Hi Paul. Hi Open.

Paul, thank you for sharing your experience. It is very synchronistic for me, as I've been thinking about that same "issue" a lot lately. I've worked in the performing arts all my life, and every once in a while, throughout my career, I've experienced that sort of 'glitch' in my consciousness where everything just goes blank. One thing that happened to me quite often was that I'd suddenly forget the lyrics to the song I was singing. My mind would just go blank. Usually, the lyrics to a well rehearsed song just flow by themselves, you don't even have to think about it, but suddenly it would all be gone. It was an intense feeling to have all eyes and ears upon you when that happened. Fortunately, I've always been a good improvisor, so I would always manage to make something out of it, like make up new lyrics about how I couldn't remember the old ones and turn the performance into a comedy. It always made a good show, and everyone laughed, but internally I was always a bit disappointed that the performance I had intended and practiced wasn't fully realised and experienced.

In later years, (prior to my awakening, 3 years ago) I've mostly focused on acting because that has worked very well for me. In acting, there's a character to lean on, and even though you have to follow a script, there is still room to move and improvise if you forget where you're at. You can make a dramatic pause or make something up to say, as long as you stay true to your character. Strangely enough though, during my 10 years in acting, I don't think I ever forgot a line on stage. I had an immense confidence in that, maybe because I knew I could act my way out of it if it happened.

Around the time of my awakening though, and for a long time thereafter, dramatic life events would keep me away from the acting 'scene' all together. In the meantime, an intense transformation has been taking place for me, so when I recently was asked to do one of my old performances again, I had a very interesting, but also quite unsettling experience while being on stage. Normally, when acting on stage, I will be aware of two forms of consciousness. One is the experience, thoughts, and emotions of the character herself, and the other is 'Me', the consciousness that runs or controls the life of the character. This time, however, there were three sets of consciousness present on stage. The character, Me running the character, and yet another 'observing' consciousness, just sitting behind the scenes, watching the whole thing. This became very complex for me, as I found myself swithcing back and forth between the Me-consciousness and the Observer-consciousness, and the two had slightly different agendas. The 'Me' felt a big responsibility towards the character, the other actors, and for the whole performance/job itself. The 'Observer' however, didn't really care about those things, and could (if it wanted to) just walk off stage at any point and not care less if the whole show just fell apart. Fortunately for Me though, the Observer was respectful of the 'job' Me was trying to do and stayed put, but it was completely free to do whatever it wanted if it felt like it, and it was very distracting for Me to be aware of these different agendas simultaneously. I found myself having to work very hard to focus on the play itself.

I'm filled with so much emotional anxiety as I write this, because tomorrow I'm going back to the exact same place to do the exact same performance that I described above. And there is this great fear, that what if a 'glitch' happens, or what if I can't 'control' this other consciousness and it decides to do something weird. The fear centers primarily around the other people involved in this project. I think I would actually be ok if something weird happened for myself, but I know how much this job means to everyone else, and how much they trust me and depend on me doing what I'm being paid to do. (And I also need the income these jobs generate).

So, I'm breaking this down into two issues:

A) The need to respect other people's realities, even if I recognise the absurdity of the whole thing. I don't want to do anything that may upset the 'world' they depend upon. I care so deeply about these people who have been my friends and colleagues for so many years. (Why is there so much painful emotion in this?)

B) There is growing conflict in me when it comes to acting. Acting used to be my passion in life. I loved trying on different identities, going deep into feeling what it was like to be someone else. After my awakening though, my passion has changed to being as authentic as I can possibly be and the discovery of that. Which consequently means, acting is becoming more and more challenging, as the soul does not seem interested in exploring that any more. However, acting is my profession and there is nothing else at the moment that emerges as an alternative. (And again, I need the money)

Open, you said:

When the pressure gets too intense, it can be that there come moments of deep surrender inside, a 'giving up', which tend to happen in what are perceived extreme experiences or on the verge of a kind of death (or even death itself). That's when there can be a strong cognitive dissonance between where you come to (internally) and where you were. The stream of soul withdraws from the experiential stream and framework of reality it was previously engaged in - in this case layers within the mind (probably).

Frankly, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this, but I really want to understand, because I want to make sense of the experiences I shared above. Could you elaborate on this a bit more, especially the part about death?

Synchronistically, yesterday I was on the platform on the subway station waiting for my train, as a train moved in going in the opposite direction. As it stopped, in front of me, I found myself face to face with an info advertisement saying "I died today. Right here!". I felt directly hit by this message, and I knew it meant something significant for me. Especially since a few minutes later, another train came in and as it stopped, the exact same words faced me once again. When I read these posts today, the part about death struck me and I immediately felt it had something to do with this incident from yesterday. I'm now also making the connection to the performance I'm going to do tomorrow, and the immense fear I feel in the face of it. Am I facing a 'death' here?

Immensly grateful for your support,

Love,

Anastasia