It's All In the Playing

by Shirley Maclaine

  I had also agreed that I would participate in a “consciousness” experiment whereby my own soul would leave that body on the slab and enter other bodily forms in order to experience life. This process occurred over a period of centuries, and in that time I had innumerable incarnations while my original body remained on the slab. I could enter the original body any time I wanted, but I felt trapped and imprisoned because it was in a state of suspended life.

  As I had lain on the table with the needles in my body, the sensations became more uncomfortable than I could bear; the dead stiffness of the joints and a kind of frozen inactivity of my inner organs were stifling. It was as though my body “today” had a cellular memory of another body eons before, when it had been involved with something I had agreed to, but thoroughly disliked.

  As Chris and I had worked on the bizarre images coming up for me, I tried to pinpoint why my higher self was showing them to me. At the time it had become so physically uncomfortable that I had terminated the session.

  But I knew this was an area I’d have to come back to.

  Chapter 13

  Now, one year later, I thought I might try again. I knew from experience that when things get rough, a breakthrough is just on the other side of the pain.

  Chris had come into town from New Mexico to administer several treatments to various people. She stayed with me and we did a session. As a result of that session, several things became clear.

  It wasn’t long after Chris inserted the needles that the pictures began to appear again. There it was—the same familiar stonelike body lying on a slab. I knew it was me. The associated pain occurred again. I was imprisoned and entrapped inside the body. It was horrible. Chris guided me through it.

  “Breathe light into the needles,” she suggested gently.

  I breathed evenly, visualizing light coming from the needle points. I felt myself relax a bit.

  “Now,” she said, “ask your higher self why you are having this pain.”

  I questioned my higher self. I did it in words, in English. I waited. I didn’t hear anything come back. I questioned again. Nothing happened. I could feel myself resisting, as though I didn’t want to hear what it had to say.

  “Breathe into your third eye,” said Chris. “Take light-filled breaths and tell me what you see.”

  I did what she said. Through my third eye I breathed light. Then I saw a picture form in the front of my mind. I was lying on a desert surrounded by lavender flowers. I was trying to beam light to another soul in the universe. I followed the light as far as I could see, but then I lost it.

  On the table my right forearm began to throb with pain. I knew it had something to do with the other soul I was beaming to.

  I told Chris what I was seeing.

  “Okay,” she said. “Ask your higher self to tell you the story of that soul and your right arm.”

  I asked. This time I got an answer, in English.

  “The other soul wanted to depart,” said Higher Self. “You wouldn’t honor the desire. You attempted to hold on physically with your right arm. The soul departed anyway. You are still holding pain over the occurrence.”

  Suddenly the picture in my mind became very specific. I saw myself in a temple with people languishing around in white robes. The temple was made of peacock-blue marble. I asked my higher self who the people were.

  The picture swam back to the desert, where I saw vases of some kind. I asked what was in the vases.

  “They are cremation vases,” said Higher Self.

  “Who is in them?” I asked.

  “Both child and grandfather,” said Higher Self. “You were both.”

  “I was both?”

  Higher Self nodded and said, “Yes.”

  I couldn’t figure that out.

  “Don’t try,” said Chris. “Just allow it to come.”

  Okay, I would. Then Higher Self said, “They were your brothers.”

  My brothers? That was even more confusing. I waited for a moment, becoming agitated and impatient.

  Then I saw the slab again. There was my body on it. As I watched, a woman came over to my body with a small sculpted bottle in her hand. It was Tina Turner, looking almost identically as she looks today! She held the small bottle aloft, as though to show me I had drunk from a similar bottle. I couldn’t understand. I asked Higher Self.

  Immediately the picture changed to what looked like palm trees turned to stone. They were alive and standing, but stone. Then I saw the word VIOLENT spelled out. Immediately after that there was a forest of trees on fire. A terrible chest pain stabbed me. I saw little people with bald heads running around with earrings in their ears. Animals were stampeding, trying to escape from the forest fire. They were headed toward a city.

  The next thing I knew I was in the city (which was more like a templed community). And an elephant was tracking me down. (I seemed to have an affinity for elephants. They were always popping up in my visualizations.) The elephant was angry with me, as though I had caused the fire. Then a previous psychic visualization occurred again. I was living with the elephants and decided to leave and head toward the city. I don’t know how the fire began, but the herd leader blamed me.

  The scene shifted. The pain in my chest became intolerable. I got very frightened lying on the table. Then I saw myself on the ground, unable to escape from the elephant. I looked up at him. He reared up on his hind legs and came down on my chest, crushing me. I let out a moan. It was awful. I felt I was reliving the actual event. But the most bitter memory was that I had loved the elephant and he had not understood why I left him or the herd. My chest and back were so painful now I could hardly breathe.

  “Now,” said Chris after I had related the story to her, “ask your higher self if there is anything else for you to know relating to this before you release the memory for good.”

  I did. And Higher Self said, “The elephant lives today. He is white. He is looking for you in order to make peace and to lead you somewhere.”

