Theater is Innate
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Storytelling didn’t pop up by accident – it is a natural and innate way for the human nervous system to process thoughts, experiences, and emotions.
The popularity of the ancient Greek theater eventually evolved into the popularity of movies and television today. It is unfortunate that this is relegated to “entertainment” because the actual magic in such processes is minimized and all but lost in that approach.
Storytelling through theatrical formats, including film and television, activates our mirror neurons and so feels to the audience, in many ways, as if they are the ones living the story that the characters are living.
However, the focus on the experience of the audience is generally where the exploration ends. Meanwhile, playwrites, screenwriters, filmmakers, etc are all living their experiences mostly in secret. These are the people who have first-hand experience and push the boundaries of human exploration.
Oftentimes, these behind-the-scenes storytellers are channeling experiences that they don’t fully understand. The archetypal movements that they must embody on behalf of the audience make them into the holy people – priests and priestesses – of our modern culture. Storytellers archetypally live on a similar plane as doctors telling us whether we will live or die, judges, and mortuary staff helping us to say our last goodbyes.
Practically speaking, this means that becoming a holy person is as simple as allowing our bodies to channel the necessary collective stories that need to be told. There is a reason I wrote a book on this topic and based more than a decade’s worth of healing and contextualizing around it as well.
Stories are like ghosts, and they will keep haunting the cells of our bodies until they are given their rightful acknowledgments and passage into where they belong.
