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Guided Meditation: Recognizing Stories

So hello everyone, and welcome.

Humans spend a lot of time thinking, and to get lost in thought, absorbed in thought, preoccupied with thoughts, does not help the process of meditation, of waking up, of really being present here. Becoming wise about our thinking world, our thinking life, is really essential for becoming a proficient meditator or, if not proficient, someone who delights in meditation.

One thing that can help very much is to be able to recognize when your thinking is telling stories. You are telling yourself stories about something, or if you're a visual kind of person, you have a whole scene in front of you that's playing itself out with characters and conversations that are telling a story. It's a narrative about something—something that happened, some fantasy.

If you could recognize the narrative thinking, the story-making mind, when it's happening, and simply let go of it... Letting go of all your thinking might be too high a bar to quiet the thinking mind entirely. But you simply, and maybe lovingly, kindly, don't let yourself continue telling a story.

One way to do that is to recognize clearly: "This is a story. This is me telling a story. This is a narrative of fantasy, of memory, of planning, of anticipation, whatever it might be. It's a story." Stories are narratives that take time, involve a certain kind of time, and assign meaning to events that are happening. Simply recognize story as a way of not necessarily stopping telling the story, but no longer placing yourself telling the story, no longer committing to the story. Say, "Well, that's a story," and then return to the breathing, return to the present moment, enter the world of the present over and over again.

Stories take you away from that. To become proficient in meditation, learn to recognize stories in the mind when they begin, when they're happening. For today, make it a particular theme of the meditation. Not with stress or strain, but see if you can have a heightened sensitivity to when you start thinking stories, and then recognize, "Oh, that's a story. That's a story."

Some of you might have to recognize it every twenty seconds. Some of you might have more gaps between the next story when it arises. It doesn't really matter. What matters for this exercise is that you recognize it. In fact, if it happens regularly, you might actually get more benefit from this. Rather than being discouraged, maybe you can be encouraged: "Oh yeah, story, story," and then come back to the breathing. Maybe in doing this, it supports the mind to become quieter and stiller.

So taking a meditation posture, assuming a meditation posture, gently lowering your gaze, and gently closing your eyes.

In a gentle way, not too ambitious, take a little deeper breaths than usual so that you're entering into the experience of breathing. You're participating. Let yourself ride the exhale. Breathe in deeply, and ride the exhale, ride the letting go.

Then letting your breathing return to normal. Participate some more with your breathing by feeling your inhale, and as you exhale, relax different parts of your body. As you exhale, settle in here.

Letting your breathing become the center of your attention, letting your awareness be the companion of your breathing, gently accompanying. Breathing in, accompanying yourself. Breathing out, accompanying yourself.

When you accompany your breathing, and if you find yourself involved in a story, take the time to recognize, "Oh, that's a story. That's storytelling." Then begin again with your breathing. Maybe as you exhale, relaxing the thinking muscle.

Are you thinking, and is your thinking involved with storytelling?

Instead of telling stories, accompany your breathing, as if you're accompanying a good friend on a walk who needs you just to be a silent companion—present, but not talking about things.

There is the mind that's involved in stories, and there's the mind that doesn't—two different ways the mind operates. For meditation, stories are not needed. Stories are not needed to be with what is as it is.

As we come to the end of the sitting, now you can use your storytelling mind to tell yourself a simple story of yourself starting your day or continuing your day, and the people you might have some connection with—because you pass them on the street, or people who live with you, or at work, people you'll communicate with over email or some other way, people that you read about in the news. There's a story here of you and them, and how would you like to relate to them?

Perhaps coming out of meditation, it's a wonderful time to consider what it's like to relate to others with friendship, with friendliness. To think and consider how wonderful it is to bring friendliness into the world. Part of this story is for you to wish that onto the world, to wish greater friendliness for everyone.

May the way that you walk through the world today, may it in known and unknown ways spread friendliness and safety. May it spread a sense of peace and acceptance. May how we walk through the world be one of walking with care, kindness, and with wisdom. May it be that this practice we do is for the welfare and happiness of everyone. May all beings be happy. May all beings be free.

Dharmette: Thoughts and Emotions (2 of 5) The Influence of Stories

Continuing this week's topic of the relationship between emotions and thinking. One of the ways that sometimes we live is we tell the story of our day to a friend that we might see. Imagine that the friend sees you and says, "Tell me, how was it at work today?"

Maybe just an imaginary idea. Someone says, "Tell me how it was at work today, but tell me about the challenges you had with your boss." "Oh, that boss of mine! Oh, that boss is always so demanding and so angry, and I can never do enough. I can never do it right. And there's so much disrespect. I have some ideas, and the boss takes the ideas and makes them their own, and I don't get any credit, and I'm delegated to the back room."

As we tell this story, there's more anger, there's more depression or just despair, like, "Oh, this is terrible."

But then imagine that the friend said, "Tell me about your day at work. What did you learn about patience today? How did your ability to be patient improve today?" And then you might say, "Oh, well, I have a difficult boss, but so many times during the day when the boss was demanding or did something, I was able to breathe deeply and just relax. I didn't buy into my tension and my anger, and I was able to stay calm with it all. I was able to manage the situation so much wiser with a calm, and I had much more patience. And then when I was working with a colleague who was really slow in doing the tasks that I needed the colleague to do, I found myself more patient. That was really good because later I found out that my colleague was dealing with a really big personal issue; someone in their family had died recently. I was so glad I was able to be patient."

