The Director's Choice

Margie stood at the edge of the theater's empty stage, her breath steaming in the cold air. For twenty years she'd been an actress, always waiting for someone else to call "action," always following scripts written by others. Tonight, something had shifted.

"You're here late," came a voice from the shadows. An elderly man emerged from the wings. Andrew, the theater's night watchman, held an energy in his eyes that seemed bright and knowing.

"I can't do it anymore," Margie whispered. "Play the same roles, speak the same lines. I feel like I'm disappearing."

Andrew stepped into the pool of stage light. "Suppose you've been the director all along, but you've subconsciously blocked your awareness of it?"

Margie laughed bitterly. "That's impossible. I audition, they choose, I perform what they want."

"Do you?" Andrew’s voice was gentle but firm. "Or do you choose in every moment what to believe, how to react, what energy to bring to each scene?"

The theater seemed to expand around them, with infinite darkness beyond the stage. Margie felt something stirring in her center, a recognition she'd been avoiding.

"I'm afraid," she admitted. "What if I choose wrong? What if I'm not savvy enough?"

"Fear is just another role you're playing," Andrew said, his form beginning to shimmer like heat waves. "But doubt is the villain that convinces the heroine she's powerless. You've been casting doubt as your leading man for years."

Margie closed her eyes, and suddenly she could feel the vast space of possibility stretching beyond the theater walls, beyond time itself. Every choice she'd ever made had led to this moment, every reaction had created the next scene.

"The play never stops," she whispered, with understanding flooding through her. "We just keep creating it."

When she opened her eyes, Andrew’s voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere: "Now you realize what this life is. You're not just an actress in the play of consciousness. You're the playwright, the director, and the casting agent."

Margie walked to center stage. For the first time in twenty years, she wasn't waiting for someone else to say "action." The infinite darkness beyond the stage lights now gave her comfort. It was her canvas.

She spoke her first self-directed line into the vastness: "I trust myself to create my life."

The theater lights blazed to life, and Margie realized that somewhere in her imagination, the real performance is already on stage in a dimension that we can realize in our inner knowing. Outside of that, we would have no access to its reality