The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Whether we realize it or not, we all have various internal and external stories—about ourselves, our experiences, others, the world, and reality. And those stories condition our way of being and perceiving. They affect how we perceive ourselves and others, and how we relate to the world. As we become aware of these stories, we can choose to actively re-work them, or even let them go, and in so doing find a greater degree of freedom and presence. This is a 28min talk followed by a 15min meditation

Transcript

In the last class,

I spoke about the geography of memory and how often we have memories and stories associated with different places given our experiences and relationships to those places.

For today,

I would like to go a little bit more into the idea of stories.

Often,

Whether we realize it or not,

We all have a lot of internal and external stories about ourselves,

About others,

About our experiences,

About the world,

About reality,

And those stories condition our way of being and perceiving.

They affect how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive others and how we relate to the world.

As I said,

These can be internal or external,

So they could be internal in the sense that they're a story that we have within that we may not share outwardly with others.

I'm sure all of you have had the experience of having certain repetitive thought patterns or stories come up,

Or when you think about a certain person,

You immediately have a certain association,

A designation for that person,

A label.

And we also have those about ourselves.

And then we also have external stories,

Stories that we actually share in dialogue with others,

With family,

With friends,

With therapists,

Or even with the public at large,

Through social media,

Through writing.

It's important to understand the importance that stories have in the ways in which they affect the creation and sustaining of our ego structure,

Of our self-identity,

Because whether we realize it or not,

These stories are affecting how we perceive ourselves.

And the way in which they also affect how we perceive others is part of what creates that separation,

The separation between self and other,

The separation between us and them when it comes to group stories and group dynamics.

And because they affect our perception of ourselves and our ego structure,

They also affect how we hold energy in the body physically and emotionally and mentally.

From the perspective of Oriental medicine,

As we've talked about,

The natural state is when the chi is flowing freely through the body.

When that occurs,

We are living fully experientially in the present moment,

Connected within ourselves and connected to the world around us,

And we are able to exist simultaneously in a state of duality and unity.

And that's the ideal,

And that's the natural state,

But the fact of the matter is that being born into this world in a body,

We automatically will have experiences of trauma,

Of difficulty,

And we create defense mechanisms in response to those traumas.

And stories are very intimately related to those defense mechanisms,

Because many of these defense mechanisms are created precognitively.

They're created when we're very young.

Often we don't even remember the original traumas that led to the creation of these defense mechanisms,

And they lead to patterns that we often keep throughout our lives that determine our character,

Our personality,

Our sense of self,

How we view ourselves,

And how we view the world.

And so those defense mechanisms that are related to those stories create these ways of holding energy in the body,

Physical tension that affects how energy flows through the body and affects our emotional states.

Some people might have a tendency to be more depressed or sad.

Some might have a tendency to have anxiety.

Some might have a tendency to have more anger.

And often those can be related to these underlying blockages that change how energy flows through us.

The good news is that we have the ability to release these stories.

We can allow them to change.

As we become aware of them,

We can begin to recognize how they create patterns of tension and holding in the body.

These patterns of holding tension in the body are what Wilhelm Reich referred to as character armoring.

It's that psychosomatic relationship,

The relationship between the mind and the stories that we have and how we posture ourselves.

And so as we become aware of the stories,

We can become aware of how we're holding our body,

Whether we're slumping our shoulders forward and holding our head down or whether we're really tense or agitated.

All of these different cues are ways of becoming more aware of the connection between mind and body.

And when we become aware of it,

We have the ability to do something about it.

Because a lot of our patterns are subconscious and that's what leads to the reactivity.

Because we have an experience that triggers a story within us and so we automatically react without even thinking or realizing the connection that what we're reacting to is something that occurred 30 years ago.

And the conversation or what just happened is bringing that up in our body or bringing up that defense mechanism because we have fear or insecurity or feel threatened in some way.

When we become aware of that link through creating a pause,

Through becoming aware of our breath and our body,

And we become aware of that story that's behind that urge to react,

The urge to do something,

It allows us the ability to sit with it and to allow that story to evolve and change.

Most of the stories that we have carry connotations of good and bad,

Of right and wrong,

Value judgments,

And that's part of the world of duality and it's part of what keeps us in an experience of duality.

Some stories might create a victim mentality of why is this always happening to me or why did that happen to me?

Or it can create a power dynamic where we feel like people are trying to take advantage of us or we try to take advantage of others.

Some stories as we allow them to change can become truly empowering.

When we allow that story to shift in a way that shifts our perspective of our past experience,

It has the ability to free us from the tyranny of the past so that we are no longer dictated and ruled by our past experiences.

This is the ultimate power of stories,

Is to allow them to change so we can find our freedom.

Otherwise,

If we allow stories to remain concretized with those value judgments,

Then it just makes our self-identity harder and harder.

