Fear and the future hold hands, finish each other’s sentences, cannot really be distinguished, and use the mind as an unregulated playground. To illustrate: Notice the breath. What are you afraid of in this moment, in the verticality of right now?
Mind is an exceedingly industrious storyteller. Memory creates an ‘I was’ narrative; imagination constructs an ‘I will be’ narrative. Simultaneously, like a mad samurai, it slices the present into good, bad, doesn’t matter.
All of our problems are mind-made. They are mental creations. Nothing in the natural world has a problem. No mind, no problem.
The ego is who I think I am. It is a limited, temporary and entirely mind-based sense of self. So men say: “I am a millwright.” Or, “I am a stay-at-home dad.” But we are not the roles we play. Marlon Brando did not tell people he was a mafia don. On examination, we find that the question “Who am I?” can only be answered in the negative, e.g., not this, not that. We concede one all-purpose exception to a blinking list of negative statements: “I am an actor.”
Men's Work 