The telling and the hearing of a story is not a simple act. The one who tells must reach down into deeper layers of the self, reviving old feelings, reviewing the past. Whatever is retrieved is reworked into a new form, one that narrates events and gives the listener a path through these events that leads to some fragment of wisdom. The one who hears takes the story in, even to a place not visible or conscious to the mind, yet there. In this inner place a story from another life suffers a subtle change. As it enters the memory of the listener it is augmented by reflection, by other memories, and even the body hearing and responding in the moment of the telling. By such transmissions, consciousness is woven. . Susan Griffin
About This Quote

The telling and the hearing of a story is not a simple act. The one who tells must reach down into deeper layers of the self, reviving old feelings, reviewing the past. Whatever is retrieved is reworked into a new form, one that narrates events and gives the listener a path through these events that leads to some fragment of wisdom. The one who hears takes the story in, even to a place not visible or conscious to the mind, yet there.

In this inner place a story from another life suffers a subtle change. As it enters the memory of the listener it is augmented by reflection, by other memories, and even the body hearing and responding in the moment of the telling. By such transmissions, consciousness is woven.

Source: A Chorus Of Stones: The Private Life Of War

Some Similar Quotes
  1. When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable. - Jess C. Scott

  2. The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends. - Friedrich Nietzsche

  3. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection - Sharon Salzberg

  4. In youth, it was a way I had, To do my best to please. And change, with every passing lad To suit his theories. But now I know the things I know And do the things I do, And if you do not like me... - Dorothy Parker

  5. You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and... - Sharon Salzberg

More Quotes By Susan Griffin
  1. The telling and the hearing of a story is not a simple act. The one who tells must reach down into deeper layers of the self, reviving old feelings, reviewing the past. Whatever is retrieved is reworked into a new form, one that narrates events...

  2. The world of fundamental religion does not recognize even the slightest variation in meaning should this meaning fall outside its own definition of truth.

  3. My father learned his disinterest under the guise of masculinity. Boys don’t cry. There are whole disciplines, institutions, rubrics in our culture which serve as categories of denial. Science is such a category. <span style="margin:15px; display:block"></span>The torture and death that Heinrich Himmler found disturbing to...

  4. The mind can forget what the body, defined by each breath, subject to the heart beating, does not.

  5. The authorities did not wish to confront those citizens with the sight of the dead. Finally bodies were dumped unidentified into mass graves. Like plutonium waste which we would like to forget, these bodies had become poisonous.

Related Topics