“Outside, the Storm Rages. Inside, a Single Drop Fell.”
I underlined this as soon as I read it in the book ” A cup of Zen ” by Kai Tsukimi.
Some words immediately have a profound impact and reach your heart.
I used to get drawn into every drama that presented itself on my life screen, and I felt all of it inside me. Even the movies I saw on a literal screen were not an escape. I cried with the characters and rejoiced with them. They stayed with me long after the lights came on.
I carried worry on my back or in my head for days, making me feel sluggish and worn. My brows were creased in worry, and my heart clenched and closed.
The whole notion of being unconscious is that we don’t realise that we have a choice in where our attention goes.
As I watched this pattern of remembering and slipping back into being reactive, I started paying attention to the conscious decisions I was making in terms of where my attention was going and why.
The egoic prompter thrives on the drama. It loves it, imbibes it and apparently only feels it exists when it is deep inside the drama.
The observer is calm, at peace and at ease because it knows it is all a drama. The observer is also aware that precious life-force energy is lost in the process of getting sucked into every drama. That this life force can instead be consciously directed inwards, towards our inner connection, towards the eternal fount of eternal peace, no matter the storm raging outside.
This is only possible when the dreamer awakens to their own ability to wake up from the dream.
Sometimes it takes a jolt, a shocking event that jerks the dreamer awake. Sometimes it is a series of prods and nudges from the Universe, gently reminding us to see the bigger perspective.
No matter the catalyst, a moment of peace tastes so good that the dreamer begins yearning for more. They begin to fight the urge to go back to sleep again.
Sometimes we still fall asleep, but within the dream we realise we have fallen asleep and jerk ourselves awake.
Ironically, in this life it occurred to me that when our eyes are open and we feel we are awake, looking outwards at the illusion, we are actually asleep and dreaming, getting sucked into the drama.
But when we go into meditation, pranayama, yoga, Reiki and shut our outward-facing senses, we awaken the ones that look inward.
And that is how we awaken from a living dream.
In my case, just knowing that this is happening is not enough to make me stop engaging with the drama completely. It takes constant reminders from my conscious self to let go of the engagement with the drama.
Where I have progressed is that I have consciously minimised my active participation in all aspects of the drama.
I understand why the Buddha advocated the middle path of non-reactivity.
Lessening the reactivity and remaining neutral helps one to consciously choose where this precious life-force energy is directed.
To reach that place of:
“Outside, the storm rages.
Inside, a single drop fell.”
Perhaps that is the quest of this life for me.
Perhaps I don’t need to become the storm in order to care.
Perhaps I can be of greater help when I silence the storm within me and pour some peace into the drama of the dream….diluting and softening it enough so it loosens its hold upon us.
❤️
Mehr's blog 