The Game
of Stories
Council. Prompt. Story.
The way humans have always learned.
The Game of Stories is a facilitated circle game designed for retreats, classrooms, festivals and rite-of-passage work. Participants move around a hand-drawn board, draw from a comprehensive library of 18 books with 200 prompts each (3600 prompts total), and offer true, mythic, and in-between stories that reveal more than we planned to say.
It’s not performance — it’s presence. The prompts do the teaching: Book of Coyote, Shadow, Archetypes, Anima & Animus, Synchronicity, Wisdom, Authenticity, Pass the Gate, Elder, Childhood, Love & Loss, Dreams, Calling, Trickster & Gift, Community and more. I bring the entire library — no printing, no prep.
The board itself is the teacher: four directions, seasons, life stages. People leave with a felt sense of where they are in their story — and where the next chapter wants to go. Ideal for wellness retreats, schools, men’s & women’s circles, elder gatherings, and art programs seeking depth without heaviness.
Four ways to bring
story to life
All offerings are portable, low-impact, and turnkey — I bring all prompt books, boards, and materials. From a 2-hour evening circle to a full weekend village. Best 5–10 per circle for radical honesty.
The Game of Stories
The core experience. One circle, 18 prompt books, 3600 stories waiting. Where Coyote, Shadow, Archetype & Wisdom meet. I bring everything — no printing needed.
- Complete library: 18 books × 200 prompts each = 3600 prompts. I bring all books — complete kit provided
- Best size 5–10 per circle so everyone tells their story and feels radical honesty — the heart of shadow dissolution
- Perfect for retreats, team building, rites of passage, elder circles — scales with trained breakout facilitators for 10+
Tri-Mandala Work
Vision mapping as living art. Three concentric worlds — personal, relational, collective — painted into clarity. All materials provided.
- Hand-painted mandala tables as templates — I bring all
- Life-mapping, thresholds, calling & contribution
- Leaves with a painted map for the year ahead
Medicine Bag Workshop
Hands-on leatherwork and intention. Sew, stitch, and fill your bag with story, stone, and prayer. Turnkey kit.
- All materials: leather, lacing, stones, cordage — provided
- Intention-setting, stone talk, protection teachings
- Everyone leaves with a wearable medicine bag
Tiki Carving Workshop
Story in wood. Traditional hand-tool carving from the Big Island studio — from log to ancestor. Tools & blanks included.
- Beginner-friendly: gouges, mallets, safety & grain
- Design your own protective figure or gateway marker
- Studio tools provided, take-home carving
Facilitator Training
for larger groups
When your group is larger than 10, we don’t make the circle bigger — we make more circles. I train your staff and facilitators to run breakout circles so everyone gets to speak.
Best Size: 5–10 per circle
So everyone gets to tell their story and experience the power of radical honesty, the main component of shadow dissolution.
Radical Honest Protocol
Radical honest inviting truth as it comes. The player chooses their story to tell. The circle is the village of giving and receiving.
Shadow Dissolution
Shadow dissolution. Approach the story from multiple perspectives to find the honest one story of the now. The storyteller returns to the author of their self narrative. Living at high noon to cast no shadow.
Holding Space
Holding presence over performance. We as the village circle make the space of freedom to express the story we carry as our self identity. The circle holds the space as the anchor of safety.
THE BELONGING
The village circle offers each other acceptance as a member of the village once again. A full experience to be enjoyed by your guests hosted at your event. A shared transformative journey of self-realization.
The Game of Stories — Facilitator Training Protocol
For Event Holders
This is the living mythology of the Game of Stories. A village witness circle combined with the game of self-honesty to make right the self-narrative story.
Circle Size
The circle: 1–8 people
I facilitate. Everyone has space to talk their story.
We talk story, we listen, there is no fixing, no interpretation, we hold space for each other to bring their stories.
Larger Groups
For larger groups, we make more break out circles.
Each circle holds 1–8 people and runs with the same agreement:
- Was it true when it happened
- Is it true now
- Is it true as I speak it
- How would I be if it never happened and I never spoke it
This is our only hand rail for disillusion. Each player holds this as the anchor.
