Friday, August 7, 2015

The Actor

Worrying won't stop the bad stuff from happening,
it just stops you from enjoying the good.

I was watching "Road Hard" the other day, which is about an aging stand-up comedian who had to decide on whether to stay in the show-biz in glamorous LA, or moving in with his new girlfriend in a sleepy New Hampshire town. Luckily for him he chose to do the spiritual thing and went for love instead of money and fame, but this note isn't really about that; it is about the observation that actors have the ability to project their imagined personality. Adam Carolla looked incredibly old as the struggling comedian, but young and energetic when he fell in love again later in the movie.

Actually we spiritual travelers are actors too. How often do we hear the mind bubbling, "you will fail". "you are deluding yourself", "the world is out to get you". Yet, we keep going despite it. Especially when we interact with others we do the opposite of what the voice has in mind. We demonstrate to ourselves and them that we are not this voice in our head. A noisy commentary is running in the back of our mind, but we act as if it is not real. Perhaps even stranger than that, while we feel old when life throws the scary and uncertain stuff at us, but we don't look it to others. It is as if the soul is shining through just as the ego is throwing a tantrum. Truth of the matter is, we don't have to act at all. All we have to do is to recognize the impostor called ego and be our Self.

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