James Cameron's Avatar: A Spiritual Critique

Hello all,

I don't get out to the movies much. Weird work hours, two preschoolers, long commute, makes it hard. So I usually don't get to see movies until they're out on DVD, if at all. I finally got around to renting Avatar to see what the fuss was all about. Fun movie. Lots of action, visually stunning even on my crappy TV, not the grand and amazing thing it was made out to be, but fun. Reminded me of a mix of Dances With Wolves and Braveheart, with some obvious Cameron touches.

For anyone who missed it, the basic story is as follows. In the not-horribly-distant future humans discover a habitable planet and name it Pandora. It has Earth level temperatures, but the atmosphere is toxic to us. The entire surface of the planet is a vast jungle, teeming with life and inhabited by the Naavi, a humanoid race that looks like 10 ft tall blue cat people. Humans discover a valuable mineral on this planet (called, in a horribly cheesy touch, Unobtainium), and start mining it. The Naavi don't like that so much, and so begins a conflict that closely parallels how the US treated Native Americans, us land-grabbing and driving them back and them fighting a guerrilla war with primitive weapons and stolen guns.

A paralyzed former soldier named Jack gets recruited to be part of the Avatar Project. Avatars are genetically-created human-Naavi hybrid bodies that a person can project their consciousness into via a machine that looks like a coffin filled with unflavored gelatin. The point of the Avatars is to give humans a way to interact directly with the Naavi. No big surprise, Jack falls in love with having a 10 ft tall body that can walk. He meets a female Naavi on his first time out who 1) doesn't kill him on sight because of a floating flower, 2) happens to be basically a princess, and 3) takes him home to Mom and Dad.

You can figure out where it goes from there. Humans do bad stuff, Naavi get pissed, Jack and Princess fall in love, Jack goes native, two secondary characters (who you don't like at first but you like more later) die, big climactic fight where things look bleak and then turn around, humans leave, and they find a way for Jack to be a Naavi permanently. Roll credits.

It was a very fun, if predictable, movie, but something about it got under my skin just a tiny bit, something I couldn't put my finger on right away. It took until a couple of weeks afterwards for me to figure it out. The Naavi are depicted as being very spiritual, very All Life Is One, Earth Mother, give thanks to the spirits kinda people. And yet they never seem to even attempt to extend this spirituality to humans. Humans are depicted as, and assumed to be, irredeemable, motivated by nothing but greed. Even one of the better humans, when confronted with one of the biological wonders of Pandora, replies "I need to get a sample", seemingly motivated by nothing but intellectual greed. Even Jack, in the beginning, really only loves being Naavi for the opportunity to walk again.

This is not to say the depiction of humans was wrong, that's not my point. My point is that, if the Naavi were so spiritually advanced, where was the attempt on their part to extend the olive branch? Why did the Naavi automatically assume that humans were not part of their Circle of Life, not connected to their Earth Mother? Why did the Naavi assume the irredeemability of humans?

Any race that truly embraces Oneness would automatically extend it to all living things, not just those contained on their little planet. I find the spirituality of the Naavi to be incomplete and inconsistent. Just my two cents.

JCS

Now Available on Amazon!

Hello everyone,

It's official, "The Curious Snowflake" is available on Amazon as a Kindle and iPad download! If you have one of these nifty devices, please support my dream and buy a copy for just $5. If you don't, then please help me out by spreading the word. Mention it to people, send out an e-mail, post it on Facebook, anything you can do to help me out, no matter how small, means the world to me. Here's a link to Amazon for anyone who would like to take a look.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Curious-Snowflake-ebook/dp/B003T0GIP4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1276992039&sr=1-1

Peace and joy to all, and wish me luck!

JCS

Autobiography of a Yogi

On my continued trek through my accumulated literature, I've come across another gem. Somewhere, at one book sale or another, I picked up a copy of Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi", and it is a wonderfully fantastic tale.

For those who've never heard of him, Paramhansa Yogananda was on of India's premiere practitioners of what's called kriya yoga, and the first major Indian spiritualist to spend significant time in the U.S., specifically the last 30 years of his life (he died in 1952). "Autobiography" was published in 1946.

Kriya yoga is not the typical, twist-my-legs-up-into-a-pretzel kind of yoga (that kind is called hatha yoga). Kriya is more focused upon specific mediation practices with the goal of conscious acceleration of spiritual evolution. PY called it the "jet airplane" path, since each meditative session, properly undertaken, is supposed to be the equivalent of years, decades, or even centuries of typical spiritual progress.

