MAGIC AND ULTIMATE REBELS

by Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

On the plains of Hercules, under the watchtower of a State agency, beside an abandoned factory, in a future where every identity was captured on records stored in underground cities of machines, one man walked, staggered, and fell.

He knew he was going to die, and his only remaining task was deciding what to think as passed out of the world. Because he considered it might be important, as if that thought would linger on the air and float to some unknown place where other souls could pick it up in a net of consciousness and keep it safe.

A ridiculous idea, but it possessed him, and so he gave into it.

He lay on hard-packed ground and felt his senses dimming out. He struggled to stay awake. He searched for his final thought and then, miraculously, it came to him:

THERE IS NOTHING LEFT TO IMAGINE.

As he died, he knew it was a good thought, because…anyone receiving it would possibly RESIST its meaning…and then…there would be more life. There would be more imagining, and the world of famine and thirst would be built upon, and a new period of creation would ensue.

THERE IS NOTHING LEFT TO IMAGINE.

He died.

And in the same way, people pass on every day in a teeming world of seven billion, thinking this thought. But they aren’t trying to leave a legacy of hope and rebellion. They’re summing up their existence. They’re surrendering. They’re reaching the logical conclusion of years of adaptation. Their last thought fully defines adaptation.

But one contrary spark—there IS something to imagine—restarts the force of a non-system that has no name, can’t have a name because it is outside and beyond every cause-and-effect sequence in the universe.

Plots, conspiracies, revolutions come and go. In most cases, after the dust clears, things are the same. Or, as time proves, worse.

Revolutions need brilliant leaders who can articulate and nail down the principles upon which a new society will be formed. In the absence of that, you get mobs and opportunists and high-flying rhetoric and crime with no purpose.

The revolution I’m talking about occurs on another level. It involves individuals who can see that the universe is not going to dispense answers to existence. The universe is set up as a kind of organic system, within which changes happen and energy flows.

The universe, as I’ve written many times, is waiting for imagination to revolutionize it down to its core. THAT is the ongoing revolution. It is not destiny, but choice. The choice is taken or it isn’t. The universe has no say in the matter.

People who can grasp this interest me.

The two key questions are:

WHAT DO YOU TRULY AND DEEPLY WANT TO CREATE?

ARE YOU CREATING IT?

Which returns us to imagination, that capacity to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before.

There are billions of people on this planet who believe, in one way or another, that a beneficent force is going to hand them ultimate consciousness and harmony. They hope for this, they live for this, and they wait for this. They consider any other approach fascistic and inhuman, although they might not admit it.

Those believers will go their own way, as long as they want to. Years, decades, lifetimes, millennia.

I know why people come and go from imagination as if it’s a department store. Imagination doesn’t operate on its own forever. You employ it, you immerse yourself in it—and then when you’re done with it for now, it fades into the background. If you want it again, you call it up. You re-immerse yourself. You re-imagine imagination.

This effort is too much for most people. They prefer to say, “I’ve hit a brick wall. Nothing there.”

Which is like saying, while you’re in the car on the road, “This map is supposed to show me where the picnic is, but we’re out in the middle of nowhere. The hell with it, let’s go home.”

Except the picnic is your life and your future.

In my audio seminars, Mind Control, Mind Freedom, and The Transformations, I describe profound exercises that can increase your ability to access your imagination. Other seminars of mine offer more such exercises. These techniques aren’t little tricks; they’re practices that can give you access to areas of your own innate power that, in ordinary living, aren’t required.

What psychologists analyze as “negative patterns” of behavior and thought are actually opportunities for graduating up on to another level, where you begin to re-imagine your future and take over the reins of possibility.

Our society has become an effort to label, embed, and slice and dice all the reasons a person can’t move forward, can’t fulfill his desires and wants. Society—its so-called experts—makes hay out of these pronouncements and, in the process, hammers in the bolts of the status quo.

However, in the long run, deep desire is the gateway into magic, because in order to satisfy it, imagination must come into play, and once that happens, creative force knows no limits. This is the road to magic. Desire is where it starts.

I’ve been on this road for decades now, and I’ve learned many things. The way isn’t easy, but it’s there. Most people want easy, and if they can’t get it, they turn to other things. That’s the world we live in. The latest self-improvement best-seller, the latest novel about the “mystical quest” arouse great enthusiasm, and then that energy fades out, until the next heavily advertised end-all and be-all appears on the scene.

Politics follows the same curve. The new leader—then the scandals and the disappointments—and then another leader takes the stage. It’s a game of artificial stimulation. A drug.

Imagination has no truck with any of this. Imagination is simply infinity waiting to be called on.

Nothing we are taught confirms this. The impetus has to come from the individual.

And when he does choose imagination, he is the ultimate rebel. The one who not only sees through the illusions of so-called reality, which is the status quo, but who blazes his own path and invents new spaces in which he operates. Then hope is transformed into the fire of creation.

