Letting Go of the Drama

Consciousness

Apr 11

I want to describe something to you and I want you to do the best you can to imagine what I am saying.

Feel free to close your eyes if it makes you feel more comfortable.

I want you to see a spiral galaxy orbiting in a counter-clockwise fashion but see it from light-years away. It easily fits into your view if you close your eyes.

From this viewpoint, it’s like a field of diamonds. Million if not trillions of stars, all in their place orbiting around a clear center, a clear axis that makes up the center. The beauty is overwhelming, and the magnitude of the power contained within it is breathtaking and beyond words. Unthinking, void of any drama, ever-unfolding, no seeking, no regret, no desire, you watch the movement of a timeless past and an eternal future and yet know that within it but beyond your sight is life.

And suddenly you are witness to the galaxy beginning to compress, to move within, not collapsing, but shrinking, compressing, condensing, inhaling down to a singular point, a singular seed. Now imagine to the best of your ability, that point, that seed, that tiny moment of space and time containing everything that was the galaxy, the breath, the power, the majesty, the force, the will that made up all of the movement, the strength of the center that held everything together, the conscious meaning of its birth and destination of its existence, all held in this seed, this point. And now this point, this seed begins to exhale, the point begins to exhale. And you see your birth, the movement from metaphysical to physical, the movement from the seed back to the galaxy, expanding, growing. The evolutionary path of your physical life has been initiated, is taking place, expanding, and you are here on planet earth. And now open your eyes and look around.

The vastness is replaced by inches, existence reduced to experience. Vision is imprisoned by sight and eternity is hollowed out by Time. Consciousness is veiled by the mind, a mind that seeks but never finds, a mind that replaces reality with drama and the pointless preoccupations of a meaningless existence. And all, every bit of this ignorance and meaninglessness with the consent of the immutable power that created itself in but a seed…a seed that is you.

And there is your journey. That is your evolutionary path.

It is the beautiful story of you, of all others, and of the world.

We are all doing the same thing because we are the same thing. It is intentional, in order to experience itself in physical form, not to know itself but to experience itself.

So, your individual experience in this world is going to be dependent upon, unlike everything you have been told, your experience is going to be dependent upon your conscious understanding not of your experience but of your existence. Whatever role that consciousness, that galaxy so to speak, has assumed in you, it is going to be the central pivot, the axis, the center, of your life until you learn to see your Self and your life differently.

In metaphorical terms, the galaxy lies within you and your outer life is the same as the outer life of the galaxy. The galaxy will change when its center changes. Just like the galaxy, you will change when your center changes.

For your world to change, you have to change. Not the world, for the world you see is the world you are.

That is the real purpose of these teachings, to help you create a bridge from your outer life back to your inner life, from the horizontal to the vertical, from the drama to the galaxy, from physical to spiritual. It is not a philosophical, mental approach but the lived experience of the truth of who you are that will transform your life…and the world.

Where your mind is the creator of illusions and unreality, your being is the knower of Truth and Existence. That is why you’re not going to find what you’re looking for using your mind. Yes, temporarily, but never long-term, never everlasting, always brief.

For your world to change, **you** have to change. Not the world, for the world **you** see is the world **you** are.

When you look at your circumstances as a human being, it’s not very difficult to see that being a human being contains a certain unbearableness, a constant shock to the system that you try to hide on the outside but on the inside result in unstable neurology that is not based on joy, release, expansion, but is based on withdrawal, suffering, and the expectation of doom and gloom.

2001: 9/11 and catastrophic, illegal war. No one is held accountable.

2007: Financial collapse. No one is held accountable.

2016: The near-collapse of democracy and the rise of stupidity. No one is held accountable.

2020: The pandemic along with thousands dying every day and 1 in 4 families experiencing food insecurity. No one is held accountable.

Who cannot see that the process is accelerating? Where is it going? Where is the center that holds this world together, what has happened to it? And those are just global events in the US. That doesn’t include your own personal catastrophes or the catastrophes experienced by millions in other countries. And it just keeps adding up through the years.

These unavoidable and inescapable collisions between the truth of who you are that I am trying to express by way of describing the galaxy versus the everyday occurrences of your daily life cause truth to turn to ignorance, existence to turn to meaninglessness, and joy to turn into a kind of numbness.

