The Wasteland

Are there things you see and think… “I should be doing that” or “I should be watching that”?

The OilCrash Movie “A Crude Awakening” had been jumping out at me from the video store shelf of staff picks for a few weeks so. I imagined it would be interesting. I finally grabbed.

I was struck by the images of oilfields and the ugliness that goes along with them. There is a busyness and excitement when they’re productive and when the resource runs out there is an emptiness, a wasteland. How can we destroy what is beautiful and leave it ugly without repairing what we’ve done?

The narrator called our attachment to the possibilities of petroleum an addiction. Alcoholism on wheels. Its not only ourselves we are damaging with this addiction. We are affecting our landscapes. Climate change is another affect. One of the people interviewed in the movie referred to oil as a magnet for war. The movie is a sobering reminder. A reminder that any addiction sucks away our spirit.

I look at the ways I’m addicted. I look at my uses of power and control. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I see the slavery to substance, to feeling, to mood, the habit of thought, the habit of devotion. I see them and understand them because I have experienced them first hand. And when a narrator in a movie refers to our oil usage as an addiction also, I wonder how much am I addicted to the lifestyle I am living at the moment.

I notice when I am without work I begin to have withdrawal symptoms even though I’ve told myself that it’s a lifestyle choice. Fear comes up and I lose a sense of being supported, until I finally get some news that there is work. I have debts to service and these can also create a sense of being enslaved. That somehow this addiction to certain standard of lifestyle wrought a financial commitment that I don’t have the freedom to walk away from. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing as I need to see even debt in a different light.

The images of the wasteland have me looking again at the Grail Mythology. In the search for the Holy Grail the knights needed to quest with pure heart in order to heal the king and find the Grail. The Grail symbolizes the principle of wholeness and is the source of everything we ask for. What am I not Being in order to feel Whole. If I don’t ask the question “to whom does the grail serve” I remain in the wasteland. If in my life I’m not lead by a pure heart I continue struggling in the wasteland.

It seems that the questions I pose to life itself create the results that materialize for me. If I don’t feel whole I need to understand and clarify my questioning process. Are the questions I’m asking coming from my unconscious habitual ways of thinking or are they lucid questions emanating from an awakened consciousness. As my life changes I need to perhaps change the questions I’m posing.

Resources:
Grail Myths: http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/student_orgs/arthurian_legend/grail/fisher/

http://www.oilcrashmovie.com/