The most important story is the one you tell yourself.
When I wrote my first book, Press Play, in 2020. The main idea was simple.
Music is more than just entertainment. It can change the world.
I weaved my personal narrative with a voyage through music from Africa across to the United States and Caribbeans and to the world.
I learned a lot from that writing journey. Most importantly, I learned that music was a great tool to build empathy and move emotions.
Underneath that main idea that music can change the world was a sub-idea that music can radically empower the individual and be a glue to bring people together.
4 years after writing that book, I’ve grown. I’ve written some more. I’ve come to realize that it’s not just music.
What I was really talking about is storytelling.
Our ability to tell stories will save or annihilate us as a human race.
Happy Saturday, btw.
Suffer Suffer For World!
Enjoy for heaven!
We are dominated by our minds.
We don’t use our minds as a tool to reduce suffering.
The mind uses us, intensifying our suffering.
Ever since we became attached to clock time, our minds have been dominated by linear thought processes.
Productivity and intelligence are how you progress in life.
As income inequality grows, you have to be sharp (utilize your productive body and intelligent self) or be left behind.
Our attachment to the mental form has helped us build a lot of tools.
But it has also led to destruction.
Our current level of consciousness is “mind-dominant.” Tied to time.
It has gotten us far but it is on its last leg.
If we are going to survive, we will have to evolve past this level of consciousness. Breaking our identification with the mind and rising above thought.
Silence is more important than noise.
This evolution begins on a personal level.
It starts with the individual building their awareness of the present.
When we all do this, that’s how we move forward.
Go above thoughts to raise consciousness and tell a cohesive story to do it together.
Our survival depends on it.
3 Ideas For Conscious Storytelling
I recently watched Oppenheimer – a story about how the atomic bomb was created.
It was fascinating.
Although it had the technical elements of bringing these smart minds together, it was a story about morality and envy.
It was a reminder that the human mind is the most effective tool in the known universe but it can either be used to empower or destroy us.
Raising our collective consciousness is the only solution. This is done with awareness and stories that bring us together.
With a few ideas I’ll share about conscious storytelling, you’ll become more aware.
You’ll not be jerked around by thoughts that are there to manipulate you. You will use your mind as a tool to end suffering not the other way around
Here are the 3 ideas to think about to thrive:
1. Increase your awareness
We have to go above thought to survive as a human race
I was recently listening to a Lex Friedman podcast of Noah Yuval Harari.
There were various topics discussed from human origins to artificial intelligence.
Two things struck me the most.
First, he drove home the point that the thing that makes humans unique is our ability of flexible coordination.
The main driver for that is fiction: the ability to tell stories and imagine.
Can you imagine?
This is how we have coordinated across millions of people.
Second, he talked about AI and mentioned that one way to build AI responsibly is to make it necessary that for every minute or dollar invested in AI, a similar amount is invested in raising human consciousness.
This struck me as I simultaneously read The Power of Now.
It made me reflect: that our survival is tied to how we can raise our collective consciousness to tell cohesive stories that help us coordinate better.
The identification with the mind is our dominant form of consciousness.
This mind dominance is what has got us to where we are as a human race.
But reliance on it is like being on a sinking ship.
Most times people go below thought to reduce mind activity.
They do this with sex, alcohol, drugs, and other addictive behaviors to reduce the mental chatter.
Going below thought also happens when you sleep.
The next phase of the evolution of our consciousness is going above thought.
This happens when you tap into the present.
The “I am” that’s there already.
One thing that has allowed me to connect with the present is meditation.
It allows me to observe my thoughts, without judgment. Focusing on my breath.
With practice, you can get glimpses of the present moment. Where you are not lost in thought. The gap between the thoughts is your awareness. Your real self.
One exercise I just came across has been helpful.
Do you want to try it?
OK.
Close your eyes. (Well read the question then close your eyes)
Ask yourself this question: “I wonder what my next thought is going to be?”
Try it now and just see what happens.
We’ll talk about it later in this letter.
“The egoic mind has become like a sinking ship. If you don’t get off, you will go down with it. The collective egoic mind is the most dangerously insane and destructive entity ever to inhabit the planet.”
~ Eckhart Tolle, Author of The Power of Now
Raise your consciousness by tapping into the power of the current moment.
