Leah Lamb: Stories Show Us the Way

Leah Lamb: And what is a crisis? A sacred storyteller begins to use etymology and says, oh, a crisis. If you look at the etymology says, we’re at a fork in the road. We have an opportunity to make a choice. That’s what crisis means.

Tami Simon: In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Leah Lamb. Leah is a writer, a creator, and a storyteller working at the intersection of myth, and personal transformation. She spent seven years working as a wilderness guide, has a background in social work, theater and environmental media. And Leah Lamb is the founder of the School for Sacred Storytelling. And when I first heard about the School for Sacred Storytelling and how Leah was bringing together storytellers from across the world to tell in a visionary and creative way the stories that we need to know now, the stories of our time, I thought to myself. Leah Lamb belongs at Sounds True and that’s true. She has created with us a new learning series. It’s called Sacred Storytelling, how to Tell Stories That Open Hearts and Heal the World. Leah, welcome

Leah Lamb: Thank you so much, Tami. It’s such an honor to be here with you today and amongst the amazing teachers that you profile in your space.

Tami Simon: in this new teaching series towards the beginning. You state emphatically sacred storytellers are the Sears of our time, I wanna start there because I think so many of us are trying to see clearly at this time, and it’s hard. in such a collective phase of change and many people are like I, I can’t quite tell. What is happening now? So if we could start, how does a sacred storyteller function as a seer at this time?

Leah Lamb: I wanna go back to the original role of the storyteller. You right now, we’re in a time when storytellers are known as marketers. They’re known as people that are selling products or are selling visions. Uh, we’re selling movies and, and we’ve been capitalized and, and consumerized. And back in the day, back in the original time when we, when we go back to, um, all the ancient religions agreed that the world was sung, spoken and chanted into being.

And I like to say that twice because I almost need to read that like three or four times myself, that all the ancient religions agreed that the world was sung, spoken and chanted into being. And so as humans, if you’re wondering Why am I here? Well, the original instructions are there. They tell us that one of our roles as humans is that we are creating and we create through our voice, through our song, through our words, through our stories.

But we’re not the only creators. And I just wanna say that because birds are creating, we were talking about whales. If you’re in the ocean and you hear a whale singing, they are creating also. And so when we come back to the original role of humans, one of the original roles of humans, knowing that our voice is here to create the original role of storyteller, it was a sacred role in in society.

They were known to be healers. They were known to be guides. Um, in, in Africa, the OTTs, they were the memory keepers. And Welsh, they were the, they were known as the people between the dimensions. They could take you into other worlds, but they bring you home. That’s the role of a guide. They always bring you home.

And in today’s world, when we look at movies, when we look at all the horror movies, there are so many storytellers that I, I fear, have maybe never been informed or told or introduced to the sacred position of what it is to create reality. That we are constantly creating reality for other people and that reality might last for generations and generations and generations.

And so that when we create these stories, when we bring something from the creative space, when we bring something from the unseen realms and you know, story. It has its own language. It it, you know, if you’re gonna go to France, you learn French, right? If you’re, if you’re gonna go to the land of story, you learn the language of story and it speaks through symbol, through metaphor and through archetypes.

And so this, this amazing, you know, world that is unseen and what lives there, perhaps our ancestors or our guides or our angels, or as Sean Cain says, the earth literally speaking out loud, that when we can receive these messages and it comes through. Story all of a sudden is coming through the language of spirit metaphor into its, it, it has like this instant translator story itself is a, is the translator.

It’s the Rosetta stone from the unseen realms. And so when the, these messages can come through our stories, now all of a sudden they can actually act as guides for how to live through these times. So when you’re saying, how do we, how do we see through these times and how do we understand ourselves as sacred storytellers and, and what does it mean to be a sacred storyteller?

Which is when I, when I use my voice in honor of the sacred, when I use my voice to say I am in service to life itself. Now that is an instant determining factor of what I choose to give my voice to my life force to. And so when I say I’m a sacred storyteller and I’m speaking in service to life, well, what kind of stories will I.

What kind of dreams will I share? How discerning will I become? You know, and in the middle of the night I woke up probably in preparation for this, for this, for this time with you today. And I got this instant, uh, curious, uh, metaphor. You know? And normally I say, I try to explain it where this beautiful body that we get to inhabit and we all give this body and our soul lives in it, right?

I think that’s a common agreement on some people. Not you all, but you know, that’s out there. And so there’s stories and a story is a vehicle for spirit. And so when we bring a story into our bodies, we live with that story inside of us, and now we can inhabit it. And so it inhabits us. And so we can tell joyful stories.

Fearful stories. Stories filled with hate. Stories filled with grief. And they can transmit through us, and we can experience those stories when we receive them. And then there’s the stories that we all know that get stuck, you know, stories of what happened in your childhood, you know, it can start living in your liver, you know, or what happened in a broken heart, you know, your heart can get scarred, you know, and, and will it repair?

And, and so, um, coming back to again, this piece of how do we be Sears in this time? One of the things is to understand the mechanics of the biology of our body and our consciousness. And our brain is not smart. Our brain’s kind of dumb. It’s like a, it’s like a car and it’s designed to survive. So our brain’s here, it’s designed to survive.

It has a job just like your car. When you turn it on, it has a job. It’s gonna, you, you hit the pedal and it goes right. So when we are surrounded by the amount of fear that we have right now, the amount of devastation that we have right now, the amount of grief that we have right now and our biological nervous system responds into fight, flight or freeze, that’s when our consciousness gets to come in and start driving the vehicle.

