Since starting my meditation practice, I’ve made a habit of observing my inner critic.
As a result, I’ve noticed that its most insidious tendency is to weave all kinds of stories around certain situations and people I meet. Usually, those stories are negative. They try to make someone “wrong” and assign blame, all the while abdicating myself of all responsibility.
I’m not alone in this, of course. “Most people are in love with their particular life drama,” Eckhart Tolle writes in “The Power of Now,” “Their story is their identity.” He goes on to write that even the search for some kind of “answer, a solution, or for healing” can become a part of that story. In other words, this process is deeply unconscious. It takes a great deal of dedication to become aware of it. This is what Tolle explores in one of the entries of his second book “Stillness Speaks.” He writes:
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What a miserable day.
He didn’t have the decency to return my call.
She let me down.Little stories we tell ourselves and others, often in the form of complaints. They are unconsciously designed to enhance our always deficient sense of self through being “right” and making something or someone “wrong.” Being “right” places us in a position of superiority and so strengthens our false sense of self, the ego. This also creates some kind of enemy: yes, the ego needs enemies to define its boundary, and even the weather can serve that function.
Through habitual mental judgment and emotional contraction, you have a personalized, reactive relationship to people and events in your life. These are all forms of self-created suffering, but they are not recognized as such because to the ego they are satisfying. The ego enhances itself through reactivity and conflict. How simple life would be without those stories.
It is raining.
He did not call.
I was there. She was not.
Complement this meditation from “Stillness Speaks” with Eckhart Tolle on becoming aware of your inner critic and accessing the power of now.
I’m a freelance writer and mindfulness advocate behind this blog. I started my meditation practice in 2014, and in 2017 I launched this website to share what I learn with others. Here are the three things you can do here:
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