Everything else is an illusion.
2. Understand the power of stories
A good story is a tool used to thrive. A bad story uses you to divide.
Growing up in a Christian household, you hear the origin story.
From the Garden of Eden, man was made to “rule the fish in the sea” and “birds in the sky”
I hardly questioned that story.
But then something happened. I got older.
I learned about the Yoruba origin story.
In search of knowledge, I learned how Olorun sent down Obatala from the sky.
He descended on a gold chain, carrying a snail shell filled with sand, a white hen, and a palm nut. He poured the sand down, the white hen spread it around the marshland to create hills and mountains.
The palm nut was planted to create palm trees.
Obatala created people like himself out of clay and asked Olorun to breathe life into them.
So many stories.
I bet your culture or religion or company or currency has one too.
If there’s one thing we like as humans, we love a good story.
Our competitive advantage as human beings is our ability to organize.
We can build large and flexible networks of people.
Our closest evolutionary relatives, chimpanzees, can only create social groups of 50 – 100.
We have networks of billions of us sharing goods, ideas, food, clothing, and artistic artifacts across great distances.
This is what helped us as a species to rise and in a sense dominate the earth.
At the foundation of this network are stories.
Our ability to tell stories is what allows us to gather together as strangers and organize.
Almost everything that is an entity beyond your physical body and survival is a story.
Religion is filled with stories.
Money and the value it holds it’s a story we agree upon.
The schools we go to are a story we tell ourselves about the importance of having a paper certificate to be able to do a job.
They are all stories.
To keep thriving, we have to think about the stories that we tell one another.
Are we developing stories to bring cohesion or division?
“My answer is stories. It’s fiction. The imagination. If you examine any large-scale human cooperation, you always find fiction at its basis. It’s a fictional story that holds a lot of strangers together. It’s most obvious in religion”
~ Yuval Noah Hurari
Don’t overlook the power of a story. It’s what got us here.
3. Embrace your storytelling responsibility
Embracing uncertainty is the new story of our era
The world seems very noisy now.
Everyone’s an expert on everything.
What people are not talking about is the panic that is fueling this noise.
The internal panic that the world is doomed.
The reality is that panic itself comes with hubris. The mind-dominance yelling “I know it all.”
Curiosity and bewilderment are what you need to cut through the noise.
Saying “I don’t know what’s going on” is the best approach.
We have lost the cohesive liberal story.
Most nations that adopted it are now embracing a nationalist agenda.
What most have not taken into consideration is the huge upcoming technological disruption of biotech and infotech.
Humans have been good at building the world outside.
We now have the technology to build the world within. Manipulate bodies, cells, and even thoughts.
Just like how we are good at building new tech but not great at dealing with the consequences.
What will be the consequence to the social order and politics when we can for instance kill a thought? (You should read my book – Toffy’s Divide to get a clue)
The new liberal story will have to adopt a narrative that weaves the impact of ecological collapse and technological disruption into its story.
The reality is that we are moving from an era where the masses pushed back against exploitation to where the pushback will be against irrelevance. (No one wants to be useless).
The next decades will be one where clarity and reflection are needed to engage in civil dialogue.
Instead of yelling doomsday in panic, approach it with bewilderment
“Stories are tools. They are good when we use them to alleviate suffering….sometimes we forget this. Instead of using the stories for our purposes, we allow the story to use us for their purposes, and then we start wars because of a story. That’s the tragedy of human suffering”
~ Noah Yuval Harari
Stay curious.
Develop your story with others through open dialogue.
Final thoughts
Remember that exercise in the beginning. Did you find yourself waiting for the next thought to emerge? Did you have a few seconds before a thought popped up in your mind?
Yeah, that’s the attentiveness. For a few seconds, you became very alert and aware. That’s the awareness that exists beyond thoughts.
As an individual, develop your ability to raise your consciousness. Go beyond thought. Tap into your ever-present awareness. Participate in raising the collective consciousness by contributing to the narrative to reduce suffering.
You are responsible for conscious storytelling.
Don’t forget, the most important story is the one you tell yourself.
For every hour and amount spent on AI, a similar amount should be spent on raising human consciousness.
It’s not only necessary to thrive. It’s necessary to survive.
