Something I’ve long been fascinated with is how movies and TV shows with similar themes always seem to come out at the same time. While some of this can be explained by Hollywood’s copycat formula of success stories (vampires are back again thanks to Twilight and True Blood) or current fads (notice the plethora of 3-D films lately — especially in animation?), what I’m talking about goes a bit deeper. I’m referring to the tendency of certain story themes to come out in very close proximity to one another.  It’s as if there’s some kind of new information that humanity is ready to learn that’s buzzing around our collective unconscious. And writers, artists, poets, and even musicians — all being the modern-day shamans that they are — pick up on it and translate it into messages for us mere mortals to subliminally interpret.

I first noticed this tendency back in the late 1980s. I remember thinking how odd it was that all these adult/child switcheroo movies were coming out at the same time.  There was Like Father Like Son, Vice-Versa, 18 Again, Big and a few others. It’s easy to assume that after the success of Big, Hollywood just jumped on the switcheroo bandwagon, but actually, Big came out after those other films. Looking at our superficial society in the late 80s, perhaps the message of these films was to help us get back in touch with our inner-child. (With the more recent 13 Going on 30 and 17 Again in these stressful times, perhaps it’s time for a reminder.)

Then, in the late 90s we had a ton of cities-getting-destroyed movies. There was Independence Day, Armageddon, Deep Impact, and Godzilla just to name some. Could this have been some kind of subliminal warning about 9/11? More recently we’ve had disaster films like The Day After Tomorrow, The Happening, and The Day the Earth Stood Still (remake) where nature seems to fight back against humanity.  In the wake of An Inconvenient Truth, is this some kind of wake-up call to begin taking better care of the planet? Interesting how all those movies relate to a time, i.e., a “day” or “happening.” The message seems to be that we need to get moving now or face the consequences.

Within the last couple years, superpowers movies — either with superheroes or ordinary people gaining super abilities — have been off the charts. Last summer alone, a new superpower film seemed to come out nearly every week. Is this a hint to some kind of new evolution coming for humanity? And what’s with all the time-travel themes lately? This year alone we’ve had the theme creeping into Lost and the new Star Trek movie, and there was also Land of the Lost, and of course another Terminator film. Interestingly though, the theme of the new Terminator didn’t relate to time travel as much as the question over what defines humanity. With technology becoming so advanced, that is an issue we are likely going to have to deal with in the next fifty years if not sooner.

My point in bringing all this up is to demonstrate that the similar themes and concepts of movies and TV shows are not just coincidental. There are real messages for us to pay attention to. So after watching Knowing and noting its many similarities to Lost, I began to wonder what the message was and if it could give us a hint about the conclusion of the show, or possibly even what’s to come in the real world.

Both Lost and Knowing contain apocalyptic themes. Early on in Lost, it wasn’t particularly obvious, but there were hints. Many fans noted that The HANSO Foundation was an anagram for NOAHS…as in the ark that saved life on earth. In Knowing (I need to give away some spoilers here so stop here if you don’t want ‘em) there were alien crafts that captured all species of life on earth to bring them to safety (I believe this also happened in the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still as well). Getting back to Lost, there’s also the fact that Oceanic Flight 815 might refer to Genesis 8:15, where God tells Noah to rebuild civilization after the flood.

So is the whole point of Lost about saving humanity (or a select group of humans) from the end of the world? Is that where the story is going? While I’m not sure yet if this theme will be contained within the actual story, or just within the moral of the story, the show does seem to be heading in this direction.  I spoke a bit about cataclysm theories in The Myth of Lost — especially as they relate to the numbers. What if the numbers are not just a serial number of the Swan Station but a date for the end of the world — 4/8/15 at 16:23:42? While this theory has been around for a while, in light of the events of the season five finale, and a very similar use of a sequence of numbers in Knowing, it does give it new weight. The apocalyptic undertones of season five and Knowing also shed new light on another aspect of the Lost mythology.

Early in season one, we see two skeletons referred to as “Adam and Eve.” Surely, this nickname, which seemed like a joke at the time, was no accident. Will the old humanity be destroyed only to bring in a new Adam and Eve to repopulate the world (Aaron and Ji Yeon perhaps)? Is this the point of Lost, or simply another one of its hidden messages about the real world? In Knowing, the Adam and Eve theme is shown almost literally — with a tree of knowledge and everything. This is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil — a theme Lost focuses on quite often. Who is good? Who is evil? What is right? What is wrong? If you look deeper at the Biblical good and evil mythology, it’s not really so much about morality as is commonly interpreted, but about the material world we live in: a world of right and wrong, life and death, up and down, physicality, time, and the senses. These are aspects that did not exist in the Garden of Eden until humanity ate the forbidden fruit. It’s all an allegory for the creation of the physical universe. A world where we can experience ourselves as separate beings who seemingly have the freedom of choice to live life as we want.

According to all these media messages however, this world, as we know it may be coming to an end. On the one hand that could mean that the veil between our physical/illusionary world and the infinite world beyond may be thinning. On the other, it can be a warning that our days living on this planet may be numbered. Either way, it would seem that Lost, Knowing, and similar stories are telling us that humanity may be in for drastic changes.  We will probably end up stronger when this cleansing is complete, but getting there is going to involve a lot of growing pains for many of us. And those who cannot deal with this new world may not be coming along. Already, we see how the old greedy paradigms are failing, the selfish people are falling, the cheats, liars, and assorted scoundrels are being busted, and those who represent the flashy epitome of ego are dying.

Yes, there are certainly a lot of clues out there in stories beyond Lost. But one thing that Lost has taught us is how to look for them.  In fact, I think that has been one of the more important purposes of the whole show — to teach us that the clues of the universe are all around us — not just on Lost. As we move ever closer to Lost’s final episodes, that knowledge is reassuring indeed. The search for clues will not end with Lost. Regardless of its solution, the show has opened our eyes to a whole new beginning.

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers a simple solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page.

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.

Technorati Tags: abc, Knowing, Lost, Lost In Myth, marc oromaner, Numbers, the myth of lost

Much like Jacob’s tapestry featured at the beginning of “The Incident,” Lost has woven a story filled with symbolism, mythology, and mystery. As Jacob says at the end of the two-part episode, “It takes a very long time when you’re making the thread. But I suppose that’s the point, isn’t it?” Well, I guess it’s the point when you have a moneymaking TV show and you need to keep audiences involved long enough to get to syndication and sell tons of merchandise. But most of the best stories I know are brilliant in their simplicity. This includes most nursery rhymes, tall tales, fables, and myths. Of course, you also have your Lord of the Rings and your Alice in Wonderlands, so there is hope for Lost to stand the test of time. Just like these other complex stories, Lost weaves together many themes that have helped to make it so meaningful. This is especially true in its final episode of the season.

Once again, the main theme of the episode, the theme of the fifth season, and perhaps the theme of the entire show is that of fate versus freewill. Is life a constant, and “whatever happened, happened” or are we the variables, as Daniel Faraday came to believe, with the freedom to choose? Jacob seems to represent this freedom. He specifically reminds Hurley and Ben that they are free to choose their paths, bails young Kate out of her crime, doesn’t stop young James from writing his letter to Sawyer, tells the insecure Jack that sometimes things just need a little push, and gives his blessing to the tumultuous marriage of Jin and Sun. Does this make him good or evil? Based on his white shirt compared with his opponent’s black one, we are being led to believe that he is good. After all, he’s allowing the freedom to choose. But as with many of the characters of Lost, I don’t think that either of these two beings is good or bad. Like Ben and Widmore, they just have different beliefs — issues to be worked out, as Jacob said. These issues seem to set the seed level for every character in the hierarchy below them.

Regardless of whether Jacob is on the side of good or evil though, I would say that he represents the guardian angel motif. This guardian angel can look out for us like Cinderella’s fairy godmother or the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi, or, it can be a troublemaker like the trickster fairy, Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, whose mischief challenges us to become stronger. All throughout the flashbacks, we see how Jacob allows the Losties to choose their path, yet, he gives them little nudges along the way to help them stay on it — for better or worse.  By bailing Kate out of her crime, did he teach her that she could get away with it, or encourage her to avoid it with her promise? By pulling Sayid aside, he saved his life, but allowed Nadia to be hit by a car. By telling the insecure Jack that sometimes things just need a little push, was he easing the argument he’d just had with his father, or setting up his tendency to always push things too far? Really, it’s up to the recipient of Jacob’s help to decide because he’s allowing them the freedom to live their life as they wish. He’s just occasionally intervening to guide them in the general direction of their destiny. This is actually in line with my own beliefs about fate and freewill.

In my last column, I wondered if there’s, “a general path that life wants us to take, and when we drift, it nudges us back in the general direction we’re meant to go.” I later stated, “We have freedom of choice when it comes to the details. But ultimately, life will steer you [towards your destiny].”  I went on to say that we just might get to see this message played out during the fifth season finale. We did. But not in the way I thought we would. I thought we’d get to see it through the incident itself. This may turn out to be the case for season six. In this episode however, we saw the theme play out through Jacob.

At the start of “The Incident” we learn that Jacob has brought the Blackrock ship to the shores of the island in hopes of proving his adversary wrong. This adversary, who we’ll call Essau since he was Jacob’s adversarial brother in the Bible, believes that when left to their own devices mankind is evil. “They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt — it always ends the same.” To which Jacob replies, “It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.”

Watching this scene, I was reminded of the film Trading Places, where brothers Randolph and Mortimer Duke make a one-dollar bet over whether people are born bad, or if it’s a result of life circumstances. Using two unwitting characters (played by Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy) as the pawns in their twisted game, the brothers manipulate the characters’ lives to see which of their theories is correct. Considering the opening scene of this episode, and all the times Lost has alluded to games, the insinuation seems to be that all the turmoil that has occurred on the island, and perhaps the world, is the result of a little game. A game played with human lives by two supernatural beings. Perhaps the reason the show is called Lost isn’t because the characters are physically lost or mentally lost, but because they are pawns in a game that will be won or lost with their lives.

So who are the two players of this game? Since Jacob lives within the four-toed statue, it seems that we are meant to think that this is him. While the identity of this statue, finally revealed in this episode, will probably be debated for the next nine months, it definitely looked like it had the face of a crocodile.  Along with its Egyptian garb and two ankhs, the statue is most likely, Sobek, the Egyptian god of fertility and repairer of evil that had been done. Since Jacob appears to be attempting to repair evil, this fits him well. We also know that eventually his statue will crumble and that this likely coincides with the time when women on the island can no longer conceive. From this perspective, Jacob would appear to be good since babies and those who repair evil are good things. Speaking of which, isn’t this Jack’s MO — his obsession with fixing things? Could he be related? Perhaps Jack, Christian, and Claire are offspring of Jacob, explaining why the latter two were able to live in Jacob’s cabin — assuming it ever actually was Jacob’s cabin and the people Locke saw inside actually were Claire and Christian.

At the very least, Ilana, Bram , and Richard seem to think Jacob is good.What lies in the shadow of the statue? Some Latin phrase that apparently translates to, “He who shall protect (or save or watch over) us all.” But how do we even know that Richard and company are good? If they are all demons that are to be saved, that doesn’t speak well for Jacob. Even if they are good, Jacob lies in the shadow of the statue. Perhaps that phrasing is intentional. If there’s anything that Lost teaches us, it’s to never assume anything. We do get at least one other clue though — Jacob’s tapestry. At the top is a quote from The Odyssey in Greek which translates to, “May the gods grant thee all that thy heart desires.” Surely, it is a benevolent god that would wish such things. Then again, doesn’t the realm of desire belong to Satan? Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but the point is, thanks to Lost’s many plot twists, we really can’t know anything for sure. But we can speculate, and that’s half the fun on this show. Maybe Lost is tricking us with the white-shirted Jacob and his black-shirted killer and Jacob is the one who’s evil. Sure his followers claim to be the good guys, but as Frank Lapidus pointed out, usually those who insist they’re the good guys, aren’t.

