Journey to the Other Side(Charles E.J. Moulton) Journey to the Other Side

- Spiritual Awakening for the New Millennium

By Charles E.J. Moulton

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"It's you against you,
It's the paradox that drives us all."

- "Burning Heart", Survivor, 1985

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Liam Neeson utters one of the coolest phrases of his career in the 1999 film "The Haunting". Originally, fear was intended to protect us. Nowadays, however, through increased input, it has lost its purpose, blocking us. It was never intended to stand in our way.

Journeying to the other side might mean finding ourselves on the other shoreline. Fear blocks us because we concentrate on it. So the only chance is focusing on something else. Life moves and if we don't move with it, we stagnate. We can't live in the past and so if we are able to focus on what happens around us, we are able to forget our problems.

The more you change, the more you stay the same. The old proverb seems like a cliche, but if you think about it, it makes sense.

George gets a job close to home. He can walk to work, which seems like a good thing. Then, however, on his first day at work, he discovers a gang of tough guys drinking their morning coffee at the corner. They notice his insecurity and he notices their rude behavior. They spit animosities in his way and he becomes self conscious. With time, these animosities become meaner. He tries to find other routes to work, but somehow he always meets one of them on his way. Walking to work becomes an issue, a problem. Now, George has started doubting himself, thinking he might be strange, the boredom of the tough guys mistaken for what he thinks is his own lack of intelligence. He sees the tough guys everywhere and his mind even finds reasons why he should be stupid. His mind starts imitating the tough guys, putting him down, even threatening him if he does what he wants. He wants to break free, but the memory of his original fear gets such a strength in his mind that he is unable to exit the loop. His only chance is to concentrate on the reality of the present. Other people started this cycle of maladjustment. Other people can pull him out of it.

The condition is called OCD. Obsessing so over fears that they become exaggerated. According to some sources, obsessive-compulsive disorder has increased in the last decades. The lack of rest might be a reason, giving the brain literally no time to understand the processed information. George might even make up internal voices that forbid him to do things that other people thought were bad. After all, he was told he was a bad boy.

We tell ourselves that fame will solve the problem, money will solve the problem, sex will solve the problem, alcohol will solve the problem. That famous people are happy. But we see it isn't so. We never live in the now. We live outside of our spirits in this day and age. Remotely. Always trying to impress each other. Social media is nothing else than a road of forgetting ourselves. But we have to make the distinction between focussing on others and being addicted to other people's attention.

There is good news, however. Something that might save us.
There is something in our existence that wants to lead us to salvation. It's in our energy, as if our fate is embedded into our DNA. Our soul knows the way. We know what we want to experience.

With that I mean finding our core. Who we really are. To do that, we need to look outside the nine dots. The old acting trick of finding an inspiration outside of the context of the role one is playing might be our saving grace. Nine dots in rows of three need to be connected with one line, so we draw a diagonal line that goes outside of the cube in order to find the answer.

The metaphore is an allegory for life itself. A mafia boss might be best played when the actor thinks of a wolf. A scared, jittery accountant might become perfect when thinking of a squirrel. Forcing yourself into a context will cage you. If you are free to draw inspiration from something that matters to you, you are more likely to solve your problem than if you have to think what conventions tell you you should think. A man who always found help by talking to his mother in times of trouble might lose himself when his mother dies. He might find himself when he talks to his mother's spirit. He is not dependent on society's conventions about only being able to talk with her when she is inside a body. He trusts that she is there even as a spirit and selves his problem easier.

So life becomes a mystery within an enigma wrapped inside a riddle hidden in a labyrinth. Thought upon thought laying upon one another like layers woven into a tapestry of colors, a painting painted on a painting of the painter painting himself painting a painting. But these colors are not just bright. They are illusive and mysterious. Hard to catch. Like Dobby thinking he has to wait for his sock, afraid to leave, threatened by his Master Lucius that he has the power over him. That is his master's power. Dobby can be free. Hormones affect high sugar levels and in turn trigger compulsive thoughts. Caught in a time loop of fear and expectation, thinking only intense prayer can save him. What if Dobby just walked away, telling his master his threats were just farts in the wind? Thought makes it so.

We think life is so on purpose, but maybe we create the riddle. The man we spoke of might have thought his parents ideas were his and so he builds his own assumptions based on those ideas. They create more problems, however, and send him deeper into his psychological misery. Digging down through the rubble to his core means admitting what is truly him and not someone else. His brain has created a version of himself that is not him.

The thoughts criss-crosses his head making it difficult to decipher where the riddle begins and the enigma ends.
Dobby and his master dance and dance of expectancy. He seems to have been walking through a labyrinth all of his life. Okay, sometimes his life seems like one of those fairgrounds that were a mix of horror circus and amusement parks. In one of the corners are monsters drooling green acid. In the other, happy people singing songs. But one never knows if the happy people were actually monsters and the monsters were actually just nice guys with masks. But Harry, bless him, tricks the master to free the servant. The master set the rules and when the sock is given, the rule book is closed.

