Moving Beyond the Storytelling Mind

I've been thinking a lot lately about how rarely people inhabit their lives and the subtle ways they distance themselves from the present moment.

At Awaken, we're becoming more and more aware of what it means to be fully alive, and for me, it always comes back to being fully present, here and now, and noticing the exact moment I begin to use a story or a framework to filter my experience.

Even the language I use is telling. Do I believe myself to be carrying a client, or caring for them? Do I subtly show that I think they need fixing in some way, that I'd be able to love them more if they were a tiny bit better?

In a tiny, ancient book called Practicing the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence said his favorite way to communicate with God was to simply do his ordinary work. He believed it was a serious mistake to think of prayer time as being different from any other, to separate the material from the spiritual. He invites us to see even the most repetitive chores, such as washing the dishes, as opportunities for meditation.

This same concept has found its way through mindfulness meditation — eating a raisin with full awareness, being fully alive while changing a smelly diaper. Being awake to life is a beautiful shift.

I've been sitting with this awakening more deeply than usual. Through the process of writing Holy Rebellion, I found myself confronting my aliveness and awareness directly.

Writing my memoir meant returning to the major threshold moments of my own journey: the times when a calling was pulling me forward and I resisted, when the truth I was sensing contradicted everything I'd been taught, when the container I'd been living in no longer fit.

I remembered sitting in my spiritual director's office, unable to articulate what was welling up in me. She didn't try to solve me. She sat with me. And in that sitting, I began to notice how much of what I thought was real was actually a story I had constructed to make sense of my discomfort.

The Brain as a Storyteller

The human brain functions more like a storyteller than a camera. It has a natural, almost relentless propensity to create narratives to explain and process everything we encounter. As you may have learned in A Course in Miracles, any object we see holds only the meaning you assign it. Some people move through the world entirely unaware of this, holding their cultural, religious, and family histories as unyielding truths rather than the subjective filters they actually are.

When we aren't aware of these filters, we stop seeing people and experiences directly,  like children do. Instead, we see:

• Labels: Shorthand definitions that dismiss the complexity of a human being. He's "the responsible one." They have "insecure attachment issues." She's an "American."

This is one reason that real spiritual coaching begins not with technique but with love. When we are rooted in the love that holds both coach and client, we're far less likely to reach for a label. We're more likely to simply be with the person in front of us.

• Frameworks: Structures, even the most helpful ones, that dictate how a moment should feel before it even happens. You might learn Internal Family Systems and notice, "Oh, that's a protector showing up!" Helpful, until it's not. Useful until it comes between me and the actual person in front of me, who is always part of The Great Love.
• Stories: Elaborate "whys" that people project onto the actions of others to make sense of their own discomfort. "Oh, she's just jealous." "He's like that with everyone."

For those who haven't yet looked at these patterns, the story becomes the reality. But because you are already tuned into this, you know that the real work is in the noticing.

Finding Pure Experience

I find myself constantly looking at my own mind and asking: How is my story filtering my pure experience right now?

I gave someone some feedback recently, and they went silent. In the absence of data, I thought, "This person's ego is so fragile." Is it, though? Someone else who observed the situation thought, "This person has certain Clifton Strengths, so they'll want to receive feedback differently." Hmmmm….

It is so exquisite to be fully present to what is right in front of my eyes. Yet, even with awareness, parts of the mind try to twist that reality to meet a conscious or unconscious need.

Part of Awakening is the practice of catching that twist in real time. It is the moment we realize that, while the story of "caring for a garden" feels better than the story of "weeding is a chore," both are still stories.

There is a profound freedom in dropping the narrative entirely and simply being with the dirt, the sun, and the breath. Really feeling them, as a child with few words would experience them.

Bringing Observation, Not Interpretation, into Our Coaching Work

In coaching, some people believe the goal is to interpret the client's experience, to find a clever explanation or fit their struggle into a known psychological box. But you and I recognize that interpretation is often just another story we tell ourselves to feel useful.

The real transformation happens through pure observation. When we sit in presence and simply notice the raw data: a sudden catch in the breath, a repetitive phrase, or a shift in posture, without attaching a why to it, we offer the client a mirror instead of a map. By choosing observation over interpretation, we stay out of the way, allowing the client to experience themselves in the here and now, free from the weight of our filters.

