The myths we make

Humans have the ability to make stories about each other.  We can brand one person a king, and another an outcast.  We can present one person as a friend, and another as an enemy.  We can stick a label on a person or a people as though we are defining their identity.

In reality, nothing has an identity unless a mind gives it one.  Other people’s identities are the stories we make and tell about them.  If I decide my brother is a bad person, then I have just created a story of a bad person in my mind, and that is where that story, and that person, reside.  Ultimate reality has not changed.  The only identity my brother has is the one in my head.

If we widen our view to society in general, we can see a plethora of stories generated in our culture, and in the press.  This country is an aggressor, and this one is a victim.  This person is evil, and this person is good.  In reality, these are all just labels created by our own mind in response to patterns of thought and outside influences.

Nagarjuna was a Buddhist monk who said that all things lack inherent existence.  He felt that when we think we are such-and-such, or that something is a such-and-such, we are imagining it so.  He also felt that if we can escape these imaginings, these illusory fixed ideas, then we can free ourselves from the suffering they cause.

For instance if I imagine myself to be an Olympic gold medallist, then it may temporarily motivate me to try harder in training.  But it may also make me anxious when I don’t feel I am living up to this imaginary identity.  One minute I will feel temporarily satisfied, and the next I will feel deeply unhappy with myself, because I am trying to maintain the illusion of a fixed identity that is impossible to maintain.

We can trace a lot of our anxieties to mental attempts to live up to imaginary identities.  We see ourselves as a good lover, a good friend, a good worker, a rich person, a safe person… but all of these self-concepts are threatened the moment we wake up in the morning.  Life tells us that these self-concepts are illusory, but we feel we can’t afford to accept that, so we keep trying to assert and perpetuate them.

At worst, this results in schizophrenia, where we disconnect from reality because we cannot match it to our inner mythical identity.  For instance, a person may be proud inside, but humiliated by the world, and their mind may seek refuge in a belief that their pride is justified, and that the world is plotting against them – paranoid schizophrenia.

Can we live without myths?  Well, yes.  We get a glimpse of this when we get so involved in a sensory activity that we stop thinking for a while, and are content just to be, in the moment so to speak.  We rest easy in a simple awareness of what is around us, and drop the need to ‘be’ someone of a separate identity.

The Dalai Lama (the current spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, and an influential spiritual person worldwide) offers the thought that, fundamentally, we are all the same, can achieve inner peace more easily if we accept this, and are warm-hearted towards each other.  We will not waste so much energy on bolstering a mythical personal identity, or asserting, wrongly, that others are different from us.

A good meditation is to practise dropping our stories about ourselves and others, and to rest easy in a simple awareness of our and their presence.  This is mentally healthy because it reduces resentment and alienation, and fosters compassion and a sense of common humanity.

In the same way, therapeutic work can focus on examining, and letting go of, the myths that we create about ourselves and others.  We develop the wish to drop our illusions, and to live in peace.