We spend a lot of energy trying to make sense of what’s happening to us. Trying to organize the mess. Trying to get life to follow the script we’ve written in our heads.
But sometimes, life rips up the script and hands us something we never imagined.
And in those moments—when things fall apart, when pain arrives, when control dissolves—we’re left with one question:
What now?
From Narrative to Nonduality: Seeing Beyond the Self
The mind searches for understanding. It looks for fault. It wants to fix, to label, to explain. It needs a narrative: This is why it happened. This is what I’ll do. This is how I’ll survive it.
But from the perspective of nondual awareness, that need to know is also part of the dream.
Because, ‘It’ isn’t personal. Never is.
What feels like personal tragedy is actually a cosmic event. Not in the sense that it’s grand or special—but in the sense that it belongs to the whole. It’s movement within one field. A wave in the ocean of consciousness. No more and no less.
And that shift—from ‘me’ to movement—can bring unexpected relief.
Chaos or Consciousness? It Depends on the View
It doesn’t take the pain away. But it softens the ‘why me.’ It loosens the grip. It allows grief, confusion, and even fear to arise, without getting stuck in the identity of the one who suffers.
As strange as it may sound, there’s peace in knowing ‘this isn’t mine’. Not because I’m disconnected—but because consciousness is not two and ‘I am’ is not separate.
The truth is, we never really had control. The control we thought we had was borrowed—from hope, from fear, from habit. And when it fails, we see what was always true: that life unfolds…
Not to punish. Not to reward. Just to unfold.
In EMDR, we talk about the difference between identifying with the memory and witnessing it. The same principle applies here. We can live in the collapse thinking it’s ‘me’, or we can watch it unfold.
From the mind’s view, this feels like chaos. From awareness, it’s just a shift in the kaleidoscopic pattern of life. Life moving through. Life being lived.
And when we allow ourselves to stop clinging to the ‘why’ and ‘how’—when we fall out of the role of manager of life—there’s space for something deeper to be known.
Not with the mind. But with the I am/beingness.
That’s when the question changes.
From “Why is this happening to me?” to “What’s unfolding through consciousness?”
And that’s enough.
~ Jordan Shafer/nmm