This is the heart of what the core practices of spiritual coaching are really asking of us. Not a more refined set of tools, but a willingness to receive the client fully, beyond analysis, beyond understanding, beyond the story.

What Writing My Memoir Taught Me About This Work

Writing Holy Rebellion asked me to revisit my own storytelling mind in ways I hadn't anticipated. I had to look at the narratives I'd held.

What I found, again and again, was that beneath the stories was something much simpler and much more alive. A longing. A knowing. The movement of The Great Love, pulsing through the ordinary moments I had been too busy narrating to actually feel.

That discovery is what has led me to develop Remembering the Great Love, a year-long journey for women who are ready to drop the narrative and simply be with what is true, in their lives, in their bodies, in the love that has been holding them all along.

A Truthful Invitation

Many people find their way to spiritual coaching because something in them already knows the story they've been living isn't the whole truth. A quiet sense that the container no longer fits. A hunger for a truer way of being that their current life hasn't quite been able to hold.

If that resonates, you are not alone.

Remembering the Great Love is a 12-month journey of spiritual deconstruction and divine reclamation. This is an intimate program for 9 women who feel the dissonance. You are paying attention because something in you knows there is a larger way to live.

You have probably started pulling away from a system that got too small, a way of working that asks you to leave your values at the door, a version of success that belongs to someone else's story.

Leaving the old world behind can feel incredibly lonely, even before you can name what you are walking toward. I'm proof that you can leave it all behind and still belong somewhere. That is what Remembering the Great Love is about.

The journey begins in September 2026 with a five-day residential retreat on a former Cognac estate in the south of France, and continues with monthly witnessing circles, 1:1 sessions, and practices woven into the fabric of everyday life. Remembering the Great Love begins with being willing to know that you are already whole.

The first step is a Threshold Session: a 90-minute conversation with me where you can finally say out loud what has been quietly asking for your attention. What you are leaving behind. What is calling you forward.

If you feel the pull, you can find out more and book your Threshold Session here.

How else would you like pure observation to bring life to your experiences and relationships?

About the Author

Christi Byerly, MCC, is the founder of Awaken Coach Institute. Her coaching process motivates you to build a community of empathy and grace around you, and to live your mission as part of something bigger than you are. With more than 17 years of coaching experience, Christi has trained hundreds of new coaches and maintains a thriving practice focused on depth, presence, and authentic transformation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is spiritual coaching? Spiritual coaching works at the intersection of who you are and how you're living. It isn't about fixing you or building a better version of yourself. It's about witnessing what's already true, and helping you trust it. A spiritual coach listens at a depth that allows what is most true to surface, beyond the stories and frameworks we use to manage our experience, and holds that space with warmth, presence, and love.

How is spiritual coaching different from therapy? Therapy typically explores the past to understand and heal what went wrong. Spiritual coaching is oriented toward what is alive and calling in you right now. Where therapy treats, spiritual coaching accompanies. The focus is on presence, inner knowing, and what Love might be inviting you toward, rather than diagnosis or analysis of what needs to be repaired.

Can spiritual coaching help if I've left a faith tradition? Absolutely. Much of this work is done with women who are deconstructing from religious systems that formed them but no longer hold them. Spiritual coaching at Awaken is not affiliated with any denomination or tradition. What matters is a willingness to engage depth, complexity, and mystery, and to trust that Love, however you understand it, is already holding you.

What is the storytelling mind in coaching? The storytelling mind is the brain's natural tendency to create narratives to explain and process everything we encounter. In coaching, this becomes a problem when the coach's interpretations, their labels, frameworks, or assumptions about what a client needs, get between them and the actual person in front of them. Moving beyond the storytelling mind means choosing pure observation over interpretation, offering the client a mirror rather than a map.

What is Remembering the Great Love? Remembering the Great Love is a twelve-month spiritual coaching journey for nine women, led by Christi Byerly, MCC. It begins with a five-day residential retreat in the south of France in September 2026 and continues with monthly witnessing circles, 1:1 sessions, and daily practice guides across the year. It is for women who are ready to stop performing and start living from the ground of love that was always beneath them. You can find out more here.