Last night Sharon and I finished a seven night viewing marathon, watching all of the Star Wars movies on consecutive nights. It was prompted by seeing the 'new' one for the first time; and then we decided to go back and view the rest in story (rather than filming) order. This meant that we ended by watching 'The Return of the Jedi', which had always been my favourite.
Last night I absolutely hated it. I found the story to be full of holes, cliched, poorly scripted, badly acted and all round trite. Afterwards, I wanted to throw the DVD in the trash. The viewing experience left me depressed and generally out of sorts. It has taken a night’s sleep to shake it off.
It's thirty three years since I first saw the movie. I saw it twice in the same week, I loved it so much. Then when it came out on video, we rented it; when you could buy videos we bought it and watched it on many occasions over the years, only to replace it with DVD when that became available; and then we even upgraded it to George Lucas's enhanced version some years ago. In all this time, it never failed to work its magic on me. So how is it that last night this beloved film could appear so passé and awful? This morning AA Michael chipped in with the prompt that the experience may be taken as a useful learning metaphor for the way we conduct our lives. He explained it as follows.
It is easy for us to place great store and value by the things that happen in our lifetimes that afford us pleasure, or give us some kind of experience that we find valuable. In retrospect we may look at such occurrences with (almost) reverence and accord such happenings with an aura that may or may not be justified. Some seem to become definitive for us, and we may even delineate our lives with them, viewing them as being punctuation marks of tremendous significance and importance on our pathways.
Such respect for particular times may cause us to spend more than warranted emotional effort in looking back, recreating our recollections of the experience and even creating a vision wherein we relive the finest aspects of what came to pass. In our minds we orchestrate quasi-reencounters with not only the events, but the associated feelings. And along the way, we may reshape what has occurred until the memories assume a form that meets a need that has precious little to do with reality, and is more aligned with a fantasy that meets our needs to find, or even venerate, a halcyon period. All too easily a simple but frequent touching of the familiar may evolve into a form of escapism, accompanied by an unrealistically idealistic perspective upon the circumstances.
Whatever our reasoning, attachment to what has gone before had two principal effects: Every time we revisit the past, it distorts our focus and unsettles our ability to constantly be present in the moment. And it may also act as a kind of millstone that weighs on us, arresting our necessarily relentless forward motion and progress on the ascension pathway.
At all times it is important for us as individuals not to become prisoners of our past. Life is perpetually organic in its evolution, always changing and developing and certainly never staying the same. It may be our expectation that life constantly gets what we would define as 'better; but in truth it should be comprised of a series of ups and downs, ebbs and flows that may be smooth, but may also be turbulent and difficult.
What has gone before has and will always remain definitive for us, in the sense that we are all, at any moment, the products of our experiences to date. But we are never the same and must allow the vicissitudes of our lives to take us where they may. If we resist and attempt to cling on to what was, we lose sight of who we are becoming. Worse still, we deny ourselves the opportunity to appreciate what is happening to us in the moment and miss the chance to learn, grow and meet our challenges with fortitude and mastery.
Enjoyment of a memory is fine when it is momentary. Constant revisitation of what has passed, or retaining a 'photogenic memory' of things gone by, is deleterious. As we evolve as beings, our perspectives must be allowed to change. It is desirable to explore new insights into what we have gone through and allow ourselves permission to change, reevaluate and reassess. With increasing wisdom and maturity, we may perhaps recognise and accept things for less than they had seemed at the time, and as a consequence, dismiss them with ease. Such recognition is crucial for us. What was of one moment is not necessarily of another. And the learning applies not just to events, but also to circumstances, places and people.
Letting go, as a component of the frequently touted etheric bundle 'accept, release and move on' is critical for our wellbeing at many levels, particularly the emotional and spiritual ones; although you may well recognise the intellectual strength in it too. When we are willing and able to do this, our lives become less encumbered, less fraught and we open ourselves to the possibilities that await us, rather than believing that we have to be what we once were.
