The movies we replay in our heads—held on to from lives past—cause us to recycle stories that no longer serve us, if they ever did.
We run these stories over and over again and like hamsters on a wheel; we go nowhere in our inner life development, and as a result we suffer as adults from the wounds of our childhood.
Slowly these toxic stories crowd out the potential for joy and ease that is the birthright of every human being…. If we simply give ourselves over to this narrative, to the storyline of “Uns and Nots”—unloved, unseen, unappreciated, unwanted, uncared for, not good enough, not smart enough, not attractive enough, not powerful, not rich enough, not the right color or gender or position or class—then we abdicate the one thing that can reposition our relationship to the entire experience of our life: responsibility.
I often say, “It’s not your fault, but it’s your responsibility.” It is quite true that there are many conditions in life that confer a less-than-desirable experience. But it is also true that at the end of your days on this planet, your life will have been lived only by you. How you experience whatever conditions life hands you correlates directly to how much responsibility you choose to take. None of us can control all (if any) of the conditions, but we can choose how we experience the conditions we find ourselves in.
If we do not begin to debunk the deep inner myth that many of us carry that we do not deserve greater joy, love, or ease in our lives because we are _______ (fill in the blank with your choice of Uns or Nots), then we condemn ourselves to the role of victims in our own movies.
Buddhist teacher angel Kyodo williams
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