All the World's a Stage

[Parsons]

http://www.llresearch.org/transcripts/is...draft.aspx

Aaron: You are like actors in a play. When you come out onto the stage, if you look to the audience and say, “Oh, this is only a play. It doesn’t matter,” the audience is not going to get much from your lines offered with no sincerity. If you become so involved in the illusion of the play that you forget that it is a play, forget that there is an audience out there, you may turn your back to the audience or speak too softly for them to hear. The good actor must live its lines convincingly—live them, be them—while being fully aware simultaneously that this is a play, that when it walks offstage it no longer is the identity of that character. This is how the audience learns from a play. And you also are the audience, both actor and audience.

This is what your life asks of you: to live the illusion as full-heartedly as you can while still knowing this is illusion. Herein is the intersection of relative and ultimate reality, the intersection of the cross. You have one foot in relative reality, one foot in ultimate reality, and there is no separation between them. Some of you have understood that you have one foot on each side of this threshold, but you feel as if there were a wall, an infinite wall, dividing relative and ultimate reality so that you may only experience one at a time. It is very hard work to learn to blend them, to bring compassion and wisdom together. But that is what you are here to learn to do.

Thank you plenum, this is precisely what I needed to read. The above Shakespeare quote has been on my mind a lot lately, and the Aaron quote finally reconciles that thought. I have been a 'bad actor' for about a year now and was wondering if was even possible to be a good actor with my knowledge of the illusion. This quote inspires me that I have the potential to be an even better actor than before I awoke.