How to See the Stories More Clearly
You may understand everything you've read up to this point, but it might still be difficult for you to apply it to your own life, to put it into practice, to see and comprehend what is a story in your personal experience.
Here are two situations where you may be able to identify an inner tale most easily:
When you have strong emotions
When you have spinning thoughts
In either case, there is always a story driving the train.
Our typical stories have themes like these:
Why did that happen to me?
What should I do if such-and-such happens?
A particular thing should happen (or, should not happen).
This is why this event happened.
IHere is an explanation why this person acts this way.
This is what I’m expecting to happen.
Here is what I will do/buy/say if some particular thing happens.
This is what I will do later/tomorrow/next year.
Here is how I will try to make sure that that event does or does not happen.
My spiritual path is about such-and-such.
When you bring increased awareness to this, you can see that many or most of your thoughts and words are made up of these narratives of reality.
One thing you can do to increase your awareness of 'stories' is to take one of the above themes and watch for it during the day, in your mental chatter and in conversations. You may find that most of what we think about and talk about is covered by these themes…that those stories make up most of our world.
This might still seem a bit abstract…but if so, don’t worry. Further sections in “Storylines” and the second section, “Frameworks and Patterns”, will give a number of suggestions and explorations about seeing into your stories from different angles.
