Life Beyond Drama

By Karen Sparks BA MScEd

Life Beyond Drama encourages us to do the road less travelled and dive into the depths of our life stories, myths, and dramas in order to understand where these things come from, why we engage with negative energy-draining dramas, how we engage in these dramas, and what they actually look like.
Looking into any arena in life, every day we can all admit that drama is everywhere. We have heard so much about our thirst for healing, wholeness, and living the life we have always been meant to live. Dramas prevent us from getting to these places. This book offers us tools via a path of self-reflection in everyday life, which can lead us to a life beyond drama, where endless potential and possibilities await.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Sep 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781504374606

Karen Sparks BA MScEd

Karen brings a unique background to the field of personal/spiritual development. She has studied academically, experientially, in various schools of alternative studies, and has over twenty years of experience in Kung fu, Chi Kung, Yoga and various healing modalities bringing extensive knowledge from both ancient and current perspectives into the arena of the psyche of human nature and wholeness/wellness. For over twenty-five years, she has assisted and encouraged others, privately and in groups, to look into the mirrors of life. As a teacher, counsellor, spiritual guide and Movement Artist, she weaves her studies, work & life experiences into a path of self-reflection we can follow in order to free ourselves from negative energy-draining dramas something we can find everywhere inside and all around us in our daily lives. Her focus involves waking up in life and to Life assisting others to experience what a Life Beyond Drama truly has to offer us. Her approach is both practical and intuitive personal and spiritual. You can find out more about her work at www.souhlcenter.com.

Book preview

PART ONE

So What About Drama?…

The entire mission of Socrates was devoted not to teaching wisdom to men, but to urge them to see their lack of wisdom. Vernon Howard

‘Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.’

‘Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.’

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Hard to see, the dark side is. Yoda

A little more knowledge might light our way. Yoda

In a world where the veil is thick … distractions abound … and distortion, numbing and illusions are the norm, the development of discernment, clarity and wisdom is vital. A good place to begin is in seeing Dramas for what they really are – in our own lives first. And if the truth of what we see makes us uncomfortable at first, once we see it, it can also free us …

… if we do something about it.

CHAPTER ONE

Light on Drama

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Dramas, Mythologies and Stories … the stuff of Life

That our lives are in part shaped by the stories we tell ourselves (though not always consciously, of course) is something I have discovered to be a huge key in understanding ourselves and others on a deeper level. In my own personal work and in my many years of working with others, I have experienced this to be true. We are also ‘born into’ stories and dramas … we then tell stories about these stories too.

It would be remiss of me to discuss dramas and drama patterns without correlating it with stories. I am actually surprised that the word ‘drama’ does not include any reference, in its definition (in all the sources I’ve looked at to date), to stories. The stories we tell ourselves and others are full of drama. We can view our lives as stories or a series of short-stories, or journeys and transitions … all of which involve dramas of one sort or another.

I tend to view our negative energy-draining drama patterns as having their origins in deeply rooted stories, mythologies, fairy tales or energy patterns … reflected in our lives like mysterious metaphors and stemming from ancestral, cultural as well as current family and significant relationship patterns. It is within the metaphors and symbols of our drama patterns that we can find the ‘magical path’ to the Essence of who/what/how we really are.

Don’t most of us already know about stories? Stories are embedded in our language in phrases like: Everybody has a story. or Everyone has skeletons in their family closet and there are always stories to go with them. or So, what’s your story? or What’s his story anyway? or Ok, so that’s your story … really?

As humans, our cultures and religions have always been embedded with mythologies – which are our collective beliefs, teachings, stories, legends and epic adventures. The oldest records we have hold examples of the storytellers and artists of old – in cave paintings, archaeological remains, and records of cultures long past, the telling of stories has existed as long as we know. We have all likely read or heard our share of Fairy Tales and bedtime stories. We relate to the dramas, the hardships, the adventures, the characters, the subtle or not so subtle lessons ... these things have always reverberated with the evolution, foibles, hopes, dreams, patterns, predicaments and dramas of human nature. We have all either resonated with or learned from the victims, heroes, heroines, parents, Kings and Queens, princes and princesses, helpers, guides and teachers. Perhaps we have even been inspired by them … or a fire of hope has been ignited within us in dark times when our favourite character has come across magical helpers and assistance in their travels through dark woods and meetings with dangerous villains. Either way, we have always been, as far as we can recall, creatures of story, dramas and myth.

