Merely Players

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark," said Marcellus in "Hamlet". It was clear that something very unpleasant was going on and it would play itself out. Something is rotten in England right now and that, too, will play itself out. What is rotten is corruption and power-seeking but it isn't anything new. Since time began there have been people who cannot face their own inner demons so enact them on the world stage. Shakespeare has it to a tee:

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages...."

And again:
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..

But that, coming from the tyrant, Macbeth, misses a lot of the truth. To a tyrant, whose sole aim is to hold on to power at any cost, life must indeed seem like the fifteen minutes of fame that quickly implodes and burns the tyrant. The 'altruistic tyrant is even worse, I think, because he believes he is doing the world a favour by telling everyone else how to live; by taking charge, and being in control. What arrogance to think we know better than everyone else, how everyone ought to live!

It is absolutely fascinating that the most powerful people of all time are those who simply went about their message and never tried to impose their ideas on the world. The tyrants from the Caesars and Alexander the Great to Hitler and Stalin, had their moment of 'glory' and were gone. Who remains? The Buddha, Christ, Shakti, Shiva, the unchanging...They weren't playing the role on this earthly level; they were living from their own reality.

Indeed, those who seek power in this world, can have it! Much good will it do them! Like Faust, they will have their moment of pleasure and it will be gone. On the other hand, the 'other world' is, to my mind, not separate from this one - it isn't in some far distant future or something we achieve after death, if we're good enough; it is now and it is the reality. We see the lost little children playing their games of glory and they come home feeling no better off than Macbeth who, for all his moment of glory, was utterly destroyed by his own ambition for power.

The real power is shifting nowadays. It is surely moving away from the rottenness of needing other people to tell us how to live, what is good or bad for us, and, at the same time using us to work out their own insecurities. Altruism is often a mask for avoidance of responsibility for our own issues. If we all looked to ourselves, to our own inner demons, and rooted them out, there would be no demons in the world at all and we would stop playing as actors and start to live happily and peacefully as children 'at play in the fields of the Lord'.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if, one day, those who think they rule the world, had a glimpse into the inner reality and saw that those whom they perceive as dreamers are, in fact, living a life that is very different from the nightmare that the need to project and control other people creates? There would be no more wars; no more violence; no more play-acting...only playing happily as we were created to be.