It’s not personal

Life has a funny way of throwing stuff in our way, don’t you think, just when I think I've got it sorted out, things change and it starts all over again. One phrase that I have heard over and over in the past months is ‘It is not personal’. What does it actually mean? It may help a little if I put context around it. It is more than just the interplay between people, it is about how we feel, how we react to circumstances even down to having a lousy day. Consider this quote from Shakespeare.

 All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

William Shakespeare

This quote has merit in its own right, and I’m certainly not going to debate or critique it here, but it does allude to the idea that we play a part in life, and others play parts in our own lives. I now think that there is more to this phrase than just the interplay between people in one life time. I have recently been exposed to the esoteric world and have been reading lots of material about the physical form and its identity and the soul or higher mind, and what happens to the personality when the higher mind wakes up. In doing so there is the awareness of the higher mind and being part of a soul group. This concept is difficult enough in its own right, without adding the idea that I am an expression of that group, part of it, in form to experience and learn; to achieve what I was put here for. That is a huge subject, and I am not qualified to expand on it, yet. What has come out of this is that the group works through me; they are constantly guiding me, teaching me. To this end, having a bad day is not personal; it is just part of the plan, guidance if you will. I have struggled to understand this, to put it in context, so that I can hold and understand it.

I think in terms of pictures and in analogies that bring a complex concept down to basic forms. My father used this method to teach mathematics, by taking a complex problem, breaking it down to parts of simple maths so that I could understand it and prove that my workings were correct.

Now back to the idea that it is not personal, here is a hypothesis that we are mealy characters in a play that has been playing for an eternity. Consider for a moment a company of actors, writers, directors, stage managers, prop managers, wardrobe managers, and all the other people that contribute to a play or film. Now the only people visible in this play are the characters on stage and the props that support them. Here is the important part, as soon as the actor enters the stage he/she is consumed by the character and forgets that they are an actor. The character assumes the identity, completely. The directors and stage managers cannot directly influence the character; all they can do is create circumstances by changing props etc.

Me, my personality, my identity is no more real than a character in a fictional book, an idea, a persona put into the play to achieve something. There is neither script nor knowledge of anything outside of the character we play. When my time is up, the character will exit the stage and then realise that it is all an illusion.

As it happens I have recently realised that I am an actor playing a part, but the persona will not let go completely, nor should it, after all it was created for a purpose, all things are important. Time and place are part of the story, as are the skills that I have, and everything that surrounds me, it has all been created by the directors and writers (the group) so that we may express, play our part. It is also plausible that a persona was created to work out some issue or karmic debt incurred by previous personas.

The key to life is not only to live a good life, but to reach a point where the persona can work with the actor, who can hear the director’s guidance, and then become a useful member of the group.

When my part is played out, the writers and director will create another character to play, another personality, another life. If ‘I’ am an actor, then the personality is the persona, or just the part I’m playing now. The persona or character is not important; it is created so the group can grow, so the group as a whole can move on, so the play can evolve.

My life journey is guided by a group of writers and stage directors, changing the story conditions to achieve the desired outcome. As soon as the character, can get out of the way and allow the actor to listen to direction, the better. It means that the story has a chance to play itself out and move on to the next act.

All the off stage members cannot directly force a character, all they can do is change conditions, bring things to our attention. However when one of the characters realises that he is an actor on stage, and looks up to see the lights, then the actor can work with the persona to be a more useful member of the group.

The bottom line is that it is not personal; the persona is just a work of fiction, a persona added to the story to affect a change, to grow the story. The first and most important thing we can do as individuals is to look up and see the light, recognise the stage and realise that we are characters in a play. From that point on, with awareness of the directors we can be useful members.