Jim Henson made all of his friends puppets so that they could more consciously, corageously and hilariously act out the archetypal drama energy patterns they were locked in, so that they could become liberated by that act of sacrifice of your own self-image.
This is a little bit like what I talked about way back when with regards to the whole evil twin thing. But not completely.
The way I have been thinking about it the most lately and which I have had the most personal success with not only in understanding on an intellectual level, but in terms of actually changing my life is as a musical. Basically, you think of your life as a musical. A really grand epic stage production with all the drama, intrigue, romance and dancing you can shake a stick at.
I’ve been asking people this question a lot: if you could write yourself an ideal part to play in a musical, what would it be? People always have interesting and bizarrely revealing responses to this. Try it for yourself. What part would you want to play? If it’s not the part you’re currently playing, the thing is that it is the part you were meant to play. It’s why you were sent here. It’s why you chose to come onto the “stage” of this world. And you’re probably suppressing it. Don’t worry. It’s what most people do. It’s what factions within our world want us and train us to do. Their reasons are their own. It’s not worth speculating on them.
What it is worth doing is re-writing the part that you’re currently playing scene-by-scene into the part that you know you MUST play. The part God allowed you to enter this performance to put on because you were the only one uniquely qualified to handle it.
Part of the beauty of this “modality” of looking at personal spirituality though is that it gets better the more you share it. And this is what I was talking about with regards to the Jim Henson thing. Part of the beauty of any person who is authentically creative (who partakes in the ecstatic creative power of the Godhead) is that they can’t help but give it to others. It is criminal at that point to be experiencing such states of sublime beauty and to be keeping them to yourself.
What you may find though is that people are scared of experiencing beauty. They want it. They need it. They know it exists in their heart. But they are jaded. Scared. Pushed down by this world. Locked within patterns they can’t control. Acting out parts that don’t fit for them and which don’t make use of their unique skills.
And I think Jim Henson saw this. So what he did was he took each of his friends and asked them what their ideal part would be in a musical. And then he wrote that into the musical of his life, and asked them to play that part. He was clever enough to realize that most people are fearful of actually actively taking on the role they were meant to play though so he gave them a tool. He gave them each a muppet. A puppet. An externalization of themselves so that they could look objectively at the stories they are caught in and how to improve them. Some of them he gave many muppets, so that they could explore all kinds of hidden and locked away facets of themselves.
But all he really did was give them permission and an excuse. He set up a creative space to play in and then left the door unlocked with cookies inside on the table. And that’s about as simple as it gets. Watch the Muppet Movie for more on just how he did it. My favorite scene is when Kermit meets himself out in the desert and he realizes it wasn’t him they all believed in - but the dream.
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30 Comments
This isn’t a direct reply to your post, but what you wrote did get me thinking. Why is it that people don’t know what the part is that they were meant to play? And I think the reason for that is the fact that our culture tells us to place ourselves at the centre of the universe, and so we all end up thinking that we are the lead actor. But a play (or a musical) can’t work when EVERYONE is a lead actor.
I think that one of the problems is that kids are never taught to understand themselves. At school or at home, or wherever. So we grow up questioning everything about the external world but find it hard to see what our place is in it. We can’t see ourselves properly and so we end up quite deluded about our place in the world. And the only solution to that is finding some way to look at yourself objectively. Sometimes psychedelics can help with this, or therapy. But our culture doesn’t spend nearly enough time concentrating on the archetypes, like those in tribal societies did through their stories and rituals. Musicals might be one of the main ways we can see the different archetypes.
Ha, well that sure seemed like a direct reply to the post from where I’m standing.
Again I’ll bring up Jesus Christ Superstar, because it illustrates perfectly the point you’re making: not everybody can play Jesus in the musical. Because it would be BORING and God hates when things get boring. That’s precisely why he invented us.
I don’t buy that people don’t know what their part to play is. I think people just keep it buried because it seems unrealistic and impossible and they are scared to step up to bat. People who are kings know they are kings but say they don’t want to be when they know they really do and are simply scared. Lots of other roles to play before you can play Jesus though.
you know he got really dark stuff before he died, right?
