FULL-BLOODED AWAKENING and EMBODIMENT: A REVIEW OF "AVATAR!"
By Robert Augustus Masters, Ph.D., Facebook, Monday, February 1, 2010

When you are asleep at night and dreaming that you are doing something
somewhere, where exactly are you? Are you the body/person in the dream
or the body/person asleep on the bed, and if you are identified with
neither -- for you in fact are capable of holding both as objects of
your attention -- then who or what are you? Do these bodies you "see"
contain you, or do you contain them?

Perhaps both are not literal containers for "you" but rather are
expressions, different expressions, of the essential you, means through
which you can relate to your current environment, however unusual or
alien that might be....

The body through which we make an appearance in our dreams allows us to
navigate and interact with our 3-D dreamscape -- and however bizarre the
scenery and context may be, we generally adapt to it fairly quickly,
much like Jake, the protagonist in AVATAR, does when he finds himself
embodied as a native of an alien world called Pandora. Whether our
dreams frighten or elate or trap or wing us, we generally take them at
face value, rarely asking ourselves at the time if we are indeed
dreaming.

But sometimes we do realize that we are dreaming while we are dreaming
-- and Jake finds himself in a situation akin to this, knowing that he
is "really" back in human form in a sleep-like state in a high-tech pod,
even as he immerses himself in the world of the Na'vi, the indigenous
people of Pandora. He is fascinated, blown away by the beauty, but not
fully -- he initially keeps his depths removed from the hypervivid
wonder so greenly and vibrantly alive all around him, sticking to his
role as a good soldier who doesn't question what he is being told to do,
especially given what he has been promised by his commanding officer,
Colonel Quaritch.

And we, with our 3-D glasses firmly on, enter the Na'vi world with Jake,
resonating with his awkwardness and surprise and wonder, perhaps still
somewhat conscious of where we're sitting, popcorn noises all around,
absorbed but not fully absorbed, just like Jake. But it doesn't take
long to really get into the film, unless perhaps we are a movie critic
on the outlook for simplistically presented conflicts between greedy
capitalists and noble savages.

Like a city dweller who's been on a lushly treed hiking trail long
enough to stop thinking about his or her city concerns, we soon stop
looking at the Na'vi world as nothing more than sensual digital magic,
just as Jake stops looking at it as nothing more than a place to exploit
for a "higher" purpose.

Before long, Na'vi reality becomes more real to him than his "normal"
state -- just as our dreams sometimes seem more real to us than our
so-called waking state, sometimes so much so that we feel a kind of
fleeting grief upon reentering our usual state, as if we've lost
something extremely precious and important -- and intrinsic -- to us.

As the film progresses, we feel increasingly at home in the Na'vi world,
because what it so viscerally represents -- our primal, radically
connected nature in the fully-embodied raw -- is starting to really
resonate with us, unless we're locked away upstairs in our cranial
headquarters, uneasy with such a blatantly unapologetic presentation of
the noble savage motif. Jake now has the legs to stand on a truer
ground, and we feel something similar stirring in us, however slightly,
grounding us to much more than our seat in the theater.

AVATAR moves and shakes many people quite deeply, not just because of
the incredible special effects, but also because they have been reminded
with considerable impact not only of their own primal nature-attuned
core, but also of their estrangement or disconnection from it. So
there's a simultaneous sense, however subterranean, of deep opening and
deep loss, a more-than-intellectual recognition of having lost touch
with something truly essential to us. In this sense, Avatar serves as an
awakening force, a jolt to our core, inviting us to awaken from the
entrapping dreams we habitually animate.

EARTH is PANDORA, getting ever closer to being one massive clearcut, and
we know it, regardless of our distractions. The popcorn falls from our
hands, waves of green energy branch through our torso, tears come, and
something very deep in us starts to open, to unfurl, to reach through us
with unmistakable urgency, calling us to a deeper life.... Some may view
AVATAR as a romanticizing or naive endorsing of a more primitive, "noble
savage" state, a seductively regressive call to a prerational,
naturoholic condition oozing oneness and a touchy-feely connection with
all living things.

And it's not all that hard to view AVATAR as doing this, once we push
aside the psychedelic visuals and armchair wonder -- but if we choose
not to be so literal and shed our disembodied rationality, we might
sense a deeper layer to AVATAR, beyond all the prerational exhorting
that we had determined was there and critically zeroed in on. And that
layer, that marvelously fecund and expansive depth, is not prerational,
but arguably transrational (both transcending and including
rationality), especially as Jake plunges and plugs into it.

We the viewers -- and psychoemotional participants, too! -- don't have
to abandon our rationality as we root ourselves in our own Na'vi way of
being (we can simultaneously reason and feel and intuit), though there
is of course the danger of doing so, as exemplified by those
contemporary spiritual aspirants enmeshed in magical thinking. Going
back to our roots doesn't have to be mere regression or an
anti-intellectual trek, but it really does ask for a depth of embodiment
that is not all that familiar to many of us.

It is not a retreat, but a kind of descent, a dropping-down or grounding
that awakens and uplifts us ("Down" is not "up" having a bad day; "down"
is where seeds grow and roots fly free). As a Na'vi, Jake gets more and
more embodied, but not denser or thicker or cut off from subtlety and
spirituality; his is far from a body-negating path! The more rooted he
becomes, the more he can soar, really soar; he has developed the
necessary ground from which authentic flight, responsible and lucid
flight, can take place. There is great risk in this, but even greater
risk in staying put.