A Personal Relationship with Stories, Myths and Dramas

We all have a personal relationship with stories, myths and dramas… whether we are aware of it or not. What sort of stories were important to you… and why? How have stories, myths and dramas shaped or even guided your life in various ways? What sort of characters have you related to? Aspired to be like? Admired? Wanted to be nothing like? If you weren’t interested in reading you likely grew up with stories on television.

My father used to tell me fairy tales, tales of wisdom from various traditions and he often quoted from his favourite stories, philosophies and other books he collected. By the time I was 15, I had read quite the collection of stories, myths, novels and fairy tales. Once, he gifted me with my favourite books of stories as a child: three of the Andrew Lang famous coloured fairy books. A friend of mine, many years later, bought me more of this series. The fairy tales were collected stories from various cultures around the world … each book was a different colour … and the amazing hand-drawn illustrations in these books are definitely things we no longer tend to see in most of our modern story books… sadly. The illustrations in the Lang coloured fairy books are realistic looking - making it even easier for young and adult minds alike to step inside these tales. I began to see myself and others around me in these and other stories. In this way, my inner journey began … with drama … and with story.

Did my father know that sometimes these stories provided me with encouragement … even sanctuary … knowing that others had experienced injustices, hardships, struggles, broken dreams, pain and family dysfunction … but would go on bravely in their lives in search of better stories… often getting to a better place in their life? Did he see how stories mirrored our own lives as humans … from all walks of life and from all places? Many of these stories had multiple mirrors for me to peer into.

While we have similar family/ancestral myths and stories to be sure, our own lives hold many things unique to ourselves. It is up to us to unravel the mysteries of our own personal mythologies. I dove into my own life stories and into the pain and many reflections that came with doing that; on the other side of it, was Wisdom, forgiveness and understanding.

Our personal stories are bound to be ‘coloured differently’, but they do hold deeper common themes and symbols from our cultural and ancestral roots.

Our drama patterns prevent us from experiencing better relationships. We have to be able to see that first. We have to be willing to do our part in relationships; we have to be willing to take a good look at ourselves and most of all we have to be willing to work at it when/if things get a little tough. If not, the experiences we have with others around us often feel shallow, distant, void of feeling, stagnant and lifeless if we are honest with ourselves - especially if we don’t like to pretend. Many things, with work, can shift for the better in our lives – for sure. Sometimes we even have to BE the very thing(s) we did not ‘get’ or see when we were growing up. How else will we create better stories in future generations to come?

We can learn to create better stories for ourselves by clearing out negative energy-draining dramas from our lives. If what you desire is freedom from energy-draining dramas… more peace in your life… then this is the route for you to follow.

These old stories and fables had many ‘good endings’. Even if the characters found themselves in horrific life situations and dramas, they also often came across help and a way out. Surely, I thought, as I read these stories, my own traumas, worries, dramas, fears and struggles could be overcome or fade away in time… the tides would turn! Did my father know that I secretly developed hope through these stories that things would be brighter one day … or that I too hoped that ‘magical assistance’ or a guide or teacher would one day come and offer tools or the right path …to walk through the dark woods safely… to fight off attackers … to learn about the deeper things in Life? I am sure that if he saw things through my eyes and my own life stories, he would see that his gift to me was one of his finest; many of my ‘ideal images’, hopes and inspirations came from these wonderful stories.

I was never sure whether my father bought me these old stories because he knew the wisdom they held – or whether he simply knew that I loved stories so much; it doesn’t really matter. Like many before me, story led and I followed … by looking into my own life stories and dramas. They were my first teachers in the realm of human nature and drama. I would not know, until much later, that stories would always be a big part of my life.

When I was older, I revisited stories, mythologies and fairy tales and saw them as containing deeper things like the subtle progressions of and opportunities for our inner psychological development and evolution … even well-hidden secrets of spiritual processes and our collective archetypal energies. Of course, there were always the usual trials and tribulations in life with lessons to be learned and even synchronistic meetings with wise old men and women - magical helpers - along the way. Truly, Life contains all of this and more! I found many of these things on my own journeys … and where else could these magnificent stories, fairy tales and mythologies come from but reflections from our own amazing lives?

The better you know your ‘self’, the clearer you see your reflections in the stories and dramas in your life. It is then easier to begin to see others as they really are … in their stories and dramas … it’s a clarity thing.

