Written by Rahim Paul Nanos, The Modern Spiritualist
Rahim Nanos is a multi-disciplinary spiritual teacher and practitioner with over ten years of experience in modalities such as martial arts, Sufism, divination, and contemporary shamanism. He teaches classes on manifestation, healing the inner child, and healthy energy body cultivation.
Collectively and individually, the stories we tell make or break us. As contemporary people, we’ve ventured far past the oral tradition of storytelling, and even beyond the printing press.
American lives are inundated with a flood of streaming options, more movies and shows than anyone could watch in a lifetime. Most of us have social media apps cued up to fill every single space in our day with more content, more story. We can access endless pictures, videos, blogs, podcasts, etc. Humans are obsessed with stories.
The role of the storyteller in our lives
Story is how we make meaning of our lives. It’s how we make sense of the world and its limitless context. Back in times of oral tradition, stories were intentionally framed by elders and community members to help children make sense of themselves, their community, and the world they live in. Often these stories were held by a shared cosmology among the culture. This enabled the children to rely on a consistent structure through which they had the freedom and safety to weave their personal mythologies.
In our time, stories have become fragmented and oversaturated. We’ve lost the original intent and purpose of story even though we all seek to find meaning through them. Most Hollywood stories are sloppy, trite, and repetitive. The Gen Z era of TikTok offers infinite echo chambers of performative positionality. Stories are being generated without the full consideration of their meaning.
The more fragmented we become, the more problematic our teaching stories become. The more fragmented our stories become, the more fragmented we become.
Consider a story that had a major impact on you as a child and continues to impact you today. Then, consider why that story has had such a profound impact on your life.
Often, good teaching stories explore common themes among humanity: birth, love, coming of age, sex, loss, courage, integrity, betrayal, and death. Big themes require big answers, and every individual has a unique way of making meaning.
These stories work because they help us tap into our felt sense of universal experiences in a personal way through the exploration of character, symbolism, and metaphor. Life doesn’t have easy answers and we confront choices that are difficult to make. These stories help us apply meaning to major themes in life so that we can dance through our life processes with more inspiration and wisdom.
While we don’t have total control over what happens to us, there are so many ways to perceive every situation, for better or worse. Stories help us shift our perception.
We don’t always have control of the cards we’re dealt (as good stories have already told us), but regardless of the challenges we’ve been given, the way we weave stories around those challenges has a major impact on how we feel and behave.
Thankfully, if we’ve lost a healthy connection to our Inner Storyteller, that is something we can repair.
Energy body clearing
Connecting with our inner storyteller and using it to re-weave and take control of our personal story is something that I teach in my 8-week class, Energy Body Clearing.
In this class, we confront our relationship with the stories we’ve been telling. Often, young trauma survivors weave their stories around trauma as a method of coping with it, which can have disastrous results in later contexts throughout their lives.
Another common reason for losing touch with our Inner Storyteller is simply because the stories we’ve been handed down by our family and culture keep us stuck, confused, or unhappy.
We don’t have to stay here. We can craft new and more powerful stories.
A kind of alchemical magic exists in the right story, and if we access this magic, we can carve deeper meaning from our personal experiences. This deeper meaning can enrich what it means to be alive and allow us to take more purposeful actions that impact our environments in ways that felt unreachable before.
In other words, it allows us to make meaning of our inner story and empowers us to risk actions that shift the screenplay of our lives. We are no longer victims of our stories, but the makers of them.
This mindset shift literally changes lives - yours and the lives that benefit from the impact of your story. Suddenly we’re no longer stuck in the same repetitive patterns, but we initiate enough creativity to actually shift out of phases of our lives and into completely new ones.
Manifestation theory
Why? On a manifestation level, what’s happening?
From a grand-scale standpoint, everything is energy. Energy shows up in different forms, but all energy is simply energy. On this level, we are not separate from anything else in life. We are small, but intrinsic and vital parts of the cosmic system.
From my cosmological perspective, I believe that energy itself is conscious and intelligent. When energy takes on physical form, I call this “manifestation.”
Because of mankind’s ability to think about itself, I believe that energy as consciousness gains a unique pleasure out of manifesting as humanity. I believe mankind manifests simply for the joy and awe that conscious energy can experience through thinking about itself in the way that only a human can. And I believe that humans are manifesters as a result.
Man thinks, “I Am,” and in this way, man creates his, her, or their reality. The human in question may or may not believe that their creative power is the same inherent creative power of the whole universe. But whether a human believes this or not, they have the power and free will to make choices and are actively creating reality from those choices.
Practical manifestation
If what I said above isn’t proof enough for you, that’s okay! Here’s a more concrete example of our power to create reality based on our stories.
Clinical psychologist Alia J. Crum conducted a study to explore if our perception of the foods we eat plays a detectable physiological role in how our bodies process food.
Her study, Mind Over Milkshakes, tested the effects of Ghrelin production. Ghrelin is a hormone that has multiple functions essential to food digestion. Two separate groups were given the same 360-calorie milkshake.
