We are the world creators; the story tellers.
From the beginning of time, those who possessed the stories weaved meaning and wonder into the world, into the minds of men. They captured realities inaccessible to most feeble minds and passed the bread to pacify their need to escape the frailties of the human condition.
The oracles, the ministers, the seers, the bards, the sages, the philosophers, the men of letters, the statesmen and political orators… the leaders: these are the minds that shaped the course of history, portraying worlds laced with endless meaning. They constructed stories that stratified the mind, that constructed consciousness that allowed mankind to live, to build.
Walt Disney possessed an insight like no one else. He created a world, curated a world, much like the authors of Christianity and Muhammad and Buddha and Hindu have done. These worlds possess magic in plain sight, evident to those who believe in the magic, who have faith in the world.
Ron L. Hubbard knew this. “You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion” he is famously quoted as saying. And he did. A dozen plus books later, his story was totally unrealistic, but it was believable, it gave people hope, it provided a story for people to believe in, to bond together.
The word religion is derived from the word ligature, meaning bound, from the latin word religare meaning “to bind” as in “to bind together”. This makes sense, when considering that religion is an institution binding people together through a common story.
Stories are life in motion, imbuing conscious experience with meaning, weaving words into a tapestry of significance. Everything is a story, and stories about struggle are the most universal. Love and loss.
The two attitudes toward love and loss are either comedy or drama. Comedy embraces the absurdity of life, the inconsistency, the injustice, and laughs because grieving is no use of time, though it provides existence with depth of feeling. Drama is the grieving, is the feeling that produces a well rounded depth. It is not superficial, it is profound. It holds on, whereas comedy lets go. There is joy to be found in both of these, the drama of holding on, the sorrow of holding on. Sometimes this works, sometimes it does’t. The best stories illustrate both of these struggles. Lost love found again. Comedy, on the other hand, relishes in the absurdity, holding nothing sacred, letting go and passing through circumstance with ease, laughing it off, accepting the injustices as mere jokes of the universe. Easy come easy go.
The cult leaders.
Cultivating stories, creating culture.
The world cult is derived from the latin word cultus meaning “to protect, nourish, worship, honor, till” from the word colo meaning “to till, to move, to turn around”. Culture refers to a cultivated piece of land. In the 16th century cultivated referred to the way the mind, faculties and manners could be developed, much like the soil, to yield good fruit.
Men of faith, in these worlds: perceiving the unseen. Great men, capable of imagination, of exercising the wisdom of the ages to construct these coherent worlds, capable of culling the cattle of men to pools of pleasure, of joy, of escape, by providing depth and meaning.
We create a world, a fantasy, full of universal mimetic meaning, of metaphors that make life spring to mind.
We are the world makers.
We tell it how it is, and you want to know more.
They will say, “Give me more of this joy. I know these characters. I know these deities, these personifications of me, of my multitudes, contained within me.
Give me more of these stories, weave a narrative I can glue my senses to, that I can grip and hold onto, to insulate me from the shallow world I inhabit, that my weak animal mind struggles to endure. Give me joy. Give me meaning. Please, I beg you. My world is too painful, possesses too much suffering. Let me indulge in this world, let me here these stories, let me take these totems, these toys, these symbolic representations of the world and their heroes, and place them amongst the exterior landscape all around me, let me adorn my life with them as reminders, offering me an escape when I am weak, when life becomes difficult.”
This they say. They want to be pacified. They want to believe. Let us create this world with fantastic stories that educate and inspire, that elevate, that put magic in profane places, in plane sight for those who want to see, those of faith, in the magic, the divine, the spiritual and supernatural.
We create the worlds, we tell the stories. Our language provides us the ability to create, not only describe. I am not a beggar, asking for handouts from others. That is for you. I am the world creator. I am the god head, the divine whisperer of ageless wisdom and magic and discovery, and I possess the power to produce meaning, to save your soul.
We are the world creators.
