Shakespeare coined the immortal words: “All the world’s a stage.” One could add that all the world’s a stage—in which all the roles are defined by the manipulators. In order for you to step onto the path of higher awareness, you have to be willing to start defining your own role on earth instead of playing predefined roles. You especially have to stop playing the roles that the manipulators have defined for human beings.
This is truly a challenge because the effect of the epic dramas is that the manipulators have defined a large number of roles that are not seen as roles. Instead, they are seen as being real and as being mandated by God. The message being that you must continue to play these roles until the end of your life or until the epic objective has been achieved—which, as explained, will never happen.
Many people are trapped in playing these roles—indefinitely. Consider how easy it has been for the manipulators to pull people into the epic dramas. All they have to do is to commit some kind of aggressive act against someone, and if that someone feels violated – feels victimized, feels attacked, feels unjustly treated – then that person will slip into the dualistic mindset and will then play the role of one of the dualistic identities that have been created over time.
Playing a pre-defined role
The manipulators have created certain identities based on duality. These identities can be compared to the roles you have in a theater production where some people play the hero, some people play the villain, some people play the victims. Those who are trapped in duality are already – without realizing it – trapped in one of these dualistic identities, in one of these parts, one of these roles in the play.
When they act out that role in aggression against the innocents who are not yet trapped in such a role, there is a possibility – a strong possibility – that the innocent children will feel victimized by the aggressor and therefore will slip into the role of being a victim. Then they are trapped in the dualistic dramas of the selves.
Now they see themselves in relation to – in opposition to – someone else who is in a dualistic role. Without knowing it, they slip right into one of these dualistic roles, such as the role of victim. Some slip into another role, that of the one who seeks revenge, or that of the one who seeks justice by somehow compensating for the wrongs done in the past by committing another wrong in the present.
This is the basic fabric of the selves. They always play one of these dualistic roles, they take on one of these dualistic identities. You need to become wise as serpents so that you can see the unreality of the serpentine mind, the serpentine logic, that has created these varied dualistic parts and identities. You can then realize that you have taken this on as an actor in the theater takes on a costume, puts on make-up, puts on false teeth or a wig or a hump on the back in order to resemble the part it is meant to play.
When you see the unreality of this, when you become wise as a serpent – wise to the serpents – you realize that you are not the part you are playing, you are more than that part. That is when you can begin to contemplate the possibility of separating yourself from the part, even separating yourself from the entire play so that you can eventually walk out of the theater and say: “I have had enough of playing that old worn-out part. Find somebody else, for you will have to do without me. I am done with this. I have had enough!”
The game ends when you decide to stop playing
When will your struggles end? You have free will, do you not? When will your struggles end? When you decide that they will end, now! Can you make that decision right now? Perhaps not. But there will come a now when you can make that decision—if you decide that it is going to happen now.
The universe is a mirror, which means that whatever you send out, the universe must reflect back. When you take on a certain role in the play, in the dualistic play, then the universe thinks that you want to experience the outer conditions that correspond to the role.
If you feel like a victim of life or a victim of outer circumstances, the subconscious message you are sending into the cosmic mirror is that you want to experience what it is like to be a victim. The more victimized you feel, the more frustrated you feel, the universe can interpret that in only one way: “Oh, he wants to experience even more of a struggle, he wants to be victimized even more.”
Why does the universe interpret it that way? Because the cosmic mirror has absolute respect for your free will. As long as you are in that role, that identity of being the victim, the universe can only interpret it in one way, namely that you are not done playing the part of a victim. You still want to experience what it is like to be a victim.
Naturally, the universe gives you what you want. It will continue to do so, even accelerating it, until you finally come to the point where you take responsibility and say: “Okay. I have been a victim for a long time, but it was because I made a decision that caused me to enter into that victim consciousness. I took on that part, I put on that costume. But I have had enough of it!” You then decide that you will no longer play that part.
The universe is based on free will, which means that whenever you decide you have had enough, you are free to leave the theater. Even if it is the night before the big premiere, you are free to quit and say: “Enough of this madness!”
This is why you need to be wise as a serpent. Because the manipulators will do everything they can to make you believe in the lie that for this, that or the next reason you cannot just walk out of here, you cannot just walk out of that part. Once you have taken it on, it is permanent, you can never escape—or so they want you to believe.
This is why they have come up with so many clever illusions, including the mainstream Christian delusion that you cannot save yourself but that only Jesus, as the external savior, can save you. All of these Christians think they are headed straight for heaven. But they are still in the consciousness of being a victim, still feeling that there is some external force who is pulling them down to hell or pulling them up to heaven—when in reality it is themselves and their own consciousness that is pulling them up or down. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Matthew 6:21).
The selves cannot become harmless as a dove
The selves will always be locked in this dualistic drama of playing a part where they are either the aggressor and villain, or the victim, or the hero, or some other role that is part of this battle between opponents, between two sides. Most people on earth and most religions on earth have fallen victim to this consciousness.