The Na'vi are so embodied that they feel the body of Nature in a very
palpable way; they literally plug themselves into the forest and its
inhabitants. And as we witness this, we feel both our longing to be thus
plugged-in and our disconnection from so doing in our lives. It is to
Avatar's credit that it has been able to put so many viewers in touch
with that longing, if only for a few minutes.

Jake's greatest flight is initially a descent, as he freefalls -- and he
has to thus fall -- onto the back of Pandora's mightiest, most feared
flying creature, an enormous scarlet bird-dragon. Is this just another
version of the white man being the hero, the savior, the man, for a
tribe of in-trouble indigenous people? Or is it a heroic leap born of
extreme necessity, a leap through which Jake leaves his usual self, both
human and Na'vi, behind?

Some might see a stereotype here, but I saw wild archetype, feeling it
right to my marrow, like I was not just taking the leap, but was inside
the leap, completely aligned with it. No thinking, just pure action,
guts and heart and vision operating as one. Quintessential warriorhood,
as practical as it is sacred. It wasn't so much that I identified with
Jake, but that I felt what he had become as a living force within
myself, right down to my toes.

And to manifest this fully, to truly live such an ancient but ever fresh
passion (call it a full-blooded leap into life-enhancing
connection/action), its opposite must be faced, deeply encountered. This
is most strongly dramatized as the conflict, armed and otherwise,
between Jake and Colonel Quaritch, who by the almost-end of the film is
but the operator of an enormous humanoid killing machine, a monstrous
metallic G. I. Joe figure amped up with enough steroidal intensity and
weaponry and square-shouldered violence to make a bloody mess of any
opposition.

Not something at which to wave flowers or spiritual platitudes! There's
nothing subtle here -- just brute force and an environmental
insensitivity that is as insane as it is driven. The final battle is an
ancient one, played out over and over again in myths and comic books and
our own ecological illiteracy, but this does
mean that it is stale or banal -- because this very battle, however
mildly armed, is going on in just about all of us, and not just now and
then. Many of us think we have to pick one or the other, especially when
we live in cultures that are big on either/or considerations.

But how about being rational, even transrational, and deeply emotional
and full-bloodedly alive at the same time? How about being at home both
in primeval forest and executive office? How about cultivating a second
innocence, an awakened innocence, rather than regressing to a naive
innocence or hiding out in cynicism and irony? Many of us have lost
touch with our Na'vi territories, and are just not finding adequate
compensation for this loss in our gains in even the finest things that
contemporary culture can offer, trapped in our very "freedoms."

The "noble savage" of Pandora is a strawman for those who, knowing that
many indigenous, nature-attuned cultures were appallingly barbaric, see
AVATAR as just one more film that overlooks or marginalizes the darker
side of such cultures. But Avatar is not about showing the full spectrum
of Na'vi behavior; there simply isn't time, and more to the point, there
is no real point in doing so -- what needs to be shown, and shown with
enough depth and intensity to really sink in, is the relationship the
Na'vi have with their environment.

We need not to be told this -- though we are to some degree -- but to
see and feel it as much as possible.  There's no point leaving the
theater with just the idea of interconnectedness, for other ideas will
soon crowd it out. No, better to leave the theater actually feeling the
reality of such interconnectedness, and not in a sappy or sentimental
way. No need to romanticize it; just breathe it in and out, letting it
branch and stream through your body for a bit, being aware that you are
walking while you are walking, feeling each step.... And what about the
seemingly one-dimensional portrayal of the Terran capitalists and their
military allies?

Yes, of course they could have been given a more multidimensional
presentation, but do we really need to be assured that the filmmakers
get that the "bad guys" have more to them than their greed and violence
and ecological stupidity? However they are presented, what they portray
exists, and exists with enough abundance and force and sociopathic
infusions to be a major player in the accelerating desecration of our
world.

In AVATAR we are seeing the encounter of two opposing archetypal forces;
the film focuses mainly on what stands out most about each force. Early
on the capitalist/militaristic force is pretty much fully formed and
clear about its mission, but the nature-immersed/interconnected force is
barely formed, being mostly embryonic, hardly having the legs to
survive. As the film progresses, however, the latter force matures,
flowers, becomes capable of taking the kind of stand needed to meet its
opposition.

Sometimes in a dream in which there is extreme difficulty, as when we
are being pursued by something monstrous, we simply have to turn around,
and face it, even if it means our death. It is a stand that serves us
well, even if we die -- and usually in dreams when we face what has been
pursuing us, we do not die, but start living more deeply, more often
than not absorbing the energies of our adversary, until we realize right
to our core that we and this other being are one and the same.

AVATAR only skims the surface of this, but it does nonetheless show
transformation occurring, as the ground underfoot becomes holy ground.
There is deep communion with Nature, and there also is communion, at
least to some degree, with subtle forces and even with consciousness
itself. (I'd love to see an AVATAR-like film that explores the far
reaches of who and what we truly are in as visceral a way as possible.)

AVATAR is, among other things, a fledgling awakening call on a massive
scale; the destructive forces that it so compellingly displays are at
this very moment literally eating away at our world, and at the same
time eating away at many of us from the inside, asking not for some
Disneyesque fantasy of Bambi with a submachine gun taking down all of
the villains, but for an open-eyed empoweredness that arises from within
each of us, a power overflowing with fierce compassion, a power which
can effectively counter the psychoecological insanity and numbness that
pervades our planet.

AVATAR is a movie, and it is also more than a movie; treat it as BOTH.

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