Something I keep noticing….
When I feel a need to defend against a story, it is because it doesn’t fit with stories – and their corresponding viewpoints and identities – that I take as true. It creates a sense of having to protect and defend certain viewpoints and identities. A sense of separation. Tension. Stress. Reactive emotions. Precariousness. Making some stories true and other false. Making others wrong and myself right.
When I instead find the truth in the story and allow it to sink in, there is a shift. I find specific examples of how it is true. I take time to feel it. I find appreciation for it. And there is a shift into a sense of fullness. Coming home. Receptivity. Curiosity. Connection. Deep relaxation. No need to defend stories. A sense of shared humanity, of all of us in the same boat.
So if I exclude stories of stupidity, failure, mistakes and so on, several things may happen if stories tells me these apply to me. As mentioned above, I may get defensive. Tell stories of how it is not true. Feel hurt, sad, angry. Distract myself. And so on. It creates a good deal of drama, and requires investing a good amount of attention and energy.
But when I honestly and sincerely find these in myself – with specific examples, finding its genuine gifts, allowing it to sink in, feeling it, taking time to allow my self-images to reorganize to include these too – there is a shift. Now, if someone says I am stupid, there is a sense of recognition. Of coming home. Fullness. Richness. Appreciation. Shared humanity. I recognize – through examples and felt-sense – how we are all in the same boat here. It is beautiful.
It is also very simple. I exclude something from my self-image, and I am at odds with life and it creates a sense of unease. I include it – by finding specific examples and feeling into it – and there is a sense of recognition, coming home, fullness, richness, shared humanity. One is living a lie. Another is living a little more aligned with truth.
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Initial outline…
- story = viewpoint + identity
- if exclude from the identities we identify with, then may defend against it, see in others only, trigger reactive emotions
- if include, then sense of fullness, coming home, relaxed, everyone in same boat, shared humanity
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Taking a story as true, means to take it’s corresponding viewpoint and identies as true. There is an identification with the story and its viewpoints and identities. A location of a (sense of) separate I in time and space. A sense of an I with an Other. A sense of separation. Something – stories, viewpoints, identities – to defend.