A Selection of My Storytelling Podcasts, Videos, and Articles
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)
April 28, 2020The Story of the Oven Bird
Poet, storyteller, and all around cool guy, David Gonzalez is a maestro in the fine art of embodying a story. His performance of The Oven Bird was featured on the April 26th Music & Sound Healing webcast, produced by Evelyne Pouget, Gabriela Rojas, and Fran Linry in beautiful San Miguel de Allende. You are in for a treat! Thank you, David! And thank you, Evelyne, Gabby, and Fran for your vision, perseverance, and soulful service to the world so much in need of healing.
PS: Next up on this page: Steve Gorn's bansuri flute performance from the 4/26 Music & Sound Healing webcast.
Next Music & Sound Healing performance: May 3, 5:00 pm, CST
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 07:09 AM | Comments (0)
April 27, 2020The 18 Mile Lie
This is a story told by Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi:
"One day my father asked me to drive him to town for an all day conference, and I jumped at the chance. Since I was going to town, my mother gave me a list of groceries she needed and, since I had all day in town, my father asked me to take care of several pending chores, such as getting the car serviced.
When I dropped my father off that morning, he said, 'I will meet you here at 5:00 p.m. and we will go home together.'
After hurriedly completing my chores, I went straight to the nearest movie theater. I got so engrossed in a John Wayne double-feature that I forgot the time. It was 5:30 before I remembered. By the time I ran to the garage and got the car, and hurried to where my father was waiting for me, it was almost 6:00.
He anxiously asked me, 'Why were you late?'
I was so ashamed of telling him I was watching a John Wayne western movie that I said 'The car wasn't ready, so I had to wait,' not realizing that he had already called the garage.
When he caught me in the lie, he said, 'There's something wrong in the way I brought you up that did not give you the confidence to tell me the truth. In order to figure out where I went wrong with you, I'm going to walk home 18 miles and think about it.'
So, dressed in his suit and dress shoes, he began to walk home in the dark, on mostly unpaved, unlit roads.
I couldn't leave him, so for five and a half hours I drove behind him, watching my father go through this agony for a stupid lie that I uttered. I decided then and there that I was never going to lie again.
I often think about that episode and wonder, if he had punished me the way we punish our children, whether I would have learned a lesson at all. I don't think so. I would have suffered the punishment and gone on doing the same thing. But this single, non-violent action was so powerful that it is still as if it happened yesterday.
That is the power of non-violence."
Thanks to Kurt Krueger for sharing this story with me
Photo: Amir Benlakhlef, Unsplash
Storytelling for the Revolution
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:13 AM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2020Family in the Age of Coronavirus
Welcome to my (new) world!
The lovely people in this photo are three members of the Pakistani family with whom I am living in Epping, Australia -- Huma (38, the mother), Aroush (7, the daughter) and Ali (31, the brother of Huma).
When I first moved in to their home on February 22, it was your basic AirBB situation. I was the "guest" who came and went with very little interaction with my hosts, me wanting to respect their privacy and they wanting to respect mine. We had a cordial relationship.
Then, as the coronavirus situation heated up and my stay in Australia extended, the game changed. The four of us found ourselves in a new paradigm -- it becoming very evident that life (or Allah) had brought us together to be of support to each other. Whatever "walls" existed between us at the beginning (i.e. AirBB guest/host, Pakistani/American, Muslim/Jew etc.) disappeared quickly.
Now, we are a sweet little family. I shop for groceries. Huma cooks great Pakistani meals. Ali does home schooling with Aroush and prepares the tea. I teach all three of them how to juggle. We have storytelling time. They invite me to watch Pakistani soap operas in Urdu (help!). We watch some of Prem's Lockdown talks. I coach Huma and Ali on some projects of theirs. My fee? Two chocolate chip cookies.
Isn't it amazing the kind of unexpected twists and turns that take place in our lives? The plot keeps changing. The location and actors, too. But there are definitely recurring themes that weave their way through all the plays we find ourselves in: letting go... resilience... adaptability... kindness... humor... challenge... love... learning... and, in the end, realizing that no matter what our external differences may be, we are all the same on the inside.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:03 PM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2020Ten Great Storytelling Quotes
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A Thousand Muslims and a Jew
The importance of family storytelling
Helping children understand the moral of story
Storytelling for the Revolution
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2020The Three Faces of God
When my mother and father, Sylvia and Barney, decided to sell their house on Long Island -- the one I grew up in -- and move to Florida, they invited my sister and me to take anything we wanted before they made their big move to West Palm Beach.
