“It is given you to be the means
Through which His Voice is heard around the world…
Through you is ushered in
A world unseen, yet truly there.”
From A Course in Miracles- A Manual for Teachers.
I have often been guilty of befuddling my head with so much vexation about the quality of my work, hankering after some magic formula that might guarantee the arrival of the miraculous each time I step onstage. In my trying to be 'good', or at least trying to avoid being 'bad', the work usually ends up forced, intellectual, disconnected, over-complicated and mechanical. Disappointing. Unless I am prepared to surrender my fearful and limited expectations of what is possible in God, and just allow it to happen through me, (not because of me) it is destined to fail.
Why then, as a spiritual agent, a wounded healer, an ambassador for God's wisdom, do I fail so often? And what does 'failure' really mean in this context?
I have come to understand that it is the Ego that short-circuits the process. It intervenes by attempting to squeeze out grace-as if the Holy Spirit were some kind of lemon- so well-meaning and ardent you are for meaning, for truth, for beauty...The Juice!
It never ever works.
The actor cannot squeeze.
And the antidote to squeezing...? Well, you could do a lot worse than just transfer attention away from the effort to generate 'an experience'. Instead find an authenticity (born without effort) by witnessing Love flowing through you to others. As sentimental, fuzzy and utterly luvvie as it sounds, the actor's message is always, always Love. God's compassion and forgiveness is laid bare by the actor-saint's willingness to crucify the ego, to expose the notion of personal identity as a mere story we tell ourselves. We are each a fragment of the Universal Soul, and the actor's invisible rays galvanise healing through reminding us of the truth that we are as One with every other creature in God's eyes...And that we are forgiven.
But then love, especially of this perfect kind, seems so frustratingly disobedient, volatile and incomprehensibly vast. We can only begin to glimpse its immensity in contemplative stillness and a patient waiting on God. Even then, any opening requires incredible patience and courage, coupled with an unflinching faith that He will deliver us if we ask Him in all humility. We just have to accept that more often than not the magic will occur in the ways that feel less than safe or predictable. It's not that God is trying to wrongfoot the actor or the audience. It is because the audience not only have to fully engage with the actor/character's heart and mind, but actually be permitted to collaborate in his creative process for the act of holy theatre to come about. They must share the responsibility as co-creators.
This is why the ritual of Quaker meetings felt so instantly familiar to me from the start. It's the same quality of experience when I am performing with an ensemble before a 'gathered' audience as when I am allowing God's words to pass through me in ministry. I am not witnessing for me; I am speaking for, through and by means of the Holy Spirit in both situations. Everyone is present, and all sense the purity and the truthfulness of the Light in the moment. It is not me; it is not them. It's Him. It's all of us.
Of course nights in the theatre, just like Friend's meetings, can be tedious and hollow, devoid of inner life. Great theatre requires a unanimous yearning for open, honest, full and deep Communion. One has to avoid the temptation to trot out the tried and tested- reciting /hearing the text like a religious liturgy that has devalued spiritual potency-or is only relevant to one's own individual past egoic experiences. Half-heartedness, fear, self-deception, pride are all cancerous in this context. But, even without the presence of those carcinogens, pinning down the truth within the present moment can be like pinning down mist.
It can only be when the audience are connected, willing to have a rich and shared experience, that through the mist is revealed a foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven. But for this to happen one must have no attachment to results.
The essence of theatre is in the fleeting and ephemeral nature of process, of growth.
The growth into Love.
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