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

To order Mind Control, Mind Freedom, and The Transformations:

http://marketplace.mybigcommerce.com/products/The-Transformations-%283-MP3s-3.75-hrs%29-b-Jon-Rappoport.html

http://marketplace.mybigcommerce.com/products/Mind-Control%2C-Mind-Freedom%3A-The-Grand-Overview–%283-CDs-3.75-hrs%29-by-Jon-Rappoport.html

UPDATE/MAGIC THEATER WORKSHOP

OCTOBER 17, 2011. First—urging those who have indicated they are coming to San Diego for the December 10-11 workshop to contact me soon about details, payment, etc. You want to make sure you have a hotel room available. Also, I’m keeping the group fairly small.

In addition to the Magic Theater dialogues, I’ll be conducting a few sound/energy exercises that are quite powerful. They engage participants in the whole order/chaos barometer, as I call it, which is the tendency to choose a rigid balance of order-versus-chaos in life and stick to it, to the bitter end. Instead, there are wide-ranging possibilities for opening up this vast arena, liberating new energies of body and mind…

All in all, I view this kickoff workshop as the first step of a revolution/evolution. You can eventually, for example, start your own Magic Theater group, and the December workshop would be the beginning of that process.

The first basic proposition is: the mind cannot be charted or mapped. There is a simple reason why. It is being invented all the time.

If you were walking through a mansion snapping photographs for a museum show—but meanwhile a few hundred thousand workers were adding wings, you’d be in arrears forever.

In the mind, there is a self-generating Complaint Department. The way to deal with it is to embody the whole notion of complaints theatrically—to play out roles in dialogue in which the complainant and, for instance, a god or a personage who is beyond complaining act out these two roles…and then switch. This is quite fantastic in its implications. It isn’t so much about thinking or remembering as it is about ACTING. Acting a role has great potential to SATISFY WHAT IS ESSENTIALLY A THEATRICAL DESIRE.

In other words, complaining (or any other attitude) has a root in theater. As such, complaining doesn’t really MEAN very much; it signifies an attraction for a role. A person wants to play THE ROLE OF COMPLAINING. That’s the basic wish. He doesn’t want to live his life as a complainer in little dribbles—he wants to enact the role of someone who complains. Why? Because it’s a juicy role. Who wouldn’t want to play it?

But in life, he doesn’t get a chance to stretch out and really give that role a good workout. In the Magic Theater, he can.

There are a billion things a person can complain about. But that’s not the same thing as pouring real energy into the role.

When you look at it from this angle, you could say that any inner problem is nothing more (or less) than the unfulfilled desire to play a role.

And how exactly does what I’m talking about here cross over into the real world of money, politics, oppression, revolution, poverty, love, hate…

If you’re willing to look at some of the figures who have led the fight to unseat controlling elites, you’ll often find people who can’t get out of their own way, can’t stop doing the very thing they’re railing against, can’t, in other words, seek genuine change.

And they are, on some level, in need of THEATER. They need to mount a personal revolution. They need a stage on which they can emerge from their own frustration—otherwise, in the world, they will just bring more doom. It happens, over and over.

Where do you think private, secret, personal agendas come from?

You can look at the whole world on a barometer of ZERO THEATER all the way to INFINITE THEATER.

In Magic-Theater improvised dialogues, you have the opportunity to try out various roles and satisfy the buried desire to expand expression through imagination. You’re not shackled to one role. You’re not just following one narrow track through life wishing you could break out.

If the whole world was dark all the time, somebody would imagine light. Well, the whole world is trying to behave as if it is un-theatrical—so it’s natural that somebody would invent wide-ranging unlimited improvised theater. That’s what Jacob Moreno did nearly a hundred years ago, when he created Psychodrama. That is the core from which the Magic Theater springs.

Think of any obsession, preoccupation, problem, internal morass. What is going on there is: THE PERSON WANTS TO PLAY THAT ROLE. AND HE WANTS TO PLAY AS WELL SOME COUNTER TO IT. HE WANTS TO PLAY SOMEONE WHO IS BEYOND THAT PROBLEM.

That’s why the problem exists in the first place—because he isn’t playing the role to its fullest.

It’s all theater.

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

To inquire about the Magic Theater workshop in San Diego on December 10-11: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

OSCARS FOR PRESIDENTS

OCTOBER 8, 2011. First off, my site, nomorefakenews.com, is down at the moment. Technical problems, which should be ironed out in the next 24-48 hours.

I’m of the opinion that every president I’ve ever seen or heard has failed to carry off his part with convincing style.

I’m familiar with presidents from Truman onward.

There’s something about them. They’re just not good actors. They come off as melon-heads, despite, or perhaps because of, their best efforts. Now, all melons are not the same. But you can recognize the overall type.

