Observations placeholder
MacLaine, Shirley - On acting, inspiration, Reincarnation and Possession
Identifier
026553
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Out on a Limb – Shirley MacLaine
"Look," he said, "you don't have a problem with the reincarnation stuff do you?"
"No," I said, "not really. Not after all I've read on the subject and experienced myself. I mean, when I play a role, I put on the emotional cloak of another person. So, I can see that the soul might do the same thing every time it re-embodies."
I was reminded of the many, many actors and actresses I had met who expressed bewilderment at where they got their inspiration when confronted with roles entirely alien to anything they had personally experienced: many times we based feelings we were supposed to act out on events in our own lives, but more often than not we were asked to dredge up feelings and reactions that we had never been familiar with, and as far as we knew, were outside our frame of reference.
Yet the miracle of inspiration carried us to some deeper understanding and when we were especially good, there was a faint resonance under our consciousness that reminded us that we had in fact emotionally been there before.
Maybe actors really were in effect the spiritual re-enactors of the soul's experience. Maybe that's why it felt familiar to me.