While watching a serious drama, we often forget ourselves and get helplessly sucked into the emotional turns in the story. We feel fear, conflict, confusion, excitement, stress, sadness, joy, shock, grief and a whole slew of other emotions. And, the strange thing is, we actually enjoy it!
Sometimes though, we love drama so much that we bring it into our real lives. We jump in with both feet, fully identifying with outer circumstances and people that don’t need our emotional involvement. Then, we suffer from being caught up in the web of our own thoughts.
How can we detach from drama?
Loving Detachment
Detaching from drama doesn’t mean that you don’t care or are unfeeling. Spiritual master Swami Chinmayananda tells us to Feel the emotion, but don’t become emotional. Feel the sentiment, but don’t become sentimental.
Detachment ensures a mental distance, and distance gives you clarity in any given situation. It allows your inner wisdom to guide you to your highest good without being intercepted by your emotions.
Learning how to mentally detach is growing in spiritual maturity. It is a slow ripening process. You gradually learn from your own experiences that it’s not helpful or useful to get sucked into the drama.
Later, you realize that whether you cry over it or you don’t, it doesn’t change the situation. So, you learn how to handle the ups and downs of life with greater peace.
Make Inner Peace Your Priority
Happiness is measured by the tranquility of our mind – Swami Chinmayananda.
As we mature inwardly, we realize that having peace of mind is the most important thing to have. The reason is that peace of mind brings happiness.
As you make peace your priority, you are able to quickly stand back and assess a situation in a detached manner.
You may realize that an interaction with someone is simply a difference of opinion or a clash of egos. Even if you are in the right, you may ask yourself whether it’s worth trying to prove it to the other person.
What’s the use of sparring words? It will only agitate your mind and leave an uneasiness in the relationship.
Self-help author Dr. Wayne Dyer gives sound advice. He says, When given the choice between being right and being kind, choose kind.
Spiritual Self-Mastery
When facing a challenge, making peace your priority and detaching from it gives you the strength to face it. When you are able to do so, you are growing spiritually.
Spirituality is self-mastery—not mastery over the world but mastery within ourselves so that under all circumstances, we try to remain as equipoised and balanced as possible. —Swami Chinmayananda
Choosing peace and making it our priority will help us able to remain calm and balanced This is how to detach from drama.
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Thanks Manisha for Relax and Release Mantra. I am going to use it on regular basis. So simple but could be so powerful.
Thanks Babita. Yes, it’s a very effective way to remind yourself to release and let go of what’s not worth expending energy over. By repeatedly suffering from the emotional drain of our dramas, we come to know what’s important and what’s not.