That’s when our stories and our stories are, are our consciousness. That’s when we can say, okay, if I can catch my breath right now and breathe. What story do I want to be living in right now? What story do I most want to be creating right now? And how do I use the power of my voice to speak that into being?

And this is where, you know, I know that you’re in, in BC right now. I grew up on the East coast, and we are, so, we’re, we’re born critical. We’re born with a little bit of snark, inness. And so this idea of, you know, half glass full, I, I hated it. I thought it was so smarmy. You know, until I started learning this really, that this is ancient knowledge.

This isn’t woo woo ungrounded, uh, guidance. This is be discerning with your language. Understand how much power you have with what you speak. And are you going to tell the kids of this time that there’s no hope and that we’ve messed up, and that there’s nothing left to live for. So go eat everything outta the ocean, you can because it’s gonna be gone soon enough.

Or do you say we are at a, we’re in a crisis. And what is a crisis? A sacred storyteller begins to use etymology and says, oh, a crisis. If you look at the etymology says, we’re at a fork in the road. We have an opportunity to make a choice. That’s what crisis means. And so we can say, ah, wow. I sure do want to have a beautiful ocean filled with life and a beautiful forests.

And we have this moment when we’re being asked to, to come into a new place of guardianship for Earth. We’re being asked to say, what do you love? What do you love? Go protect it. And I really believe in my heart of all beings, that if we can get our feet on the earth and let the, the spirit of life breathe through us, and we ask that one question, what is the one thing that I love?

What’s the one thing that I’m here to be a guardian for, to protect? There’ll be enough of us to protect this place.

Tami Simon: Let me just ask you a clarifying question. Leah, you said in the middle of the night, perhaps you’re unconscious, preparing for this conversation. Something came through, what was it that came through in the middle of the night?

Leah Lamb: That was that our brain is really dumb and that our consciousness, the story is what’s driving. So we really want our, our, it’s, it makes sense for us to get shut down. It makes sense for us to get paralyzed. It makes sense for us to, to want to numb out when we’re surrounded by this much fear and our brain is actually doing its job.

It’s saying overwhelm shut down,

Tami Simon: So let’s, let’s talk about, let’s talk about this notion of our brain is overwhelmed and we’ve become invested in a glass half empty story, and yet we wanna be a sacred storyteller, but we don’t wanna do it in an inauthentic way. I don’t wanna dream some fantasy vision, uh, of either what happened to me or what could happen for life in the oceans.

I wanna be grounded in the devastation that I feel and still tell of visionary story of what’s possible. What are your recommendations around that?

Leah Lamb: Deep listening, I, I think the biggest, one of the biggest crises of our time is that humans think that we created this by ourselves and we’ve lost our relationship to the greater. Family of being on a planet, that we have deep interconnectedness with plants, with stones, with animals, and that there’s intelligence in all of these beings that was operating long before we came around with our opposable thumbs and started changing things.

And, and even this idea that we changed things of our own free will, that we weren’t somehow inspired or informed by all of that around us. So it’s such a great question because the distinction between fantasies and dreams, you know, this fantasy is like, oh, I wanna live in utopian world where everybody gets along, you know, and, and it’s, it’s, I love that we think that that’s a fantasy rather than a dream, you know?

And, and I think about, uh, in those moments when, when we don’t know what step to take next, or when we’re feeling hopeless or powerless over this. This idea of what would it be to actually try something really different? And I think that’s the greatest question. What’s something that would be radically different?

And could that be simply sitting on earth and, and actually taking some time to get the energy out of our brain and out of our thinking, which is now being so overly impacted by so many other things and say there’s another intelligence that operates on this planet. This planet is designed to continue to rejuvenate and survive.

That’s what it’s does. It has a superpower. Our planet is a healer in the universe. She’s a healer. She’s designed to heal. And so when we can come into the truth of that story and that we don’t have to figure it out, but what we can do is sit down on the earth that we are living with and say, what is one thing that I can do with you today?

What is the story that you wanna speak through me today? That’s one I, I, I really believe it’s in the. Getting off the phones, getting out of our beautiful intellect, getting out of all the statistics and facts about what we say is going to declare the, the end of time of life, of humans, and getting more into relationship with this earth who’s designed to keep living.

And I really believe Earth loves us. I really do. I think she wants us here. And so it’s how do we start thinking about being collaborators, being partners. And I really believe in my heart of heart set, we’re going through this, you know, big change in one of those changes is a change in our relationship to story.

And that we’ve been kind of, uh, kidnapped by the story of the hero. And, and the hero does it alone. I have to save the world. And now we’re going into the time of, oh, the, the rise of the, um, collaboration. No, we’re going to live with the world. It’s a different story. So part of it’s changing the story.

Tami Simon: Now when you said that, I really believe Earth loves us, I had this moment and I thought, well, I know I love the earth and

Leah Lamb: Hmm.

Tami Simon: many humans love the earth, that’s for sure. But. How does Leah, how does she have this conviction that the Earth loves us? I, I’m gonna put a question mark on that one.

Leah Lamb: I mean, I just moved to Maui three days ago and I got to have my feet on the sand and I’m, I’m looking at bright, vibrant green trees right now. And every time I go in the presence of the natural world, I feel at peace. I feel at ease. I feel filled with love. I feel like I have more access to myself, um, to joy, to pleasure.

I, I really believe that energy is coming out of that natural world, and I get to experience it when I’m in its presence. And that’s where I feel like we have this very strange cognitive dissidence. And, and, you know, many years ago I ran the Green Channel for Al Gore’s television network, and I took in environmental news all day long and I thought my job was to synthesize it so that we could move people from information to inspiration and motivation to activation.