Let us enlarge your world, from beyond your slighted senses. Let us breath life into your spirit, so that you can see with new eyes, and feel with new hearts. These characters, these deities embodying the feelings within you, guide you in life, offer you a hero, a protagonist, ansntahonist to pin you pain on, an advisor for your travels. Seek them like the Greek gods, like the pantheon of past. They will accompany you on your journey.
We are the world creators, crafting characters containing the same spectrum of humanity as you, the rarified states of being that tantalize the imagination, that lay dormant at the edges of awareness, ever occupying your thoughts, but never explicitly. They are you, and when you see them, you see you. And you are inspired, like that daimon lurking low, that genius that embodies what you’ve always known to be true. (See: Emerson, Self Reliance) These personalities, these deities, give you permission to feel human, to feel whole. And you consume them, forgetting yourself. This is the aim of religion. To bind together, as one, as one of the flock.
We are the world creators.
We are the shepherds who heal hampered minds. Who unchain you from the world, from the mundane masses all around. The cattle of consistency, the convention keeping consciousness in a callow state.
Conventional stories fill our lives, but they are weak stories. Religion is out. Give me something more meaningful. The stories we create are safe and sound, are familiar and universal.
We are the world creators. Animating the inanimate world. There is magic here. The world of past was full of magic, but of superstition, of folklore that mislead man, of witches and wizards, of divine beings.
The world we create is science, is truth, the priesthood of the focused man with a focused aim. Reality is constructed by story, by the syntax sequencing the attention from one adjective to one article to the act that enrapt the imagination. The semantics imbue it with color, with feeling.
There is story that is magic, the leverages the logic of absurdity amd love, and this we create.
There are no rules. This is the truth. There are no laws of engagement, anything goes. There are ways to live that alleviate suffering, or promote suffering, but suffering is inescapable, and embracing this is the beginning of wisdom. You grow due to struggle, not because of its lack. There is no strength in ease, no matter your power. Strength is overcoming the insurmountable. This is truth, in finding what is true for you.
When you begin, everything is insurmountable. There is wisdom in this. Embrace the impossible, and you will rise to the challenge, you will learn to grow taller than the obstacles around you, but always seek bigger obstacles. There is nothing to fear when you operate from a place of love, from a place of acceptance, from a place where you nourish with attention. Death is imminent for all. Do not fear death. Annihilation begins in the mind. Charge the unknown: you are an explorer, you discover what is true, if only for you.
Disney World is the modern day Mecca; the American man makes his Hajj to this holy place. Who tells the stories here?
Muslims travel to the Mecca to participate in this world, the story they’ve been told. These holy sites are a refuge, the ultimate escape. The wellspring of our stories have a place, and these holy sites, these sacred worlds are their origin. Man’s search for meaning is all the same: create a story, an escape, and alleviate the suffering. Revisit the spiritual centers for healing. The pilgrimage takes us there: Carholic Christians make the pilgrimage to the Vatican, Buddhists to the Gangetic plains of Northern India and Southern Nepal, Hindu’s to the Himalayan Char Dham – Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, and Yamunotri. They go to the places where the magic began, to participate in the stories occupying their world.
A quote that has stayed with me all of my life, “The only reason it is still apart of your life is because you still keep thinking about it.” This is true for things that you don’t want in your life, just as much as it is true for things you do want in your life.
You become what you think about all day long.
You can join us in this world, but you must believe.
We will pass this sacred knowledge onto you, from the ivory towers into the temples of your heart. You will become part of the story if you share this knowledge, this magic. Share it with the world, let others into this world. The stories make disciples, so long as you share them. Be fishers of men.
The biggest worlds, possessing the most depth, the most substance, the largest landscapes of imagination: these are the pillars of civilization. The Pantheon, the World of Dr. Seuss, of Harry Potter, of Tolkien, of CS Lewis, of Disney, of Jesus, of Mohammed, of Buddha, of Moa, of Plato, of Aesops Fables, of Star Wars, of Mother Goose. The stories that we share, that teach us, that inspire and empower us, that show us that magic is found where it is sought.
We are the world creators.
William Dare 