I Don't Want to Be in Your Play Anymore

People who know me know that I love the theater. I've been an actress since I was old enough to stand in front of the television and mimic the singers, dancers, and actresses who caught my fancy on all of the variety shows and movie musicals that were so popular in the 1960s. I was in my first live stage production at the age of nine and by the time I started high school, I'd been a part of so many plays and musical productions that I couldn't count them all. I love drama and I always have--on the stage, that is.

Unfortunately I also grew up with a lot of drama that wasn't always played out on the stage. It was Shakespeare who said that "All the world's a stage and all men and women merely players...", and he was correct. We all have to deal with a certain amount of offstage drama, but that doesn't mean that we have to create it nor must we be willing participants in the drama that someone else creates. The problem is that when we grow up in the drama, it's all we know. We don't realize that we don't have to live with it or that it's even harmful to us not only emotionally and mentally, but physically as well. We literally become addicted to it like a drug, which in fact, it is a drug, or at least it causes a chemical reaction in our bodies and gives us a rush like a drug. The natural hormone that it creates and feeds on is adrenalin, also known as the "fight or flight" hormone, and it's that chemical rush that causes our addiction to drama.

It wasn't until a few years ago after I had a major gallbladder attack and I had to have my very sick gallbladder removed, that I learned that stress and/or "drama" is a major contributor to gallbladder disease. It

was then that I made the decision that when the surgeon cut the diseased organ out, I was going to excise the drama from my life at the same time. I literally said "no" to all the people--family, friends, acquaintances, co-workers, people on Facebook, etc.-- who were addicted to drama and who not only created it, but who tried to suck me into it. Not only did I stop participating in other people's drama, I quit creating my own and sucking others in. At first it was hard. Like any addiction, you go through a period of withdrawal that literally leaves you feeling sick, empty, and bored, so to counteract the boredom and fill my life with something where the drama once was, I decided to write the book that I always wanted to write. After writing and publishing two books, I concentrated on losing the weight that the drama-induced stress caused. Pretty soon I found that not only did it get easier and easier to stay out of the drama, it also got easier to identify people who were addicted to drama and who were seeking to suck me into it. And once identified, it was easy for me to tell them that I didn't want to be a part of it and to go away.

Yes, I made a few enemies when I walked off their stages in the middle of a scene, but I actually found a whole lot more friends in the process--friends whose plays are much more fun to be in and who enjoy taking the stage and then standing back and giving the stage to me for a while. If life must be a theater, at least I have a choice of whose play I want to be in.

I am a part of it all

I look all around me and I am always amazed at the things there are to learn. God reveals himself through his creation--through plants & animals, through people, through the cosmos, through the arts & sciences, and through reason & philosophy. To claim that truth can only be found in one source, in one belief, in one religion, in one philosophy is to deny the vastness and inconceivable nature of The Creator, and to me is the ultimate blasphemy. We cannot put God in a box. The more I know of the universe around me, the more I know myself, and the more I know God. What a comfort to know that I am not separate from creation, that I am a part of it, and because I am a part of it, no matter what religions tell me, I am not separated from God, nor have I ever been. No man-made doctrine will ever change that truth.

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God. ~Albert Einstein

A case for reincarnation

Nearly six decades ago, a 21-year-old Navy fighter pilot on a mission over the Pacific was shot down by Japanese artillery. His name might have been forgotten, were it not for 6-year-old James Leininger.

Quite a few people — including those who knew the fighter pilot — think James is the pilot, reincarnated. James' parents, Andrea and Bruce, a highly educated, modern couple, say they are "probably the people least likely to have a scenario like this pop up in their lives." But over time, they have become convinced their little son has had a former life.

From an early age, James would play with nothing else but planes, his parents say. But when he was 2, they said the planes their son loved began to give him regular nightmares. "I'd wake him up and he'd be screaming," Andrea told ABCNEWS' Chris Cuomo. She said when she asked her son what he was dreaming about, he would say, "Airplane crash on fire, little man can't get out."







Source: Reverse Spins, Proof of Reincarnation

The illusion is gone

I had a dream last night that when I awakened was very easy to analyze. I dreamed that I traveled to Vienna with Steph and when we arrived we went to visit this beautiful, old Viennese house full of ornate wood and carved, tray ceilings, large baroque stair cases, etc. All of a sudden the walls started filling with water, it came flooding into them from everywhere. The interior structure walls were filled to bursting and when they broke open a whole section of the interior of the house caved in, and the beautiful tray ceilings came crashing down, the ornate carving was splintered, and although the structure survived, what was revealed was only the structure. The rest had only been a facade, an illusion.

When one understands that in dreams houses represent one's life, then this dream was extremely revealing for me in light of the book I'm currently writing. Things are coming to light that are beginning to threaten the illusion I had of the main character in my book and about her life, and it is adding a whole new depth to the story and revealing a host of new characters who I never thought were important, as extremely important, and in many cases pivotal.