Perhaps some insight can be gleaned by looking at Jacob’s opponent. Who exactly is this guy and how come Jacob didn’t mention his name? Well, if Jacob is Sobek, according to the popular vote on the Lost boards, that would make the other guy Seth — the Egyptian god of chaos and infertility. This would again explain the problem pregnancies assuming he comes to power after the statue crumbles. So, maybe Seth is actually the bad guy after all, or maybe they both are, or maybe it doesn’t even really matter. In fact, I’m not so sure that any of this will ever be spelled out for us, or if any of it is even relevant to the ultimate plot.  Like Trading Places, Lost is about the pawns, not the players. The pawns are who we are meant to relate to. We may all be a part of God, but in this illusionary world we live in, we’re just the characters playing out the game of life. The best we can hope for is to win.

Fate, freewill, gods, and games, and I’ve only just scratched the surface of the themes in this episode. At risk of turning this into a tome, I’ll just quickly reference two more. The first is one I haven’t really discussed much before and that is the theme of science versus spirituality. Besides fate and freewill, there is a sub-question that this episode seems to ask: Is it the experiments of DHARMA and the advancements of science that moves humanity forward, perhaps even saving us as Radzinsky claims? Or is it the work of supernatural guides like Jacob and our faith in God that saves us? Yet another timely topic as this theme is explored in the book and film Angels and Demons that comes out this week. Specifically, the story asks whether science and spirituality are polar opposites, or, if they are in fact telling us the same thing. Just as with the yin and yang, faith and freewill, or Jack Shephard and John Locke, I believe each completes the other. This may, in fact, even be the lesson for Jacob and his killer. Neither of them is right or wrong.

The final theme I’d like to bring up from this episode, is one I’ve covered quite a bit and pretty much makes up the bulk of my book. This is the theme of redemption. Are we brought into this world to overcome our issues? According to the mythology of Lost, the answer is, “yes.”  This is how we win the game, or at least, get out of it. From the very beginning of the series, we’ve seen that all of the characters have major life issues. Through a series of challenges, the island helps them solve these issues, and once they do, they die. In this episode, it was Juliet’s turn to burn. Before arriving on the island, Juliet was timid, afraid to stand up for herself, and, as we learn from a flashback featured in this episode, confused about her parents’ divorce.  Her parents tell her that just because two people love each other, doesn’t mean they should be together. Young Juliet doesn’t understand but her mother promises that one day she would.

In “The Incident,” Juliet calls the shots on the sub, knocks out a crewmember which leads to her being able to escape with Sawyer and Kate, and then helps convince Sawyer and Kate to help Jack after all. She definitely solved her whole timid thing. Then she comes to terms with her relationship with Sawyer, realizing that love isn’t enough, fully conquering her remaining issue. And that’s when she died. Or at least, seems to have died. Again, you can never assume anything with this show. Still, looking at the arc of her character, her solved issues, and her red shirt, I think it’s a sure bet that in this timeline at least, Juliet is gone.

For the most part, Lost seems to be sticking with the precedents it established early in season one. However, I do question the personification of freewill and fate in the forms of Jacob and his opponent respectively.  Up until now, the writers have treated fans as though we are smart enough to pick up on these themes through metaphors such as time travel and through the choices of the show’s characters. To express them in the forms of ancient Egyptian gods seems to bring them closer to the realm of a fairytale. For me, this makes Lost’s storyline less relevant to today’s audiences. Most of us cannot relate to the myths of Egyptian gods as well as we can relate to the mythology of say, The Wizard of Oz, The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. So why go there? The idea that fate is a result of the rigidity of our timeline or the programming of a video game — I totally get that. The idea that it is the result of one Egyptian god killing his brother who had the opposite view, not so much. If anything, it seems to be taking a step backwards.

We already have tons of Egyptian, Greek, and Nordic myths that cover these themes. A good mythological story updates them so modern audiences can understand how they pertain to their lives. Even if Jacob isn’t a god, he’s still living in the statue of one, doesn’t age, creates hieroglyphics, and can resuscitate the dead. As fascinating as all this has been, I want to see Lost bring the story back to themes and characters I can relate to. I don’t care how fantastical the story becomes, as long as all the themes are consistent with one another. Egyptian god statues, Biblical names, creatures named after Greek mythology (i.e., Cerebus the smoke monster), time travel, ghosts, Buddhist concepts, book and movie references, and spiritual themes all seem to be a bit much. I know that mythology all borrows elements from one another, but they don’t usually take a little bit from everything and jumble it together. For me, the only way Lost can successfully navigate its own convoluted myth and come to a satisfying conclusion is if there is something bigger going on. Something else beyond Jacob — a twist that puts everything in perspective. While it seems increasingly unlikely that the show is going there, I’ve still enjoyed the ride and have definitely learned a lot.  Still, if I don’t get some major answers next season, I’m going to be disappointed.

Many fans point to how many answers we got this season — about Rousseau, DHARMA, and how the Oceanic Six got back to the island. Great, but none of that really has to do with the mythology. Even the mythological answers we got just raised more questions. Locke was dead, then alive, now dead again — but what’s the story behind this doppelganger of his? Ilana is working for Jacob. So, who is she exactly and why did she have bandages all over her face? Is she someone we’d recognize who’d gotten plastic surgery? We see the statue is an Egyptian god, but who built it, why, how did it get destroyed, and why does Jacob have to stay there? Is he that god, if not, how does he have powers?

There are still thousands of questions. I don’t expect Lost to answer them all, but I expect answers to the big ones, and I haven’t even mentioned the smoke monster, the numbers, Christian Shephard, Desmond’s time traveling, Walt’s powers, the food drops, the eyeball close-ups, everyone being connected, Kate’s horse, Hurley’s friend Dave, the pregnancy issues, the whispers, the polar bears, the Hurley bird, Libby, Mikhail’s revivals, the Black Rock, Henry Gale, the skeletons with the black and white stones in their pockets, and the basic origins of the island. To me, these are big questions and if they are not answered directly, I feel like I should be able to figure them out from the solution Lost leaves us with.

So, getting back to my original question, what if Lost concludes without meeting our expectations? Has it all been worth it? In the immortal words of Aerosmith I’d like to remind everyone that “life’s a journey, not a destination.” We’ve learned so much on this journey — that we’re all connected, there are no accidents, and the universe gives us clues to help us on our paths. Even if you don’t believe any of these themes, the show contains real wisdom that can help us with our own life challenges — wisdom we’ve learned through the perspective of the characters and through the lessons of the episodes. No matter how Lost ends, I believe that if we listen out for the whispers, overcome the smokey monster of self-doubt, and use our connections, we will succeed on our journey through life. Even if the ending of Lost leaves us more lost than ever.

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers a simple solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page.

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.

Technorati Tags: abc, Angels and Demons, Jacob, Lost, Lost In Myth, marc oromaner, mystery, mythology, philosophy, series, show, Sobek, solution, spirituality, television review, the incident, the myth of lost, The Odyssey, The Variable, Trading Places, tv

In the 1998 film Sliding Doors, Gwyneth Paltrow’s character splits in two different directions all depending on whether she manages to catch a train.  Interestingly, the two realities never coalesce. In fact, as the story progresses, the separate versions of her life split further and further apart, and end up in two entirely different places. While I enjoyed the movie and the perspective it brought up, to be honest, it didn’t sit entirely right with me. Is life really just a collection of random events with an infinite number of pathways all dependent on an infinite number of decisions we make at any given moment? Or, is there a general path that life wants us to take, and when we drift, it nudges us back in the general direction we’re meant to go? I prefer the latter explanation, if for no other reason than it is much more forgiving than the former. It gives me comfort to believe that one little mistake is unlikely to mess up my entire life, and if it does, the mistake is unavoidable. It also gives me comfort to think that we are being guided toward some ultimate purpose.

This fate versus free will question has been one of the major themes of Lost and has really come to a head in the last couple of episodes. And despite indications to the contrary, it has already given us its answer-fate wins. Whether that perspective allows for some freedom of choice wiggle room (aligning with my own beliefs) remains to be seen, but the show has already indicated to us that fate will win out in the end, and whatever happened, will happen. In other words, Faraday was right to begin with and his newer “variable” theory is not. How do I know? Well, for starters, he’s dead.

Faraday went to the Others camp in hopes of changing what had happened. Unfortunately, fate wouldn’t let him. If this were any other show, that would be the end of it. Since this is Lost however, there are a million different ways his plan can still take effect: he can be brought to the temple and reincarnated, the smoke monster can free him temporarily from the afterworld or duplicate his likeness, his thoughts can be channeled via Miles, he can be rescued through time travel, or, Jack can be inspired to take his message to heart and continue Faraday’s plan on his own. While I won’t be surprised if any of these methods lead to Jack and company setting off Jughead, I can tell you it will not make a lick of difference for the end result. As many Lost fans have gathered, if anything, Jughead is more likely to cause the incident that led to the current sequence of events than stop it. Even if it doesn’t, even if the explosion of a hydrogen bomb manages to somehow defy physics by, in Faraday’s own bizarre words, “destroy the energy” (most physicists agree that energy cannot be created or destroyed), it will still amount to no change.

Think about it. If Jack manages to set off the bomb and it prevents the incident so that the Swan station numbers never have to be pressed, then Desmond can’t inadvertently cause 815 to crash. That means 815 lands but Jack and the gang will never be sent back to the island to prevent the incident that caused it to crash. I can picture all the 815ers carrying about their lives in 2004, when suddenly there is a ripple and all these weird things start to happen sort of like in the Ray Bradbury story, “A Sound of Thunder.” Only here, Jack’s actions will cancel themselves out. So, there will eventually be more ripples causing Jack and company to come back to the island in 1977 to be given another chance. Assuming he doesn’t remember having done so already, Jack may prevent the incident again. If so, the same thing will happen-all the 815ers will be stuck in a loop until the incident is allowed to occur. This could go on and on until, perhaps, Jack has a déjà vu and gets a sense that he keeps doing the same thing again and again. He may still do it anyway, until the déjà vu gets stronger and stronger, acting like feedback on itself. I don’t know about you, but whenever I get déjà vu, it’s usually a déjà vu of my remembering something where I also had déjà vu. It’s because an event is continually repeating, including, my remembering that the event has already happened.

There was actually a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode titled “Cause and Effect” that covered this very theme. In it, the Enterprise is caught in a time rift and the crew keeps making the same choice to get out of it. The ship, along with the crew, are all destroyed but then loop back to the same moment where they made the wrong decision. Eventually, the android character, Data, notices a strange sequence of numbers in the cards he’s holding during a game of poker that soon show up everywhere. Data comes to believe that it’s his subconscious talking to him from one of the previous loops. Repeating numbers? Perhaps we aren’t seeing the first time the Losties have gone through this series of events, perhaps it has been going on for an eternity and the universe, aka, the island is giving them clues on how to get out of it and get time flowing again. Maybe this loop extends further back than the 815 crash and explains why all the Losties are connected-the universe is conspiring to bring everyone together so that things can happen as they are meant to.  Interestingly, this Star Trek TNG episode also brings up themes of mysterious whispers and characters getting headaches, just like Lost.

It truly is amazing what messages mythically-themed stories-and Lost in particular-are sending us. If you think about it, Lost can be teaching us exactly how the world works-even if it’s only subconsciously. In fact, “Follow the Leader” brought up this very point throughout the episode, although, even this was sent subconsciously. As I mention in The Myth of Lost, “mythologically speaking, being underwater (especially in the ocean) is symbolic of dreams and the subconscious. That’s why the planet Neptune-named after the Roman god of the sea-represents our dreams and subconscious in astrology.” In fact, it’s not just being underwater-being underground also represents the subconscious.

In “Follow the Leader” we witness people swimming underwater to reach underground tunnels. There, they find the underground bomb that could set off this loop. We also see the love triangle of Sawyer/Kate/Juliet (or “Skatiet”) head underwater in a submarine (water also represents love and emotion). Since the sub passengers have not been knocked out for the journey, as is the custom, I would actually be very surprised if they are able to make it back to the mainland. Not just because it would mess with my main Lost theory, but also because it sort of messes with the mythology of the show. Why did they always have to be knocked out before if it was never necessary? Yet, I digress. The point is that all these underwater and underground scenes are a heads-up from the shamanistic powers of the writers that the story is giving our subconscious a juicy download about how the world really works. Will the variable win out over the constant? I say no, and here’s one last reason why: Miles.

