Before summing Up Lesson One: Stop Narrating

When we see the world through our thoughts, we stop experiencing life as it really is and others as they really are.
-Adyashanti (Fall Into Grace)


Lesson One was a long lesson :).  Before I summarize what was hopefully taught and hopefully learned by someone ( readership is way down again and I just want to believe that at least one person is getting something from it...even if it is "just me".  If it is me it is never "just me" is it?) ...I want to talk about narrating our experiences.

Narrating our Way Through Life

I first was introduced to the idea of how we humans narrate our lives away  when I watched an Eckhart Tolle video a while back.    In the video, he and his wife were sitting with an interviewer on a park bench in Vancouver.  They were watching people, animals and things go past them in front of the water from the lake.  Tolle was telling the interviewer in order to be fully present here and now he should  look about him without narrating everything he seen; without describing it or analyzing it...to just observe, and experience.  "Being" in the present moment is stepping away from the "thinking, judging and labelling" of it to just experiencing it.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3CunRgjXBk


The basic lesson he shared  then is that thinking your way through life is not living it.  Putting words to the experience diminishes it to a thought or idea...and it creates this illusion that we "know" all there is to know about it. As soon as we  reduce something to a name, thought, description or idea,  we lose touch with the wonderment, the magic, the connection with life.

A Chronic Narrator

That lesson blew me away because I (my little "me") am a chronic narrator. I am constantly describing things as I see them, hear them, taste them etc. I am forever putting that experience into words because I am addicted to words.  Words help me make sense of my experience...well so I thought.  What I do though when I narrate my way through life is I stay an observer rather than an active participant.  I am like a journalist recording an extraordinary event from the sidelines.  But I am not actually a part of it.  hmmm!  As a writer I want to name things; love to describe things and in so doing I judge and label. As a human being, I want to "be' there fully.

A Lesson from Falling Into Grace

Adyashanti, in Falling into Grace, talks about this in the beginning of his book.  He shares a line from spiritual teacher, Krishnamurti: "When you teach a child that a bird is named 'bird,' the child will never see the bird again."  

What the child seen before the naming was a beautiful magical expression of life flying through the sky.  He or she would have felt great wonderment and joy...connection.  But as soon as we teach the child by naming things and experiences...all the child will see from then on is the word.  He will only see 'bird.'  He or she will then assume that they know what a bird is and when someone asks them, as they point to  a lovely bird flying by, "What's that?"...the child will answer with so little excitement, "Oh that is just a bird."

How many things in our life have become "just a " something? How many people have become "just a someone..."Oh that's just so-and -so." How many moments of our lives have become narrations rather than experiences?

How do we stop Narrating

1. Be Aware: Without straining or struggling, just be aware of yourself as a narrator.  Just observe yourself narrating
2. Relax, avoid resisting your thoughts, your narrations...According to Adyashanti, thoughts come in and out of our mind without our conscious control.
3. See thought form for what it is....nothing. Just a veil between us and the Truth.  It is that veil that makes us suffer
4. Accept  that you know nothing...accept that you are not seeing things as they really are. That you do not know what they are beyond the veil.
5. Breathe: One sure way to bring you back from thought is to take a deep breath and focus on the air going in and the air going out.  (Do this without the play by play sports commentary lol)
6. Notice the silent space between the breath, where your thoughts will go when they are ready. Notice the space . " Rather, it's about beginning to notice that there is a silence that is always present, and that noise happens within this silence - even the noise of the mind.  You can start to see that every thought arises against a back drop of absolute silence. Thought arises literally within a thoughtless world-each idea appears in a vast space."  Adyashanti
7. Let Go to the silence that is always present

All is well

Adyashanti (2013) Falling Into Grace. Sounds True.