6
Do We Choose Our Life,
Or Does Our Life Choose Us?
A
long time ago, perhaps ten or fifteen years ago, I asked myself a simple
question: why do actors choose the roles they play? If I’m not mistaken, this
question was prompted by Al Pacino’s role in Scarface, a shocking movie of horrific violence; and I remember
thinking to myself that in Scarface
Pacino had unleashed all the violent emotions that he held back in his Godfather movies, giving me an insight
as to why an actor plays the roles he plays—an insight that shocked me at the
time.
The
insight that came to me was that the actor does not choose the roles he plays;
instead, the role chooses the actor. This was beyond my comprehension, but in a
strange way it made sense to me; and every movie that I watched since my shocking
insight I saw in a different light, because I now asked myself: why did that
role choose that actor?
It took a few years of reflective
thought, but one day I connected the dots and realized that this was the
central mystery of the individuation process; and a role chooses the actor
because the actor needs that role to come to terms with their undiscovered
self. But this is such a powerful thought that I have to do a spiritual musing
to work it out…
As I sat back and thought about my
entry point into my spiritual musing, the image of the actor Hugh Laurie came
to mind; of him telling the story of how synchronicity opened the door for his
leading role in the TV series that would bring him stardom—his role as Dr. Gregory
House in the new TV medical drama called House.
If
memory serves me, Hugh Laurie was shooting the film The Flight of the Phoenix in Africa and he taped his audition for
the role of Dr. Gregory House in the washroom of his hotel room in Namibia
because it had good lighting, but he had just come in from a long hard day of
filming and was scruffy and unkempt and had a five o’clock shadow, which for
some odd reason appealed to David Shore, the creator of House, and Laurie got the part.
I’ve
read many stories of how synchronicity opened the door for actors and writers
and people in every walk of life, which writers like Robert H. Hopcke (There Are No Accidents, Synchronicity and
the Stories of Our Lives) and David Richo (The Power of Coincidence, How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know)
have written about, and which I’ve personally experienced with some amazing
coincidences in my own life (how I found Gurdjieff’s teaching that changed my
life, for example; or finding a building lot for our new house in Georgian Bay
on a street called Stocco, my last name); and the more I reflected on the
mysterious phenomenon of synchronicity, the more I was forced to see that as
free as we are to choose the life we live we are also guided by what I have
come to call the “omniscient guiding force of life,” and synchronicity is life’s
way of calling us to our destiny.
The
psychologist C. G. Jung coined the word synchronicity, which he defined as a
meaningful coincidence to draw a distinction between mere coincidence and a
meaningful coincidence; and in There Are
No Accidents Hopcke expands upon this understanding: “Coincidence is a bond
between unconnected realities. Synchronicity joins something going on outside
us with something happening inside us. In fact, synchronicity gives us a clue
that there is no real separation between inside and outside, between internal
and external reality. There is continual interplay. In this sense,
synchronicity is a spiritual event, one that shows the unity of human, natural,
and divine reality” (There Are No
Accidents, p. 8).
Shirley
MacLaine, whose remarkable life has been guided by amazing coincidences, says
in her memoir I’m Over All That, “The
truth is that no matter where I went, I was always looking for myself. The
journey into myself as I evaluated my beliefs and values, whether living at
home or in far-flung corners of the world, has been the most important journey
of all,” and while she was in Peru doing the movie version of her book Out on a Limb, the Peruvian shamans told
her that “our spiritual existence is a unique combination of free will and
predestination. We each came in with a destiny, but free will can pull us out
of alignment with that destiny. This is why it is so necessary to be in touch
with our true selves. The true self is totally in touch with the movements of
space-time and never fixed in either time or space” (I’m Over All That, pp. 11 &171).
Obviously
then, synchronicity comes into play in our life to align our free will (our
karmic destiny, which we determine by the choices we make) with our predestined
spiritual destiny that we’re all born with; and this is my entry point into
today’s spiritual musing, because it opens us up to the mystery of our destined
purpose in life...
“Meaningfulness
happens when an event or experience in conscious life puts us in contact with
unconscious forces that lead us to a fulfillment of our destiny,” wrote David
Richo in The Power of Coincidence; and
I had a meaningful coincidence one evening last fall just as we were about to
sit down for dinner with some friends when I noticed that the movie Hemingway and Gellhorn was about to play
on television.
I had
to excuse myself from the dinner table, because I felt compelled to watch the
movie that would bring me back to my high school hero and literary mentor and
awaken me to the enantiodromiac
principle of the great writer’s life that became the inspiration for my new book
The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway.
The
outer event in my life was the movie Hemingway
and Gellhorn that put me in contact with my unconscious and awakened me to
the enantiodromiac principle of life,
which is the principle of our becoming that I saw being played out in Hemingway’s
tumultuous relationship with his third wife Martha Gellhorn; that’s why I
exclaimed half way through the movie, “He
had to be a prick to become the great writer that he became!” And I went
back to Hemingway to re-read my high school hero with fresh eyes, because the
movie had given me the insight that I needed to understand the enantiodromiac principle that governs
life.
I
didn’t choose to write The Lion that
Swallowed Hemingway, then; it chose me, because I was ready to grow in my
understanding of the enantiodromiac principle
of life that is the driving force of our self-becoming, and the omniscient
guiding force of life arranged for me to have a deeper relationship with my
unconscious by compelling me to watch the movie Hemingway and Gellhorn just as we were about to sit down for
dinner.
As I
watched my high school hero play out his self-centered life in his relationship
with his strong-willed third wife Martha Gellhorn, I saw the dynamic play of
Hemingway’s obstreperous shadow (the
unconscious dark side of his personality), and I caught a glimpse of the enantiodromiac principle that I needed
to better grasp the central mystery of the individuation process—which is the
mystery of becoming our true self.
Shirley
MacLaine said that no matter where she went, she was always looking for herself,
and not until she found herself would she be content with her life; and I was
called to write my book The Lion that
Swallowed Hemingway because my inner self knew that this was what I needed to
become more aware of the individuation of our true self.
Synchronicity
is the call to our true self, then; and the book chooses the writer just as the
role chooses the actor, because this is what they need to grow into the person
they are meant to be, thereby aligning their karmic destiny with their predestined
spiritual destiny to help them fulfill their purpose in life. We are free to
choose our own life, then; but when our life needs to be brought into alignment
with our spiritual destiny, life chooses us.
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