Spiritual Teachers of Hollywood
Will Smith. Amber Heard. Johnny Depp. These are not names that spiritually inclined people usually give much attention to. But perhaps we ought to take more notice, because people who live out their personal dramas for all the world to see are, whether they know it or not, spiritual teachers. As my late teacher Arthur used to say, “other people are there for us to learn from.” The same energy is at play if you witness a multi-car pile-up on the motorway. You can feel sorrow and empathy for the victims, be shocked at or transfixed by the sight, annoyed at the traffic jam or you can vow to change your behaviour so that such a disaster is less likely to befall you.
Resistance to this ‘learning by proxy’ sometimes stems from a sense of superiority, the idea that observing messy 3D drama is just soooo unconscious, because obviously you are soooo much smarter/kinder/of a higher vibration than they are. Other times its stems from a noble, but to my eye’s false notion that other people’s business is nothing to do with us. Do not get me wrong here, of course, other people’s private business is nothing to do with us. But in the case of celebrities whose personality, behaviour and back story are constantly being monetised against us it is very much our business. Hollywood celebrities are human beings, just like you and me. But that is the problem, because they are constantly being held up as better than you and me. So, their fall from grace matters, because contained within their drama is a message for all of us.
However, much care should be taken when trying to analyse individual cases. Using numerology, I could say a great deal about Will Smith’s tragic and public failure to live up to the high ideals of his 22 Destiny Number. I could say even more about Amber Heard and Johnny Depp’s stubborn refusal to confront their shared Karmic Debt 13/4, as well as Johnny Depp’s lengthy rollercoaster ride attempt to channel his Superpower 7. The numbers can be very revealing here, indicating the consequences that await us all when we fail, be it through ignorance or neglect, to understand and align with our numbers.
But there is something even more important going on. Why, as a society, do we continually follow people who are themselves lost? Those who spend all their life pretending to be other people cannot, by definition, have a strong sense of self, and without a strong sense of self you will be constantly buffeted by every passing whim, fancy and emotion, as well as manipulated to hell and back by every type of hanger-on who wants a piece of your action. It is great when you do meet celebrities who are prepared to examine themselves in honest and meaningful ways. I can personally attest to this and when I see such people in the news I know that not everything in the world is wrong or broken. But I can also guarantee that such people are the exception not the rule. The last thing most celebrities want to do is to really examine themselves. That is why they became celebrities, so that they did not have to. Sure, they want to look in the mirror, but very few of them want to look in the mirror.
As such we should observe, but carefully. Their purpose, in many cases, is to show us what not to do, how not to live, what not to believe and how not to be. We should stop taking moral cues from entertainers. They may be able to move us emotionally, to make us, through their performances, laugh or cry. But they themselves have no centre. They make the world a better place by performing, not by pontificating. There is no harm in us letting them move us emotionally for 90 minutes, but far too many of us let their performance continue after the credits have rolled.
Even when you can identify a ‘good’ celebrity, they themselves will probably admit the power of the Hollywood machine, the sole purpose of which is to make money. Individuals may fall into the entertainment industry with sincere intentions, but the truth is the machine soon chews them up and spits them out. The entertainment industry has always been primarily about money, Hollywood nothing more than a factory that makes and sells dreams, which we pay to consume. Nothing has changed in this respect from Gone with the Wind to Aquaman 2. Even the so-called woke-ification of Hollywood is only really a commercial move, born of a board-room realisation that minorities have money and can be sold to. Celebrities are paid by this machine to be insincere; it comes naturally to them. Unfortunately, because they have no centre, they do not know where the performance begins and ends.
But it is not just celebrities themselves who are the problem, it is the culture that springs up around them which is so damaging. Celebrity culture – which now reaches all the way from Beverly Hills into your living room - turns life into one long performance, draining people’s actions of substance and meaning. Instagram and YouTube merely provided the tools by which millions could join in with this; it was celebrity culture which told us that all the world is a stage. Celebrity culture – the water in which we all swim, whether we are aware of it or not – encourages sound bites over substance and constantly narrows the guard rails of what is deemed acceptable conversation. It encourages short-termism in our society, and helps people assemble the false belief that you do not need to learn a skill or master anything in particular, just so long as you can get your social media to blow up then everything will be fine. And you know its dominance is complete when a Prince is prepared to renounce his place in one of the oldest and most powerful institutions on the planet in order to become a Hollywood celebrity.
Yet now, Hollywood, at the peak of its power, is visibly crumbling from within as the Great Revealing rolls on. More and more Hollywood psychodramas are coming to light for one reason and one reason alone; to break the spell of celebrity, to free us from a malicious enchantment which has been active for far too long. Some people remain stuck solid in the mould of celebrity worship, but more and more the antics of celebrities seem not just unappealing, but distasteful and maybe even fundamentally rotten. Despite this the best reaction is neither to love or hate these people, but to pity them. Many who fall into the Hollywood machine would be better off if they had never become famous, and almost everyone who wishes for that kind of adulation and fame will, at some point, regret it. These people do not lead charmed lives but live in an endless hell of their own creation. In some cases the adulation, money and power have destroyed their soul. We may wish each of these individuals healing, recovery and a safe path back to the light, but in the meantime, we should be under no illusion what is going on. Hollywood celebrities, almost without exception, exist as mirrors, amplifying and reflecting back the darkness that exists in the hearts of every one of us. That is why their behaviour fascinates us. We are not simply looking at them, we are looking at aspects of ourselves. Life ignites into a dumpster fire when you do not know who you are, and rather than make an attempt to find out you decide to spend all day every day pretending to be someone else. Celebrities are therefore the last people we should be following. They possess no qualifications to tell us what to do or know what is right for us. When they ‘represent’ or ‘advocate’ they are just playing a role, for which they will be paid handsomely, in one way or another. We can gain much from observing these antics. But more fool us if we continue to buy what they are selling.
The twentieth century English writer G K Chesterton knew the score when he wrote, “when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.” And that is where we are, a society where millions of people will happily call the Bible a fairy tale, Christ a fictional character, numerology quackery, magic fakery, crystals rocks and healing the placebo effect while at the same time, without a shred of irony or self-awareness spend hours discussing the story arc of the latest Hollywood blockbuster and the stellar performances of the lead actors as if they were real. They will then, again with zero self-awareness, mindlessly purchase the goods and support the causes endorsed by those celebrities, while all the time proclaiming themselves as rational, free-thinking human beings. It boggles the mind really, but perhaps we need not worry too much, because even the most die-hard consumers of celebrity culture are going to struggle to maintain the illusion when the truth really comes out. But when that happens we ought to remember to thank these Spiritual Teachers of Hollywood for showing us how not to be.