In my view, it is better not allow others to tell our stories or label us … our stories told by someone else will be tainted with their own perceptions, projections, assumptions, judgments and so on. Someone, who has not heard all our stories… or lived them …, can suggest a story for us to reflect upon based on what little they know… but it is we who must know ourselves well enough in order to find the true story or myth which relays the depth and entirety of our experiences to date. It is we who must be honest enough to find the ‘real story’ underneath all the drama and pretense.

Surely others get glimpses into our stories – but unless they have mastered their own dramas and stories they will still only see what they mostly imagine they see … or what they want to see … or what they have been conditioned to see … or what they have become accustomed to seeing.

True masters can see through us because they have already seen through themselves first. Many times we are not ready for what they have to say about our stories anyway! If we are, and we meet someone like that, we can embark on a very interesting story/journey indeed. And like the stories and myths warn us… be careful … there are wolves in sheep’s clothing… however, do not let that deter you from finding the ones who do ‘Know’… they are out there… in places along your journey… sometimes in the very dark woods you may find yourself lost in.

We must find which stories we resonate with for ourselves; otherwise, we risk being told… once again… what we are all about and where we ‘should’ be going by someone (even if well-meaning) who only sees a part of us in their own experience. Finding our stories may take time. Ultimately it is we who must realize that a story reflects something to us.

The stories we tell ourselves and others about ‘what happened’ to us … ‘about our lives’ … tends to get coloured by our unfinished business … as well as our hopes and dreams. Some of our stories are true … exactly the way they are – others are not… they’re lies created by our own inner buffers to seeing things how they really are. This happens in fairy tales, stories and mythologies quite frequently too. Sometimes no one believes our true stories… other times it is we who must face the stories we have created which are tainted and distorted.

Sometimes our stories change to suit our current favourite view of things … or our current level of being or filter we are currently seeing through. As we work, grow, evolve, our stories are clearer, more accurate – even wiser.

We tell our stories. We want others to listen … to hear … to validate us … to SEE us … perhaps as we see ourselves … perhaps as we desire to be. Telling our stories can assist us in seeing ourselves better… if we use the telling to reflect.

But who will truly KNOW your story … your real story … the one(s) beyond the drama and the varied coloured glasses worn over time?

Who will know your real story? Your mother… father… partner…friend(s)… lover… children… neighbor???? They may know parts of your story, surely.

Your real story is like a myth in the mist – waiting to be uncovered by the only thing that sees it for what it truly is… your own developing, evolving, expanding consciousness and awareness … your hero or heroine’s journey – your life.

Stop looking outside with your drama storytelling and bring your attention inwards to the rich landscape where myths and stories and fairy tales truly come from. Develop your own personal relationship with the stories, myths and dramas of your own life.

The best reflection… the deepest insight … the truest story can only be found by you … in you … and reflected in your world… since only you can truly ever Know Thyself.

So journey inwards through your stories and begin to experience Life beyond Drama and uncover the story of your real life. Work with it… unravel it … tell it over and over until it shines and all that’s left is the essence of who you really are.

Ask yourself who you are looking for … what it is it you truly desire in your life stories and dramas. What is the real story behind all the dramas? Is there another story longing to be told that can be reflected in these dramas of your life?

All the secrets of what really happened… all the gems of your stories lie in each of your drama patterns. How will you collect these gems… meet the wise hermit and/or the wise old woman in the woods with the magic tools… complete all the tasks set to you by the King or Queen… defeat or tame the tyrants, bullies and thieves along the road … and obtain your long sought after advice and hearty food for your journey’s trek through the perilous mountain of destiny, hopes and dreams … if you do not or will not learn to ‘See’?

Whenever you get off track or stuck in the details of the book and its various parts, come back and read this section again. Reflect on how these things can all be found in various ways in the mythologies, stories and fairy tales of old. This is because it is an essential human condition … once which, when mastered, can lead us out of the woods and into the light of the life we were always meant to live.

Dramas are your gateway. Enter Now.

A Wise Woman’s tale about the stories found in this book

Back in the days when we travelled by rudimentary horse-driven carts – if we even travelled at all, there was a quiet little village by the sea. Well, it was quiet most of the time – when the villagers weren’t fighting about one thing or another… wrapped up in their various drama patterns.