80 million people worldwide are affected by the condition called OCD. Obsessive compulsive disorder. In my opinion, it is, very roughly, the mind being caught in a dilemma so bad that it clicks into a trap. It starts working against itself. Dobby in the Harry Potter series is to me a metaphore for OCD, a soul stuck in a dependance so bad that it endangers his own existence.
Maybe, fear is entirely a thing of the mind. Like Donald Duck's rich uncle who saw thieves dressing up as Bigfoot before encountering the real Bigfoot in Alaska during late night hours. Thinking the real Bigfoot was just the thieves in dress-up, he chased away the beast and saved his own gold. His courage saved him. So what did he tell Huey, Dewey and Louie at the bedside?

"The only thing to fear is fear itself. And rage is just rage because it wants to protect its fear and who is afraid of fear?"

If you want to journey to the other side, you have to realize there is nothing to fear.

In "Star Trek: Voyager", there are two episodes that also describe this choice-problem. Because that is what OCD is. Choice. Seven of Nine is a human that was turned into an Borg drone as a kid, the Nazis of the universe who assimilate everyone to become them. Captain Janeway saves her and makes her human again. But the voices of the people she assimilated are still in her brain, not as entities but as memories. One day, they pop up by the thousands and she can only be saved by a colleague who literally pulls her out of it.

The second episode describes the holographic doctor, who is forced to choose which dying colleague to save during an attack. He chooses his best friend and his programme threatens to break down because of the moral problem of not being impartial, letting the stranger die.

All these stories lead to one thing: fear stands in our way. We say fear helps us, but at least in the case of the 80 million OCD patients, many of whom you know yourself or maybe are yourself, it is sheer terror. They are not possessed or jinxed. They have a dilemma that threw them into a severe mental loop. Telling them to let go of the past is like asking a fox to free himself of his leghold trap. Of course he should let go of the past, but first he has to realize that he is caught in a trap. His mind skewed into this tangent, very much like Doc and Marty did in "Back to the Future 2". Only going back to see that somebody's harsh demands conflicted with love and threw him into this. OCD is the playground bully that never had the tools to get away with his threats, but who you believed just because he could sneer well.

George is the son of two very strong cholerics. Hard working professionals that had him, loved him, adored him, even, but both were disappointed that their careers seemed to slow down because of him. So, George's parents push their frustration on him, saying it is his job to become famous and take care of the family treasures. Sometimes, the parents have different opinions of what he should do and his choices turn into massive fights. He learns that he cannot make choices on his own, he cannot go on vacations with both of them. He panics whenever he has to make a choice, because the parents explode whenever there is a mistake. They take everything so seriously. George's mind click into a wheel, a psychosis. His only way to get out of it is to realize his brain is not an entity trying to destroy his family, but a misunderstood part of him that thinks it cannot be heard. If the mother also is very prude, imagine how hard it is for George when he has sexual thoughts. He will probably subconsciously choose a partner like his father to face the problem. Bottom line, his thoughts never hurt anyone. They are just his mind's only chance to defend itself. As time goes on, George gets more and more intricate thoughts. It is his own spider's web.

George, the doctor, Seven of Nine, even Marty and Doc, they all need to get to the other side. But the only way is onward or up. Fear is bad enough, but when fear builds upon fear, then the victim becomes like Alice who digs herself so far into wonderland that she forgets herself. At some point, Alice has to stop digging and start ascending.

One of the most impressive beaches in the world is the Shipwreck Beach in Victoria, Australia, a 130 kilometer beach where 638 ships found their end. If the captains had avoided the difficult passage and took another route home, they would have survived. If something is perilous, we don't have to face it. If we do, we have to hold our ships in a steady calm hand in order to get to the other side.

So the question is: if we are facing an enemy who is challenging us, shall we scream as loud as he does or shall we respond with control? If we remain calm, we win. He cannot claim we lost our poise. He did.

We might say what we like about Christopher Columbus, but the bravery of sailing off in 1492 without really knowing what he was facing was admirable. He had to have been a strong soul.

Love leads you to your core. What we love leads the way. When we love something or someone, that is a light in the darkness. It has to lead the way. A piece of music will inspire us and make us happy. That happiness will energize us and make us make the best decisions. A good friend will give us strength. A smile will cause us to understand that we are good people. An embrace will make us soar to new heights. A compliment will make us feel better. A sunrise will inject us with positive energy.

In that way, love actually is a metaphore for divinity. Through love, we become creators. Making love to your partner creates a child and you become a creator. The spirit is beautiful and so is the body. Through the body, we express the soul. Michelangelo's David, Boucher's Venus, Velasquez Venus, Rubens Helene Fourment, they are all dedications to beauty and why should we discard that?

Moreover, if we are able to give love across the classes and genders and races and religions and professions, we are on the right track. If we challenge our fear, trusting our love, we truly have journeyed to the other side.

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