Here, in the physical body, the movement from the galaxy to the physical induces the element of duality into the mind. Consciousness is reduced to the terms of truth and ignorance and all of the many levels that make up the distance between the two. Existence is reduced to life and death and all of the many levels that make up the distance between the two. Joy is reduced to the terms of pain and pleasure and all of the many levels that make up the distance between the two.

The galaxy within you is concealed by the drama of everyday life. And again, what I mean by the analogy of the galaxy is the truth of who you really are and what you are capable of being, the you that is capable of rising above this drama of living and it is this truth that must emerge in your life. In fact, what I am trying to say is that it is an inevitable truth that you can only be who you truly are and that you must emerge in one lifetime.

I have spoken on numerous occasions about the national decline in mental health that has been substantiated by numerous fields of study and research. Simply put, our way of living has exceeded our mental, physical and emotional capabilities, and toolbox.

And yet, the Vast, the Unmanifest, the All-Pervading, the Immutable, the Eternal, lies inside of you because that is who you are.

The slow evolution of this Self within you is the sole purpose of your life. And in spite of the difficulties, the unexplained dynamics and paradoxes of your life, this emergence, this Self, this galaxy, must take place.

This understanding resolves much of the confusion of your mind when you understand that all of the events in your life are intended events whose purpose is to cause that Self to realize itself in the physical body. This understanding provides a lot of answers to your questions of how and why. But make no mistake, what you seek as you go about dealing with your unique confusions and events that make up your life, what you seek that you believe will finally make you happy, fulfilled, is not out there in the physical world. Those things are just distractions. What you seek is not only within you but it is you! This is the true necessity upon which the quality of your life depends.

In the meantime, the drama of everyday life becomes the reality that you substitute for what is truly real, and not knowing the difference, the separated mind functions as its own galaxy, its own determinant of true and false, and thus, creates and lives out of an illusion that it defends through pain and suffering. The mind says, “Well if suffering is an illusion, then why do I suffer?” not realizing it is the creator of the suffering. Establishing that suffering is real, it then projects onto the world the fact that it is the world that causes it to suffer, once again not realizing that it is all self-imposed.

What you seek as you go about dealing with your unique confusions and events that make up your life, what you seek that you believe will finally make you happy, fulfilled, is not out there in the physical world.

The drama in your life that you allow in your life, your galaxy, is there precisely because you allow it. Now, I’m not saying it’s easy because I know first-hand how addictive drama can be. Drama gives the mind a reason for existing, it gives the mind meaning and purpose, it gives the mind something to do. Because of the infinite complexities of life, the unexplained nature of what it is to be a human being, the endless conflicts that are contained in everyday life, the reactionary patterns of the emotional body to nearly that happens, it’s easy to see that this predicament, this issue of being stuck in a maze for which there is no map for getting out, this is the true beginning of all spiritual efforts…the desire to get out of the mess.

But to be clear, it’s getting out without exiting, meaning you realize you want out of the drama but without having to end all of your relationships, quit your job, or without hurting yourself and buying into yet another illusion of thinking that you’d be better off not existing. You can see that what you want is simply to put an end to the drama.

Now again, as is often the case, the mind hates what it loves. The mind loves drama because it gives it meaning and purpose but at the same time hates it because of the havoc and instability that results from engaging in the drama. The same is true for addiction of any kind whether the addiction is mental, physical, or emotional.

If the galaxy, if consciousness, if the greater Self, and that’s Self with a capital S, does lie within you and I am saying it does, then why does it remain concealed?

There is a particular exercise that I have conducted with probably hundreds of clients over the years, in which I ask the question, “What is left when everything in the mind has been removed? What is left when loss, regret, pain, and the past has been removed? What is left when the content of the mind has been removed?”

About 2-3 people out of 10 will reply, “Nothing.” And if the person does reply in this manner, I ask, “And now, what do you feel?” The person will nearly always say something that is related to fear. In other words, nothingness implies meaninglessness. And meaninglessness invites the darkness. And the mind will react when confronted with the darkness and we’re back to where we started with the creation of drama.

