Category: authenticity

Walking the wire

I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of tightrope dancer, so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.
~Goethe

I first came across this quote, reportedly one of Sanford Meisner’s favourites, via Simon Furness whilst training with him, some four years ago. It burned itself into me and has come to mean many different things to me at different times. Today, its meaning is something like: the dedication to this path, to the best of my ability, to wherever that leads and to those who might share it with me for a while.
Funnily enough, I have trained in tightwire in the past and even given a little performance or two on it and am reminded of another of Simon’s many pieces of wise guidance shared: ‘a miss is as good as a mile’. I think that, finally, only we can know for ourselves if we are placing each step on the path truthfully and with our fullest possible commitment. And, as some of the reflections on this subject describe, there is no ‘sort of’ staying on ‘the wire’.
To keep facing the truth of life, through the fear. I feel that is something of my task. And this lifetime is not long enough to repay the debt of gratitude I owe the good teachers, friends, family, colleagues, and my tribe with out whose help I would not have had a hope in hell of staying on the straight & narrow.

walking the wire

What does one do when one wakes up (The Matrix revisited?)

Skimmed tpuc.co.uk. So here’s the thing for me: I was already sold on the idea that many of the components that I had taken for granted as core to my permission for participation as a member of humanity are, in actual fact, just ideas and that some of which are, ultimately, to my detriment e.g. The negative aspects of my birth certificate as a document of ownership of the state [and therefore those who own the state] over my ‘legal’ [slave] identity. And that, in many cases, people are willingly and happily allowing themselves to be farmed like cattle in exchange for rewards of much less true value than that which they are selling e.g. Cash for Authenticity/freedom [ok, yes, what is ‘freedom’- that’s a big discussion for another time].
My problem then is: having arrived at this perspective, what am I to do? How does this serve me/others? Am I destined to now spend my remaining years shouting at windmills?
Much meditation required…