AoaY is half a biography, half a spiritual treatise. PY is very scientific in his explanations of his spirituality, but some of the circumstances in the book are incredible enough to make most people doubt it's veracity: co-location, precognition, faith healings, materialization and dematerialization of physical objects, levitation, people going years without sleep, all happen frequently throughout the book. For those with an open mind, the claims in it are fantastic, especially in the realm of spiritual progress.

The book is quite well written and thoroughly footnoted. I'd recommend it to anyone capable of keeping an open mind about miracles.

JCS

How to change the world

Hello friends,

One of my absolute favorite things in this world (I'd say not as far up the list as chocolate, but definitely beating out sunsets) is how the world conspires to bring you exactly what you need when you need it. Recently, I've begun to feel a little frustration at life, a character trait I try to avoid.

While on break at work a few days ago, I decided to go out and enjoy the lovely spring weather rather than sit in the back room and stare at cinderblock walls and video game cases for half an hour. I took a yellow legal pad and a pen out with me, and when I was done eating I started writing out my ideas on why it can be so hard for me to manifest change in my life. In a nutshell, my thoughts took a form of Issac Newton's Second Law of Motion, F=ma (the amount of force needed to move an object equals it's mass times the rate of change you want) and applied it to will working upon the Universe. From this rather depressing view, the reason I have been unable to change my life is that the Universe is too big and I am too little. I may be able to change the small things, give myself some good luck from time to time, but the greater changes were beyond me.

Well, leave it to the Universe to dispel my illusions. A few years back, I bought a book called "Notes From the Universe" by Mike Dooley at a used book sale, stuck it on my shelf, and promptly forgot about it. I pulled it out yesterday on a whim and fell completely in love. Philosophically, it reminds me of a more upbeat version of CWG, structurally it makes me think of the Messiah's Handbook mentioned in "Illusions". Just a series of 1 page or less thoughts and reminders, many having to do with.... big shock coming..... how to bring your desires into your life.

Someone trying to tell me something? Maybe? :-)

In a nutshell, this book brought me a wonderful, wonderful truth. I have been unable to change my life because I am trying to change what is, which is impossible. What is is immutable, unavoidable, and denying it is nothing more than an exercise in futility. On the other hand, what will be is as malleable as Play-Doh, completely up for grabs for anyone with the insight to realize it. Literally. Realize as in real-ize, make real.

Idiot that I am, I've missed this completely. I've been like a hiker who comes to a big boulder in his path. Instead of just walking around it, I decided "this boulder is in my path, and if I wish to stay on my path I will have to push it out of my way". This book is like another hiker who walks up and says, "Uh, dude, just go around", and I look up, smack myself in the forehead, and say "Duh!"

JCS

Unity solves nothing

I got to a place about 4-5 years ago where I thought I'd figured out The Big One, that my beliefs and ideas had found a final basic shape and everything else from there on out was just details. Unity was the Grand Truth, and our attachment to outcomes was the cause of all our misery. We needed to "let go and let God", surrendering our free will to the Will of All and just going with the flow. Problem was, as time went on I found myself feeling less and less content, less and less focused, less and less at peace. A little over a year ago all that changed, and I can now look back upon that time and put my finger on what the problem was.

My soul was bored.

You see, Unity may be the Ultimate Truth, but Unity is also incredibly, horrendously, cataclysmically boring, at least for your soul. It's great bliss for your mind and heart, don't get me wrong, but your soul just kinda sits there and says "yeah, yeah, been Here, done this, bought the T-shirt, didn't fit." You soul knows Unity already because your soul is Unity, and It/you came here to experience something that was not Unity. That's the whole point of physical existence, to be un-Unified.

We are the otters of the universe, to quote Richard Bach, playful, curious creatures who like nothing better than something new and different. Our soul is our inner child, and hanging out in nothing but Unity is the spiritual equivalent of taking your inner child shoe shopping; all well and good if the shoes light up and do neat things, but gets old really fast. Our soul doesn't want Unity, it wants to jump in mud puddles and sing loudly to bad songs and get the lyrics wrong and chase fireflies at twilight and imagine clouds as turtles and elephants and dragons and have fun!!

Realizing Unity helps us appreciate these things, but it doesn't bring them to us. They're already there, most people just don't see 'em.

How Time proves free will.

The existence of free will is inextricably tied up with the nature of Time. Part of the reason so many Oneness advocates deny the existence of free will is because the Oneness is something which exists outside the bounds of any linear timeline, and in fact could be considered as much the All-Time/No Time just as much as It could be considered the All Things/No Thing. This, the predeterminists say, shows free will cannot exists, because everything exists in the perception (if such a word applies) of the One Soul. If everything is known, no possibilities other than What Is and What Will Be can exist.

