Soup with a Fork

This was read to us at Theory class tonight and it was so powerful it spoke the words I need to hear I felt compelled to share it with as many people as I can 

We create big problems for ourselves by not recognizing mind energies when they arrive dressed up in stories. They are like the neighbor’s children disguised as Halloween ghosts. When we open the door and find the child next door dressed in a sheet, even though it looks like a ghost, we remember it is simply the child next door. And when I remember the dramas of my life are the energies of the mind dressed in the sheet of a story, I manage them more gracefully. Here’s an exercise to show that it’s the mind state, not the event itself, that determines our experience:

FIRST SCENARIO 
You’ve been in a relationship, and the relationship has gone sour. You and your partner are both disappointed that the relationship hasn't worked out and dismayed and angry with the other person for not having lived up to your expectations. You meet for one last day to try to talk things over. You go to the beach to get away from it all, and, as the day goes on, each of you remembers more and more painful ways in which the relationship has failed. You feel exhausted and angry. On the drive back to the city, because both of you are hungry, you stop at a restaurant for dinner. Your partner eats the soup with a fork. You think to yourself, “This is even worse than I thought! This idiot eats his soup with a fork!” 

SECOND SCENARIO 
You fall totally in love. The other person loves you with equal passion. You go to the beach for the day. You lie in the sun, you read Rilke, you splash in the waves, you make love. On the drive back to the city, you are both hungry so you stop in a restaurant. Your partner eats the soup with a fork. You think to yourself, “What a cute idea! Eating the soup with a fork!” 

I think this is what people mean when they say, “We create our own reality.” I used to have trouble with that idea when I first heard it in the seventies. Hard as I try, I cannot create the reality of the sun rising tomorrow in the west, and I cannot create the reality of the people I know with illnesses being miraculously cured. But one reality I can create—the point of view I bring to any experience

It's Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness

by Sylvia Boorstein