My sister, five years older and a mother of three, showed up with an 18-foot U-Haul truck. I showed up with a Volkswagen.
As I walked from room to room, exploring my choices, it soon became clear to me there was nothing I wanted. Not the blender. Not the toaster. Not the TV. Nothing. And so I spent the rest of the day, helping my sister carry out stuff to the truck.
I'm not exactly sure how long it took us to load it up, but by the time the last item was in -- a red, plastic silverware tray -- the sun was going down.
But I didn't leave empty-handed. I didn't. There was ONE thing my parents had that I wanted -- most definitely -- a wood carving they'd bought in Thailand on one of their rare vacations. It was hanging on the wall right behind the card table where my mother played canasta once a month with her four best friends -- Shirley, Blanche, Selma, and Ellie, each one of them a second mother to me.
Sprayed a nice shade of gold, the wood carving featured what spiritually-minded people from the East believed to be the three forms of God -- Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva -- the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer of all things. Brahma, on the left, was praying. Vishnu, in the middle was dancing. And Shiva, on the right, looked as if he was just about to kick somebody's ass.
I found it astounding that my parents, they of the bagel and lox school of Judaism, chose to hang this particular piece of art in such a featured place in their home. Neither of them had any interest, whatsoever, in Eastern cosmology. They read the Sunday New York Times, not the Bhagavad Gita. "Om" was a misspelling to them. And their favorite mantra for me? "As long as she's Jewish" -- referring, of course, to their wishes for me, as the only son and carrier of the family name, to never marry outside the religion. For my mother and father to have placed a wood carving of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva just above the canasta table made absolutely no sense to me. Zero. Zippo. Zilch. But there it was in all its ancient glory. Noble. Pristine. Powerful. And calling to me on this most auspicious day of downsizing.
"Hey, Ma," I said. "Can I have the woodcarving?" pointing to the wall.
"THAT?" she replied. "That's all you want? That?"
"Yup. That's all I want."
My mother shrugged and mumbled something in Yiddish as I reached up and removed the piece from the wall, then positioned it carefully, in my suitcase, in between my pajamas and favorite t-shirt.
When I got back to Denver, the first thing I did was hang it in my living room just above my record player. Every time I left my bedroom and headed towards the kitchen, it was the first thing I would see.
A month later, I got word that a fundraising campaign had been launched to help my teacher, Prem Rawat, get his message of peace out into the world -- an effort I very much wanted to be part of. The only problem? Unemployed, I had no money to give. That's when I began cruising my apartment in search of "items of worth" to sell.
The first thing that caught my eye was my record collection which, I reasoned, might fetch about $200. Bye bye Otis Redding! Bye bye Rolling Stones! Bye bye Dave Brubeck! But I wanted to give more than that, so I kept on cruising. That's when it dawned on me that my most valuable possession was my newly acquired woodcarving. Clearly, it was time to let it go, so I reached up, removed it from the wall, and made my way to the finest antiques shop in town where I hoped to sell it on consignment. The owner, a nice Jewish man, loved it, and told me it would fetch a "pretty penny". Yes, he would get his commission, but I would get the rest -- probably, I figured, $500 at least. Hooray! Yippee! Yahoo! Let's hear it for Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva! Let's hear it for Sylvia and Barney!
A week passed. Then a second. Then a third. And a fourth. Every time I called the owner of the antiques shop he gave me the same response. No one was interested in buying my woodcarving. Did they admire it? Yes. But no one wanted to buy it. No one, he explained, even tried to bargain. Apparently, there wasn't a single person in the Mile High City of Denver who had room for Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva in their living room -- so I returned to the antiques store and drove it back to my apartment, hanging it, once again, over my record player (though, now, my albums, were gone.)
Part of me was glad it didn't sell. Part of me was sad. And part of me felt bad -- aware that my deep-seated need to GIVE SOMETHING of value to my Master did not bear fruit.
It was precisely at this moment that I had a revelation. "Why not give it to Prem? Why not give it to the one has given me everything? Nobody ELSE liked it. Maybe HE will!"
So I asked a carpenter friend of mine to make a box for it, asked another friend to gift wrap it, and gave it to a third friend, a gardener at Prem's residence, to hand-deliver it later that day.
A week passed. Then another. And another. And another, yet. I got no response. Absolutely none. It felt like the antiques consignment store saga all over again. Unwanted. No one wanted what I had to offer. Not even my own Guru.
