I just went to see The Karate Kid last night. It was a beautiful story of one child’s journey into spirit. He thought he was mastering kung fu as a form of self-defence, but he soon realised that was just the beginning of what he was really learning.
The boy’s kung fu teacher was a maintenance man in the apartment complex where the boy lived, and seemed to be of only modest background and education - an unlikely person, in many people’s minds, to be the conduit for such profound wisdom. But as the teacher told his young student, if you think only with your eyes, you are easily fooled!
The master proceeded to prepare his student for a tournament for which, at the outset at least, the boy was completely unqualified. He didn’t begin with a severe physical training regimen, as one might imagine. His intention was to lead the boy to a state of mind that would enable him to focus, to pay attention to his own thoughts and inspiration, regardless of what was going on outside.
So this film is really about mind control. It demonstrates through plot, character and art why we need to be aware of our thoughts, demonstrating in a simple but accessible form the need to understand that the thoughts we have create our experience.
So much great art - literature, films, and even music and paintings - is not all that it seems. This art taps into a spiritual wisdom that many people are not ready to regard as truth, and presents the ideas in a way that people can accept.
Even myth and fairytale are not merely what they seem. They too have their beginnings in truth that has since been trivialised down through the ages by those who do not understand the many layers of truth and are unable to accept a reality that is not evident to the five senses. That is why many of these films and books are marketed as children’s, or as fantasy or science fiction.
If you are prepared to see - if you ‘have eyes’ - then a new world awaits you. Let me make some suggestions for your adventure in truth, some books and films that if you look beneath the surface, will reveal great insights. My initial list would include the following films: The Legend of Bagger Vance; Batman Returns; As It Is In Heaven; The Matrix; Alice in Wonderland; the Narnia series. I would also recommend the television series Smallville.
All is not as it seems in this physical world. That is the truth.
