Awakening Is A Choice

 

Nobody has to awaken. The greatest characteristic of the foolish actor is his or her ability to believe they are the character and not the actor. This is exactly why Shakespeare referred to the actor as the fool. The wool was pulled over the actor’s eyes, by himself.

This is the choice most people seem to make. Why awaken when I am enjoying the dream?

For the awakened, there is a dance; the dance has to do with yielding your belief system to the alternating realities. You find yourself in the very doorway; between the worlds. You might pray to an unknown God in one moment, and, in the next, you might believe that everything that happens in the future is up to you.

A fool, in this sense, is not a stupid person at all. A fool is someone who has chosen to believe in the unreal world of forms. The term may seem degrading, but fooling oneself is a part of the drama.

If we never embrace the performance or the role, we would not grow as the character we portray. There are those who never come out of character because the role is actually where they want to live. There are those who refuse to play the part they’ve been assigned to play. You will know them when you meet them. This group seems checked out. They are in a way. They are the ones who dreamily sing, “Nothing really matters to me.”

And when they say this, they mean it. No thing results materially for them. This is not a good look for the show.

The best performers are the ones who succeed in bringing a belief system to their role. You will know them too. They are completely confident in whatever they do or say. This is not easily accomplished either. This is not someone who is great at acting as if they believe in their role; this is the person who actually does believe in the role. This person is actually bringing the most to the drama. Their self-belief fleshes out their character and the audience buys it.

The wearing of a mask is to assume the part.

When I was working as a background actor, I would always observe the way in which people seemed to change as soon as wardrobe and makeup got through with them. In many scenes, we had police officers. It was so odd to observe the behavior of these guys once they had a uniform on. They suddenly started acting cop-like. And everyone in our holding rooms would even begin to react to them as if they were real law enforcement. Everyone would straighten up and guard their behavior and language when a person would walk by in a police uniform. Not only that, but the actor would walk more upright and authoritatively.

I was on one set where we had aliens. Two guys were given glittery attire and their faces where painted white. Their hair was white and their eyes were red. These guys were so odd looking that whenever they walked by, everyone would just stare. The guys were in on this and they started behaving as aliens. They kept very straight faces and they were rigid and robotic. They started assuming the very character they’d been dressed to portray.

In Hollywood, if you really want to succeed, you have got to believe you are who you are portraying; at least while you are acting.

Life’s drama is not very different. Those who appear to succeed are the ones who have “dressed for success”. It is not just about your attire; you have got to slip into the part.

Of course this ties right back into “The Feeling is The Secret” as Neville explained.

There was a time when I had $120 in cash in my pocket, and no more money anywhere else. I traded the twenty-dollar-bill into twenty-one-dollar-bills and I put the C note on top. I put the wad of cash in a money clip and it looked just like I had a nice stash.

It was not really long after this that I could actually replace the ones with hundreds and I really did have that stash of cash. I firmly believe that it was my own belief in the bigshot role I was portraying that moved me into a more bigshot-like role.

I used to call this confidence, but I really think it is more about belief. Confidence may or may not include the actual belief. If you don’t have quite enough belief, confidence appears cocky and that does not usually work.

Confidence alone provides a path for the audition process; confidence with belief takes the interviewee to the next level.

Do I believe I am a fit or do I just have confidence that someone might be convinced of the idea that I fit?

There is a barely noticeable distinction here. But it is nearly impossible to play any part if I do not believe in it.

There is a very good reason why Jesus said that The Kingdom of Heaven was made up of people who could embrace the child inside. When we were children, we could easily pretend that we were any character at all. Our earlier belief-systems were exceptionally adaptable. As we mature, and try to fit societal expectations, we lose the childish abilities and replace them with form-norms. We eventually learn to act right. By the time you are 20, you are supposed to act like an adult with an education. There is sometimes a small window for the next few years, where people alternate between adulthood and childhood. Ironically, if someone continues to behave like a child, we might even say they have forgotten themselves. However, this is not true at all. To forget oneself is to step completely out of who they are and into who they are expected to be; forgetting who they really are. When someone is being childish, we should say, “Ah, you remember.”

What is The Kingdom of Heaven?

That’s the potential surrounding everyone. How do you enter into this realm and take advantage of the limitless potential there? Belief.

There is no other way. If you cannot believe, potential is not revealed.

The thing we often miss about our childhood is our ability to pretend. I had a plywood fuselage with a steering wheel, buttons and levers. For any adult, it looked like an unfinished box, with all kinds of knobs attached to it, but to me, it was a fighter-jet. My jet was incredibly fast and I had a lot of firepower. Sure, I would get shot at, but my craft was reinforced and the bullets were just annoyances. It is nearly impossible for me to remember this role as I experienced it then. I am an adult now and I share in the vision of a motionless, pine box. But it was more than pretending when I was actually in that moment, in that cockpit, holding those controls. I was a real war hero. I could see the enemy flying near me and shooting at me. I was in the sky. I was over the Pacific and no longer in the back yard. I now think of that drama as the wild imagination of a young boy, but when I was the imaginer, it was real; I believed it.

This is the answer to potential. Nothing – and I do mean nothing – is impossible for him who believes.

Our future is even more filled with potential than we could ever imagine. It has always been more than you could ever think or imagine. All things are possible.

Neville stressed the importance of “catching the feeling”. He was always looking for new ways of saying this. Based on his lectures, Neville seemed to be really good at assuming things as if they were true. Of course, when I hear him speak in those old recordings, I often attribute his rambling to an imagination gone astray. However, Neville asked one question often: “What would it be like if it were true?”

I do actually know what he meant. I knew what it was like to fly an actual fighter-jet over the South Pacific. I never asked myself to pretend; I assumed it was real. The difference is striking, but extremely difficult to express with words. I can pretend even now. However, I have the hardest time believing.