This village once had a midwife … a wise woman… who was skilled in supporting the local women in childbirth. She was also frequently called upon to assist others in coping with and magically transforming their drama patterns, nightmares, personal life stories and various physical complaints. Her name was Sophia.

Sophia grew and collected herbs which she made into teas and healing tinctures. She also traded chicken eggs and goat milk for various other things she needed to support her simple life by the sea. Three times a year she was known to disappear for weeks into the forest. No one knew what she did there, but there were plenty of stories about her; we still do not know which of these stories are actually true. Sophia loved her work and became well-known in those parts. After all, she had served her villagers and many of the neighbouring villages for over sixty years.

When Sophia died, her apprentice immediately took her place amongst the people. The apprentice Sophia trained to take her place was equally skilled in the Ways of the Wise Woman. This woman’s name was Luna. Luna studied with and assisted Sophia for over twenty years.

Before Sophia died, she called upon Luna. As she faded from this world and drifted into the next, she made Luna promise to share the stories in her manuscript and serve the people by continuing to do all she had been taught – including teaching others how to overcome their drama patterns. She advised Luna to find an apprentice and teach her the Ways of the Wise Woman. Luna took her teacher’s hand and held it gently to her own face. I promise, Sophia. I will. Sophia transitioned from this world into the next with a small smile.

Luna took her teacher’s manuscript and began to tell stories to the villagers from it. These stories were tales with examples of situations many villagers continued to find themselves in over time. In time, Luna and her apprentice added to these stories… as did their apprentices ...and so on until today. Over time this manuscript became known as The Book of Sophia.

Although all of the stories in this book you are reading today came from ‘The Book of Sophia’, I have modernized the language of the tales and added additional insights to them. I am now a part of the old line of ‘Sophia’s Wise Women’. This book has been passed on from generation to generation of Wise Women. No one has ever known who these stories were really about, as Sophia and all who came after her altered the situations and names of the villagers; however, many people… even today… may find themselves in these stories… Have we really changed that much over time? Not when it comes to our drama patterns…

Relationships and Drama

One thing we all have in common is that relationships are a part of our daily life. Even those who live quiet lives have a relationship with themselves and all that is around them.

Drama is another thing we have in common – particularly in larger families and groups, though one or two people can often create enough for the entertainment of themselves and others.

Know what I am talking about, here? Sure you do. I can confidently state that anyone picking up this book is quite aware of drama in relationships ... either your own or the drama in the relationships and lives of others you have known.

Oh, and by the way, ‘We’ have none, right? Wink, wink. It’s all the rest of ‘Them’ who do … and this is what we get more drama from: gossip, redirection and denial!

Without judging ourselves or avoiding the truth of our common predicaments, let’s take a good look at drama with a curious eye and an open mind.

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‘Who - me? No, I’m not the dramatic type!’

Effects of Drama

Let’s face it: The drama we experience in relationships involves emotional and mental ups and downs. Even if the dramas we engage in do not feel negative to us, they can lead to an inner state that throws us off balance and harmony inwardly, which also can impact our well-being and create energy drains. This is not conducive to inner peace, happiness or an ability to soar to the heights of our personal and spiritual potentials.

In fact, engaging in drama creates more drama and further mental and emotional stress. It also takes a great deal of our precious energy to engage in dramas ... energy we could be using for other things in life.

Want more energy? There are many ways to gain more energy. One way is to get rid of the unnecessary drama in your life ... and lifestyle.

We know from body, mind and spirit therapies (such as different systems of energy work, Naturopathy, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Acupressure etc.) and certain styles of movement Arts such as Kung fu, Chi Kung, Tai Chi, and Yoga, that our various mental/emotional states affect our body directly. Over time, if not balanced and harmonious, these states can lead to chronic stress-related illnesses and disharmonies within our entire being. Negative energy-draining dramas involve and affect our mental and emotional states directly.

Engaging in this kind of drama, with its negative consequences, is what we are speaking of – the kind that impacts us on all levels of our being. These negative mental/emotional inner states can influence the quality of our health, happiness, personal potential in life, and quality of relationships.

Many people are unaware of the direct relationship between drama and these negative inner states. In other words, people can be involved in dramas and either deny it, justify it, or consider it as acceptable or unavoidable human interaction.

Some of us are quite aware of the effects of drama in our lives and feel stuck in these states even though we desire to be free.

