In my most recent article (“Earth Game as God’s Stories”), I presented the perspective that your life here within “Earth Game” is your individual story, played out against a background of successively broader and grander stories – including Earth’s story, the story of our galaxy, and the creation story itself (i.e., the story of our Universe and beyond). Here, I explore how the “story arc” of your individual story is developed, including the respective roles of your Higher Self, your Soul, and the Earthbound “you”.
Every storyteller is familiar with the concept of a “story arc”. Whether viewed in terms of a novel or movie, or alternatively as episodic storytelling (e.g., a television series), there is a progressive unfolding of the plot. I invite you to ponder your own present lifetime in terms of a similar unfolding.
In a story arc, first comes some measure of exposition, i.e., background information, including characters and setting. In your individual story, that is your family, hometown, and initiating circumstances. (The broader background, of course, is the timeline of your present lifetime as viewed against the unfolding story of the Universe, our galaxy, the Earth, and the unfolding human story on this planet.)
Then in the story comes some sort of initiating incident, followed by rising action. In your individual story, these can play out in multiple ways for various aspects of your life.
The rising action eventually leads to a point of climax, resulting in success or failure, i.e., some sort of resolution. This is followed by falling action, denouement, the tying up of loose ends. Here again, there may be various storylines playing out over various stages of your life. The story arc of your life is more like a television series that spans multiple seasons – that is, with action serially rising and falling – than a single novel or movie. (As for the tying up of loose ends, in the context of the story of a lifetime I would think that mostly involves the life review at the time of crossing over.)
As with the story arc for a television series, the story arc of your life is thoroughly crafted and developed and then launched. As it progresses, however, new ideas may be worked into the story. The story arc itself may evolve. Let’s look at how the initial development and subsequent developments are worked into the storyline as your life unfolds.
Before you were born, your Higher Self crafted the basic elements of your story. Your “past lives” were part of the backstory (albeit a part that would remain mostly hidden to you); they almost certainly informed the key elements of the plot, i.e., which opportunities and challenges and conflicts you would encounter in your present lifetime. Your parents and siblings were agreed upon, and various other rendezvous that would play a significant role in your story were lined up. Whereupon your Higher Self passed the baton to your Soul as an intermediary between the realm of your Higher Self and the physical realm that would serve as the backdrop for your story.
It would be the role of your Soul to guide you into the rising action – the opportunities, the challenges, the conflicts. To that end, your Soul would ensure that you would miss none of the signposts, and none of the destined rendezvous. Yes, whenever you would look through “the eyes of the Soul”, you would recognize every “chance” encounter that was not to be a fleeting encounter. Free will notwithstanding, your Soul would guide you to your storyline, and make sure you did not fail to notice it.
At various junctures, however, and by design, Soul exits the Director’s chair and hands over editorial control to the physical you. At which point you exercise your free will any darn way you please. With whatever consequences might flow from that, of course. But ultimately leading you back – again and again, if necessary – to those climactic choice-points.
Free will being the “prime directive” that it is, you can determinedly dodge the resolutions that were the key elements of your story arc in this lifetime. But you may have to numb yourself to do that – perhaps through drugs or some other addiction. If you succeed in that avoidance, eventually Soul will lose interest in the story that goes nowhere. Reluctantly, Soul cancels the series, and shifts focus to what a replacement series (i.e., your next lifetime) might aspire to.
The paradox of free will vs. a predetermined plan for your lifetime resolves at the above point. There are junctures you will arrive at, circumstances you will encounter, and individuals who will most certainly appear upon the stage of your life at just the right time and place. But how you fare through those transits is up to you. At those points of climax – those “choose your own adventure” pages of your story – you will be making the call.
Here’s the rub. Soul, if heeded, will always take you down the path of growth, i.e., the path of evolution, i.e., the long journey back to Oneness. Which path will always involve opportunity, but also some element of challenge and/or conflict. Ego, however, being the fully Earthbound aspect of “you”, may have other ideas. If the Ego aspect of self doesn’t realize that its role is mostly to watch and enjoy the movie, it may decide that it needs to edit the action. That is, if Ego, being a construct of your not-entirely-aware physical brain, decides that its job is to create safety rather than adventure, then Ego will do its darndest to shut down all that opportunity/challenge/conflict stuff. Run away from all that; escape; hide.
Can you imagine if the stories that we love to watch or read were crafted by a mispurposed Ego? No heroic deed would ever be attempted. Protagonists would hide out, go nowhere, do nothing of any value as entertainment.
Consider the opposite of all that. Wherever there is a whisper of Soul’s intent, whenever there is opportunity, challenge, and perhaps even conflict, step forward, embrace it, venture into it. Relish the story arc – and multiple story arcs – of your lifetime. Think of “acceptance” as saying yes to your Soul; rejecting any experience is the converse of that.
Instead of “Oh no, here we go again”, or “Why me?”, or “What if this doesn’t work?”, can you respond as if you were watching a movie from the safety of a comfortable theatre seat? The mantra “Ooh, isn’t this interesting” would serve you well whenever the rising action in your life is building towards some sort of climactic scene.
From the above (refreshed) perspective, take a look at your life. Consider the various story arcs within your life, including their various stages of development. And consider the overarching story arc, the story of your lifetime. Embrace it all, in full acceptance. Then, imagine yourself in the presence of your Soul. With a resolved nod, tell them you’re in, that you are saying “yes” to whatever opportunity or challenge or conflict is presently lined up for you. Then, perhaps imagine them handing you a pen, and a tablet with a script still under development. What will you write on the blank pages? How do you choose to resolve the storyline(s) of your lifetime?
It is a fresh perspective, viewing your life as one of “God’s stories”, i.e., God’s entertainment. More fun, I suggest, than viewing it as some sort of ordeal or trial or test on which you will be graded and judged (or, worse yet, as a meaningless and pointless exercise generated by a “cosmic fluke” theory of reality.) No, you are an actor on a grand stage, playing a role you enthusiastically signed up for. The actor need not be afraid. Just be the entertainment that you came here to be. As you perform for an audience that is the grander “you” who, beyond this world of illusion, is who you truly are.