Friday, April 15, 2011

Individual Duality


Do you remember Smeagol from Lord of the Rings?

Well he had an alternate personality, his natural man,Gollum. Gollum was wild, sensual & greedy. He wanted it all, & he wanted it now. Smeagol had a hard time controlling Gollum, keeping him in check to do the right thing. Well we all know what happened to him, Gollum  got the best of him and he was destroyed with the ring.

We all have a Gollum inside us, crying to get out. The world is full of "natural man" tendencies. Rebellion, Greed, Lust. It's that urge to do something crazy just for the heck of it. It tells you "you'll be free" to do what you want, whenever you want. We all have that urge to be "FREE". We want what we want no matter the cost.

Yet there is a ruling force in the universe that helps us keep this guy in check. It's called our conscious. He tells us what's right and what's wrong thus helping us to control our natural desires and tendencies. Not necessarily forever as some are not all bad just need to be expressed in the right context.

Lately I've been feeling this pressure from the inside. It feels like I'm living in a video game and that this isn't 'real life'. That one day I'll wake up to find this "freedom". The day I finally quit suppressing, avoiding, ignoring and start living the way I've always wanted to. It feels like no matter what happens right now, it's not permanent. Have you ever felt like just going crazy? Doing things you wouldn't normally do only to experience the rush irregardless of the consequences good or bad.

Our duality is also expressed in James Cameron's Avatar, however slightly different. It's not as focused on good and bad choices or desires as it is individuality and finding one's true self. Jake Sully is a human who finds himself in a science experiment in efforts to make contact with an alien race. The concept is you can physically connect to an "avatar" body and virtually live inside it as your own as long as your host or original self stays in tact. Jake begins his journey of self discovery as he enters his new body and begins to live that life during the day and his old self at night. He eventually wonders which one is the 'true reality'. He eventually leaves his old life and finds himself engulfed in the one he has learned to love the most, his avatar.

I too have felt torn or split as you will or physically connected to another life. It goes back to that inner person the one who dreams of doing things and being someone else, wanting so badly to take control. Yet I suppress my I.D. or inner desires striving to live in what I consider to be 'my reality'. I reality I think I have control but quickly find I don't. Sometimes it seems I can't do anything the way I think it should be or overcome any obstacles. Therefore, I feel trapped in a video game like world hopping and waiting for my other life or even a way out. Thinking that nothing will ever change and that if something sad happens I can just restart the level and everything will be okay again.  Time will just go on forever.

These I.D.'s lead my natural man to want to get out and explore the world around him and sometimes it's hard in this duality to keep him in line and under control. Questions go unanswered, problems are on the rise and stress seems to be a daily occurrence. People change, loved ones leave, some friends stay and some friends go. Life is ever changing & seems to be a fight within ones self. There was a choice in the beginning and there's a choice now. The things we do and say effect the path we take and the places we go, the people we meet & the life we live and eventually the life we will live later. So what's the answer? How do we live the life we desire inside and allow our inner desires to take fight while still maintaing control of our natural man?

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