Letting go of the story line

What is really going on when we think we can't let go of thoughts? Andrew Weiss speaks to this in a marvelous paragraph in his book, Beginning Mindfulness:

When we say that we are caught up in our thinking, we are really saying that we are attached to our narrative. The narrative is the story we tell ourselves about our lives: all the reasons we are the way we are, all the reasons why things happen to us. Our attachment to the narrative keeps us powerless. The narrative's job is to remind us that we are subject to forces we cannot control - other people, heredity, social problems, and of course, our habits and feelings. Our attachment to the narrative keeps us in the role of victim. The reason for this is simple: The narrative is the intellectualization of our emotions. It is also the creator, and the result, of our habits. It doesn't let us understand that we can choose how to face our feelings or that we can decide whether or not to follow our habits. Once we are locked into the narrative, we think and act out our lifetime's patterns of behavior.

Keep the word "choice" always before you. We have more choices than we readily acknowledge. Getting in touch with those choices is the way to liberation. Just try letting go of the story line and see what happens. The choices become wide open.