I am amazed today how I can still find new and significant meaning in popular cultural icons. For example, there is tons of wisdom readily available in almost every episode of the early Star Trek series. Now I am not going to go into explaining examples in any one episode with this article, but instead would like to approach it from the vector of how we can block such wisdom from ever entering our psyche. If we chose to merely see such things as mindless entertainment, or goofy retro fun or even something too old to be cool, then we may be missing out on the underlying intent and intelligence, or even historical significance that went into the story.
I recall in my early twenties how I avoided indulging myself in things from my past as there were too many emotional wounds or memories associated with them. I have friends who have told me (and I have told them as well) that when I share a piece of music or a video clip of a movie or a TV show, how I have often heard something like “sorry, but that’s not where I’m at right now”. On first look at this statement one may assume that the person (or me) is going through some upward mobility in their spiritual/intellectual life and the freshness and newness they are encountering at the moment is too enjoyable to want to turn backwards. However, on further thought, there also may be some emotional lens that is filtering out the information as it is too painful to view in the current state of mind. As an example, I had a girlfriend in college who of all things hated Star Trek. The reason being was that her father insisted on staying home to watch the latest episode when he should have been at the hospital watching her being born. In this case, I can understand the resistance to ever wanting to see the show again.
In my experience, I recall specific events or states of mind in my life when I was hearing a particular piece of music or was watching a movie and having strong emotions about things not going quite right in my life. A good example of this is when you hear you and your girlfriend’s or boyfriend’s favorite song after you had a painful breakup. Other situations may be your state of mind after losing a loved one to a disease, or losing a cherished job after working there for years. These are things that did not happen by choice, and pop culture was always running in the background of your local universe.
So to get on with my point, and still using Star Trek as an example, as I educated myself more on things of this world, like social justice, causes and effects of wars, religion, spirituality, etc., I began to notice that there were many common threads written into the scripts of these shows relating to my newly acquired knowledge. And after doing some research on Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, I found that he was also an avid explorer in many areas of thought, and used those learned ideas in his writings and TV shows. Some would even say he had a special interest in esoteric knowledge, and may have had inside information on government black projects. As another example, I have always been a big fan of the music of the band YES. Their lyrics, written and sung by Jon Anderson, have always provided seeds for challenging conversation and speculation as to their meaning. Their music struck a chord with me growing up, so much that I created a lot of positive and negative memories around it. It wasn’t until I shelved it for awhile then later picking it up again with new curiosity and a fresh mind that I began to really find some new meaning behind the lyrics. Much of the time it was purely my personal interpretations, and not always the intended one by the artist.
This is just a small example of the magic of self-discovery and expanding our world view. As we make those inner discoveries and grow outward into the bigger picture, we disconnect those feeling channels, and create new neural pathways to those things that are familiar to us. It’s like we remove the constraints of past pain and memories and forge new experiences with the art, making it new again!
