What Is Your Idea of Peace?
Be the Watcher
Dear Friend,
Saturday gone, Chiara and me, we were treated to front row seats at the dress rehearsal for Ralph Fiennes’ performance of MacBeth. Front row, mean’t two feet from the great actor.
We both love Ralph Fiennes’ work. Gustave H, in The Grand Budapest Hotel, a particular favourite.
At the end of the performance the cast were given a standing ovation, only for the stage manager to request we repeat the applause as they needed to practice the curtain call again.
It was a lovely moment. Intimate. Relief washing through the audience and we laughed along with the cast, freed from the tragedy that had unfolded before us.
A couple loosing their peace of mind.
“O full of scorpions is my mind.”
Status.
Power.
What use are they if they rob us of peace? MacBeth cannot sleep, and when he does, his tortured mind plunges him into nightmare. Lady MacBeth’s sleepwalking, the stains on her conscience will not wash.
There’s a moment in the play where MacBeth realises what he is sacrificing, just before he commits the act of murder, but his course is set. The false self has him.
What he has, title, honour, property, kinship have lost value.
The idea of himself as King, has him.
Ideas. Thoughts.
Grasping at phantoms.
I was struck by how unimpressed Ralph was with his own performance. There were moments when his mind grappled ever so slightly for the next line. He took the standing ovation, along with his fellow actors, but I sense he knew there was more to find, more to give, at least that’s how I read it.
Future audiences I sense will be treated to the full force of his abilities. Myself I am content to have shared such a moment in his presence, the words of Shakespeare reaching through a great actor into our present time.
Shakespeare, poet, playwright, actor, artist.
What use are our desires and ambitions if they rob us of our peace of mind?
We all know that feeling of wanting the next moment to come. The moment we are in feels lacking in some way, and the promise of what will come occupies our mind.
I’ll be happy when…
I’m King?
Queen?
No.
Peace is uncovered when we wake up to the parade of thoughts that march and wriggle through our mind. The key is to open our hands, let all we think we hold slip from our grasping fingers and lean back into life.
Peace comes when we realise we cannot control our outer environments nor the behaviour of others, but we can tend to our inner selves and our reactions and responses to the world out there.
“ [To] stand unshaken amidst the crash of breaking worlds"
(Paramahansa Yogananda)
It’s not that the world becomes peaceful and then so do we.
We cultivate peace within ourselves, the energy of peace emanating powerfully from us as we do so.
As more of us strive for inner peace so the world is transformed.
What if today we make the effort to watch our thoughts as if they were things. Maybe clouds reflected in a river?
Realising we can watch a thought. Notice how they arise out of nowhere. Where do they return once we turn our attention away from them?
Turning attention to the in and out of our breath.
Pay attention to the sounds that reach us.
Look at the way the light plays on the surface of the world.
Watch what happens when we become still on the inside. The observer, watching the play of thoughts unfold before us.
If we can watch our thoughts, we realise we are not them.
We are something else.
Peace has something to do with what we are.
To know our selves.
Is to know peace.
MacBeth ‘hitting the nail on the head’.
The false self.
"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."
(William Shakespeare)
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey