Metaphoric Mammal - Part V

The Pizza and Empathy Edition

Metaphoric Mammal - Part V

The Pizza And Empathy Edition

Imitation is the engine at the core of all we learn about ourselves and each other. It is at the root of our social and cultural organization. It is by means of imitation that we learn our names and assume an identity. Imitation creates our world. Everything we ‘know’ we owe to imitation.

As Annie Murphy Paul puts it in her book, The Extended Mind:

“It’s paradoxical but true: imitating effectively demands a considerable degree of creativity.”

Looking Back - Don’t Hurt Yourself

You’ll undoubtedly recall - never underestimate how much faith I have in you - that a few dispatches back, in Look At YOU, I shared an assignment from my first acting class as a student at the American Academy Of Dramatic Arts. I imitated Mario, a pizza man.

I invited you to do the assignment your way. The key elements of the exercise encompass the essence of ACTING HUMAN practice.

Keen observation. PAY ATTENTION. With intention.

Pay attention to what you pay attention to; to what excites your sense of curiosity? Feel it!

Extend imagination into assimilation through repetition. Repeated observation in terrestial and/or imaginal space. Get out of your mind, drop into your whole body as it resonates the whole universe.

Call The Cops

We tend to believe our thoughts and act as if they define reality. We think about our feelings so that we don’t have to feel them. In so doing we rob ourselves of love.

“Love is found in the quality of attention we pay.” ~J.D. McClatchy

We rob ourselves of universal connection. A clear sense of the mystery in which we are part and whole. Implicate/Explicate. Players of an infinite game. Eternal. Timeless. 

We rob ourselves of aliveness. We forget, when we don’t pay attention, that our lives, when lived alive, are vibrational. 

We are energetic expressions of galaxies. Eternal. Timeless. One singular sensation! 

This all sounds udderly [sic] crazy, right?

We live alive to emanate joy; we want to enjoy and enliven our lives, all lives. To create sanity and humanity, as we live life alive. 

I know. I know. Still sounds crazy. Unrealistic. Utopian. Take a moment. Consider your lived experience - seriously. How crazy is this connected and joyful perspective? Are you really a separate entity? Is that your experience now? How do you feel when you “connect,” when you’re in love with life?

Take a breath. Slow and deep. Feel.

Do you feel a little less alone? More connected? Less restless?

Can you live outside Earth’s atmosphere? Can you imagine the intricacies of all that has created, and continues to create, the air we breathe.

I’ve only days ago learned about the creation of iron (Fe) in outer space. Without iron, no hemoglobin. No hemoglobin, no oxygen in our blood. No oxygen in our blood. Stop reading.

That breath we took a moment ago connects us to generous stars in outer space; they create iron for us, as a gift, one without which we’d find ourselves in a pickle - floating in vinegar, discolored, and dead. 

So, with humility, we can (must?) play in the Universal Theater to create a sane and humane world. Still sound utterly crazy? 

“The purpose of life is joy. Rejoice at the sky, the sun, the stars, the grass, the trees, animals, people. If this joy is disturbed it means that you've made a mistake somewhere. Find your mistake and correct it. Most often this joy is disturbed by money and ambition.” ~Tolstoy

We’ve been bamboozled. We’ve bamboozled ourselves.

Bamboozled! Bamboozled!! Bamboozled!!! 

We’ve come to a critical juncture. More pertinent even than Yogi Berra’s crossroads. We either break free of wholesale propaganda and indoctrinations, born of fear and conformity, or suffer ugly consequences.

We can’t afford to ignore the seismic changes at all levels surrounding and in our lives, nor to see them as irrelevant given any of our particular circumstances. The idea that if it’s it’s not our individual problem, it’s not a problem is pure and dangerous ignorance. 

“Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.” 

~Daniel Kahneman

We can, if we don’t pay attention, easily choke on garbage. Environmental garbage. Social garbage. Geo-political garbage a/k/a war and inhumanity. 

We can choke on media as sports/entertainment produced to service corporate/business interests. We can get consumed by consumption.

“There’s a god-shaped hole in every human heart. If it doesn’t get filled with something noble and elevated, modern society will quickly pump it full of garbage.”  ~Jonathan Haidt

The time has come to PAY ATTENTION! To live as if money and ambition are not the safe havens we’ve assumed. We have been fed huge portions of cultural and educational encouragement to assume thusly.

These assumptions are decidedly unsafe in my experience. They are traps designed to make asses of you and me.

I’ve traveled in the company of the rich and famous, riding in limos, sailing on yachts and flying high in the sky aboard private jets. My benefactors seemed more needy than safe. Always aware that someone had more, so they needed more. They were palpably uncomfortable.

There have been occassional exceptions. For the fifteen minutes I spent having coffee with him, David Rockefeller seemed comfortable in his skin.

“When you start living in a world of concepts and comparative thinking, you’re very susceptible to the conditioning of the society around you and what they think is important.”  ~Gil Fronsdal

Curiosity and Empathy

When we embrace heart centered curiosity, empathy sprouts naturally.

We are, when ACTING HUMAN, engaged in consciousness practice. Some call it spiritual, as Suder did in Moscow. We eschew success trips. We are not into “look at me” acting. We value selfless (egoless) acting rather than selfish (idealized, insatiable individual) acting.

“As long as we are identified with that sense of self in the mind, that identification creates fear, attachment, separation, comparing. If there’s an “I”, if there’s a self, then we have to defend it, we have to protect it, we have to gratify it, and our whole lives revolve around this particular identification.” – Joseph Goldstein

We are Metaphoric Mammals, created continuously as we live. We create me/you/us. We are not who we think we are. We are embodied metaphors. We can and do rethink self/SELF, moment to moment. 

If you sit still, in quiet contemplation, you will see thoughts as transient forms that simply arise and pass. 

We write our stories as we live them. We can with practice, energize and ennoble agency, our capacity to act with intention. We can and do rewrite all the time. We create story out of pure imagination.

Too many of us are too often expressions of imagination taking life WAY too seriously, and far too insincerely. Our hearts are not well placed in the game. We’ve pawned our hearts and minds to avoid uncertainty (possibilities) for the illusions of constancy, safety, security, status, and success.

Time has come for us to rethink and rewrite with generosity, intention, and creative skill borrowed appropriately from the actors/writers craft.

We all act all the time. We ARE actors playing human lives. Most of us do not notice our acting. Let’s start noticing, witnessing the process, so we can learn to live life alive.

We create our lives. They do not “just” happen.

While we develop skills in particular areas of our lives, generally occupational and often essential skills - if I need surgery I’d like a skillful surgeon - we largely ignore our capacity to grow our capacities for imagination and play. We “forget” to create a whole life. 

We forget to play others. To walk in their shoes. (Why shoes not shirts or skivvies?) 

We’re busy thinking and worrying (an abuse of imagination) so we forget to play the sun. We forget to shine. I’ve done my share of absurdist theater.

We forget to hear all we say and do as music. We live puny lives for lack of paying attention to our acting.

“A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.”  ~Castaneda 

Curiosity, empathy and compassion give rise to and inform acting connected lives lived alive. Those qualities will take center stage for us moving forward. We shall pay keen attention on the path to higher truth.

Until next time,

Lights Up!