What Happens When You Stop Making Up the Story?

An experiment in imagination, intuition, and following what appears . . .

Something curious has been happening at The Metaphysical Haberdashery.

I have been writing stories about the Haberdashery, except “writing” may not be quite the right word for what I am doing. I don’t begin with a plot. I don’t know what is going to happen. I don’t invent characters and decide what they will do. In fact, when I begin one of these stories, I generally know no more about it than you do when you begin reading it.

Instead, I go there.

Or at least, that is what it feels like.

The Metaphysical Haberdashery already exists in my imagination as a place. There is a shop, a counter, shelves and drawers and peculiar things tucked into corners. There are peacocks wandering about with very little regard for anyone else’s plans. Certain rooms and places have revealed themselves over time. But when I begin one of these experiments, I don’t decide what I am going to find there.

Someone else asks me a question. (that someone can be AI if you are working with and AI program)

It might be something as simple as, “What is behind the counter?”

I pay attention to the first thing that appears.

“There’s a door.”

The next question might be, “What does the door look like?”

And I look.

It is important that the person asking the questions doesn’t suggest an answer. They don’t ask, “Is it an old wooden door?” or “Is the door locked?” Those questions already contain possibilities. Instead, the questions remain as neutral and open as possible.

“What do you notice about the door?”

“What happens when you approach it?”

“What do you see?”

“What happens next?”

One question at a time.

That last part matters.

If someone asks me five questions at once, my thinking mind has plenty of material to grab hold of. It can start organizing things, filling in blanks and constructing a perfectly respectable story. That isn’t what I am interested in doing.

I am interested in what happens before I start constructing anything.

Sometimes an image appears immediately. Sometimes I hear a phrase. Sometimes I know something without knowing why I know it. Sometimes there is a physical sensation, a smell, a texture or an emotion. I simply describe whatever arrives first.

Then the next question comes from something that has already appeared.

If I mention a strange box sitting on a table, the questioner might ask, “What do you notice about the box?” If someone unexpectedly walks into the room, the next question might be, “Who is it?” If I suddenly feel uneasy, the question might be, “Where do you feel that in your body?”

And slowly, something begins to unfold.

This is where it gets interesting.

The scenes often acquire a coherence of their own. Things happen that I would not have deliberately chosen. Characters behave in ways I wasn’t expecting. Places appear that I didn’t know were there. Occasionally something happens that I actively dislike, and yet there it is.

It begins to feel less like constructing a story and more like watching one.

Anyone who has spent much time meditating may recognize this territory. During a guided visualization, for example, you might be invited to imagine yourself walking through a forest and discover that your particular forest contains something the person leading the meditation never mentioned. Perhaps there is a stream. Perhaps you hear a bird. Perhaps there is an abandoned cottage among the trees.

Where did the cottage come from?

The easy answer is imagination.

And perhaps that is exactly what it is.

But “imagination” is a much stranger word than we sometimes allow it to be.

Carl Jung explored something related through what he called active imagination, allowing images and figures arising from the unconscious to develop and interact rather than consciously directing them. People who practice various forms of meditation and consciousness exploration may recognize similar spontaneous imagery. There are also intriguing parallels with aspects of remote viewing, particularly the attempt to notice an initial impression before the analytical mind begins deciding what the impression ought to mean.

I am not claiming that these Haberdashery stories are remote viewing. Nor am I claiming that I am wandering around some objectively existing metaphysical shop while my body remains inconveniently elsewhere.

I don’t know what is happening.

That is rather the point.

Perhaps I am exploring my own subconscious. Perhaps I am accessing memories, symbols and associations that ordinarily remain beneath the surface of conscious thought. Perhaps this is simply a particularly fruitful form of collaborative storytelling.

Or perhaps consciousness is considerably stranger than we understand.

I am quite happy to leave that door open.

What interests me most is the difference between an image that seems to arrive and one that I consciously manufacture.

Once you begin paying attention, you may discover that there is a difference.

The manufactured image often has a faint sense of effort behind it. You are deciding. You are considering possibilities. You are trying to make the scene interesting, meaningful, beautiful or logical.

The spontaneous image simply turns up.

Sometimes it is beautiful. Sometimes it is ridiculous. Sometimes it makes no apparent sense whatsoever. That is precisely why it is worth resisting the temptation to correct it.

If a purple chicken walks through the door wearing spectacles, let the chicken in.

You can ask questions later.

This also means resisting the urge to interpret everything while it is happening. If a raven appears, I don’t immediately stop and decide what ravens symbolize. I want to know what this raven is doing. Perhaps it flies away. Perhaps it steals a button. Perhaps it begins reciting Shakespeare. The symbol can be contemplated afterward.

First, let the raven be a raven.

If you would like to try this yourself, you need very little. Find someone willing to be your questioner. Decide upon a starting place or situation. You might imagine yourself standing before a house, sitting beside a river, entering a garden or opening the door of a shop you have never visited before.

Then have your questioner ask you one simple question.

“What do you see?”

Don’t work at it.

Notice what appears first and say it aloud, even if it seems unimportant.

Then let your companion ask the next question based entirely upon something you have already described.

Keep going.

The questioner’s job is not to direct the experience. It is to hold the lantern while you explore. They should avoid introducing new objects, suggesting interpretations or steering you toward something more dramatic. Their questions should simply help you look more closely at what is already there.

You may also find it helpful to record the conversation. That allows you to stay inside the experience instead of stopping every few minutes to write things down. Later, you can transcribe it and see what sort of strange little journey you have brought home.

And don’t worry about whether you are “doing it right.”

The experiment is not about producing visions or proving anything about consciousness. It is simply about becoming curious about what happens when you give the deliberate, managerial part of the mind a little less to do.

What appears when you stop deciding what should appear?

What happens when you follow the first thread instead of choosing the most sensible one?

And what might be waiting behind a door you didn’t know was there?

I don’t have an answer.

But I have discovered that opening the door is considerably more interesting than explaining it.

Definitely not the end,

laura

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