By JOAN GLACY

“Letting Go of Our Stories: Finding Freedom Outside the Narrative of Self

"The workshop will help participants to:

• Identify the stories that consume and bind.
  
• Begin living in real life without the distracting inner voice of the story-making self."
  

Reading this description, I think, “Perhaps.” After a year in the Intensive “Deconstructing the Myth of Self,” most of my story-making can be seen for what it is—an activity of mind that often has little to do with present reality. There is one story, however, that seems immutable. It torments me, and worse, impedes spiritual growth.

“Perhaps now is the time to take a closer look,” I thought, and decided to register.

We gather in the Meditation Hall and online. Under Teacher’s loving guidance, we become a Workshop Sangha. Grounded in presence, minds calming and bodies settling, we focus on what brings us together: The search for liberation from our tyrannical minds.

The teachings are comfortably familiar, but how seamlessly they land is surprisingly new.

Stories often spring from young minds trying to make sense of a complex, confusing world. These early stories may conflict with reality. With adulthood, the potential for more reality-based perspectives and understandings arises.

Story-making is a mind activity, just like contracting-relaxing is a diaphragm activity, and pumping is a heart activity. The stories created by this habitual mind-activity are unreliable! They tend to mix fact and fiction. Unconditional acceptance of the content of these stories is, therefore, folly.

Discernment is needed to separate the helpful part of a story (fact) from the unhelpful part (fiction).

How do I gain discernment? By learning from the story-making itself. Yep, it’s paradoxical: To let go, look closely. 

[Continued from Mindfulness Matters]

So that’s what we do. We dive in. Courage grows, and a safe, supportive space for investigative inquiry, creative questioning, and fresh consideration opens up. We hold deeply seated assumptions up to the light, and ask:

1. “Is this true?”

2. “How does believing this story affect me? Does it constrain, constrict and disturb me? Does believing this story support my aspiration?”

3. “What would it be like if I didn’t accept this story at face value? Who would I be without this story defining me?”

For me, Number 3 is the tough one, because the honest answer is, “I don’t know” (which is scary). Yet, I do know. Because of the ground that has been laid these past months, moments -- more and more -- of “dwelling happily in the present” teach me what it is like to live harmoniously with the mind’s stories, to not take them too seriously. This is a new skill that, like any new skill, requires practice and diligence. In time, such moments string together, one after the other, indefinitely.

Hmm, really? Sounds too good to be true.

And there it is again, the story-making mind, fretting about the future. Is there something in this fretting that needs my attention? Perhaps. For now, however, I’ll focus on what is most true in this present moment, which is gratitude.

Grounded in presence, Joan Glacy, who practices with the Naples Sangha, is aware of the suffering caused by living from her unexamined stories. She offers metta to all, and for the teachings, Teacher and sangha, inexpressible gratitude.