#2984 - Monday, November 12, 2007 - Editor: Gloria Lee

[Guest guest]

#2984 - Monday, November 12, 2007 - Editor: Gloria Lee

Nondual Highlights - NDhighlights

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about ...From The Power of Myth by ph

This past weekend I saw Into The Wild, written and directed by Penn. Both Penn and the author of the original book have expressed how this young man's story haunted them and drove them to try to know and understand McCandless. The film evokes a similar longing in me. Because the film presents a very enigmatic and complex young man undergoing a transformative crucible of life experiences, a big part of its success comes from resisting the easy answers. The bare bones of the facts are simple enough. After graduation, turns his back on his affluent family, donates his grad school fund to Oxfam, then sets out on a two year road trip worthy of Kerouac. From a journal he gave a friend, the places he went and some of the people he met can be reconstructed. But exactly why he left and what he was looking for on his journey are very much left up to you. Indeed, how they both change with time and experience is the real story, enigmatic as it is.

The reviews and reactions are all over the place. To some he was just a spoiled rich kid who read too many books and had grandiose delusions of some silly quest. To wilderness experts, was just another under-equipped greenhorn who made some stupid mistakes, however sad the consequences. For those who see the the quest's more heroic side, his initial and progressive renunciation of the supports of civilization and his efforts to "kill the false being within" are admirable. His tragic end is not a plot-spoiler, as it is implied at the very beginning of the film.

What I see most is simply "the rapture of being alive", as is brought to life by the incredible Emile Hirsch. On screen nearly every minute, he seems more to be channelling than acting. He certainly makes the impact had on those he met very real and believable, because he's now connecting with you in some deep primal place. You won't want to miss seeing this film. Take a look first at the trailer, and be sure to also turn on the music for Eddie Vedder's great soundtrack. The music and nature scenery are not background, but equal forces that assume their full presence in this time-shifting plot.

Excerpt from "ph - The Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers"

MOYERS: But aren’t many visionaries and even leaders and heroes close to the edge of neuroticism?

CAMPBELL: Yes, they are.

MOYERS: How do you explain that?

CAMPBELL: They’ve moved out of the society that would have protected them, and into the dark forest, into the world of fire, of original experience. Original experience has not been interpreted for you, and so you’ve got to work out your life for yourself. Either you can take it or you can’t. You don’t have to go far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience – that is the hero’s deed.

http://www.intothewild.com/

The next excerpt is from the first magazine article that prompted Krakauer to write his book, Into The Wild.

Death of an InnocentHow McCandless lost his way in the wildsBy Jon Krakauer

http://outside.away.com/outside/magazine/0193/9301fdea.html

excerpt

McCandless doesn't really conform to the common bush-casualty stereotype: He wasn't a kook, he wasn't an outcast, and although he was rash and incautious to the point of foolhardiness, he was hardly incompetent or he would never have lasted 113 days. If one is searching for predecessors cut from the same exotic cloth, if one hopes to understand the personal tragedy of McCandless by placing it in some larger context, one would do well to look at another northern land, in a different century altogether