Some presidents fumble with the role. Ford, Reagan (yes, Reagan), Bush One and Two. Others overdo it. Nixon, Reagan (he fumbled and overdid). Others go for “matter-of-fact” and miss the mark. Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton. Others try prophetic and fall short. Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, Obama.

As the director of the Magic Theater (not associated with any other group of the same name) based in San Diego, I have an easy answer. When an actor is struggling with a part, give him another one. Let him improvise a slightly different kind of person. Loosen him up. Let Reagan do a shoe salesman. Jimmy Carter does Jimmy Swaggart after the motel-peephole incident or whatever it was. Clinton does Elvis in Vegas. Obama recites from the Book of Revelation.

You get the idea.

The downside is, they then might comes across as un-presidential. But that’s only because we’ve become accustomed to presidents who are cartoons.

Using “presidential cartoon” as the standard, it becomes rather obvious that the Republican nominee in 2012 would be Mitt Romney. He edges out Rick Perry.

And if we admit that recent presidents couldn’t have been any worse, it makes sense to bring a REAL actor in for the job. Historically, we’d be talking about Jason Robards, Melvyn Douglas, Lee J Cobb, Fredrich March. Guys like that. Today, we’d go for Kenneth Branagh, Albert Finney, Tom Wilkinson.

They’d know what to do.

I think these actors could pull off the role of president so well that people would settle down. The country would relax a little bit. Despite the temptation to want a president who is some kind of con man we all know so well, if the part were played to a T, for once, we’d breathe a sigh of relief.

My first choice would be Melvyn Douglas. Go back and watch him in The Candidate (as the ex-governor of California) and Being There (as an ultra-heavy Washington DC insider). Mel knows. His gravitas makes Clinton’s gravitas look like Gilbert Gottfried.

How about George Clooney vs. Gary Sinise for the presidency in 2012? It ain’t Mel Douglas, but it has a bit of juice. And I have a feeling these two actor could articulate their political positions better than Obama and Romney. Or, in a pinch, Warren Beatty vs. Tom Selleck, with Jesse Ventura as the third-party candidate. Or if you just want a cage match, Adam Corolla vs. Al Franken and stand back. I’d pay to see those two debate.

The more I think about it, the more it seems real actors who aren’t B-listers could handle things better than than the overtly political animals we’ve been putting in office.

When a role like the presidency (of 300 million people in what is supposed to be a Republic) is pretty crazy to begin with, and then, on top of that, we allow bad actors who are also politically avaricious to occupy the office for at least four years, it’s certain to be a mess and sometimes a disaster.

If I ever start a political wing of the Magic Theater, the work will be about giving politicians hundreds of roles to improvise in dialogue, knowing that the experience will make them into much better versions of themselves, much freer versions, who can get out of their grasping egos long enough to find out what life could be all about.

That’s what we really need. People who DO know what life is all about. Not just one corner of it. We need them in the USA and we need them all around the world. This “let’s all come together” mantra is fine, but if the people who are sitting at the big table are obsessed and crazy and dangerous and deceitful, where is it all going to go?

Bottom line: a president SHOULD BE an actor, but one who has played and given life to many, many roles and therefore has felt what consciousness and imagination can really produce. Then we would have something. Not a victim, not an oppressor, not a thief, not a compulsive liar, not a puppet—but instead, someone who has played all those roles to the hilt and comprehends them and is aware and alive beyond them.

That would be a revolution for the ages.

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

The first Magic Theater workshop will take place in San Diego on December 10 and 11. To inquire about attending: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

THE CLASH OF EGOS

OCTOBER 8, 2011. On one side, we have the people who fervently believe the very rich are plotting to steal everything in sight—especially from the poor.

On the other side, we have the people who believe our civilization was created through and by individuals who had a keen self-interest and a desire for More and the lazier types, who benefit from civilization, sit around and whine and try to steal as much as they can from the rich.

Both sides present good arguments. Both sides can marshal a reasonable case. Both sides overdo their claims, in certain respects.

What remains to be seen is what would happen if these sides could get beyond their own positions.

If this clash were staged as a play, act one would feature the argument, the conflict, act two would show breakthroughs on both sides, and act three would portray what happens after the breakthrough.

Every thinking person has some of each oppositional side in his consciousness. Therefore, it’s interesting to imagine the following: Smith plays the rich self-seeking individual and Jones plays the one who is being ripped off by the rich man and is seeking to bring him down.

These are roles. A long improvised dialogue ensues.

Afterwards, Smith and Jones switch roles, and undertake another long dialogue.

Suppose they keep playing these roles and switching, engaging in this improvised dialogue for a few months, every day.

What would happen?

Obviously, Smith and Jones could tell you, if they did it.

We all walk around with these remarkable constructed egos, “selves,” hardened positions, beliefs, attitudes, points of view, certainties, pre-shaped arguments.

We tend to think that, in their absence, we would dissolve into nothing, oblivion.