But does not such a concept place a limitation upon the Unlimited? To be locked into one continuing set of circumstances, unalterable, unavoidable, marching on from the Big Bang until the end of time, this would put a horrible set of constraints upon the experiences the One Soul can have. Every time we come to a situation where, to our perception, we make a choice, the Oneness would be limiting Itself to one circumstance, one possibility.

What would be much more logical is if, instead of one timeline, the entire web of probability were open to the perceptions of the Oneness. Then, instead of only one set of experiences, an infinite number of splintering timelines and possibilities would be available. Every possible choice and every possible shift of reality that choice could create would be there for the Oneness to perceive and experience, through us.

But what would this mean for us, down here in linear time/space? If every possibility actually exists for the Oneness, what constraints, if any, would we have upon the possibilities of our own lives? Lack of free will implies, and actually requires, that only one possibility exists. If all possibilities exist, what could keep us from choosing for ourselves?

So my logic is simple: if there is no free will, the Oneness is limited. If the Oneness is unlimited, then free will exists, or at least nothing inherently keeps us from having it. Me, I go with the latter.

Sleepwalkers and the Awakened

The vast majority of humans are what I refer to as Sleepwalkers, average Joes/Janes who wander through life thinking that life is something that happens to them and not because of them. They are constantly choosing and creating both their reality and themselves, but they do it all without actually knowing it. To them, the world is a scary, unpredictable place, a place of hardship, random chance, and capricious Fate.

Part of the reason that Reality seems so unpredictable to them is because they have not yet learned how to live consciously, to wake themselves up and really pay attention to themselves and to their world, thus my term Sleepwalkers. Until they learn to live consciously, their world really is unpredictable, because without conscious living they cannot bring their 3 creative tools, Thought, Word, and Deed, into alignment with each other.

It all begins with Thought. The entire universe is one huge field (called the Zero Point Field by quantum physicists) of electromagnetic energy, and that which we call "matter" is really just highly complex EM waveforms, so complex and tightly packed that they appear, to our limited senses, to be objects instead of energy.

Our thoughts are EM waves as well, just not as tightly packed and complex. Our thoughts radiate out of us and interact with everything, not only what's immediately around us, but echoing off into Infinity, shifting the ZPF faster than the speed of light. Quantum physicists have observed what is called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal, that the act of observing a quantum object actually affects the object, and in some cases actually brings it into being. This is simply the waves of our thoughts interacting with objects, and this is most easily observed in subatomic particles for the same reason that a splashing hand can knock over a toy boat but not a battleship.

Words and Deeds are simply manifestations of our Thoughts. Words are Thoughts expressed, pushed out of us, transformed into other types of waveforms, either sound as spoken words, or placed upon solid objects so that they stay and may be observed by many people at many moments as writing. Words are more powerful than Thoughts, but less precise. While thoughts are experienced, words must be interpreted, and this interpretation changes the words, sometimes slightly, sometimes drastically, as we've all experienced in out lives.

Deeds are the heaviest creative tool. They are Thoughts in motion, actually shifting physical matter around. Deeds are the most powerful creative tool we have, but can be the most imprecise and even damaging. Everyone has had moments where they've lost their temper, lost control of their Deeds, and done things they've regretted later. Unlike Thoughts, which can always be changed, or Words, which can be re-expressed or modified, Deeds are moments, done and then gone. If your Deeds go astray, any resulting damage can be fixed, but never undone.

Now, the difference between Sleepwalkers and the Awakened is a matter of focus (pun intended:D ). Sleepwalkers have just as much creative power as anyone, but because they go through the majority of their lives not really paying attention, their creative power is scattered, intermittent, unfocused. Their belief in their powerlessness is a Thought like any other, it echoes out of them and creates their reality. Their worries, their fears, their insecurities, they create these things as much as they experience them. They are stuck in a feedback loop, thoughts affecting experience affecting thought affecting experience. Their Words and Deeds are similarly scattered and affected.

Every once in a while everything might come into alignment and a Sleepwalker might bring something intended, perhaps even something extraordinary, into their reality, but usually they are so convinced of their own powerlessness that they attribute their good fortune to either luck or the intervention of some outside force or Deity. Some rare ones even become so convinced of the reality of their chosen God that they may do great works, or even perform miracles, all the while believing that it something outside of them working through them. They have indeed brought Thought, Word, and Deed into alignment, but under a false assumption that they are powerless in and of themselves. This does not lessen their power, only limits the scope of it.

A few, a rare, rare few, have Awoken completely to the truth of this reality. They understand that this energy field which we inhabit, the ZPF, is merely One Thought, One Word, One Deed which they are part of, a manifestation of, and the controller of. They are a fractal of this Oneness, a part of the pattern yet the pattern entire and also containing the pattern within them.

This is the ideal to which we strive. None of us have gotten there yet, but we see the path to it.