Read the full column at The Layman’s Answer’s to Everything blog…

]]> http://www.docarzt.com/lost/lost-in-myth/marc-oromaner%e2%80%99s-lost-in-myth-discovering-you%e2%80%99re-really-from-%e2%80%9cacross-the-sea%e2%80%9d/feed/ 44 http://www.docarzt.com/lost/lost-in-myth/marc-oromaner%e2%80%99s-lost-in-myth-are-you-a-candidate/ http://www.docarzt.com/lost/lost-in-myth/marc-oromaner%e2%80%99s-lost-in-myth-are-you-a-candidate/#comments Thu, 06 May 2010 00:42:25 +0000 Marc Oromaner http://www.docarzt.com/?p=11125 really… trapped on the island? It’s not because he’s malevolence, evil, or darkness, and it’s not becaus]]>
Wanna know why the Man In Black is really trapped on the island? It’s not because he’s malevolence, evil, or darkness, and it’s not because Jacob wouldn’t let him leave. It’s because he hasn’t overcome his issues. And what are his issues? Up to now, all we know is that he seems to be terribly frightened of adolescent boys. Hopefully, we’ll get a better answer next week, but as ridiculous as this might sound, I actually think there may be something to it.

If there is one theme that has remained, uh, constant on Lost, it is that all the Losties had major issues that were affecting their lives. The island presented them with opportunities to solve these issues, and once they did, they died. Charlie overcame his drug addiction, Mr. Eko released the guilt he had from his brother’s death, Shannon learned responsibility and selflessness, even Juliet finally came to understand that just because you loved someone, doesn’t mean they’re right for you—an issue that had been haunting her since her parents’ divorce.

In “The Candidate” we lose Sayid shortly after he decides not to kill Desmond for his own selfish purposes, we lose the Kwons after they are reunited and Jin promises never to leave Sun again—solidifying their love, and we lose Frank because, let’s face it, his only purpose this season was to fly the plane off the island. Once that plan was killed, so was Frank. But not to worry, if he’s anything like a character in a Burt Reynolds movie as Sawyer claimed, surely he’ll show up in the end-credit bloopers.

So, in words that are reminiscent of Willy Wonka, three nasty, naughty little children gone, five good, sweet little children left. Actually, strike that—reverse it. The ones left still have issues that haven’t been completely resolved. They’re very close now, but not quite there yet—except for Jack. I believe his on-island self has solved his need to fix everything and taken a leap of faith towards, well, faith. So, why hasn’t he died? Let’s look to our old friend mythology for an answer.

According to Buddhist beliefs, there is a very rare being who is so selfless, he or she not only reaches enlightenment, but postpones the infinitely pleasurable experience of Nirvana in order to stick around in the hell that is earth, just to help others. This being is known as a Bodhisattva. We’re talking about Buddhism here, the same religious philosophy that uses terms like dharma, namaste, and the 108 defilements which one must overcome to reach enlightenment. So, perhaps when looking to explain Lost, looking to Buddhism is a correct step on our dharmic path towards answers.

Mythically speaking, this season, Jack has taken on the qualities of a Bodhisattva by giving up his future in order to stay behind on the island. Again, this is a theme, and likely will never be overtly explained. Lost’s answer to the Bodhisattva however, is the candidate, which hopefully will be shown. The candidate is chosen, presumably, because he or she has qualities similar to the bearer of the position that is to be replaced, i.e., Jacob. So, the candidate to be chosen will be the one who is most like him. But there has been some confusion as to what his qualities actually are. On the island, we have two main archetypes—good and evil. It seems increasingly likely that the “good” is Jacob—he who has reached enlightenment but postpones it to help others do the same. Have we seen this? It sure seems that way.

The island has helped the lost Losties grow past their issues, enabling them to “die.” But nobody ever really dies on Lost. Even if they don’t get reanimated by the smoke monster, dunked into a holy pool, possessed by evil, turned into a zombie, revealed in spirit form, seen or heard by Hurley or Miles, or shown again in a flashback or time travel sequence, we have our convenient flash-sideways timelines to see everyone again. And as I’ve been saying, I believe that this timeline represents the Losties’ lives after their island experience—after their redemption. Sure, they still have their issues, but for the most part they are all in better shape than they were. This seems to be all thanks to Jacob.

So if the candidate must reach enlightenment but postpone it to help others, what must the “evil” archetype do? He must not only not reach enlightenment, but also try to prevent others from doing so. In “The Last Recruit,” the Man In Black admits to Jack that all he ever wanted to do was help the Losties get off the island. He says it like he was doing them a favor, but if the island is meant to help them, he isn’t. He’s preventing them from reaching enlightenment. He has not gotten over his issues so he doesn’t want anyone else to either. The Man In Black isn’t a prisoner of the island; he is a prisoner of his own inability to change. In fact, I do not think he is going to ever get off the island. I think in “The End” we are going to see him on the beach with Jack, complaining about how much he wants to kill him. This is where the show is leading us—at least in the original timeline.

