"Step away from the story..."

There are phrases that create openings into greater Awareness. “Step away from the story” was one such phrase for me recently. It was said as part of a comment left by a fellow blogger commenting on the issue of drama that has been showing up at my door on regular basis. And for some reason when I read this phrase, something clicked. She said: “I've been working with the phrase ‘drop the content.’ It seems to help me step away from the story machine that feeds the drama and stay with the sensations and whatever emotions the sensations represent.”

Ah-ha – a light bulb went on about how the story machine runs: by focusing on the content and not seeing the *context* of the experience; running with the experience and not being present *to* the experience – allowing myself to be drawn into the machine.

I will admit I keep getting sucked back into the story machine with ongoing family drama issues. It’s taking quite a bit of awareness to remember the Greater Context in which this drama is playing itself out, to remember it’s all just life as it is. Life is story. Life is drama… There is greater awareness that comes in this “stepping away”, in seeing the Context, seeing and experiencing the Spaciousness that these stories appear in…

From a non-dual fellow blogger, to whom I posed the question about story and drama, came this response: “There is indeed no escape from drama, if by the word “drama” we simply refer to the constantly changing appearance of this life where we are all (as it appears) playing our separate parts. There is no escape from THIS, as it IS. There is, in other words, no escape from the appearance of the story of “my life” unfolding, as there exists no “my life” without a “me”, and there exists no “me” without the story/drama of “my life…. The idea that there actually exists a separate someone (“me”) to be walking [away] is intrinsic to the story or drama itself…” Hmmm… light bulb…

As I sat out under the “Buddha Tree” Saturday evening, I heard the sounds of nature, people, and things around me. My *mind* fixated on the sound of a dog barking. It managed to block out all other noise and I just fixated on “dog barking.” It was as if the backdrop in which the sound occurred was lost and all I heard was *noise.* And then judgment about noise, wishing someone would do something about their dog barking noise, disturbing my stillness! Ah! Story! Light bulb again.

So of course it occurred to me that I had become fixated on the story – to the exclusion of anything else. It’s like getting fixated on the clouds in the sky, but not being *aware* of the sky in the background. (Except it’s not really the “background” – it’s the space in which the clouds appear – the Greater Context). And sometimes it’s overcast. All you can see/experience is story, and you have to stay with it until the clouds either move on or dissipate – or – until you become aware that you are focused on the dramas occurring *in* the larger Context – not the larger Context itSelf. Ah-ha….

I know I create stories around life events, about whether it should be happening or not, and how it is affecting me, or disturbing me, or interfering with me, or how it makes me feel. It’s all a story about a separate sense of self *feeling* something about some *thing*; a separate sense of me feeling inadequate, angst, anger, irritated, or overwhelmed about a life event.

Clouds are inevitable. Noise is inevitable. So too it seems are stories and dramas. But they require a willing participant. When I *internally* “step away”, I am able to *see* more clearly that they are just clouds, just stories – just fluff floating through space with no *real* substance. In the spaciousness of the “Greater Context” there is no story. It’s just whatever is happening is happening with no conclusions, no judgments, no dramas about what is happening – just acceptance – “stepping away from the story” and opening to spacious Awareness…

~*~