“My mind is like a bad neighborhood. I try not to go there alone.” Anne Lamott
In his book The Wise Heart Jack Kornfield enumerates the 26 principles of Buddhist Psychology. The 10th principle has to do with the Storytelling Mind.
I don’t know about you but my storytelling mind is one that fascinates, frustrates, angers, enlightens and surprises me all at the same time. I can weave a story that feels so real and so true that every part of my being starts to buy into it. I become enthralled with it and may spend days beside myself with this story. And, then, out of nowhere, the story disappears. All of the anxiety of what the story would mean, if it were true, falls away and it’s as though I simply hopped out of a dream. I’m not sure what got me there and I’m not sure what got me out. The only thing I am sure of is that it wasn’t real. However, if you had tried to convince me of that while I was knee deep in its plot I would have dismissed your opinion altogether.
Buddhist psychology says that we must understand the power of the stories we tell yet be able to differentiate them from the experience of life. This allows us to use thoughts without being trapped by them. As they say, “Thoughts make a good servant, but a poor master.”
Several researchers have supported the claim that the average person has approximately 17,000 thoughts a day. It’s all good – that’s a mind’s job. However, our job is to check in with ourselves regarding the content of those thoughts and the process of thinking them.
The 10th Principle is this “Thoughts are often one-sided and untrue. Learn to be mindful of thought instead of being lost in it.”
So, what does that really mean?
Many of the thoughts we have are simply repetitions of the thoughts we had yesterday, and the day before that and the day before that. These repetitive, often circular thoughts create a sense of self and other. In effect it’s just us talking to ourselves. When we focus on the process of thinking it is then that we begin to see how these thoughts create a very limited sense of self. They are filled with judgments, assumptions and justifications. If we don’t truly examine them, we believe them, which is almost absurd when you think about it. Imagine that someone followed you around and repeatedly whispered these thoughts into your ear all day. What do you think would happen? Aside from being totally annoyed you would be bored and then you would just get confused about how unkind these thoughts were and then you would be flat out mad. That’s because in truth we know those thoughts to be untrue.
When we are mindful we can step outside of the story and notice the telling of it – maybe even appreciate how creative we are:)
Much of our pain and anxiety comes from how tightly we hold on to our stories. When we are able to give them air, deconstruct them and as Kronfield says, “drop below them” we hold ourselves and our thoughts in the lightest and most reverent way possible.
