Who would you be without your story?

There’s an old Buddhist proverb that says when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. I have found this to be true so many times in my life, especially in those moments when serendipity intervenes and I seem to stumble upon just the right book, the perfect website or a new contact who points me in an inspiring direction.

It’s appropriate that the proverb is a Buddhist one because yesterday’s moment of serendipity drew me to the work of Zen teacher and author Gangaji (born Merle Antoinette Roberson in Texas).

She had been on my radar for a while – albeit orbiting outside my conscious awareness – but what drew her towards me was her recent book, Hidden Treasure: Uncovering the Truth in Your Life Story.

I’ve already written a few posts about rewriting the stories we tell ourselves, and lo and behold, here is a book that delves much deeper into the subject. You can read an excerpt from it here.

So much of this resonates with me that I’d like to quote from it time and again, but I’ll stick to the following passage:

“Underneath all the stories, we can experience that deep core of ourselves that is historyless, genderless and parentless. Naked. That presence is unencumbered by relationships and has no past and no future.

“In the core of our beingness we are free of definitions. Unencumbered by our definitions we experience ourselves as conscious intelligence aware of itself as open, endless space.

“This instant of being storyless is an instant of freedom. For even if our story is filled with light and beauty, to the degree that we define ourselves through that story, we are less free.”

I invite you to reflect on the profound wisdom in Gangaji’s words. When we let go of all our stories, what remains is our truth – which she defines as an endless space in which we can rest as conscious presence.

If this seems a bit spiritually advanced, how about starting to identify the stories that are creating your life script. Do you have a victim story? A sob story? An “I’m not good enough” story? Or perhaps the classic tale “I’ll never meet The One”?

These are all stories that you can rewrite. Think about it. And then do an edit you’re happier with.