The Martfotai Reflections
The Director: Watching the Play Without Losing the Plot
The Director – Watching the Play Without Losing the Plot
Presence, Performance, and the Power of Inner Witnessing
We All Live on Stage
We spend most of our lives in performance.
Not on a grand stage with curtains and applause, but in kitchens and hallways, in meetings and phone calls, in glances across rooms and arguments across years. It’s a quieter theatre. One we rarely see, because we’re always in character.
We play roles we didn’t consciously choose.
Roles inherited in childhood, adopted out of survival, or absorbed through imitation.
We become the pleaser, the perfectionist, the rebel, the rescuer, the cynic, the child.
Each one of these ‘I’s steps forward, speaks its lines, and disappears.
But we forget that.
We think the part we’re playing now is who we are.
We mistake the role for the self.
We lose the plot.
The One Who Sees
There is another place in you.
It doesn’t act, react, or perform.
It watches.
It sees the stage, the characters, the storylines.
It holds the scene, without becoming it.
We call this the Director.
The Director isn’t a better role. It’s not a more virtuous ‘I’.
It is the seat of awareness itself.
It doesn’t edit the script or correct the actors. It simply sees what is.
And from that seeing, everything changes.
The role still plays.
The lines are still spoken.
But you are no longer lost inside them.
The Moment You Mistake the Role
When the actor believes the script, pain follows.
Take Lear. He demanded declarations of love from his daughters. The two who flattered him, he rewarded. The one who spoke with truth, he rejected.
“I did her wrong.”
– King Lear
That single line captures the grief of one who mistook performance for essence.
Who believed emotion over presence.
Who lost the plot.
And we do the same.
We trust the ‘I’ that shouts over the one that simply sees.
We believe the momentary feeling is the truth.
We give power to the part that wants control.
But when you sit in the Director’s chair, the scene doesn’t change, you do.
The same moment becomes insight.
You stop playing the part that needs to be right, and start seeing the one who is reacting.
What the Play Reveals
Every moment in life is a scene.
Not an accident. A teaching.
A silence that unnerves you.
A delay that frustrates you.
A tone that wounds you.
Each is a script designed to reveal what remains unfinished in you.
But if you’re fully in character, you’ll miss the point.
You’ll argue with the script.
You’ll blame the actors.
You’ll fight the scene instead of watching it.
Hamlet understood this.
“The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”
– Hamlet
So it is with us. The play reveals the inner king. The part that wants to rule. The part that hides. The part that clings to identity.
But only if you watch it.
How to Return to the Seat
When emotion arises, pause.
Ask:
- Who just took the stage in me?
- What part is playing now?
- Who is watching this unfold?
You don’t need to silence the scene.
Just stop believing it’s the whole truth.
Let the line be spoken.
Let the moment pass.
But stay seated.
Don’t rewrite the play. Just don’t lose your seat.
You Don’t Need to Be the Best Actor
You don’t need to be more convincing.
You don’t need to play the enlightened one.
You don’t even need to stop reacting.
You just need to see it.
To feel the wave without becoming it.
To watch the scene unfold without mistaking it for the story of you.
This is the power of the Director:
Not to control life.
But to remain aware within it.
Final Reflection
You are not the character.
You are not the storyline.
You are not the applause or the silence that follows.
You are the quiet space in which it all unfolds.
You are the one who sees.
And when you remember that, really remember it,
the drama softens.
The tension loosens.
The plot becomes clear.
So stay seated.
Watch the scene.
Hold the thread.
Because the one who watches the play…
without losing the plot…
is already free.
The Practice of Patience: Waiting Without Wanting
The Practice of Patience – Waiting Without Wanting
We often think of patience as a gentle virtue, something admirable, respectable, maybe even passive. But that’s a surface idea. Beneath it lies something much more confronting. Patience, in truth, is not softness. It is strength. It is what holds steady when every part of you wants to move.
And here’s the hard part:
If you lose your patience, you never had it in the first place.
You had tolerance. You had suppression.
But real patience doesn’t break when it’s tested. It holds. It remains.
No one says, “I’m not violent, I only hit people occasionally,” and expects to be seen as nonviolent.
Yet we say, “I’m a patient person, I just lose it sometimes,” as if that were enough.
Why do we allow that?
Because impatience is so deeply normalized. It’s socially excused, domesticated, even rewarded.
But that doesn’t make it real patience. That makes it performance, until it cracks.
The moment your patience ends is the moment your real Work begins.
That’s the edge of your being. That’s the limit of what you can hold.
And unless you can sit with that edge, not run from it, you will stay the same.
How Far Does Your Generosity Extend?
There’s a simple question that exposes our limits:
How far does your generosity extend?
To your partner? Your child? A friend?
What about a stranger? A slow driver? A failing system? A long delay?
Wherever that generosity ends, your Work begins.
Patience is not measured when everything is smooth.
It’s revealed in friction, when you are ignored, interrupted, misunderstood, delayed, disrespected.
Right there, you meet the threshold of your being.
And if you can remain still, conscious, and present in that moment… then something begins to grow.
The Wait That Transforms
Russell once described a small exercise:
Hold two fingers close together, and wait.
Not to move. Not to force.
Just to wait.
And in that quiet waiting, something happened.
“All your focus now is waiting,” he said.
That focus, that poise, that contained anticipation, this is patience.
Not delay. Not passive time.
But the still ground in which real presence lands.
Impatience moves too fast to feel.
It overrides the subtle sensations that carry transformation.
But patience makes them louder.
A single thread of attention, held long enough, amplifies what was once imperceptible.
Patience Is Not Suppression
It’s easy to fake patience, at least on the outside.
You hold your tongue. You smile. You don’t lash out.
But inside, there’s a storm.
A student once praised another for their “great patience.”
They smiled. Then admitted they’d been seething the whole time.
That wasn’t patience. That was control.
True patience doesn’t mean you feel nothing.
It means you feel it fully, and do not act from it.
You see the surge. You hold the space. You stay.
This is conscious effort. Not performance.
This is intentional suffering, not in a masochistic sense, but in the sacred sense:
the willingness to bear discomfort without escape.
Repetition Is Not Punishment. It’s Practice.
Many students speak of boredom with the same materials, the same readings, the same chores.
But repetition is not where the Work ends.
It’s where it begins.
When you read something again and it lands differently, it’s not because the words changed.
It’s because you did.
When you clean the same space or perform the same task, and you do it without complaint,
you are not wasting time.
You are building inner structure.
The Work is not what happens when life goes your way.
The Work is what you do when it doesn’t.
The Tempo of Real Time
Presence has its own rhythm.
It does not match the clock.
And it cannot be forced.
Patience is how you align with that rhythm.
It is how you get slow enough to meet the moment before it passes.
Jeanne de Salzmann once said:
“In waiting, something else appears.”
That “something” is not the result you were hoping for.
It is being itself.
When we wait without demand, without subtle expectation, we begin to see through the illusion of control.
We make room for what cannot be summoned, only received.
This is the patience that has no reason.
No bargaining.
No timeline.
It is a kind of love.
A faith deeper than hope.
An openness to the unknown as sacred.
Final Reflection
You are not patient because you say you are.
You are patient only when nothing in you wants to be, and you still are.
So pause and ask:
- How far does my generosity extend?
- Where does my patience end?
- Can I stay… right there?
That edge is not your failure.
It’s your mirror.
It’s your invitation to grow.
Be still.
Be generous.
Be patient.
And in that stillness, something finer will begin to move in you.
Not because you chased it.
But because you became ready to receive it.