Our Stories Define Our Reality...

Until We Start To Wake Up

Last night I rewatched the film This Must Be the Place (2011). I really love the main character Cheyenne, played by Sean Penn, who is an incredibly soft spoken and quiet-mannered retired rockstar. He has such a unique gentleness in his way of moving through the world that makes me smile. It’s a reminder for me that I don’t need to conform to conditioned social standards and that it’s “okay” to be a bit different and odd in how I interact and express myself.

There is a line in the film where he states, “When I was 15, I decided that my father didn’t love me. …When you’re a kid, it’s very hard to back off from your decisions.”

Hearing that line brought tears to my eyes because I realized I believed the same thing about my parents when I was young. Due to certain behaviors and reactions of my parents, I told myself a story that they didn’t love me, that there was something wrong with me, that I wasn’t worthy of love and that I needed to make a conscious effort to behave in certain ways in order to earn their care, approval and support.

These stories became the foundation for how I related to people for most of my life, leading to a great deal of neurotic, anxious, obsessive, people-pleasing and repressive behaviors. But it’s through these painful experiences that I’ve come to better understand how stories are used as coping mechanisms.

We tell ourselves stories in order to feel safe, to create a sense of order and meaning, to protect ourselves, to give us comfort when the world feels too overwhelming for our nervous system. We do this even if the stories are painful because we believe it’s necessary and because the stories are perceived as less painful than the intense direct experiences that we encountered. And after years of telling ourselves these stories, it’s incredibly hard to let them go because we believe they are essential for our survival.

Sometimes when I read the news and get angry and depressed about all the violence and injustice in the world, I have to take a moment to remember that all of this is the result of people believing the stories in their minds. If people did not believe their painful thoughts, there would be no cause to harm another. The stories we tell ourselves over and over again are what keeps the cycle of trauma and violence going.

By an act of Grace though, we eventually come to realize that believing our mental stories is what causes us suffering. We start to wake up from the dream of the mind when we remember the Awareness that precedes the arising and disappearing of thoughts. We can then consciously observe our thoughts, we can question their validity. We stop being a slave to our thoughts when we discover the source of thought - the “I Am” Presence.

The times when I am able to recognize I’ve been trapped in the mind-dream, I suddenly have so much more compassion for myself and others others who are suffering - both the perpetrators and victims of injustice. I can start to see clearly the harmful impact that painful thoughts are causing. I can see the delusion of the behavior strategies that the mind believes are so absolutely necessary. There is a realization that all the violence and suffering is so innocent because people were in a hypnotized mental state - they were powerless over their actions. Jesus exemplifies this when he said about those crucifying him, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

This is the beauty of “waking up,” there is a recognition that all of Life is an act of Grace, that there is no one responsible for anything because the “separate-doer” is just another dream of the mind. The Love of the Heart expands outward engulfing the world in a fierce embrace, burning away beliefs of separation and perceiving everyone and everything as pure, whole, undivided, worthy of unconditional love.

What a gift to remember that our temporary thoughts do not define who we are and that a Love exists that holds everyone and everything just as they are.