maanantai 11. maaliskuuta 2013

Days 170-171: Childhood dreams of fame




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A friend got an opportunity via his school to get into a situation where he competed with hundreds of others for a diploma in acting which is internationally accepted as a sign of qualification. He was one of the five people that were granted the diploma – out of a thousand applicants. In the final evaluation phase he had met a jury consisting of Hollywood's A-list movie directors.

Now, as I heard this I was very happy for him and proud of him. But as this feeling of “I'm so proud of him / happy for him” continued, I asked myself why I wanted to hold onto an experience of success that wasn't mine – I was living through another adopting his victory as mine through sympathy – and I realized that I was jealous for never having such an opportunity myself and feeling that I had “lost” something and was turning my back on stuff I really wanted.

I've had an intense and a nerve-wrecking period of a few months where I have been going through my relationship to theatre, the position/role of theatre in society, the function of theatre as a tool and what I would like to do with(in) theatre; what do I see to hold enough relevance to be “worthy” of my limited time and effort.

One thing I have especially had trouble with is my relationship towards the future dreams I have created for myself, because I am at war with everything I have programmed myself to strive towards. This has been good because I have had a chance to re-evaluate the choices I have made in my childhood and teens, but now I'm no longer able to tell head from tail as I have no idea whether I'm suppressing my ”true self” or simply facing the unavoidable resistance towards change.

When I was a teen all of my friends and family thought that I would become a famous and successful actor/singer and they encouraged me to do so. I disagreed. I told them I wanted to keep art as a hobby and do something else for a living (around that time I wanted to be a journalist). I remember already then feeling the dishonesty I spoke these words through – I just didn't have the tools nor the will to face it then – which means that I have suppressed my desire to be a famous and successful actor/singer ever since teenage, if not longer.

When I was a child (9-10) we had a “band” with my friends and we would dream about fame and glory. We never got any music done even though I composed songs, because we didn't really know how to play, and so all we ever did was dream and fantasize. So back the I was not yet ashamed of my desire to be famous/successful.

I have memories of situations where I have learned what amounts of work becoming famous would actually require, not to mention money and luck, and I remember seeing myself “unable” to do all this work. For example, I was watching an artist perform on stage in the TV (Britney Spears on one of her world tours) and my mother told me that in order to dance and sing like that simultaneously I would really need to exercise more. This was her way of trying to motivate me to exercise, which I was really reluctant to do – and instead of deciding “So that's what it takes? Yes, I'll do it!” I thought that it was too much effort, that I could not do it, and that I would thus have to give up on my dreams.

So as I have suppressed this desire with the belief that being a pro would be too demanding – that “I don't have what it takes” - now that I have shown myself that I am actually capable of the hard work (as it is but simple acts of consistency) the desire re-surfaces because now I see that “I do have what it takes”. As I have suppressed it for years and years the accumulation makes it more and more intense and all the more difficult to face without plunging head-first into the desire and going along with the current.

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As I am now here the experience of the desire has faded and I see that it was in fact not real. It only appears every now and then and when it does I participate in it fully – when the desire is triggered (usually through jealousy) I instantly cross over some threshold of acceptance and allowance. I haven't yet seen how exactly this happens.

There's a lot more to deal with in my relationship towards theatre and I have laid out an outline of specific questions I need to answer to myself. I will share the process thereof. Now I will focus on what I have written here about dreams, self-image and future projections.



I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to create a future image of myself based on the idols I admired.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to decide what/who I will be in the future as it was encouraged to find a “calling” for oneself (a profession, a passion, a career) – not realizing that once I have already decided what/who I will be in some future moment I will no longer be here participating in each and every moment of breath preceding that future moment, not making decisions based on that which is HERE but blindly aiming to a goal that I set based on things I had only seen others do but which I had never done myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to admire the artists I listened to on CD's, watched in the TV and saw in magazines because I believed my interpretation of what their lives were like which I made based on what the media told me – not realizing that this was never the full story of the lives these people actually lived.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to perceive and believe that the artists I admired lived a life of glamour, fun, enjoyment and “being loved” because this is how I interpreted what was shown of their lives in the media – and I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a desire to have this kind of a life for myself because I perceived myself to lack all of that which made their lives so wonderful.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to create a desire to be famous because I perceived and believed that famous people were accepted, appreciated, admired and loved and saw myself to lack all this.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold on to the perception that I am not accepted, appreciated, admired or “loved” as I have held onto the desire to be famous so that I could reach all this – not realizing that all the acceptance I need is right HERE within and as myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to perceive and believe that I was not “loved” for who I was. [How this came about, I don't know – but I think this has been a fundamental point in all of my early childhood development that has contributed to my personality creation process.]

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that I need to become “more” than who I am (who I perceive myself to be) to gain/win acceptance from others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to plan out my future in my childhood and teenage years and to follow this plan unquestioned in my adult life as I have believed that this is my “path” as my “calling” which I need to follow to fulfill my “purpose” - not realizing that I am living out a story in which I play the lead and NOT actually living a life in the physical as breath where my every move isn't dictated by what I have decided years and years in the past but where my movement is decided and directed HERE based on that which is here now and not based on that which was in the past.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe the beautiful lie that everyone has a path set out for them to follow in life, not realizing that living according to this belief limits one from seeing all the numerous possibilities present in each and every moment as one only sees the possibilities that serve the story one is living as “the path”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I am limited to the skills I gathered as a child.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself based on the skills I have gathered as a child.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that only the skills gathered as a child have any relevance because they have been learned during a period of time when learning new skills is fast, efficient and effortless – not realizing that even though learning gets slower and more difficult as one ages the skills learned with more strain and effort are of relevance as well because they are what's here now as one is able to re-create oneself for as long as one is alive.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that because I learned to sing, dance and act at an early age these are the primary skills I should devote my time, effort and passion to because I have learned them during a time when I defined and refined my self-image to fit into the society in which people live as stories within their minds instead of as physical beings with a mind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to want to be a celebrity because they got to perform for large audiences, wear fun clothes, travel around the world, pose for photographs and do all the fun singing and dancing that I too enjoyed and get money for it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the artists I admired were living a life of fun at the expense of others as I did not see the big picture of why there are celebrities, what they represent, what their function in the world system is and how all of that show is funded.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not question the position of celebrities as those who “get to” have fun all the time (or at least present a life of fun) as opposed to those who have “normal” lives as I did not see the separation and inequality here because of self-interest.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to be famous for the sake of being famous without taking into consideration what the disempowering consequences are of having a world system where a chosen few are elevated for others to admire (to compare themselves to) within the thoughts “I could never do that” / “they must be something special”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see the elitism in being entitled to a profession that serves no concrete purpose but only that of self-interest and “inspiring others” to do the concrete stuff so that I wouldn't have to.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that those who have certain skills are entitled to a profession of self-interest as I have been at the winning end of this deal as I have been lucky enough to gather these skills in my childhood.



I commit myself to create my future based on that which is HERE as I see, realize and understand that everything in this reality is in constant flux and that thus everything that is not here (but instead in the past/future) is not a valid basis for decisions as they do not in fact exist anymore/yet.

I commit myself to expand my skills and consequently myself by taking on new challenges outside of my comfort zone as well as refining the skills I already have, as I see, realize and understand that there are no limits to how much a person can do and learn other than those of practical reasons (such as time and aging).

I commit myself to realize that fame in itself has no other value than that of practical value – when one is widely known one is widely heard and seen, and this is a position of great responsibility not to be abused.

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