Ripples (An Actor’s Perspective on Connecting the Dots .)

Author, Phil Sisson offers a stream of non-stop insights and raw personal experiences into how to connect one’s own dots. The book shows that it is possible to heal from past emotional wounds. The original title was Connecting the Dots, inspired by Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement address at Stanford University. But with Jobs’ passing, the author realized that a very important dot, so critical to following one’s heart, could not be connected by just looking backwards; it can only be connected by looking backwards and forward. The original idea of the book started in 1976, the year he graduated from UCLA. With so many dots to connect, he admits that youth and fear kept him from facing the real self, and that he didn’t have a clue of where to begin. RiPpLeS is the result of his struggle to connect his own heart wrenching personal dots. By being engaged with young performing artists, he saw first-hand how others were caught up in their own quandaries and confusions, expending an extraordinary amount of energy trying to unravel them. As a young college student studying acting, and as the years accumulated, so did the confusions. He was desperate to end the charades but didn’t know how, and psychologists were of no help at all. By 2006, after years of performing on stage, he discovered that he was able to help young aspiring dancers learn to act by getting in touch with their own early childhood emotions hidden so deep they were unable to give authentic performances on stage. “Instead of performing, they were hiding behind words,” he says. The goal of his book is about connecting the dots looking backwards and forward. The forward dots are the ones that heal, and healing is about helping others become authentic doers. That is when the concept of RiPpLeS was born! The title sums up his experiences and struggle to become an authentic human being and actor. In a single word RiPpLeS illustrates everything he believes. Starting with a single pebble thrown into the stillness of consciousness, it is the first trauma of our lives; and with the dropping of that pebble the pond’s very center begins to emanate from within, causing ripples on the surface that move away in all directions in search of equilibrium, and finally to be still once again. “That one image described perfectly the way I have experienced my own life,” he says. Our life experiences are the trauma that not only affects the individual but all the people we meet, expanding out in all directions towards a perfect state of renewed equilibrium. That is what this book and connecting the dots is all about.