Suppose this view is entirely incorrect.

And suppose, if you don’t mind this fantasy too much, we discover, after we die, that this view IS entirely incorrect?

Might it not be better, in some sense, to come to the realization while we are alive?

This is one of the goals of the Magic Theater. To find out more, go to www.nomorefakenews.com, enter my blog and read the last two months or so of articles.

Jon Rappoport

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

THE MAGIC THEATER WORKSHOP/MORE DETAILS

by Jon Rappoport

qjrpress@gmail.com

Below you’ll find the basic details on the workshop. For those of you who’ve contacted me already expressing interest, I urge you to register and pay as soon as you can. I’m going to keep the group to a manageable size, and once we reach the limit, that will be it.

There are several hotels and inns in the Carlsbad area. I’m recommending the Holiday Inn, which has reasonable room rates and also will have a free shuttle to take attendees back and forth from the workshop—for those of you who aren’t renting cars while you’re in San Diego. (Holiday Inn: 800-266-7880)

I can now tell you more about the lineup of events.

In the Saturday session, I’ll explain how the actual dialogues work. People will be paired off in those dialogues, most of which will be done simultaneously, so everybody is working at once and we get in as much time as possible on it.

After the explanation, I will team up with an attendee and do a short demonstration of a dialogue in action, and then answer questions.

We’ll do a few warm-up energy exercises and then move into the dialogues. After each dialogue, people will have time to comment about their experiences and ask questions.

Doing the dialogues will increasingly familiarize you with how it all works.

The entire Saturday session will be taken up with dialogues—and I’ll comment as necessary, as we go along. What I say and how long I take saying it will depend on my ongoing observation of the dialogues in progress.

The Sunday session will also contain dialogues, and I will give a short talk on how you can continue this work at home. I’ll also talk about the future of the Magic Theater and where I see it going.

Those of you who are coming with another person may, if you wish, do dialogues with that person during the workshop. It’s up to you. Once you register, we’ll figure that out before you come to San Diego.

I want to emphasize that this workshop is exploring territory that has never been approached in this way before. Psychodrama paved the way, and certainly, classes for actors have engaged in improvisation and “role playing,” but the Magic Theater takes these practices into new spaces—as you can well imagine, if you’ve been reading my articles on the subject.

Your commitment to the process, your adventurous spirit, your engagement with the dialogues themselves allow the breakthroughs to happen. We are mining new ground. There’s no limit to what can be achieved.

Here, again, is the workshop layout:

WHEN: Saturday and Sunday, December 10 and 11. Saturday—noon-7. Sunday—9:30 am-1pm.

WHERE: The Southern California Institute of Clinical Nutrition, Carlsbad, CA 92008. 5670 El Camino Real, Suite B. The Institute is about 30 minutes north of the San Diego airport.

Workshop Fee: $150.

To keep costs down, I haven’t opted for holding the seminar in a hotel.

To register for the seminar, contact me directly at qjrconsulting@gmail.com. Then pay the fee: go to PayPal, click on the “send money” button, enter qjrconsulting@gmail.com to get into my account, and fill out the information. You don’t need your own PayPal account to do this.

There is nothing about this workshop that has anything to do with “professional training” as an actor. Nor will there be any criticism of the dialogues. The whole idea is to get further into the roles and the dialogues. This is an ongoing process.

Once you sign up for the workshop, I’ll send you a confirming email. Of course, if you have any questions, I’m here to answer them.

I believe this will be an historic occasion—the launch of the Magic Theater. It’s been a long time coming. Over the years, I’ve had conversations about such an idea, and I’ve read hints and clues that other people have offered in this direction. But this is a firm beginning, a take-off into greater realms…

I hope you’ll be here.

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

THE MAGIC THEATER WORKSHOP

WHEN: Saturday and Sunday, December 10 and 11. Saturday—noon-7. Sunday—9:30 am-1pm.

WHERE: The Southern California Institute of Clinical Nutrition, Carlsbad, CA 92008. 5670 El Camino Real, Suite B. The Institute is about 30 minutes north of the San Diego airport.

Workshop Fee: $150.

To keep costs down, I haven’t opted for holding the seminar in a hotel. Attendees arrange their own lodging, meals, and transportation. I can suggest one or two hotels/motels in the area.

To register for the seminar, contact me directly at qjrconsulting@gmail.com. To pay the fee, go to PayPal, click on the “send money” button, enter qjrconsulting@gmail.com to get into my account, and fill out the information. You don’t need your own PayPal account to do this.

I will be giving background on the Magic Theater at the workshop, but much of our time will be spent in hands-on dialogue between all participants, as they act out a number of roles. This isn’t the sort of seminar where the group sits back and takes notes all weekend.

I will offer plenty of grounding in how Magic Theater dialogue operates, because you can continue this work after you go home, by phone, with another person who was at the workshop. It’s my hope you’ll do just that—and I will be available to answer any questions that come up, if you do phone sessions. During the workshop itself, you’ll work with a steady partner, so you can get used to dialogues with that person.

