Making stuff up

One of the ways we cause ourselves to suffer is to make stuff up. We make stuff up about what we think the future holds and we make stuff up about what others are thinking. We also make stuff up about who and what we are. Jon Kabat-Zinn describes how meditation can help relieve us of this habit in his book, Coming to our Senses:

We recognize the proliferations and the endless construction projects of the mind, and how easily we get absorbed in them, how easily we get emotionally involved in them. We recognize how easily we cling to them and have opinions about them, whether positive or negative, pleasant or unpleasant. When it comes right down to it, all of this, we see, is mere fabrication. So we keep watching the mind's constructs arise and pass away. We rest in awareness itself, beyond thinking altogether, even thoughts of watching and knowing. We rest in this awareness momentarily, and this "momentarily" is itself beyond time.

Over time, such timeless moments emerge out of the background of proliferations and fabrications and are seen and known because they become more familiar to us and therefore more visible and more accessible. We are naturally drawn to reside in undisturbed peacefulness and clarity no matter what is happening. We have momentarily at least gotten out of our own way, at which point the way becomes evident, bright, and undisturbed, even when the proverbial stuff is hitting the proverbial fan, maybe even especially when the proverbial stuff is hitting the proverbial fan.

Lets try to see and know what's actually happening in the moment and not make up stories about what's happening. We will prevent much personal suffering that way.