Some people believe that the dramas in their lives and/or the resulting negative inner states they experience are inevitable because the reactions they have to dramas around them are "just the way they are’’ or ‘’just the way others are’’ in personality. This sort of belief does not encourage us to reach our inner potentials and is a great way to justify behaviours and tendencies which may not be balanced or conducive to peace and well-being.

The truth is that many people have learned to release themselves from dramas and have gained inner freedom from the chronic ups and downs of mood swings; stress resulting from poor lifestyle choices; chronic stress-related illnesses; distressing lingering emotions; mental cycling and the low energy levels that go with these things.

While the tools in this book are not suggesting that we cease to feel what we feel (a trap in itself, for sure!), we definitely do have the ability to learn to acknowledge what we truly feel in the moment and then choose our responses ... breaking the unconscious habitual patterns of responses and behaviours (within ourselves and towards others) that lead us nowhere: what I am calling ‘drama’.

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‘What am I feeling? Oh nothing, I’m just fine! (Huff)’

Though we can place most emotions into several basic categories, there are many subtle nuances and words we use to describe negative mental/emotional states as well as reactions which can become habitual responses to the many experiences and dramas we engage with in life: fear, anger, grief, worry, jealousy, judgment, self-importance, self-pity, self-righteousness, continuous recycling of negative inner or outer chatter, hysteria, pretense (like pretending all is well when it is quite obvious to others it is not, pretending to like something when one does not or pretending to feel a certain way when one does not ... we are not always aware - even when it is ourselves who are pretending), etc.

I am sure you can think of many more words to describe various draining mental/emotional states. I am not saying that if we work to master these inner and outer negative energy-draining dramas that we will always feel absolutely blissful and wonderful; this is a ‘mental bliss trap’ I talk about later in the book in Section Two. When we respond to something and it is a ‘genuine’ emotion, it may not always be a pleasant one; to dismiss that we are feeling angry in the face of an injustice or ignorance – or sorrow/grief in the face of deep loss or trauma is to deny our full range of natural human emotional (energies moving within us) experience ... but to remain in these states for a long period of time ... to hold onto them … to be triggered into an angry outrage over trivial things ... to cry or laugh over every little thing suggests imbalance and that there are deeper things in need of light ... harmony ... balance.

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E-motions: energies in motion

Many of us unconsciously expect ourselves to be perfect … or at least to appear to be something we imagine is expected of us. By whom, exactly? Nearly anyone, it seems. We go to great lengths to ‘keep up appearances’. To expect ourselves to be perfect (or something we are not) invites pretense … after all, we want to be as ‘good’ as most of us have been told we can be ... this begins in childhood and is often supported by various personal, religious and spiritual beliefs (which are sometimes misunderstood, misapplied and misinterpreted). So many dramas are involved in ‘keeping up appearances’.

What we can learn is how to ‘attain a personal mastery in our life’ – we do have the potential to learn to accept and feel all of our many fluctuating emotions/energies and sensations and not ‘hold on to them’. There is a central core within us which some call ‘my center’ which, if we develop an awareness of it, can assist us in feeling what is going on in the moment more accurately. We can then develop the ability to consciously choose our reactions and responses to things. We do not have to remain at the whim of these fluctuating energies/emotions ... be ‘taken over’ by them. In order to learn how to do this (if we aren’t doing so now), we have to work at it.

A good place to start is to examine our many unconscious negative energy-draining dramas.

I am talking about the energy-draining dramas that become our long-term drama patterns because we ‘feed’ them without tending to their root cause ... mostly because we are no longer aware that we do have them. I am speaking of the ones which are negative and/or create a state of imbalance and an overload of stress within us - especially when these mental/emotional states become habitual patterns or an inner state which we feel stuck in. Even an over-excitable state which we may equate to intense pleasure can border on hysteria and can also create an imbalance within us when indulged in. This does not mean we can’t feel joy.

Take a moment to reflect on any number of relationships you are in or know of. Can you name some of the mental/emotional states that are present in the dramas between these people (and yourself)? Can you identify some of the stressful or negative energy-draining dramas around you in your daily life? Can you identify any of your internal dramas?

So, what is ‘Drama’?

DRAMA… Defined

The Oxford Dictionary of English (2005) defines drama in the following ways:

Origin: early 16th Century via late Latin from Greek drama, from dran: ‘do, act’.