And I realized that I was really asking the wrong question because information is not where we get our inspiration from, or inspiration comes from somewhere else. It comes from the living and, and not from data. And so, I don’t know, you live in British Columbia. Uh, like I love to know what happens for you when you go out in the natural world, but for me it’s, I, I can read about the, about the earth and feel a certain way and I feel like, oh my God, it’s all dying and ending and life is over.

And then I go out and I’m in nature and I’m living a very different story. I am, I’m in love, I’m in love with life.

Tami Simon: As a sacred storyteller, you have the opportunity to tell these stories from whatever perspectives, uh, that speak through you and that you want. So that’s, that’s your right. Now, while you were recording this series for Sounds True On Sacred Storytelling, if I understand, correct me and please correct me if I’m wrong, you were in a studio, uh, in the New York area recording this teaching series while the fires were spreading in Southern California, in the Los Angeles area, including to the area of home in Topanga Canyon, and that the fires actually burned down many houses in your community and came dangerously close. Very close within a couple of blocks to your home, and as you’re talking about this storytelling for hope and possibility and the fires are spreading in your hometown, tell me what that was like for you and how you oriented towards telling the story of fire devastation.

Leah Lamb: It was such a powerful confluence, Tami, to be. You know, in those studios recording for you guys really talking about the role of the sacred storyteller in these times, the role of storyteller as guide, as someone who, who provides a pathway through. And then all of a sudden on the, on the, on the morning of the third, uh, recording day, I was in the subway and I got news that the fire was at the bottom of our street and it was real.

It was, it, I wouldn’t, I realized I had to turn off my phone. I had to focus on the day of recording and I went in fully with the reality of, okay, everything of my material world could be about to be lost and. What happened in that moment was that there were huge fires in la The Palisades, the way that Topanga works is we’re surrounded by Malibu on one side of us as a canyon, and the Palisades on the other side.

And there were huge fires in the Palisades and there were huge fires in the Malibu. So by the time that the fires started coming up the canyon, there were no resources left. There were no fire trucks left. And so my entire community of peoples calling 9 1 1 and we’re getting these messages. Uh, Topanga is, is a very well networked community.

They, it’s a special spot where people go there and they wanna be in community and they’re pretty well networked. And so I’m looking at over the WhatsApp groups and the, the hysteria and the fear that’s happening that people are calling 9 1 1 and they’re being told that no one’s gonna come. And what.

Topanga had, which I actually think every community has, is that they were very well resourced and one of the first resources they had was connection. So for example, on my block, we had had brunches together. So we had, we were already connected. Everyone on the block was already in a text thread. Um, we also had people who were used to doing things in the world and they automatically turn their skills inward to start taking action.

So within hours, like literally within hours, they had created, um, entire WhatsApp groups, uh, understanding who needed help getting evacuated. Um, we, they had understood, um, it made a map of all the pools in the entire canyon so that when the fire trucks came, they would understand how to access water. They had, uh, understood, um, people started bringing in their own fire trucks, which I didn’t know this was something that you could do.

But then there’s this that happened. When in this kind of crisis, and I don’t know if you’ve ever had a health crisis or, or something, when I’ve experienced it in myself, all of the noise of life goes away. And if you can be in that place of deep listening and life that wants to keep going, it, it gets very clear what is yours to do?

And that’s what I witnessed in that community. All of a sudden, all these different people came online and people got in their lane for what they were really good at. The marketing people started creating these communication systems. The, the tough, the tough, rugged dudes created their own fire brigade.

So all of a sudden, you know, within hours, uh, Topanga had their own homemade fire brigade that was then going out and putting out spot fires, and they had these communication systems. Um, the people who were emergency, uh, trainers knew that the libraries, and everyone should know this by the way, that your local library is set up as an emergency center and has communication systems that don’t shut down when everything else does.

They have generators, they have all of that. We had someone in our community that knew that. So we had within hours an emergency system. And then there’s this, everyone that was to get out of the way did. And that’s a really important piece. That’s where that deep listening, you know, we’re not all supposed to be on the front line.

There’s, there’s waves of, of things that can be done at different times from different places. And that fire came where I live in Topanga, uh, was literally right on the edge of the wilderness, really across the street wilderness. And when the fires ca came, my neighbors who had all lived there for over 30 years, finally, when Barb left, I knew it was serious because Barb never left.

But she understood how when the fire goes down to the ocean, the winds bring it back up and then it’s time to go. And then there were two neighbors in our area. This is such an important story. There were two neighbors on our block that had it out for each other, and I lived on the friendliest block in the world, best neighbors.

But we had some people that moved in that didn’t know about living in rural areas and they didn’t understand the nature of neighbors. And they, they stayed with the old timers that also stayed. And together they ended up fighting that fire together. And it’s such an important piece in terms of what is real community.

Real community shows up for each other when it’s not convenient and when you need each other. That’s what community is. It’s they’re the people that they don’t have to be your best friends. They’re the people that you, who you really need when, when the moment comes. And all of the nonsense of our egos and personalities doesn’t need to be forefront when the crisis comes.

And so those two people who fought like cats and dogs in normal life fought the fire together and saved Topanga. And I’m not being dramatic when I say that because they ended up, uh, calling in the fire brigade. And when the airplanes came in, they didn’t understand why they had to save that particular, um, mountain side.

And they realized that if the fire came there, it would’ve taken the whole canyon. It’s to me, one of the most inspiring stories, and it’s the story that gives me hope that everything can fall apart. The social services were not there for us when we needed them in that moment. But the people that lived there, who were connected to place, who were connected to each other, who were connected to land, showed up for each other.