And then, in the fifth week of this outtake from my own Mahabharata, I got a call from the gardener friend of mine who'd hand-delivered the woodcarving a few weeks ago. Prem, he explained, after a month in Denver, had traveled back to his home in Malibu. A few days later he called the Denver residence and requested that someone ship him the woodcarving immediately. Which they did.
As the story was told to me, he hung it in a place of honor in his living room.
PremRawat.com
TimelessToday
TPRF.org
Prem photo: Courtesy of TimelessToday
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:25 AM | Comments (1)
April 14, 2020The Importance of Family Storytelling During the Difficult Daze of the Coronavirus
"It has been said that next to hunger and thirst our most basic human need is for storytelling." -- Kahlil Gibran
While it's true that the Coronavirus has brought some dark clouds into the lives of millions people, each of those dark clouds also has a silver lining. And one of those silver linings is the undeniable fact that families now have more time to be together.
For some families, however, this extra time is good news/bad news. Theoretically speaking, having more time to be together sounds great. But practically speaking, it doesn't always turn out that way. Confined to a small space, with few breaks from each other, and the stresses that come from all the unknowns, it's not uncommon for family members to get impatient with each other, cranky, or simply space out on TV and video games.
Is there an antidote to this phenomenon? Yes, there is -- and it's thousands of years old: storytelling!
If you are a parent, one of your main responsibilities is to protect your children from harm. In many ways, of course, you are already doing this. (Hand sanitizers! Social distancing! Masks!) But physical health is only part of your job. The other part is to protect your children's metaphysical health -- their state of mind.
That's where storytelling comes in.
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Family storytelling (AKA Wisdom Circles) has many benefits: it strengthens relationships, provides comfort, defuses anxiety, entertains, imparts values, builds trust, transmits wisdom, and gives everyone in your family a voice -- especially the children.
That's why I'm inviting you to create some special "storytelling time" with your family this week. But instead of merely reading stories from a book, I'm inviting you and your family to tell stories from your own lives. Memorable moments of truth. Obstacles overcomes. Life lessons. Revealing episodes. Cool experiences. You know, the good stuff.
Simply put, a Family Wisdom Circle is a chance for you and your loved ones to unplug from the world and simply BE together -- no news, no Netflix, no TV, no internet, no bills, no dishes, no worries, and no problems -- just some sacred time, in each other's company, to share from the heart.
Here's what Tanya Kubitza, a Whittlesea resident, had to say about a Family Wisdom Circle she hosted in her home.
Interested? If so, here are ten guidelines to make sure your family Wisdom Circle is as meaningful as possible:
1. Create a cozy space to meet, ideally in a circle.
2. Light some candles to create the meeting-around-the-fire feeling
3. Decide on who plays the role of "facilitator."
4. Let everyone know that storytelling is voluntary. No pressure!
5. Each storyteller gets five minutes to tell their story
6. When people aren't telling a story, their task is to listen
7. Turn off the TV, all cell phones, and devices
8. At the end of each story, have a conversation -- unpack it
9. Cookies! Popcorn! Tea! Juice! Marshmellows!
10. At the end of the circle, ask your children how it can be improved.
Storytelling for the Revolution
PHOTO #1: Pablo Merchan Montes, Unsplash
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:12 AM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2020Neuroscience and Storytelling
Good article from NPR on the neuroscience behind storytelling, why storytelling is such a powerful communication tool, and how it connects and influences people.
Big thanks to Peter Blum for the heads up
Storytelling for the Revolution
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 07:14 PM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2020Write a New Story For Yourself with the Help of an Online Genie
If your life, livelihood, family, community, or health have been negatively affected by the Coronavirus calamity, I invite you to try my online Free the Genie tool. It's a simple, fun way to originate bold new ideas, possibilities, and solutions -- some of which may be the key to you navigating your way forward during these difficult times.
And it's free.
When you subscribe, you will get a 10-year free trial. And when your trial is over (2030), it's over. No fine print. No payments due. No obligations.
My company, Idea Champions, used to sell subscriptions to Free the Genie, but we have now waived all fees in response to the global pandemic and the need so many people have to think up powerful, new ways to adapt, create, and thrive.
100 quotes on what it really takes to innovate
Idea Champions
MitchDitkoff.com
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:43 PM | Comments (0)
April 02, 2020ONCE UPON A TIME: An Invitation to the Families of Whittlesea
Dear Moms and Dads of the City of Whittlesea:
Hello! My name is Mitch Ditkoff and I am working, these days, with Al Siraat College in Epping. Part of my work here includes storytelling -- or, more specifically, Wisdom Circles (a form of storytelling). I am also an author of two books on the power of storytelling (this one and that one) and a long-time researcher in the field.
