Just as a snake sheds its skin, so we should shed our past,
over and over again
The Buddha
From the moment we are conceived, to the day we die, we are continually changing and developing. This constant, ongoing, change can produce anxiety, and we have a natural tendency to try an reduce this by stabilizing our life and looking for as much certainty as possible. We like to have identifiable projects and clear plans. Above all, we like to have a coherent narrative, a life story that seems to make sense, at least to ourselves. So we talk to ourselves from late adolescence and young adulthood to create our own personal myth that will give us a unity and purpose in the psychosocial world. The main poles of this myth are community or relationship and agency or purpose, and each one of us positions ourselves somewhere on a spectrum between these.
This desire for a coherent narrative or unitary self seems so necessary at some times in our life. However, there may be alternative ways of working with life. When we sit, we notice that it is hard to rest in just pure awareness. We much prefer to go back to our story. However, our story is selective, it emphasizes certain themes and ignores others. It often selectivley remembers the things that have gone wrong and which have been stored in our unconscious as worry and anxiety. Thus, it may be best to let the story go. Mindfulness training draws attention to the fact that all things arise and pass away: all things are impermanent. Our life is continually changing and it may be better to see our selves as a succession of selves and just rest in how we are, in this moment. We can drop the story, the continual commentary on how we are doing, the wondering how we measure up in terms of this myth we - or others - have crafted for us. We can move on.
This can save us from the the tendency we have, as we grow, to compare and notice. We compare our stories to the dominant stories in society, which tell us what "success" or "happiness" should be at our age. We compare ourselcves with ourselves, often noticing the loss of what we no longer have, such as youth, activites, friends, relationships. This can lead us to overlook the fact that happiness in life comes not from holding onto the past but by living in the present with appreciation. If we see this we resist the tendency to make things permanent - "this will always be so" - and free ourselves to delight in life as it presents itself each day.
If I am not who I think I am; and I am not who everybody I know has been telling me I am; and I am not the story in my head; and I am not the beliefs, the accumulated experiences, the memory traces - then who am I? Every answer to that question is dangerous because every word that one might use will create another concept. The reality of who you are can never be expressed in words. Words are only signposts that point the way.
Eckhart Tolle
