The “Hook” of Life’s Micro-dramas

Michael Singer, author of The Untethered Soul, calls them disturbances. You know…the moment something happens and you become aware that somebody did something, and somehow it affects you. Maybe your mood plummets, maybe you feel angered or offended, maybe hurt feelings arise or you feel small.

Someone has triggered you.

Now you are riding high on that familiar wave of thought and emotion.

When you are triggered, a blocked energy from the past resurfaces. Old traumas and insults that carry unresolved emotion come back to haunt you in the present moment. According to Singer, this is stored, blocked energy from the past that released from the heart and now generates thoughts. If you want to be free of these energies, you must allow them to pass through you instead of storing and hiding them inside you.

Eckhart Tolle calls this the pain body. The pain body is different in each of us; you have your own unique frequency of energy you’re vibrating at, and this is your pain body.

Your pain body has its own energy field and it wants to grow that same energy by hijacking the present moment.

So maybe your pain body is sadness or despair, or perhaps it is a frustrated type of anger. The pain body, although it has originated from past traumas, will pop up out of nowhere and want to feed on the situations of the present moment. When it comes out, “you” go unconscious. Have you ever noticed a time when you were so upset you felt possessed? And when you calmed down you either could not believe your own words and actions or you couldn’t remember them altogether? The pain body has taken over. And it is growing stronger with every new interaction.

So what can you do?

Singer’s version: Watch the sensitive part of you and feel the disturbance as it begins. See it feel jealousy, need, fear, rejection. These feelings are just part of the nature of a human being. Notice how the energy of the disturbance draws you in, absorbs you. If you watch it and don’t get absorbed in it, the experience will soon pass and something else will come up.

Sit comfortably in the seat of awareness, and feel the flow of energy deep within. This flow has been called Shakti or Spirit. This is what you begin to experience if you hang out with the Self instead of hanging out with inner disturbances.

Singer recommends this physical queue: Relax your shoulders, lean back a little, and take a seat behind the eyes.

This sends a message to the mind from you that Hey, you’re on your own here, buddy. I’m not getting involved. You have made the conscious choice to occupy the body, rather than the mind in that moment. And Singer believes this is enough to help you duck when the “hook” comes to nab you.

Tolle’s version: Feel the pain body coming out of its dormant state and beginning to stir. (I visualize a large creature, grumpy and ready for a meal, crawling out of its dark cave.) It might come on suddenly or slowly. Notice that as you surrender to the emotion, you are not in control, you are asleep and become increasingly powerless over your words, behaviors and actions.

Instead, witness the pain body: how hungry it is, how it wants to feed on the situation and people around you, creating more of the pain that already resonates in you. The biggest tips here: just watch the pain body - don’t resist it or wrestle with it.

Tolle remarks, “consciousness never exerts itself onto anything.” He believes that simply bringing the light of consciousness is more than enough. And as your light shines on the situation, the pain body will naturally recede into the shadows. I tell people I love and trust, “my pain body is trying to get you right now!” and then I take space to watch it and feel the emotions that stir up in me. Saying this aloud helps bring a little comic relief, but it also tells the truth of the feeling I’m getting as the pain body tries to take charge. Then these beloved ones know to scram and I can sit with my emotions.

Tolle offers an incredible incentive for following his advice: If you can watch the pain body as it emerges, it has to expend old negative energy in order to make its newest appearance. And if you just watch it instead of allowing it to feed, it actually loses some of its energy. This negative energy gets transmuted into your life force energy, allowing you to vibrate more strongly with positive, life-promoting energy.

Each time you watch the pain body without creating a new trauma in the present moment, some old pain gets released. Over time, the pain body’s strength and power over you diminishes.

As you resonate more weakly at that painful energy frequency, you grow your inner surplus of positive life energy. Win, win! I like to visualize this process as a reward process for the old think bucket (my mind).

My own take:

Know that if you follow the mind when there is so much emotion and thoughts racing, you will never be clear enough to see the solutions or the answers. I think of my own consciousness as a bloodhound dog and the mind’s thoughts stringing out like a scent. The dog runs after the scent, completely entranced, and this gives great power to the thoughts. As consciousness follows them, the mind attaches and believes each thought. You have made an unconscious agreement with the mind. You have now said, “yes, this is true,” without noticing.

Get used to telling the mind, “no.”

No, I won’t be trying to solve this while I feel all of these crazy emotions.

No, I don’t have to listen to you as you analyze, interpret, attempt to tell the future, and cause me stress.

No, I don’t have to agree with what you say when I am upset and not clear.

No, you are not helping right now. Please be quiet. (Jeffrey Allen, energy healer and teacher, says to visualize a dimmer light switch and turn “the analyzer” (your mind) down to 50%. Then to 0%).

The mind will try to convince you that you need to stew and ruminate and formulate ideas right that instant. It’s a freaking emergency as far as the mind is concerned. But the mind is lying to you. It wants to get into all the juicy details and as tempting as it may be to allow the mind to speed off – like making an agreement with yourself to just scratch a mosquito bite for a few seconds - you know it will only end up in pain and not relieving the itch at all.

It’s the heart that needs your attention in that moment, not the mind. Redirect your awareness to the heart, the body, and ask for its wisdom. Ask where the pain is, ask how you can love it into healing. Bringing compassion, nurturing, tenderness and care to the wound. You need your own loving kindness, your own healing energy in this moment. So learn to turn down the analyzer and turn up the volume on the heart.

So, create your own physical queue. Whether you like Michael Singer’s advice to relax your shoulders, lean back slightly and take a seat behind the eyes…or if you want to create your own version of this. Jeffrey Allen describes getting all of your energy into the “body suit”: think of pulling your body onto your spirit like a sleeping bag. Pulling your body suit’s arms and legs into place, and all of your energy occupying the space within the physical body.

When I’m in the throws of a micro-drama, I like to meditate on emotion; connecting deeply to my heart space, or heart chakra, and envisioning all my conscious energy moving within my chest, following the flow of energy wherever it may go. Bring something into the physical world that reinforces your intention to just watch and not react. Feel but don’t add to the situation.

Be patient if you notice the pain body has taken you over again. Resist the urge to entertain disappointment or judgment about yourself. Just notice how it took you over. Think about the scenario and see that, in fact, the pain body has overwhelming qualities that come on quickly. Resist the urge to criticize or judge your ability to watch. Know that over time, it will come. There is no deadline or need to grow discouraged. It’s ok to have times where you don’t catch it in time. Depending on how powerful your pain body has grown, it will take a lot of presence to sit and watch. Practice through meditation when you are not upset to get the mind used to slowing and watching.

Coping with Your Judgey Mind

In creativity or passion projects:

When creating or just wanting a break from judgment, visualize your inner critic getting locked away in the other room. You hold the only key to its release! Set your intention to spend time with a free mind, play, exploration, and allowing your creation to be whatever it is without interpretation. I visualize my spirit delightfully zipping around the room, then diving into the paper. I mindfully cultivate a boundless, childlike energy. Allow it to be practice. Allow it to flow freely in any shape or form.

Once you’re finished creating, make a conscious choice to free the critic from its room and spend time with it, listen to the feedback knowing your inner critic is trying to help. Filter the feedback through a loving hearing aid. Tune it so that the message comes in its true form. The critic wants to protect you from emotional injury (what others will say about it or how good you think it is or isn’t). Show it that you do not need protection at this time. You’re just practicing! Try to maintain a healthy detachment from the outcome.

When the Judgey Mind Attacks

When you notice yourself judging, try Gabrielle Bernstein’s tip: Recognize the other person is you.

Attack thoughts

Notice the blame. Notice your ego taking a strong, polarizing mental position. Notice your attachment to this mental position. Notice how justified you feel as you attach to it even more. Notice how the ego tells you how right you are and how wrong the other person is.

Notice your mind replaying the situation over and over and over like a bad movie clip on a loop.

Self-attack

When you notice you are judging yourself (now this one is sneaky), this self-attack may look like the mind racing, you’re replaying moments in your mind, wondering if you did the right thing, said the right thing, you enter a ruminating frenzy and feel unable to stop the mind. The mind is telling you that you were not good enough, right enough, pleasant enough, influential enough. Perhaps the mind is telling you that you were cruel or inappropriate, you were misunderstood in some way. Notice the power struggle as the ego tries to regain control. The need to hold power and control can be the driving force behind the entire scene.