We become more fixed in who we are rather than allowing ourselves to grow and change like the complex and dynamic and impermanent beings that we are.

And as I alluded to at the beginning,

The stories that we have are not just about ourselves,

They're also stories that we have about other people,

Other individuals that we've interacted with,

But also about communities and subgroups,

Races,

Ethnicities,

Religious affiliations,

And humanity as a whole.

And it's these stories that create separation between groups of people and between individuals.

And here too,

We have the ability to shift the story.

Rather than allowing stories that we have about groups that we're a part of or not a part of,

That create this identity of us and them or a sense of othering,

We can begin to look beyond those stories that we have and create a story where we see how we are all individuals that are part of a greater whole.

That every single human on this planet has their own unique struggles and their own unique beauty,

Regardless of their circumstances,

Regardless of whether they're rich or poor or black or white or Christian or Muslim or Buddhist.

The labels that we have can sometimes relate to the stories.

And like stories,

Labels can just simply be a designation to understand different aspects of reality.

Just as I can label my hand and say I've got a thumb and four fingers and a palm and it's attached to a wrist and a forearm,

Those are labels to designate seemingly individuated pieces.

And yet all of those individuated pieces are part of the totality of my arm,

Which is part of the totality of my body,

Which is part of the totality of this world.

Stories themselves are neither inherently good nor bad.

What matters is what we do with them.

And what matters most is whether we're conscious of the stories that we have and the impact that those stories have on our experience of ourselves and reality.

If we are not careful,

It can be easy for stories to concretize and solidify energetic patterns of guilt,

Pain,

Shame,

Lack of self-worth,

Fear,

And so forth as a part of our innate identity,

Allowing these aspects to become conditioned aspects of self.

But they can also be an integral part of healing by giving us a sense of agency over our experience.

For example,

When people have a traumatic experience,

It is a natural response to create a story about that experience.

And that might start out as a very self-victimizing story.

And if it just stays that way for years or decades,

Then that becomes part of the identity.

But when we begin to allow that story to shift,

It becomes empowering.

When we shift out of a state of self-victimization,

Or when we realize that there are gifts that have come out of that trauma,

That while it might have been painful and terrible at the time,

That those difficult experiences sometimes give rise to the greatest growth,

The greatest depth of wisdom and compassion by allowing us to see the pain and struggle that others have and being able to relate to them by having a desire to help others.

Then the story changes.

It changes how we relate to it.

And we can see it as still being a foundational part of what has affected us and generated certain energies within us.

But we are using that energy in an active and transformative way rather than in a static,

Heavy way of letting it define us and not letting us move forward.

It can be easy to conflate our stories with who we are as an essential being,

As our self-identity.

I would like to share a quote from the Australian psychotherapist Michael White.

Many of the people who seek therapy believe that the problems in their lives are a reflection of their own identity or the identity of others.

When this is the case,

Their efforts to resolve problems usually have the effect of exacerbating them instead.

This leads people to even more solidly believe that the problems of their lives are a reflection of certain truths about their nature and their character or about the nature and character of others,

That these problems are internal to their self or the selves of others.

So most of that which we perceive as problems in our lives are so because of how we perceive them and the stories that we have and the stories that we have about ourselves or others.

You know,

There's a saying in Buddhism,

No self,

No problem,

Because it's only our attachment to our sense of self and our attachment to thinking that things should be a certain way or we should be a certain way that create the appearance of problems.

When we think that we should never have suffering or that suffering is evil or that death should not occur,

Then when these things happen we see them as problems and we try to do everything in our power to stop them,

Usually creating more unnecessary suffering in the process.

Whereas if we shift that story and instead see that suffering and death are innate aspects of being alive and embodied beings and that suffering,

While challenging,

Is also one of the greatest instigators of growth,

Of learning to gain in wisdom and compassion and humanity,

That shift in perspective changes the story around difficulty,

Around suffering.

And we realize that,

Oh,

When I have an injury and it's painful or I have an illness that's painful,

Then maybe there's something to learn here.

And that moves us out of victim mentality of wondering why is this happening to me.

And it allows us to actively engage with the experience of the moment rather than trying to get away from it.

And in so doing we gain power,

Inner strength.

We have a sense of agency because it's no longer something that's happening to us,

It's something that we are an active dialogue and engagement with in our experience.

The other thing about stories,

Especially ones that have become concretized and are patterned and habituated ways of perceiving ourselves in the world,

Is that in a sense all stories prevent us from being fully experientially aware in the present moment.

Stories are often a means of interpreting the sensorial stimuli of the moment,

Of our experience.

They allow us to organize and provide context and meaning to our current experiences.

However,

While they provide a lens,

A perspective to interpret our current experience through,

They also end up creating a slight dissociation from the present moment.

