Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
How do I stop myself from creating a story out of suffering that will consume me? How do I forgive?
banned_crab
Veteran
Whenever I experience a certain sadness and suffering from a certain person I always find myself creating a story out of it. I notice that this story includes blaming others,anger and hatred. The last time this happened I couldnt get over it for months. I dont want to be stuck with this same story and anger for months again. For some reason I just cant see myself letting go of the sadness and anger that is associated to this person. The reason I feel this way is likely due to diminished ego. What do you guys usually do about this?
I tried forgiving the person in my heart but it just wont help. Maybe I am doing it wrong, I feel that forgiveness may be the answer though.
0
Comments
@heyimacrab As in meditation, don't indulge the story. Instead of following it around, notice it when it arises and recognize "aha! there the mind goes making a story again". The more you notice it and don't give it power, the less hold it will have over your life.
What I do for this kind of thing is practice Buddhism.
Meditation practice of "setting the story aside" and returning to the breathing.
Im feeling better now, I dont know for sure if the thoughts will come back or not. I just wanted to tell everybody here that forgiveness is powerful beyond what you may believe. In every religious book it says something like this "God loves when you ask him for forgiveness". Many people interpret it as "ask god to forgive you for your sins, after that god will love you more". My buddhist interpretation of that quote is "Forgive them as if you were God, for you will receive the gift of God in the form of forgiveness" Its easier to understand it if you dont think of God as one single idea but rather the unity of everybody. Almost every day I feel like ill never experience joy ever again and sure enough only a few hours later my suffering ends and I feel more alive than ever.
For some reason I just cant see myself letting go of the sadness and anger that is associated to this person.
The reason I feel this way is likely due to diminished ego.
I just wanted to tell everybody here that forgiveness is powerful beyond what you may believe...
Its easier to understand it if....
On the first part, I've tried to highlight inconsistencies in the event that it assists.
You don't know the reason but you then do know the reason?
Forgiveness may be the answer, but you're not sure?
Convincing others of what you're not convinced of?
The swing between extreme down and extreme up (for want of a better phrase) may be an indication of an underlying issue to address.
Meditation practice is a way to train our minds to relate and react in a different way to our thoughts and emotions. Often there are specific actions that you can undertake to appease or mollify a situation but a consistent meditation practice acts as a panacea to all problems. It takes time and effort though like exercise or learning any skill.
we create stories to try and explain events, to make sense of something that has happened to us so in one way it's just part of human nature to create stories or narratives. But as you point out, the stories then have an impact on us. It can help to create a different story of the same events, to try and see the another point of view if you like - that helps us to develop empathy and it also helps us to realise that we often take things far too personally, which leads to feelings of being being hard done by and to suffering.
I think that its when we start to believe our stories are the only version of events that we end up suffering. I have found that the more I practice and meditate, the less I identify with the stories I created about my life, particularly those stories ( and there were many!) where I thought I was a victim of something. Now I see a lot of events that happened in the past as just things that happened - life if you will. Letting go of my old life narrative feels very freeing. It's past and I want to be as fully in the present as possible.
I have found that doing metta meditation every day has really helped me stop creating the type of stories your talking about and to lose the animosity I've had for some people. Now I feel I have a lot of control and choice when those thoughts arise in my mind and I can let them go much faster.
Stopping the story when I realize I'm in it/creating it and then focusing on the person and possible reasons they act that way helps me. Sometimes I have a good idea of why they act that way, and in those cases I find it fairly easy to take some time to practice tonglen for them (and sometimes for myself!). In cases where I don't know the person, I think of possibilities for their behavior and that helps me let go of the anger/frustration/whatever. Practicing tonglen definitely helps for me, whether for a specific person or just a larger group of people. It doesn't necessarily make me able to immediately love the person or feel compassion for them, but even knowing logically that I should work on that, seems to help. But don't be hard on yourself in expecting to feel a certain way. It takes time to build up compassion for difficult people and strangers.
Sometimes I say to myself "If I had had all the same experiences and grown up in the same environment as xx who's to say I wouldn't have acted in exactly the same way"
I think sometimes, what this tendency is called, is 'snowballing'.
I wrote about it some time ago, I think....
While the content may not be 100% relevant to this specific situation, this is what snowballing is....
>
Just chatter chatter chatter in the mind. Empty arisings.
You've already started, the hardest step in a way is something you just did by becoming aware of the story-telling itself, and how much pain and suffering it causes you!
How to stop it . . . when I realize I'm 'telling stories' (that's what I call it for myself) just identifying it somehow takes the oomph out of it. It's like what the story really needs to take off (and take OVER) is for me to be unaware that it is happening. So when I realize I'm telling stories, the story might mumble along but it won't have near the energy to plague me for days or weeks like it used to.
Last week I had an inner melt down at work (one of a series of them that have been happening over the last year) where one of the difficult people I work with does or says something and I suddenly have JUST HAD ENOUGH DAMMIT!!! The last couple of times I've had enough I realized the story telling for the first time. I still went through the emotions, the angst, and it spent itself in a much, much shorter period of time. Progress rather than perfection, I guess.
It's better that I no longer simmer in resentment for weeks on end to simmer in resentment for a few days. I would MUCH prefer to have no negative reaction whatsoever to the difficult persons. Maybe that is the goal? Just like learning any skill, you do better and better over time, continue the effort toward the goal until you've mastered it. I don't know what that would look like . . . maybe I witness the difficult person(s) be abusive to another co-worker (this is the usual case), and I respond only to the particulars in that moment, maybe speak out a correction or ask a question or make a statement that I feel would rectify the situation somewhat, and then move along -- without wanting to choke the abusive co-worker, OR rush to the wounded co-worker because I want to reassure them and appoint myself their rescuer.
Exactly man, forgiveness is a skill
It's funny . . . 'forgiveness' is what I am doing, but not what I've been naming the process. In the moment (while I am reacting inside and trying not to react overtly lol) I remind myself this person's behavior is an organic expression that could be no other way (karma?) than it is. And so for the target person who is embarrassed or hurt by the first person.
Still I don't know that it 'feels' like forgiveness, but we all have our own personal interpretations of concepts like forgiveness. Obviously, forgiveness is what is happening. Maybe forgiveness is such a huge 'thing' that it is like a forest, and what I'm doing (and you too) is dealing with the individual trees. Amounts to the same thing, though. Thanks for your reply
If you don't think so much about this, maybe, there won't be a problem. It is just like when they say, if you don't have a physical body, you don't have diseases.