What did you think of the dark Crystal?
its awesome
I also have a sort of pet theory about what “musicals” are in the first place intended to be…
You can trace “music” obviously to the muses in Ancient Greece - to which you can thereby connect devotional/courtly love with the poet’s dedication to the Muse, the Sufis, the whole nine yards. Not tightly wound connections mind you, but important thematic ones.
So it seems that part of what the musical genre is supposed to do is inspire divine participation with the ecstasy of devotional love to the muses… Which is why Jesus Christ Superstar is such a perfect musical: because the story of Christ, of all ancient “prophecy” was originally delivered within the context of interactive musical performance theatre. If Jesus was anything in “real life” he was a character in a hit musical in the desert who went on to crush box office records the world over!
Also, the Proto Indo European roots for “muse” come from words for remembering and thinking. Remembering is especially important here: Philip K Dick’s anamnesis in which the God Yah wakes up and remembers the Joy and Bounty of his creation from within it, through the inspiration (the blowing into of the holy wind spirit) of the Muse/ical
When you say “proto Indo European” you reminded me of Bollywood. All musicals.
That’s cool about the muses though. I’ve been getting back in touch with mine of late.
Superstar vs. Technicolour Dreamcoat - compare and contrast… one story is clearly pasted over the other. Father and son and twelve brothers? That’s prophecy, that is.
Except I don’t like Superstar - they kill Him off at the end. What’s that all about?
This is interesting while on the subject of Jesus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_death
This also makes PERFECT sense then that I felt so strongly about needing to read the Gospels OUT LOUD because they are meant to be performed.
Passion Plays are not reenactments of the Bible, they are the original method in which the Bible was meant to be understood: as stage drama in which everyone actively and intentionally took part:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passion_plays
When I started doing these reading out loud “performances” on my own is precisely when I started having massive synchronistic experiences around the character of Jesus within my life.
Passion plays are esoteric initiation rituals. Act out the story of Jesus with you and your friends. Be sure to have fun with it though - it’s a game. it’s a musical!
This also explains why at that mass just before Easter - Good Friday I guess in the Catholic Church - that I so distinctly and vividly remember my dad, very religious, yelling out “CRUCIFY HIM!” which is one of the roles for the audience/congregation at the Easter drama:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Play
A bit of background:
I was brought up C of E, like most people I know over here. That’s ‘Church of England’, which is a remarkable branch of Christianity in that everyone in the whole country is ‘in’, unless they specifically request otherwise. This inclusivity has tainted my view of religion ever since.
Anyway.
What it means is that most people I know have participated in a school Nativity play at Christmas time, at the age of around five. And there’s a generally accepted theory that /whatever you play in the Nativity, that shapes the rest of your career./
Hey, I was the narrator. The number of bossy divas I’ve met who played Mary is uncanny ;-D. And the narrator’s part in Joseph ATATD definitely has the best songs. We’ve got this crazy TV programme right now where they’re auditioning Josephs for the West End. C’mon, who wants to be Joseph? ‘I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain’? What does that MEAN, man? How did you see anything?
Hm. Maybe there’s wisdom in your words ;-D
Oh, and PIE makes me think of, well… pie. Mmmm…
I remember wearing a crown and singing in a nativity play as part of a group in kindergarten
Oh man, is that true? I played the star. And by star I don’t mean Jesus. I mean the Star of Bethlehem. Me and my friend got very competitive over that part, but I won out in the end.
You know I was reading this gain, and you really have some beautiful insights into Jim Henson.
Why do you think people are scared of beauty?
Btw,
Hi Cadevo!
Hey Tim,
I just finished listening to your “Faking your own death” podcast. The Dark Crystal deals with a lot of the themes you talk about with the Skeksis and the other dudes that split of from each other and then History begins.
Hmm, well here’s one for you Tim. I’d rather not be part of the musical, I’d rather be part of the crew. You know, doing scenery changes, helping with the props, doing the lights, all that sort of thing. It’s the sort of thing I like doing.
Of course, I’ve always seen the crew as part of the thing. Sure, you don’t see them onstage, but they’re an important part of it. Things wouldn’t go on for very long if they weren’t around.
