What accounts for the difference in the way people react? August 19
by: Ben Gilberti
Hello everyone.
A friend of mine, a medical doctor who is not involved in any spiritual practice, wrote and asked me these two questions:
“Is it better to be “detached,” or is it more valid to react with unbridled emotion?”
“And what accounts for the difference in the way people react?”
Here’s how I replied to him:
Both of your questions relate to the same phenomenon. Both have to do with one’s sense of identity. Our lives are like the stories we see when we go to the movies, and those stories involve characters or roles, like Richard Burton playing the role of Macbeth. While Burton’s skill at acting does involve his ability to immerse himself in his role emotionally, he at no point forgets that his identity is not Macbeth, but Richard Burton. So while he may display “unbridled emotion” in acting out the Macbeth role, he is at the same time totally “detached” from it, totally free of it, in that he is never fooled into believing that Macbeth is who he really is. If he was, it would be a psychological catastrophe, he would be caught and enslaved in the role, and he would suffer all that Macbeth suffers because he would then believe he actually is Macbeth.
It is this very same psychological catastrophe that afflicts the great majority of people — their sense of identity is identical to the character or role they’re playing in their life story, they’re caught and enslaved in it, and they suffer all that’s in their story’s plot.
But in doing so they’ve assumed a mistaken identity. Just as much as Richard Burton, were he to get mesmerized into believing he was really Macbeth, would have assumed a mistaken identity.
Any sense of identity that is entangled with the drama and plot of a life story is an object of awareness that awareness is aware of. Clearly this has to be so. Before you can believe you are something other than awareness, you have to in the first place be the awareness that can be aware of that. If you weren’t awareness in the first place, you would never be able to be aware of identifying as something else, like a role or character in your life story.
So your true identity is in fact pure awareness. If you realize that, and identify as pure awareness, then you are never caught or enslaved in any role or character you play in your life story. You can act out any role you please, and with great emotional flamboyance if you like, but you’re just like Richard Burton having a grand time acting out the role of Macbeth with great flamboyance and convincing emotion, yet always absolutely free of that role, never for one second caught in that role, despite how much he may enjoy playing it and we may enjoy seeing him play it.
Now, as a practical matter, when we identify as pure awareness, we most often are not very interested in flamboyant drama, and so our lives become more emotionally tranquil. Yet if an occasion calls for it, we can act out overwhelmingly intense emotion. But we’re never caught in it. The instant we’re done, we’re again quiet inside.
Much Love,
Ben