What I am suggesting for many of us is that what we’re looking for is a little below the darkness, and therefore, it is a darkness that we have to navigate, that we have to have the courage to encounter if we’re going to learn to move away from drama and the illusion and anchor into the essence of our being and to, at last, find ourselves at least, at the doorway of a greater way of being, of existing, of at least becoming at aware that there is something greater that awaits us, that there is a greater presence within. Nothingness does not exist but only appears to be nothingness. Being unable to recover from the blow of life only appears to be impossible.

If there is a purpose to drama, if you can somehow find any redeemable reason for engaging in it at all, it could be said that the purpose of drama is to force you away from the outer world in which you easily see through enough experience in the drama of every day that you’re never going to find what you’re looking for and that drama only results in upheaval and pain, and that if what you’re looking for can’t be found there, then it must be somewhere else and if it can’t be found in the outer world then maybe it can found in the inner world.

Nothingness does not exist but only appears to be nothingness.

All drama would then be understood as a mechanism of the evolutionary process to force the individual to move within and then, drama could make sense. If you begin with the idea that there is a Force, that Force creates energy. That energy creates form. That form is endowed with the makings of its creator, the Force. That form is a spiritual form whose identity is concealed to allow for the play of evolution in which at some point of the unfolding, the individual recognizes the unfolding process and transformation results. The spiritual form which originates from the energy of the Force that created it cannot be understood by the material world. Because of that, it’s as though the individual is stuck in no man’s land.

No matter how much material gain you make in the material world, you still can’t escape the gnawing feeling inside that something is missing.

And without enough material gain and being able to have a roof over your head and enough food to eat, you can’t escape the gnawing feeling inside that something is missing. What is the point of all of this? Is it really the point, the objective to possess, to have, to own, to singularly focus on the accumulation of wealth and material gain?

I assure you that your soul could care less and is seeking a grander experience of itself in the physical world but that doesn’t mean you should dismiss seeking mastery in the horizontal, physical world. It is a balance of the two, that is to say, that it is a balance of the horizontal physical and the vertical spiritual that you should seek. It is the absence of the vertical, spiritual that creates the meaninglessness in the horizontal, physical. The horizontal, physical life is not the determinant of itself. It is the vertical, spiritual that is the determinant of the horizontal, physical. Everybody has a boss, even in your everyday life.

So, the drama plays out…all over the world…each individual struggling to come to terms with the purpose of being a human being.

It also becomes pretty obvious that as one gains some mastery in the horizontal world and is able to prosper enough to be able to possess enough money and material gain to lead a “comfortable” life that most people become entrenched in trying to hold on to it, to guard it and keep it out of the hands of others. Now before your mind reacts and assumes, I am not saying that you should give it away. I am saying that it is a balance and a very difficult one of maintaining one foot in the horizontal, physical, and the other foot in the vertical, spiritual.

With both feet planted in concrete in the horizontal, physical, drama becomes a drug that keeps the mind busy, gives the mind something to do, that otherwise, left to its own accord, will drop down into the meaninglessness, the emptiness that so many people feel because of the absence of the vertical, spiritual. Religion provides no deterrent to keep that from happening because religion in most cases is another expression of horizontal, physical. Prosperity religion provides hundreds of examples of individuals promoting horizontal, physical gain as proof of God’s love and blessing. The pursuit of prosperity under the guise of vertical, and spiritual has also been the downfall of hundreds of individuals.

Well, I’m not going down that road other than to say again that your soul could care less. But there’s no need in being naïve. If an individual is cold and hungry, it’s a little difficult to praise God. And I encourage anybody who hasn’t done it, that is, to have gone without, to do it.

A little suffering is good for your development.

But back to the drama. The drama of this unfolding of life becomes the center of your life and in doing so, you become blinded by the mental, physical and emotional reactions to the drama. It is so easy for the mind to become obsessed with this unfolding.

But what would happen if you were able to distance yourself from the unfolding drama of family members, the unfolding drama of national and international events, and the drama of life through a different perceptual and conceptual lens, seeing the drama as unconsciousness manifest? Do you understand what I mean here?

Mastering and overcoming being addicted to drama in your life is dependent upon you being able to see it for what it is: it is the role that ignorance is playing in the evolutionary process.

It is only through the disciplined process of learning to quieten your mind that you are able to gain this perspective, this poise, this stance.