And it was one of the most extraordinary times. And these moments of crisis, they can, they can bring us together in the most magnificent ways. And they, you know, they’ve done research on World War II and the long-term impact and they went back, uh, to the people of London and asked them, you know, what was the best time of their lives.

And they actually talk about the time that they were getting bombed as being one of the highlight times of their life because there was so much connection. There was so much community, there was so much aliveness. And not that I say that I’m not calling for that kind of crisis, you know, but I do want us to know as, as.

As people who remember our past and who remember our history and remember that that crisis can, it will bring out our best and it will bring out our worst. And I really, having been through now several crisis, I was in the fires in Northern California. I was near the fires in Southern California. I’ve been around the fires of Maui, that over and over and over again, most people truly want, people want to be their best selves.

And this gives us this opportunity to show up in a way that we might not get to when we’re, you know, in the doldrums of everyday life.

Tami Simon: Now I wanna just make something more explicit, if you will, because there’s so many different ways to tell any story. You just chose a way to tell the story of the Topanga fire and how these two neighbors collaborated. Even though in ordinary life they, you know, whatever, uh, hated each other. When, when it came down to it, they were on the same team and they did this heroic act together. You could have told the story a different way about the Topanga fire. How does a sacred storyteller use a lens, if you will, in your words, tell stories that bring us home? How do we focus on, oh, I’m gonna tell the story in such a way that brings us home. Are you excluding a lot of other possible stories in the process?

Or how, how, what’s the lens you use to do that?

Leah Lamb: I mean, that story could have excluded, right? ’cause it’s not very, you know, it’s like, oh, I have to tell about these people that didn’t get along. I think as sacred storytellers we’re looking for the path through, we’re, look, we, we understand that our role is a guide. And so it’s not about ignoring the shadow or ignoring the things that aren’t working well, but it is about having an eye for patterns.

It is about, um, having an eye for, um, who is doing what. That will show us a way through. And I feel like more and more that’s our job as sacred storytellers. We have to be telling stories of, of how to get through. It’s sort of like, um, you know, we’ve all had friends who are pregnant or we’ve all had friends who have operations.

And we all know people who have had horrible pregnancies or have horrible operations. And when you’re talking to someone who’s about to give birth, you don’t tell them all the stories about everybody that died during birth or had horrible things happen. No. You tell them the stories about that woman who was really amazingly courageous and, and, and had a great birth.

You, you fill her with great birth stories or you fill her with strength stories, and you do that with discernment because you don’t need to plant these bad ideas in our head. You know, I think the same thing in this moment of, you know, I think two of the things is it’s what do we look for? You know, I’m, I’m obviously looking for the way through.

I’m obviously looking for good people, doing good things. Um, but it’s not that I’m not ignoring everything else, that, that’s really the story that I saw. I saw over and over again. People showing up to be their best selves. And it is the role of the sacred storyteller to be discerning because there’s so many stories of fear.

There’s so many stories of hate, you know? Sure. I could have screamed and cried and been hysterical and been like, oh my God, I’m about to lose everything. But what’s the point? Like, do I get to have a good feeling in my body by getting hysterical and sad and whatever? Or do I say, okay, how can I stand up inside of myself inside of this moment?

How do I meet this moment? I, I love the ocean as, as the ultimate guide and teacher in, in terms of we’re in this times when we’re getting hit by waves over and over and over again. And do we turn and face the wave? Do we dive in the wave? Do we ride the wave? Because if we run away from the wave, the wave’s just gonna smack us down.

And, and as storytellers, we have that opportunity over and over again where we get to be the driver in the seat of our brain and saying, okay, consciousness, you know, where do we wanna steer the story? Where do we wanna look? How can I, how can I find a pathway through this?

Tami Simon: That’s very helpful and I wonder if you have any prompts for someone who’s in a story in their life. They’re not through it.

Leah Lamb: Yeah,

Tami Simon: not through it,

Leah Lamb: yeah.

Tami Simon: can’t tell you,

Leah Lamb: Yeah.

Tami Simon: uh, this is how this story comes out. They’re in the dark wood and they’re lost. What are the prompts that might be able to help them telling the story?

Find their way, find their way through, through the act of storytelling.

Leah Lamb: Well, the first thing is don’t tell the story when you’re in the middle of it. Like when you’re really in the thick of a mystery, like let yourself not have to know what the story is. And the, and the biggest thing to do in that moment is not to repeat old stories. So if you’re someone who’s had your heart broken, or if you’re someone who’s had, who’s lost everything, or, or whatever your story is, that that can be your block.

And when you’re in the mystery of the unknown, the biggest thing is don’t repeat your old stories because they’re not here right now. You’re actually in the middle of something that’s completely unknown and unfamiliar. And what that requires is to be radically present, to ask for a story to help you through.

This is my favorite thing to do in those moments when you’re so lost, is that you can actually go to that imaginal plane and you can say, give me a medicine story for this time. Give me the story. And it’s, it’s flipping the switch, right? Because we’re so used to, I’m gonna tell the story and that’s our ego brain.

And, and the great ego does a great job of doing that. But when we can come to that humble space in our mind and our consciousness and say, I don’t know how to do this and I don’t know how to get through, can you bring me a story that will support me through this time? The greatest prompt is once upon a time, and one of the things that you can do with once upon a time is it immediately takes you into the mythic dimension or into the dimension of the soul.

And you can say, okay, and you can go in with intention and say, I’m looking for, and I call it the medicine stories. Um, and you can use any word that you want. It means healing. It means, you know, bring me a story that will bring healing to this moment in time. And okay, I’m gonna receive it through your language, which is through symbol metaphor.

