"It takes 20 years to become a master actor"

So said Sanford Meisner.
So the Master Actor is… what?

He is the actor who is connected to his Higher Self.

Prospero in The Tempest (2008)

The next question then is: How do I become this Higher Self?

This question has been one that I have spent the last 18 months trying to answer, certainly since Anna Karenina, and in some senses way before that- perhaps for as long as I have been alive. I can remember sitting in the Razed Curtain meetings trying to come up with a sanitised, acceptable version of what I think our work should have been about but I felt embarrassed to share my spiritual focus- for fear of not being business-minded or ‘realistic’. I made every effort to make my own version of the mission statement sound less wishy-washy but I could help but feel it just came across as vague and unfocused anyway.

I wouldn’t have the same problem now.

Much of the spiritual and artistic journey to becoming one's Higher Self consists of asking the right questions. Michael Chekhov would sometimes admonish his students for asking what he called "unborn questions", and I guess that for most the last 30 odd years I have been acting I have been asking unborn questions. It was only when I hit upon the Sanaya Roman books about Spiritual Growth and Personal Power that I began to realise that I had been barking up a series of wrong trees, seeking inspiration in the wrong places, putting too much faith in the guidance of others and not enough in my own inner wisdom for a start. The question how do I become my higher self strikes close to the one I really need to be asking when it comes to my acting; for if it truly is my vocation, or at least helps me to access the higher realms, then I have to open myself up to the answers such a question might reveal in order to align myself with and hopefully connect with the Divine Source.

And the first answer I got to this question was quite unexpected:

You already are your Higher Self!

It is the self, the Me that unifies all the limitless and infinite aspects of your divine soul, all the possible combinations and outcomes that are inherent and implicit in you, and could potentially communicate with the universe. The Higher Self is the access point for an infinite number of soul dimensions. With the right inner work this Higher Self can be made manifest in your work. But what then is “the right inner work”? Well first and foremost all this depends on you believing the incredible truth that this Higher Self is a reality, and not just an imaginative construct. As an actor you are used to attributing the imaginary circumstances and characters you inhabit with as much truth as you can so that they become true to the audience. It is about paring away the unnecessary, so that the higher values and qualities are revealed. Acting is a spiritual process that has much in common with the mystics journey of discovery which yields to a shocking and revolutionary principle that all notions of personal identity on our plane of existence is maya: illusion, that despite the apparent flaws in or nature we are each of us capable of being perfect channels for the divine, and allowing that Self to explore those selves through visualisation, imagination and the embodiment of the Ultimate in order to enlarge one’s sense of who one might be at a soul level. And the point is not so much what you do in your daily life or which profession you have. Whether you are a road-sweeper or a doctor, an office clerk or a waiter- well, it makes no difference really. What really matters is your “state of being,” the energy that you send forth, the energy that you are. It is not what you do but who you are that is the source of transformation. And as an actor you can be all these people and more.

Acting is one of the most effective tools available to mankind for channelling those inner, transcendent dimensions in an intensely creative and deeply inspirational form. It works on the same principles as the law of attraction we have heard and read so much about in recent years. Potentially, we are all nothing less than beings of gargantuan spiritual power, able to download extraordinary levels of wisdom, beauty and sublime insight. You can plug yourself into that power and download whatever you require for your journey- like a Blackberry with infinite memory. The responsibility is so scary that many cower and run from it: they pretend to themselves and the world they are mere artisans, and as Marianne Williamson says they choose to shrink so that others won’t be intimidated or humiliated, our deepest fear being the realisation that we are powerful beyond measure. But the power I am talking of does not humiliate other souls- though it may scare their egos into realising they have settled for far less than their divine inheritance! No: work that is generated and fuelled by this light gives other souls as Williamson says “permission to do the same”.

So how do you do this then?
Let me try and make a list. I love and loathe lists at the same time. Lists are made by the intellect, and tend to encourage a ‘ticky-boxy spirituality’: i.e. Do all this and, hey presto, all will be well. But there are no real shortcuts to this though, because your soul depths already operate by these rules. The trick is to align the spirit and the heart and the mind to all operate according to the same principles- only then can the power be made manifest through the following means. So then- the list:

What you must do with this power is...

