Our mind is the perfect storyteller. It loves to weave us in a set storyline.

8 min readNov 14, 2020

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral, which always is at it is. — Eckhart Tolle

When I called Kate about this, we hit record and made my first podcast. Kate is a professor at Duke, a Canadian with huge dimples who married her high school sweetheart, the author of more than one New York Times bestseller and a super popular podcaster.

What we tell ourselves in our mind is not the reality. It is a story. We are J. K. Rowling and Harry Potter at the same time. Our mind is a superb storyteller and makes up a fictional character which we believe is us. It makes little sense for J. K. Rowling to believe she is Harry Potter, so does it make little sense for us to believe we are this fictional character in our mind.

After 2 years, when Gelong Thubten understood his ego made him suffer, he confronted it with compassion, acceptance, and awareness. This made him overcome his depression and he spent the last 2 years of the retreat in total bliss.

We all have feelings, even Buddhist monks. When Gelong’s ego was hurt by his feelings, it started to fight against these emotions. He wanted to be a wise monk who enjoys the retreat. The last thing he wanted was to be depressed.

This is life. If we can accept this and identify ourselves with the sky, we know the sun is always coming back. Clouds don’t influence the sky in its being. They just cover the sky on bad days.

There are always two things. The difficult feeling and me. There is the subject and object. If you become one with it, who is bothering who? How can it hurt you if there is a oneness?… Compassion is oneness. — Gelong Thubten

Don’t waste the next year waiting for this pandemic to be over. Live your life and chose happiness over depression and anxiety. If Gelong Thubten can do it, so can you! Let’s make peace with our minds!

I believe that meaning is made, not found. And I believe this is good news indeed because this puts us back in the locus of control where we decide what to make of our realities.

Gelong Thubten didn’t feel blissful during meditation, he was looking for more. A supernatural feeling of joy and contentment. Instead, he got depressed from meditating. So he went to his mentor another Buddhist monk and asked for advice. And he answered with this quote:
2 years in the retreat, he noticed that the resistance is bringing him nowhere. That’s when he changed resistance for compassion. He describes it as becoming one with the pain.
30 million people in 50 different countries bought a copy of 2006’s The Secret and in so doing, expressed a hope — maybe even a need? — that a new reality was ours for the imagining, including:

Notice the feelings which come up in you. Don’t judge them. Face them with compassion and curiosity. Where are they coming from and why? In every tough situation, give yourself some credit and love like you would do for your child or best friend.

Don’t listen to your ego what you are missing out or what kind of person it wants you to be. Whatever the ego tells you, have an open mind, and accept the situation you are in. Don’t look for the next bliss instead remind yourself you already have everything you need to be happy.

Imagine your mind is the vast sky and every thought you have is a cloud. Clouds pass by, they come and go without changing the sky. Some clouds are puffy and beautiful, others are dark and scary.

During meditation, your mind wanders, and this is natural, like clouds passing by. But still, we feel we have failed. We should realize that every thought we can let go of is the perfect mindfulness training. When you find your way back to awareness, this is a moment of success.

When we are caught up in our mind-made story, every tiny deviation from it makes us suffer. We need to face every situation with an open mind. We need to be ready for everything.

When you realize this, you make peace with your mind. Clouds will never stop coming. When they don’t distract you anymore and you can endure the discomfort some of them bring, then you escape suffering.

This happened to Gelong when he started the retreat. He felt superior. He thought with his seniority and experience of being a monk for 12 years, he will wing this retreat.

Let me say, in terms of our interior lives, I believe that thinking more about people you love and what you are grateful for will skew a day to the positive, and feeling good more than feeling bad is a valid and profound life goal.

But, if prayers or positive thinking could save a person, if things actually happened for a reason, my friend Liz Laats above would still be alive in her kitchen where her good and hilarious children would be begging her to make her noodles and special sauce. And my friend Kate wouldn’t be deep into year five as a stage 4 colon cancer patient.A way to practice this is to keep your eyes open during meditation Gelong Thubten suggests. And it makes sense. Meditation is about accepting this moment, not shutting it down, and flying off to nirvana.Don’t waste the next year waiting for this pandemic to be over. Live your life and chose happiness over depression and anxiety. If Gelong Thubten can do it, so can you! Let’s make peace with our minds!

Our mind is the perfect storyteller. It loves to weave us in a set storyline.

Written by sportsontv