It’s gonna be a mythic story. And so with once Upon a Time, you know, show me how to get through and you can allow this mythic reality to reveal itself to you. The trick, this is the biggest trick, Tami, is you have to trust what comes to you. Because what you’ve done is you’ve, you’ve, you’ve come into the space of surrender.

You’ve said, I don’t have the answers. Can something beyond me guide me in this time? And can it come through a story? And so you can say, you can say, I’m talking to the muse. You can say, I’m talking to the angels. You can say, I’m talking to Spirit, to, I’m handing over to God. Whatever your language is. I usually just like to say, I’m giving it to the spirit of life and you know, I’m, I’m, I’m asking for the spirit of life to help me in this moment.

Bring me what I need and it’s not gonna be the same story that you’ve always known. It’s, it’s going to be something else. And that’s that moment when you get to stop doing and you come into that state of receiving. So it’s a very yin position. It’s a restful position. It’s receiving. Um, another way of saying it’s like I’m being, you get to be danced by the muse.

If you like to tango or salsa, you get to go to the muse and say, you lead the show. I’ll follow, let my pen follow your lead. I’m just gonna write whatever comes through. I’m not gonna think about it. I’m not gonna stop it. I’m not gonna interrupt it. I’m just gonna receive. And I have had the most extraordinary healing experiences in my own life working with this.

I witnessed a woman who was in, um, just a battle with her brother and just so mad and resentful with him because of the drug addiction that he dealt with. And he, she did this process where she took the story and we put it into the mythic dimension and we say. You know, we’re asking for medicine, we’re asking for healing.

Bring it back. Show us the story in this dimension. And when she came back, she saw him in a completely different way, had clarity in another way of understanding his situation, and could take that way of relating to him in this realm. And so, Tami, I hate using this word, but I don’t understand any other word, but it, it feels magical.

It feels otherworldly.

Tami Simon: Okay. I’m, I’m okay with magic.

Leah Lamb: Good.

Tami Simon: If you could tell me

Leah Lamb: Yeah.

Tami Simon: a time in your life where you felt stuck, you didn’t know the story through, and perhaps you asked that question. You sent out that cry, if you

Leah Lamb: Oh yeah.

Tami Simon: what happened?

Leah Lamb: Oh gosh. Every, every day. But, um, one of, I have two great examples for you. One of them I was, I was in, uh. I was in a, a situation where someone who I really was into betrayed me in one of the worst ways. And it, uh, you know, he slept with my best friend and, and my heart got just, you know, splattered in all directions.

And then it went straight into like my core wounding of childhood abandoned men. I couldn’t see straight, I was just so in the pain body of what was happening. And therapy wasn’t working, nothing was working, you know, I was just in that. And so out of desperation, I, I took that and I put it into that, into the, into the mythic dimension.

And I said, you tell me the story. I, I’m done. You tell me the story. And what I received was this whole other mechanism of working with saying, okay, in the mythic dimension, what if that person, which is causing you so much pain is your master teacher? So in order to do this, I have to say there’s a warning.

The the, and the, my, my warning on this is that you have to be, the only way that you can do this is if you’re willing to not be right. So you have to be at some point in your life where you can say, okay, I’m gonna go in the world of, of, of, maybe I’m, I’m not right about how I’m seeing this. And you’re doing that in service to saying, I wanna know the whole story.

I wanna know the whole story. And I’m, I’m gonna rewind just one second here and say, what is truth and truth? It’s a carpentry term, right? It means a straight line from here to there. And so when I say, well, I know my truth, of course I’m right because all I can see is from here to there. But if we were sitting on the opposite sides of the circle and there was something between us, you would see something different than me and your truth, right?

So when we go to this moment of saying, I surrender. I, I surrender. I need help. The story that I’m in is causing me pain and suffering. I want to live in another story. I wanna heal this story. And when we hand it over, we say, I’m also willing to not be right. I’m willing to see something bigger and make the story bigger than what I’m in right now.

And so, in that case, you know, we, we, I call it the sacred story telling Samurai Flip, where you take the bad guy, the villain, the person who’s causing so much pain, who’s so wrong, and you, and you flip them over and you recast them in the story. And the mythic dimension is master teacher one who’s willing to take a hit in the human dimension.

’cause wow, did he look like a jerk? But what happened in the, in the mythic dimension, if I say, okay, you came as my master teacher and you were willing to give me an opportunity to learn something that no one else would willing to do. ’cause no one else got into my heart in that way, and no one else could open that core wound in the way that you did.

And wow, now I have this incredible opportunity to address this core wound. This isn’t about you anymore. This is about what that story woke up in my own system and how it, and how it created alchemy with other stories that were stuck inside of me. So we begin to see ourselves as storied people, and we get to really engage ourselves as, as, um, observers of life and of alchemists.

And so in that way, one of the things I think is so incredible when we understand that story is, is a, is a chemical process. We have this biological body and it does all these things and energies can get stuck in it. And that when we work with story, story is a form of energy that we bring into our body consciously or unconsciously.

And so when we say, okay, now I’m a, I’m in this pain body. I want to heal it. How do I change that story? And when you authentically change the way you live inside of a story, then it begins to cha that energy changes in your body and then you have to make this other commitment. I’ll never tell that story in that same way ever again.

And that’s how the change it goes from lying to yourself. I don’t, I don’t want that to be my story. I’m gonna resist it to, okay, I’m gonna face that story all the way. I’m gonna see it from all different directions. Oh well. If it wasn’t, if it’s not just I was betrayed, abandoned, and lost, what if it was, oh my God, I had this opportunity to really tend to something that was really deep and painful inside me that needed to be addressed.

