"Your True Self knows reality and does not confuse it with the twisted tales your mind spins. Some of these stories bring pleasure; some bring pain. All are forms of fiction that distract you from reality and your True Self." Patanjali, Yoga Sutra 1:3-5, as translated by Alberto Villoldo in Yoga, Power and Spirit (2007)
As one of my teachers, Susan Gregg, often says, "Life is and then we tell ourselves a story." Susan was an apprentice of don Miguel Angel Ruiz and teaches in the Toltec tradition. The Toltecs teach that life is essentially neutral and then we assign emotional value based on the stories we tell ourselves about what has happened as we try to place it into the context of our experience. We decide, consciously or unconsciously, how to react to the happenings of life around us. There is tremendous power in this choice.
As one of my teachers, Susan Gregg, often says, "Life is and then we tell ourselves a story." Susan was an apprentice of don Miguel Angel Ruiz and teaches in the Toltec tradition. The Toltecs teach that life is essentially neutral and then we assign emotional value based on the stories we tell ourselves about what has happened as we try to place it into the context of our experience. We decide, consciously or unconsciously, how to react to the happenings of life around us. There is tremendous power in this choice.
We cannot always control what is happening around us, but we can make a choice about how to respond and about the tales we tell ourselves as life unfolds before us. These stories inform how we react to the world around us and how we see and treat ourselves and other people. They are often not based on facts, but on perception or beliefs.
We spin stories like a web in our head. This web becomes our own personal filter system and influences our perception of everything around us. Woven into our filter system are assumptions we've made along the way, habitual patterns of thinking and reacting, and "stories" we've accepted as true from our parents, our teachers, our friends, the media and ourselves, many of which bear no resemblance to truth.
Yet it is our filter system that is often in control of our lives as it dictates our habitual patterns of reacting and is the root of our emotional triggers. At times, it is like a messy cob-web between us and the rest of the world, preventing us from seeing clearly and dulling our experience of life. When we understand this, we can learn and practice awareness techniques so we can witness and even dismantle our filter system and live life with more authenticity and a deeper connection to our True Self. After we have cultivated the awareness to identify self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering, we can learn to let go of the beliefs and stories that cause us pain and suffering and transform our lives into an experience of freedom, happiness, and love.
I love this quote from Buckminster Fuller: "All children are born geniuses; 9,999 out of 10,000 are swiftly, inadvertently degeniusized by grownups.” Young children live in the moment and are not worried about the past or future. They are usually happy unless their basic needs are not being met. As we grow, we begin to take on stories about the world from those around us and learn how to conform to the family, culture and society in which we live. Don Miguel calls this our "domestication" process. In many ways, this is necessary to learn how to function in our world as a human being. However, if we hold too rigidly to our beliefs and filter system, we become creatures of habit and cease to live authentically, as our True Selves in the present moment. As we learn to be aware of our domestication process, we can ask ourselves, "Am I living my life as a unique expression of my True Self or as an unconscious result of cultural programming?"
For me, authenticity means listening to my heart and acting from the innate beauty, goodness, wisdom, and unconditional love found there. It is within all of us. This is the nature of our True Selves. Learning to listen to and follow your heart means doing your best to extend love to yourself, to each thought and every being around you in each moment of your life. To even get close to living in such a blissful state, for me, more than anything, requires trust in the Source of life energy (however you perceive that), trust in unconditional love and grace. Trusting that no matter what is happening around me, when I choose to express the unconditional love within me, I will always be a happier, freer person than if I chose otherwise.
Next to the miracle of life itself, the power to choose is your greatest gift. “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In those choices lie our growth and our happiness” (Stephen Covey, The 8th Habit). We are always making choices about how to respond to people and events, about how to live our lives. We can decide to wake up and be truly present in the moment, liberating ourselves from physical and emotional habits and seeing the true nature of the word around us, or we can continue to live within the bounds and limitations of our filter system. As Steven Covey writes in The 8th Habit, “Everyone chooses one of two roads in life…One is the broad, well-traveled road to mediocrity, the other the road to greatness and meaning.” Which road are you choosing?
You are the author of your own story – claim your power of creation! A very powerful tool in learning to create happiness and to live life as art is to write the narrative of your own story up to this point. Narrative comes from the Latin gnarrus, meaning “to know.” It is one of the primary cognitive tools that human beings use to make sense of their experience and can help us to uncover and understand some of the subconscious stories and beliefs that make up our filter systems.
Here are some steps you can take to engage in this process:
1. Brainstorm: what are the behavioral patterns, archetypes, mottos, and/or themes that appear in your life over and over. Are there things you say over and over, almost like a mantra?
2. Create an outline of your story:
(1) Setting—when and where?
a. once upon a time, in a land far, far awayb. use description to create a setting that reflects the fabric of your overall life experience
(2) Characters—who and why?
a. protagonist, antagonist, damsel in distress, bumbling fool, etc. - are there any obvious archetypes at play?
b. use descriptive and chronological patterns to reflect the major players at various stages of your life (3) Plot—what and how?
a. incorporate changes to setting and motivation that reflect pivotal points in your life
b. use chronological patterns - notice if you have revisited similar situations time and again3. Write your story: Create your own personal mythology and learn about your filter system and unconscious beliefs.
4. Read your story and know that your interpretation of events is a choice. Are there beliefs you hold based merely on assumptions you made along the way? Can you reinterpret events in a new way? Play with the idea of re-writing your story in a positive light. What have you learned from your experiences? Even difficult experiences can teach us valuable lessons. Can you cultivate gratitude for the people and situations that helped you to learn those lessons? As Patanjali stated in the yoga sutra quoted above, stories can bring you pleasure or pain. You are telling your own story, which one of these do you want more of in your life?
In studying and practicing the yogic and Toltec traditions, I have come to see life as art. We are all artists and our lives are the masterpieces we are creating. The yogic and Toltec traditions, along with many other spiritual traditions from around the world, provide us with tools that allow us to be the amazing, creative, powerful geniuses we were born to be. We can master the arts of awareness and transformation so that we can create stories that help us to lead happier lives instead of the opposite. Yet even as we dream up our masterpieces, we can know that they are creations and, as beautiful and amazing as they may be, our stories are not true. They are only an approximation of the truth from our unique point of view. They are a mere reflection of the brilliance and beauty of our True Selves. We use words to communicate with each other and to tell our stories and if we choose to we can become masters at doing this effectively and with clarity, creating more freedom and joy for ourselves and inspiring others around us to do the same. Yet far beyond the grasp of any words or any tales spun by the mind is the nature of our True Selves and the unconditional love we are capable of expressing.
Happy storytelling!
Happy storytelling!
Namaste', Aimee
