In this incantation, I confront the lure of disempowering narratives—whether cast by conspiratorial minds or ancient doctrines—that ask me to abandon my center and accept a background role in someone else’s awakening. These stories place power far away, in shadows or scriptures, and reduce me to a seeker chasing truths that are never mine. But I choose presence. I question what belongs to this moment, here and now, and release all that demands I bow to something distant. I am not small. I am not a member of the supporting staff. I am the author of my awakening.
Some characters in my awakening are what I’ve come to call story goblins—people who try to rope me into their disempowering narratives, where they are awakened revolutionaries locked in battle against some vast injustice. In their stories, ancient bloodlines rule the world. Powerful, unseen forces control everything. We are all mere individuals, reduced to a speck inside a vast, rigged design.
Others tell a different kind of story—religions, ideologies, belief systems centered around distant figures, ancient texts, and invisible deities. But the effect is the same. The power lies elsewhere. The meaning is handed down. The center of the story is always someone else—someone long dead, or someone far away.
These aren’t conversations—they’re performances. And the moment I engage, I’m no longer the central figure of my own awakening. I’m cast as the skeptic, the sleeper, the background character who hasn’t yet understood the truth. If I accept that role, I’m pulled into an impossible task: to awaken to their reality, to resist forces I cannot see, to decode videos or scriptures or historical conspiracies that hint at control systems operating above me. I’m handed a role that demands I fight shadows, or surrender to dogma. And that’s not a story I want to live in.
Because I’m not a supporting character. I’m not offstage. I’m right here—center stage, under the lights, looking out at the audience. This is my story. My scene. My awakening. So when I feel myself getting pulled into their script—when I sense that subtle shrinking—I pause. I close my eyes and ask the question I always return to: How close is this to me, here, now? If the answer is far away—if it belongs to some invisible force or ancient scheme—I let it go.
Because if I believe that hidden powers, ancient prophets, or remote tyrants control everything, then what does that make me? Small. Powerless. Forgettable. And I am none of those things. I am the one who is always here. The one awake on this stage. The main character in this story—not theirs. So I don’t enter their script. I don’t accept the costume. I return to my own role, and I stay in it.
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