Professional storyteller Ashley Ramsden, on the role of traditional stories in times like these.

Ashley Ramsden is the founding director of the School of Storytelling, the longest established centre of its kind in the United Kingdom.

He has toured with his remarkable storytelling programmes on all five continents, has appeared at major storytelling festivals in the UK, South Africa, Scandinavia and America.

Ashley, how have recent times been as a storyteller?

Extraordinary. I don’t remember another time to equal this one. There are so many stories flying around; the work to discern what is actually going on, what is actually true is nothing short of Olympian. As a storyteller there is always the question, what story shall I tell? A story is a powerful thing and has to be used wisely… in the Indian tradition it is said that every word we speak contains the triumvirate of Hindu Gods - Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva… who respectively represent the forces of creation, preservation and destruction. So I have to ask myself ‘what am I doing with my words? How can they help the situation? What is worth preserving? What do I need to let go of? What am I trying to create?’ And in many ways, this recent time has been no different from any other. It’s just that suddenly everything is more intense. I am conscious that many stories are knocking on my door, and also that I am vulnerable to them: many are incendiary, there is clearly a lot of censorship, a lot of fake news and conspiracy theories, some perhaps valid, some not, extremes of all kinds… and that can be a rocky terrain. I see my job being to hold the centre – that is my contribution. But it’s easier at some times than others! Luckily I have small children who are very present, and keep calling me back from the distractions.

Do you feel the world is moving away from rich cultural traditions like storytelling, or towards them?

For some time, way before Covid-19, I have felt the truth of that wonderful many layered saying ‘something’s gotta give’. And I think that now, after the past few months, this is unavoidable. The question is ‘What can we give, that promotes a different way for us all to be together?’ I think we are moving into that space, where we will be forced to focus more on giving and service than on profit and growth. As Rumi said ‘Start a huge foolish project, like Noah! It makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.’ We are at such a time when it is important to strike out in new vessels and begin huge new endeavours. We have to somehow imagine and align new financial and economic structures that reflect this movement - There are many teachers emerging who are suggesting how we do this – how do we completely challenge the pervading worldview and drop out of the consensus reality of unchecked capitalism and greed? I like what Charles Eisenstein refers to as ‘radical doubt’, where we all do our own research via warm data… because we simply can’t verify where all the information is coming from these days.

So is that a yes or a no?!

I believe that people who are courageous enough to choose which boat they want to get into, are moving towards a new chapter for our humanity, a new story… and those who cannot, or will not, are moving away from this.

What stops more of us from starting such a project and getting in the boat that was built for us?

The thing is the boat won’t be built for us. That’s the old dependency. We must build the boat and the main thing that’s stopping us is not a Covid-19 pandemic but the pandemic of fear that is far greater than the virus. The fear is of course the fear of death but living in this lockdown world of masks and separation is as good as dying and like it or not death is the teacher every time I step outside and see my fellow human beings hunched and hurrying away from each other. If something in us has called this crisis into being we could ask for no better teacher, As Samuel Johnson said “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully’. Ultimately we are afraid of change because it feels like a death – of the familiar, of the manageable, of the comfortable… and in the last year I’ve become ever more conscious of this, as I’ve been hugely shaken by death. Both my parents died recently, gracefully at the same age of 96, and my brother took his own life… he chose to go. These changes have been teachings about death and surrender and that ultimately, when it’s my time to go I must also step aside willingly and with humility. It may well be that my greatest contribution will come after I am dead. It might sound strange but maybe we shouldn’t take our own death too personally.  

So, the stories we tell ourselves can define our experience, who we think we are, and indeed the course we see our lives following.  Are there ways in which storytelling therefore can be used to manipulate rather than liberate?  I'm thinking about business for example.

Storytelling can support real cultural change, wisdom and leadership, but can also be used for sales and profit or at worst propaganda. My own experience is that the old stories have a medicinal magic in them, and we never know what their footprint will be. Often people get into storytelling because it’s entertaining and they’re right because storytelling has always been just that. But deeper down storytelling is education, healing and under that a path of inner development, or as one wise person put it “when you enter into a story you find the story inside yourself.” Many commercially minded business people who have come to Emerson, where we have run a School of Storytelling since 1994, have ended up leaving their jobs or shifting focus.   

What is the function of storytelling in these times of chaos and crisis?

In many respects it is to un-story ourselves. From a certain perspective, every story is a form of defence. I have built my ego out of the stories and experiences I have made my own and I still maintain myself by holding on to them. My separate ego is always in a state of defence. What is called for now is to loosen those defences: for selflessness and service is not interested in such posturing. In this respect storytelling can help people listen more deeply to each other, and in doing so to hear the future of kindness and compassion we so desperately need, calling us into action… so that we can indeed board the right vessels and then make the transition into a wiser, more fulfilling and sustainable way of life – a life in which we can be  fully present. Storytelling can remove us from the trap of modernity and give us a glimpse of the simplicity we all crave. Recently I read Dr Joe Dispenza’s book ‘Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself’ and he speaks of a time in his life when he realized the enormous gap between his outer success, how he appeared on the outside and how he felt on the inside. He stopped what he was doing and re-shaped his life so that he could do the inner work and surrender to re-write his story, close this restlessness and live more truthfully. He really shows us that we are the stories we tell ourselves and how to create other more fulfilling narratives. Storytelling has always supported these kinds of processes.

What teachings are you working on right now that can light the way for people and connect them to this important work?

The main teaching is all around us – we are literally surrounded by teachers at every turn. The animal and plant kingdoms, the cows I saw this morning and the trees I passed by, they are all fully present, in each moment, calling to us humans to join them in simply being! My shoes on the floor, this chair, all of these things are inviting me into non-doing, into the cessation of ego activity… however if you feel you need more  – which is understandable given the circumstances - I’m running a couple of online courses ‘Holding The Centre Of The Storm’ with the marvellous teacher and world-renowned clown Vivian Gladwell, and another course in September ‘Story Medicine for the Madness’, at Emerson. Remember that many of the creation myths start with ‘In the beginning there was chaos’… so when could there be a better time than now, to start your storytelling journey?

* Ashley offered the following extension of his thoughts on death and dying after the interview:

In 1991 my sister Lottie was killed in a car accident and in April last year my brother took his life. Both of these deaths were unexpected and shook us, as a family, to the core. With my sister, death came through her falling asleep at the wheel; my brother ended his life in his own way. From an early age I have been engaged in spiritual research particularly the experiences of people’s memories of their lives before birth and after death. I have not had a ‘near death experience myself’ but have constantly investigated these matters and I can only speak out of my own inner certainty that we not only choose when to be born but also when to die. Our suffering, as those left behind, is because of our limited understanding and lost perspective but there is now a great body of research available to expand our awareness of these comings and goings.

Thank you Ashley!

Relevant links:

https://www.emerson.org.uk/clowning2/item/holding-the-centre-in-the-storm?category_id=39

https://ashleyramsden.com/on-tour/

IG: ashleyramsdenstoryteller