Have you seen the movie Avatar?
If not – quickly put it at the top of your list of the movies to watch.
Released in 2009, written and directed by James Cameron, it’s a fantasy movie that is truly like no other. It has won three Oscars and a range of many wins and nominations – and it is undeniably a cinematographic masterpiece.
Avatar is the highest-grossing movie in box office history having earned close to $3 billion worldwide. Yet it is so much more than a spectacular movie and a box office hit – it is a Phenomenon; jam-packed with many overt, subtle and subliminal messages and allegories about politics, the environment, human values and emotions, spirituality, universal laws – and many more; it is a deeply spiritual movie disguised as a fantasy that profoundly touches us at so many levels.
It is a rich and complex movie.
It transports us to another world that feels strangely familiar.
It is breathtaking and confronting at the same time, boldly bringing to light the shadows of humanity.
I have seen people cry watching a movie, that’s nothing new. But I’ve never seen people becoming almost hysterical after the movie. and suffering from anxiety for several days afterwards. I know I was deeply touched by it and felt unexplainable grief and a sense of longing….for that magical world I wanted to be in which was so familiar.
But I thought – why is this movie so hugely successful? What is in that touches us so deeply at the unconscious level?.. Yes, it’s a very rich, spiritual movie – but there must be more… and then, one day it hit me, and I knew what this movie is really about.
The story is set in 2154 and involves a mission by the US Armed Forces to an earth-size moon called Pandora. Pandora happens to be a rich source of a mineral that people on Earth desperately need, yet it is not just a rock orbiting a star. It is inhabited by a peaceful, spiritual, blue-skinned race of slender giants - Na’vi - living in harmony with nature - who refuse the mining of that precious mineral, and so the army decides to take it by force.
Given the large size of the Na’vi and their world, plus the atmosphere poisonous to humans, a unique mission was designed to enter their world as avatars – organically grown Na’Vi lookalikes who are mind-controlled by humans wired up in a trance-like state on the spaceship orbiting Pandora.
When acting as avatars, their consciousness enters the avatar body where they have the full awareness, all the senses and physical abilities of the Navi. They live and function in the Navi world as Navi – and then every so often they go to sleep, leaving their Navi body lying on the ground, and wake up in their human world. To go back – they go into a trance and wake up as a Navi. That’s where I stop the synopsis – as I really want you to see this movie – and because it has reached the critical point which is the subject of this podcast.
As humans, we are a very fragile species. It takes a lot of effort for the high-frequency soul to maintain a physical body in the 3rd density. We have 6 key needs without which we can’t survive: the need for air, rest and sleep, water, food, shelter, and human contact we often refer to as love and connection.
Now – what stands out here? Which need is an odd one, different from all the others?
Sleep.
Unlike air, water, food, shelter and human contact which are fulfilled by external sources – as everything comes from outside the body, sleep is the only survival need that is fully internal and independent of the environment. There is nothing you need to find or access in order to sleep.
Interesting.
Sleep deprivation - even when enforced, can only last a few days at the most and at some point, we lose consciousness and fall into an involuntary sleep which cannot be stopped or prevented. We won’t die, but we won’t be able to function until we wake up several hours later. Having said that, there is a rare genetic condition called fatal familial insomnia, with the most extreme documented case of a man who died after 6 months of sleep deprivation.
Interesting. Ok, So now let’s dig into sleep a little deeper.
There is one more significant difference that sets sleep apart from all other key survival needs. When we sleep, our consciousness separates from self-awareness and we experience a period of “non-existence” in every 24-hour cycle, which not many people realise.
We could be dreaming, but we recall a dream only once we wake up, as a memory.
We have no awareness of being asleep in real time. Think about it. We are literally unconscious as our consciousness is…elsewhere! The question is, where? Where does it go during those 7-8 hours or so when our body is lying down in a catatonic state ?....
With all the mysteries of life and the universe I have researched and talked about even on this podcast, to me, sleep is at the top of the list.
So, what is sleep?