Miles never grew up on the island. His father, Dr. Chang, practically forced them to leave. The reason Dr. Chang did this, we eventually learn, was so that his family would be safe from the incident. And the reason he knew about the incident was because Miles, Faraday, and inadvertently Hurley, convinced him that they were from the future. So, the effects of Jack and the gang’s time traveling have led to results that can already be witnessed, namely, Miles having been taken from the island as a baby. Even if there was no evidence though, Jack cannot prevent the incident from happening because the effects of this action are what enable him to do so. In other words, this isn’t just a paradox, it’s a looping paradox where the results are needed to create those results. The closest Jack can come to making a change, is to set off some massive looping feedback. Perhaps, this is what the incident is-and it will continue until Jack loops to a time where he does not set off the bomb. It is possible that Jack prevents the incident, or gets everyone killed, and this may be how the episode ends. But this result will eventually be rendered moot because whether Jack is dead or stops the incident, he cannot come back to the island to cause this very result. So, it must loop back again.

To bring this column full circle, if you could get a redo for a certain decision you made in your life, where would you be? I believe you would be in pretty much the same place right now. You are in the career you are meant to be in-even if you hate it and should probably leave it for something else. You are in the relationship you are meant to be in-even if it is doomed to failure. It’s all learning lessons designed to help us experience ourselves in certain ways we are meant to experience. We have freedom of choice when it comes to the details. But ultimately, life will steer you on the course you are meant to go. It will give you the challenges you are meant to overcome. And it will keep doing so until you either overcome them-or don’t. Chances are though, you’ll get to play again in your next life. If you didn’t succeed, you’ll be given a similar set of circumstances once again. And if you do succeed, you’ll come back at a more advanced level with harder challenges.

I think this is the ultimate message of Lost that we just might get to see during “The Incident” or not until a year from now. If it’s the latter, do you have the patience to wait? If not, don’t worry. This game of life is impossible to lose.  If you don’t get it in this lifetime, you’ll get it in the next. And we’ll all be there to help.

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers a simple solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page.

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.

For diehard Lost fans (aka you and me), “The Variable” didn’t really offer anything we didn’t already know or suspect. Eloise Hawking admits to being Daniel’s mum.  Okay, we knew that. Charles Widmore claims to be Daniel’s father. Okay, most of us suspected that. Daniel reveals that the young Other named Ellie who he’d met on the island in the 1950s is, in fact, his mother Eloise. Yeah, we were all pretty much taking that one for granted. The mystery that wasn’t answered however, is how the strapping and attractive Widmore and blonde-haired, blue-eyed Hawking produced a scraggly, dark-haired, goofy guy named Faraday?

Even if we suspend disbelief for the casting mismatch, where the heck did the name come from? Was Daniel named for Michael Faraday, the British physicist known for his work with electromagnetism? In fact, since Widmore has acknowledged that John Locke was named for a philosopher, does that mean all the characters who share names with famous people were given those names for a reason? We had always assumed that the character names were just little hints of the writers, but now it’s beginning to seem like the reasoning may be more integral to the plot. Are Daniel Faraday, John Locke/Jeremy Bentham, Mikhail Bakunin, Danielle Rousseau, Charlotte Staples Lewis, and the rest just players in some little game? Are they pawns that can be sacrificed for a desired outcome? Or are they variables whose actions can directly affect the outcome of the fate of the world? While Lost is hinting at all three possibilities, from a mythological perspective, it is the latter option that has the most relevance for our real lives.

The “variable,” as Daniel reveals in this episode, is “us.” Us, as in the viewers—people! “We think, we reason, we make choices, we have free will,” he goes on to say. “We can change our destiny.” Personally, I feel that you can’t have it both ways. If you’re going to view time as a straight line that doesn’t allow for paradoxes and that “whatever happened, happened,” then destiny is set in stone. However, if you look at time as I do—as an infinite number of possibilities and that we “jump” into the one our mind is attracting, then yes, I believe we can change our path. All we have to do is change our mind. While this is admittedly easier said than done, the repercussions either way go way beyond the fate of one person. As Lost shows us, we are all connected. For this reason, the choices we make not only affect our lives but the fate of the entire world.

Every single day of our lives, we make choices based upon our personal interpretation of our experiences. Most of the time we make choices to avoid pain and gain pleasure. And usually we make choices that are more likely to benefit us in the short term, than the long term. The reason is that the long-term choices are usually more challenging and less certain than the short term ones. With every variable that life throws at us, we can choose to take the easy path and do what we want, or take the more challenging path and grow ourselves so that we are more likely to succeed at our destiny. Unfortunately, since most of us have taken the easy way out over the last several decades, the result is the rather crappy scenario we must all deal with right now.

Think of each person on the planet as a gear in a huge universal clock. If just one gear doesn’t do its job, it messes up the entire mechanism. Conversely, the more gears that grow themselves, the easier it will be to get the mechanism to flow smoothly. Viewed from this perspective, every single life is important in effecting the fate of the world. And the more people that know this, the quicker we can make a difference. The more people who step up and challenge themselves, the more likely we will benefit as a society. And will all those who step up be personally rewarded? Not in the material sense. These challenges will require sacrifice.

As a young child, Faraday wanted to play music, but his mother insisted that his gift was science and that this was the path to his destiny. So, Faraday gave up music for physics which has seemingly resulted in his death—death at the hands of his mother. Why would his own mother, who was apparently aware of this tragic outcome, point him directly towards it? She must believe that Daniel’s sacrifice is for a much greater good. That his death was not in vain. That he sacrificed his love of music, his romantic relationships, his mind, and ultimately his life for a reason.

Mythologically speaking, the cherubic Ms. Hawking represents our guardian angel or fairy godmother. She is our gut instinct that guides us on our path for better or worse. It remains to be seen why Daniel’s scientific contributions were so important to the fate of the world that they were seen as more important than his own life. I do not believe that the message here is that we are all doomed, or that all our work will be for nothing. Instead, the message seems to be that we are all going to have to make sacrifices if we want our world to move forward.

Right now, almost all of us are being forced to make sacrifices because we haven’t volunteered to make enough on our own accord.  Many of us have been greedy but because of the recent economic downfall we now must learn to be more fiscally responsible and less materialistic.  Many of us have inadvertently abused our planet but because of severe climate change, we now must reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and move towards renewable sources of energy. Had we stepped up to these challenges in the sixties and seventies when they were first presented to us, we wouldn’t be in this predicament right now. If only we had chosen mutual respect and spirituality over the excesses of the “me” generation, what kind of world would we live in now? What if we could go back in time and prevent the assassination of Martin Luther King or Robert Kennedy? Or somehow convince the world to change? Could we affect the outcome, or would the world have simply course corrected because it was our fate to learn the hard way?

Regardless of whether or not we could change the past, because we were selfish in recent times, now, we must pay. Since so many gears in our universal clock didn’t grow themselves, it’s now going to take much more effort from all of us to get this clock ticking properly again. The lesson we’ve all hopefully learned is that when given a choice in life, we should choose the more challenging path—the one that will enable us to grow. We should be proactive, make sacrifices, and choose to take a leap of faith because if we don’t, the universe will choose for us. It’s the sacrifice “the island” demands.

While I believe that we do have control over the outcome of our lives and, through our connections, the path of the world, I’m not sure yet if Lost is on the same wavelength. It seems to me that this variable is what Ben and Widmore are fighting about. Is Ben one of the good guys? Is Bram on the team that’s going to win? Does the island “course correct” to ensure a certain fate? If the variable can be changed, Lost’s message is that any one of us can affect the fate of the world. However, if it turns out that whatever happened, happened and dead is dead, the message is that we’re all just pawns in some big, and probably sick, game.  Since I also believe that the media channels real messages and Lost in particular has tapped into some pretty big truths, it isn’t just the fate of Lost’s characters that will be decided in the season’s final episodes. It’s ours. Can we as humans change the path that the world is going? Do we have any say in our ultimate destiny? Tune in to Lost to find out.

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers a simple solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page.

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.

In many ways, I feel that Some Like It Hoth validated my interpretation of myths in the media. I believe that these myths subliminally provide us with information to help us solve our everyday issues and fulfill our lifelong destinies.  Who says watching TV is a waste of time? Before I even get into that though, I first want to explore the more obvious theme of the episode. Like pretty much the entire Lost series, this episode dealt with daddy issues and how most of the characters are not dealing with theirs.

First we had Miles who had grown-up daddy-less and led to believe that his father abandoned him and his mother when he was just a baby. Hurley mentioned that his father had left when he was just ten, but they had recently reconciled and he was glad they did. This episode also featured Ben’s father who is so concerned about his missing son, he takes to drinking beers on a swing set and then goes back to mopping up floors. We all know how that relationship winds up. Then there’s Howard Gray, a man who hires Miles to find out if his dead son knew he loved him. At first, Miles takes his money and tells the father what he wanted to hear, that he did. Later however, he gives him his money back and tells the father that, “if you wanted your son to know you loved him, you should’ve told him when he was alive”—harsh words but an important reminder for the viewing audience.

From Sawyer, Locke and Jack to Kate, Ben and Walt, Lost has covered daddy issues many times before, to the point where it’s pretty much one of the major themes of the show. So why spend a whole episode on it? Reconcile with your father—we get it! Actually, I think this theme was used for a deeper reason, and, as is usually the case, this reason can be deciphered from the episode’s title.

The “Hoth” of “Some like it Hoth” relates to the icy planet in The Empire Strikes Back. Icy—just like the father/son relationships depicted in this episode. While some like their relationships “hot” as we know the expression is meant to be, Miles prefers to have a cold relationship with his dad because of what he will allegedly do to his family. Of course, The Empire Strikes Back itself is probably the granddaddy of daddy-issue stories. Actually, Oedipus Rex is more of the granddaddy, Empire may be more of the big daddy. And let’s not forget Hamlet, Chinatown, and even The Wrestler—man, is there a daddy-issues prerequisite to being a writer? Maybe. Or maybe they’re just channeling the myth from the great-great granddaddy of daddy issues—the Bible. “Father, why have you forsaken me?” I don’t know kid, but perhaps 2,000 years of storytelling can help you figure it out. Seriously though, that’s a seed-level story that spawned millions more like it. And we know Lost deals with Biblical themes.

Hoth is only part of the hints we get from the episode title. The other is the movie title that is being spoofed—Some Like It Hot. In the 1959 film, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis are two funny guys who witness a murder, similar to Miles and Hurley discovering the corpse of DHARMA worker, Alvarez.  In the movie, the two characters go undercover to avoid being discovered by the murderers, similar to how Miles and Hurley must continue their charade as DHARMA employees. Just like in the movie though, it looks like the jig is up when at the end, Sawyer’s plot is discovered by the nosey, Phil. After the weasel-like Phil admits to not telling anyone else, Sawyer punches him in the face and lots of laughter ensues.

The Lost connections don’t end there either. Do they ever? Just as everything is connected on Lost, so it is in the real world. I can’t wait to find out how many of these connections were actually planned by the writers and how many were planned by the universe. For this next one, I would bet it’s the latter. In addition to being a very funny Marilyn Monroe movie, “Some Like It Hot” is also a hit song by the 1980s supergroup…wait for it…The Power Station. As in, the building of the powerful Swan station in this episode. Even weirder, the group took its name from the Power Station studio in New York City where it recorded it’s first album. The name of this recording studio today? Avatar Studios. Avatar, as in a god that incarnates into another form on earth. A Richard Alpert type if you will. Then again, isn’t there another definition of an avatar? Isn’t it also a graphical image of a real person that exists on the Internet? An image that you might use with any identity you choose, say a Marvin Candle, Mark Wickmund, or Edgar Halliwax? What conclusions can we draw from with this little free association with the universe, hmmm? On second thought, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions lest the Lost powers that be decide to pay me a little visit.

