THE GOALS OF LIFE
SEPTEMBER 12, 2011. Thanks to those who have donated to the nomorefakenews fund drive so far. Your generosity is much appreciated. Details on how to make a contribution are at the end of this article.
Okay. Here we go.
A person would have a hard time counting up all the current spiritual sects, cults, and religious organizations that seek the goal of surrender.
Surrender in this context implies: “the individual” is really some primitive Separateness, from which one should graduate into merging with a Greater Reality.
The Greater Reality is variously defined as God, the universe, cosmic consciousness, collective consciousness, All One, etc.
The idea is that, sufficiently enlightened, the individual would see his path, up to that moment, had been restricted and confined, and the next step involves yielding his “separateness” for a far better future.
What has been hidden or given diminished attention is this: the evolution of the individual actually moves toward greater independence. Greater individuality. And not just independence from external forces, but from inner conditions as well; inner conditions that dictate in favor of weakness, confusion, fear.
A person entertains and accepts ideas and feelings that can make him less than what he is. He can mire in feelings and doubts that curtail, for example, the force of his own decision-making, the sense of his own power, the sense of his own control over his present and future.
Suppose a person believes his own past is a central hindrance to his life. Suppose he believes he can’t really move forward under his own power, making his own choices, because something in his past is keeping him down.
In that case, his full conception of his own individuality is distorted and blunted. He is in half-light, believing he is partially free and partially slave.
At that point, he can struggle to become freer, or he can find a philosophy that urges him to give up that quest, claiming it was always an illusion and instead, he should have been seeking ways to surrender his “separation” from Ultimate Spirit.
In the same way that a baby struggles to emerge from the womb, to move beyond the channel and the fluids that previously sustained him during the formative phase, evolution actually consists of freeing one’s self from the feelings and ideas that would legislate in favor of becoming “a part of a whole.”
Once having attained sufficient individuality, a person can go back and visit places of less freedom and operate within their contexts, much as an actor who has played King Lear can go back and participate in little plays for the kiddies—if he chooses to.
By “little plays for the kiddies,” I mean those environments in which people still cling to the notion that they are essentially surrendering to a Greater Reality in hopes of being absorbed in it.
I have seen many people who have talent give up that talent and even fail to recognize it exists, because they think they are severely limited and compromised by some elusive inner confinement.
And then, to top it off, they opt for connecting themselves to a philosophy that justifies surrender to “a greater Whole” as a more spiritually mature choice.
Whether on a political, economic, creative, or spiritual front, this is called Fascism. It can be hard or soft. Brutal or friendly.
But let’s leave this rather harsh discussion behind. Now we take a really adventurous step–
If such a person were really up for it, extended dialogues in the Magic Theater might work wonders. I’m not talking about an hour. I’m talking about many sessions in which the roles of, say, “Universal Consciousness” and “My Past” and “Separate Individual” and “Merging with the Whole” are acted out across a wide spectrum. There are electrifying possibilities here. A person PORTRAYS THESE ROLES, EMBODIES THEM, ACTS THEM, SPEAKS FROM THEM, IN DIALOGUE WITH ANOTHER PERSON.
Then the whole polarity of “separateness” versus “merging” breaks down and dissolves. What replaces it is THEATER.
Why bother to argue the merits of greater individuality versus group-inclusion, when you can break through into more power and creative force by ACTING the roles involved?
Playing these roles in the Magic Theater liberates all sorts of bound-up and walled-off energy. A new flexibility is attained. Spontaneity emerges.
This startling premise was announced to the world some 80 years ago by JL Moreno, who founded Psychodrama. The Magic Theater extends that premise by saying that existence itself can be put on a theatrical basis—and there is no limit to the number and types of roles that can be acted out. In fact, the roles eventually don’t need to have anything to do with the actors at all. At least not in any obvious sense.
You can have two people playing “an ant” and “a yellow phantom that dissolves galaxies.” Somewhere along the line, revelations will occur.
The Magic Theater plugs into the imagination, and in doing so, it brings into view miles and miles of material that was previously hidden. Or never existed.
For example, a person has hot flashes. She and another person play the roles of “a fence that is looking out on miles and miles of open plains” and “the reincarnation of Tesla.” Then they switch. Somewhere in all this, the hot flashes might recede. How? Who knows? It’s not a straight-line connection. It’s imagination operating at warp speed.
It’s about a lot of things, most of which are invisible and resolve by themselves.
The Magic Theater operates by allowing the imagination to enter, in the form of acting roles without limit…and in this enterprise, the action of creating and speaking from those roles widens drastically one’s relationship to reality.
The drugged state called normal living falls away like an old skin.
Here is an impossible fantasy for you. On national television, over the course of, say, three days, President Obama and an unemployed construction worker enter the Magic Theater. Their first dialogue is fairly predictable, but then they SWITCH ROLES. The construction worker is now the president and vice versa. Then they switch back. And so on and so forth. Eventually, their roles and dialogues tend more toward the archetypes of president and worker. Energies and emotions expand. The entire cliché of canned political speech disintegrates. The two men break new ground.
The television audience is taken far beyond its usual nodding status. Things are being said, feelings are being expressed that go beyond any format or expectation.
It isn’t the result that is so important; it’s the unwinding process.
Reality is punctured. The status quo is shaken.
Well, the Magic Theater has that potential, for those who are willing to participate in it.
Even what at first looks like a disability or deficit takes on dramatic possibilities for expression.
“Yes, you know, I thought my life was a mess, but ‘being in a mess’ has some interesting aspects when you use it as part of a role. It’s kind of exciting…”
Raise the level. Expand the level.
What can happen is only limited by the willingness of the participants to move into an adventure.
Here’s another opportunity. A person is asked to consider a picture of where he would be if he attained his goals in life. He describes that place, and then he is asked to talk about what he would be like as the champion of that quest. He does that, too. Then—and here is the interesting part—he plays the role of that character in a dialogue with his “opposite,” a character who has completely failed at attaining those goals. And then they switch roles.
The degree of insight and liberation possible, in these dialogues, is startling.
The whole journey to reach goals and fulfill them (which is what everybody is doing) is cast into a THEATRICAL light.
In the Magic Theater.
We enter life, we look around, and sooner or later we decide we need to be something, and so we make that happen. This is fine, this necessary for survival, this is interesting, this is energetic, and so on, and then…as time passes, as we become more proficient in these roles, things tend to slow down. We’re on the verge of becoming a piece on a chessboard, and that doesn’t feel so good. We’re motivated to look for something else, whatever that might be.
It turns out we need a crash course in Living 201, because we’ve already done 101. But now, we take a unique path. We come into the Magic Theater, where roles are so abundant. We’re speaking from those roles, and soon enough the clouds part and we see we have this native talent. We can, as the Tibetan magicians discovered long ago, be many things. We can move in and out of roles. We can gain new flexibility. We can return to our original role. It’s all open. No binding rules. Energy flows. The old boredom and the stress that built up around the central part we were playing dissipates. We’re freer. We can create in new ways. We can be stronger, in the same way a sapling can outlast an old oak in a high wind. There are no limits. No limits on creative force, on imagination, on power, on magic…
Jon Rappoport
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