  White elephants had been a haunting passion of mine as long as I could remember. I asked how he would find me.

  Higher Self said, “He will.”

  I began to cry. I didn’t know why. You never really do know why you’re crying when working with past-life psychic energies, but you always do. I think it’s because your soul finally makes contact with truths it only sensed before. Since we have all lived so many lifetimes over so much of the planet’s experience, it is very emotional when you finally remember something that you know belongs to your experience, but which you have been unable to integrate before. I think we are all haunted by knowing that we are only a subtotal of much more than we realize and actually more than this life’s experience. We are often touched and reminded of passions and events from some long-forgotten time and place, but we don’t know how to identify them or whether we can even call them real. When you finally begin to scratch the surface of who you really are, it is overwhelming. You are never the same, nor do you want to be—and you are, whether you realize it or not, on the path of self-discovery, self-knowledge, and self-revelation.

  The session didn’t terminate with the elephant.

  “Breathe in through the needles,” reminded Chris. “Breathe into the solar plexus, so you can release the painful images and we can get on to touching more.”

  I breathed in and out through my solar plexus.

  “Allow the past image to release, so you can draw in the future image of the white elephant bringing you peace.”

  I breathed. The pain in my back and chest and shoulders was worse. It went up and down my arms, throughout my whole body. I explained it to Chris.

  “Ask why,” she said.

  I tried. The answer came back: “Suffering from love congestion.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What is the source of love congestion?”

  “Smoke and polluted air,” said Higher Self.

  I began gasping for breath. My breathing was so labored I couldn’t get enough oxygen.
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  “What’s going on, Chris?” I said. “I’m a little frightened.”

  “Go into the pain of breathing,” she said. “Let the images rise.”

  I tried to relax and allow the pictures to come. Instead of pictures I got an answer from Higher Self.

  “Love in the human body is congested because the body is a vehicle of carbon,” said Higher Self.

  “Carbon?”

  “Yes. Carbon is the lower frequency of silica which is crystal. It is difficult to resonate to divine love in bodies of carbon. You are on the earth plane to raise the frequency of carbon to the frequency of crystal, which will act as a consciousness amplifier. When your consciousness is raised, the love feelings are not congested because you are resonating to the Divine Source.”

  As soon as Higher Self ceased talking, the picture of my stonelike body lying on the slab returned. Immediately my body was more pained than before. I squirmed around on the table. I couldn’t get comfortable.

  “You are back with the slab?” asked Chris.

  “Yes,” I answered. “And it’s godawful. I wish I could work out this slab thing once and for all. It’s always in my mind but I can’t work through it.”

  “Well,” said Chris, “go into the body on the slab.”

  “I don’t want to,” I answered. “I’ll be stuck again.”

  “Then go to the time when you broke free. You know you did.”

  I can’t.

  “Yes, you can.”

  I squirmed around on the table, jarring several of the acupuncture needles loose.

  “I don’t want to be here,” I said. “I want to quit. I want to get up.”

  “Of course you do,” said Chris. “Because you are about ready to break through. You are coming to the real you who is still feeling congested about love—which is what the stone body represents. You won’t accept and embrace real love until you break up the congestion.”

  “Okay,” I said impatiently. “What the hell should I do?”

  Chris’s voice became softer. “Ask your higher self what you need, to be free of the bondage.”

  I yelled at her: “Why should I ask my higher self anything? I know it’s nothing but me!”

  Chris was slightly taken aback.

  “Of course it is,” she said. “It’s the higher you, and you are out of touch with it. Ask it for help.”

  “All right,” I yelled. Then in my head I yelled at my higher self. “What is wrong with me?!?”

  It said calmly, “You are impossible.”

  I said to Chris: “It says I’m impossible.”

  “Well, we know that, don’t we?” she answered gently. “Now, embrace your higher self and allow yourself to be embraced by it.”

  “I don’t want to!” I shrieked. “Because I am impossible.”

  Chris laughed. “But your higher self isn’t.”

  “Yes, it is, because it’s me.”

  “No,” said Chris. “You, right here on this table, are the impossible one.”

  “Yeah?” I asked sarcastically. “Well, what should I do now?”

  “Ask your higher self what gift does the impossible one need in order to be free. Because the impossible one is imprisoned in its own impossibility.”

  I hesitated.

  “Ask,” chided Chris.

  “I can’t,” I answered, “because I, the impossible one, and it, my higher self, are the same.”

  My body was virtually knotted with pain now.

  “Your choice,” said Chris, “is to remain impossible or be released.”

  I couldn’t move now. I felt encased, similar to the mental picture I was seeing.

  “I really am in a dangerous place now,” I said, subtly blaming Chris.

  “The impossible one likes dangerous places. It stays in control that way.”

  “Okay. Big deal,” I said. “What should I do then?”

  Chris hesitated, then went on: “You can focus on your higher self or you can focus on the impossible one—which of course you’re already doing. When you focus on impossibility, it takes over, because that is your consciousness at the moment. Change that consciousness—that’s all.”