1. Trust the universe, the divine will always support you, making your path lead ever higher. All you need do is believe.
2. Believe that help is given to you the moment you ask. Learn to listen for that voice. This is what your life has always been about, and you are so very close to the critical mass point where you explode with love. And ‘the semen of your being will come into the cunt of the universe’, as you once so eloquently said to Derek Pryor 25 years ago while high on lager, sulphate and magic mushrooms!
3. Develop the talent for listening to the loving thought as opposed to the fearful one.
4. Choosing honesty over pretence.
5. Root yourself in the heart of intuition and love, rather than the egoic, thinking mind
6. Feeling your own soul’s understanding of beauty is always preferred to society’s understanding of it. Always.
7. Access your playful inner child and lure him out of hiding.
8. Use your intuition with grounded discernment. Often it will tell you things that seem… well… obvious. Enter the imaginary body and feel the psychological changes imbue every cell and seep into your heart, mind and spirit.
9. Know that you really do create your own reality
10. Remember to connect to the divine source on a daily basis- meditate, pray, say hi and say thank you
11. Think always of service to others, rather than yourself, because you will otherwise remained mired in illusions and egoic thinking.
12. The goal is to live your highest life as highest self and you cannot help but serve others
13. Your goal, your higher purpose is to heal, to enlighten and encourage.

But our souls are immensely powerful- so potentially awesome in fact that we have created an illusion and then lived it as if it were real in order to accomplish larger, much more noble goals for ourselves. It doesn’t tend to work though because we become divided and separated from the Truth of Love which remains invisible.

A faithfully embraced and fully-committed heart-relationship with your higher self is required. When the connection with your higher self is at least as important and as real to you as any of your other relationships, once you trust it enough to follow and obey its guidance faithfully, you will experience “critical mass.” You are closer to achieving this than you ever have been in your life. The universe is starting to cooperate as never before as you align yourself to your inner connection to truth. Meaning and opportunity abound and multiply. Connection happens when you act on your vow of devotion to higher service- to the healing and enlightenment of others, rather than trying to accrue praise, money or nourishment for your own ego. When the Universe then trusts it can rely on you real transformation occurs. You now discover your hidden gifts and realise your astonishing untapped divine potential by logging onto that inner programme that’s been around since the universe’s beginning–your Soul. Following through on your inner guidance helps you become aware of incredibly precious and beautiful gifts that have remained buried in the secret corners of your soul from the beginning of time.

All actors- all souls!- have a common, universal and divine purpose (to learn, to grow, to serve etc.) as well as a specific purpose based on individual identity (to act, to make people laugh, to heal, to inspire, to comfort). This suggests that the individual, the personality or “ego” should not be “negated”, but actually accepted- and yes!- accentuated. You have been ashamed of the apparent “selfishness” of being an actor in the past. Your response to George Docherty’s email which had been intended as a message of support for applying to the RSAMD but which you interpreted as a reminder of your selfishness, illustrates better than anything else how much of a tender issue this is for you, despite all the inner work you have done to get you this far.

After all, the bridge between this world and the kingdom of heaven that many of us yearn for lies with each of us fulfilling our own life purposes, using our individual gifts and talents. Your gift which you have devoted your life to developing, Mark- your extraordinary, divine talent- is for acting. This is not selfishness though, because your soul has always known that despite the praise you get for it, despite the joy you get from doing it- it liberates and inspires others. How heartening it was to come across a review of the last play I performed in (Tango, in May) yesterday.