There is nothing about this workshop that has anything to do with “professional training” as an actor. Nor will there be any criticism of the dialogues. The whole idea is to get further into the roles and the dialogues. This is an ongoing process.

Once you sign up for the workshop, I’ll send you a confirming email. Of course, if you have any questions, I’m here to answer them.

I believe this will be an historic occasion—the launch of the Magic Theater. It’s been a long time coming. Over the years, I’ve had conversations about such an idea, and I’ve read hints and clues that other people have offered in this direction. But this is a firm beginning, a take-off into greater realms…

I hope you’ll be here.

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

ALCHEMY OF THE DIALOGUE

SEPTEMBER 29, 2011. Something interesting happens when a person plays the role of a major problem, in a dialogue.

It doesn’t matter what the problem is. It is personified. And then the conversation begins.

I do this in some of my consulting work with private clients.

Suppose Craig’s problem is his inability to begin a project. He becomes the project and speaks as the project, and I take the role of Craig.

Suppose his problem is his sister. He plays his sister and I play him.

A problem becomes a problem through its silence. In other words, the problem is never given a voice BY THE PERSON WHO IS MIRED IN IT.

“Okay, you’ve been working at your job for five years and you keep going up against your boss. So let’s try this. You be your boss and I’ll be you, and we’ll talk.”

How long does the conversation last? Impossible to predict. It might be an hour. It might be six hours, over the course of several weeks. And then we switch. He plays himself and I play his boss. The length of the dialogue depends on how fertile and deep the dynamics of the relationship are.

“Okay, you keep talking about God. You play God and I’ll play you.”

Dialogue.

Looked at from this viewpoint, every problem is a dialogue waiting to happen. Every problem is an opportunity to play “an opponent.”

The next step is to understand that every human relationship is an opportunity to play the other person. And when that relationship is a problem, the opportunity should be taken.

Let’s say that Joe watches five hours of television every day. He’s a news junkie. I would say, “You play a news anchor, Joe, and I’ll play you.” The funny thing is, Joe has stored away a great deal of material about the news anchor. He knows him backwards and forwards. But now he gets a chance to inhabit the role and speak as the newsman. In some sense, he’s wanted to play that role. And because he hasn’t (yet), he has a problem. And when you reduce down the problem to its core, it comes out as something like this: Joe wants to play a news anchor and he hasn’t been able to. It’s that simple. We all want more THEATRICAL experience. We all want to play roles.

If Joe hasn’t been able to play a news anchor, he keeps watching him on television.

Or a priest has a problem. With the Pope. So the priest plays the Pope and I play the priest and we talk. Finally, the priest gets to play the Pope.

Or a mother has a problem with her son. So she plays her son and I play her. On some level, she wants to play her son. And now she has a chance. She has a great deal of material stored up about her son. She knows him backwards and forwards. She has a subconscious THEATRICAL desire to play her son. Now she finally does. And in the process, a great deal of clarity is reached.

An aspiring executive in a company has an odd problem with the CEO. He barely knows him, but he’s seen him speak on numerous occasions, and for some reason, he dislikes the CEO intensely. The aspiring executive has stored up a great deal of material about the CEO, and now he gets a chance to play him, to give voice to that character he’s subconsciously desired to play.

Mr. Smith has written five books on the JFK assassination. He believes he’s identified the real killer. Mr. Smith is very frustrated that his books haven’t received the attention they deserve. There are a number of ways to approach this situation, but here is one simple way: Mr. Smith plays the real killer, and I play Mr. Smith. And we speak to each other.

A very good surfer has one final obstacle to overcome: getting out in the water on the North Shore of Hawaii and riding the biggest waves. He’s nursed this fear for years, and it’s a problem to him. So he plays the biggest wave and I play him and we have a dialogue. He knows that wave backwards and forwards, and he finally gets a chance to inhabit the role of the wave and speak as the wave—we’re doing alive theater. And the problem is shattered. This isn’t to say the surfer will now ride that big wave or not ride it. But either way, it won’t be a problem.

Sometimes, the most introverted people are those who have the most intense theatrical desire, who are acute observers of others and have stored up much material on them, but have never had the chance to inhabit their roles. If they could be coaxed to play a few of these roles, enormous changes would take place.

Playing a role and doing it with conviction is, in this context, quite transformative. Why? Because there are many dynamics at play in the process. It isn’t just a matter of playing a particular person. It’s an energy shift—from being at the apparent mercy of a problem to being the apparent reason FOR the problem: that role shift, for instance, from aspiring executive (who has the problem) to CEO (who supposedly is causing the problem) is “educational” at a deep level, a visceral level, an emotional level.

