Sunday, July 5, 2020

Stories

Can I detach from the storytelling that causes me so much suffering, but still tell stories?

I'm having some wonderful meditations lately because I've detached from the idea of having to identify with this vast state of mind that is too big to conceptualize, awareness. It is a state of being that pre-dates my birth and will continue on without me. Realizing this I feel less of a need to identify with a "self," with my body, with whatever idea people have of me. 

If I want others to share in this peace, and joy,  that I'm increasingly sure I can cultivate, I need to be able to tell a story about giving up stories. I need to tell the story of how I found happiness.  How I got out of prison.  But first I actually have to get out of prison. Get off the story telling wheel. Make this state a trait.

Or at least that is the story. 

What if I don't. What if I can start now, as though the only thing that matters is knowing that this state exists, and that I can access it.  What if I don't worry about embodying it?

That was my insight at my last Vipassana, the suffering caused by the narrator, but to get people there I have to be a narrator. 

Maybe it's a question of how we use narration as a tool, not a master.