Two young fish swimming along happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way. He nods at them and says “Morning boys. How’s the water?” The two young fish swim on for a bit, and then one of them looks over at the other and says “What the heck is water?”
The moral of the fish story: Fish are the last one's to recognise water. In other words, the most obvious, important realities in your life are often the ones that are hardest to see and difficult to talk about. Knowledge is nothing, awareness is everything; awareness of what is real and essential, yet so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over that's it's there.
"How's the water boys?"
In the weeks after seeing Avatar I've been a little obsessed -- I've scoured the web for reviews and ardently scrolled through long forum discussions, fascinated with what people were seeing in this movie, and how it was resonating with them. What I found, a myriad of impassioned interpretations, confirmed my impression that although this is, on one level, just a predictable Hollywood blockbuster about sexy aliens and explosions, it's also a valuable parable inspiring deep dialogue.
Like most viewers, I was enchanted with the newness & beauty of visual aesthetic, the psychedelic iridescent forest worlds & creatures -- the alien world of Pandora felt more like where I wanted to live than the concrete strip mall jungles of Sydney.
But I was especially taken with the film's elegant fusion of core spiritual concepts from diverse spiritual traditions. In other words, I loved it's "New Age-ism".
And the concept that has stuck with me most is "I see you". In Pandora, seeing is important. "I see you," one of the sacred greetings of the Na'vi, refers to seeing into a person, seeing his essence and actual being. When Jake arrives to the Na'vi tribe and is about to be killed by the angry crowd, it is the Tsahik, the shaman, who examines him with her wide-open eyes to recognize his essence, and then decides to let him stay. Later in the film, when all have turned against him, after his apparent betrayal of the tribe has been exposed, she will also be the one to set him free. She has seen something.
If we could just learn this one lesson - to actually "see" the person behind the face and inside of the body - I reckon our world would be a lot more like Pandora, and a lot less judgmental, fearful and prejudiced.
Trigg Beach
Perth, Western Australia
My ticket to the show
Getting born is like being given a ticket to the show. The ticket will get you through the door, and that's it. It doesn't get you a good time and it doesn't get you a bad time. You go in, sit down, and you either love the show or you don't. If you do, fantastic. If you don't, well that's a real bummer. But if you do complain loudly enough the nice lady behind the cashier's counter will happily refund you your life. 
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To worry is to pray for what you don't want.
-- Deepak Chopra
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I started Wake Up Tiger exactly two years ago; 7th January 2007.
There have been 140,325 visits to my blog over that time. Many thanks for your interest and participation.