One group was told that the “indulgent” milkshake had 620 calories.
The other group was told that the “sensible” milkshake only had 140 calories.
The results showed that Ghrelin production was dramatically more stable for the group that had been given the “sensible” milkshake.
They concluded that mindset may play a valuable role in determining our physiological responses to food.
If the stories we tell about the consumption of our food can have this much impact, imagine the impact on your stories in every other aspect of your life!
For more background info on this study, check out this NPR article.
The power of story in cause & effect relationship
Now, let’s look at another example of manifestation from a practical perspective.
We have a human protagonist. Let’s call him John.
John has taken on a belief. The belief is that John is inherently bad. John believes he is inherently bad because his father heavily drinks and his mother is so lost in her grief about her husband’s behavior that she forgets to ever pay any attention to John.
The reader knows that this childhood upbringing says nothing about John. John is not responsible for his father’s behavior. John is not the reason that he is ignored by his mother. But growing up, John’s childhood mind could not comprehend the fact that his parents weren’t parenting because of their own failures.
The only conclusion that little John could make was that he was ignored by his parents because there was something fundamentally wrong with him. He must be inherently bad. Because John holds this belief, the actions that he takes in life reflect this belief, manipulating his outcome.
John grows up. John meets Jane. John wants to ask Jane to go on a date with him. But John believes he is inherently bad. Because of this belief, it affects the way John asks Jane.
John approaches Jane. John is reasonably attractive, but he wears ill-fitting clothes and it’s clear John doesn’t take great care of himself. This is because he doesn’t believe he is good, so he doesn’t believe he deserves to take better care of himself.
This is strike one for John in trying to woo Jane, not because he’s inherently unattractive, but because he is unkempt, giving him the appearance of being unattractive. John could have made a different choice here which would impact the outcome, but John doesn’t see any other choice. He believes he is inherently bad.
Unkempt John approaches Jane. As he gets closer, Jane takes him in. John keeps his head down and slopes his shoulders. He doesn’t make eye contact.
When he finally gathers the courage to ask, “Will you go on a date with me?” he is convinced she’ll recognize his inherent badness and say no.
He asks her so fast he barely gets the words out. The words are slurred and slightly panicky. He’s still not making eye contact. His feet aren’t turned towards Jane. They are turned away as if he’s in danger and preparing to run. This is because John doesn’t want Jane to see his badness, so he creates an exit strategy that keeps him from fully connecting with Jane.
Jane is confused. Jane has no idea what John just said or what he wants. She’s getting anxious from his approach, but she doesn’t assume she’s in danger.
She simply asks, “What did you say?” because she didn’t hear him the first time. John takes this response as an outright rejection without understanding that she didn’t hear him.
John runs away. John doesn’t get the girl. Not because of his inherent badness. John doesn’t get the girl because of the choices he made out of his belief in his inherent badness. This is the power of story.
Now let’s see what could have unfolded instead.
John grew up in a chaotic household. His father was a heavy drinker. His mother ignored John because she was too busy playing damage control with her husband’s behavior.
In this scenario, little John could have understandably developed a belief about his inherent badness… but he didn’t.
John had an elementary school teacher who knew the power of story. John’s teacher ensured that John knew he was lovable. As a result of this, John grew to trust his teacher.
John told his teacher about his trouble at home. As an adult in John’s world, John’s teacher contextualized the situation for him. She explained why his parents might be ignoring him without excusing their behavior. She affirmed him and then told him stories about protagonists like John who felt isolated and unloved, but found a way through.
As a result of this loving relationship, John sees a window of opportunity to develop a different belief instead. Instead, John grew up to believe: “Life can be complicated, but I am inherently loveable and capable of bringing myself through challenges.”
John grows up. John approaches Jane. John knows his father screwed up with his mother. However, he recognizes his power and choice to write his own story. John holds his head high as he approaches Jane. His eyes are bright and full of hope. He is dressed well and Jane notices how attractive John is.
John asks, slowly, strongly, and clearly, “Would you like to go on a date with me?”
Jane feels comfortable with John’s clarity. John’s excitement and hope are contagious, making Jane feel hopeful too. Jane says yes.
Same John, different story, different outcome.
Reclaiming the inner storyteller
For better or for worse, whether our stories build us up or tear us down, our stories are very powerful. Our stories are how we choose to decide how the world works. It’s how we make predictions that impact our behavior, whether they are truthful predictions or not.
Our stories determine how we assume the behavior or intent of others. It’s how we make sense of neutral expressions and determines how empowered we feel to meet challenges.
It determines how creative we choose to be. It determines which opportunities we can see and which ones we are blind to.
The more we allow trauma to fuel our stories, the more we repress and marginalize our Inner Storyteller. The more we repress our Storyteller, the more we weaponize our Storyteller.
Many humans, as a result of sterilization and domestication of our culture, put their Storytellers fully away in the dark recesses of their minds. This unconscious Storyteller then drives our beliefs and actions from a place so buried that we are either completely numb to our own lifeforce energy, or we act out in extreme ways that we regret later.
