One of the main reasons for distress in people’s lives is the drama they encounter in the workplace.

It’s hard to find an office, factory, medical facility, school, or even a beauty salon where there isn’t some form of drama happening on a daily basis.

Sometimes switching our place of work can bring improvement, though much of the time the same issues arise in the new location. Besides, often it simply isn’t practical or even possible to switch.

Whenever we are faced with drama, whether at work, in our family, or in our social life, the way forward is to become a person who neither causes drama nor is affected by drama.

In other words we become a person who is centered, so that our feelings flow from the heart of our own being in response to life, which is very different from being a person whose emotions are triggered by the words or actions of others.

The journey into higher consciousness is all about becoming centered.

When we are centered, we are responsible for the way in which we experience our life, so that how we feel and how our day goes is no longer dependent on others. The more self-directed we are as individuals, the less are we affected by the drama generated by those around us.

It’s possible to become a person who not only isn’t wounded by the words and actions of others, but isn’t even nicked.

So many of us are like puppets or marionettes, jerked around by others. Someone yanks on our string and we react with drama.

Emotional reactivity is a highly unconscious way of journeying through life. Which means that the drama that surrounds us can be put to good use. We can choose to use it as a tool for becoming more conscious.

Consciousness isn’t a matter of trying to control our reactions. The reality is that if someone says or does something that triggers us emotionally, we won’t be very successful controlling our emotions.

The reason we aren’t able to control how we feel is that we all carry within us an emotional charge from childhood that has been reinforced over and over throughout our life thus far. When we are faced with drama, this emotional charge is likely to overwhelm our defenses from within, making us vulnerable to the attack from without.

Control isn’t an effective way forward, but allowing—not resisting—is.

The drama that comes into our life serves us well when, instead of trying to control our emotions and not react, we allow ourselves to experience our emotions but sit with them instead of either venting them or suppressing them.

When we become still at a time we are being triggered, not fighting or trying to block the emotions that arise, the emotional charge we’ve carried all these years is gradually integrated. The energy locked up in this charge then becomes available for constructive living.

We would never feel attacked, hurt, abused, or victimized if we didn’t already carry within us an emotional charge that corresponds to what’s being dished out by those in our external world. Unless we were providing a landing place for the emotion fired at us to touch down on, it would fly by us without affecting us. It would be the proverbial water off a duck’s back.

To deal with external drama effectively we must integrate our own emotional charge, triggered in us years ago in childhood and retriggered every time a situation in the present recapitulates what we experienced all those years ago.

As our emotional charge becomes integrated and the energy is freed up for our use, we experience a growing sense of peace. We flood with our own inherent joy. And we find ourselves loving those who inflict drama because we recognize the painfully unconscious state in which they are trapped.

Drama is only ever a projection of a person’s unintegrated emotional charge. Not only on the part of the one dishing out the drama, but also in that our own emotional charge locks into that of others and draws their drama out.

Opportunity for Self-inquiry and Sharing:

A.  What does it feel like when someone attacks you? What do you experience arising within you?

B.  What happens when, instead of reacting, you sit with the emotions that are triggered by the drama going on around you? Describe a time when you have done this and what you experienced.

You have completed the first 4 parts of Journey to Higher Consciousness, and can continue on to Parts 5 - 9 of the course.