Gabrielle Bernstein advises:

“To truly honor another human being, you must recognize that the darkness you see in them is a disowned part of your own shadow. When you judge the shadow in others, you’re merely projecting what you’ve denied within yourself. Whenever you’re triggered by others, it’s because they’re mirroring back the elements of your shadow you’re unwilling to heal. Turn your judgment into gratitude. Thank them for being a reflection and giving you the opportunity to continue to learn and grow on your spiritual path. See them as your teacher showing you your universal curriculum. Recognize that they are you.”

She recommends the following mantra/prayer:

“The light in you is all I see.”

At the root of our judgments are our own thoughts about ourselves. Like a cluster of wounds or thorns you’re trying not to touch or let anyone else touch. You think they are other people’s wounds but you are the one perceiving them, the other person is just drinking their tea or telling a simple story or walking in late to a meeting making a benign comment. Meanwhile, in your mind, you are knitting together a story of pain. You have become uncomfortable. Notice the discomfort that lives inside you. It’s not the other person’s discomfort. It is your unhappiness and it is your healing work now.

Personal story

Last night I sat with a friend. Her low energy, her stories that didn’t make sense or come to any solid conclusions. Because of my focus on her discomfort (or so I was perceiving), I didn’t immediately see how uncomfortable I had become in her presence. I was resisting her low energy, wishing it away, wrestling with and trying to control her energy to make it more upbeat, hoping she would snap out of it sometime in the conversation. None of my attempts to lift her were effective. None of my subject changes brought anything but that same low, intolerable energy to me. I was deflating. Getting sucked into my own story that her energy was bringing me down.

In the light of this new day, I see that not only was I bringing myself down, but some old pain in me was being triggered. The restlessness of watching someone not living their best life, to see their light shining so dimly, to hear the self-doubt and awkwardness of a woman who cannot see how beautiful her soul is. For me to know how brightly she can truly shine, watching a woman who does not believe in herself or believe in her ability to create positive change in her own life. A woman who is waiting to live. This was my trigger.

Watching someone else’s “unhappiness” so, so many times triggers me because that is my own wound. My own former belief system has created this wound, it has created my own unhappiness. That wound, so it seems, had not completely healed.

This morning I allowed myself to get launched into self-attack. I felt awful for energetically fading before her, not being able to sit strongly in my own light. I had lost my own grounding and my own joy. I criticized myself internally for not being better and felt deeply ashamed. I felt tremendous shame for failing, for not living up to my own standards, for saying the wrong thing and doing the wrong thing. My mind raced, analyzing and trying to solve this problem. Not understanding why the night unfolded the way it did.

So in the light of today, I watched my attack thoughts now directed at myself. And I turned to meditation as my mind whirled out of control with so much judgment and the thoughts that injured me. As soon as I realized I was under a full-swing self-attack, I heard an inner voice say, “There, there…I see what you are doing and I love you. You are precious, you are love. None of these things take away from the essence of you, your innocence and your loving spirit.” A flood of compassionate energy coursed through me, I felt love return to my closed heart and it opened again. I smiled and cried and released the old pain. The voice continued sweetly, gently reminding me to practice kindness to myself, cease the attack, and embrace my own mind with love. I surrendered to the fact that the mind had swept me away again, but I celebrated the fact that I found my way back so quickly.

I’m not saying that I need to be the bigger person and surround myself with low energy people. I can still stay in integrity and choose not to spend time with people who may not be fully available for the deep connection I am searching for. The difference is that now I’m coming into sensitivity for when I have become uncomfortable, unhappy. Looking inward instead of across the table.

Accepting my own powerlessness, acknowledging my own grasping need for control that will never put me in control.

These were my lessons. And realizing when I feel I am out of control, I turn to self-attack to dig into old wounds. Now I understand this pattern and the awareness will help me notice the next time the pattern begins.

Another trick is to name the story: Oh this is the “controlling energy” story that inevitably results in my own disappointment and self-attack. Ah, yes, this is my opportunity to choose again. Choose love. Choose to see the light in the other person, and then choose to spend time with people who actually do lift me up.

I do hope that you’ve plucked some golden nugget from all of this! Let me know in the comments below (or shoot me a message on Facebook) if you have questions or want to share ways that you cope with micro-dramas and being the proud owner of a judgey mind ;).