Destiny. Is it crushing or joyful?

         In a way, that’s the same question blasted out by the Baba Yaga to the traveler in quest of the beloved: “Are you here because you wanna be or because ya haf’t’be?” While anyone awake vibrates in the question of destiny, the devil and other merchandisers specialize in sleeping spells, addictive sells, seductive lies, religious shells, workaholic half-truths, and bookoo distractions.

            College is supposed to be the quintessential questing-ground for destiny; not surprisingly, then, any authentic campus abounds in sideshows going A (academics, animal house, athletics) through S (sex, slum dwelling) to Zzzz (sleeping-in and feel free to fill in your favorite seduction). Amid this circus, Good Stories offers a destiny-detector as we learn to discern signal from noise by recognizing when a story strikes a resonant chord. We call this attending to the point of resonance.

         In our initial Good Story, we set sail on a Russian folktale with the youth on a fishing boat accompanied by a tutor. Often titled “The Maiden Tsar,” we call it “The Visit” because the story features a visitation from the beloved with an encounter that compels the journey. Of course, what is life but the journey? For destiny is more about direction than destination; it’s really about increasing integrity, becoming more true, more whole. (Thanks to Marion Woodman for elaborating on wholeness in relation to this story.)

         But those are too many words, the philosophical kind that risk putting us back to sleep, or that might provoke a drink, a binge, a lifetime off the real path of attraction. Decoding destiny depends on stories more than abstractions because the stories, the true ones, have the nectar of the gods.

         We just have to decant them. Decant: transfer from one container to another without disturbing the sediment. In other words, our bodies want/need the spirit from the bottle without dead words and without hangovers. From “The Visit” bottle, how do we engage the beloved and the firebird so our bodies are vitalized with the arousal of destiny? How do we, like the traveler, pass the want-to/have-to test and get rewarded with the ecstatic whirl on the firebird?

          Not so fast. Let’s remember it’s the journey, not the destination. In Good Stories, our initial tasting of the swich liquor might simply offer relief. Let’s take time to appreciate that we’re not going crazy. In today’s world, we’re often told one thing when our bodies are crying something quite different; and that’s crazy-making. While our heads are stuffed with dead notions from mis-taught books and hegemonic organizations, our inner sense knows we’re in a quantum age.

        This quantum swirl around uncertainty (Heisenberg), indeterminacy (Bohr), and about wave/particle and observer interaction might first appear disorienting; yet chances are our bodies can appreciate such concepts that acknowledge the turmoil our senses give us. The feel of uncertainty has an honesty and the quantum confirmation of it allows our meaning-making system to say, “Ahh. I’m not crazy. So how do I hold together contradiction, paradox, and constant change?” Quantum multiplicity sooths us when we know everything is changing, including our brain; it tells us that being perfectly clear is an illusion, if not a deception.

      We’re making sense of stories through multiplicity because they yield truth mainly when we work them on multiple tracks, when we connect archetypes with personal experience, when we bring together historical happenings with today and even engage the future. Quantum multiplicity is acknowledged in the coined term: timespacematter/ing.  Yes, it’s easy to feel crazed; but with hard work/play involving stories we can connect with inner knowing and we can trust the resonant compass that’s implanted in our beings from birth or before. That’s destiny.

       Baba Yaga demands us to respond to the question we’d rather avoid: “Wanderer, are you here because you want to be or because you have to be!” When we engage this question seriously and when we invoke the quantum gift of multiplicity, we are able to see it’s a trick question.  As we articulate the miasma, this dispels the oppressive fog that we feel much of time, especially when we look into the deeper waters around destiny: What am I here for anyway? Which way am I going? Is that all there is? And the perennial one, if “God is Love,” how can there be so much suffering in the world?

      In Good Stories we escape from being consumed by our wish for simple answers through serious play; and like the traveler, when the time is right, but not before, we have to blow our own horn, loudly and yet louder! So we get confirmed that we live in an age of multiplicity, necessitating “quantum” consciousness and navigable by quantum storytelling. Still, hearing their names doesn’t make it easy.

      So when we think destiny: Do we get the pin in the neck putting us to sleep? Do we wield the sword that frees us from oppression? Do we soar on the firebird? Do we finally get to embrace the Beloved! Well, it doesn’t have to be that old way of testing with only-one-right-answer or you go to hell. When the trick questions come, let’s learn to take a good breath, say “YES&NO” and connect with resonant inner knowing?

      Here’s what my horse sense tells us this week. Legacy’s message for us: If you’re going to dance with me, get in the flow. Because a horse has reaction time far faster than humans, we’ll need to live in the future. Slide on into that next step. In order to do this, we have to act in the perfection of the step we’re in. The one we just asked for is already happened/ing! And don’t forget the importance of follow-through. In that spirit of multiplicity, part of us also has to swirl out in the wake, streaming into the sunset. Horse power takes us into timespacematter/ing.