“The situation is saved by the stunning Mark Coleman as Stomil, Arthur's father. His relaxed acting and lovable wackiness makes him stand out among some indifferent and tame performances.” The Skinny

Stomil in Tango (2008)

You have worked towards seeing from the soul’s perspective for a long time now, Mark- and your spiritual vision is to sharpen still more. This review was a wonderful encouragement to keep on developing my talent along spiritual lines, especially after I had been feeling at a discouragingly low ebb these past few weeks, wondering why no one appeared to be offering me any acting roles. I loved the fact that I managed to make such a flawed and arrogant character “lovable”. But actually this is not really about ego (well, not much!), actually it is more about recognition that I am not wrong! and that somehow God has been working with me on this role all along. I committed to applying deep, spiritual principles learned and expanded from Michael Chekhov about the Higher Self and Love to my work on that role, and that it happened to amuse and thrill one other person- in this case a young Polish girl who happens to write for a freebie magazine. It sounds disingenuous I know but in the end that one response really does make that work all worthwhile. Her words filled me with pride- but a good pride; with a humble gratitude to God for her encouragement that I am travelling on the right road. It’s not selfish to feel this way. If it were then it would please me to have Marta’s direction and the other performances in the production slagged off. It so doesn’t. It really upsets me, in fact, and I think it must have upset Marta too. That is why I perfectly understand why she preferred to keep the review’s publication a secret from everyone involved in the production for the last 7 months.

This time ahead as you apply for the RSAMD offers you such amazing opportunity, as an explorer and a vehicle for truth and freedom. I am already thinking deeply about writing my dissertation about the Higher Self and its practical use to the actor. This inner power, the soul’s power based on love, is what will turn this planet around. The spirituality of acting is such an important area of research that many of the academics prefer to ignore. They are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The time for this ‘new’ way of being is NOW. You as an actor are to be part of this movement and ascension up to the next evolutionary level of the art and the society it influences and helps to change. You will go as high as you can imagine. Everything you can imagine becomes real from now on.

But still, your own emotional body is very sensitive to fear, to anger and aggression and to all strong sentiments which easily pull you out of your centre. This was illustrated in the way you responded to the Anna Karenina debacle last year. In trying to unravel exactly what went pear-shaped then you have been required to stop blaming others and instead take responsibility for the emotions you feel, examining them and following them back to their source(s). In this process of internalization you do not search for the cause(s) of your problems in the outside world anymore but you look for them within yourself. Thus you take responsibility for your own energy and that is one of the most important things you have been learning in your spiritual life and will continue to learn through your acting, teaching and directing too.

Prospero in The Tempest (2008)

There are 3 danger-areas for you.

Firstly- Spiritual anger (if that isn’t too much of an oxymoron!).

In the past I have interpreted this as a creative energy, a drive for perfection, but actually unless used in the correct way it can so easily become very destructive! The desire to help and change things often contains a form of spiritual anger although this may go completely unnoticed. After all you seem to simply “want the best” for other actors or for the audience. But surely there is anger inside you when you feel inclined to force somebody – no matter how subtly – to change their behavior or their emotions. You get very impatient and it takes you out of your centre, away from the creative source. Often you do not notice that the time is not yet ripe for change.

This inner rage and itch for perfection feels like inspiration but it takes you away from your soul. There was a secret meaning behind the suffering incurred during this time. Each person involved- Dean, Sarah, me and all the others were there to unfold, to express and to learn more about what it is to be human and spirit at the same time. Each one of us proceeded according to his or her own path of development. And I was being asked by God to respect this, to take a step backwards and to concentrate entirely on yourself, on your own light. Instead I banged my gavel in judgement. You vibrated hate and rage for what they were doing wrong. You took on the responsibility for being their moral and artistic compass because you didn’t trust that they had to find their own way. There was no need for you to stand on the barricades. There was no need for you to fight. You should have walked away when you realised it was happening, instead of staying out of a misplaced sense of loyalty, and egoic preservation of your desire to be proved right.

Roverini in The Talented Mr Ripley (2005)

It’s strange but even though acting should be about actions, the emphasis your way of working has is really not about doing but being. When your spiritual energy is in balance, the healing energy you send forth to others flows easily and effortlessly, without physical or mental exertion. It feels light and smooth, not exhausting to you. You find your flow. Things, ideas, inspiration and people show up as if by magic on your path and turn to you for healing.

