We walk through this life in the shadows, in the shadows of those who have gone before.

Usually, and most commonly we don’t even know it, not on the deeper level. We may have some ideas, both positive and negative, that we articulate to ourselves and at times to others, but these are, more often than not, simple conceptualisations of the murmurs that bubble away deep in our subconscious.

The stories that we tell ourselves; stories to ease us through life, stories that seem to make sense, stories that help us avoid the true story.

We like to tell ourselves that we are just as we are. We like to tell ourselves that we inherited great talents, abilities, a great attitude to life. We like to tell ourselves that we were cursed, corrupted, an unfortunate by product of our environment and upbringing.

All these things are true to some extent, but in the telling of these stories, the truer and deeper story lies hidden.

This is the story we need to hear.

Through this story we find ourselves and release our true potential. Through this story we find liberation.

Some would say we are born with a certain, clear disposition and there may indeed be some truth in that. We inherit a deeply complex array of information stored within our DNA that will carry and pass on snippets from the many generations that have gone before. DNA is now known to be the most powerful and complex information system imaginable, the mysteries of which are still not fully understood.

So yes, we undoubtedly inherit.

However, we are more than that.

As each day and year goes by, we become far more than that. We become the product of the stories we hear, we see and we feel around us. In a complex weave of interaction with these stories we grow and develop a picture of our world and of ourselves in relation to it, and without even knowing we are doing it we create our own story of who we are, of what we want and of what we fear, and then, simultaneously, we live it.

We live it, adding to it along the way, every action, every event reinforcing the story so far, and so our life becomes a self-referencing truth, and the deeper we go into our own created story the harder it becomes to see where all this started, or that it even started somewhere at all.

Even for those of us who have taken the time to self-reflect and to develop self-awareness we are still but characters within our own story.

Time to follow the thread to lead us back to where it all began.