Stopping the story
Gangaji
Ashland, Oregon
Public Meeting - October 19, 2003
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I had many teachers before I met my final teacher. I can look back now and see that everything that they gave me and everything I received, was in preparation somehow, for meeting my final teacher. When I was brought to that teacher's feet, he told me to stop. Not "stop, don't move, don't breath." Stop the story. It is actually very simple. It does not mean stop the thought as it comes. Just do not follow the thought. Stop building on the latest thought, whatever your storyline is: "I am good, I am bad, I am horrible, I have got it, I am superior, I have lost it, I am inferior, I will never get it, I am deflated, I have always had it, I am inflated…". Stop the story of "I should leave, I should stay, I should fight, I should…" These thoughts have a momentum. Just as the physical story of your body has a momentum, the mental story has momentum in thoughts. You can expect them to arise. If they do, then there is a choice, and it is a supreme choice. It is a choice that most people never hear of, and of those that do, many brush it aside and consider it impossible. It is not impossible. It is possible for you to recognize when you begin telling your story again, and in that it is possible to stop.
Now in that stopping, there can be a huge emotional arising, because we believe the story of who we are to be who we are. There is a fear that if we do not tell our story, we will cease to be. So to stop telling our story, is terrifying, This is facing death, facing non-existence. So be willing not to be for a moment. Completely cease to be and see what is in that. This is where the choice is. There may not be a choice as to the particular story that has appeared here, but there is a choice in whether it continues. The moment you recognize that a story is being told, you can stop. And this is a revelation. Because attention is usually on the story and on changing it or getting out of it or making it better, what is present even while the story is being told, is overlooked, tragically. But for you it need not be. And if you really hear this, you will surrender the excuse of overlooking, and be willing to face the terror of not existing. Because of our conditioning, we reference our existence and the relevance of that existence to the story that is being told. And we modify that story based on the input we get from the outside: our circumstances, the people who leave us, the people who stay with us. But closer than the story, is the truth. There is nothing wrong with stories. I am not telling you to erase the story because then you have a story of, "I am now erasing my story." I am suggesting that it is possible to first recognize that there is a story and then to recognize the pleasure that the story promises, and the suffering that the story delivers. Ruthlessly recognize that.
Papaji often used to say, "When someone begins to awaken, all the gods and demons of their past come to reclaim them." Every untold character in the story, not just the demons but the gods too, will come to claim you: "how great you are, how wonderful you are". Whatever you have hoped for, shows up. This is the story of the Buddha having to face maya. This is the vigilance. This is the willingness to be nothing, the willingness to die — not as suicide, not as a death wish. In the willingness to be nothing there is no character in any story: no hero, no victim, no star, no almost-was — just here. In that you taste the essence of yourself, the truth of yourself.
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