Conscious Stage
I’ve just finished a new poem as Dad and I continue developing our forthcoming book, “Heaven & Earth”—a study of the many facets of universal consciousness and all its threads. We haven’t yet decided where this piece will belong in the manuscript, but like my other poems it resonates deeply with the larger theme we’re exploring. Inspired by Shakespeare’s vision of life as a stage, this poem suggests that existence itself is the stage of consciousness. Come—let us take a metaphysical journey together.
Stage by James Hall
Co-author of the popular Audible book, "The Sword of Damocles, Our Nuclear Age."
Shakespeare once declared:
"All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts."
I say—moving from the individual to the collective, from the temporal to the eternal—I must agree.
Everything in the folds of time,
everything natural,
everything manufactured,
everything philosophical,
everything political,
everything spectacle-born—
All of it, already scripted.
Not by Man.
Not by Woman.
Nor by God.
But by consciousness.
Not human,
not non-human,
but universal consciousness.
You decide the origin.
We are the many and the one.
We are chorus and soloist,
mirror and mask.
Yes, we are collective consciousness,
yet also individuals.
Our soul is both individual and divine ground.
Individualism gives cadence to greatness,
talent to good,
and allowance to harm.
The stage is set for us to perform—
to succeed,
to fail,
to rise.
The stage gives us a role.
We must play it.
Not complain of its weight,
but rise to its demand.
We can shape our role,
if we have the drive,
the inner fortitude.
Fate, after all,
is only another word for choice.
Our choice.
I collapse determinism and free will into one paradoxical embrace.
We all carry that riddle.
Our stage is simply that which is.
Reality, after all, is not he or she who is, but consciousness—the very heart of that which is.
Consciousness performs:
all roles,
all dramas,
all shoes worn before the end.
To play is our destiny.
Yes, it has all been done before—
yet it makes us what we are.
To realize there is no death,
only the curtain folding into the next act.
To realize our story resonates
with the chorus of collective being.
I do not pretend to know the details.
I know this poem has no true end.
For poetry does not come from the poet,
but from a voice beyond the vessel.
One must only listen—
and not fear what is heard,
nor what is learned.
So, in my mind and in my heart, I call out:
Grant us humility.
Grant us our conscious soul,
that we may learn to play together
upon a peaceful stage.
Again.
I call out,
I call out,
I call out for peace, unity, tolerance, inclusion and respect.
Most of all, respect.
Respect for all—great and small!
James Hall, Copyright Library of Congress 2025
James Robert Hall
Executive Assistant to Michael Hall, RAM CEO.
James also serves as president of "James Hall Foundation For A Better World."
Please visit our new website for more of our great works: www.authorshall.com And do check out our recent book: The Sword of Damocles, Our Nuclear Age by Michael and James Hall, now on Audible, Kindle and Amazon Books.
Digital Art By James Hall