Each time you lock yourself in your righteous indignation and anger, even if it concerns injustice or suffering that you find unbearable to witness, you need to have the courage and patience and wisdom to just step backwards and move into the center of yourself. A state similar to the one you get into when meditating. Enter the silence and accept that things are as they are. Accept that everything completes its own cycle and has its own development, including the people who are dearest to you. Set them free, as the Kinks song says. Trust that it is enough ‘just’ to be there.

You ended up being blamed for the fall out during Anna Karenina, but your desire to be right was what alienated everyone. Sarah accused me of trying to force my spiritual principles onto others. It was a humiliating realisation but many months later I was able to come to the realisation that she was damned right even though I had been appalled at being blamed for this at the time.

So much for Anger.

Then there is Melancholy.

Feelings of depression or gloominess originate from low self confidence. Intellectually perhaps you may understand perfectly well that you carry a spiritual light within, that you are a sensitive, compassionate and wise soul. But the wounded 3 year child inside you, still standing at the top of the stairs looking down at his mum, still yearns for recognition and appreciation from the outside world. You cannot deny that there is a part of you that craves external attention and safety. The trouble is you can never get enough of this. You can’t find the sort of recognition you really seek because you are different. Others can’t recognize the real you and therefore cannot acknowledge and nourish you.
Your wounded, inner child will never be healed by something from the outside but only by yourself, your own power and wisdom
You are very prone to this kind of spiritual melancholy. The answer is to rekindle your Inward Light in order for the heavens then to fan it into a raging fire again. This is where the Quaker thing has really helped you. The Quakers remind you you are light.

And the third obstacle after anger and depression is plain old Fear. Particularly the fear to do with a lack of trust in your own inspirations, feelings and intuitions. If you doubt your own feelings, you worry a lot and you invoke a whole series of emotions which take you further and further away from your centre
Fear blocks the actor’s intuition. When the intellect and the emotions gain the upper hand ican easily create stage-fright and chaos. The intellect and the emotions need the intuition, the heart as a foundation. Only then can they serve you in a useful way when you’re acting.

Pedagogus in Electra (2004)

Set yourself free from worry and to go back to your heart. What do you really feel underneath all those restless thoughts and confused emotions? In breathing calmly down to your base chakra you are able to go back to your foundation. Then you may feel a relief valve deep within, a point of silence beyond thought and emotion. You may then choose a certain thought or emotion.
…
Every time you make contact with this inner center and take a step backwards you will find a renewed clarity within your soul- something changes at a very deep level- however imperceptable. From there you can observe your feelings and emotions without being absorbed by them or attached to them. You can watch your anger and send it love. You can observe your depression and offer yourself a healing hand. You can see the smallness of your fear and send it the energy of deliverance and transcendence.

You have now an armoury of tools for countering the negative energies of anger, depression and fear. For instance, the silent worship of the Friends’ meetings, your spiritual reading, your prayer and meditation discipline, your spiritual journal, your acting, your teaching (Yes, incredible as it may seem…teaching- But working with teenagers alerts you to all three of these spiritual pitfalls, and forces you to face them and overcome them. At last this time is coming to an end and you are going to conquer the limiting ideas of having to be a guy named “Mark”, of being anything somehow less than perfect, of being just material or thought energy. You can be Love and Light).

This is all heavenly nourishment you have been given just in the last 2 or 3 years.

It may be a cliché but there is much truth in it: as an actor you have access to the soul’s multidimensionality and in fact live many, many lives. At an early age you adopted the personalities and tics and habits and gestures of those closest to you. Your mother worried that you seemed too easily influenced, that you appeared not to have a strong enough sense of who you were (In actually fact she was saying that she was afraid I would never make an impact on the material world if my ego as so apparently swayed by the influence of others. She would say, “What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you got a mind of your own?”) But people like me are in fact powerful once they find their niche at least because they are not quite so trapped in their identity. I could morph, and this scared your mother, because she didn’t realise who you were any more. She identified the Mark she knew with the everyday Mark and not the soul that inhabited his body, the larger and universal energies that could take up residence within his energy field and transform him into many different people. Some of those energies were acceptable to her and others were not. But you were able to learn that you can shed your own egoic attachments when necessary- even for a little while- and can glimpse and show others something of the human’s potential to be Godlike and become anything they imagine themselves to be. In time you learned how to shed those energies once they had served their useful purpose. This is an incredibly powerful gift, and it is often really only a glimpse that is given, as if by flashes of lightning if you’re lucky, but then it is through acting you are able to gain far more access than many others, who are not able to live a life where they can connect with their own true life purpose and see it from so many different perspectives. In your case, as an actor you live many lives, inhabiting many dimensions, many hearts and minds. It is a tremendous privilege and it IS what you came to this earth to do. Teaching has been about trying to show others how to do this, but this coming year you are going back to actually doing it. You have done your time, serving others through the dense fog that is teaching and we in heaven have now seen that the time is now right for you to go back into the profession. But preparing for all of that will involve you going to college for the foreseeable future, getting training.

