FEARLESS BLISS

"Ask your soul to illuminate your interior, to transform your suffering into insight and purpose. Pray for this profound act of transformation."

"Live in fearless bliss and allow the divine to awaken your soul's greatest potential."

"Your sole/soul requirement is to commit to being devoted to your inner authority- to the divine. That devotion will give you the will to follow through on all that you are guided to do, say, and become in this life."

"Take your soul out into the world and allow God to work through you as a channel for grace, a vessel of power and transformation... You are a container for God in this world."

Wow. These quotes are all from Caroline Myss' fabulously inspiring Entering the Castle, based on Teresa of Avila's devotional classic "The Interior Castle". Both books are profound and resonant stimuli for my lectio divina, and contain much for this actor's soul to meditate, explore and so live by.

Having finished rereading both these books last week I was somehow able to summon the courage yesterday to refuse a director's offer of the title role in Anthony Nielson's The Censor at this year's Edinburgh Festival. I am not used to turning roles down, but the play did not chime with my moral values (My God , I sound like old Mary Whitehouse, don't I!?), and so I followed the promptings of my Soul, rather than my head. This took some nerve as I have no other offers in the pipeline.

I still await confirmation of dates for my production of Brian Friel's Faith Healer at the Ramshorn this autumn. Friel's sublime and profound series of monologues are just perfect for me right now, distilling such themes as Faith, Love, Art and Spiritual Purpose. Rediscovering this play was a definitive answer to much prayer, in fact! I intend to cast myself in the title role and to direct it. Of course, in the past, I have always avoided acting and directing at the same time (Being simultaneously objective and subjective is not easy); but the trouble is I simply can't choose which I would rather do. Doing both, no doubt, will be perceived by some to be a vanity project once news gets out at Strathclyde Theatre Group, but hey, sod it... Other people can think what they like! I know I'll be doing it for the highest reasons, and I know God is cool with that :-)