by Dr. Barbara Condron
When announcing the Earth Day dvd release of his top grossing movie, AVATAR director James Cameron said, "I’m hoping that continued conversation around AVATAR and around the needs and the issues will actually kind of elevate consciousness and help us to get the things done that need to get done."
From a professional dream researcher's viewpoint, Cameron has accomplished what he calls "my new mission."
The strong 'save the Earth' theme is timely and noble yet the brilliance of the movie is how it addresses what is required for humanity to take action. People changing from a disposable plastic society to an eco-friendly one requires a shift in consciousness, and the film allows the viewer to make that shift.
This shift is portrayed in every aspect of the movie, from its dual world plot line to the technology that registers the actors' emotions and translates them into computer-generated characters. The 3-D precision makes it easy for the audience to suspend belief and accept whole-heartedly that Pandora exists. Its as if we are watching an anthropologist's account of a "lost" civilization on some uncharted island. It's similar to the experience most people have with their dreams. They know they happened. They are intrigued. They want to tell other people about it.
For three hours, we travel back and forth between the world of the indigenous Na'vi and the alien human spaceship above the planet. Cameron has accomplished what he set out to do, to "create a lucid dream state while you're watching the film." For anyone who doesn't know what a lucid dream is like, experiencing Avatar offers a unique opportunity to learn.
Like Jake, we are awake then we sleep in order to awake in the dream world. This is the essence of the state of consciousness researchers know as lucid dreaming.
If anyone on the planet knows about lucid dreaming, it's me. After 35 years of experience as a dream educator at the School of Metaphysics, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) educational institute, I piloted the Global Lucid Dreaming Experiments (GLiDE) a couple years ago. In a similar way AVATAR uses technology to tell its story, GLiDE uses the internet to track the evolution of consciousness on the planet through participant's dreams. Thousands of dreams from dozens of countries have been received at www.dreamschool.org. Each one is a record of people entering and leaving the body.
Before the credits, Jake, the lead character, says, 'When I was lying there in the VA hospital, with a big hole blown through the middle of my life, I started having these dreams of flying.'
"When we’re kids," Cameron told hollywoodtoday.net, "we dream of flying and I certainly did, and still have a lot of flying dreams. I thought that if I can connect to an audience, to a kind of collective unconscious in almost the Jungian sense, then it bypasses all the politics and ... the culturally specific stuff and all the language specific stuff around the world and connects us all to that kind of childhood, dreamlike state."
SOM research puts the science behind Cameron's ideas. 40% of people reporting dreams at www.dreamschool.org experience flying in their dreams. It is clear that Cameron has reached into universal mind and plucked the chord that creates our night time dreams.
He says the concept of the Garden of Eden quality of Pandora arises from the childhood, dreamlike state when the world was magical and infinite, scary and cool. A time when one can soar. "And for me, personally," he adds, "this was the part of the movie that I like the best, that I can watch over and over again.”
Obviously, millions of people agree. Listening to my students and watching the numbers climb to make Avatar the highest-grossing film of all time, I began to think I might be one of the last people on the planet to see the film. Their excitement about the movie was clear. They received the save-the-planet message and the teaching of the folly of separatist thinking demonstrated through the stereo-typical unconscionable military guy who destroys paradise.
They also had a lot to say about the movie's 3-D dream world. This is where, like your dreams, personal experience is the only way to go. You can read about others' dreams of flying or being eternally young and healthy or talking with a deceased loved one, yet reading pales in the face of personal experience. Experiencing the movie is like having your own experience of lifting your dream-arms and soaring above the clouds.
Cameron is achieving his mission. Through his example of imaging his dreams into existence, he is giving many people permission to live their own.
What surprised me about AVATAR is the way the story unfolds, for in the hands of a master like Cameron, the viewer has a real opportunity for spiritual initiation. What I admire the most is the director's way of inviting the changes in consciousness that enable people to move from selfishness to selfhood, from greed to need, from death to transformation.
Here are six ways just seeing the movie shifts the viewer's consciousness. Each hold lessons we can learn.
1] Dreams are an alternate reality. Humans going to sleep in order to awaken on Pandora, is a metaphor for what occurs nightly for everyone. Our waking life temporarily ends so our dream life can resurrect in what spiritual avatars have long taught as the True Reality.
2] Dreams afford different perspectives that reveal new truths about life. Jake's entire journey is one of finding a higher purpose for his life. Every culture on this planet, up to modern times, has recognized the value of dreams to inform, guide, instruct, and reveal greater truths. AVATAR is like a story told around the fire, only now the fire is a technologically-produced, electronically-fueled movie screen and the tribe is the human race.
