From Annette Nibley
Read more at What Never Changes
What are teachers saying when they tell you, “There is no one to be frustrated”? They are really referring to the story you have to be making up all the time in order for there to be a person, and in order for there to be frustration. It’s the story that is at the root of the belief in a person. You’re making up the story, and so you’re making up the person, out of your own imagination. No story, no person.
A story needs to be told for there to be frustration. Without telling a story, is there frustration? Where? How? Look for the story you are telling. Look for the narrative you create for the frustration to thrive in. This narrative creates the person out of thin air. This is something you're doing all the time – you’re creating the person all the time with your inner narrative. And this is the center of every problem, every speck of suffering and seeking.
So what can you do? What is needed is not action, it’s inaction. Stop making up a story.
Having no story amounts to the same thing you’re asked over and over: Who is frustrated? Where is the person? But, “getting” that there is no person is not something you just have to wait around until you "see" – making up the person is actually something you are actively doing all the time. You don't have to do it. You don’t have to make up a story. And without the story, "This is so frustrating" has no place to take hold, no place to bloom. It just blows away like dust. Nothing has any place to take hold. Nothing can harm you. You are at total peace.
If you don't tell a story right now, there is just a watching, a peaceful noticing of the current moment. No problem arises, no frustration, no irritation, until you start constructing the narrative. Until then, it doesn't exist, and it's just pure consciousness, you, peace, that's all.
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