It should be obvious to you by now that your thinking does not originate freely but that your thinking, your entire functioning, is bound by the level of drama that you create and allow in your mind. Your past, full of good and bad, ups and downs, memories and stories, dominates your communications with others. Who sits around at the Thanksgiving table and discusses the possibilities of tomorrow? Because without drama, there is calm, quiet. And that is uncomfortable for the mind that needs activity, movement, something to do, something to be, something to analyze, something to grind against. The mind grinds and opposes. The soul embraces and merges.

In your initial efforts to limit the amount of drama in which you engage, even in small incremental steps in beginning to train your mind to be still, to withdraw from the horizontal, physical and into the vertical, spiritual, your mind will react because its principle reference point is being taken away, the experience that any addict has when the substance is removed.

In learning to eliminate drama in your life, in consciously withdrawing from the outer horizontal, physical world, you increase the movement into the inner, vertical, spiritual world and that has enormous and for many, immediate results. Calm, greater clarity, lowering of blood pressure, a stabilizing of the emotional body, and I could go on.

In an April 2018 article written by Daisy Luther, she refers to research conducted in 1999 by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University that addressed the issue of drama in a different way. She says, “It’s time to address an epidemic in the United States. It’s one that could be deadly, particularly to liberty. It’s an epidemic of Dunning-Kruger. It’s why ignorant people are so certain that they’re right. What’s that, you ask?

The Dunning Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which individuals, who are unskilled at a particular task, believe themselves to possess above-average ability in performing the task. On the other hand, as individuals become more skilled in a particular task, they may mistakenly believe that they possess below-average ability in performing those tasks because they may assume that all others possess equal or greater ability.

In other words, “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”

It’s completely normal for us to base our opinions on our own moral beliefs. As Dunning wrote,

“We are, at heart, either individualist or communitarian, hierchist or egalitarian. These are core attributes that would be difficult, if not impossible, to change.
But what we CAN do is make a conscious effort to catch ourselves when we make rapid judgment calls without the facts. We can educate ourselves on both sides of an issue and make an effort to use facts instead of feelings in our arguments.
What we CANNOT do is expect everyone to play by these rules. But that’s okay because by understanding how an opposing view was developed, we can use that to fuel our own arguments. We can call out the cognitive biases. What we can’t expect is for facts to change their deeply held beliefs, no matter how ignorant those beliefs might be.”

We can correct the lack of information, but we can’t really expect someone with a confident, sacrosanct opinion to change their minds. They’ll hold on to a belief even after it is proven factually incorrect.” Dunning went on to say, “We are all confident idiots.” Remember, facts have nothing to do with why they have their points of view.

The good news is that there are folks in the middle, who may not have a deeply held opinion on hot-button topics. These are the folks who can be reached by logic and facts. It’s nearly impossible to battle confident ignorance, but with facts, you can influence people who are undecided.

If you ask me what is going to be the end of our civilization, the rampant epidemic of Dunning-Kruger seems to be the most likely cause. Let’s not be guilty of this confident ignorance ourselves. Let’s vow to inoculate ourselves with facts instead of enabling ourselves with emotional biases.”

Drama is the killer of truth. Drama is the substitute for reality and you must do everything you can to remove yourself from the drama. This is a quote from Sri Aurobindo:

“The condition in which all movements become superficial and empty with no connection with the soul is a stage in the withdrawal from the surface consciousness to the inner consciousness. When one goes into the inner consciousness, it is felt as a calm, pure existence without any movement, but eternally tranquil, unmoved, and separate from the outer nature.
This comes as a result of detaching oneself from the movements, standing back from them, and is a very important movement of the sadhana (which means practice or discipline).
The first result of it is an entire quietude but afterwards, that quietude begins (without the quietude ceasing) to fill with the psychic and other inner movements which create a true inner and spiritual life behind the outer life and nature. It is then easier to govern and change the latter.”

So, be still and begin a practice of removing yourself from the drama of everyday life and seek refuge in that stillness that repairs, restores, and rectifies. Gently push the drama to the outer realm of your universe where it can remain and you can return to it when you choose. But here, in the center, in the quiet, as you train your mind to greater and greater depths of stillness, the greater Truth of who you are will make itself known.