Forming Meaning and Telling Stories
"I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life." Paulo Coelho
"I believe legends and myths are largely made of truth..." J. R. R. Tolkien
Stories, symbols, and images have an incredibly powerful impact on our worlds, selves, and reactions to our environments. Our constant search for meaning is "a journey to wholeness...in relation to seeing the interconnectedness of everything" (English & Mayo, 2012, p. 181). Through the different ways that we create meaning of our lives and world in which we live, we form and reform stories based on conscious and subconscious emotions, relationships, contexts, and interactions (Dirkx, 2012). In essence, all that we are, all that we experience, and all that we accept allows us an opportunity to support, challenge, create, or recreate our stories and the meanings that we make of our world and our understanding of it.
Story-telling and myth making are firmly rooted to the work of the soul. Myths and stories arise from both the conscious and the subconscious realms. These two realms, the conscious and subconscious, are brought together through the ways that we create meaning. This, as I referred to previously, is the essence of soul work. Kinsella (2006) describes a process of meaning making that focuses on the act of critical reflection.
"(H)umans actively construct their personal realities and create their own representational models of the world" (Kinsella, 2006, p. 279).
Stories, myths, and meanings cannot be created individually, the role of social relationships is a significant component of transformation. After all, how do we challenge the meanings behind our own stories and myths if these meanings are rooted only within ourselves? Transformation does not occur in a vacuum; transformation occurs when our own realities are influenced by others. This transformation occurs at the intersection between individual and social borders - the liminal line.
We travel along through our lives, telling ourselves stories about meaning and understanding. Sometimes these stories hold true as we continue our journey. We can all think back about the things that we used to tell ourselves - 'oh how foolish we were' is a typical response. How did we come to understand ourselves and the world in different ways? What caused us to flip our stories around and change things that we believe to be true? What keeps us rooted to our long-held stories and myths? In what ways do images, relationships, and experiences shape our stories? What drives us inward, to that liminal line, where we critically reflect on our beliefs and values, our stories and myths, and the meanings we hold to be true?
Kinsella (2006) is on to something - problems are solved through changed meanings; learners "set the problems that they go about solving", they construct, demolish, and reconstruct their stories about their worlds and create new meanings (p. 284). After all, isn't that how we learn and grow?
What stories do you hold on to?
"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales." Albert Einstein
"Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage..." C. S. Lewis
References
Dirkx, J. (2012). Nurturing soul work: A Jungian approach to transformative learning. In E. W. Taylor, P. Cranton & Associates (Eds.). The handbook of transformative learning (pp. 116-130). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
English, L. M., & Mayo, P. (2012). Spirituality and adult education. In Learning with adults: A critical pedagogical introduction (pp. 179-187). The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Kinsella, E. A. (2006). Constructivist underpinnings in Donald Schon's theory of reflective practice: Echoes of Nelson Goodman, Reflective Practice 7(3). pp. 277-286. DOI: 10.1080/14623940600837319.
"I believe legends and myths are largely made of truth..." J. R. R. Tolkien
Stories, symbols, and images have an incredibly powerful impact on our worlds, selves, and reactions to our environments. Our constant search for meaning is "a journey to wholeness...in relation to seeing the interconnectedness of everything" (English & Mayo, 2012, p. 181). Through the different ways that we create meaning of our lives and world in which we live, we form and reform stories based on conscious and subconscious emotions, relationships, contexts, and interactions (Dirkx, 2012). In essence, all that we are, all that we experience, and all that we accept allows us an opportunity to support, challenge, create, or recreate our stories and the meanings that we make of our world and our understanding of it.
Story-telling and myth making are firmly rooted to the work of the soul. Myths and stories arise from both the conscious and the subconscious realms. These two realms, the conscious and subconscious, are brought together through the ways that we create meaning. This, as I referred to previously, is the essence of soul work. Kinsella (2006) describes a process of meaning making that focuses on the act of critical reflection.
"(H)umans actively construct their personal realities and create their own representational models of the world" (Kinsella, 2006, p. 279).
Stories, myths, and meanings cannot be created individually, the role of social relationships is a significant component of transformation. After all, how do we challenge the meanings behind our own stories and myths if these meanings are rooted only within ourselves? Transformation does not occur in a vacuum; transformation occurs when our own realities are influenced by others. This transformation occurs at the intersection between individual and social borders - the liminal line.
We travel along through our lives, telling ourselves stories about meaning and understanding. Sometimes these stories hold true as we continue our journey. We can all think back about the things that we used to tell ourselves - 'oh how foolish we were' is a typical response. How did we come to understand ourselves and the world in different ways? What caused us to flip our stories around and change things that we believe to be true? What keeps us rooted to our long-held stories and myths? In what ways do images, relationships, and experiences shape our stories? What drives us inward, to that liminal line, where we critically reflect on our beliefs and values, our stories and myths, and the meanings we hold to be true?
Kinsella (2006) is on to something - problems are solved through changed meanings; learners "set the problems that they go about solving", they construct, demolish, and reconstruct their stories about their worlds and create new meanings (p. 284). After all, isn't that how we learn and grow?
What stories do you hold on to?
"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales." Albert Einstein
"Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage..." C. S. Lewis
References
Dirkx, J. (2012). Nurturing soul work: A Jungian approach to transformative learning. In E. W. Taylor, P. Cranton & Associates (Eds.). The handbook of transformative learning (pp. 116-130). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
English, L. M., & Mayo, P. (2012). Spirituality and adult education. In Learning with adults: A critical pedagogical introduction (pp. 179-187). The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Kinsella, E. A. (2006). Constructivist underpinnings in Donald Schon's theory of reflective practice: Echoes of Nelson Goodman, Reflective Practice 7(3). pp. 277-286. DOI: 10.1080/14623940600837319.
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