Do you tell yourself stories? Are they stories of what you have or don’t have, what you need or don’t need? Are they stories of your freedom, your bondage, your lack, your bounty, your grief, your joy? Are they stories of who you are, of who someone else is? Are they stories of what needs to change, of what needs to stay the same, of what is right and what is wrong?

Are you willing to stop telling your personal story? Are you willing to tell the truth about whether you are willing or not willing? Whatever you are telling yourself, however horrible or grand, is a story. As a story, as a distillation of experience, it may be the relative truth but it is not the final truth. Stories appear, change, and disappear. Whether your story is about how good or bad you are, it appears and disappears. The final truth has nothing to do with emotions, biochemistry, or changes in circumstance. It is unchanging and unconditional.

You can stop telling your story in less than an instant. Even if it is a good story, stop indulging the telling of it and immediately the truth can be experienced. You cannot experience the truth if you continue to tell your story, and you cannot continue to tell your story if you are experiencing the truth. It’s obvious, isn’t it?

Stop telling your story, right now. Not later, when the story gets better or worse, but right now. When you stop telling your story right now, you stop postponing the realization of the truth that is beyond any story. All effort, all difficultly, and all continued suffering are in the resistance to stopping. That resistance is fed by the hope that the story will give you what you are yearning for, the hope that if you can just fix the story, make the necessary changes, you will get what you want.

When you stop telling your story about me, him, her, them, or us, you can know in less than an instant the true depths of what it means to be who you are. Then whatever story appears or disappears, it doesn’t touch who you are.

When you dream at night, your dream has a beginning, middle and an end. It seems real at the time, but when you wake up you know it was obviously a dream. Similarly, you can wake up in the dream of your life. You can wake up before the story of you ends, as all stories will eventually end. Waking up in The story is called ‘lucid dreaming’ or ‘dreaming clearly.’

Normally, you wake up in the morning and pick up the story of who you are. You may do some meditation practice, but the real practice is the ongoing story of who you are. The energy and the emotion that the story generates gives birth to infinite permutations of frustration, delight, pain, or pleasure, all revolving around this practice of the story of ‘me’.

Telling the personal story is the primary religion of most people on the planet. The personal story gets located in a body, a tribe, a nation, a religion, an ‘us’. This is why the planet is constantly at war, and why you may be constantly at war with yourself. If you can recognize what your story is, then the story is conscious rather than unconscious. You can see what the story is, and you can choose to stop following it as if it were reality.

The possibility is to recognize that all of our stories, however complex and multi-layered, however deeply implanted in our genetic structure, are only stories. The truth of who you are is not a story. The vastness and the closeness of that truth precedes all stories. When you overlook the truth of who you are in allegiance to some story, you miss a precious opportunity for self-recognition.

As a means of exposing your own particular story, you can ask yourself honestly and directly: What is my story? Exposing the story is not for the purpose of getting rid of it or following it. The purpose is to see what stories you are telling about who you think you are, or who you think you should be.

Whatever your answers may be, can you entertain the possibilities that it is all just a story? It is not right, it is not wrong, it is not real. Experience the possibility of its unreality. Drop your consciousness back into the space where there is no story, where there is no thought. If a thought arises, see that it is just passing through. It is neither wrong nor right. It is just a thought, having nothing to do with the essential truth of who you are.

Gangaji found spiritual fulfillment in 1990 when she met Sri Poonjaji, a student of Sri Ramana Maharshi. The Gangaji Foundation was established as a non-profit organization with the purpose to make Gangaji’s teaching available to all who are interested. Be with Gangaji in Asheville, Sept 25 -28 visit www.gangaji.org