Tami Simon: a terrific example. Terrific. And really helpful. Now, you said there was a second story, so I want to hear that one

Leah Lamb: Second story was I, um, another love story. I met someone, it was a very intense meeting. I couldn’t make any sense of it. It was driving me a little crazy. I was like, I don’t understand why. What, what was that? You know? And, and I, um, and that’s where I learned this technique. Honestly, Tami, I was in this question, I was in Kauai.

I was like, I don’t understand what that meeting was. I can feel that it was bigger than this moment. And I took it and I put it into the mythic dimension. And I said, you tell me this story. And I received this story. Uh, uh, it’s, and I can actually share it with you. It’s, it was called, uh, when We Were Gods, and in that story I got this beautiful, rich story of a wind goddess and a wolf god.

And, and I got how they had met in this other lifetime, and they wanted to come as humans and, but dangerous coming as humans because you lose your memory. And, um, it’s a longer story that I won’t get into right now, but what it did was it helped me make sense of the feeling that was otherworldly, if that makes sense.

It gave me a way to listen to what was the bigger story that I could feel between us, even if it wasn’t going to act out in the human place in this time. And I think, you know, when I think the people that listen to you are very attuned and they are deep listeners and they are deep feelers, and sometimes we feel things that, that, that.

Doesn’t make sense in the moment that we’re in because we’re these timeless beings feeling through time and space and, and all of that. And when we take this, this other knowing, this intuitive knowing, and we put it into the vehicle of story and you say, show me what this is from a humbled mind, you show me.

I’m not gonna tell you. You show me. We can receive so much guidance and insight.

Tami Simon: Speaking of meetings that we don’t quite understand, but we know are very powerful. Right. In the beginning of our conversation, Leah, you mentioned that you and I had been talking about. Whales, because before we started recording, I mentioned to you that I heard that you were working on a book called The Whale Dreamer, which is part of a multimedia initiative to inspire and empower youth to connect with the ocean and it’s extraordinary beings during a time of great ecological change. And I said, I’m so interested that you have this connection to whales and whale dreaming because here in BC you mentioned where I live, I’ve been in encountering whales. And part of the reason I came up to BC was my love of dolphins and whales, and specifically orcas as well as humpbacks and blue whales, all kinds of whales.

And I don’t really get it. It’s, it’s, it’s almost like I feel like I’ve gone into a different. Quality of stretched time. When whales are present, when I hear them breathing, when I see them in a distance, it’s not like time stops. It’s more like it expands and gets slow and I start dreaming. But I don’t, and I think probably a lot of people have this reaction.

I don’t think this is some like special whatever. I think it’s, it’s, it’s, I think a lot of people have this reaction, but the interesting thing is I don’t really get it. I don’t really get how it relates to storytelling, but I sense that it does. And I wonder if you could help shed some light on how you think love of whales relates to storytelling.

Leah Lamb: you’ve gotta wonder how this being with the biggest brain on the planet and the one of the biggest hearts on this planet, somehow has gotten into so many of our consciousness and somehow has been replicated in so many different shapes and forms. I mean, it’s, it’s really rather incredible.

when I first set out to write the Whale Dreamer, I spent a lot of time really deeply listening and in the water and by the water, And this big story about whales came in and I became immersed in that world of of whale, and it was really while.

Writing that story and creating that social impact campaign and the, just the figuring out how to be the necessities of life that the School for Sacred storytelling emerged and the school for sacred storytelling took over, um, my life entirely and completely. Maybe you know about that. And as I learned about sacred storytelling, I really discovered.

You know that it is this incredibly powerful tool for connection, connecting us to earth, connecting us to place, connecting us to each other, to the past and to the present, but that it’s done through this mechanism of voice of resonance. And when we go back to that original teaching that the world was sung, spoken, enchanted into existence.

It really feels like as humans we’re guardians of this earthly plane of this land and that we do it through our voice. And when, and the more I began to think about it, I thought, oh my gosh, I’ve lost my way. I was supposed to finish that book and now I’m here doing the sacred storytelling. And it wasn’t till, I mean, just last year, that the lights went off.

Or I really realized and recognized that the school from Sacred Storytelling literally emerged out of that work of working with whales. And so to make the connection, what I would say is while humans are guardians of creating through our voice here, that whales are the guardians of creating with their voice and through resonance and the oceans.

And what we know that whales do is that they’re known as the memory keepers, so are storytellers. Um, they’re known as being able to influence fields of energy that their voice and really calms the nervous systems of all the other animals around them, and the coral included. So do humans. We can use our voice to bring peace, to bring love, to bring ease through our.

Through how we resonate and how we influence that field of energy between us and what are we saying when we’re saying save the whales? I think this is a really great question because it was the most impactful campaign on in, in the environmental, environmental campaigning. Save the whales. It worked. And so there are a couple of things to tend to, what are we really saying when we’re saying save the whales?

Well, we’re talking about these beings that that live in water and what is water, but the largest symbol of our unconsciousness. So when we’re saying Save the whales, we’re saying well save our waterways, keep our water healthy and clear and clean. Keep our consciousness clear and clean. When we say save the whales, we’re saying save our memory keeper.

Save our memory. Or saying, um, you know, how can we be attuned to that humans, were not isolated, that we have deep relationships, deep interconnection with all the species, and this word save. You know, when we go back to its Latin term and the etymology of that word, it means whole. So it’s also a call for wholeness.

So it’s, it’s mysterious to me this connection between whales and stories, but it’s there and we can feel it and sense it.

Paul Watson says that once a whale looks you in the eye, you stop working for yourself and you start working for them. And I really do think that something like that happens that there are so many whales that are choosing to reach out to us right now.

Leah Lamb: They’re known as the archetypal storytellers. That’s, that’s one of their archetypes. They’re, they’re known as memory keepers.

