The Drama We Secretly Love
El drama que secretamente amamos
A student notices that they are drawn to stories of struggle and redemption in movies, yet find similar themes in their own life repulsive. The teacher explores why we project our love of narrative onto fiction while rejecting it in our lived experience, and suggests looking for a hidden love that is already present.
The Drama We Secretly Love
A student notices that they are drawn to stories of struggle and redemption in movies, yet find similar themes in their own life repulsive. The teacher explores why we project our love of narrative onto fiction while rejecting it in our lived experience, and suggests looking for a hidden love that is already present.
What came up for me during the meditation was your recurring theme about waking up from the movie. You said we love seeing it in movies, and it really made me think about how I'm drawn to certain films with themes of the underdog, the suffering, and then trying to make something of themselves, or transforming all the suffering they've endured into something greater than themselves. I love watching those movies. And then it just clicked: it's so romantic. But when I see that same thing happen in my own life, I'm not drawn to it at all. It's repulsive. As you were saying about seeing the beauty in it, I can see it when watching a movie. Is it because it's fictional, because it's distant? Whereas when I'm experiencing it, it's intimate and it's repulsive.
You're hitting the nail on the head. That incongruence, your love of that kind of story in fiction or in film and your rejection of it in your real life, is exactly what I'm talking about.
Something in you loves that narrative, and something also loves that narrative in your life. In a sense, it's hidden because it's transferred onto a distant narrative. The narrative of our life and the narrative of film are obviously very different, but there's a place where they're not. The film can be a mirror, a way of reflecting back to you what your love of this narrative reveals: that possibly there is a love of that in your life as well.
I'm not asking you to deny your actual experience. You said there's a rejection, that you don't find it romantic in your life but you find it romantic in the movies. In a sense, by loving that in movies, you're warming up to it in your life.
The love that must come first
There is an aspect of this awakening where you fall completely in love with your story, your narrative, the drama that you so much dislike. Love comes first. That's what's needed first. The metaphor of the relationship with a child is similar: you cannot set a boundary without love. You can, but it's going to be wrong. The love needs to be there before there is any pushing back.
So would you say that when we practice meditating and being present, not being in our thoughts, it leads us to an acceptance of what's happening for us? And the more we accept what's happening, perhaps over time we acquire the taste, we come to love the taste?
Looking for what is already there
I would say it a little differently. This was quite a surprise for me. Having spent a lot of years practicing acceptance, I realized that the acceptance was always there. In a sense, what we can practice is to see what's already present.
I don't feel like I have that.
I know. That's why I'm talking about it, because I'm aware that's not how you currently experience or interpret your reality. I would put it a little differently: instead of practicing acceptance, practice looking at the beauty of what is, or looking for the beauty of what is. Because acceptance can feel like something forced. "I have to accept this shit. This is horrible and I have to accept it." What I'm talking about is actually acceptance, but that word can be interpreted in ways that are probably not right. It's more like a love than an acceptance. But I'm not directing you to love something that you don't like. The direction is: see that maybe, possibly, there already is a love present.
That requires you to go deeper. Instead of staying on the surface trying to accept something at that level, it requires you to say, "I'm not experiencing this, but it's supposedly already here. Where is it?" And so it requires you to listen, to pay attention in a more refined, more attentive way. That's when the mind will quiet by itself. Not because we're trying to quiet the mind, because at that level we'd just be fighting activity with more activity.
The act of listening definitely quiets the mind.
The clarinet behind the orchestra
Yes. Listening literally to sound, but also as a word that can be applied to attention and awareness: to sensation, to thoughts, to emotions. Imagine you're listening to an orchestra. All of the instruments are playing loud, and then you're asked: find the clarinet in the back. That clarinet is playing the tune of love. The whole string section is playing this really loud, noisy mess, and the clarinet in the background is playing a beautiful romantic melody. You're being asked to look for the clarinet. It's playing. You're actually hearing it right now. You just can't find it in the cacophony.
I feel like when I'm listening to something external, it's neutral. But when it's something personal and intimate, it's not a neutral listening.