So that's a different story, and the emotions of telling that story would probably be very different than the first one.

If the person said to you, "How was your day? I'd love to hear a little bit about what brought you joy today and delight." "Oh yes, it was so nice to watch some of my colleagues work together and collaborate. They were so creative, so supportive of each other, and so kind. We don't do that much at my job, but to watch it across the room and see how respectful they were of each other, that was like a highlight of my day. I got a reminder it's possible to be this way with each other."

What I'm trying to convey here is that we can tell the same story, more or less, with different themes, different purposes, different things that we emphasize. Depending on what we emphasize, we will have a different emotional response to it—the tone of voice, the body language, everything, the feelings inside, the emotions that come.

What happens to many of us human beings is that we're telling stories a lot, but we're not so conscious of the choice we've made for what we're emphasizing in the story. Some people emphasize how everything is wrong, and a lot of their stories have to do with complaining. Some people emphasize how everything impacted them: "I'm the victim to everything, and it's so hard." Some people tell the story from the point of view of a lack: "There's not enough here." There are an infinite number of ways a story of a day or a situation can be told.

If we tell the same story over and over again, or always have the same focal point that we're emphasizing in each story, then we're going to reinforce the inner emotional life, the inner disposition that we have. We might not be aware of how much conditioning influence stories have on who we are and how we are.

These are stories we say out loud to our friends and people, and stories we tell ourselves. Often, especially when we tell them to ourselves, we're kind of living the story. The stories are an expression of our emotional life, what we think is important, or how we're feeling at any time. So if we're angry, if there's aversion, then a lot of the stories can be aversive stories: "What's wrong, what's wrong, what's wrong." If we're hurt, if we have a deep sadness or hurt, we might still be angry because we're kind of recoiling from the hurt, and we want someone to blame. The story is a lot of blame and victim stories: "Someone has been the perpetrator and has done bad to me."

Some of these stories have aspects of truth to them, and that makes it more complicated because then we think, "Well, it's true, and so I'm justified in telling the story the way it is." But truth is varied, truth is thematic. How we tell one story depends on the angle we take on it.

So if we tell the story from the point of view of "What did I learn today?" versus "How was I hurt today?" we'll tell the story differently. They're both kind of true, but which is better for you? Which has a better influence on you?

If you tell the story of how you were kind today, that's a different story than if you go home and tell a story, "Oh, I was mean today, and I'm always mean, and I can never not be mean, and this is hopeless for me." But if you tell the story of how you were kind today, then maybe you'll notice, "Oh yeah, there was a moment today where I opened the door for someone. I guess I'm not always mean."

Be sensitive that we're biased. We tell our stories in biased ways and select how to tell our stories. When we ruminate and tell the same story over and over again, or use the same bias or angle to tell the story, it can reinforce our inner life, reinforce our dispositions, our emotional life, how we feel, and what we do. It's hard to change the ocean liner and make it go a different way, but it is possible to start recognizing what is actually happening.

One of the ways to begin that is to start becoming skilled at recognizing, "Oh, that's a story. That's telling a story. There's a story." You can do that in meditation, but you can also do that in daily life as you're going about. Notice your thinking and story making. Notice how much it's happening.

Once you notice how much it's happening, spend some time investigating your stories. Some of you might actually write them down in a journal, tell the story in a journal, and see it on paper. Then look at: "What is the angle that I'm using to tell the story? What kind of self am I in this story? Am I a self that has agency, or am I a self who is a victim? Am I a self that has rights and needs to demand my rights, or a self who has a sense of confidence?" Look and see the themes, how your stories tend to go. Consider—not to make a Pollyanna story—but consider if there are realistic alternative perspectives to look at the same thing. Perspectives that don't deny there's been difficulty, but perspectives that help you become a better person, support you, help you become more free, more kind, and wiser. Help you engage in the situation in a way that's better for everyone.

One perspective that I like for stories, if you're trying to problem-solve and figure out what's happening, is to ask the question: "What is best here for everyone involved?" as opposed to, "What's best for me?" What's best for that person, what's best for everyone involved? Maybe that story will help live a life that supports everyone, self included.

So stories are a very important part of human life. Sometimes I think that we shouldn't be called Homo sapiens, we should be called Homo historians, because stories are such a powerful characteristic of human life. Maybe animals tell stories, but the creativity and the ways we can do it dissociated from reality, and the impact stories have on our inspiration, our faith, our confidence, our lack of all these things, and our sense of purpose and meaning, is huge. It's huge, these things.

To become wise about stories... In meditation, to the degree to which you become really quiet and still with thinking, one of the values of that is to help us see with greater clarity the stories that we live by. When we see them, let us become wise about that part of our life so that our emotional and inner life is not unduly and unhelpfully influenced by the stories we tell.

Thank you. I hope that today is an interesting day in looking at your stories. If you have someone to have a conversation with, a stranger or friend, you might have a conversation about the role stories have in your life, to kind of become wiser about this whole topic of the storytelling mind. Thank you.