Well that *is* part of the musical - a very important part. As you may have guessed the role I prefer is also slightly more behind the scenes as a writer/producer. That really gets me going.
I love this for so many reason.
I think you just articulated why this is one of my favorite things in the world and makes my cry, every time.
Yeah the Muppet Movie really hits me where it hurts!
Well, maybe not, now that I watch it in that light. Maybe it’s something slightly different. Whatever. Watch it. And watch to the end.
I kind of disagree. I mean, the last sentence is true. But I think our culture (also) sends the (contradictory) message that we are not stars. Celebrities are the stars. We’re just the consumers, the spectators, and thus that’s the role most of us accept and settle for. Most of us don’t even see ourselves as contenders to actually be a part of the show. So we don’t even strive to reach our full potential, as ‘actors’ or otherwise. It’s hard to discover and play the role you’re meant to play if you don’t even believe you ‘have’ an important role to play.
Also, the lead actor is not necessarily the most important element to a production, just the center of attention. The behind the scenes crew, the writers, the visionaries, the artistic directors and so on are at least as important. Even supporting actors can steal a show, or have as much to do with the overall success of the drama as the ’star’. If we all played our roles as if we were the stars, and at the same time appreciated that everyone else, too is a star (familiar?), I wonder what that would look like? I honestly don’t know, but I suspect it would be good.
Totally agree here. We have become lost in the endless barrage of outer forms, and not been trained to see their interconnections or the fact that they’re all variations on basic archetypal themes, and that it’s those we’re really responding to, without knowing it. But with so many symbols and forms, and no grounding in the simple, underlying patterns and elements that tie them together and give them meaning - no useful frame of reference (or cross-reference?) to understand them, out there or within ourselves - it’s no wonder everyone is so aimless and confused about who they are, where they fit in and what they’re ’supposed’ to do.
I hope you weren’t talkin to me there Tim. Because I wasn’t talking about the Muppet Movie making me cry… though it does have some heartwarming moments.
Wait, what were you talking about making you cry then?
Yeah I totally feel what you’re saying here. One of the ideas I have been developing lately for the purposes of my own musical production (literal, not just figurative) is that basically Jesus is just an actor who is hired by the people who really know, with the “real shit” as it were to act intentionally as a figurehead and crystallize something within culture. I see that as being a kind of fundamental aspect of the Jesus story. And then what happens is you basically sacrifice that character and people’s emotional attachments to that character in order to transform them.
Make any kind of sense?
I wrote something a little while back about my experience taking hawaiian baby woodrose seeds, where I basically left my body and looked at my whole life as if it were a play - completely objectively. And then I actually began to inhabit the minds of my friends and other people I knew, looking at myself the way they saw me.
That whole experience helped me realised two different things:
- firstly, that people are much more complicated than we first think
- but secondly, that people all fit into these general archetypal patterns
Most of the time, people are afraid to really “be themselves”, which is to say, they are afraid to give into the archetype of what they really are. I think this might be why it is sometimes difficult to understand the motives of others, because we keep expecting them to act within the bounds of their archetype, but they try and self-consciously go the other way.
I’ll see if I can dig up my ramblings… http://stirredherd.blogspot.com/2007/02/meaning-myspace-and-complete.html
I was talking about the thing I linked to in the sentence where I was talking about it. Pay attention! Okay, it’s kind of subtle I guess. Easy enough to miss. it’s the ‘this’ that’s highlighted.
Absolutely. And makes me think not only of religious figureheads but of monarchs, presidents, presidential assassinations, and Zaphod Beeblebrox. They’re called figureheads for a reason, right? They are much like actors, in that they are acting on the direction of directors, acting out the writing of writers, bringing to life the visions of visionaries…
I kind of missed that last part of what you said earlier, but now I see it, and it’s the most important point. Makes total sense too.
I’m so glad I’m not the only person who thought The Muppet Movie was transcendent.
Tim, you gotta see El Topo and Holy Mountain. They are easily findable on bittorrent.
Forget that, they finally get legit, restored releases on May Day (how appropriate):
Nice post, Tim. Off to Netflix for the Muppet Movie…
Ha, May Day is when I’m moving to California!