The reason why I'm reaching out to you now is a simple one -- to share with you about the value of storytelling, in your own home and how it is likely to be a great resource to your family, especially during these stressful days of the Coronavirus.
As a parent, one of your biggest responsibilities is to protect your children and to make sure they have the best chance to thrive and grow. In many ways, or course, you are already doing this. Protecting your children's physical health is part of the process. It is also important, however, to protect your children's "metaphysical health" -- their state of mind -- by doing everything possible to lower their stress and anxiety.
One of the simplest ways to do this is via storytelling.
Storytelling has many positive benefits: it helps families bond, strengthens relationships, relaxes the mind, provides comfort, entertains, imparts values, builds trust, transmits wisdom, and gives children a voice -- allowing them to express themselves in healthy ways. And that includes the opportunity to air out their worries, concerns, and fears.
And so, I'm inviting you to create some special "storytelling time" with your family. But instead of just reading stories from a book, I'm inviting everyone in your family to take turns telling stories from their own lives -- personally meaningful, life-affirming experiences. Lessons learned. Challenges met. Breakthroughs. The good stuff.
The stories your family members tell do not need to be profound. They can be very simple -- whatever the storytellers think would be of interest to the others in the Wisdom Circle.
If you are the Mom or Dad, maybe you begin by telling a story from your own childhood. Or maybe you tell a story about a parent or grandparent. Or maybe you talk about a challenge you overcame... an act of kindness you experienced... a risk you took... a remarkable moment... or even something silly your kids might like to hear about.
"Gee, Mum, I never knew that about you!" your child might say. Or, "Hey, Dad, that was so cool! Do you have any other stories like that you can share with us?"
Of course, you also want to give your children a chance to share their own stories. And to help them do so, you can give them some topics to choose from:
-- My most memorable moment
-- The best gift I ever received, and why
-- A risk I took
-- An experience that changed my life
-- A moment of kindness
-- A funny thing that happened when I was smaller
-- The coolest surprise of my life
-- My biggest success
-- Something that scared me, but doesn't scare me anymore
Here are other topics you might want to consider.
Simply put, a Family Wisdom Circle is an opportunity to unplug from the world and simply be together -- no news, no video games, no TV, no internet, no bills, no dishes, no worries, no problems -- just some sacred time, in each other's company, to share from the heart.
Here's what Tanya Kubitza, a Whittlesea resident and employee of Al Sirat, had to say about a Family Wisdom Circle she recently had in her home.
Into it? If so, here are ten guidelines to increase the odds of your Family Wisdom Circle being as good as it can be:
1. Create a cozy space to meet, ideally in a circle.
2. Light some candles to create the meeting-around-the-fire feeling
3. Decide on who plays the role of "facilitator."
4. Let everyone know that storytelling is voluntary. No pressure!
5. Each storyteller gets five minutes to tell their story
6. When people aren't telling a story, their task is to listen
7. Turn off all cell phones and devices
8. At the end of each story, have a conversation -- unpack it
9. Cookies! Popcorn! Tea! Juice! Marshmellows!
10. At the end of the circle, ask your kids how it can be improved.
If you have any questions about Wisdom Circles, email me and I will respond. If you actually have a Wisdom Circle in your home (and enjoy the experience), feel free to let me know about the value of it and I will post your comments on my blog for other families to read. (mitch@ideachampions.com) PS: Good news travels fast!
Here are some articles about storytelling you might find useful:
Storytelling builds attachment
Telling stories calms anxieties
The power of simply listening
You are a universe of stories
Dadda, do you have time to catch my bubbles?
Who am I?
Storytelling for the Revolution
First photo: Jude Beck, Unsplash
Fourth photo: Muhammed Ruq, Unsplash
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:12 AM | Comments (0)
April 01, 2020Another Lifetime
One thing that is cool about telling a story is that almost anything in the world can spark it -- a glance, a kiss, a word, a chance meeting on the street, almost dying, a dream, an argument or, with respect to what follows, a past life regression. Speaking of which, it is not at all unlikely that you, upon reading the phrase "past life regression" may already be telling yourself a story about the value of reading the still-unread narrative below.
"Flaky," you might be thinking. "New Age mumbo jumbo." "Man overboard."
