It's All In the Playing (21 page)

“What’s going on, Chris?” I said. “I’m a little frightened.”

“Go into the pain of breathing,” she said. “Let the images rise.”

I tried to relax and allow the pictures to come. Instead of pictures I got an answer from Higher Self.

“Love in the human body is congested because the body is a vehicle of carbon,” said Higher Self.

“Carbon?”

“Yes. Carbon is the lower frequency of silica which is crystal. It is difficult to resonate to divine love in bodies of carbon. You are on the earth plane to raise the frequency of carbon to the frequency of crystal, which will act as a consciousness amplifier. When your consciousness is raised, the love feelings are not congested because you are resonating to the Divine Source.”

As soon as Higher Self ceased talking, the picture of my stonelike body lying on the slab returned. Immediately my body was more pained than before. I squirmed around on the table. I couldn’t get comfortable.

“You are back with the slab?” asked Chris.

“Yes,” I answered. “And it’s godawful. I wish I could work out this slab thing once and for all. It’s always in my mind but I can’t work through it.”

“Well,” said Chris, “go into the body on the slab.”

“I don’t want to,” I answered. “I’ll be stuck again.”

“Then go to the time when you broke free. You know you did.”

I can’t.

“Yes, you can.”

I squirmed around on the table, jarring several of the acupuncture needles loose.

“I don’t want to be here,” I said. “I want to quit. I want to get up.”

“Of course you do,” said Chris. “Because you are about ready to break through. You are coming to the real you who is still feeling congested about love—which is what the stone body represents. You won’t accept and embrace real love until you break up the congestion.”

“Okay,” I said impatiently. “What the hell should I do?”

Chris’s voice became softer. “Ask your higher self what you need, to be free of the bondage.”

I yelled at her: “Why should I ask my higher self anything? I know it’s nothing but me!”

Chris was slightly taken aback.

“Of course it is,” she said. “It’s the higher you, and you are out of touch with it. Ask it for help.”

“All right,” I yelled. Then in my head I yelled at my higher self. “What is wrong with me?!?”

It said calmly, “You are impossible.”

I said to Chris: “It says I’m impossible.”

“Well, we know that, don’t we?” she answered gently. “Now, embrace your higher self and allow yourself to be embraced by it.”

“I don’t want to!” I shrieked. “Because I am impossible.”

Chris laughed. “But your higher self isn’t.”

“Yes, it is, because it’s me.”

“No,” said Chris.
“You,
right here on this table, are the impossible one.”

“Yeah?” I asked sarcastically. “Well, what should I do now?”

“Ask your higher self what gift does the impossible one need in order to be free. Because the impossible one is imprisoned in its own impossibility.”

I hesitated.

“Ask,” chided Chris.

“I can’t,” I answered, “because
I,
the impossible one, and
it,
my higher self, are the same.”

My body was virtually knotted with pain now.

“Your choice,” said Chris, “is to remain impossible or be released.”

I couldn’t move now. I felt encased, similar to the mental picture I was seeing.

“I really am in a dangerous place now,” I said, subtly blaming Chris.

“The impossible one likes dangerous places. It stays in control that way.”

“Okay. Big deal,” I said. “What should I do then?”

Chris hesitated, then went on: “You can focus on your higher self or you can focus on the impossible one—which of course you’re already doing. When you focus on impossibility, it takes over, because that is your consciousness at the moment. Change that consciousness—that’s all.”

I stopped and tried to shift my focus. I couldn’t find my higher self anymore.

“Remember the light,” said Chris. “Fill your inner being with light. Draw the light in and expand it. You will get direction from your higher self. Your rebellious part says you can’t choose light, but that is your ego talking; the immature child part of you. Draw your higher self into the light.”

Slowly I forced my consciousness toward my higher self. I drew in the visualization. Light hovered in my mind. Then everything came clear. There I was on the slab, my body looking as though it were made of stone. Then I saw a group of white-robed priests lift my body from the slab and prop it up to its full height. They
carried me to a place of worship and erected me upright, as though I were to be an idol of some kind. They surrounded me with the impedimenta of adoration and proceeded to teach others to chant worshipfully before the stone statue that was really me, except that I had no control over it and I was horrified that it was being used as an image for the purpose of perpetuating elitist spiritual authority.

As I watched the picture in my mind, everything became clear. No wonder I had felt so responsible for the destiny of so many people. Perhaps this was one reason for some of the problems I had today regarding adoration and fan worship. To me there was nothing more shameful than to be hyped by a studio into being adored if I hadn’t earned it. It is mortifying for me and ultimately humiliating for the people being so manipulated.

I watched the past-life visualization continue. As it extended, it seemed to last for centuries. The image of me; a suspended-life statue serving as a false representative of spiritual authority. There seemed to be nothing I could do about it,
and
I knew that on some level I had willingly participated in this bizarre experiment of soul and body suspension. And somewhere on a soul level of consciousness I knew I would reap the karma of having been a part of this. Perhaps this was why I had created a role for myself this time around whereby I would be at the forefront of the New Age spiritual movement, heralding
the
giant truth that one individual is his or her own best teacher, and that no other idol or false image should be worshipped or adored because the God we are all seeking lies inside one’s self, not outside.

   This session with Chris was a powerful one for me. It put me in touch with why I was feeling guilty about other people’s negativity, and it also enabled me to feel free to release some of my own pent-up feelings, to neutralize my frustrations. As the shooting proceeded I
didn’t explode in temperamental anger or anything like that. I just expressed what I felt while working. If I felt depressed I didn’t bother to camouflage it. If I was pissed off I found a humorous way to let myself say so.