From my notes on the Magic Theater: “The peasant who plays the king experiences a long-repressed desire. He knew all along that he knew HOW TO PLAY THE KING—and then he confirms it by playing the king. He not only feels the energy of the king, he not only expresses it in dialogue, but he catapults his own IQ in the process. He acts out a point of view, so to speak, that has a higher IQ than he, the peasant, ordinarily displays. And then he realizes that he has been acting out the role of peasant for a long time—which is a revelation. He has taken on a role, with all its downside, to accommodate the fact of life that he is working the soil on the manor of a lord who is, in turn, a servant of the king. And now he can begin to think clearly, for the first time, about how he might escape from and transcend his life as a peasant.”

Fortunately, none of us is quite in the real-life situation of the medieval peasant. We already have choices. For us, these theatrical opportunities I’ve been describing can, if acted out, automatically transform our lives in the world.

The old alchemists were searching for a way to transmute consciousness. The kind of dialogue I’m talking about here does that very thing.

The impact of life delivers us the message that we really have only one basic role to play in life, and we should stick to it. In the long run, that’s a losing proposition, no matter what the basic role is. The entertainment and media and advertising industry sells us the idea that people exist who, in their “natural roles,” are happy and fulfilled, and the best we can hope for is to admire them and fantasize about them. And then, in addition to that message, we are also told there are “natural villains,” and we should despise them and enjoy that exercise and thank our lucky stars we weren’t born into such circumstances.

This is all hogwash, of course. Cracking open the illusion, we discover the central theatricality of the world, and we look around for ways to play and inhabit other roles. But where is the outlet? Where is the venue? Where is the platform, the stage?

The platform is what I call the Magic Theater. In it, all roles and dialogues can occur. I’m already engaged, and the first workshop of the Magic Theater will take place in San Diego on December 10^th. I continue work with private clients in this arena.

Jon Rappoport

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

www.nomorefakenews.com

MAGIC THEATER FOUNDATIONS

SEPTEMBER 27, 2011. Now that I’ve set a date and place for the first Magic Theater workshop (Dec. 10-11, San Diego), I’ve been thinking back on several moments when all this started to come together.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, in 1958, there was a whisper of an idea that, if you could understand and experience more fully what A POINT OF VIEW was about, you would crack a code and finally know something about metaphysics. Because the parade called the history of Western thought was, at the root, a series of points of view looking at cosmos from various angles and proposing various irreducible and “ultimate champions” of reality: Plato’s ideal forms; Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover; Spinoza’s underlying Substance; Leibniz’s Monads; Kant’s reality beyond appearances…

Once I began painting, in 1962, I found myself glimpsing the notion that every inanimate object in the universe actually has its own invisible point of view.

Well, in the Magic Theater, those questions and possibilities come to fruition, because we play roles and we speak from those roles, in dialogue, and we do experience many points of view—including those of inanimate objects. Because, well, ANYTHING can be a role, and we can play that role.

That which doesn’t seem to have a voice now has a voice.

The silent universe speaks.

And therefore, eventually, our visceral and emotional and energetic and mental and physical sense of the universe changes, expands, and becomes more alive.

In the Magic Theater.

This is metaphysics and cosmology in action.

About eight years ago, I studied traditional archetypes and began inventing some of my own. I saw how much energy could be released by interacting with archetypes—but now, in the Magic Theater, the energy is multiplied many times over, because we are actually playing the roles of archetypes. We are speaking AS them, and TO them.

Most of us assume the universe is asking us to be a part of it, to take our correct spiritual place in the great order of things, but I would suggest something else: the universe is asking to participate in OUR future, our open destiny—and we can accomplish that by speaking as and from the elements and things and processes of universe, empowering IT, giving more life to IT.

It’s no longer a question about whether we fit into cosmos or cosmos fits into us—we are acting out all possibilities, speaking as them, from them, and to them.

War is the outcome of the refusal to speak AS the enemy. “That’s a role I won’t play. I want to destroy it instead.” Well, giving up that battle-stance is futile and suicidal, unless there is an opportunity for each side to inhabit the role of the other.

You want to understand a star, a galaxy, a black hole, a space storm? Take it on as a character. Speak from it and as it.

In the Magic Theater, the difference between a noun and a verb is bridged. The psychic distance between a thing and an action is closed. The artifact of linguistic distinctions and the accompanying architecture of perception is surpassed, because, again, any thing, action, or process can be embodied as a character. And so we experience what it is to see directly.

All this is achieved through imagination, and imagination is given a voice so it becomes real.

POINT OF VIEW ceases being a hardened bunker—but that change is not one that involves transforming into a zombie. Power isn’t sacrificed; it’s expanded.

In the Magic Theater, the universe speaks to God, and God speaks to the universe. A table speaks to a tiger. A quantum of energy speaks to his brother a hundred light years away. A beggar speaks to a president, and vice versa—and then they switch roles. The gold rush of 1849 speaks to the first human journey beyond this solar system. The lowly ant and a mighty galaxy hold a conversation.

