What is the relationship between going deep in myself, and deep into characters?
Going deep in myself means letting go of all the usual frames of reference in order to experience a reality that is transcendent of ego and attachment.
Going deep implies liberation from usual, entrenched patterns of self. I am in a place of wonder, not a place of assumptions. In fact, the part of me that is always thinking myself into corners and bound up by reason doesn’t really exist anymore.
Going deep in myself does not imply indifference, however. In that place, I am, more fully than anywhere else. In that state, I feel, and am transparent. I don’t get caught in the groove of an emotion or thought and become an endlessly skipping record. I feel and connect to my emotions.
When it comes to going deep into my characters, there are definite similarities. The ability to connect to a character, or characters, implies putting aside my tendency to judge, to want to have it all worked out even before I put pen to paper, and to have a better light source to hold up to the truth. When my mind gets out of the way of preconceptions, when I stop worrying so much about getting things “right,” then I am also, in a sense, letting go of ego, and allowing the characters to use me as a vessel to come to life. They begin to move around in my mind and I begin to feel them in my heart. They are allowed to be different from me, separate entities that I am allowing to have life.
Both aspects of the process are indispensable.