Comment:
Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Sailor, Rich man, Poor man, Beggar man, Thief.
A role is anything you identify with, which has a beginning and an end. It becomes the past and moves into the future. It squeezes out the present in between. It is anything that can be put after “I am....” or “I was...” or I will be...” It is the dwelling place of the Ego.
You are not born playing a role, unless the karmic pressure is enormous.
Being born is being part of the continuous flow of reality in present time.
Reality lasts forever as a variable continuum and is always there underneath the roles (you can have cancer while acting Hamlet or stockbroker) or between roles (you can have a real broken nose if, between sitting waiting for a bus and jumping on the bus, you trip and fall on your face).
Roles have beginnings and ends. Reality is forever...
So what is Reality?. Buddhists call it Suffering. Some call it “fun”, some a “drag”, a “veil of tears”, an “accident”, “a wondrous miracle”..
First of all, it is Not its Name. It is whatever is truly here and now at all times. Call it what you like...
Roles can be projected onto others (so that they will conform to a role you yourself are playing). An excuse is a role. “That is the enemy! Therefore I can (have to) kill him.”
Postscript:
While you are playing a role, you draw in memories, “facts”, environment, and especially people that will support it. Or, if all else fails, will OPPOSE it.
Even if your role is a monologue (in the centre of) an empty stage, the least you can get by with is one member of audience.
Otherwise, the caretaker will come in and turn off the lights.
Curtains.
In the dark tabernacle,
ReplyDeletea shaft of sunlight
illumines the heart
and shines through
a million years of dust.
Clouds and clouds of swirling
dust
spiralling
through the light
which spills in a golden pool
on damp, grey stone and rust.
When the light moves
it does not take the dust there to it.
When the dust slides into darkness,
the light does not pursue it.
Why then does the heart invent
burdens to shoulder?
(Why does the heart consent
to the illusion of growing older?)
Current findings – simple, yet not easy to bring to perfection
ReplyDeleteIf it is an artificial role that one plays in life, comparable to a role on a stage or in a film, one should try to avoid it.
If it is a duty or a responsibility, one should struggle not to identify with it, so that it does not become part of the falsely understood ego entity.
Sometimes one has to do things; they play an important role. One makes a good job of these things and does not allow the mind to add anything to the ego.
The impression is: The closer one listens to communications from the Centre, the wearier one is of (false) roles. One answers to help, not to play an important role.
So the questions one should ask oneself are:
Why does one really do things?
What is really one´s goal?
Why does one really do things?
Deletea. compulsion (conditioning, karma).
b. restlessness (result of karma).
c. to attain one’s real goal..
What is really one´s goal? Eternal Peace.
There is not necessarily anything wrong with roles. Roles rise and fall like all things (physical and mental) in the manifested universe. The problem arises when, usually humans, become attached to roles as an identity.
ReplyDeleteActually, playing roles without being attached to them as an identity usually means the role is more effectively performed. We can see this clearly in the animal world when they breed. Animals don't need sex education classes, midwives, doctors or nurses, kindergarten teachers etc. They instinctively give birth, protect and educate their offspring until the young ones are old enough to fend for themselves. Then, the parenting role stops. We don't see the male blackbird addressing it's 6 year old son in the garden: 'Now what are you going to do with your life? Don't forget your mother and I spent so much time and effort raising you! Why don't you go to university? Get a better job etc...'
In contrast, the human world is full of examples of people clinging onto roles that have passed long ago except in their memories. Paris Match is full of them. And attachment to things that arise and then pass away can only mean one thing. Suffering. Suffering for as long as there is grasping.
If ethical cracks
ReplyDeleteare seen in a role
let go... let go...
no excuses.
(Let´s go before it´s gone again! says Gnome.)
In some languages "he or she is playing a role" means he or she is acting like an actor, i.e. acting as someone he or she is not. It may even be seen as deceit.
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