Cloud Atlas Life Lessons
In Cloud Atlas life lessons are provocative and offer much ‘food for thought’! If you haven’t seen it, you should.
Intermittently, a work of art is created that does justice to the complexity and profundity of life; the movie Cloud Atlas does just that and more. It exemplifies the progression of inter-related souls throughout the past, the present and into the future. As we follow their journeys, we glean profound life lessons and spiritual wisdom. And through their journeys we learn that everything is connected – past, present and future.
Today’s films have a few days to a week at best to garner widespread public attention. While it may not have reached that mark yet, Cloud Atlas will profoundly alter its viewers’ perspective about our eternal journey through time. If you haven’t seen it, you must; not so much for entertainment as for its provocation.
Cloud Atlas brilliantly reminds us how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another across time, geography and social context as they struggle with the forces of light and dark – good and evil. It is a neon sign, brightly and incessantly reminding how everything and everyone is connected!
It traces a small cadre of souls from a far corner of the Pacific (1849), to pre-WWII Britain, to 1973 San Francisco, to present-day England, to a futuristic 2144 “neo-Seoul” and then to 2321 in a post-apocalyptic society. As it does, it dramatically portrays how each of us is born and reborn with opportunity and choices to allow light to prevail in our hearts, minds and actions. Decisions and actions ripple across centuries, as one soul transforms from a killer to a hero, while for another a single act of kindness inspires a revolution.
It’s not so much an advertisement about reincarnation as it is a study of souls as they struggle for ascension some seeking redemption other’s ignorant of or unprepared to avail its opportunity. In this regard, it accurately mimics life and the soul’s eternal journey.
For those who have explored past lives or life between lives through reading or experientially, the movie resounds with familiar themes.
Each of us travels through time with a select group of souls who assume important roles in the lives we have crafted for ourselves. Some of these roles are more significant than others – lover, partner, sibling, boss, close friend; while others are less important to the purpose we have decided upon – colleague, neighbor, and parent. What is common to each of these relationships is that they serve some end. What we learn or attempt to heal in the relationship, or accomplish in tandem with this individual is directly related to what our soul intended before incarnating. Cloud Atlas beautifully reminds us that the chance encounters that set in place events that reverberate through our life are no coincidence – they too have been carefully orchestrated.
Have you ever met someone and known instantly albeit inexplicably that you have known them before? Like the heroes in Cloud Atlas, the eternal bond that you share with this person stirs within when they enter your life. Or are you in a relationship that defies logic, rationality and perhaps even practicality? If so, chances are that this person has shown up in your life, as planned and promised to assume a role at your behest! So after you have finished laughing or screaming at the idea that even those who are the bane of your existence are purposefully in your life, ask yourself what purpose the relationship serves. What are you learning from it? What are you in the process of healing because of it? Perhaps even, what karma are you balancing from a long ago shared past.
It is common in past life and life between lives regression, for people to gain insights about unresolved relationships. Not surprisingly, the drama playing out contemporaneously is often the next chapter in an eternal Lila ~ play of life. Can you step back from your day-to-day interactions, joys and hurts to place your relationships into this context? When you do, you will find both relief and understanding that is too often absent in the midst of interaction. It’s not that problems, drama or pain will wash away but that understanding your soul’s higher purpose frees you from secondary suffering ~ that suffering that is heaped on unavoidable pain because of our thoughts about it.
As with much contemporary art crafted for mass appeal, Cloud Atlas traces love across past, present and future. But as in our lives, the universal desire to realize love does not exist in a vacuum. It is set within the broader plan that the characters – in our case souls – craft for themselves. Each of us sets in place a plan for our upcoming lifetime long before we incarnate to accomplish learning, healing or to balance karma. The plan constitutes the back story of our lives while the front story plays out e.g. I am a wife to so and so, the mother of so and so, the employee of such and such and my hobbies are this and that.
Within each soul plan, are the themes that each of us is interested in working on. In Cloud Atlas fear and courage are dominant themes, themes that resonate for many of us. And just like in life, major themes such as compassion vs. cruelty, courage vs. cowardice, and/or love vs. fear often take multiple lives to play out and resolve for individuals. Concurrently, society as a whole manifests similar impulses, struggling for example with freedom vs. tyranny, justice vs. injustice. The evolutionary impulse prompts movement and expansion but does not guarantee success or progress. Cloud Atlas brilliantly portrays these struggles. As in life, there are heroes and villains and just like in life the journey of the hero is not always upward nor the journey downward of the villain guaranteed. The emotional and spiritual travails of the characters, people and souls alike are in constant ebb and flow.
Too often as we go through our daily lives, we overlay expectations that our emotional and spiritual growth should be complete. We berate ourselves for being “less than” regardless of what we fill in the blank with – less than perfect, less than accepting, less than generous, less than forgiving, less than . . . less than . . . less than . . . Even more painful are the expectations that we have for what we would hope to be perfect or almost perfect relationships with important people in our lives.
In Cloud Atlas, we see souls struggle in lifetimes that span five centuries. I am reminded of an example Dr. Michael Newton, dean of life between lives hypnotherapy, uses to illustrate this important point discussing the effort of a client he was working with who was struggling to overcome envy in lifetimes that spanned 850 years. To the eternal soul, this is a blink of the eye. To the human personality, nine centuries is eternity!! What’s important to understand and what we are reminded through Cloud Atlas is that the more important the pursuit, the larger and more lengthy the struggle.
While all does not end well in the movie for all characters and all quests, we can find comfort in the reminder that life truly is never ending and that today’s travails and challenges are bound to become the joys and successes of our future. It’s not to be missed. Here’s the trailer to pique your interest. And don’t forget, everything is interconnected – past, present and future. . . [youtube id=”hWnAqFyaQ5s” width=”600″ height=”350″]
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