At first I found that people were somewhat startled at seeing that my emotional life was not always peaches and cream. But as a result they were more certain of where they stood with me. If I needed more light on my face to reveal tears in my eyes, I said so to Brad. He appreciated the interest. If Charles Dance wanted to change a line we had written, I would listen, but if it didn’t sound right I wouldn’t let him do it. If Anne Jackson, playing Bella, wore a dress that looked more like Anne than Bella, I changed it. I wondered sometimes if I was indulging in a power trip. I wondered if I sounded superior; if I had forsaken my democratic way of working. But no, it didn’t feel like that. It felt as though I was taking charge of my own responsibility, which, as I looked back, was probably related to the lifetime that came up for me on the table—the lifetime in which I had not.

The morning after my session with Chris, a school of dolphins swam past my bedroom window. And that afternoon the pain in my back disappeared. On New Year’s Eve, Sachi and Colin and I went to a small party attended by people in our business who were spiritual seekers themselves. Twenty of us sat around an oval table; a crystal was passed to each of us and we expressed in words what we would like to manifest in our lives for the following year. The open and direct honesty was heart-glowing to witness. But when the crystal came to me I found myself expressing an understanding that for me was true, but for some of the others seemed outlandish.

I began by saying that since I realized I created my own reality in every way, I must therefore admit that, in essence,
I was the only person alive in my universe.
I
could feel the instant shock waves undulate around the table. I went on to express my feeling of total responsibility
and power
for all events that occur in the world because the world is happening only in my reality.
And
human beings feeling pain, terror, depression, panic, and so forth, were really only aspects of pain, terror, depression, panic, and so on, in
me!
If they were all characters in my reality, my dream, then of course they were only reflections of myself.

I was beginning to understand what the great masters had meant when they said “you are the universe.” If we each create our own reality, then of course we are everything that exists within it. Our reality is a reflection of us.

Now, that truth can be very humorous. I could legitimately say that I created the Statue of Liberty, chocolate chip cookies, the Beatles, terrorism, and the Vietnam War. I couldn’t really say for sure whether anyone else in the world had actually experienced those things separately from me because these people existed as individuals only in my dream. I knew
I
had created the reality of the evening news at night. It was in my reality. But whether anyone else was experiencing the news
separately
from me was unclear, because
they
existed in my reality too. And if they reacted to world events, then I was creating them to react so I would have someone to interact with, thereby enabling myself to know me better.

My purpose in mentioning this on New Year’s Eve was to project a hope that if I changed
my
conception of reality for the better in the coming year, I would in effect be contributing to the advancement of the world. Therefore, my New Year’s resolution was to improve myself—which would in turn improve the world I lived in.

Most of the faces around the table looked scandalized.
I
created the Declaration of Independence and Marilyn Monroe and the fifty-five miles per hour speed limit? If I changed my reality, it would change the world? I had
clearly gone too far. The discussion that ensued was a microcosm of the world itself. And while the others expressed their objections, I felt
I was creating them to object,
so that I could look at some things I hadn’t resolved myself. In other words I
was
them.
They
were
me.
And all because I was creating them as characters in my play.

The classic question was asked: If what I was proposing were true, would it also be true that I did nothing for others, everything for myself?

And the answer is, essentially, yes. If I fed a starving child, and was honest about my motivation, I would have to say I did it for myself, because it made me feel better. Because the child was happier and more fulfilled, I would be. I was beginning to see that we each did whatever we did purely for self, and that was as it should be. Even if I had not created others in my reality and was therefore not responsible for them, I would feel responsible to my own feelings which desire to be positive and loving. Thus, in uplifting my own feelings I would uplift the feelings of my fellow human beings.

How do we change the world? By changing ourselves.

That was the gist of my New Year’s projection.

Chapter 14

   W
ith the holidays over and very little sleep (we worked every day but Christmas) I was looking forward to regular working days because I wouldn’t feel determined to have a good time.

We finished with Charles Dance and the Gerry segment of the shoot. Our last scene together was our first meeting—typical of the illogical juxtaposition of reality in the movies. We finished late at night. Charles said goodbye to everyone and suddenly my screen Gerry was out of my life.

Enter John Heard from New York.

John had expressed some interest in losing weight for the picture. So I introduced him to Anne Marie Bennstrom, who runs The Ashram in Calabasas (the toughest spiritual health camp in the world).

John had two scenes to shoot with me and then would have a week off so he could become a tortured inmate with Anne Marie.

On his first day, there was a complete change of energy on the set. John was informal, spontaneous, and more than a little unusual. He had the kind of working
personality that challenged men and brought out motherhood in women. That he was an exceptional actor there was no doubt. What made him tick as a man was soon to provide the soap opera drama that kept the company’s gossip entertainment going for the next few months.

He lost ten or twelve pounds in one week with The Ashram’s exercise program, which consisted of twelve miles of mountain hiking every day, three calisthenic classes, two aerobics classes, dynamic tension class, and a three-mile jog. All of this was accomplished on the nutrients of some salad and yogurt. John looked wonderful. During the week of his training I called him from the set and he told me funny stories about how he was confronting his body in new ways.

John had not only been successfully on the wagon for several months, but he had been able to stick to the diet too. He was proud of himself and said he felt better about who he was now than he ever had in his life. He went over his lines and his life with Anne Marie and joked about how he was wrong in considering California a spaced-out dumb place. He said he had seen a way to be “spiritually joyful” in California for the first time.

Anne Marie and I congratulated ourselves, because his weight reduction had been relatively painless and his feeling of well-being was very positive. That was on a Thursday. John was scheduled to continue shooting in earnest on Monday morning, with Anne Jackson and me.

Stan called me early Saturday morning.