Getting back to the daddy issues and the title of the show, so…what’s my point? My point relates to Hurley using The Empire Strikes Back to illustrate to Miles the repercussions of not talking things out with your dad—you get your arm chopped off, metaphorically speaking. (Then again, as Tom Mohan, leader of the NYC Lost Meetup Group pointed out, considering that Hurley watched Empire over 200 times, shouldn’t he have remembered that Luke found out Darth was his dad after he got his arm chopped off? Okay, we’ll let that one slide.) Just as Hurley used Empire to help convince Miles to make up with his dad, we can use Lost (and other myths in the media)to help us with our own life challenges. Subliminally, Lost is helping us deal with our own life issues. No wonder we’re so addicted.

Hurley represents the fans. He is us. By explaining life via the mythology of Star Wars, the real message is that we can use Lost’s wisdom in our own lives. And the more you study media myths, the better you’ll get at deciphering them. While right now, in the words of Hurley, “my power is better than your power,” if you continue practicing, perhaps one day you’ll be able to repeat the words of Darth Vader to me: “The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner, now I AM THE MASTER!” Just be prepared to prove it.

In Two Weeks: Will “The Variable” prove to be an event that can change everything? The one thing that can have a domino effect on the outcomes of every event that followed? Is it this variable that Ben and Widmore are fighting for? Or am I just taking stabs in the dark like the polar bear prediction from last week? Find out next time on “Lost In Myth”!

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers a simple solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page.

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.

When we had last left Lost, Richard Alpert was carrying a dying young Ben into the temple in hopes of bringing him back to the land of the living—assuming that’s where they even are. The scene seemed very familiar to me and I was racking my brain to remember why. An Egyptian-looking guy who may be a god (the never-aging Richard Alpert’s initials are RA which just so happens to be the name of the Egyptian sun god) was carrying a young boy into a temple to meet with a god of the afterworld. I knew I’d seen it somewhere before. Then, it hit me. It was just like a scene out of The Ten Commandments!

After the tenth plague, Rameses (a king who is worshipped as a god) carries the limp body of his son to a temple and places him on the altar of the falcon-headed Sokar—the Egyptian god of death. Unlike Ben, the boy is not resuscitated. Perhaps Rameses would’ve been better off using the jackal-headed god of the afterlife Anubis (seen kneeling in the hieroglyphics before the smoke monster in “Dead Is Dead.”) What’s particularly serendipitous about this scene comparison is that The Ten Commandments is about the exodus of Jews from Egypt that is commemorated on Passover, on which “Dead Is Dead” aired during the first night of. “Dead Is Dead” continues the story of young Ben, revealing that he has been brought back to life—reborn, just as Locke has been. Even more serendipitously, this theme fits in perfectly with another event that occurred the same day “Dead Is Dead” aired—a rare, astronomical and important spiritual event.

It takes the Earth approximately 365.24 days to circle the sun. Because of this odd number, our planet is in a slightly different position on any given day than it was the year before. (As seen from our perspective, the sun is in a slightly different position in the sky from year to year.)  In fact, it takes about 28 years for the Earth to come full-circle and return to the point where it started. Kabbalistically speaking, that day happened on Wednesday April 8th—the day that “Dead Is Dead” aired. The spiritual interpretation of this event is that it signifies where the Earth was in relation to the sun when the universe was created. Because of this, many believe that on this day our world is in tune with an energy of being reborn, giving all of us a clean slate or “tabla rasa.”

As many Lost fans may recall, “Tabla Rasa” is the title of the first season episode where we learn that Kate was a fugitive but had been given a clean slate on the island.  In “Dead Is Dead” it is Ben who is pardoned by the smoke monster and allowed to start again, this time to follow the orders of Locke. Just as on Lost, there are no accidents—everything happens for a reason. This once-in-28-years phenomenon along with the freedom themes of Passover and even the resurrection theme of Easter all coinciding with this episode’s similar themes are the universe’s way of letting us know that the seemingly magical rules on Lost island also apply in our world. And this brings me back to what those rules are telling us.

There were actually dozens of interesting parallels in “Dead Is Dead.” One was Ben not killing Penny because he didn’t want to leave her son motherless just as he’d been. This reminded me of Sawyer not scamming a family who had a son because he didn’t want to be like the monster that had ruined his own family. Just as Luke realized as he looked down at his own robotic hand after chopping off Vader’s, we are sometimes tempted to become the thing we hate most. But I’m not going to focus on this theme, or the parallels of Widmore as Satan being cast off the island for his sins, or the conclusions to be drawn from Alex growing ever-so-much hotter in the afterworld. Instead, because of the title of this episode, I’d rather focus on when dead really is dead.

Dead certainly isn’t dead for Locke, who is the same as he’s always been, according to his own assertion to Sun. Death also was not to be the fate of young Ben who was saved due to the island’s mysterious powers. He was also not killed by the smoke monster, which decided to give him another chance to make things right. His dead daughter Alex told him so. Alex probably is dead, but allowed to appear thanks to the smoke monster. This may also be the case for Christian Shephard who was referenced but not seen in the episode, but is known to be wondering around despite having died. So what exactly is going on here?

The moral of the episode, and possibly the entire show, seems to be that when it’s your time to leave this world, no matter what you do, as Desmond said, “You’re gonna die Charlie.” Charlie did ultimately die, as did Danielle and Alex just as Widmore had wanted. For them it may have taken awhile, but death eventually caught up to them. Caesar was shot, and judging by the fate of his namesake, is likely also dead. Desmond on the other hand, despite getting shot by Ben, is alive. So apparently it is not his time to go. The reason for this, as Christian Shephard might say, is that he’s still got “a lot of work to do.” In fact, Eloise Hawking told him so in one of his flashbacks when she promised, “the island isn’t done with [him] yet.”

So is dead really dead then? According to Lost (and movies like Final Destination), only if it’s your time to die. If you still have unfinished business to do, you’ll live. This perspective of life pretty much takes us out of the equation when it comes to matters of life and death. It’s actually pretty comforting to believe in it. When someone we love dies, it’s hard not to wonder, “what if.” What if he hadn’t taken that flight, or eaten that food that got him sick, or what if we’d caught her disease earlier? Sometimes we feel responsible. According this viewpoint though, the end result is out of our hands. There is simply nothing that we could do. Even if we had prevented one source of death, another would simply come up in its place. Just as people have proxies, perhaps life situations have proxies too.

On the other hand, perhaps you know someone who’s had several close calls or even near-death experiences. Maybe you can remember some time from your own life when you thought you were a goner for sure—that logically, you absolutely should’ve died or been very severely hurt. You can think that you were just lucky, or, look at it from a different perspective—the perspective of the universe. Like the island for Desmond, the universe isn’t done with you yet. It just may be that you have a very important role to play in the movie of your life, and there are many characters that are depending on you to complete it. Or, put another way, you are an invaluable gear in the universal clock, and without you, the whole mechanism comes to a screeching halt. The point is, you weren’t just lucky, you are needed, and you have work to do. Use the clues that Lost teaches us to look for and begin to piece them together to find your true calling. What is it that you are meant to do? How do you fit into the universal scheme of things? Figure it out and achieve it and the person who needs you to succeed will be able to do what they are meant to do. This in turn will enable someone else to do their job and others to do theirs and so on. This is why one person can be so important. The fate of the entire world just might rest on your very capable shoulders. Good luck, we’re all counting on you.

Next Week: Will “Some Like It Hoth” finally reveal what we’ve all been suspecting the polar bears are for—to turn the donkey wheel and get zapped to Tunasia? We shall see…

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers a simple solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page.

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.

For those who don’t know, the Mayans were astrological masterminds and their incredibly precise Long Count calendar ends on December 21st, 2012—a day that coincides with a very rare cosmic event. On that day, the winter solstice sun will line up with the center of the Milky Way galaxy (as seen from the perspective of the Earth) for the first time in nearly 26,000 years.  The Mayans thought this was a pretty big deal. In fact, they pretty much revolved their entire culture around it.

Anyway, since we’re getting rather close to that date, I figured it was about time I asked the question.  As usual, the song that woke me up the next morning didn’t disappoint. While I was kind of expecting to hear Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” or R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” the answer sort of surprised my pessimistic musings.  The exact lyric that woke me up was: “Some day, we’ll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun. Some day when the world is much brighter” from The 5 Stairstep’s “Ooh Child (Things Are Gonna Get Easier).” (I find that the oldies stations work the best at giving me messages, probably because I admittedly know more oldies songs.)

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Whether or not this has any relevance to what is going to happen in 2012, I don’t know. I have to admit, though, it at least made me smile and gave me a much needed boost of confidence to continue on my path. After all, if we all knew that the world was going to end, anything we do now would seem kind of pointless.  While it all may be a trick or could mean that climate change may finally cook the Earth with the rays of the beautiful sun, I’m leaning on the side of optimism here.  My initial impression was that the universe would like me to continue doing what I’m doing. And considering that you’re reading this, it probably wants you continue what you’re doing too.

Since this is supposed to be a column about Lost, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with the show, and specifically, its most recent episode, “Whatever Happened, Happened.” Allow me to explain. From the most apparent perspective, the title of the episode relates to how time travel works in the Lost universe. It is non-paradoxical, meaning you can’t change anything. So, whatever happened, happened. While this may be exactly how time really works in our world (which I disagree with since I believe in multiple parallel timelines, or multiverse theory), I think the theme of the episode is actually a metaphor for something else—destiny.

I believe that we all have a definite destiny that, like non-paradoxical time, cannot be changed. However, I also believe that there are many ways to get there and most of us, ultimately, do not.  I like to think of destiny as the fate of our highest selves, the life course that would bring us the greatest joy but involves us overcoming our deepest fears.  When we are on this path, our life goes relatively smoothly. When we aren’t, nothing seems to go right. When we are experiencing the latter, from our perspective it may seem like we’re total losers or that the universe hates us. The truth is though, there is a much bigger picture and at the moment, we are just temporarily coloring outside the lines. In other words, while your life may seem like it’s falling apart, you are more likely just being given room to start living a better one—one more in line with your true destiny. The universe is simply doing what it can to get you out of your own way.

After four and a half seasons of always trying to fix things, Jack finally came to this realization in “Whatever Happens, Happens.” Deciding he wasn’t going to fix Ben this time, he tells Kate that maybe the island just wants to fix things itself. That maybe, “I was just getting in the way.” Bingo! Yes, Jack was never meant to fix Ben even the first time! The island, a.k.a., the universe, was continually giving him things to fix so he would have an opportunity to so, “no.” Finally, he has!

I believe that Jack was never supposed to fix anything at all and was not meant to leave the island until he learned this. Similarly, Kate was not meant to raise Aaron forever, only until she could learn to be responsible and not run away. Sawyer was not meant to be with Kate until he could learn to commit to one woman, which he has with Juliet. Young Ben was not meant to die, because he must grow up to teach these lessons to everyone else. Just like the characters on Lost, we will struggle until we learn to conquer ourselves. We will struggle until we realize our destiny and work towards it, rather than against it.

If only we could be like the Maya, and know our destinies from the moment we were born. One of the Mayan calendars known as the Calendar Round combines their circular 260-day Tzolkin calendar with their circular 365-day Haab calendar together as two interlocking gears. Each day (one of the gears) represented a different energy to the Maya. Since the two calendars each had a different number of gears, they would interlock at varying points over time. The combination of the two gears that connected on the day you were born represent your destiny. So for me, those two gears might have been “spirituality” and “media” (in modern terms) since I believe it is my destiny to combine and interpret these energies.  For you it might be “music” and “napping” or whatever it is you do best.

While we aren’t Maya, I still believe it is entirely possible to figure out our respective destinies. For starters, if you keep hitting brick walls in your life, change direction. As they say, “Out of rejection, comes direction.” Yep, they really do say that.  One that I made up (since these rhyming motivational declarations seem all the rage lately) is, “Challenge yourself to grow, then life will flow.” Let life happen for you. Get out of your own way as Jack said. Leave a space and let life do its thing. This doesn’t mean you should do nothing, it means to stop doing what isn’t working. Einstein supposedly said: “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”  According to destiny, what you think you want (mind), and what you actually need (soul), may be two different things.