  I stopped and tried to shift my focus. I couldn’t find my higher self anymore.

  “Remember the light,” said Chris. “Fill your inner being with light. Draw the light in and expand it. You will get direction from your higher self. Your rebellious part says you can’t choose light, but that is your ego talking; the immature child part of you. Draw your higher self into the light.”

  Slowly I forced my consciousness toward my higher self. I drew in the visualization. Light hovered in my mind. Then everything came clear. There I was on the slab, my body looking as though it were made of stone. Then I saw a group of white-robed priests lift my body from the slab and prop it up to its full height. They carried me to a place of worship and erected me upright, as though I were to be an idol of some kind. They surrounded me with the impedimenta of adoration and proceeded to teach others to chant worshipfully before the stone statue that was really me, except that I had no control over it and I was horrified that it was being used as an image for the purpose of perpetuating elitist spiritual authority.

  As I watched the picture in my mind, everything became clear. No wonder I had felt so responsible for the destiny of so many people. Perhaps this was one reason for some of the problems I had today regarding adoration and fan worship. To me there was nothing more shameful than to be hyped by a studio into being adored if I hadn’t earned it. It is mortifying for me and ultimately humiliating for the people being so manipulated.

  I watched the past-life visualization continue. As it extended, it seemed to last for centuries. The image of me; a suspended-life statue serving as a false representative of spiritual authority. There seemed to be nothing I could do about it, and I knew that on some level I had willingly participated in this bizarre experiment of soul and body suspension. And somewhere on a soul level of consciousness I knew I would reap the karma of having been a part of this. Perhaps this was why I had created a role for myself this time around whereby I would be at the forefront of the New Age spiritual movement, heralding the giant truth that one individual is his or her own best teacher, and that no other idol or false image should be worshipped or adored because the God we are all seeking lies inside one’s self, not outside.

  This session with Chris was a powerful one for me. It put me in touch with why I was feeling guilty about other people’s negativity, and it also enabled me to feel free to release some of my own pent-up feelings, to neutralize my frustrations. As the shooting proceeded I didn’t explode in temperamental anger or anything like that. I just expressed what I felt while working. If I felt depressed I didn’t bother to camouflage it. If I was pissed off I found a humorous way to let myself say so.

  At first I found that people were somewhat startled at seeing that my emotional life was not always peaches and cream. But as a result they were more certain of where they stood with me. If I needed more light on my face to reveal tears in my eyes, I said so to Brad. He appreciated the interest. If Charles Dance wanted to change a line we had written, I would listen, but if it didn’t sound right I wouldn’t let him do it. If Anne Jackson, playing Bella, wore a dress that looked more like Anne than Bella, I changed it. I wondered sometimes if I was indulging in a power trip. I wondered if I sounded superior; if I had forsaken my democratic way of working. But no, it didn’t feel like that. It felt as though I was taking charge of my own responsibility, which, as I looked back, was probably related to the lifetime that came up for me on the table—the lifetime in which I had not.

  The morning after my session with Chris, a school of dolphins swam past my bedroom window. And that afternoon the pain in my back disappeared. On New Year’s Eve, Sachi and Colin and I went to a small party attended by people in our business who were spiritual seekers themselves. Twenty of us sat around an oval table; a crystal was passed to each of us and we expressed in words what we w
ould like to manifest in our lives for the following year. The open and direct honesty was heart-glowing to witness. But when the crystal came to me I found myself expressing an understanding that for me was true, but for some of the others seemed outlandish.

  I began by saying that since I realized I created my own reality in every way, I must therefore admit that, in essence, I was the only person alive in my universe. I could feel the instant shock waves undulate around the table. I went on to express my feeling of total responsibility and power for all events that occur in the world because the world is happening only in my reality. And human beings feeling pain, terror, depression, panic, and so forth, were really only aspects of pain, terror, depression, panic, and so on, in me! If they were all characters in my reality, my dream, then of course they were only reflections of myself.

  I was beginning to understand what the great masters had meant when they said “you are the universe.” If we each create our own reality, then of course we are everything that exists within it. Our reality is a reflection of us.

  Now, that truth can be very humorous. I could legitimately say that I created the Statue of Liberty, chocolate chip cookies, the Beatles, terrorism, and the Vietnam War. I couldn’t really say for sure whether anyone else in the world had actually experienced those things separately from me because these people existed as individuals only in my dream. I knew I had created the reality of the evening news at night. It was in my reality. But whether anyone else was experiencing the news separately from me was unclear, because they existed in my reality too. And if they reacted to world events, then I was creating them to react so I would have someone to interact with, thereby enabling myself to know me better.

  My purpose in mentioning this on New Year’s Eve was to project a hope that if I changed my conception of reality for the better in the coming year, I would in effect be contributing to the advancement of the world. Therefore, my New Year’s resolution was to improve myself—which would in turn improve the world I lived in.