The Heart of The World

Our stories make us.

Why we live is a question posed by mystics and thinkers now and in the past.

What is your opinion? What do you feel is the point of your life? Do you find yourself faced with more urgent questions, like how to earn a living or how to navigate the daily details of survival? If so, you’re not alone.

I think we project a story onto life as we live it — unaware that we’re making up the story as we go — a story that we don’t question, a self-confirming story that we author and listen uncritically to, as if handed down by God.

If we start to listen closely to ourselves as we tell this story, with all its judgements and moods, the thing that becomes obvious is simply how gullible we are. We’ve bought our own story, hook, line and sinker. We think making up assumptions is normal, an innocuous mental activity with no real impact on our lives.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

You don’t have to listen critically to notice this, you just have to listen without any attempt to affirm or deny. If you listen for the textures and colors of your self-talk, you’ll hear all the emotional notes, all the unsaid conclusions, all the errors in logic, all the self pity or self justification. Often we are describing the dead end street we’re caught in with no clue as to how we got there.