A NEW EARTH: AWAKENING TO YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE

Role Playing

Most of us actually play multiple roles: parent, child, brother, sister or spouse. Added to our familial roles are those of employment and those in community. The roles we play set the parameters by which we define our relationships--friendly, adversarial, loving, defensive, etc. Each role carries its own personal baggage. Eckhart Tolle wrote that

Authentic human interactions
become impossible when you lose
yourself in a role.

One of the most common ways group sessions/meetings begin is with a 'warm-up'--tell us your name and what you do. As we listen, we use the information provided by each individual to 'fit' them into our world. We understand them in the context of their perceived role and how it relates to our role(s). The way in which I present myself to the group reflects my own sense of self.

What really matters is not what
function you fulfill in this world, but whether
you identify with your function to such an extent that
it takes over and becomes a role
that you play.

If I want to experience life without being locked into a role set in concrete, then I must be willing to step back from the known and allow myself to Be fully in the Now moment. Not by resisting or denying, but by recognizing the extent to which I let people and events dictate my experience through emotional and/or self-image triggers.

Then there is Being.
It is found in the still, alert presence of
Consciousness itself, the Consciousness that you are.
Human and Being are not separate
but interwoven.

Try an experiment while walking alone: Feel yourself inside your body, walking. Be aware of looking outward through your eyes. What you see is less important right now than that you are totally aware of yourself present in yourself in the moment

Rev. Claudia Naylor.