You Are Not Your Drama
I am constantly reminded of something my favorite yoga teacher likes to say to her class. “You are not your drama.” I’ve been reminded a lot of this lately. Recently I joined a fabulous Hashimoto’s group on facebook, and in the discussions there, I hear a lot of people identify with their disease.
Consider, for a moment, the meaning of that word:
dis·ease
Noun
1. A disorder of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, esp. one that produces specific signs or symptoms.
2. A particular quality, habit, or disposition regarded as adversely affecting a person or group of people.
-or-
3. A lack of ease.
Disease is more than a nasty wee beastie who got in your blood and is now throwing a party you aren’t invited to. Disease can be understood from a more wholistic standpoint of being the state where ease is gone and something else has taken its place: dis-ease.
When I hear people identify with their disease, it seems that in their minds, it becomes who they are. I want to stop them right there and have a big fat reality check about it. If we claim disease as our identity, then what is left of our light, our inspiration, of our dreams and love – our true nature?
My yoga teacher has been through plenty of drama. But she does not claim it as her identity. She always says, “You are not your drama.” You are not your issues. You are not the dysfunction in your life. You are not your disease. Who you are is not the same as the storyline that you live, and it is not the same as the stories you tell yourself in your mind every single day.
This concept was immensely freeing for me, yet on an everyday basis, it’s hard to remember. We get caught up in our drama and our mental storyline, and we forget it’s not who we are.
I was in the Utah desert a couple years ago, during a really hard time in my life. I was laying on a slab of bedrock, hanging out with my dog and watching a storm roll in. I just stared up at the sky, and the clouds were rolling past in multiple layers, each one at its own speed. As the clouds moved over the landscape, I imagined them being like my life – one layer was me, the other was my drama. And for a moment, one sweet, miraculous, delicious moment, I felt free. My true self was separate from all the stuff that goes on in my life. I felt it down to my core, how I am solely me, and the rest is just the storyline in any given moment. Now, even though I am not lying in the desert looking up at those magnificent clouds, the memory of the experience is with me, and I can return to it for a sweet reminder.