They work through resonance. Their songs can go across the curvature of the ocean. Um, when I swim through their songs in Maui, it feels like I’m swimming through the mother’s milk of the universe. That sense of peace, uh, of love, of joy is, is so present and for me, overrides everything else I could be feeling as soon as they come close.

I feel more connected every time I’m in their presence.

And it’s a privilege and it’s a joy to get to live in places where I can get in the water and be with them. And yet, and if you can do it, go, there’s nothing quite like it. And I really believe in my heart of hearts that their consciousness is so big and so accessible that all we have to do is choose to be there and we can do it.

And I just had an opportunity, it was an amazing opportunity to get to be with, um, uncle Bonna Lowry from, uh, Australia, who is one of the original whale dreamers, one of the last whale dreamers. And they, there, there was a process from the whale dreamers of New Zealand who dreamed in the consciousness of whales, there are the Chumash of California, who were also known as whale dreamers, who said that they could dream the whales to come to land when they were hungry, that the whales would give them their bodies and would, would nourish them.

And I know in my own experience that when I’ve gone, when I’ve been most stuck in my life in, in big moments where I got really stuck in them of, of the brain, couldn’t stop. When I could grab myself and take a breath and actually go to whale consciousness and say, oh, I’m so stuck with this. What do, what, what do you do?

I would get a response instantaneously, and it wasn’t my own consciousness speaking, it was something else. And so I really believe that they’re available to us. So I don’t know if I’m answering your question of, you know, how are they connected to storytellers? Except that, um, if you’ve ever gotten to see a humpback whale singer, this is, put this on your bucket list folks.

What they do is they, they’ll, a singer puts its head straight towards the earth, it’s tailed towards the sky, and it has about four chords, and it repeats it over and over and over again into the earth. It is doing something, it is using its voice to put a frequency into the earth, almost like an acupressure point or, or acupuncture into the earth.

If you’re near them, you, you see, this is their job. They’re doing something with their voice for this earth,I think that there’s, they’re incredible beings. They, I think they, they are the story carriers. They’re, they’re record keepers. They’re, they’re of memory, but they’re also holding something that feels so magnificent, especially the humpbacks as this extraordinary frequency of love

Tami Simon: interesting to me that you brought up whale dreaming and that that within this indigenous culture where you met

Leah Lamb: Mm-hmm.

Tami Simon: tribal leader, that he calls himself a whale dreamer and it’s, it’s merging with this other consciousness.

Leah Lamb: Mm-hmm.

Tami Simon: of the points you make that I thought was really brilliant in the Sacred Storytelling series is that as a creative, you don’t have to quote unquote believe in yourself, but you do have to be willing to believe in what comes through you. And I’m curious if you could say more about that for someone who’s listening who says, well, I don’t actually believe in what comes through me, not consistently.

Leah Lamb: it comes down to what you’re in service to. So I’ve heard certain people say, oh, I’ll just let anything in, and I believe in it and, and I’m open and receiving, and, and that’s fine. But there’s so many different entities. It’s such a, a, a convoluted experience up there. And so I really think that when you’re really clear and you say, I know what I’m in service to, I’m in service to life.

I’m in service to love. I’m in service to union, to community, to collaboration. When you get really clear inside of yourself, this is what I’m in service to, this is what my vessel is open for, open for business for. Then when we, when we can open up and say, please guide me, please, um, show me the way, then, then we can actually receive things that are in alignment with what we’ve said we’re committing our life force to.

So when you come down to that original question that you just said,

How do you trust what’s coming through you? You’ve done your job. Your initial job is to say, what am I gonna give my life force to? And then when you’ve done your job, you can trust that what comes towards you is in service to that too, is an alignment to that too. So then I can trust the stories that come through me.

And when we, when we do that and that, when we have that trust, the most important pieces is to keep going even when you see something that you don’t understand or something that you don’t like, or even something that you don’t quote unquote believe in because you are now in this collaborative relationship with something other than yourself.

And as a creative, I don’t, I, I think it’s something that, um, creates the most amount of, um, grounding trust and faith in my own work where if I don’t think that I’m doing this all myself, all of a sudden I’m, I’ve got a boss. You know, it’s like if I, if I think that I’m just working for Leah’s Lamb ego, well she’s gonna go, you know, sit in the corner and be afraid of do people like me, you know, whatever.

But if I say, okay, my boss right now, I work for the ocean, I work for the whales, I work for life, you know, and when I’m clear about who I work for and who my boss is, well then the, the level of energy and inspiration and passion is so strong. It overrides all the other nonsense. And it also keeps me focused and determined.

And um, and I think that we need that right now. We need to remember what are we really, when, especially when there’s so many distractions going on. You know, what are we. What are we focused on? And that comes back to the role of the storyteller, Tami, in terms of what’s our job in these times. And I really believe our job is to create a pathway for people to be able to follow, you know, the whale Dreamer.

That’s literally what that entire book is about. It, it, you know, spoiler alert at the end, it, it, it’s really about who, who owns the dream of our time? And I think our dreams have been hijacked and we understand that our role is to keep the dream of life going. Then we have to ask ourselves what path will we take to, to, through the crisis, through the destruction, through the endpoint.

And if we always say we’re in service to life and we’ll always be in service to life, then I have to believe that, um, the stories reveal.

Tami Simon: Two final questions for you, Leo. One, you’ve said a couple of times, and you make this point very clearly in your series on sacred storytelling, that there’s a connection between listen. Listening carefully and storytelling, and I’m imagining that part of it is that there’s an inner listening process that the story comes through, but I wonder if you can say exactly what you mean by that.