So, how can you figure out your destiny? Once you know what it isn’t, think about what it might be. What gives you the most pleasure? Something that you’re good at and gives you the most energy? Something you enjoy sharing with others. Okay, besides sex. Is there a talent you have or a hobby or something you dreamed of being when you were a kid? If so, it’s likely related. Next, look at your life. What is it that your parents do? Your mom is an art teacher and your dad a doctor? Perhaps you are meant to teach art therapy. Your mother is very religious and your dad is a scientist? Perhaps you’re meant to bridge the two philosophies. Your birth parents are hippies and your adoptive parents are accountants and your adoptive dad got divorced and remarried to an attorney and your adoptive mom now has a lesbian relationship with a waitress and your stepbrother is a circus clown? I’ll let you figure that one out, but you get the point. We all have a destiny, and if we listen to the whispers, act in spite of our fears and conquer the murky monster of doubt, we will succeed in fulfilling it. And something tells me the characters of Lost will succeed at fulfilling theirs too.

Next week: Does Richard Alpert carrying a dying Ben to a temple remind you of anything? How about Rameses carrying his dead son to the Egyptian god altar of Sokar in The Ten Commandments? Is dead really dead? Find out next week!
Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers a simple solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page.

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.

Technically, since these episodes all deal with the opposite of the characters they supposedly represent, they are variations on the “he’s our you” theme I’m looking to explore here. For a more direct comparison, a later Seinfeld episode actually provides a better example. In “The Junk Mail, “ we are introduced to a character named Frankie Merman who was Jerry’s friend from summer camp and, because of his sidekick role, is referred to as “the summer George.” (In what seems to be a strange coincidence, the episodes of “Bizarro Jerry,” “Mirror, Mirror” “Spookyfish” and even “The Junk Mail” all premiered during the month of October. Presumably, the idea of alternate versions of ourselves is kind of creepy and therefore air as Halloween episodes.)

Since the Seinfeld characters are so familiar to us, the show itself makes for a good metaphor of the “he’s our you” theme. Even before either of these Seinfeld episodes aired, I often referred to one of my friends as “the George Costanza of my Seinfeld life.” I had a Kramer too, and an Elaine, which pretty much made me Jerry. All these characters are archetypes. Archetypes are perfect examples of a personality type or group. They are the prototypes from which copies are based. Star Wars also works well in exploring how archetypes fit into our lives, which is why I used its characters to compare the mythological relationship of Lost characters in last week’s column.

In our real lives, archetypes give us a lot of clues. Besides providing insight about a person’s challenges and opportunities, our relationship to that person also tells us something about ourselves. If you look at your own life, you will likely see certain personality types who have continually challenged you. From a spiritual perspective, the purpose of these characters is to help you overcome, or at least deal with, the issues they bring up for you. When you successfully do so, these characters will either fade from your life, or, the grating part of their personality will. Sometimes however, characters leave us before we are able to solve the issue they were meant to help us fix. When this happens, a new character playing the exact same role will enter our lives to replace the first. Using Lost terminology, they would be a proxy, or substitute, for the previous one. This is how you know whether you’ve solved a particular issue—if the person who challenged you with it leaves your life, but another pops up in his place, you haven’t.

Have you ever noticed how some of your friends always seem to date the same types of people? Either someone who is lazy and expects his or her partner to do everything, or perhaps someone who is demanding or even abusive. Or, maybe you’ve noticed this pattern in your own relationships. Perhaps you’ve worked a number of different jobs, but always have an obnoxious boss, or a boss that doesn’t respect you or overworks you. You may keep switching jobs, but until you step up and stand up for yourself, you will continually find yourself with the same boss. One will just be a proxy for another.

These roles play out with our friends too. If you have a friend who’s always sponging off of you, even if you manage to get them out of your life, if you don’t put your foot down other spongers will enter your life. Ignoring the person by not returning their calls or emails is not dealing with the issue. You must communicate. It can be as simple as telling the person that while they mean a lot to you, you cannot continually support them with money, time, or whatever. Of course, their reaction may not be so simple, but hold your ground. Be caring and respectful, but expect the same of them. If they don’t change, then you can cut them out of your life. How can you tell you’ve done all you could do? If you are not revisited by another sponger, then you did.

Now, what if the challenging archetype is someone you can’t get out of your life—a close family member or lifelong friend? Interestingly, the people who are the closest to us in our lives are often put there to help us deal with our most challenging issues. That’s why these are the people who often drive us the craziest. Their purpose is to help us overcome problems that could take a lifetime to solve—or even more than a lifetime. In fact, these are the problems that we’ve likely carried over from a previous carnation to deal with in this one.*

Like a gigantic puzzle, the universe somehow arranges for every person to meet the exact person who can help him or her to grow. And just as that person is challenging you, you are challenging him. This is why drama addicts are surrounded by people who push their buttons, why submissive types attract abusive partners, and why givers attract takers. And each of these archetypes will continue to attract the exact archetype that can help them to grow until they no longer need to.

Throughout its fifth season, Lost has illustrated the “he’s our you” or “proxy” concept from many different perspectives. It’s shown us how the returning Losties on Ajira 316 had to act as proxies for the missing survivors of Oceanic 815. More subtly, it has depicted new characters as proxies for original ones, for example, Caesar seems to be the new Jack. In “He’s Our You,” Sawyer points out that the torturer Oldham is DHARMA’s Sayid. This is the obvious reference to the title, but there is a deeper reference in the episode as well.

Throughout his life, Sayid has continually been revisited by a particular archetype—that of a strong, confident woman who is able to mesmerize and ultimately entrap him. In “He’s Our You,” that woman is Ilana, a bounty hunter who seduces Sayid at a bar and then captures him in order to bring him to justice. Ilana is a proxy for Elsa, the woman Sayid tried to get information out of and fell in love with, never suspecting that she was trying to get information out of him. Elsa was a proxy for Rousseau who captured and tortured Sayid on the island in order to get information. She in turn was a proxy for Amira whose husband tricks and then beats Sayid until he will admit to torturing her. And of course, Amira is a proxy for Nadia who Sayid was supposed to torture but became so smitten by, he aided in her escape. In each of these cases, women have been Sayid’s one weakness—his kryptonite. Perhaps it is because of Sayid’s culture, which does not respect women to the level that they could compete with a man. Sayid will continue to experience this seductress proxy until he learns to see women as equals—seeing them for their inner as well as their out beauty. Ilana makes this issue clear when she tells Sayid that she is not a “professional” prostitute, as he had assumed, but a professional worthy of more respect.

So who are the proxies of your life? What are the archetypes that keep repeating over and over again? Confront them or change the way you deal with them. Then, watch them change or disappear. If you actually enjoy having the proxy continually entering your life, ask yourself if you are taking advantage of them in some way. What you might not realize is that you could be the irritating one that the proxy is trying to get rid of. Without realizing it, you may be getting energy from them at their expense. The best thing to do, in this case, is to be proactive and change yourself so that they won’t have to leave. Then, you can have a mutually beneficial relationship, which in the long run, will be better for both of you.

*See last week’s “Namaste” column.

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers a simple solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Myth-of-LOST/34096821137

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Lost-Solving-Mysteries-Understanding/dp/0595484565 and barnesandnoble.com: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Myth-Of-Lost/Marc-Oromaner/e/9780595484560

Namaste is a Hindu expression of meeting or parting that has made its way into yoga classes, spiritual circles, and Lost fan jargon in the Western world. However, much like Lost episode titles, there is a deeper meaning to the word. From a Buddhist or Hindu perspective, when one says, “namaste,” one means: “the light/spirit within me honors the light/spirit within you.” In other words, one person is recognizing that we are all one light or spirit and seeing themselves in the other person. Trippy, ain’t it? Even trippier is how this is related to another Eastern philosophy. If we are all one, then anything we do to others we are actually doing to ourselves. This is the very essence of karma.

Put simply, karma is the idea that our actions come back to us in this life or the next. In “Namaste” we see this theme repeated with just about every major character in the episode. Take Sayid. In his past, Sayid was a torturer of prisoners. In fact, Lost has already shown how us how karma caught up to him when he was tortured as Danielle’s prisoner. In another episode, Sayid has Ben as his prisoner and feels that he cannot be trusted and should be killed. Sound familiar? In “Namaste” Sayid is thought to be one of the Others by Radzinsky who feels that he cannot be trusted and should be killed. Of course, Ben was not killed and neither is Sayid. Still, the fact that the tables have turned becomes even more apparent when a young Ben visits Sayid in his cell. Perhaps Sayid’s Habitat for Humanity work has paid off his karmic torturing debt however because the only torture Ben doles out, is a mustard-less sandwich.

Speaking of Ben, he got some karmic payback in this episode too, based on his actions in “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham.” After getting all the information he needed out of an unsuspecting Locke, Ben took him out of commission with an extension cord to the neck. In “Namaste,” after getting all the information she needed out of an unsuspecting Ben, Sun took him out of commission with a paddle to the head. It didn’t kill him, but technically, Locke didn’t really die either. As in life, with Lost, what goes around comes around. In fact, this concept may give a hint to Ben’s ultimate intentions.

Ben has done a lot of killing in his time. So karmically speaking, when the freighter gang came to kill him, they should’ve succeeded. But as Ben points out in “Namaste,” they didn’t. Perhaps then, Ben hasn’t really killed anyone. Or, maybe he has killed but it wasn’t for selfish purposes but for the overall good of the world…or at least, the island. This might explain why instead of killing Ben, the freighter crew only wound up killing themselves. Now that’s instant karma.

Karma doesn’t always have to be bad—you can get good karma too. For most of his life, Sawyer had been a selfish conman. But after sacrificing himself to save Kate, he paid his dues and is now playing the role he’s always wanted—the new sheriff in town. His selfless karma has had a ripple effect too in that he’s now helping to save Kate and the gang again. Sometimes, when we pull a one-hit-wonder that’s directly opposed to how we’ve been most our lives, the universe throws us another test to see if our new ways stick. So far, for Sawyer, it seems as though they have. Of course, Sawyer still has a bit of a chip on his shoulder, which is probably a good thing. We all know what happens to Lost characters once they solve all their issues. (Add neck slicing sound effect here.)

Even without his pissy attitude towards Jack though, I still don’t think Sawyer’s story is done. His mythological match is Kate, not Juliet. If Kate is Princess Leia, then Sawyer is Han Solo to Jack’s Luke Skywalker. This kinda makes Juliet, Chewbacca—a loving partnership but nothing more. If you think that Juliet and Sawyer will last, ask yourself this question: why would the writers go out of their way to show us that Sawyer had real feelings for Kate during the Claire baby delivery flashback scene only to ignore it? They wouldn’t and they won’t. (BTW, why is it that Sawyer falls for women when they are helping to deliver babies—both Kate and Juliet? Perhaps because he longs for the family he never had?) Juliet’s purpose is to domesticate Sawyer—a skill he needs to learn if he’s ever going to have a successful relationship. Throughout her life, Kate always ran away, but by caring for Aaron she settled down. Now at last, the two of them are ready for one another! Watch the magic.

Even though Lost throws us a lot of twists and unexpected endings, it has yet to contradict classic mythological storytelling. Even Jack’s story is typical of the hero’s journey: rise, fall, redemption. As Sawyer cuttingly points out, Jack has always dealt with issues by reacting. This has brought him to drugs, alcohol, and nearly killing himself in the outside world. Now, he has been metaphorically reincarnated on the island to try again. His karma will bring him the same type of issues he had to deal with before, only now he’ll have to deal with them a bit differently. Jack must now take a subordinate role (Workman) until he can either successfully excel as a leader or come to terms with not being one. Either way, he must accept that he cannot fix every little problem. Similarly, Locke has the same issue. He has also been reincarnated to either succeed as a leader or accept that others are going to tell him what to do. Either way, he must stop being a victim and stand up for himself when others try to take advantage of him. There’s a big difference between being a team player and just being played.

Over a lifetime, karma serves to keep us stuck in the same loop of repeating occurrences until we step up and change our habits. It is like the metaphorical skipping record of time on Lost. What we do, keeps happening to us, causing us to do what we did before. Will Sayid try to torture or kill little Ben? Will big Ben seek revenge on Sun? Will Sawyer cheat on Juliet? Will Jack turn to drink and drugs when he can’t control his situation? The message of this season seems to be that it is time for the characters to move on or they will continue to be stuck in time. And stuck in their lives. With only 25 more episodes remaining, I think we’re going to finally see some real progress. Or else, expect a Lost spin-off.