So then, how can you be the truly multidimensional, spiritually protean actor God intended you to be? How does one employ one’s multidimensionality in such a way that one can move freely through the many dimensions and levels of being and yet not lose touch with one’s divine spirit?
Being multidimensional from a place of wisdom and awareness: that is your chosen spiritual destiny. It is your destiny to become a fully conscious multidimensional creator with God. This is the path of the mystic.
Release the illusion of linear time and become more than just your body. Your purpose in this regard is fulfilled through acting. Do not be ashamed of this.
Acting gives you the opportunity of being consciously multidimensional.
But when you get stuck in holding limiting beliefs such as “I’m not good enough,” “That isn’t done,” “This’ll just go wrong,” etc., you sink into the illusion of separation, the earth-bound oblivion. You are trapped in the quagmire of linear time, the illusion that you are a body, the illusion that you are separate from God. In this way, the soul gets temporarily “stuck” and then in the habit of dwelling in the lower realms of creativity. Settling for less. The soul forgets about its true origins, its divine freedom... and begins to die.
Acting is your way of remebering your own divinity.
You become an aspect of God.
An actors using his higher self is not so much a person as an energy vortex or pattern with an individual flavor.
The Holy Spirit externalises and expresses aspects of Himself in this way, driven by the sheer joy of creativity.
And your Higher Self makes the CHARACTER a unique soul.
Not even God can be entirely sure of the results. I like to think this is what He craves of the actor: not to know everything he will do, but to experience something new! You become a co-creator with Him, stepping into an empty space, , a space of potentiality, a space of unending possibilities.
The actor finds out that he can create many forms and live in them. Every form you inhabit as a conscious actor has a certain angle or perspective to it which enables “unformed consciousness” to experience things in specific ways through the embodiment of the imagination.
At this very moment, there is a layer of pure divine energy inside you, a layer of pure Light. There are also layers of confusion and fear inside you. But you can choose, at any moment, to be the Light self, the angel that you are. This is not something you need to develop, it is simply a part of who you are.

You are beginning to realise you no longer need to look up to spiritual masters, guides or angels. There is not one authority above you. You yourself become God and angel.

The easiest way to get in touch with your Light self is through connecting with the layer of pure Spiritual consciousness within you. And you now know hot to do this- by becoming silent on inner and outer levels. This silence is always present within you; you only need to become aware of it.

You are what some spiritual writers would call a lightworkers, working towards a greater awareness of oneness with Spirit. You have travelled into duality a very long way in your youth, and now you can hear a voice calling you, telling you you are ready to come back Home. And Home is not a static place of bliss, but a dynamic, creative reality of divine, multidimensional life filled with joy and light.

Keep your longing and determination alive- trust that impulse, for it will bring you Home.

You are a lightworker. This is better than being a journeyman actor. It elevates you, and lifts you above the thick fog that has often surrounded you in egoism, fear, anger, weary despair and the desire to prove yourself.

Sculpt with light and feel the love!

Acting reminds you of all the levels we exist on and how they come together to create what it is to be in this miracle we call life.

King Lear (2006)

The Master Actor first teaches himself, and then teaches his audience the law of attraction the truth that the light of faith combined with the compassionate will to Love can and does move mountains.

A long blog this, but I'm buzzing at the moment

:-)