Story, قصّة, is absolutely central to humanity, yet our current culture is strangely divorced from the power of myth and storytelling, having drawn an artificial line between “what is real” and “what is imaginary”, that to my mind strongly parallels the difference between language and dialect: “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” In other words, the truth in stories is denied simply because we don’t have the ability or willingness to see it.
One could write at great length on the subject of Story, but I don’t think anyone can put it better than Joseph Campbell, to whom I refer anyone interested. For the source of my inspiration here, see this article by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, of which I quote a paragraph:
“If a story is not born from the inner world it will lack the power to effect any real change. It will speak just to our conscious selves, the surface layer of our being, rather than engaging us from the depths. The stories of the past, the myths that shaped humanity, spoke to our individual and collective soul with the numinous and transformative power that comes from deep within. How many men have been called to battle by the archetype of the warrior or the hero? How many churches have been built on the foundation of the myth of redemption? The power of the archetypal, mythic world belongs to the river-beds of life that shape humanity.”