*See “Lost In Myth” columns from these episodes for details.

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers a simple solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Myth-of-LOST/34096821137

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Lost-Solving-Mysteries-Understanding/dp/0595484565 and barnesandnoble.com: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Myth-Of-Lost/Marc-Oromaner/e/9780595484560

The title was the first tip-off—being that it’s in French, known as the language of love, and translating to “the flower,” which of course is symbolic of love. I would go so far as to say that the episode’s teasing glimpse of what may be the mysterious four-toed statue was another hint. Maybe it’s just me, but the statue, which has been said to be depicting everyone from Richard Alpert and Daniel Faraday, to John Locke and baby Aaron, seems to be female. With its long hair, sloped shoulders, slender waist, thin legs and what looks like a miniskirt, it’s either a chick, or a very effeminate guy. I guess that doesn’t rule out the meek Faraday or guyliner-loving Alpert. I could totally see Alpert with full Egyptian makeup and sun god garb. But I think it would be more interesting if the statue was of a woman, a goddess to be respected and worshiped that is perhaps an effigy of the island itself—an effeminate energy that will be controlled and abused by men who will fight to rule over her. There are a lot of parallels here between this concept and how our parochial religions demonized, converted, and annihilated goddess/earth-loving peoples, but I’ll leave that until we know what gender the statue is for sure. For now though, let’s get back to love.

I guess it’s a bit unexpected that an episode about love would focus on Sawyer. But, maybe this explains why Sawyer has always been so angry. Perhaps he was just a true romantic at heart who has never been able to express this side of himself due to his hang-ups about his past. With this now behind him, he is able to transform from Sawyer, a troublemaking conman, into a new superhero identity—LaFleur, a clean-shaven, caring guy who picks flowers to bring home to his lover. In fact, this may be a bit of an over-correction. The real James Ford is probably somewhere in between the rough and rugged Sawyer and romantic LaFleur. But interestingly, both of these archetypes are that of the romantic. One just represents the unattainable bad-boy that many women want, while the other is the all around nice guy that they probably need but usually reject—unless they also happen to have the rough and rugged looks. So with LaFleur, Juliet really gets the best of both worlds—the unattainable man she wants, but, domesticated. Too bad such perfect situations rarely last. And since Lost has been so good at making metaphors for the real world, it probably won’t last too long here either.

Another love theme to play out in this episode is the idea of how time fits into the picture. After Horace Goodspeed finds an ankh necklace that belonged to his wife’s now-deceased husband, Horace wonders if three years is enough time to forget about someone and love somebody new. The answer represented symbolically by the ankh is no and yes. An ankh is an Egyptian symbol with a hoop atop a cross that represents everlasting life. (Egyptian gods are often depicted carrying it by its hoop, as the giant statue seen in this episode appears to be doing.) Interestingly, the symbol is similar to the astrological symbol for Venus, the goddess of love. Surely, this is no coincidence. Love never dies. It is eternal. Once we love someone, a part of us always will. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t love again should something interfere with the physical expression of that love. Sawyer insinuates this when he tells Goodspeed that he once fell for someone but in time, her learned to forget about her. And this leads us to the major message about love in the episode.

In the movie Swingers, Jon Favreau’s character Mike is deeply heartbroken over his girlfriend who has just broken up with him. In fact, he’s so torn up about it, he spends half the movie moping around, wondering if she’ll call him to get back together. She doesn’t. Eventually he comes to meet Heather Graham’s character, Lorraine. At first, he feels that she is no replacement for his ex, but decides to go out with her just to get his lost love off his mind. Eventually, he comes to grow real feelings for Lorraine and totally forgets about his ex. And sure enough, that’s exactly when she calls. It’s not just Lost that metaphorically represents real-world truths on the screen—all good stories do it. It’s that Lost covers so many that make it unique.

Lost’s take on this same theme happens shortly after James “Jim LaFleur” Ford says “I love you,” of all things,” to his star-crossed lover Juliet. Those three words echoed through time and space and brought his ex-love Kate right back into his life. In this case, it happened quite literally. The flash could’ve sent Kate to any time, but no, it brought her right to that one despite the fact that there hadn’t been any flashes on the island in three years. The message is that whenever we have strong feelings for someone who doesn’t feel the same way about us, our energy sort of intrudes upon theirs—making them feel even more repulsed. Yet, as soon as we back away or forget about them, we leave a space that allows them to reenter our lives. It’s like they say, “you always find something when you’re not looking for it.” Or, when it comes to desire, “we always want what we can’t have.” Translate that to love and you get a scenario that seems to be an almost cruel truth about how it seems to work—that we unintentionally push away that which we want and inadvertently invite in that which we don’t. Why? It’s that Law of Attraction thing again.

Whether you believe in it or not, there is a definite truth to how The Law of Attraction works. When we are focusing on how we need someone or something, we are actually focusing on how we don’t already have it. So, not having it is exactly what we continue to get. But as soon as we focus on how we do have something, in Mike’s and LaFleur’s case, a feeling of love, then we invite every possible path for that love to come to us—including ex-lovers. Ain’t life a stinka? Well, not once you become aware of this pattern and learn to master it.

If this is how it works, the trick then it would seem, is to pretend to want what you don’t want and to ignore that which you do. This isn’t exactly new information, it’s why there’s a game of love to begin with and why those who play it and act aloof towards potential partners tend to attract them. Most of us are at least subconsciously aware of how this works. It’s just that it seems more interesting when we see how it all may work like a mathematical formula. For whatever reason, nature abhors a vacuum. So as soon as there is any kind of space, it will provide for something to fill it. This is why we’re always busy, constantly having new challenges to deal with, continually having to buy bigger hard drives to store our stuff, and always having new people enter our lives as soon as others exit. When it comes to love, as soon as we forget about an ex-lover—usually because we’re now with someone new—they return. And the more we try to push them away, the more forcefully they push right back. If this universal truth isn’t cruel enough, our patriarchally-endorsed society’s rules that we must be bound to only one love for most of our adult lives seems like the cruelest rule of all. Good thing we have Lost where we can live vicariously through all the various love triangles, quadrangles, and—if Goodwin, his wife Harper, and Ben show up—love heptagons of the latest depiction of Fantasy Island. An island that can apparently only exist on TV, and in the seventies.

Marc Oromaner author of The Myth of Lost will be giving a presentation about the meaning of Lost and what it can tell us about the world today, and tomorrow. The presentation will be held on Sunday, March 8^th from 2:30pm-4:30pm at East West Books in NYC (78 Fifth Avenue @ 14th Street). For details, those on Facebook can click here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=63754384362 And others can click here: http://www.eastwestnyc.com/events.html (Go to March and click on the event on the 8^th.)

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Lost-Solving-Mysteries-Understanding/dp/0595484565 and barnesandnoble.com: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Myth-Of-Lost/Marc-Oromaner/e/9780595484560

I don’t believe the media is all to blame. In fact, our brains usually prefer when life is simple to categorize. While I’m not sure if it’s officially canon, DHARMA supposedly stands for the Department of Heuristics and Research on Material Applications. A “heuristic” is a rule of thumb that we use to take shortcuts in solving problems. It is helpful in that it can help us save time and brainpower in coming to conclusions. It is not as beneficial when it brings about rushed judgments, which are often incorrect, or at least, not fully developed. Maybe it’s because the world has gotten smaller, or more PC, but it seems to me that most people these days don’t see the world quite as black and white as they used to. While I’m sure the Internet and terms like “intellectually-challenged” have contributed to an extent, I feel that the biggest contributor towards seeing things in shades of gray has been our modern-day myths in the media.

When today’s audiences look back on dramas of the sixties and seventies, the characters often seem cartoonish in their portrayals of good and evil. A bad guy never needed a reason to be bad—that was just his character. And good guys never tired of being heroes, this was just who they were. By today’s standards, these characters seem boring and two-dimensional. This change in audience mindset has led to revealing new back-stories of these clichéd characters that help us understand why they may have acted the way they did.

One of the most popular recent stories to do this points out our propensity to rush to judgment by offering a new perspective on a classically evil character. Wicked takes another look at the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz and wonders, what if she really wasn’t so wicked after all? What if she was actually trying to do good but had been misunderstood and shunned by society. If a society itself is wicked, doesn’t that make the good guys bad from their point of view? Had Sodom and Gemorrah not been destroyed, wouldn’t their history have shown Abraham to have been wicked? And surely if the world had survived the Biblical flood, Noah would’ve been cast as a crazy villain who stole animals for his own personal gain. History is written by the victors, and of course, they always see themselves as “the good guys.”

While perhaps not as obvious as Wicked, the most recent Star Wars films also attempted to recast a famous villain in a new light. In episodes I-III, we learn that Darth Vader wasn’t always such a bad guy. That he had been manipulated into the dark side and, in many ways, was just a victim of circumstance. The Shrek films have also done a good job of showing ogres from a new perspective, as well as portraying fare maidens, princes and princesses as pompous, materialistic brats. Our mindset concerning characters has changed so much, you’d be hard-pressed to find any movie or TV drama anymore where the characters are so cut and dry. Are the protagonists good or bad on Prison Break? Who exactly are the heroes and who are villains on Heroes? And what about on Fringe? This brings us, to Lost.

As far as TV shows go, I think Lost has really gone out of its way to show us that there really is no such thing as good or bad. From the very beginning, flashbacks revealed a depth to characters that we wouldn’t have guessed. Sawyer was bad, until we saw what happened to him as a kid. But as a con man he was bad again, until we saw him walk away from a family who had a child that he didn’t want to con. He was bad for hiding Shannon’s asthma inhaler, until we realized that he was just a masochist who felt he deserved punishment for his sins. Punishment delivered by Sayid—good or bad? Is Kate good or bad? Jack? Desmond? The smoke monster? Its indefinable body almost seems to be a metaphor for its indefinable motives. What about Mr. Eko? Ana Lucia? Michael? Juliet? Danielle? In fact, it’s hard to tell which of Lost’s characters to root for at all. We find ourselves rooting for the ones who’s issues we relate to the most, but that’s only because they remind us of ourselves, and from our perspective, we are, of course, good.

Then there’s Ben and Widmore. Which, if either, of them is good or bad? Well, since both are responsible for the deaths of many people, both would be considered bad in the classic sense, but since we don’t know the big picture yet, it’s hard to say for sure. There’s no doubt that Ben considers himself to be the good guy, or at least, wants everyone to think that he’s the good guy. I think the point Lost tries to make is that we all think of ourselves as good. If you show a movie to a bunch of prisoners serving hard time, would they root for the hero or villain? I think most of them would root for the hero because we all see ourselves this way. Usually, we are more likely to relate to the character that has to struggle the most and overcome the odds, because we can relate. It’s for this reason that most of us find ourselves rooting for Locke. Is Locke any more of a good guy than Ben? Let’s see, he broke the law by working on a pot farm, he helped his crooked father secure stolen funds, he took it upon himself to foil every means of escape for the Losties, he’s spent a good portion of his time on sex phone lines, and he’s killed many a poor, defenseless boar.

After watching “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham,” the lines between good and evil seem more vague than ever, and I think this is the point. I know there are many fans who want Ben to be bad, and many who want Widmore to be. This is because we’ve been trained to simplify—it’s the heuristics of our mind pleading for something we can understand on Lost. Personally, I don’t think we’re ever going to get a definitive answer, and this is really the whole point. Oh sure, once Lost concludes, there will be debate over who was good or bad, and perhaps Facebook pages devoted to one perspective or the other. I can see it now, “Widmore had the black stone at the end so that made him the bad guy!” or “Ben died selflessly in the volcano—a sacrifice to the gods to save the world so he is the hero!”

Say what you will, I believe the message of Lost is that there ultimately is no good or evil. No right or wrong. There is only that which can move us forward and that which does not; that which challenges us to grow and that which causes us to shrink back in fear; that which is based on sharing and that which is based on selfishness. In our illusionary, material world, where we tend to judge others by our own life experiences and values, it’s often difficult to see this. But I believe that one day, we will get a bigger picture of the ultimate reality. A reality where everything just is and it doesn’t come with a judgment. I also believe that Lost is preparing us for this time. A time when…well, according to Lost may not actually be “time” as we now currently think of it. In any case, whatever the future holds for us, as Lost fans who are now able to see the world from new perspectives that include time-shifts, constants, proxies, and yes, the blurring of what is good and evil, we’ll be ready.