Because they're transforming the present moment into a collage of references and symbols based in past experiences,

Based in those stories that we have from our past.

It's related to our conditioning and how conditioning prevents us from being fully experientially aware in each moment.

Stories are essentially conceptual abstractions.

By their very nature,

No story is necessarily completely true or untrue because no story can replicate the experience itself.

They are always based in our interpretations of our experiences.

And this is why it's important to not get too attached to our stories,

Because they are always based in a single perspective,

Just like the blind men and the elephant.

Each person perceives things in a unique way,

Based on their past experiences and based on their perspective.

And that can add a lot of beauty.

But if we get too attached to our story as the truth with a capital T and lose sight of the fact that all stories are relative truths,

Not absolute truths,

If we get attached to them as the absolute truth,

That's where all sorts of pain and violence and problems arise.

It's important to take ourselves a little less seriously,

To realize that being human is messy.

And because it's messy and complicated,

We often want to grab on to some form of story as an absolute truth,

Because it's like an anchor in a storm.

It gives us the illusion of stability and safety,

That I know who I am and I know what reality is.

But when we grab on to it that hard,

We often drown with the anchor,

Rather than letting go and learning to swim in the current of impermanence,

Of understanding that all stories are relative,

That we as individual beings are relative,

That we are not fixed,

That we are continually growing and changing,

And all of our suffering arises often from resisting that change,

From trying to hold on to some fixed concept of who we are.

As I said,

When we create stories,

They can help us by giving us a sense of agency,

If we allow those stories to be changed and reworked over time.

I have a quote from one of my former professors,

Michael Jackson,

An anthropologist.

Storytelling is a vital human strategy for sustaining a sense of agency in the face of disempowering circumstances.

To reconstitute events in a story is no longer to live those events in passivity,

But to actively rework them,

Both in dialogue with others and within one's own imagination.

This is the true power behind our stories.

As we become aware of our stories,

We can allow them to begin to change.

We can actively rework them to notice if we're self-victimizing,

If we're ladening ourselves with guilt because of our story,

If we're imprisoning ourselves,

Then we can begin to let that story go and change our relationship to the story,

To change the story itself,

To change the perspective,

To not hold on so tightly to that fixed and concordized sense of self-identity that comes from the story.

As we do that,

As we loosen our hold a little bit,

We begin to experience more and more of the beauty of who we are right here,

Right now,

In this moment.

We begin to experience more of the beauty of the world and we begin to let other people be as they are.

And if we see that other people are caught in their own story,

We can wait patiently and if there's an appropriate moment,

We might be able to offer a shift in perspective to their story,

To help them release the grab a little bit,

Let go of the attachment,

And in so doing they can find a greater degree of freedom.

And at a bigger level,

We can begin to let go of attachment to the stories that we have about different groups that are associated with different labels or identifiers.

We can realize that we are all just individuals caught in this messy pool of humanity,

Of being human,

Working with what we've got,

Trying to do our best.

We've all had trauma,

We've all had difficulty,

And most of us are living in various states of delusion while believing that we have the truth about reality and ourselves.

But really we're just human and that too is part of being human.

Part of releasing stories with meditative practice is sinking into that stillness and letting the silt settle.

So if you will,

Please find a comfortable and stable posture for meditation.

You can be seated or lying down.

The most important thing is that you have a comfortable and stable base supporting you in such a way that you can completely let go of any underlying tension or guarding.

Once you've arrived in your posture,

Become aware of the natural movement of the breath as it is in each moment.

It might be long or short,

Choppy or smooth,

Shallow or deep.

Simply observe each movement of the breath,

Allowing it to be as it is.

Begin abdominal breathing with each inhalation,

Allowing the abdomen to gently expand with each exhalation,

Allowing it to gently contract.

The shoulders and chest remain relaxed and still as the abdomen gently expands and contracts.

With each exhalation,

Try to release any unnecessary tension from the physical body.

Now continue abdominal breathing and bring the focus of your awareness to the tip of the nose.

Notice as the breath passes in and out of the nostrils,

And try not to follow the breath as it flows into the body and out of the body,

But rather keep the attention focused right at the entryway to the nostrils and notice the breath that is passing in and out at this point.

You The attention wanders.

We stop thinking about something else.

Gently guide the awareness back to focus on the sensations at the entrance of the nostrils.

You Now as you continue breathing in and out through the nostrils,

Become aware of the felt sense of the body as a whole.

Notice all the different sensations that occur within the field of sensory experience and allow it to be as it is.

Make room to accept all aspects of your experience right here,

Right now.

As you drop into the sense of the body as a whole,

Notice if any stories arise.

The stories can be as simple as,

I don't like this,

I don't want this.

If any stories arise,

Simply make space to let the story rest for a moment.