Sleep is both a physical restoration of the mind and body and a respite for the soul, our consciousness, from this difficult existence on the physical plane. It is also a unique state in which we receive insights, precognition and creative ideas.
It is a bridge between the unconscious mind which is part of the universal mind and the conscious mind of our ego. It is also a little death we experience every day that prepares us for the final transition.
We cannot live without sleep, so let’s have a look at the three functions of sleep: physical, spiritual and creative/psychic.
Our body and mind – which is our soul’s Avatar in this reality – require both rest and sleep to keep going. Sleep is a very active time at the physical level, where our chemistry, neurochemistry and physiology change and become focused on growth, repair, healing, restoration, rejuvenation, relaxation, reset, recalibration and cleansing.
Our nervous system, immune system and endocrine systems in particular undergo a nightly overhaul, if you like, while our muscles and bones recover from the daily stress. So far, all makes sense – yet the question remains:
Why can’t our body perform all these actions simply during rest?
Why do we have to slip into non-existence – and perhaps SLIP is the origin of SLEEP - a little death every 24 hours or so…? Why does our consciousness disconnect from self-awareness and…where does it go?...
The answer lies in the spiritual function of sleep.
When we fall asleep in this world, we wake up in another world, another reality. Just like Avatar in the movie, we move our awareness – the part of our consciousness that is attached to this life experience - to another form in another reality where we live and function in it with all our senses. In fact, we exist in a number of other worlds and dimensions we might call our past lives, future lives and parallel lives.
And what we call a dream, the only memory we have from those eight hours of sleep, is not always the memory of the actual experience. Often, it is a movie produced by our unconscious mind to cover up, literally, the actual experience if we are not meant to remember it.
Why do we do that?
Living in a physical body in a 3D reality is challenging for the soul due to the body’s imitations. That’s why the soul needs to gradually get accustomed to it, occupying it for only a few hours a day in the early years after birth, and even in an adult body it needs a respite of 7-8 hours in every 24-hour cycle. That’s why babies sleep most of the time.
Our soul uses this break to attend spiritual classes in the higher dimensions; visit the Akashic records; consult with its spiritual counsellors and guides on the particular decisions and changes to the karmic blueprint it wants to make; attends its Soul Group gathering, or moves fully into its other lifetimes somewhere in the Multiverse just for fun.
It leaves this body with the pre-programmed instructions to heal, grow and repair, and initiates the information download I talked earlier about – all of which is done by the time it comes back and wakes us up.
To clarify, I’m referring here to the soul fragment engaged in this incarnation, not the Oversoul, if you like. I talked about this difference in one of the episodes of Quantum Chat - a mini-series I produced last year with Maren Muter. You will find all the Quantum Chat episodes in one place on my podcast website.
While the physical and spiritual functions of sleep are its cornerstones, the creative and psychic benefits are the cream on the cake, built into the sleep program to make it more interesting and useful for us.
During sleep, while our body is busy with healing and repair, and our consciousness is busy with…whatever it is doing in other worlds….we receive information downloads from the Quantum Field, the Spirit and our loved ones on the other side: insights, memories of the past, parallel and future lives, practical advice…precognition of future events…warnings…solutions…and creative ideas for a musical piece, painting or a book. Many great artists have admitted to receiving their most fertile ideas in a dream.
But that as I said, is just the icing on the cake. The primary objectives are the physical restoration of the mind and body, and a respite for the soul fragment - our consciousness – as it goes back home to relax and enjoy its power and freedom….for a little while.
Make no mistake - Avatar is the biggest movie phenomenon of all times, and it’s not just my opinion. But it takes much more than a cinematographic genius with a heart touching story and mind blowing special effects for a movie to get to this level of euphoria and a deep connection with it. For this to happen, the movie needs to touch a raw nerve and reveal a hidden, unconscious secret we recognise as truth, explaining the nature of our existence:
We. Are. Avatars.
This is an excerpt from my Quantum Living podcast episode by the same title. To listen and read the show notes please go to my podcast website.
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