Noun

1. A play for theatre, radio or television

2. An exciting, emotional or unexpected event or circumstance

Phrase: ‘make a drama out of’… meaning to exaggerate the importance of (a minor problem or incident).

Dramatic: adj.

1. Relating to drama or the performance or study of drama

2. (of an event or circumstance) sudden and striking ... exciting or impressive

Dramatics

1. The study or practice of acting in and producing plays

2. Theatrically exaggerated or overemotional behaviour

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No, I’m NOT playing that role!

Your Life as a Drama

Have you ever heard of life referred to as one big play in which we are all actors? One of the places this idea is mentioned is Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’: All the world’s a stage ... and all the men and women merely players ... they have their exits and their entrances ... and one man in his time plays many parts.

Looking at the above definitions and considering the many experiences we have all had, it sure fits well to compare our lives to a drama ... a play ... or as one big story with many characters and scenes. In this story, we find many ‘theatrically exaggerated or overemotional behaviours’. We experience various ‘exciting, impressive, sudden and striking events and circumstances’; we often ‘exaggerate the importance of minor or trivial things’!

We surely do a lot of ‘acting’ in life. We learn this at a very young age. This acting can lead us to the point where we do not recall who we really are ... we are enmeshed in stories, dramas and roles in life and wear so many masks for so long that our Essential Nature is obscured ... hidden even from ourselves.

We act/react rarely from our Essential Natures which would consist of genuine responses full of presence and awareness - wearing masks, instead, that we put on for the various people we know and places we go (masks we have come to believe ARE who, what and how we are). Who are we without all these masks and the dramas that go along with them?

Many spiritual paths and places for personal growth base a great deal of their work on knowledge of human nature and our many predictable tendencies at this point of our collective development. We are generally very predictable when we are enmeshed in drama patterns. I have observed this to be true. I have come across many teachings about how we contain within our psyches various parts, ‘I’s’, ‘subpersonalities’, ‘aspects’ … they are called various things in different philosophies and teachings, but they are saying the same thing. The point of these observations of human nature is that these various aspects of ourselves lie largely unknown to our conscious minds … yet still influence our lives in very direct ways.

These various parts of us have their own repertoire of likes, dislikes, tones of voice, postures, behaviours and even conflicting desires and beliefs. Dramas arise from these parts of ourselves and vary according to which aspect of ourselves ‘comes forward’ in which moment or period of time.

So… how do dramas show up in our lives?

Attitudes, Tension and Drama Patterns

The change is from inner to outer. We start by dissolving our attitude not by altering our conditions. Bruce Lee

Attitude defined: (source: internet) ‘A settled way of thinking or feeling about someone or something, typically one that is reflected in a person’s behaviour’.

Synonyms: view, outlook, perspective stance, position, temper, approach, reaction.

Another definition: ‘A position of the body proper to or implying an action or mental state’.

Synonyms: position, posture, pose, stance, bearing.

Another ‘informal definition’: ‘uncooperative behaviour, a resentful or antagonistic manner’.

In the Art of Kung fu and Chi Kung I teach, health and personal/spiritual development are seen to be directly affected by our major ‘attitudes’… which include: worry, fear, anger, grief and pretense. Traditional Chinese Medicine also acknowledges these same emotions as being directly related to the quality of our life and health. When we get ‘locked’ into patterns of certain unhealthy attitudes or chronic emotional patterns, we often find it challenging to see that we are so entrenched in these things … it becomes unconscious and therefore a real challenge to work with.

Attitudes do not always have to show up as what we might typically perceive as a negative or aggressive state or approach to someone or something. There are also many other subtle ‘attitudes’ that we can embody and express. It is up to us to learn to notice how and when we do shift into our various attitudes. Most of us can pick up on the more obvious attitudes; it’s the subtle shifts that can be more challenging to observe. Developing this ability is a part of awareness … which can shift into transmutation when we are able to do something about what we are aware of.

I have included the above definitions so we can reflect on the many ways in which attitude can ‘show up’ in our relationships -- or even within our own self. You have a direct relationship with yourself … conscious or not … your attitudes towards yourself and others directly create, perpetuate and sustain your inner and outer world. You are not responsible for the behaviours of others – only your responses to these things.

Our attitudes can always be found in our drama patterns.

Attitudes also contribute to body as well as mental/emotional tensions. They have a major part in creating our physical structure. It starts with a ‘posture’ or a ‘stance’ (see above definition) that becomes a pattern for us; then it,