All this is improvised.

The relentless approach of spring speaks to a permanent sheet of Arctic ice.

Spirits and souls in transit speak with hardened materialists.

WE play the roles.

I believe this was on the mind of the old magicians of Tibet and the medieval alchemists and the first biologists who caught a whiff of life in process. It was certainly on the mind of Jacob Levy Moreno, who founded Psychodrama nearly a hundred years and staged a revolution that holds the potential to change the world. The Magic Theater is an extension of his work, just as his breakthrough created a living river that ran from the universe of art into daily life.

The alchemists searched for a”universal solvent,” a substance that could dissolve everything. The psyche already knows what that is:imagination. But imagination can and does invent…anything. It is both solvent and creator. In the Magic Theater, imagination dissolves boundaries between that which can speak and that which cannot speak, between hostile forces, between Process and Object, between Is and Might Be, between Dark and Light. It, however, invents new realities by the ton, at the same time.

What we fear, what we shrink away from, what confuses us, what puzzles our minds, what engages our problem-solving capacity, what intrigues our outlook on the unknown, what we seek to control, what we hope for, dream about, calculate, propose, question—all of it is a catalog of roles.

The universe is waiting for imagination, always waiting, and now the curtain is going up on a new act in the play.

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

To inquire about attending the first workshop of the Magic Theater: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

THE FIRST MAGIC THEATER WORKSHOP

SEPTEMBER 26, 2011. The first Magic Theater workshop will take place in San Diego on December 10 and 11.

To obtain particulars and inquire about attending, contact me directly at qjrconsulting@gmail.com

I look forward to meeting some of you for the first time—as well as seeing old friends.

I will speak about the Magic Theater, but most of the weekend will be spent in DOING: parts, roles, dialogues—in which all will participate. I’ll endeavor to provide a firm grounding for the whole process, so you can even continue to work when you return home.

These days, people see and sense the walls of this “civilization” closing in, and they take the reasonable position that they must shore up their “part in the play” and make it stronger.

I have no argument with that. I merely point out that there are different kinds of strengths. In the Magic Theater, the ability to shift roles and improvise them opens up energies that have been buried and misplaced for a long time.

Society deals in the narrowing of roles. The Magic Theater proliferates them, including those that are invented to take in territory society wouldn’t dream of exploring, because such roles too are imaginative, too powerful, too unusual, too far beyond what society stands for.

What does society stand for? Conformity, sameness, automatism, mechanical function.

Most people experience their main roles in life as a space between walls. Well, outside those walls is a tremendous amount of untapped energy, and it can be accessed by improvising roles.

The Magic Theater was an idea invented and fleshed out by Hermann Hesse in his famous 1927 novel, Steppenwolf. The actual practice of “magic theater” was created, slightly earlier, by JL Moreno, the founder of Psychodrama, who brilliantly transformed therapy into theater.

In the December workshop, attendees will experience a new incarnation of the magic theater.

The meeting point of universe and our perception teaches us the habit of accepting “things as they are.” “A thing is only and forever itself and nothing more.” Well, when we play new adventurous roles, we discover hidden power—and we find out how much life lives in previously unexplored territory. At the same time, we become much more ourselves. And that is a form of magic.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

MAGIC THEATER AND MATRIX

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011. The September nomorefakenews fund drive continues. See the end of this article for how you can help.

What is popularly called The Matrix, which is physical reality plus schemes of human organization, is dependent on how we perceive.

And that perception naturally fans out from each one of us. You look out on reality, and you are the starting point and the center. What could be more obvious?

But, over time, this individual-centered perception tends to harden into a central point of view for each person. A limiting point of view.

A point of view that contains many fixed ideas or filtering lenses.

Yet, you are you. What are you supposed to do? Abandon selfhood and become somebody else?

On the contrary, your power and strength depend on you being more and more of you.

Still, when you-being-you entails repetition and routine and ingrained habit, when you become bored by continuing to “see things the same way,” you look for a way out.

In fact, this repetition and routine and boredom acts as a confined space that locks you tighter into ordinary reality, or Matrix.

It seems like an unsolvable puzzle.

Which is where most people stop. They accept their fate. They give in. They come to believe living in ordinary reality and seeing ordinary reality and dealing in an ordinary way with ordinary reality is the best they can hope for.

Every person, creature, process, and thing inside Matrix faces this situation. It wants to be itself, it wants to gain power from being itself, and it discovers that, in the course of being itself, its habitual perception of reality hardens and narrows. Overall, this is the mechanical structure of Matrix.

In fact, even geniuses face this problem. Over time, they tend to see reality, even if it is heightened, in habitual—and to them—boring ways.

Enter the Magic Theater.

The basic premise of Magic Theater is revolutionary: you can become more you by being others. Rather than losing your sense of self in the process, you become more you, expanded you. And those fixed ideas and limiting filters dissolve.