What type of listening is needed for a sacred storyteller?

Leah Lamb: I feel like every great storyteller is a great listener, and because we’re not just repeating, we see a lot of world that just repeats back what’s happening. That’s not storytelling. And what a storyteller is doing is we’re looking for patterns. We’re we’re looking for signs, we’re looking for symbols, and we’re constantly weaving them together to make meaning.

Again, to create this path of guidance, because that’s what the Sacred storyteller does. We we’re a guide. And so when we come back to this experience of, um, deep listening, it’s not just to ourselves. It’s really listening to the world around us and listening for what does the world most need right now?

Oh my gosh, the world really needs story, stories of love. Oh my gosh, the world really needs stories of hope. Oh my gosh, the story. They need stories of courage. They need stories of knowing how people have gotten through tough times. We need these kinds of stories. So that’s one level of listening is just really not thinking well, this is what I wanna tell.

No, this is like, what does the world need from me right now? What am I observing? And then there’s that other kind of deep listening for what do the trees have to. I really believe they’ve got so much guidance. They, they know what it is to be rooted. They know what it is to get through a storm. You know, they know what it is to weather tough times.

They know what it is to grow in from a little sapling into a great tree and then offer fruit and shade for others. There’s so much knowledge inside of them. How can I quiet my mind and actually receive guidance from a tree and receive a story from a tree that will help me as a human get through a big storm?

That’s another kind of listening.

Tami Simon: And then finally you make the point that a story can be a gift. And as I was imagining, like, oh, it’s so and so’s birthday, or some special occasion, I wanna give them a gift. I could give them a gift of a story.

Leah Lamb: Yeah.

Tami Simon: do we make a story, a gift that we can give someone?

Leah Lamb: Oh, such a great question. I, I first learned that phrase from a woman, and I can’t remember her name. It breaks my heart. Um, I went to this all woman’s retreat in Oregon and this woman held this little workshop and she said, I’m gonna give you a gift. I’m gonna give you a story. And I had never heard that phrase before, that something could be given that I could then take away with me.

In that case, it was a story of her grandmother and how she’d survived through the Holocaust. It was a beautiful story, and I can share it if we want to hear it. There’s another kind of story where we can say, I’m gonna put all my attention on you, so, oh, it’s Tami Simon’s birthday, and I wanna give Tami a gift.

You know, and how can I, you know, and I do this work as soul stories, where I’ll put my attention on someone and see how they’re living in the mythic dimension, and the story will come through for them. Or we can say, oh, it’s your birthday and I see how you’re living in your life right now. And I see maybe your blind spot or maybe I see, you know, that, uh, you need this little ingredient.

If you have this ingredient in your life right now, maybe it could really help you, you know, but I’m not gonna tell you, well, you should be doing this in your life. No, maybe I can just offer a story in the form of a fairytale that has that ingredient inside of it, and then I can give it to somebody. Um, and then, uh, do you want me to repeat that part again or is that real life happening?

Um, another way that you can do, it’s, if, if you see someone and it, and you can see that you, you, you, you, you love this person. And so you, you put on your story eyes and you say, wow, if I could give them anything that they don’t already have, and maybe it’s courage or maybe it’s love, or maybe it’s, uh, uh, understanding of how to get through grief.

And if I can find a story that has that inside of it, and then I can give them that story. And you really, it’s all in the presentation because once we present it, it’s been presented as a gift. Now we get to keep it.

Tami Simon: And as we end here, our conversation, Leah, if I can ask you. Uh, to give our listeners a gift of story, whatever occurs to you as a gift to the people who are tuning in.

Leah Lamb: Well, I’ll, I’ll tell that story because it’s, it was a, a poignant one for me. This story takes place, uh, in the Holocaust. It takes place in a camp, and there were six women that were in this room, and one of them who was the grandmother of the woman who gave me the story, was looking around that room and was realizing that people were gonna die.

That something inside them was so emaciated that that life was leaving the room and leaving the space. And she desperately wanted to do something. And so she realized that she had one thing left of material value. It was her wedding ring that she’d sewn into her coat. And she went to the guard and she brokered a deal with him and she said, can I give you this wedding ring and can you bring me back six eggs, one for each of us?

And he agreed. And he went off with her ring and he came back with five eggs. He said, that’s all that I could find.

And she looked at those five eggs and she looked at those six women and it seemed like an impossible thing. How are they gonna make one woman not eat in front of all the others? And she even thought about throwing them away, like, why would we create more pain and suffering? And then she realized that she had something else.

And she took those eggs. She separated the oaks out of the white plasma of them, and that day she gave all those women facials, she gave them their humanity back.

It’s one of my favorite stories and the way stories work, is that we’ll all hear different things in them. The stories will speak to us differently at different times in our lives. And the one reason why I love having that story in my back pocket and carrying it with me everywhere is that it constantly reminds me that if there’s a moment when it looks like I don’t have what I need, when I can’t feed the hunger, that to me, it constantly reminds me the hunger, the real hunger is in the soul.

And it’s not fed through food. It’s not fed through things, it’s fed through something else. It’s fed through the way that we relate to each other, and that story is, it’s my guiding light right now in these times. I hold it not just in my back pocket. In my front pocket.

Tami Simon: Leah Lamb with Sounds True. She’s created a new audio learning series. It’s called Sacred Storytelling. How to tell stories that open hearts and heal the world. Thank you so much for your good work and bringing so many storytellers together to share with each other and to really create a community that is so welcoming all people who identify and want to be sacred storytellers.

Thanks so much, Leah Lamb.

Leah Lamb: Thank you.

Tami Simon: True. Waking up the world. Thank you.