Tonight, I watched James Cameron's Avatar. Despite it being the second time I viewed it, it's one of those movies where you anticipate its content. From a technical point (if I had any expertise in this area), the graphics were stunning!!
The story goes deeper than love across cultures and adventure. It touches on spirituality and consciousness, the awareness of who and where you are in the universe. That got me thinking; definitely need for some concern there.
Now, I'm unequivocally not religious. Like most dysfunctional families (I'm sure I'll find statistics somewhere on the net proving this point), I have diabolically religious parents, who on a daily basis swears that my happiness is directly proportional to praying multiple times a day to an angry God who needs us frightful beings subdued in order to feel good. I'm just not buying that, sorry. Neither am I interested in the New Age Tom Cruise BS. By the way, Tom Cruise cannot act. I don't know why people keep insisting that he speaks in movies. He should do what he does best: smile and look pretty.
Though I respect you for your beliefs, they just aren't mine, and I wish people would stop trying to 'save my damned soul'. It may be damned for a reason.
What I am particularly interested in is the concept of using our minds and attitude to change our destiny, to connect to the universe, God, Allah, Shiva, energy, or whatever you wish to call it, and more importantly to move physical mass. Our thoughts interacting with the physical world to effect change all the way down to the atomic level. Yes, I know, this sounds like an ad for 'The Secret'; though I am 'visualizing' a nice cold mango and lime juice right now. I'm not speaking about mainstream religion here. I'm speaking about spirituality. Personally defined, religion offers a system of beliefs (and conformity) while spirituality offers trust in yourself, giving you the power to change your destiny, a belief that God is within you and not sitting on a throne, reigning down his Godly might.
Historically, many spiritual leaders have spoken about reaching a higher level of consciousness, your 'Nirvana', such as Buddha, Gandhi, Tao and even scientists such as Newton and Einstein. Many ancient cultures and indigenous people, also held the belief that we, humans, had Godlike powers, and more importantly, our interconnectedness to the Universe, Earth, each other, is what makes us whole.
Sadly, I must concede that I have not attained an elevated consciousness as yet. I'm working on it and I'm sure it'll take years of trail and error to get there, and then more years of trail and error. It's a process, not a race.
As Avatar depicts, we are born twice, once in our natural state, and for those of us who cannot morph into little blue Smurfs, maybe the second one represents the birth of a deeper consciousness, our Nirvana.
Hmmm... You're the first person I've read to look at Avatar from a spiritual point of view! Most people just get lost in the amazing visuals or tear it down for a very simplistic story-telling device and not great dialogue (in my case, both!).
ReplyDeleteI do think you're right in the personal spirituality over the mass-religion point, although personally I'm still at a cross-roads there...
If you want to start reading other blogs out there, I think you'll be interested in this one:
http://lifeinthesecondhalf.blogspot.com/
It's an older woman who lives in Nevada and writes on a variety of subjects, but frequently touches on issues of spirituality and connections between human beings and doing what we can to solve the problems of the world (instead of blindly leaving it up to government).
PS: morph into little blue Smurfs"? Those guys were HUGE!!! :p
Crossroads are OK. It helps us to decide what we want and to learn about yourself. Thanks for the advice on the blog. It's wonderful and have joined it!
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