Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘To move beyond the stories that we tell ourselves, to walk the Eightfold Path, we must learn how to stop and give ourselves a break from the tape that we’re constantly playing.

This can be hard, especially if you’ve experienced a lot of trauma. I know how we can feel almost addicted to our life’s stories. Victimhood, for instance, can easily turn into a type of self-absorption that we don’t want to let go of, it’s that feeling of “nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.” We often stay in this prison because we wish to avoid being hurt by others. And yet that same fear can also hold us back.

You’re ready to practice with ‘getting beyond’ when you’re tired of living from within that prison. Enclosing ourself is a strategy we use to avoid getting hurt by others. But in not moving beyond our stories, we are actually hurting ourselves.

Moving beyond our confining narratives means we must grow intimate with them.

We cannot choose our histories, our bodies, race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality. We are these things, yet we are also more than them and when we are truly intimate with them—meaning we experience them just as they are—then we can begin to live beyond them as well.

Sometimes this means bringing gentle energy to the task, and sometimes it means coming at it with the force of a jackhammer.’ (from Slow Down. Help Out. Wake Up.)