Marc Oromaner author of The Myth of Lost will be giving a presentation about the meaning of Lost and what it can tell us about the world today, and tomorrow. The presentation will be held on Sunday, March 8^th from 2:30pm-4:30pm at East West Books in NYC (78 Fifth Avenue @ 14th Street). For details, those on Facebook can click here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=63754384362 And others can click here: http://www.eastwestnyc.com/events.html (Go to March and click on the event on the 8^th.)

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Lost-Solving-Mysteries-Understanding/dp/0595484565 and barnesandnoble.com: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Myth-Of-Lost/Marc-Oromaner/e/9780595484560

One of the many things I love about Lost, is that it teaches us that words, images, and symbols can all have multiple meanings and that all of them can be relevant. Interestingly, this concept is exactly how scholars interpret the Bible. There are actually four levels on which the Bible (particularly the Old Testament or Torah) is traditionally studied and interpreted—literal, metaphoric/parabolic, searching, and hidden/secret (the mystical or kabbalah level). To demonstrate the amount of spiritual wisdom that Lost provides, let’s use these four perspectives to examine the title of this Lost episode, just to see how much mythological meat we can get from only three measly digits alone.

From a literal perspective, “316” is the Ajira Airways flight number that the Oceanic Six used to return to the island during the episode. Okay, that one was pretty simple—done. From a metaphoric or parabolic (allegorical) perspective, the title might refer to John 3:16…

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

From this one level alone, there are hundreds of ways to interpret how this passage might relate to Lost, life, or John Locke. Is the implication that Locke will be resurrected just as Jesus is said to have done? Is the episode actually about the second chance of the Oceanic Six? Is the theme of faith important for the characters, as well as for the audience who are gambling with an increasingly convoluted storyline? In a word, yes. Actually, the key word here, for the purposes of this column, is “believeth.” I’ll get back to that soon.

Continuing with the interpretations, from a searching perspective—the next level— what does 316 mean? Well, perhaps we can look to numerology. Numerologically, 316 is equal to the number 1 (3+1+6=10, 1+0=1). 1 usually relates to strong leadership qualities—power and self-confidence. From a religious perspective, it can relate to the one God. All of these seem to imply a renewed path for the Oceanic six, and/or John Locke. Of course, 3 is also “the magic number,” and 16 is one of the Lost numbers. It also is the age a girl is when she has her Sweet 16—when she becomes a woman. Becoming a woman, relates to her role as earth mother, the power of the feminine, the goddess, the yin energy. The island on Lost is a metaphor for our world (mother earth). So if Locke, the male energy/Jesus archetype is brought back to the feminine island, it brings a completion to the yin-yang cycle. I’ll get to cycles later, but you’re probably seeing why this level is called the “searching” level, and there’s still much more searching that can be done. There’s also 316 as a date—March 16^th. March 15^th, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is the ides of March—a day of foreboding when it was predicted that Caesar would be murdered. The day after that death would be March 16^th, a day of resurrection. Now, while it may seem like I am grabbing at straws here, before you condemn these seemingly ridiculous comparisons that were unlikely to have been purposely chosen by the writers, remember, “there are no accidents.” Life is an amazing puzzle where many concepts fit within one another like puzzles within puzzles—or cycles within cycles, which, as I said, I’ll get to in a bit.

The forth level of interpretation, is the hidden or secret level. Unfortunately, I am not learned enough in the ways of mystical interpretation or Kabbalah to decipher what this level would be (though, I’d probably begin with the numbers 3, 1, and 6 and relate them to their respective ten emanations of the Divine, or use gematria to substitute the numerals for Hebrew letters to see what word they formed). Even if I were knowledgeable enough in Kabbalah though, I probably wouldn’t be able to spill it here anyway—hence the term “secret.” Suffice to say, if you see how each of the previous three levels become evermore complicated than the last, you get the idea of how complex this level would be. It takes information and continually folds it upon itself to look at it from angles far beyond what us mere mortals usually understand. For the point I’m trying to make here though, getting the message of this level isn’t even necessary. I just wrote four paragraphs of interpretation from just one tiny, aspect of Lost alone. Can you imagine the volumes upon volumes of wisdom that could emanate from one whole episode, or one season, let alone the entire run of the show? (Well, as a Lost fan, you probably do.) Perhaps, a scholarly analysis will one day be done, and a Talmudic body of work will be collected, analyzed and proposed as a new philosophy or even religion—a religion based upon this very show that seems so relatively trivial today. Sure, Lost is great, but can its wisdom form the basis of how we live? I say yes, because this wisdom is exactly the same as that found in our age-old holy books. As an example, allow me to analyze two important themes of this episode: “The Leap of Faith” and “The Cycles of Life.”

The “leap of faith” concept comes up at least three times in “316.” First, Eloise Hawking says it to Jack as he begins to doubt why he has to go through the ridiculous steps she’s describing to return to the island. Shortly afterwards, Ben points out a painting of Thomas the Apostle to Jack, and makes the point that while Thomas was brave (for volunteering to return to Jerusalem with Jesus even though he’d likely be killed), he is remembered as the Doubting Thomas who didn’t believe Jesus had risen until he touched his wounds. Ben then says that we’re all convinced sooner or later. For most of Lost, Jack has played the role of the Doubting Thomas to Locke’s Jesus. Now, he is being asked to take that leap. Perhaps, the third time is the charm for Jack. This third reference to faith in the episode happens while Jack is on the plane and comes to the realization that Locke’s note is following him despite his reluctance to read it. He finally concedes and reads the final wish John had before allegedly taking his life: “Jack, I wish you had believed me.” There’s that word again—“believe.” Believe as in “whoever believeth in him.” Believe as in the concept behind taking a leap of faith. Believe, as in what Jack must now do to save his friends, and possibly the world.

While belief is important, it alone is not enough according to the leap of faith allegory. The full concept is that a sacrifice must be made—that’s the leap part. Getting back to the earlier example, when Hurley first tried to get the DHARMA van started in the episode “Tricia Tanaka is Dead,” he believed it would start, but it did not. Only when he risked his life with Charlie was he able to bring it back to life. Why? Because he didn’t just think the van would start, he acted with the full intention that it would—and this intention was in line with his destiny. Remember, Hurley later uses the van to save Bernard, Sayid, and Jin from being executed by the Others. Is there an important message we can infer from this that could help us in our everyday lives? You bet. It takes more than really wanting something to make your dreams come true. You must act—and the more you put yourself out there and act as though your dream has already happen, the more likely it will. Especially if it is in line with your destiny—and if it’s something that you truly want with all your heart that could potentially benefit humanity, it probably is.

This message is very pertinent today, as the world appears to be plummeting to certain doom. But what if we believed that this trying time is all just a much-needed correction? That it will make us stronger by enabling us to create a better society. One that isn’t dependent on foreign oil, allows us to make better use of our resources, enables the jobs of investment bankers, stockbrokers and politicians to be more transparent, and makes life easier for most of humanity? Won’t a few years of hard work be worth it? We’ve been through tough times before, and nearly always wound up better off on the other end. We are just repeating another cycle. Speaking of which, Lost brought up this very theme in “316” too.

The start of this episode began just as the first episode of Lost had—with a close-up of Jack’s eye as he lay on the ground. As we flash back, we learn that all the Oceanic Six had to duplicate the events of the original crash as much as possible to get back to the island. So the body of Locke was used as a substitute, or proxy, for the body of Christian Shephard, Sayid was in handcuffs with a marshal escort just as Kate had been, and Hurley brought along a guitar similar to Charlie’s. Kate might also now be pregnant thanks to Jack, just as Claire had been, but I’m not going to get into that. The point is, on Lost, as in life, events repeat themselves. Think of life as a spiral. As we climb upwards, we continually reach a new segment of the spiral that is aligned with all those below it, and whatever theme that segment represents, repeats itself—albeit within the context of the issues of the day (the higher level of the spiral). In fact, these themes usually relate to precedents set in the Bible.

Early on in the Bible, we get the story of the Tower of Babel. Man decided that it had become so advanced, that it could create a tower high enough to reach God. Unfortunately, the tower fell, and God mixed up man’s tongues so that repeating the same feat would be considerably more difficult. So, becoming very proud of its materialistic achievements, man was shown that those achievements really amount to nothing. Fast forward to the early 1900s, when the Titanic was declared as the “unsinkable ship.” What happened? It sunk. Then there was the World Trade Center—two mighty towers representing the pinnacle of commerce in the material capital of the world—and we all know what happened there. Today, less than ten years later, we are experiencing the very same theme. The banks that were “too big to fail” have failed along with the world economy that had grown too big, too fast. In each of these four examples, the false idols that were worshipped as being indestructible were destroyed. Apparently, we are not learning our lesson. And the lessons will come faster and faster until we do. I do not believe they’re meant as punishment, but to help us grow so we can safely navigate the new age that’s to come. An age where the veil that has been separating our illusionary, material world from the real, spiritual one is beginning to open.

As a mythological story filled with valuable insight, Lost is giving us many lessons that can help us make sense of this new world. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that if Lost were required viewing for all of humanity, and everyone took its wisdom to heart (as well as mind and action), we wouldn’t have to be getting these hard challenges from the universe. We would be challenging ourselves. As they say, “fear pushes you until the vision pulls you.” Right now, we, along with the Losties, are being pushed. Only time will tell if we, and they, can see the light and get ourselves back on course. Personally, I have faith that all of us will. And I’m taking a leap of faith by putting myself out there with a slightly esoteric and possibly polarizing column (and book) that I hope will get people thinking differently about the myths in the media. How about you? How might you take a leap of faith?

Marc Oromaner author of The Myth of Lost will be giving a presentation about the meaning of Lost and what it can tell us about the world today, and tomorrow. The presentation will be held on Sunday, March 8^th from 2:30pm-4:30pm at East West Books in NYC. For details, those on Facebook can click here:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=63754384362

And others can click here: http://www.eastwestnyc.com/events.html (Go to March and click on the event on the 8^th.)

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Lost-Solving-Mysteries-Understanding/dp/0595484565 and barnesandnoble.com: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Myth-Of-Lost/Marc-Oromaner/e/9780595484560

I watched the last Lost episode, “This Place is Death” with about seventy of my fellow Lost bretheren (and sistren) at a sports bar on Manhattan’s West Side. Since we had most of the bar to ourselves, it was dead quite as the episode aired…until, a rather loud, intoxicated girl came into our section from upstairs and, quite oblivious to the transgression she was committing, began to rudely disrupt the presentation with a plethora of hardy guffaws. Of course, she was quickly shushed by dozens of fans and immediately reacted by sneering something to the effect of, “It’s just a show!”

Blasphemy! Just a show? American Idol is just a show! Lost is a wireless download of universal wisdom! Suddenly, as if from the island itself, a thought entered my cranium, which, I shared with a fellow viewer. That one day, that girl would be relying on us for help. That her selfishness, ego, and dependence on material pleasures would likely cause her to be very befuddled during the coming spiritual revolution! All around us, material greed is eroding, the unethical are being outed and punished, and those who define themselves by what they have, rather than what they are, are finding themselves in a very unhappy place, indeed.

Whether you consider yourself spiritual, have a love of material pleasures, or are a selfish bastard, as a Lost fan, I still consider you to be one of us, so to speak. The reason is because whether you realize it or not, on some level, you get it. You get that we are all connected, or at least understand how it could occur. You see how non-paradoxical time-travel can work, to some degree. You know that the universe gives us clues to help us fulfill our destiny. And you understand that our destiny, while set in stone, has certain areas of flexibility that we control. Well, you probably know that, you just might know that you know it…yet.