But “being others” is not simply an act of fantasy. You SPEAK as others. You take on various roles, in dialogue, and you speak from those roles. This is done as improvisation.

If you took a person and asked him to make a list of roles he might play, he would tend to produce a recognizable list. The roles would be familiar. That’s fine. As far as it goes. But the idea is to go much farther.

Because, in theater, anything can happen. It isn’t just mother, son, father, daughter. It can be “the ant that runs the universe.”

What?!

Why would anyone want to play that role? What possible benefit could it confer?

Let me answer that by putting it starkly: THE POWER OF MATRIX DERIVES FROM THE PERCEIVED LIMIT ON WHAT ROLES CAN BE PLAYED.

That’s the bottom line.

Think of self as a circle. The circle represents what a person considers possible for himself. When he plays a role that falls outside the circle, the circle expands. It expands, not because Matrix permits it, but because self permits it.

And gradually a new truth emerges: self, not Matrix, is the determining factor.

Matrix presents an illusory limit on what roles can be played.

In the Magic Theater, that limit is shattered.

From the point of view of Matrix, playing “the ant who runs the universe” is absurd and ludicrous. Not only doesn’t an ant run the universe, “who in his right mind” would play that role?

From the point of view of self, why not play the role?

Who is the ant talking to? Well, let’s try “your mother.” That’s right. Your mother is talking to the ant who runs the universe. You’ll play the ant and I’ll play your mother. And we’ll talk for an hour or so. Then we’ll switch. You’ll be your mother, and I’ll be the ant.

The typical reaction to such a set-up might be something like this (I include the subconscious responses as well):

“That’s crazy! Why should I waste my time doing such an insane thing. It’s impossible. I’m not an ant, and I’m not a mother. I’m certainly not your mother. Besides, if I did play those roles, I might feel weird. If I told my friends about it, they’d think I was nuts. I’m me, and that’s all there is to it. If I played an ant, I might turn into an ant. If I played an ant, I might discover I CAN play an ant, and that would be very disturbing. Ants can’t talk. So that’s the end of that right there. Pretending is for children. I’m an adult, and I know everything worth knowing. I have a master’s degree. Why should I stoop to playing an ant? If it turned out I actually enjoyed it and felt liberated by it, that would be a sign I have some kind of mental illness. Feeling liberated, as opposed to thinking about being liberated, is not something I’m interested in. It would rock the boat. I admit the idea of an ant running the universe is vaguely amusing, but it certainly doesn’t contribute to my store of knowledge. And that’s what I’m all about. Increasing knowledge. My status and reputation are dependent on gaining more real knowledge. And since I know everything worth knowing already, I have to accumulate more knowledge wherever I can find it, so I can continue to say I know everything worth knowing. Do you see? Besides, I’m a spiritual person. I have gained great wisdom from following the path of certain meditations that open the door into cosmic understanding, and if I somehow got something out of playing an ant who runs the universe, that would be tantamount to admitting my spiritual path didn’t contain everything worth having. Spiritual knowledge, or metaphysics, is ultimately a mirror of Higher Reality, and it’s very clear and exacting. Introducing AN ANT into all this is absolutely absurd. It would be like saying I found wisdom and truth from, well, a damn ant who runs the universe! No way! It’s sacrilegious! Of course, I have to confess it might be fun. To play the ant just for a minute or so. The idea that I, even if I’m an ant, run the universe—that’s appealing. I’ve always wanted to run the universe and put things the way they should be. And the sense of power—people can’t tell me what to do, I tell them what to do. I mean, I am rather…I mean, I deserve to have that power. People are so crazy. They need someone like me to tell them how to behave. It’s frustrating, you know, to walk around with so much understanding about things and yet not have a position from which I can call the shots. And if I were talking to a mother, that would be interesting. Mothers always get things wrong. They react from instinct, they over-protect, they need control from an external source. Of course, if you want me to play the mother, too, forget about it! No chance in heaven I’d do that! It would be demeaning…”

And so on and so forth. For a few thousand pages or so.

Within that circle of self are the roles a person would consider playing. But there is open territory beyond the circle, and there you’ll the find the roles a person might possibly play, and there is a wider circle and then MORE territory—and there you’ll find the roles a person would really not consider playing….and then more open territory, and on and on it goes…and each time a person moves out into wider territory and plays roles, he finds more energy and power and freedom…and he is still very himself, and in fact is more and more himself, expanded…

And Matrix doesn’t look like Matrix anymore. Which is to say, it was always an illusion.

I have found a location to hold the first Magic Theater workshop. Details to follow as soon as I have them.

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

To donate to the nomorefakenews September fund drive and support this work, go to Paypal.com, click on the send money button, enter qjrconsulting@gmail.com and make a contribution. You don’t need your own PayPal account to do this. Many thanks.