All creatures are born inescapably defined by their stories. When we recognize the stories that generate our definitions of ourselves, we are closer to the discovery of what is indefinable within us. That discovery reveals inner freedom and lasting fulfillment. Each life form has a beginning, an arc of a life story, and then an ending. Most of our internal and external attention and communication circle around the particulars of how we define ourselves as collective life and how we define ourselves, or others, as particular life. Other animals, trees, flowers, butterflies, spiders, rocks, planets, and solar systems also have their stories, and the broadcasting of their stories is both our greatest entertainment and our inevitable humbling.  

We can find ourselves, or parts of ourselves, in all stories, and we can separate ourselves through our stories. We all come from life-giving energy, are infused and animated by life energy to become a particular life form, and we all end in returning to formless life. Along the way there are small and great dramas, crossroads of destiny and surprises both wondrous and horrific. Stories are sung, put into sacred books, memorized, dramatized, and consulted generation after generation. Our collective cosmic story is a teeming theater of life forms appearing and disappearing. Forms are born, live through many stories, and then die. Before any form appears, life is here. During the lifetime of any form, life is animating that form. After any particular form dies, life — while withdrawn from that form — remains here. Life is true. It is always here.