Even though one can, from a certain perspective, say that there is an epic struggle between good and evil, the way the world looks at that struggle is false because it is influenced by the dualistic consciousness that has turned the struggle between good and evil into a dualistic one. No matter which part you play in that struggle, you are only serving to perpetuate the struggle itself and keep yourself stuck in that struggle.
We now come to the second part of Jesus statement to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. When you become wise as a serpent – you realize what is going on, you realize the dualistic game – then you can fulfill the second requirement and become harmless as a dove (Matthew 10:16).
As long as you think you have to eradicate evil, you are simply trapped in the dualistic game. As long as you think you have to serve the external God in the sky – and as long as your religious quest is based on the desire to serve the external God rather than serving the internal God that is in all life – you are still part of the struggle.
The only way to escape the struggle is to become harmless as a dove by letting go of all desire for justice, for revenge, for somehow making up for old wrongs by committing new wrongs. The only way out is through unconditional surrender, unconditional love.
Sometimes people – in the most tense life-threatening situations – instead of fighting it, instead of resisting it, instead of feeling victimized, they simply surrender. In that surrender they become harmless as a dove. In that surrender they possess their lives.
The Holy Spirit, often depicted as a dove, may then descend and change the situation so that what seems to be the guaranteed outcome may not come to pass. Because somehow – by the person who is cast to be in the role of the victim refusing to play the role of the victim – the person that is trapped in the role of the aggressor is empowered to see beyond the role and realize that he too is more than the part he is playing. He does not need to act out that part in all the grizzly detail that was in the script written by the manipulators.
Set everyone free by refusing to play the part
By you refusing to play your part in the dualistic struggle, you might inspire others to realize that there is an alternative, there is a way beyond the struggle, there is something beyond the struggle, there is more to life than the dualistic struggle.
This, of course, is the essence of Jesus’ teaching and his example. If you truly look at Jesus’ life based on the understanding just given, you will see that Jesus too refused to play the part that he had been assigned. He refused to live up to the expectations of the Jews for what the Messiah should be like.
Look at the scribes and Pharisees who wanted Jesus to fit into the mental box they had created, based on the old scriptures, based on their tradition. They used their tradition to create an expectation of exactly how the Messiah should play his part. They thought that the Living Christ – when he came to earth – would slip right into one of the dualistic roles in the play and would find his part in the dualistic play. If Jesus had lived up to their dualistic expectations, he would have confirmed those dualistic expectations. How could Jesus have had any chance of helping them rise above those limitations?
When the Living Christ appears on earth, his first and foremost task is to refuse to fit into any of the dualistic roles created in the theater production called earth, in the drama, in the classic tragedy called earth—or for that matter the comedy. Really, when you look at earth you have to say: “Things are so bad you have to either laugh or cry.” Some will prefer to cry, and some will prefer to laugh.
The Living Christ must stand back from it all and say: “I am not here to confirm people’s illusions, I am here to challenge them!” You challenge them only when you refuse to play the part that they have assigned to you—whatever that part may be, be it your family, your society, your religion. It is impossible to grow up on earth without growing up in an environment where there is someone or some institution that has a preassigned role for you that they desperately want you to fit into.
The challenge for all spiritual people is to free yourself from that programming, to free yourself from the roles that you have been brought up to play in this lifetime – or that you have played in previous lifetimes – that have caused you to build certain beliefs and programs in the subconscious mind that are still there, haunting you. Because you think you have to play that part, you still think you have to act out that role, whatever it may be.
Recognizing the more subtle parts
It might be easy to see that playing the aggressor, playing the villain is a dualistic part. It may even be easy to see that being a victim is a dualistic part. But how many are able to see that even playing the hero is a dualistic part? This is a special challenge. Many spiritual people have descended from above on a rescue mission. They have come here to be the prince on the white horse that rides into town and frees the people from the bad guys.
Unfortunately, through movies and popular culture even that has been turned into a dualistic part where the hero is cast in the role of him who fights the villain. That is not the way to truly free the people from duality. There were many Jews who expected the Messiah to be one of the warrior kings of the Old Testament and lead them in an uprising against the Romans. Many of them rejected Jesus when he refused to play that part.
It is subtle to see through the dualistic parts that have been created in order to trap you indefinitely in the dualistic game. It takes discernment. Where will that discernment come from? It will come from only one place—the Living Word, the Christ consciousness.
Ponder this simple question: “Do I like the part I am currently playing in the drama on earth?” If you do not, you are free to walk out of it at this very moment. As Jesus said 2,000 years ago: “The kingdom of God is at hand,” meaning that it is an option that is available to you right now and will be available to you at any moment in the future.
You are an actor in a cosmic play, and you can take off the make-up, you can take off the costume, you can take off the humpback, you can take off the wig, you can take off the big nose and the crooked teeth and throw them all in the garbage bin as you walk out of the theater, saying: “Goodbye and good riddance, for I have understood the meaning of Jesus’ words: ‘What is that to thee, follow thou me.’”