We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time. ~T.S. Eliot Four Quartets

12 December 2006

Down the rabbit hole...


I like to think of myself as a positive thinker, an optimist, but yesterday I learned that most of what happens is a spat of positivity covering negative thinking patterns. An event occurred, a simple event, which showed me an outcome (a good one) that I didn't predict, an outcome I didn't even consider..couldn't consider perhaps, because of limited thinking. This happens all the time, not just to me, to all of us. We are all limited in our thinking in some way or other, unless of course we are enlightened.

And so in the midst of this realisation, the DVD arrived in the post. I'd read mixed reviews of this film which may have kept me from watching it sooner. Limited thinking again. I'm glad I did watch it. Most of the ideas are not new to me, but there were certainly a few that I wasn't familiar with and am now digesting. Quantum physics and buddhist thought seem to go hand in hand. I'm going to watch it again in fact, and write more on it, but one of the concepts that really stuck in my head was that we will set an intention for ourselves, and then erase it, and set it and erase it, and in this way we defeat ourselves. Anais Nin said "life shrinks and expands in proportion to one's courage" and it also shrinks and expands in accordance with our thoughts.
If you haven't seen this film, I would highly recommend it. The 'dramatised' parts may be lame (as many reviews have claimed), but its the ideas that count. There was a line somewhere in the film that said if you have no curiousity about life, and the questions of why we are here, what is reality, what's out there etc., you are halfway to dead. Thinking about these things brings you to life, brings more joy, more exciting, conscious living.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I thought this was a fantastic film. I watched it three times, back to back to back. It reinforced the fact, at least for me personally, that we tend to be our worst enemies. Our minds control our outcomes (good or bad) so much more than we realize...it's so important to remember to be positive, especially when it's hard.