Going Within (4 page)

As the seminars drew to a close, I was amazed at how many people had been willing to look at the multi-dimensionality of themselves. It was as though the old concepts of self didn’t work anymore. Those concepts were too limited. On a fundamental level people
knew
that they were more than they seemed or had been taught. I was proud to have contributed to that knowledge. But the truth of it is, every one of those people was a teacher for me. They had taught me to channel my own spiritual power, and I had only begun.

One month after the seminars ended, I went back to work as an actress. And I used some of my spiritual techniques from the seminars in my acting. I found an epic character in a picture called
Madame Sousatzka
, directed by John Schlesinger. Madame Sousatzka was a part and a half: a domineering teacher of classical piano; commanding, manipulative, outrageous, funny, vulnerable, and, in the end, uplifting. Whatever my character Aurora Greenway might have been in
Terms of Endearment
, Madame Sousatzka made her look like a quiet day at the beach. As I hadn’t worked since
Terms
(aside from playing myself in
Out on a Limb)
, I was excited at the prospect of trying a new way of working.

I proceeded to sculpt, with Schlesinger’s help, what Sousatzka looked like, what she wore, how her hair was styled, what jewelry clanked on her wrists, how
she walked, talked, ate, breathed, laughed, and cried. Then I molded and refined her in my mind. She became a composite of reality; a real, living, breathing character fashioned from our creativity. After I finished my composition of thought, I let her go. I threw her up to the universe and said, “Now you play yourself through me.”

I had seen so many channels and mediums over the past few years, I decided I would apply the same thing to show business. I simply put my conscious ego aside, got out of my own way, and channeled a character that we had created and I absolutely adored. We actors are continually looking for techniques to inhabit the character we are asked to play. This time I allowed the character to inhabit me. Instead of trying to become Sousatzka and wait for the inspiration of the artistic impulse to happen, I just let her play herself through me. She was a compulsive eater, so I gained fifteen pounds. She was not a woman to whom time had been kind. As I watched the dailies, my face reflected
her
ravages. I wondered if I’d ever play leading ladies again. Perhaps I would enjoy playing character parts for the rest of my life. Sousatzka had a bad back;
my
back gave me pain when I went into a scene. Sousatzka had been a great concert pianist; I found that I could learn the music after only a few hearings because
she
knew how to direct my fingers to the right keys on the piano! I trusted that the magic would work if I allowed it to and simply
let
Sousatzka live through me. The character
created had become real—channeling and inspiration had become one and the same.

So my experience of channeling spiritual energy in the seminars had translated to practical film acting. Reel life and real life had merged. And both were contributing to an ever-expanding reality for me.

2

The Ancient New Age

Recognize all the parts that make the whole, for you are the maker.

B
efore going into some of the techniques of what we might call spiritual technology, I would like to address myself to the thinking that is fundamental to the process of “going within.” This thinking stems from what is being described as the “New Age.” Much has been written about the New Age, much argued, for and against. The New Age in all its manifestations has been the rich source of many, many jokes, much conjecture, concern, and even fear.

What I find most interesting about New Age perceptions—that is, how the New Age is perceived—are the enormously fragmented points of view that it seems to generate. This argues for a lack of understanding, or, at best, fragmented forms of understanding.

I hope I can help clarify the confusion.

First of all, there’s nothing new about the New
Age. It is, as has been correctly reported, a compilation of many ancient spiritual points of view relating to belief, the nature of reality, the practice of living, ritual, and truth, all predominantly originating in cultures other than those of the West. To dismiss these points of view as occult or bizarre, or to have the panic reaction that they are “satanic,” is to define the degree of one’s own ignorance of highly developed spiritual cultures in the Near, Middle, and Far East.

The word
occult
simply means “hidden.” Much of Eastern thinking has been hidden from our view. Now that some of this knowledge is being brought to light, it appears to be speaking to a New Age—but only in the view of us Westerners. It is not so much that we are backward, but that we have a different approach, and/or that we have
forgotten
some of our own early teachings.

So let’s go back a bit to New Age origins.

Christian Gnostics operated with New Age knowledge and thinking for hundreds of years after the death of Christ. In fact,
gnosis
means “knowledge.” But the Gnostics eventually separated from the authority of what had become a ritualized Christian Church because they believed that man’s destiny was an individual matter between himself and God, not a matter for the authority of the Church to decide.

Personal responsibility is an awesome load for an individual to assume. It is obviously far easier to leave matters of conscience, God, faith, moral behavior,
lifestyle, and even life-and-death decisions to some vaguely authorized power of church or government. However, though easier, clearly such a state of dependence is not a healthy one, particularly when the values and moral behavior of those in authority are as questionable as we all know they are today.

Many people these days are finding that life has become confused, tense, anxiety-riddled, and somehow lacking in purpose, because they are not using their own internal strengths to solve their problems. People speak of stress as being unbearable. They are beginning to claim that material wealth, success, fame, and the accepted avenues of over-achievement are no longer fulfilling, indeed are not worth the stress they engender.
There has to he something more
is a refrain, all too often echoed.