For the most part, I’ve always thought of fate as the grand master plan of some kind of Supreme Being, or perhaps the result of my soul’s chosen path through this lifetime. As mentioned in my previous column about time travel (“How To Use The Myth of Time Travel in Real Life”), I’ve even thought of fate as the proper path to take to win at the game of life, or at least this round. But lately, Lost has got me thinking differently. Perhaps fate is just the universe making things happen, because that’s the way they have already happened. If time is an illusion, as a number of quantum theorists have proposed, then our idea of linear time may be all in our heads. In reality, we may be jumping around all kinds of timelines that already exist, or as Lost would have us believe, just one timeline.

In “This Place Is Death” we get to see Rousseau’s early island adventure played out just as she said it did. They followed the radio transmission, Montand lost his arm, her crew got sick, and, we assume, Rousseau eventually changes the radio tower message. Everything played out exactly as described. Fate, took its course. From our perspective of jumping around in time with the island Losties, it wasn’t really fate at all, but events exactly as they happened and would always happen. We’re just seeing them out of order. Out of sequence. Out of time.

When we sleep, perhaps our souls journey to a world beyond the constraints of time, and that is why it comes back with messages from our futures. Our minds often don’t know how to process this information, so they convert it into symbols and metaphors we can better process, hence, we get dreams. Perhaps gut instinct and déjà vu works the same way. It’s all because everything that has ever happened, will ever happen, or could ever happen, is happening right now. But we are only seeing what we want to see. Occasionally, when something else slips through, we get premonitions of other experiences that our soul has had, but we have not physically lived through. It’s just like when Faraday was crying when he watched the (fake) Oceanic wreckage being recovered on TV. When asked, he said he had no idea why he was crying. But now we know, because Charlotte—the girl he loved—died. Being a connection of souls, perhaps love connects us in ways our minds cannot recognize.

What I found most interesting about the Faraday and Charlotte exchange was that Charlotte remembered being warned as a child never to come back or she would die. That statement had piqued her curiosity, inspired her to become an archeologist, and eventually brought her to the island. Faraday’s statement caused her to do exactly what he didn’t want her to do. Knowing this, I wonder if Faraday will try to break the rules and tell young Charlotte something else once he sees her. Even if he does though, because Charlotte is supposed to die, she will. That’s because this is what happened. From the perspective of the past, it’s fate, from our perspective though, it’s just the way things went down. It would seem then that Faraday has the freedom to choose what to tell Charlotte, and Charlotte could’ve probably chosen another profession, but she still would have somehow come to the island. The details are malleable, the ultimate result, however, is not.

To return to our old friend metaphor, it’s just like those Choose Your Own Adventure books that were popular in the eighties. The books start out with a certain story, then, the reader gets to choose which action to take by flipping to a particular page. Do you want to explore the creepy sound coming from the basement? Turn to page 23. Do you want to run out of the house and get help, turn to page 42. I believe life works similarly. Your fate is your Choose Your Own Adventure book. In that book, you might choose which school to go to, what career to have, what house to live in, etc. But the key elements of your life—the way you will ultimately effect the lives of others, who you will love, your children, your impact on the world—all that will happen regardless of your choices. If you have a sense of what you are meant to do and are proactive about doing it, life will be a breeze. However, if you have no clue, or resist, you will constantly struggle to go a different way than fate has declared you must go because you have already done so.

Even though this “timeline perspective” seems to be more explainable from a scientific perspective, I still believe that, to some extent at least, we choose what our path through life will be. Maybe we’ve already done it because it has already been programmed, so to speak, but at least at some point, fate seems to have been initiated by something. Perhaps you decided upon it before you were born, or, perhaps you chose it just before the universe is destroyed a billion years from now. Whatever the details, it seems to me that when we challenge ourselves to grow, act in spite of fear, and do whatever it takes to reach our dreams, we are rewarded. With that kind of perspective, we can stay strong as the material world seemingly goes to hell all around us. Hopefully, those who don’t watch Lost will learn to do the same. Somehow, I don’t think American Idol will teach the same lessons, but hey, anything’s possible.

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose new book, The Myth of Lost offers a simple solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Myth-of-LOST/34096821137

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Lost-Solving-Mysteries-Understanding/dp/0595484565 and barnesandnoble.com: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Myth-Of-Lost/Marc-Oromaner/e/9780595484560

The Little Prince

I think we are most in touch with our selves, our souls, and the world when we are kids, and then the harsh realities of life come down on us and make us forget the wisdom we had all along. That’s why we love great storytelling so much—it helps us to remember these truths subliminally with hidden messages. These hidden, metaphorical messages are designed to trick our outer, rational adult and reach our child-like innocent core that accepts the fantastical ways that the universe may really work. Perhaps, this is the message of Lost’s fourth episode this season, “The Little Prince.”

There are many reasons this episode may have been given this title. Before watching it, many assumed that it could be a reference to Aaron, and that we would learn of his royal bloodline. Since the episode is Kate/Aaron-centric, perhaps this is what the writers are implying…or foreshadowing. The direct reference however, is to the name of the boat belonging to Danielle Rousseau’s science expedition—Besixdouze, or B612. B-612 is the name of the asteroid that the little prince is believed to have come from according to the narrator of the book. The little prince had never referred to his world by this name, the numeric designation had been assigned by grown-ups, since, according to the narrator, grown-ups really like numbers. As Lost fans, I guess we can agree.

For me, the meaning behind the title of the episode has more to do with the writers sort of making light of how seriously viewers tend to take the show. They knew full well that fans would be spending many a podcast discussion and online chat pondering the title’s meaning, just as many of us had about the previous week’s Jughead title. I guess they figured, rightfully so, that we wouldn’t have learned our lesson from that little deception and decided to see if they could fool us again. Well, perhaps they are not trying to fool us, but just knock some sense into us. Maybe they are just trying to remind us that we are often too serious and that we should get in touch with our inner-child and listen to its wisdom. The title could really just be a clue that the episode would be full of life lessons we have forgotten and might need to be reminded of. In fact, “The Little Prince” episode is chock-full of wisdom; everything from the concept of not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone (Sawyer beginning to realize how much he loves Kate) to the old saying that “whatever doesn’t kill ya can only make you stronger,” which, I’ll get to in a moment.

First, though, let’s discuss Sawyer. Without saying a word, Sawyer made it clear that he deeply misses Kate. As eighties hair-band Cinderella so raspily sang, “ya don’t know what ya got, ‘til it’s gone.” A similar adage is that we always want what we can’t have. This is one of the reasons why so many women go for bad boys—they can never be had by anyone. Sawyer is the perfect example of the bad boy, or maverick archetype. I believe that if the writers are keeping to classic mythological storytelling (and so far, for the most part, they have) Sawyer either must end up with Kate, or he must sacrifice himself for her. He’s really already done the latter, having jumped off the helicopter so she could find rescue. He might have to completely sacrifice himself, but I don’t think it’s gonna happen. According to archetype, Kate and Sawyer will end up together. Think of Sawyer as Han Solo to Kate’s Princess Leia. This would make Jack, Luke. I’m not saying he and Kate are brother and sister, just that I don’t think they are a mythological match. Sorry Jaters.

Getting back the other major message of the episode, this one occurs shortly after Sawyer’s realization. It happens when Sawyer confronts Locke about his knowing what time they are in. Knowing that Locke could’ve warned his past-self of his future troubles, Sawyer can’t understand why he wouldn’t do so and save himself “a world of pain.” Locke says that he needed that pain to get to where he is now—a lesson for Sawyer and a reminder for the rest of us. The belief that “whatever doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger,” or “pain pushes you until the vision pulls you,” or even that “out of rejection comes direction,” are themes that run throughout Lost. The message is simply that the “island” (the universe, fate, God, whatever you want to call it) throws challenges at us so that we can grow and accomplish our destinies.

While Lost has been repeating this theme since the pilot episode, it’s especially relevant now, as our world is experiencing this dark hour. It is to remind us that we aren’t going through this for nothing, and that there is light at the end of the tunnel. After all, “the darkest hour is just before dawn.” In fact, I believe “Mama” Cass Elliott sang on one of the more popular covers of that song (“Dedicated to the One I Love”). Having used some of her tunes before, perhaps Lost plans on using this one as well. Just at the moment when things look bleakest.

Somehow, I think everything will turn out for the best on Lost, as it will in our world. Just like the characters though, we just might need to strengthen ourselves a bit for what’s to come. As Lost fans may be learning these lessons on a deeper level than others, perhaps we will be charged with helping everyone else cope—especially if something goes screwy with time. Can you imagine? The world in a panic as we begin jumping around in time and space? As Lost fans, we’ll be able to help everyone stay cool. Who says television is a waste? Its messages just might end up improving our lives, and quite possibly, saving our world.

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose new book, The Myth of Lost offers a simple solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Myth-of-LOST/34096821137

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Lost-Solving-Mysteries-Understanding/dp/0595484565 and barnesandnoble.com: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Myth-Of-Lost/Marc-Oromaner/e/9780595484560

Last week, I discussed our notion of time travel from the media and also how science may be getting closer to actually achieving it—the art and science of time travel, so to speak. Now (now being the moment you are reading this, which, is my future, your present, and…well, now it’s your past) I’d like to discuss the spirituality of time travel and how you can begin using it to improve your life.

Just to review a bit, I mentioned that many quantum physicists believe that there are an infinite number of timelines with an infinite combination of scenarios, and they’re all happening right at this instant. Now. That is all there is. The past, the future—all illusions. The only reality is right now. Everything that ever has happened, will happen, or could happen is happening right now. While this seems kind of hard to grasp, let’s look to our friend “metaphor” to help us out.

Think of a video game disc. Every possible combination of events that could happen, all exist on that disc. The main character’s infinite lives—some in which he is successful at completing his mission and many more where he (she, it) is not—all exist in one moment on the disc. And while each of these lives contains millions of possible event combinations, there is a certain path (which can translate in our world as “fate”) that the game play seems to lead the character on. When he steps too far from the path he is nudged back on, or he dies. Sometimes, the character must face obstacles that enable him to grow so that he will be able to accomplish his next mission.

From the perspective of the character, he is creating his every moment. What he has already created exist in his past and what he has yet to create exist in his future. If the character dies and we play again, he is not aware of his last game. All that is real to him is his current life. Only we—who are outside of the illusionary game—know that the character has infinite lives and has played them before. We know that the character is not really creating anything, but making choices about various options that have been set in code. As the character’s brain, so to speak, we have the freedom of choice to make a variety of decisions during its game play. We can have it face its enemy, run away, gather support, etc. But we can’t have it do anything that isn’t written into the program. We can’t make it fly, if it’s not a flying character, for example.

I’m not saying that the world we live in is actually a videogame, or even a program like The Matrix, but the truth behind this mythology is, I believe, very close to how our world really works. And now, science is starting to prove it. Science is starting to see that there are an infinite number of timelines that exist, and that the ones we notice, or think about, are the ones we leap into. Well, technically, science is only seeing this on a subatomic level so far. But guess what our world is made up of? Yep, subatomic particles. So many scientists have theorized that our world works similarly.

So, how does any of this have to do with the time travel on Lost? Simple. Just like as may be the case with our world, Lost is demonstrating that multiple timelines exist simultaneously. And in order to leap into them, one of the characters has to think about or discuss another one of these times. “In the future you have to…” POOF! You just went into the timeline about the future because that’s what you were thinking about.

Now in our world, you aren’t going to leap into the future whenever you think about it. But the scenarios you tend to think about just might be in the timeline you enter into. So if you are always complaining and thinking about negative things, you will likely move into the timeline of your life where the things you are complaining about are happening. If you have a positive outlook and tend to look on the bright side of things, then that is the timeline you will head into. In other words, your thoughts are attracting you to the timeline where what you are thinking about is occurring. It’s called The Law of Attraction and it’s the principle that the very popular book/movie The Secret is based on. Not surprisingly, Lost has specifically illustrated this very principle at least a couple of times on the show. I plan on discussing which episodes they were and how they teach us to use the principle, but it will have to wait for another column to be posted some time in the future…well, depending on when you’re reading this.

See you in another life, brothers and sisters!

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose new book, The Myth of Lost offers a simple solution to Lost and how it provides hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Myth-of-LOST/34096821137

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Lost-Solving-Mysteries-Understanding/dp/0595484565 and Barnesandnoble.com: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Myth-Of-Lost/Marc-Oromaner/e/9780595484560

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