Stop the Story

I've been rewriting my book, Living in Truth and Avoiding the Pit of Illusion. I wasn't happy with the way it was, and the revising has been a laborious yet insightful process. Today I've been working on the chapter on Storytelling and reviewing it has reminded me of how important it is to stay within the realms of truth. So often the simplest things trow us into the Pit not because of what happens but because of the story we tell ourselves about what happens.

Something like burning the beans for Thanksgiving dinner happens and instead of simply deciding whether we can fix it (make a new pot of beans) or live with it (not have beans as part of the meal) we tell ourselves a story about how stupid we are or how clumsy we are or how we are constantly making mistakes. Or we blame others. If they hadn't been so noisy we would have heard the timer. Or if they'd help out more we wouldn't be so over-burdened that we couldn't keep up with it all and so we burn things. These are all stories, and none of them is the truth.

When we tell these kinds of stories we are dealing with an illusion instead of with reality and it causes vexation which is unnecessary pain. Dealing with an illusion is like dueling with a ghost. You can shoot and shoot and shoot, but the ghost is never going to die.

But when we acknowledge the truth and decide whether to fix it or live with there is no unnecessary pain. We move forward without being vexed and all we had to do to achieve that peace was drop the story we were telling ourselves.