The Metaphor of the Actor, the Script and the Audience Teaches Us Everything We Need to Know
Hint: You're the one watching the movie.
I’ve written this many times: The central objective of spiritual growth, inner peace, achieving nirvana – call it whatever you want – is realizing who we are…and who we aren’t.
That’s it. Do that and we’re on our way.
Unfortunately, achieving that realization ain’t easy. If it were, there’d be a lot fewer people flipping each other off on the highway or storming out of the kitchen after their spouse infuriates them.
Fine. So we’ve established two things: 1. Realizing who we are is super important; and 2. Doing so is really hard.
That being the case, I’m always on the lookout to make this realization thing easier to understand and therefore easier to achieve.
My goal for this article
So the goal of this piece is for you to finish reading and say, “Oh, okay. Now I get it.” Then begin using that self-knowledge to start doing the work of realizing your true self.
Which brings us to this acting metaphor. This one clarifies the entirety of the landscape.
Here’s the deal. We spend our childhoods and into adulthood experiencing all kinds of things.
A huge percentage of them pass right through us never to be felt or heard from again. Like watching an uneventful episode of Melrose Place when we were fifteen. We watch it, go to bed and move on with our lives, never to be affected by that hour of TV again.
The experiences that stick with us
But a sliver of our experiences stay with us. Some good – you won the election for Student Body President in high school – and some bad – your parents went through an ugly divorce when you were thirteen, just as you were going through the throes of adolescence.
As we develop, year after year, this thing called an ego forms in our minds. Its motivation, contrary to popular perception, is noble: It wants to protect us from all the bad things that have happened to us and wants to get more of the good stuff that came our way.
So what does the ego do? It writes a script. And then directs the movie.
Who is the actor?
Who is the star of this movie? In other words, who is the actor acting out the script?
Our distracted consciousness, that’s who. Without this ego script playing out, our consciousness would simply do what it’s supposed to do: Be aware of what’s before it in the present moment.
Like eating our cereal at breakfast. And tasting it. Or looking at a beautiful, majestic tree through our office window. Or being completely present in the conversation we’re having over a glass of wine with our best friend whose marriage is in trouble.
The ego writes powerful material
The biggest problem facing virtually every human being on planet Earth is that this script that the ego has written is so alluring and powerful that it distracts our consciousness from all those things I just mentioned.
We’re not tasting the cereal because the script tells us we need to worry about the work presentation we have to give in two hours. Why did the ego include this in your script?
Because your parents, who grew up during the Great Depression, scared the crap out of you throughout your childhood that poverty and starvation lurked around every corner unless you worked hard and succeeded.
That being the case, it’s no wonder your mind is fixated on your presentation and not your cereal. You get the drift.
We think we’re the actor
The problem we all have is we think that who we are is this actor and character acting out this script.
The ego writes it and then says, “Action!” and we dutifully and unquestioningly play out the scene…as if it were real.
What none of us realize is that it’s just a script. It’s fiction.
It’s something the ego came up with to protect us from the big, bad world out there.
What our journey is
So the bulk of our journey is about realizing that we are not the actor playing out this role.
Okay, fine. If we’re not the actor, then who are we?
We’re the person sitting in the theater watching this movie while devouring a large, buttered popcorn, a Buncha Crunch and one of those 200 ounce cokes the theaters sell these days!
We’re the audience
Seriously, we are the consciousness watching this egoic play play out.
If we want to realize the real us, it begins with understanding this construct.
We’re born, we experience things, we hold onto the notably good and bad, then the ego writes the script for us to act out.
And until we realize that the real us is the person in the audience watching the movie and not the actor on the screen, life is going to be the same old up and mostly down mess it is for most of humanity.
What we need to do
The next logical question is, how do we switch from being the actor on the screen to the viewer in the theater?
The answer to that question comprises the whole of the spiritual journey.
Because that’s what it’s all about: Going from the ego-distracted consciousness that’s stuck in the fictional movie to the consciousness watching it.
First, become aware
How do we do that? I’ll say it again: Step one is simply realizing that you’re the actor playing out a fictional role. It’s not real and it’s not you.
My favorite Eckhart Tolle teaching is apropos here:
“Awareness is the greatest agent for change.”
Then we go about the daily work of letting go of all that story material the ego is using to write its script. How do we do that?
Remember that guy nervously chowing down on his cereal lost in fearful thoughts about his work presentation?
His work lies in becoming aware that his mind has drifted into worry. Then stopping and realizing he’s only doing that because his script, influenced by his doom and gloom parents, is calling for him to do that.
But that feeling has been lodged deeply in his psyche for decades and it’s not going to vanish in a moment.
The four steps
So here’s what he does:
1. Recognize what’s happening – the ego wants him to play out a scene it has written.
2. Relax as best he can, all over.
3. Lean away from the scared, fearful feeling that has arisen.
4. Let the feeling rise up and out of him.
And he, and we, rinse and repeat that scenario as much as possible for the rest of our lives in innumerable situations that arise.
I would suggest that when one of your emotional buttons gets pushed, you immediately imagine yourself sitting in a theater watching whatever scene has just come up. Heck, make it fun and light by seeing yourself eating the popcorn, et al.
The key is to do everything in your power to remove yourself from the fictional scene playing out in front of you.
The takeaway
You’re not an actor in a fictional play.
You’re a high being that is utterly fantastic on every level.
The work of your life is realizing that.
Aaaaaand scene.