Diagram & Article - Conscious & Unconscious Play of One's Life
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article below diagrams
from Awareness Journal, Vol III, No 4, Summer/Fall 1995
Role Playing
A friend of mine is a playwright, and has written movie scripts, too. We were talking one day about certain demons that he lets annoy him, and he said to me, "Well, a Not-I is just an idea, right?" By this he meant, I presume, that it wasn't a living entity (which it's not) ... rather "just" an idea, so no big deal.
I said, "Well, yes ... it's an idea, but not 'just' an idea." Let's take for example an idea he might get on which to base a play. At the moment of inspiration, it is "just" an idea, to be sure. It will never be any more than that until he writes it down, crafts his script around it. Spending this attention/energy on it fattens it up quite a bit from just an idea. With his effort and some luck, others will feed his idea, too. They might promote it or him to the right people, who might further increase the girth of the idea by putting up some money, another form of attention. Let's say he sells the right people, and the play is produced. This will take lots more attention and money, from him, the producers, all the others taking part. If the play is an success, more people will feed more attention and money into it, and it could even run "indefinitely." While the play is going on, everyone suspends "reality" and agrees to pretend (and maybe a few identify so much they aren't even pretending) that the event is real.
So ... feed an idea with attention and it grows and takes up time and space and people pretend it's real. And the attention, time and money people put in that direction is not being put somewhere else. So they have chosen how to spend their assets, they have chosen to fatten and idea, which requires or consumes energy. Soon the idea almost seems to have a "life" of its own.
It's easy to see how Not-I's, though just ideas - and erroneous ones at that - get fat and take over because we suspend reality and pretend they are "Real Life."
I think this is a wonderful analogy for Life - our lives - and a good picture of how Not-I's take over, too. (Although my friend didn't think much of it.)
Within this little event of an idea taking form and consuming attention and stimulating people to "believe," are roles that are played. In this case, the playwright, the producer, the crew, the cast, the audience, the press, and no telling how the idea might even filter down and influence people who didn't even see the show directly, because it is being talked about (more attention).
You have heard that "Life is a stage." Each of us plays roles. We can, if we choose, write our own script and play only those roles we would like to play - but how many do? People WILL play roles, it is the nature of Life here, but, alas, most people, play their roles unconsciously. They have let others cast them into parts and they don't even know it. They finely hone these unconscious roles, and yet usually wouldn't recognize it if you handed them the script.
And of course, it's not just "they" who do this ... we all do.
Let's look at some roles people play,based on ideas - not on reality, it turns out, but just an (erroneous) idea. The Work is to examine our actions, see what is unconscious, founded on error. We don't want to judge it - condemn ourselves or praise ourselves. We just want to look, make conscious what has been automatic. We don't judge or condemn, we merely re-evaluate, which is to say, look at the role and determine, "Is this activity to my advantage? Is it even a role I WANT to play?" When we do this we really don't have to change anything. An hones evaluation will be responded to by consciousness, any needed correction will occur.
Idea: The purpose of living is to gain pleasure, attention, approval, appreciation, a feeling of importance and to avoid pain, being ignored, being rejected, feeling inferior or worthless.
Idea: Ensuring the above will keep me non-disturbed.
Idea: Complaining is an effective way of making the environment realign itself to my desires.
Idea: I have inviolable rights to pleasure on all levels and not to hurt on any level.
Idea: Pretending to be nice will effectively ensure my happiness.
Idea: Other people and institutions know much better than I do what I should do.
Idea: I am the cause of all discomfort in my life, if I change I will be comfortable.
Idea: Other people, things and events are responsible for my comfort.
When we shine a light on these ideas we see first of all that they don't really make any sense. Even worse than that is they conflict with each other. We can also see a huge Life Script written and "funded" will ALL our resources to produce a play all about misery and warfare, with me as the star of this tragedy.
If it weren't so boring, we could sit down and write a very predictable play around each idea.
Unconscious roles based on the above erroneous ideas are all "victim" and "tyrant," which, of course, depend on each other. We invest our lives in these, at a very great expense. This play is a flop!
After we have determined what roles we have developed, and re-evaluated them, then we can choose any other role in the world to play, and go for it. ANY role is available to us, we need just rough out a script and start acting. If we don't know which new role to pick, a good exercise might be to try the other side of the one we used to play. If you play Precious Little Girl who always needs "support," maybe you could play Confident Woman. "Just Poor Folks" might play the role of Wealth Unlimited for a week. Little Sickie can play Picture of Health, even if she has to fake it for a day or so. The Critic can try "Live and Let Live." Sounds fun, doesn't it? Break a leg!