Intelligent and well-intentioned people look around and see an agglomeration of undeclared wars being bloodily fought, the virulence of nuclear power competition, a drug-ridden world, the horrifying spectacle of millions of malnourished and even more millions of illiterates in the richest nation in the world, vaulting rates of violent crime and fatal disease, the insane poisoning of our environment—a veritable litany of disaster and self-destruction—and ask, not unnaturally, what the hell is happening to the human race? Why are people doing this?

If those same intelligent questioners would go just a little bit further, and ask, “Why are we doing this
to ourselves?”
they would be thinking in New Age terms.

Because the New Age is all about self-responsibility. New Age thinking asks that each person take responsibility for everything that happens in life because everything in life is connected. But the very first responsibility has to be personal—in a totally real sense, care for one’s Self.

This is not easy. It requires self-reflection and self-confrontation of the first order. It means looking in the mirror and forgiving oneself for
not
acknowledging that out of love for oneself can come love for others and ultimately love for the world we live in. From that loving self-realization can come solutions to the horrific problems we have created.

Critics point out that the New Age is a movement focused on the optimum development of one’s own potential while the rest of the world and its problems lie unattended; that in the success of the New Age we risk losing some of society’s best and brightest to the seduction of self. One wonders what we should lose such individuals to—high-tech warfare research, for instance? The
point
is that a great many of the horrors we live among exist precisely because we have neglected to recognize and celebrate and utilize the positive strengths within ourselves—we have neglected self-love. And the truth is that positive self-fulfillment is expressed most strongly in relation to others. What we literally cannot do is become productively involved with the rest of the world unless and until we learn to like ourselves. This then increases our ability to like and love others, which in turn augments the
possibility to create change. So it is fortunate indeed that New Agers include some of the best and the brightest.

They are individuals who are profoundly concerned with what is happening to our planet and
all
the life residing on it. New Agers include antiwar activists, pro-environmentalists, antinukers, peaceniks, feminists, ecologista, bankers, psychologists, doctors, physicists, blue-, white-, and even no-collar workers, and many, many more—so there are apparently millions of people who advocate the “selfish” view of wanting to save our planet from destruction by beginning with themselves.

The person who is wound up in self-hatred, self-denigration, self-doubt, and self-contempt is suffocated, bound by a negative self-image that does not permit time or energy to really care about anyone else. Such feelings feed on themselves, generating more and more hatred, anger, and resentment, which will almost inevitably spill over onto others.

There is no question that modern-day psychologists are deeply concerned by the degree of violence vibrating under the surface behavior of most human beings—and increasingly emerging as expressed violence and self-destructiveness. They claim that the only way to solve the conflicts that pressurize our culture is to help people confront the underlying causes of their violence. When one understands the real cause for feelings of hatred and anger, one can change the feelings, or even let them go. That involves
taking responsibility for what we feel. It means we have to stop blaming others for our
own
problems. It means accepting our own contribution to conflicts and unhappinesses, and becoming more consciously aware of why we feel what we do.

In doing so, we are expanding our conscious awareness, which means, to use a New Age term, that we are “raising” our consciousness about our unconscious perceptions of who we are and how we are behaving. We are learning surprising things about ourselves.

The only source is ourselves.

The so-called “cult of self” then becomes the pursuit of knowledge of self so that, upon resolution of conflicts, we can become more contributive to the society we live in.

I believe it is time to begin to heal ourselves and in so doing to help heal others in our society. The responsibility does not lie only in systems of authority like the church, the state, or the schools. The responsibility lies also in each and every one of us.

The family is the unit in which we begin the investigation of Self. We pick up more of our parents’ attitudes on self-investigation than we think we do. Our basic orientation on self-reflection comes from the family. If our parents or caretakers didn’t want to look at themselves, this can affect us deeply. Conversely, if our parents were self-reflective, we are likely to be, too. But the family unit is the synthesis for society and it is up to us to improve our own
vision of ourselves within the family before we can function with a full vision outside of it. And if we are young enough, perhaps we can achieve that vision before we start our own families, and hence improve matters for the next generation.

Speaking personally, I now know that I related to my parents as I
perceived
them to be. When I began to see them as being not all-powerful but as fallible, as human beings in their own right, as
persons
with needs of their own, separate from myself—when, in short, I learned to allow them to be themselves—they no longer troubled me so much. My daughter is learning to do the same with me, and I with her.
To release others from the expectations
we
have of them is to really love them.
We are free of our loved ones when we care enough to let them go. And the anomaly, or so it seems, then becomes that the love bonds grow stronger. So we can honor our parents, and our selves, by growing up, by not getting stuck in some infantilized phase of blind expectation and demand, becoming frustrated, bitter, angry, and hating because the demands seem unfulfilled. In growing up, we accept responsibility for ourselves by having the courage to look at who we are and what we really want out of this life.

Whenever I ask people what they want for themselves and for the world, the answer is almost always the same—peace.

I believe peace for the world cannot be achieved without peace within our individual selves.

It seems to me that the dilemma of war, of destructiveness in all its forms, always returns to self. Personal conflict deters peace, engenders external conflict. It is impossible to feel like a complete human being as long as the fragmentation of conflict exists. Again, who creates the conflict? Again,
we
do. We are angry at those who mirror to us the unresolved aspects we possess in ourselves.