Give Yourself a Three-Minute Gift

Stories Mary O’Malley – Have you ever noticed there is a voice in your head that talks all day long? It likes this, but not that. It plans, resists, wants, judges, fears and basically just struggles with Life. Every person has a storyteller, and most people think they are the stories in their heads. Whatever it says is what we buy into “hook, line, and sinker.” These endless stories keep us caught in our heads, separating us from Life.

I love Pema Chödrön’s definition of enlightenment: “Relaxing into life.” Your storyteller doesn’t do anything close to relaxing. It is always busy controlling, fixing, changing, and rearranging everything. The first step of awakening is realizing you have a storyteller in your mind. The next step is understanding that the stories are not who you are. You are that which can see the stories. Right now, you believe whatever your thoughts say to be true. If a thought says you are angry, you believe you are angry. If a thought says you are sad, you believe you are sad. As you learn to become aware of your storyteller rather than identifying with it, the clouds of thought in your mind begin to clear and you rediscover the joy of being present for Life.

I was raised in great fear and it became a constant state of dread. I tried to eat it away, drink it away, numb it away with drugs, and even tried “doing time” in a mental hospital, but nothing worked. In desperation, I attempted to take my own life three times to try to get away from this horrible feeling of dread. The stories fueling the fear and dread convinced me that I was completely defective and that I was less than everyone else on the planet. Now the stories in my mind live most of the time in the spaciousness of my heart.

How did I come to the place where I could be with these stories and say “Hello, I see you’ve come for a visit”? It started with being able to see that I was caught in stories about Life and then there is Life! I learned how to relate to the stories rather than identifying with them. My first teacher showed me that “In seeing is the movement.” In other words, you don’t need to stop the stories, get rid of them, fix them or rise above them. All you need to do is see them and see them for what they are … stories in your head. Then I met author and spiritual teacher, Stephen Levine, and he taught me the phenomenal power of meeting all of these stories with kindness and tenderness, including the deeply hidden pain that was fueling them. Slowly and surely, every single part of me was woven back into the spaciousness of my heart.

If you are like most people, you are caught in your storyteller mind most of the time and so it can be very challenging at the beginning to be curious about something you have believed your entire life to be true. In order to do this, it is necessary to strengthen the muscle of your attention so you can observe your stories. How do you do this? Start by giving yourself the gift of bringing your attention into your immediate experience for three minutes each day. I invite you to begin by choosing a focus and come back to it. It could be fully experiencing your morning cup of tea, or it could be sitting on your porch, closing your eyes and listening to the sounds.

Speaking out loud is also helpful, “I hear an airplane. Oh, there is the sound of a car.” Or simply notice your breath, rising and falling. The wonderful thing about breath is that it has been here every single moment of your life. When you drift back into the stories in your head, you leave your breath. The breath doesn’t leave you! Know that stories will come up and take you away because you have been conditioned to follow your storyteller wherever it goes. No judgment. Just come back and notice a sound, the taste of your tea, the movement of your breath, or whatever your focus is. Just notice Life. This will strengthen your muscle of curiosity which allows you to relate more and more to the stories in your head, rather than from them.

I remember Stephen Levine told me that if you sit in silence and focus on your breath, you may only be present for half a breath before the stories take over again, but these moments of actually experiencing your breath count. I have meditated every day since that time because I finally realized that I was not doing it wrong if my mind kept wandering off into the stories in my head. I call it a returning practice rather than a meditation practice because your attention will wander back into your mind. But with gentleness, you can return to Life by noticing your focus again. And of course, it will wander off again and again, and you can return and return and return.

See this not as something you have to do, but something you are giving yourself and you will come to discover that it is a precious gift. Will your mind be rebellious in the beginning? Yes. It will say “I don’t have time. I am too tired. I am too busy.” However, I encourage you to find the willingness to gift yourself with at least three minutes a day. Is this simple and easy? No, but it is so much more painful to stay caught in your mind. And, if your mind is not willing to do this at all, notice that your mind is resistant. This is a moment of consciousness.

Even if you don’t do any of it, that is okay. Just reading this article will hopefully spark your curiosity and you can see that your mind talks all day long! And perhaps you will begin to notice when your mind doesn’t want to sit quietly, saying it is too busy and your life is too crazy (or whatever the reasoning). Just noticing that your mind says “I can’t do it because …” is a moment of consciousness, and that moment matters.

SF Source Awakening  Jan 2016

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