Because the Storyteller is so powerful even from a place of deep repression, it is still using up a bunch of energy in distorted ways.
We can become extremely fatigued because our Inner Storyteller is stuck in a trauma, playing it out over and over in our bodies well after a traumatic event occurred. It uses up all the lifeforce by looping in the same pattern over and over again. We become fixated on the past and unable to access the reality of the present moment.
Only by bringing this into our awareness and taking steps to repair our relationship with our Inner Storyteller can we open up a true pathway to freedom. This is what my class, Energy Body Clearing, gives us a protocol to do.
Reclaiming the Inner Storyteller takes real work. Above all, the work is about being able to come into honesty and integrity within yourself. It means acknowledging where you lie to yourself, where your blind spots are, and what stories you crafted to protect yourself from a reality you couldn’t deal with at the time.
This is a kind of reclaiming that doesn’t happen overnight. Eventually, the magick does happen. But not without consistency, accountability, and the persistence necessary to make real changes.
Habits are very powerful and our oldest habits win. Changing these things at first feels like working a muscle that has been sedentary for a very long time. The hardest part of weight training is the beginning.
Eventually, as you strengthen, you build enough momentum and practice that it gets easier to exercise a certain muscle group. It’s the same thing with habit forming. Persistence is key until the changes you’re making to your story build momentum and fully integrate with all parts of you.
In Energy Body Clearing, there’s an energy component, an emotional component, a mindset shift, and a concrete action in your life that exists as proof that you fully changed a story. Without all these components, dismantling an old story and building a new one is incomplete.
Falling in love with your inner storyteller
Your Inner Storyteller is just as clever as you are! We come by our stories and attitudes honestly. In childhood, we’re looking to our environment to learn. We learn not just through being actively taught, but through covert messaging in our families and communities. We learn just as much through the unconscious stories that our communities are carrying.
The best way to work with your Inner Storyteller is by acknowledging things as they are. You are carrying the stories that you’re carrying for a reason. You came by them honestly. You were told these stories in overt and covert ways growing up. You created your own unique stories to make sense of your life and challenges. These stories protected you, but many may be outdated or harming you now.
Your Storyteller isn’t a villain, but they need guidance too. Creating space for this kind of vulnerability and contradiction allows you to address the wounding that your Inner Storyteller carries.
As that wounding begins to unwind, your Inner Storyteller can unveil itself in a new light, and it can tell the story of your life in ways that are more uplifting, more meaningful, more hopeful, and more authentic to your natural sense of self, the one you came with before cultural conditioning began.
Ultimately, falling in love with your Inner Storyteller and acknowledging its true power and impact on your life is the biggest shortcut to true change. The reason why that’s difficult is because we have to choose to no longer be in denial over the ways we used our stories to cause harm to ourselves and others.
If we can acknowledge this kind of harm within the context of coming by it honestly, and having the power to change it if we take responsibility for it, we reach a new height of what accountability to oneself really means. It no longer has a negative connotation, but a sobering and empowering one. It’s what enables us to meet great challenges and overcome them.
It’s the moment in The Lion King when Simba stops saying “Hakuna Matata,” and changes his story to “I’m the rightful King and it’s my responsibility to restore balance to the Kingdom.
It’s one of the most profound and uplifting moments in the whole movie. It’s the moment he takes his power back.
If you’re ready to restore balance to your inner kingdom, I offer several services in which you can begin to access, meet, and reconcile your Inner Storyteller.
Energy Body Mastery is my 8-week class that helps people re-establish a healthy connection between their mind and body. This allows us to open up to the stories coming directly out of the Earth.
In the following 8-week class, Energy Body Clearing, we meet and reconcile our relationship with our Inner Storyteller. This allows us to craft better stories to re-contextualize our lives in more inspiring and empowering ways.
In my 8-week manifestation program, we start making these new stories a reality to deepen, enhance, and succeed in making our life’s dream a reality.
I also offer tarot readings, astrology readings, and one-on-one per session spiritual coaching.
If you are interested in scheduling something with me, please email me at modernspiritualisttarot@gmail.com.
If you are interested in pursuing the source of these teachings, visit the Last Mask Center for Shamanic Healing.
Read more from Rahim Paul Nanos
Rahim Paul Nanos, The Modern Spiritualist
Rahim Nanos is a spiritual visionary with roots deeply embedded in ancient spiritual lineages. Originally a student of psychology, Rahim's experience of chronic childhood abuse caught up with him in forms of anxiety and depression that prevented the further pursuit of his studies. He began seeking other modalities of healing through authentic spiritual lineages and quickly healed through them. During his healing journey, he noticed disparities within both the psychological and the new age framework of healing that felt counterintuitive to the true core of healing work. From there, he dedicated his life's work to bringing holistic modalities of healing into people's lives as an alternative to reliance on broken or incomplete systems.
