Mistaking the false for the real,and the real for the false,
one suffers a life of falsity.
But seeing the false as the false
and the real as the real,
one lives in the perfectly real.
Dhammapada v.11 - 12
How much time do we spend telling ourselves stories and how much do we invest in aligning with reality? Of course there are times when telling stories is genuinely meaningful. Not everything can be explained rationally. Stories often serve as approximations alluding to reality in ways that lineal, logical thinking cannot. However, compulsive storytelling is an obstruction. For example, there are stories which perhaps served a useful purpose at an earlier stage in our lives which now stop us from moving on. We could be telling ourselves that the limitations we feel are ultimate when in reality they are not. Or telling ourselves over and over again that we can’t let go of the past when in fact we can. We have already let go of the past. What we have now is a memory of something which happened in the past. That which happened in the past and the memory we have now are not the same thing. And therein lies the ever-present opportunity to begin again.
