Living a Life of Constant Total Amazement
In the movie, Joe vs the Volcano, Joe Banks played by Tom Hanks
is a loser. His life is despicable and the news is: Joe is
selling his soul to his boss for a measly 300 bucks a week.
Joe is also a hypochondriac which leads him to a doctor that
tells Joe he has a terminal brain cloud and only a few months to
live.
So this is the wake up call Joe needs to start living. He quits
his job then runs into an eccentric billionaire played by Lloyd
Bridges who promises to give Joe the lifestyle of a king if he
will end up jumping into a volcano.
Joe agrees and it's fun to watch him go on the shopping spree
going around in the white limo. Then he is transported first
class by air to Los Angeles, where he meets up with the
billionaire's daughter Patricia played by Meg Ryan, who is going
to transport Joe to a remote island on her yacht.
One night on the yacht with the breeze gently blowing, Joe and
Patricia are talking and Joe says that Patricia's life..... and
life..... seem so unbelievable to him.
Patricia responds:
"My father says almost the whole world's asleep. Everybody you
know, everybody you see, everybody you talk to. He says only a
few people are awake. And they live in a state of constant total
amazement."
The whole world's asleep.....think about that for a minute.
Why was that put in there?
If you watched the move, did that strike you as being
unbelievable it was even there?
What being asleep and what waking up means is what we are going
to explore for the rest of the article.
Waking Up that's what it's about. It took a death sentence for
Joe to begin waking up. When he did, he found himself entering
into a world that was unbelievable and a world that most folks
don't even know exists.
Let's flash forward in the movie to the scene where it's night
and Joe is on a raft and the moon begins to rise overhead. The
moon seems so huge and awesome to Joe that as a movie watcher
you become so caught up in the vastness of the moon and the
drama of the movie that you almost become one with the entire
experience.
Before this in the movie he is asking himself and others the
question does God exist. Joe is awestruck, and in that moment of
realization, he just knows that God exists and becomes so
grateful for his life. The moment is one of total amazement for
Joe and the movie watcher.
In that moment when Joe becomes one with the experience, he now
understands.....the need for questions to be answered isn't
there.....he wakes up to the present moment and all the present
moment is trying to convey to him and finally the understanding
he has been seeking comes.
Most of us are lost in thought. Now we're not talking about
practical thought, those thoughts you need to drive a car or
solve problems, we're talking about all those thoughts which
aren't needed for life - thoughts that are painful to us.
Being asleep means being lost in painful or unwanted thoughts.
The best way to explain this is for you to begin watching your
thoughts. You'll see that some of these thoughts aren't very
nice at all. You may be having a fight with your boss at this
very moment while reading this. You may have found yourself a
thousand miles away.
Many of these thoughts we have are unkind and detrimental to our
well being. How many times have you found yourself putting
yourself down for something you didn't do right, or found
yourself getting angry or upset over some event, or even found
yourself in a mental fight with someone?
Someone cuts you off on the freeway and you immediately go
spastic and begin to shoot mental bullets at them.
Those thoughts put you in a state of sleep and prevent you from
being fully aware of the present world around you.
In the beginning of the movie, Joe was in a constant state of
psychic slumber. He had no amazement, no awe, no wonder of life.
His life was despicable.
When Joe began waking up, his life began to turn to a state of
amazement and awe and wonder at what was happening in the
present moment around him. Just watch the scene where he is with
DeDe at dinner and you'll see the difference between a man at
sleep and a man that is awake.
In fact DeDe says, "What's happened to you. This morning you
were like a lump, now..... You're So Alive."
It is in this state of amazement that you often find children
playing. They are having fun with life because they are not lost
in thought about some fear, they are totally within and alive in
the present moment and awake to what they are doing.
These unkind thoughts we have draw us farther away from the awe
and amazement that life really is.
And as you begin to wake up and live in the present moment,
amazing things can and do happen.
Which way would you rather live?
In a world where you are lost in painful thoughts or a world
where you are in a state of constant total amazement?
Go watch a cat. Cats are fully awake and aware in their own
present moment. What creature is there that more lives a life of
amazement than a cat?
Cat's don't get lost in thought like we do, they are fully aware
of themselves and their environment all the time. Now a cat may
stare intensly at a predator, but it is not lost in thought.
To be fully awake to the present moment, begin to watch your
thoughts. Some of them may be ugly. When you practice watching
your thoughts, you'll begin to see yourself going off in all
different kinds of directions over nothing, it's these thoughts
that keep us asleep and away from a state of wonder and awe.
Don't try to change them, don't begin to put yourself down for
having them, for now, just watch them and see how you react to
them.
Next work on being present in the now. Watch yourself as you do
everything. Become aware of where your arms are, where your legs
are, what temperature is it. As you read this, watch yourself
reading and be aware of where and who you are doing this.
Become fully awake to you and the experiences of this present
moment and you will begin to see the amazement and wonder of
your life as it should be.