Setting the Stage
Get ready.
Get ready to toss away any prior assumptions you may have about life and
where it came from. About where we are going. About who you are. About what
you are. About why you are and how you are.
Let's take a trip.
And yet we are not going anywhere. It will be a mental journey. But we will
have to travel light. Just the bare essentials will do. So find a room in
your brain that you are not using. A warm comfortable room. Clear all the
furniture out of it. We will put only a mattress on the floor and a cushion
against the wall at which you can rest your back. A wooden floor would be
best, I think. Maybe a pine ceiling too. That would be my choice. But you
decorate it as you want. It's your room after all.
Place a candle in the centre of the room. An everlasting candle that we need
not tend or replace. For we will be occupied with more important matters.
Close your eyes now and picture the room. Go on. The secrets of the universe
deserve a contemplation space for appreciation.
So design a room now in your mind.
Ok. Shall we begin.
Are you ready for the secrets of the universe? It will be so easy. This is
not a edifice of complexity but an adventure in simplicity. We will start
with an eye-opener. First close your eyes and picture that mental room
again. Then open your eyes.
That’s it. The insight begins. In raising your eyelids and displacing your
mental picture with the real vision is concealed the deepest mysteries of
existence. Too simple for you?
Let me show you. We will start with the eyelids.
William Shakespeare referred to this insight when he said, “All the world’s
a stage and all the men and women merely players.”
Does the raising of an eyelid remind you of anything? Slow the movement down
until it takes five seconds for the eyelid to lift. Now it should remind you
of the raising of the curtain at the start of a play.
It is the dream of daytime.
The play is as old as the word "catharsis."
In our lives we are players, playing in the greatest play ever constructed.
The stage play is a bracketed reality of beginning, middle and end. The
beginning is when you open your eyes. Raising the curtain symbolises the
opening of the eyes. Shakespeare was a genius who realised the play was
central to human experience.
What happens when we watch a play? We are drawn in to the action. We suspend
disbelief. The same happens when we are enveloped in a film or a book.
Within a very short time we find ourselves identifying with the characters
to such an extent that the story can easily move us to tears or frighten us
silly. We find ourselves enmeshed in the play so deeply that we may entirely
forget who we are- such is our identification with the characters. The world
of our waking reality is completely displaced by the play. The reverse of
this process is the real world displacing your mental room when you open
your eyes.
The ease with which outer and inner realities can displace and replace each
other is the fundamental nature of our human playscape. We are players.
Reality is our play. Children know this and instinctively want to “play.
Our phrase for insight is: “that was an eye-opener!” Insight is a cathartic
revelation. Reality is a story . The structure of that story is seen in
language and landscape. All we have to do is look.
When the curtain rises we are straight into the action. The characters will
no doubt tell us something of the events leading up to the start of the
play, but this past is implied. We do not see the characters being born as
infants and growing up, for this detail is not necessary to our appreciation
of the play. Nor was it necessary for us who found ourselves as babies, born
to a world with an already mature cast of characters.
The same applies to the scenery at the rear of the stage. Romeo and Juliet
act out their passion against a backdrop that is but a painted scene on a
canvas. The moon and stars are there for effect and mood; to set the scene.
The play’s the thing- not the scenery. Man is the measure.
So, when the curtain lifted on the stage of Earth did the action start at
the first bacteria, or when the first human walked on stage?
That much we can tell from an eyelid. What more can the rest of the body
tell us? What more can mountain and lake tell us? They whisper the secrets
that build the Science of Meaning. A system of symbolic wisdom built on
study of the architecture of body, landscape and mind . The structure of our
bodies reveals our origin to us. As an eyelid becomes a curtain, so an eye
becomes….?
Amazing what you can see when you open your eyes.
Isn’t it?
Years ago I practised taekwondo karate. Before a class, I first did
limbering up exercises. We should try a mental equivalent. What shall we be
loosening up?. Value rigidity, that’s all. We get too attached to our
worldview. As children we are able to easily adjust our reality map, but as
we grow older we loose the flexibility of saplings and our minds become
rigid. So let’s loosen up.
If you are a conservative, then pretend for a while you are a rabid liberal.
If you believe in Jesus, then imagine yourself as an atheist. Go on. It’s
just a game. You can revert to your normal beliefs when the exercise is
over. If the Bhudda is your guru, then try kneeling to worship Allah for a
while. Scary? Don’t worry. If you are a Protestant then imagine that the
Pope is actually as infallible as…as you are! If you believe in Heaven then
visualise a world with no hereafter. Write down a list of your ten most firm
beliefs and match these with their polar opposites. Try believing in these
opposites for one minute each. During that minute believe the opposite
firmly and without doubt.
If this makes you laugh or feel uncomfortable, then this is only to be
expected. After all, we are exercising a mind muscle that is usually
stretched only by comedians, orators and re-runs of old Star Trek episodes.
But mental flexibility will be needed for some of the insights to come.
Let’s start now.
love
Fintan Dunne
findunne@iol.ie
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