And that, of course, is not only your right, but also your meaning-making machine in action. Moment by moment, second by second, each and everyone of us are coming up with conclusions about everything we see, hear, feel, and touch. That's just the way it is. We are story makers, connecting the dots of our lives in our own, unique way, and then using the lines we have drawn BETWEEN those dots as a kind of subjective map of the world -- OUR world and THE world -- both of which tend to be the same. Thus Paul Simon's fabulous line, "One man's ceiling is another man's floor."
The story that follows is a story I have told to only five people in the 44 years since it happened. I know that it's a risk to tell this story because I set myself up for ridicule and judgment -- my hesitation to tell it nothing more than my own chicken-shittedness in response to my projection of other people poking fun at my already thinning persona. So be it. C'est le vie. I guess that's the risk we all take every day upon getting out of bed. Our words and our actions... our silence and our non-action are all subject to the opinion of just about everyone we meet, save for a few Bodhisattvas, children, and people too absorbed in their own thoughts to even notice.
Be that as it may, here goes:
One day, a friend of mine, in the mile-high city of Denver, Colorado, asked me if I wanted him to guide me through a past life regression -- an ability he had recently developed that very few people knew about. While I was wary of the rapidly emerging "New Age" scene at the time, with it's questionable promises of instant access to the great mysteries of life, there was something in the way my friend presented his offer that disarmed me. There was no visible ego to his invitation. Nothing superficial. Nothing phony. To me, it felt totally pure of heart.
"Sure," I replied, "Why not?"
Twenty eight years old at the time, newly divorced, and standing at yet another major crossroads of my life, the time felt right to take a fresh look at things -- even if that look took me back several centuries. And so, we dove in.
Either my friend was a master regressionist, or I was super-suggestive, or BOTH, because in just a few minutes I found myself experiencing a deeply felt panoramic re-living of eight past lives of mine -- almost as if I was watching a movie that had been masterfully made, but stored in some dusty back room.
Can I prove it? Was it real what I saw? Hallucinated? I have no idea.
Suffice it to say, that what follows -- the recounting of a past life memory of mine -- is just a STORY. However flawed, filtered, falsely remembered, or conjured it might be, on the deepest level it doesn't really matter -- because, in the end, all of our communications (to ourselves and each other) are just that -- stories... the personal way we stitch together the flora and fauna of our lives into a tellable tale -- the curious way we make sense of things.
My hope? That my story, newly told, will spark an opening for you... an insight... some kind of recognition... a glance into the mirror of your own life so you can more clearly see something that is begging to be seen.
Here goes:
I am a yogi, in India, living deep in the forest, alone. I have been there for a long time, silent, content, free of desire, and without a care in the world. One day, I see a radiant man with a full head of white hair walking towards me. It is Shri Yukteshwar, Yoganananda's Guru, a man of great purpose and power. He continues walking towards me, in silence, and places his hand on top of my head. Suddenly, everything turns to light. White light. There is nothing else happening other than this light. Nothing else exists. Nothing.
When I open my eyes, the radiant man with the white head of hair is gone. In his place is a woman, someone I surmise to be my wife. She is doing things. She is busy. Preparing food. Cleaning things. Many things. Making order, all in silence. Every action is purposeful. There seems to be some kind of sequence to her tasks, like she has something in mind and knows what she's doing, though I am not exactly sure what it is.
Years pass. We have a child. A son. When he turns 17, he decides to move away. And so he does. Then there are just two of us in the forest -- my wife and I. Then she decides to move away, which she does, leaving me, in the forest, alone again. More time passes. Then I decide to move away. Why not? Why should I be the only one who stays? As I exit the forest, I am bitten, on the ankle, by a poisonous snake. Falling to the ground, I begin sucking the poison out of my wound, spitting the poison out of my mouth as fast as I can. I do that for a minute or so. Then I lose consciousness and die.
Is this past life memory of mine real? Is it imagined -- the fevered attempt of my psyche to make meaning out of various unconnected dots in my life? God only knows. For now, all I am asking you to do is think of my past life memory as just a story. Nothing wrong with that, right?
In this lifetime, the Mitchell Lewis Ditkoff lifetime, there was a period of 2-3 years, in my early 20's, when I used to frequently spit for no reason. My friends would notice and ask me why I spit so much and if I was alright. I don't remember what story I made up to explain this strange behavior of mine. But after my past life regression in the mile high city of Denver, Colorado, my story changed.
In the end, YOU get to decide what to make of my story. YOU decide what meaningful memories of yours, if any, my story sparks and IF it makes sense for you to pay any attention to them. Choice. Your choice. Always your choice.
Storytelling for the Revolution
MitchDitkoff.com
Idea Champions
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:58 AM | Comments (1)