Let go of resistance and experience what's occurring moment to moment.

You can ask yourself internally the question,

What is this that I'm experiencing right now?

Not looking for a verbal response,

But a response of felt experience,

Direct perception.

You you Now,

Guide the awareness to the lower dantian,

The energetic center two to three inches below the umbilicus in the center of the lower abdomen.

Let all of your awareness gravitate to this energetic center.

You may notice tension,

Fullness,

Warm,

And emptiness,

Or any number of other sensations.

Whatever you may or may not experience,

Simply continue to guide your awareness to rest in this physical space in the lower abdomen.

As you focus on the lower dantian,

You may notice a stillness.

If so,

Focus on this stillness.

Notice that there is a stillness.

It underlies all sensation.

In this stillness,

The stories begin to subside.

The mind finds repose.

The body finds relaxation.

We begin to rest in our natural state.

Become aware of the felt sense of the body as a whole.

Notice the stability beneath you,

Supporting you,

And holding you up,

And the air around you,

Which you are immersed like a fish in water.

When you are ready,

Maintain a connection to the stillness within.

As you gently and slowly begin to open your eyes,

With a soft gaze,

Take in the world around you.

Notice the shapes and colors that create the manifest world of form.

As you go about your day today,

Try to pay attention to the stories that guide you,

The way you feel within your body,

The emotions that you experience,

The way you might react or respond to all that you experience.

Notice the stories that arise when you're in dialogue with others.

And if you are able,

Try to pause,

Look at the story,

Notice its effect on your body and emotions,

And see if you have the power to transform the story or to let it go.

Thank you all for joining me today.

Reviews

A truly rich offering which would also work beautifully as a course, broken into segments. Thank you.
Namaste 🙏🏽✨️

Thank you Thomas for this beautiful season. This is the second time I have listened to it. There is so much wisdom in it, I am sure I will return to it again and again. I am going to visit my sister soon. And as siblings oh boy do I have stories.. I am going to work really hard on letting these stories go as they come up so I can see her as she truly is. I am hoping I can find an opportunity to share this session with her. Maybe we can work through some of each other's stories together.
Blessings and peace to you.

Thank you for your insights and teachings on how our traumas and “stories” effect so many aspects of our life, and how to manage this and move towards healing. Your well directed meditation was a wonderful way to allow it to be peacefully adsorbed. 🙏

This is brilliant, Thomas. I will refer back to this again and again until it embeds. I have a habit of forgetting and getting caught up in telling myself stories that do not serve me. I'm human after all, and with awareness and acceptance I'm growing. Thank you 😊

some amazing and wonderful insights in your talk- as always, thank you 🙏

Awesome meditation- very worthwhile 45 minutes spent! Thank you for these insights on stories. This teacher is good to follow!

Thank you for this. 🙏🏼 There are stories based on trauma that replay in my mind often. I knew this was not serving me but have struggled to understand how to gain control of them. Like herding cats only in my mind lol. Thank you for this guidance.🙏🏼

Another beauty yhdd as no you Thomas 🌸

Becoming conscious of just how many stories we hold onto can feel overwhelming, and yet here you offer us insight and ways to let them go. Thank you, Thomas, as always 🙏🌟✨

A lot to work with here, but as Thay say /said - when we know how to suffer we suffer less! What I as a yogi encounter daily are the knots/blocks/samsara’s that sit in my energetic body. I do not know exactly what created them, I try to breathe and move past them - give them space and be calm and witness. ✨🙏

Really wonderful. Stories also provide coherence, grounding, and lift experience to higher purpose. They are intricately human. The weavings of time and space. Often suggesting paths forward and hinting at purpose and meaning hidden in random events. Thank you for all of this!

It’s a great talk and meditation practice in the context of the LGBTQ story related to the late shooting in Colorado. My story is very much part of this human made up group. And yet, I was reflecting on why I no longer relate to the us and them story in relation to sexual identity. Thomas’ talk today explains it so clearly. I believe the shooter’s conditioning and suffering are very similar to mine. My fingers and my hand are part of my arm as Thomas describes. The pain and suffering of others are no different from mine. Separation and oneness, are a human experience reality. I can attach to the story that part of the world out there hates the LGBTQ community and that event is a proof that they do. Or, I can clear out that story through meditation and express compassion for everyone, including the shooter and his family, knowing that we are all suffering through such trauma. Thank you Thomas for your gift to flawlessly express and guide us through stillness and experience both separation and oneness. So grateful for receiving your teachings two days in a row. 🙏

Someone many years ago told me that i am going to get a gift. I didn't understand, money i thought.
Now i know that my trauma to come became my biggest gift.
Finally i’m now greathful for my gift, my awakening.
Thank you Thomas for sharing your wise knowledge🙏🏻❤️