When things are difficult, or your mind is very active, think of it as the orchestra going into full blast. There is a sound I'm tasking you to look for. In words, and these are my words (in your experience it will probably be very different), it will be a kind of love for what is happening.
Back to what you brought up about the movies: your love for those stories, and how you see that kind of narrative in your life and really dislike it. It's almost like the movies are showing you the flavor of it. Your loving of that in movies is reflecting it to you, for you to find that in your life, the beauty of that narrative in your life. Because only once we fully find that can we master it and change it if we want.
I feel like I can see a lot of beauty externally, but I don't find a lot of things that I feel or experience as beautiful.
Take that as your meditation. Less about accepting, or quieting the mind, or watching the mind. Do all of that, but focus more on this incongruence between the stories you find beautiful in film and how you don't find beauty of that kind in your life.
I feel it's so black and white, but I know things in life aren't black and white.
And so that shows you something's up. There's a veil. It smells fishy.
Some sort of internal belief.
Notice the temptation to analyze it, to call it a belief. What I'm asking is more specific: look for the love. Just assume it's there and look for it. But don't convince yourself it's there until you find it.
The creator who chose to be bound
You talk about how we're the creators, how our true self is our own creator. I'm wondering, maybe I am creating all this, my own drama and suffering, because I actually like it. And my way of rejecting it is a way of not seeing that it's available, of not seeing that truth. I can keep rejecting it, which is like saying, "I couldn't possibly be creating this for myself." But in reality, I am creating it myself, and because I actually like it, even though I say I don't like it. It's like madness.
You're analyzing it in the right direction. But keep looking beyond that. You're asking the right questions, and there's a kind of discernment in what you're doing. Still, let it be a way in which you question your current experience. This kind of analysis will take you to an edge. You're saying, "If I am the creator, then I'm creating this, so that means I like it." Yes, but you still haven't discovered the love of it. You've come to an edge where you question this very stubborn belief or experience: how could you possibly like this? It sucks. And that is a belief.
What you just described is a process of discernment, putting together some things I've said, trusting them enough to look at your experience. You come to that edge, and that's necessary, but there's more. If you do like it, where's the experience of liking it? Where's the enjoyment of this? Where's the love of this? You're not experiencing it, so keep looking. You can only go so far by analyzing and discerning. At that edge, you need to look. It's here and now. It's that clarinet playing softly behind the strings.
You could be completely shocked, and be prepared for being completely shocked. Because there's going to be a loss if you see it. That's why we don't want to see it. We want to be free. But freedom requires the ending of being bound, and we chose to be bound.
I see how intellectualizing it doesn't help at all.
Beyond analysis, into listening
It's important to clarify your thinking around it, but it's only going to go so far, which is to that edge where you need to actually pay attention and listen. The orchestra is everything you're experiencing right now: sensations, emotions, thoughts. Right now there is a clarinet playing a tune, a romantic tune of "I love my life." And everybody says, "No way." But it's really that astounding. It's covered by all the other instruments shouting, "This sucks, this sucks, this sucks." And we are every musician. We are the conductor and the composer.
That space is so huge. It requires a certain type of humility, to bring down all our defenses to be able to listen.
It requires humility. It also requires, more importantly, a very radical shift in our interest. Let me put it this way. If you loved the drama in your life the way you love it in the movies, would it still be a drama? It would completely destroy the taste of despair, of whatever is so difficult. You can't have it both ways. You project your love of that narrative onto the movies. You experience it and live it through the movies so that you can have a true drama in your life. Because if you absolutely fall in love with the drama in your life, with the part you find extremely difficult, it can no longer be difficult in that way. It actually becomes like the drama in the movie, which doesn't go very deep.
In that sense, it requires a very big change in our interests. It's almost as if I could snap my fingers and the drama of your life ended: a part of you would say no. And that's why I'm emphasizing, don't try to get this now, because you'll go to the habit of analyzing. Give yourself time to contemplate, to look into it, to ask the question and wonder. How is this possibly happening? Where is this supposed love of this life in the deepest sense?
To build on it. Thank you.