All Stories Are Spiritual
I ask myself now more than ever: what is the point of studying cinema? I have always understood, and seek greater understanding now more than ever, of the fact that there is a spiritual power in story. Cinema and movies are just a means of engaging narrative as to access the spiritual realm.
Stories are spiritual as they allow us to ‘pass on’. There are many means through which you can describe and explore the spirituality of story. The most powerful way that I have found is via Taoism and the works of Carl Jung. This is how and why I understand the spiritual capacities of stories and cinema to allow us to ‘pass on’.
It is my view that the most fundamental aspect of life and existence is change. Taoism has given me this insight. Life, for some, is about love, family, God, responsibility, suffering, money, power, knowledge, freedom. To me, it’s change. Everything transforms and is the product of universal transformation. Because everything is change, you can never be in a position of complete knowledge and energy. There is no totality of things, no end and no specific beginning. There are but patterns. Alas, in these patterns we may develop knowledge. And such is all there is to do in life. So this is what I do, and try to do well, in each day. I fail in doing this well often. But it nonetheless continues to happen.
With life as change, knowledge and energy become the primary human interests; this is what we generate from change. We generate knowledge and energy to, more fundamentally, align with patterns of change. This is ‘passing on’. To extend one’s being to another, whether that be another person, a non-conscious object, a phenomenon, a spirit, an ideal or an idea, is to transform, grow and live. So whilst I believe that change is the most fundamental aspect of life, I accept the importance of other foundational concepts in love, family, God, responsibility, suffering, money, power, knowledge, freedom. What I seek above these concepts, however, is to be changed by them and to gain some insights into how they enact change themselves. I wish to do so with the understanding that my a consciousnesses is limited, and I will never gain complete power Alas, in engaging and being affected by these concepts, I have the opportunity to grow, to gain energy and knowledge of the patterns of reality.
With the parameters of my focus, desire and aim in life noted, I return to story. I believe story is one of the most powerful means of accessing patterns of reality: what can otherwise be deemed the spiritual realm. Patterns of reality are spiritual for they can never be fully known. To embrace the spiritual and be affected by it, to gain energy and knowledge from it, is life. Doing so well, passing into this space as completely and thoroughly as possible, is to live life well.
One of the hardest aspects of life with this set of views is discrimination. If we can only engage change in the world, and therefore try to live life well by passing into the patterns of change, with what direction should we do this? What should be changed, how should we change, and what should change us? What should we seek to become beyond a transformed entity imbued with energy and knowledge? There is no answer to these questions. But, there is story. We live stories and learn of stories to gain focus in our discrimination of how to be and what to aim for in life. This is why stories are one of humanity's greatest tools.
Engaging why and how stories change us, providing energy and knowledge, has thus become the second most essential part of life for me, after change that is. I therefore seek to live and experience substantial stories. And what makes a story substantial is its ability to pass on; to provide energy and knowledge to others that contributes toward their own growth and change. Stories speak for themselves in this regard. They do so via the spiritual realm and the patterns of change they access and we have access to. They therefore pass on synchronistically. This is a Jungian idea that describes meaningful coincidences. And such is enough for me. Give me a coincidentally meaning life of change in which I consistently grow with energy and knowledge. Let the stories that make this up and comprise it be worth telling, let me study story itself for guidance.
