Inner Work

For the week of April 16, 2007

Playing Our Roles

Like actors, we adopt a wide range of roles. At work you might play supervisor, co-worker, and subordinate, service provider and client. At home you might play father, son, brother, and husband, or mother, daughter, sister, and wife. With one set of friends you might be a sports fan, artist, or music lover. With another set of friends you might be the spiritual seeker. In each of these situations we take on rather different patterns of behavior. Even with one person, we sometimes play different roles, e.g., with a child we can at times be the supportive parent, the playful friend, or the stern disciplinarian. Part of our inner work is to be aware of the role we are playing.

The best actors, rather than “acting,” seem to fully inhabit their roles, believably becoming the character, with no difference between the actor and the role. Some roles come naturally and we inhabit them fully. Others don’t suit us and the fit is uncomfortable. That can be due to the role being at cross purposes with our preferences and predilections, or with an image we have of who we are, or with our background, experience and habits, or with our psychological makeup. Nevertheless, some ill-suited roles may be necessary ones and may even be useful for our spiritual development. A little more inner freedom allows us to fulfill what’s required of us, to do the right thing and be the right way, uncomfortable though it may be.

In the same way that God gives us our free will, we often hand over our freedom to the less-than-conscious patterns and habits of our roles. By this abdication of responsibility, we sometimes allow ourselves to act in ways unbecoming to our truer self. By giving us freedom, God takes the risk that we will abuse it. Conscience serves as our link to the source of our freedom, can guide our actions rightly, and can even lead toward allowing God to play the role of being us.

So it is with our own roles. If we can maintain a link from each role to our more essential self, we act within the role but also in accord with our deeper nature. That link is presence.

Presence has no shape and no agenda beyond being present, but carries with it a sense of who I am. Thus presence can enter any and every role we play, keeping our freedom where it belongs, with who we really are, and making the role conscious. We can be ourselves and fully inhabit our roles, without allowing the roles free reign to do the wrong thing or to live the pre-programmed life.

Notice the roles you play. Can you bring presence into your roles? For some roles, perhaps the ones we play at home, this is relatively easy: we can more readily be ourselves in those roles. For other roles, not so easy: we lose ourselves in the role. In meditation and in deep prayer we drop all roles, even the role of the meditator or supplicant.

For this week, see your roles. Be present and be yourself in them.

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