Movies, Dreams, Games and You

by robert cinque

A game is a set of conditions that people agree on in order to play together. Poker, football, basketball all have conditions and rules of engagement. The goal is to defeat your opponent with a better hand or scoring more touchdowns or baskets. In every game there is a goal, players, rules, referees and an audience.

The same is true for theatrical plays and movies. When you go to a movie, you agree to forget about your everyday reality and pretend that the images on the screen are real. The Lone Ranger catches the train robbers. Rocky Balboa defeats the odds and rises to the top. Superman prevents the airplane from crashing.

The same is true in your dreams at night. You fall asleep and dream that you are lost in a jungle. You are running from wild animals and right when you are about to be eaten alive, you wake up. What a relief, you say, it was only a dream.
The same is true for ordinary reality. Asleep to your cosmic nature as infinite consciousness, you appear as Joe or Nancy in a body, in a world, in a universe. These appearances and limitations are what makes the Game work. You could not have dreams at night if you were awake. The temporary forgetting of your waking state enables the dream just like enjoying the movie is only possible because you forget about everything else.

Games, movies and dreams all require a temporary suspension of attention to ordinary reality.
An actor who plays the part of Hamlet forgets himself, puts on a costume and pretends to be someone else. Everyone in the audience agrees to pretend along with him and a drama is created that lasts for a couple of hours. The play has an author, an audience, a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The actor must forget himself in order to play Hamlet in the same way that infinite consciousness must forget itself in order to play you.
This means that you, like Hamlet, is being impersonated. Hamlet is played by the actor, you are played by God.
Here is my point: When the play is over, the actor goes home. He takes off his costume and returns to his personal life. If he continued to pretend that he was Hamlet after the play was over, people would consider him to be insane.
Dying is like waking up from a dream. The dream is not an illusion, it’s a real dream. It is however, an impersonation just like the actor who impersonates Hamlet.

When you are dreaming, you don’t know that it’s a dream. It must be this way in order for the dream to work.
Dreams, movies, and personal biographies are Games. They all require a temporary suspension of belief. In your dreams at night, you forget that you are asleep in bed, just like you forget that you’re in a theatre watching Hamlet. Taking our personal biographies seriously is like the actor who thinks he’s Hamlet after the show is over. When the actor is playing Hamlet, it’s appropriate that he embody Hamlet realistically, otherwise he would be booed off the stage. His acting skill is important to the success of the play, but it must end when the show is over.
This seems so obvious, it doesn’t even need to be mentioned. Why then, do we linger in our costumes after the play is over? Because the Actor is still asleep to his own self and loves to perform as Hamlet, as you and me, the world and the universe. God loves to build sand castles and knock them down, play hide and seek, and watch movies. You would think that being God is serious business. Creating and managing the universe, listening to countless prayers from desperate people, battling evil spirits seems like some really serious business, but no, it’s not.

How do I know this? Because God Is infinite love and love is not material. It’s not serious, it’s playful. This means that if God is not material, then the universe is not material. You, the chair you’re sitting on, the house you’re in, the neighborhood, it’s all non material. Now wait a minute you say. This chair is real, it’s solid, it’s not an illusion.

That’s true, it’s not an illusion but it is an impersonation. It’s non material consciousness playing the part of a chair. A chair is a state of consciousness like ice is a state of water. Water can be solid liquid or gas, but it’s always just water.
The actor can play Hamlet, Superman, or the Fonz, but he’s still the same actor.
The water can look like a pitcher, a bucket or a wine glass, but its still just water.
God can appear as Joe, Lucy or the cat, but its always just God.
I saw a video of a baby recently discovering her toes. She realized that those little pink things out there were part of herself. She would wiggle her toes, grab them and laugh with joy and delight.

Think about that the next time you look up at the stars at night.

The universe is your body, you just haven’t noticed it yet. You think the stars are like those little pink things out there, have not yet noticed how they are part of your galactic body. The baby was delightfully shocked to learn that those little pink things are part of her body, just like you will be stunned out of your shorts when you see that stars are parts of you. The baby thought yesterday that her toes were disconnected blobs of pink; today she realizes that they are intimately connected to who she is.
This is the inevitable destiny for us all.
The realization that there is one actor, one condition, one light, one intelligence, one Presence Alive as all Existence will transform everything.
The Movie, the Dream and the Game will become fantastically exciting and our joy and delight will overflow forever.

This is called lucid waking and it’s like lucid dreaming, which is when you’re dreaming and you know you’re dreaming. It’s not that the dream is not real, it is real, a real illusion.
It’s a Game. Games are fun, even deadly ones, like this human life.
So, enjoy yourself, and forget about getting hurt or dying.
Who you are doesn’t die.
Who you are plays Games.