3] Things not possible in our waking life are possible in dreams. Just as Jake finds new mobility with his dream-body, so it is possible for the deaf to hear in dreams, the blind to see, and the dead to live again.
4] Dreams allow us to know the connected nature of existence. Well-illustrated by the world tree on Pandora, the life force or chi existing in all living things energizes the ordinary and extraordinary occurrences in our dreams. This also speaks to the nature of Universal Mind, the reality of connected intelligence that makes it possible for people around the world to experience similar ideas at the same time without conscious knowledge of one another.
5] Experiencing the dream world brings a change in identity. Just as Jake creates a new identity for himself on Pandora, so each conscious dreamer realizes the separation between mind and body. At some point, every dreamer wakes to the reality that they are dual: the dreamer in the dream exists as well as the person lying asleep on the bed.
6] Self mastery is encouraged by experiencing the dream world. As AVATAR's characters discover, dream lucidity leads to taking responsibility for our dreams. From the Sanskrit, "avatar" means descent, moving from heaven to earth, and that journey is one of consciousness. When Jake tames a Toruk, the powerful flying predator that only five Na'vi have ever tamed, he does so in the hopes of healing Grace, the head of the Avatar program. Grace's loss opens a door for Jake's progress just as the descent paves the way for the return of consciousness to its source that only Self mastery reveals.
In an interview with cinemablend.com, John Landau described the experience of producing AVATAR as creating a world from scratch. At the same time, he acknowledged that the movie was not something Cameron had created, "it was something he had seen and was reporting it back to us."
This describes the science of dreaming perfectly. There are daydreams which become visualized realities in our lives – the relationships we value, the careers we desire, the projects we feel led to create. There are night dreams which offer a continual dialogue focused on our progress and learning in these achievements. At dreamschool.org, we call it the dream consciousness circuit.
AVATAR is an example of the circuit being connected and functioning. Cameron says, "I had a dream in '95 and it had all the characters in it, and the creatures and settings. But at the time, it turned out it wasn't possible to do what I wanted to do." He had to wait for technology to catch up with the script he'd written.
In life, timing is everything. Cameron's patience paid off and it shows itself in the character of Neytiri, the Pandora native who saves Jake from death's jaws and through celestial beckoning brings the stranger home to her clan. She is like the inner Self in each of us, manifesting our needs, offering wise counsel, and when the time comes, rescuing the soul at the end of a life.
In the opening monologue when Jake says, "Sooner or later, you always have to wake up," the temptation is for the heart to sink from identifying with what the character has lost – the use of his legs, perhaps even his manhood. The limitations of the seemingly awake mind are too much to bear. The dreamworld of Pandora affords him a freedom that has been taken from him and gives new meaning to his brother's murder.
As Jake's story unfolds, we find ourselves growing compassion for the self-indulgent and childish warrior. Through Neytiri's eyes, we begin to understand why waking up seems to be a necessary part of the human journey. When she reprimands Jake with 'Strong heart, no fear. But stupid; ignorant like a child,' we find our hearts rising as we are invited to identify with compassion and a new level of wisdom.
Whether the audience acknowledges the metaphysical impact of AVATAR's dreamworld depends upon our willingness to awaken to our own dreams. What is clear is Cameron like a modern-day shaman seems to have made waking up a lot easier for the human race and for that he may someday be remembered as an avatar in the classic sense of the word.
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The author of over a dozen books including Every Dream is about the Dreamer and The Dreamer's Dictionary, Dr. Barbara Condron is a leading authority in the fields of consciousness, dreams, and meditation. To learn more the topics here, visit www.som.org and www.dreamschool.org.
For those wanting to learn more about dreams and the research conducted by the School of Metaphysics, a National Dream Hotline® will be open throughout this weekend, April 23-25. Those with questions or dreams to interpret can call 417-345-8411 to talk to researchers or they can visit www.dreamschool.org and enter their dreams for answer online. They can also register to participate in the next GLiDE May 27-29.
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References
http://www.hollywoodtoday.net/2010/04/20/cameron-with-lucid-dreams-as-av...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/19/60minutes/main5710722.shtml
http://video.about.com/movies/James-Cameron-Avatar.htm
http://www.hollywoodtoday.net/2010/04/20/cameron-with-lucid-dreams-as-av...
http://cinemablend.com/new/Avatar-Featurette-Takes-You-Inside-James-Came...
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