The stories we tell ourselves

Karl Duffy2 Comments

What holds us back is rarely life itself, but the narrative which we cling to. When the story falls silent, movement returns.

One cannot individuate as long as one is playing a role to oneself;

the convictions one has about oneself are the most subtle form of persona and the most subtle obstacle against any true individuation.

One can admit practically anything, yet somewhere one retains the idea that one is nevertheless so and so and this is always a sort of final argument which counts apparently as a plus ; yet it functions as an influence against true individuation.

Jung

Watch the add-ons

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In life, a first wound is often unavoidable – hurt, grief, disappointment, or physical suffering. But then the mind often fires a second arrow: “This shouldn’t be happening.” “My life is ruined.” The second arrow is the suffering created by resistance, over-thinking and making the pain a story about your life

Suppose they shot a person with an arrow, and then struck him immediately afterward with a second arrow – that person would feel the pain of two arrows.

So too, when someone without inner training is touched by a painful feeling, they feel two pains, the physical feeling and the mental.

But when someone is more aware, and is touched by a painful feeling, they feel the one pain, physical but not mental.

The Buddha, Samyutta Nikaya, Sallatha Sutta (The Arrow), SN 36.6,

Going through a tough time

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A strong emotion is like a storm. If you look at a tree in a storm, the top of the tree seems fragile, like it might break at any moment. You are afraid the storm might uproot the tree. But if you turn your attention to the trunk of the tree, you realize that its roots are deeply anchored in the ground, and you see that the tree will be able to hold.


You too are a tree. During the storm of emotion, you should not stay at the level of the head or heart, which are like the top of the tree. You have to leave the heart, the eye of the storm, and come back to the trunk of the tree. Your trunk is one centimetre below your navel. Focus there, paying attention only to the movement of your abdomen, and continue to breathe.

Then you will survive the storm of strong emotion.

You should not wait for emotion to appear before you begin practicing. Otherwise, you will be carried away by the storm. You should train now, while the emotion is not there. So sit or lay down and practice mindfulness of the breath, using the movement of your abdomen as the object of your attention. After ten or twenty minutes, the emotion will go away, and you will be saved from the storm.


Thich Nhat Hanh

the basic misunderstanding

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There’s a kind of basic misunderstanding that we should try to be better than we already are,

that we should try to improve ourselves, that we should try to get away from painful things, and that if we could just learn how to get away from the painful things, then we would be happy.

That is the innocent, naïve misunderstanding that we all share, which keeps us unhappy.

Pema Chödron, The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving-Kindness

a waste of time

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There were people who went to sleep last night,
poor and rich and white and black,
but they will never wake again.

And those dead folks would give anything at all
for just five minutes of this weather
or ten minutes of plowing.

So you watch yourself about complaining.

What you’re supposed to do
when you don’t like a thing is change it.
If you can’t change it,
change the way you think about it.

Maya Angelou

Sunday Quote: Its simple: breathe and walk

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As Chögyam Trungpa said: “We forget that our ordinary, everyday life is the real teaching”

My God,

I pray better to You by breathing.

I pray better to You by walking, than by talking.

Thomas Merton