- Was it true when it happened
- Is it true now
- Is it true as I speak it
- How would I be if it never happened and I never spoke it
For Multiple Circles:
- I will train your staff. They will lead the new circles.
- I supply the tools and toys.
- • I float between them and their circle of storytellers.
You provide the people and the space. I bring everything needed for the living mythology of the game.
Facilitator Training
Half day training the day before the event.
Your team gets:
- Story prompt curation — how to choose and hold prompts for each of the 4 levels
- Level 1: Stories of Fun and Games
- Level 2: Stories of the Stages of Life
- Level 3: Stories of the Meaning of Life
- Level 4: The Big Picture of the Map and How to Dissolve the Filter
- Council practice — how to hold space, no fixing, no interpretation, only witnessing
- How to use the shadow dissolution tools for the village circle — the container of witnessing that lets the radical muscle grow
- Protocol for the deep end — who can play where the dark depths lurk, and how to keep the circle safe
Community gives that container. The radical muscle needs the container of witnessing to grow.
Complete Tool Kit — What I Bring
- 18 prompt books — covering all 4 levels
- Game board — the map for high noon, where we cast no shadow
- Talking pieces — to hold the anchor of the circle
- Enough kits for all break out circles
- All tools and toys for the living mythology of the game
What You Provide
- Space for circles to sit (chairs, cushions, or floor)
- Your staff / volunteers to be trained as circle holders
- Participants ready to talk story and listen
The Agreement Every Circle Holds
We talk story, we listen, there is no fixing, no interpretation, we hold space for each other to bring their stories. We only ask:
- Was it true when it happened
- Is it true now
- Is it true as I speak it
- How would I be if it never happened and I never spoke it
This is our only hand rail for disillusion. Each player holds this as the anchor.
Self-honesty comes out to play. A private insight alone can be rearranged by the filtered ego. In community, with witnessing, the filter dissolves.
Shadow Decapsulation
A Theory of Living Mythology
The Theory of The of Stories
An innovative theory building on Jung and the others.
This theory goes beyond stating that we are whole and never fractured. It departs the integration model and dissolves the shadow filter with witnessed radical self-honesty.
It is the next level of shadow understanding.
The Shadow Reframed
If you want to understand the shadow, it is an encapsulating filter. It feeds on the self-deception of our personal narrative and self-talk.
That filter is what keeps us living in survival mode.
Approach this self-narrative with honest storytelling, witnessed — and the shadow’s filter of ego identity dissolves.
This introduces living at high noon, where we cast no shadow. It is the way to dissolve the filter of living in survival mode and return to creative living mode.
The Game
This is not therapy as much as a journey of self-realization.
The game approaches the person as play. That is the front door. When you call it play, the nervous system relaxes, the storyteller loosens up, and self-honesty comes out to play.
For behavior to change or fall away, it takes community witnessing. A private insight alone can be rearranged by the filtered ego. In a circle, witnessed by others, the pattern has nowhere to hide. The story is spoken plainly, heard clearly, and the person is invited back into belonging.
That is the radical honesty muscle. The radical muscle needs the container of witnessing to grow. Community gives that container — not through shame, but through clear seeing.
The Four Levels of Approach
The four levels give players choice as to how far they want to open their self-dialogue. The protocol helps determine who can play in the deep end where the dark depths lurk. This is both the beauty and the safety of the game.
Level 1: Stories of Fun and Games
For the young and playful. Tell stories and have fun with it. Learn that your voice is fun to hear. Play as practice for honesty.
Level 2: Stories of the Stages of Life
The life debrief. The self-talk and self-narrative we build in response to life experience and expectations. Laying out the story we built to survive — who we told ourselves we are, how we explained disappointment, what we came to expect.
Level 3: Stories of the Meaning of Life
The heavy lifting. For those who see what can be done with radical honesty and are brave enough to challenge those self-narratives. To observe the behaviors at play in the light of honesty, and win the self-talk coming within their control.
Level 4: The Big Picture of The Map and How to Dissolve the Filter
Living at high noon. The big picture of how the filter was built, how it encapsulates ego identity, and how it dissolves when witnessed. No longer integrating shadow — dissolving it. Survival mode falls away, creative living mode returns. The hard self-stories are put to rest with loving honesty in front of the anchor of the village.
