When I was around 11 or 12, I discovered I could act. Where it came from was a mystery. Some friends and I took turns reading from a script for a director, and out of the blue, I got the part of the lead character. My friends seemed to have done just as well as me, but there was my name at the top of the list. Many roles, accomplishments and harsh disappointments became the pattern in the following years along the journey of an actress.
I never understood where this skill came from. It felt like a blankness. I would empty and suddenly I would be speaking the words of someone else, moving in the body of someone else, and finishing would almost feel like coming to out of a trance.
But Ego came in and mucked everything up. After adding ACTOR to my identity, I lived in fear that this mysterious process would leave me. When the ego stepped in, the clearing out of self necessary to become a character would stop and the acting would become forced and uncomfortable.
I wanted every part I auditioned for and grieved when I was not chosen. In the middle of my college years, this ego identity was so full of suffering that I switched my major to Writing and tried to steer the muse into words, which didn’t seem to depend so on outward appearance, longing, and narcissistic self-loathing. I thought the door of the acting world was shut.
But as these journeys go, often shadow elements swirl back again for further experience, further teaching, further understanding. When Eden’s acting spirit landed upon her head near the same time as mine had, I was full of ambivalence. Her gift seem to come in with an enormous shadow. I have written much of her pain-body on this blog!
Finding myself tangentially in this world of acting, I was asked to audition for a play last year, and thought, well, okay, why not? The most interesting thing happened at the audition. I didn’t care, not at all. And in not caring, I had no motivation. I sat there and enjoyed watching everyone, and I had no thoughts of “I want this.” Seemingly, I had to have at least that much ego to get up there an get the part. I didn’t want it. Oh, JoY. What a nice circle to see.
But I do not know how one does the acting, performs the art, and keeps the ego out, or have the ego in balance enough to have the drive to win the part, perform the part. Is there motivation without the ego?
I see Eden in the same dance as I experienced in this arena, and while I support, I cannot offter advice. This is her journey. I see the mirror work, I see the inspiration, I see the suffering. Just recently she had a go at Alice in Alice in Wonderland. The expression of the divine through her vessel was interesting to watch…she was a fiesty Alice. (I was a bit worried for the Queen of Hearts at one point) 🙂 But she realized that her interpretation was quite different from the traditional Alice overhearing some veiled comments around her, and I saw her suffer greatly in much the same way I used to…the view of the self through the lens of others for constant measuring is very painful.
Of course, I’m literally talking about acting in theatre, but also, the word acting implies any action taken, right? Sometimes on the path to the true self, people hear the voice of identity warning them that they will be boring, lifeless, a sage in a robe with nothing to say. Any movement in the world is subject to the forces of identity, self-gratification, narcissism, fear, as well as love, connection, flow from source. Obviously, I don’t know how it all works, but that rings true to me.
It seems that finding the true self does not end the expression of the vessel in the world, just removes the confusion about that.
When the seeker stops seeking, none of these seeming paradoxes arise.
Whether to act or not act occurs without having to decide – in the natural flow of the true self.
Life as Improv 