I bet you never knew Star Wars was so deep did you? So should I conclude that repeat watching of old movies is a bad thing? Well, that wasn't quite what AA Michael meant. It was just a parallel. The implications of this particular piece of learning are broad and worthy of considerable reflection.
Last night I absolutely hated it. I found the story to be full of holes, cliched, poorly scripted, badly acted and all round trite. Afterwards, I wanted to throw the DVD in the trash. The viewing experience left me depressed and generally out of sorts. It has taken a night’s sleep to shake it off.
It's thirty three years since I first saw the movie. I saw it twice in the same week, I loved it so much. Then when it came out on video, we rented it; when you could buy videos we bought it and watched it on many occasions over the years, only to replace it with DVD when that became available; and then we even upgraded it to George Lucas's enhanced version some years ago. In all this time, it never failed to work its magic on me. So how is it that last night this beloved film could appear so passé and awful? This morning AA Michael chipped in with the prompt that the experience may be taken as a useful learning metaphor for the way we conduct our lives. He explained it as follows.
It is easy for us to place great store and value by the things that happen in our lifetimes that afford us pleasure, or give us some kind of experience that we find valuable. In retrospect we may look at such occurrences with (almost) reverence and accord such happenings with an aura that may or may not be justified. Some seem to become definitive for us, and we may even delineate our lives with them, viewing them as being punctuation marks of tremendous significance and importance on our pathways.
Such respect for particular times may cause us to spend more than warranted emotional effort in looking back, recreating our recollections of the experience and even creating a vision wherein we relive the finest aspects of what came to pass. In our minds we orchestrate quasi-reencounters with not only the events, but the associated feelings. And along the way, we may reshape what has occurred until the memories assume a form that meets a need that has precious little to do with reality, and is more aligned with a fantasy that meets our needs to find, or even venerate, a halcyon period. All too easily a simple but frequent touching of the familiar may evolve into a form of escapism, accompanied by an unrealistically idealistic perspective upon the circumstances.
Whatever our reasoning, attachment to what has gone before had two principal effects: Every time we revisit the past, it distorts our focus and unsettles our ability to constantly be present in the moment. And it may also act as a kind of millstone that weighs on us, arresting our necessarily relentless forward motion and progress on the ascension pathway.
At all times it is important for us as individuals not to become prisoners of our past. Life is perpetually organic in its evolution, always changing and developing and certainly never staying the same. It may be our expectation that life constantly gets what we would define as 'better; but in truth it should be comprised of a series of ups and downs, ebbs and flows that may be smooth, but may also be turbulent and difficult.
What has gone before has and will always remain definitive for us, in the sense that we are all, at any moment, the products of our experiences to date. But we are never the same and must allow the vicissitudes of our lives to take us where they may. If we resist and attempt to cling on to what was, we lose sight of who we are becoming. Worse still, we deny ourselves the opportunity to appreciate what is happening to us in the moment and miss the chance to learn, grow and meet our challenges with fortitude and mastery.
Enjoyment of a memory is fine when it is momentary. Constant revisitation of what has passed, or retaining a 'photogenic memory' of things gone by, is deleterious. As we evolve as beings, our perspectives must be allowed to change. It is desirable to explore new insights into what we have gone through and allow ourselves permission to change, reevaluate and reassess. With increasing wisdom and maturity, we may perhaps recognise and accept things for less than they had seemed at the time, and as a consequence, dismiss them with ease. Such recognition is crucial for us. What was of one moment is not necessarily of another. And the learning applies not just to events, but also to circumstances, places and people.
Letting go, as a component of the frequently touted etheric bundle 'accept, release and move on' is critical for our wellbeing at many levels, particularly the emotional and spiritual ones; although you may well recognise the intellectual strength in it too. When we are willing and able to do this, our lives become less encumbered, less fraught and we open ourselves to the possibilities that await us, rather than believing that we have to be what we once were.
I bet you never knew Star Wars was so deep did you? So should I conclude that repeat watching of old movies is a bad thing? Well, that wasn't quite what AA Michael meant. It was just a parallel. The implications of this particular piece of learning are broad and worthy of considerable reflection.