The Screen

 I had a dream in which I was crossing the street. A car stopped and tried circumventing another car that was parallel parking. I figured I had plenty of time to cross the road, but the incoming car accelerated with incredible speed after it had passed the parking car, heading straight towards me. That’s when it happened. Something inside me pulled the emergency brakes. I froze. It wasn’t me. The car accelerated way too fast for me to do anything consciously.

You may say, so what, you were dreaming of an instinctive reaction, but that’s not how I perceived it. At that moment, I saw that we are being lived by a different  energy. We are merely screens on which the movie life is being played. Let the movie plot unfold as it may. We are before body, mind and the unfolding event. 

You probably have heard the story of the farmer who first lost a horse; then it came back with wild horses; then the son broke a leg trying to tame a wild horse; then all young men were summoned for war but his son was spared because of an accident. Other folks would have oscillated between “good” and “bad” outcomes but not this farmer. When his neighbors celebrated or lamented with him all he could say, “Is that so?” 

If you live your life with a stoic mindset to get to that stage of inner equanimity you do not accomplish anything because the experiencing “I” is still around. You are just telling yourself a convenient story that you are more spiritual than others and numb your feelings in the attempt to be a cut above life’s happenings or protect yourself from suffering. Stoic living just adds another layer of distortion on top of the distortion our perceived self-identity brings. 

What can be done to return to the screen that cannot be defiled by anything life has to offer? Who wants to return? Be still for a moment. Does the screen appear?