The power of stories

The power of the stories

I’m so good at inventing stories. I’m so good that I’m doing it all the time whether I’m aware of it or not…there’s a podcast playing in the background of my head?Sometimes the podcast channel discusses interesting topics. Sometimes it’s just crap. It depends on the mood of the narrator, if the planets are aligned in a certain way?, and if she had danced, meditated and slept enough the day before…??‍♀️

Many times, some of these stories are quite complex. There’s an epic soup? of symbolism, narratives, and meaning, and they mix among one another in different variations, doing so many connections the play can go on for ages, more than this lifetime can hold! Narrator likes these stories because there’s a mystery behind them and adrenaline in linking and unrevealing them but also: she’s attached⚓️Especially to the ones concerning some kind of childhood trauma. She knows she has a lot of content to offer in that category…

There’s also the kind of story that presents itself not so airy but more grounded, like an observational documentary on nature??. The narrator thinks she is being clever voicing her observations in an ‘objective way’ but even science now knows all that we have is subjectivity…

Many other podcasts are just pure fictions. Some good comedies, some bad dramas. The last category is the worst one: she had often made the mistake of gathering a few elements from a past story that caused her a negative emotion and a negative belief, adding that meaning to the present story, creating not only a distorted conclusion of the now, but also a discouraging projection of the future, and adding more negative emotion to the equation?. Not a fun result. Feels like a bad joke.

The funny thing is that it is so incredibly human to do this. Especially when we are stepping into the part of us that is more familiarised with suffering than with easiness and pleasure. We crave certainty, for what is known. We offer more thoughts on what feels ‘real’ based on past experiences, not necessarily what feels ‘better’, we lack pro-positive imagination…

More often than not, this last category of stories is not adding to my healing. Even though they can hold big data?, big pieces of historic truth in them, if my focus is on the stories, they are actually distracting me from the very thing I need to do the most: Just sitting there and feeling. Just staying in my body with whatever is happening…

Stillness requires courage❤️‍?. Emptiness requires courage. Just being, not doing, not solving, not having to know the answer, letting go of interpretations and just accepting the emotion for what is…that, requires perhaps the most unpopular and yet the most necessary bravery nowadays, and it’s a more feminine one.

The one that is not obsessed with outer achievements, with conquers, with outcomes, with control, with winning, with possessing…the one that dares to be vulnerable. The one that can remain as an open door for all kinds of emotions, using the superpower of acceptance as medicine.

♊️The podcast narrator in this exhausting role and effort of trying to be more than human, of trying to solve the origin of the mysteries doesn’t really add to the quality of my life, nor to the healing of past traumas, in fact: it takes me away from the most powerful healing breakthrough of all: being a daughter, being a child of Mother Earth, of Father Sun. Again, and again and forever. I’m only a child of source…that’s my happy ending that ends all the bad stories. I’ll rest in my heart tonight with that blessing.??‍♀️

My core gift is helping others to embrace a grounded spirituality, equally loving our divinity and humanity. I give it by helping people to embody their feelings through different art expressions, beauty and creativity, playing with ideas and words as well as movement practices, proving how intensity is the juice of life, and how compassion is the ingredient that will heal humanity.

Valentina B. Sepulveda is young awarded Chilean filmmaker, writer, and dancer, currently living in India.
She graduated from Film Direction and Social Communication at Universidad Católica de Chile in 2014. Since then, she has been working as a writer, director, and editor of documentaries and experimental films. She also worked as a producer and assistant director in fiction pieces, as a producer in Chilemonos International Animation Film Festival, and as a cinema teacher at the same university where she obtained her degrees, before she left her country to join Auroville International Community. From 2018 until the beginning of 2020, she has worked as a video maker, photographer, and writer for different media units, and from the pandemic onwards she has been exploring different expressions, building up her start-up renaissance company, Ineffable Films Lab from where she plays, experiment and produce projects around movement, dance, poetry, photography and film.