This is a 7 year project ready to offer now, and beginning to collect data on the effectiveness of radical honesty on the Honesty Muscles of the individual.
Our Agreement in the Circle
We talk story, we listen, there is no fixing, no interpretation, we hold space for each other to bring their stories. We only ask:
- Was it true when it happened
- Is it true now
- Is it true as I speak it
- How would I be if it never happened and I never spoke it
This is our only hand rail for disillusion. Each player holds this as the anchor.
Earthy, professional,
and human.
Sun Maker —
Medicine Man Art Classes
I don’t just make art about mythology. I live it.
For four decades I have walked as a Pacific Rim of Fire artist — from the Northwest where Native carvers taught me to carve totem, to Alaska where I worked as a shipwright building sailboats and fishing boats through many seasons. Travels to Tahiti, to Europe where I studied the master works and helped bring an 800-year-old house back to life helping the traveling school build a great oven to heat the home — a house where monks baked bread and where a village shaman shared her healing knowledge with me and I carved her a scared olive wood spoon for her magic making as payment.
I am self-taught in bronze and silver casting. Over 200 bronzes. A full line of jewelry. Over 75 totems in my own style. Wood. Stone. Paint. I have built every house I have ever owned, including my home now on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Hawaii called me here to complete the pacific rim of fire artist journey and learn the language of Tiki. The kupuna here have allowed me to learn, and I now carve tiki in local island woods — ohia, mango, monkeypod — and teach those skills in my workshops.
All of it — the carving, the boat building, the house building, the bronze, the stone, the years at sea and in the forest — has been about one thing: learning how to live an intentional, mythic life. How we activate the archetypes inside us that open the door to who we really are and how we become.
I council people who are ready to move out of trauma and into that knowledge. Not to fix their story, but to tell the true one. Because when the true story is told, the shadow dissolves.
That is what The Game of Stories is. It is the culmination of this life I am living. A circle. 200 in prompts in 18 books . One story at a time. No performing. No fixing. Just radical honesty. It works in retreats, in schools, in men’s and women’s circles, in elder gatherings — because truth is the medicine.
I bring all 18 books. All 3,600 prompts. The game boards, the art, the 30 years of holding this circle. You bring the people
If you’re brave enough to ask, I will share what I have found.
– Eric Singleton, The Sun Maker
More About Eric at TheSunMaker.com
What you get when you book
I bring all 15 prompt books (200 prompts each = 3000) — no need to print anything. Complete kit provided.
Facilitator + Kit
I facilitate, hold council, adapt pacing. I bring all 15 books, boards, talking piece, altar cloth. Ready off-grid.
Materials Included
Medicine bag leather, stones, cordage, or carving blanks & hand tools — when those workshops are booked. I bring everything.
Best 5–10 per Circle
So everyone tells their story and experiences radical honesty — main component of shadow dissolution.
Flexible Format
Half-day, full-day, evening opener, or weekend village. Indoor or under trees. Over 10 = breakout circles with trained facilitators.
Low lift for you — Turnkey
Just provide a circle space (10×12’ min), seating, and a table for materials. I handle setup, books, boards, facilitation, and breakdown. No AV required. No printing needed — complete kit provided.
Ideal For …
Event Holders
- Wellness & yoga retreats seeking depth + story (best 5–10 per circle)
- Schools, colleges, alternative ed & gap programs — scales with training
- Festivals: evening story council & day workshops (breakouts for 50+)
- Men’s / women’s circles and elder gatherings (5–10 ideal)
- Art programs wanting craft + meaning — all materials brought
- Team building that isn’t cringe — radical honesty, shadow dissolution
Sample Flow — Best 5–10 per circle
0:00–0:20 Arrival, altar, council agreements, radical honesty intro
0:20–1:30 Game rounds from 15 books (200 prompts each), council shares, shadow dissolution
1:30–2:00 Integration, harvest, closing — everyone tells their story
Add-on — Medicine bag or carving in second half — I bring all materials
Contact
© 2026 Sun Maker Game of Stories. All rights reserved.