The Story Mind
My friends, our mind is a story making machine, and the Universe is quite dramatic. The state of our mind is based on habitual patterns of thought, propensity to chase thoughts, memories, and link associations to create stories or dramas. I call this the ’story mind’. We place and associate others around us as characters within the context of “Our” story mind. Additionally, we can also say that we exist as characters in a numerous set of the “story minds” of our friends, associates, relatives, and so on. The story realm is where all the edges of or our stories meet or bump into each other. For a story to exist requires two actors. A creator, and a consumer. We are both the creator and the consumer of our story. However, it doesn’t end there, we are creating our own sub-stories for each and every person, pet, organization, government, etc. etc. within our story realm. Based on these self created stories, we develop many other emotions.
There can be a conflict of who we think we are within our story, and who someone else would have us be within their story.
Some of these stories run deep within us over long periods of time. We feel abandoned, abused, not good enough, un-loved. Sometimes simply anticipating a dramatic ending to a story feeds the dramas. In an instant we may feel a deep emotional blow, that we can’t explain the depths of. If we look deeply, and thin-slice the emotional event with mindfulness, we can disect the frames of our story, and bring mindfulness in to the story realm. Are we connecting memories from the past through a story arc? In your practice, it may be helpful to try and see if there are any stories. Explore the deep emotions you feel when you feel them. Bring mindfulness into these events of emotion. Immediately after an emotional event, reflect, what is my earliest memory, then next do this:
think of a rock skimming through the pond of your life, see where the stone skims the water.
Be mindful of the fact that you are the creator, and consumer of your story.
Filed under: Amber Star, Practice | 3 Comments
Hi Amber,
Great post, thank you for this gift.
Gassho,
Wade
The story mind, a possible synopsis.
Anything you stop feeding will die. The plot will thicken.
Stop feeding doubt, the plot will twist.
Feed your dreams,feed competence with courage, the story’s moral will emerge.