In the flash-sideways, mirror world, Locke may be a candidate, but on the island, it’s Jack. Jack and John—they are two sides of the same person. They even have the same name since Jack is a nickname for John. Just like the yin-yang symbol though, each has a bit of the other inside of him. This was shown in this episode when sideways Jack unknowingly echoed Locke’s words to him: “I wish you believed me.” Perhaps then, the reason we haven’t heard Man In Black’s name is because it’s a nickname of Jacob—Jake? Nah, too anti-climatic. But I think this line of thinking may be on the right track.

Why else haven’t we heard Man In Black’s name? Could be because he’s really a woman. But no, he specifically told Sawyer that he was once a man. Could be lying, but then why not just say that he was once human which wouldn’t have given anything away? He could have the same name as someone we know. Perhaps he even is someone we know—someone who keeps getting reincarnated because he never gets it right—someone like John Locke. In other words, he really is John Locke. Intriguing but too complicated. Perhaps then the Man In Black and Jacob are brothers—but giving away the first name wouldn’t give that away at all. Well, what if his name could literally be Jacob’s brother Esau from the Bible? Maybe, but when it comes to religion, Lost usually sticks to the subtext so as not to alienate viewers. So, where else does that leave us? Hopefully we’ll find out in “Across the Sea.” And hopefully we’ll also find out about the boy.

Up until now, I’ve assumed that the boy that has taunted Man In Black was a rapidly growing Jacob—in the vein of Spock when he was reborn on the Genesis planet in Star Trek III. But what if it’s not Jacob, but Man In Black himself? The one person who can taunt him—is himself. His deepest demons lie within. Why the bloody hands? Well, we know he hated his mom. When I thought it was young Jacob, I assumed it was a stigmata, Christ-like symbol representing his resurrection. But the genius of Lost is that they often take advantage of the multi-leveled meaning of symbols and metaphors, enabling them to fool us. The young boy just might be Man In Black’s own projected conscience, nagging him to follow the rules of society. Rules he broke when he, say, murdered his crazy mother. As punishment, perhaps he was sentenced to a Panopticon-like prison (see “Lost In Myth: ‘Ab Aetern’-Cadabra! And the Island Is…A Cork??”) that is the island of Lost. An island meant to help him overcome his issues. Issues which, thousands of years later, he still hasn’t overcome.

But hold on, if the island is a rehabilitative prison of sorts, how can it be thousands of years old? I’ve been thinking of one way that I think would make a lot of sense as an ending—an ending that borrows from The Myth of Lost theory and then mixes it with one of the oldest theories of Lost—the one that takes us back to Atlantis.

Unlike the original theory, I don’t think that the island itself is Atlantis, but what if Jacob and his nemesis came from there. Actually, it doesn’t have to be Atlantis, just some ancient, yet advance civilization that completely predates all of mankind. Let’s just call it Atlantis because it fits the mythology we are already familiar with. Now, Atlantis was doomed—doomed by its own technology. Knowing this, a group of leaders decide to save some of the more representative members of their society to keep their species alive by bringing them to a “new world” (sort of like Jor-El saving his son who becomes Superman). But in order to prevent repeating the same mistakes they’ve made, they first create a testing ground that all new inhabitants must successfully go through before being released into this new world. This testing ground is the island—a place created not by magic, but technology of an ancient yet highly advanced civilization.

Jacob takes the Bodhisattva role as the guardian of this realm, with the Man In Black as his first prisoner/counterpoint. Over time, all new prospects for the New World are brought to the island where they must overcome their issues before being released there. As they solve their issues, they “die,” bringing them into the real world. While they do not remember their experiences from the island, subconsciously, they recall bits and pieces, and hence the mythology of all of mankind is created. The world they create is hence a reflection of their illusionary island experience: “as above, so below.” The island then is but an illusionary realm—a looking glass—that leads them to their new home (which we have seen in the flash-sideways parallel world).

Once this new society got rolling, people no longer had to take part in the island initiation since their souls had already been through the program. That is, until Jacob realized that his term was up, and it was time to find a replacement. He searched through many candidates—looking for someone who could reach enlightenment, but delay it in order to help others—another Bodhisattva. In a way, it’s all been a game, but it has been the game of life. A game that only ends once, but everything in between is progress. I may be completely off base, but this is an ending that would satisfy the myth that the show has created—a myth that helps us understand our own lives.

In The Myth of Lost, I wrote:

The law of Lost is that once you conquer your demons, you’re free to leave. And since the island is really an illusion, none of the characters who have died are really dead. Just as when we die in our illusionary, so-called “real” life, we don’t really die if you believe in a soul. The creators of Lost seem to, and that’s why the show is riddled with religious symbolism and meaning.

Regardless of the details of how the show ends—whether you love it, hate it, or are somewhere in between—the important thing to take with you are the show’s lessons. The island is a microcosm of our world. Just like the Losties, we have deep-seated issues that have affected our lives. On Lost, the island is the illusionary realm that challenges the characters to overcome their fears and bad habits to grow as human beings. And once they do, they can move on.

It’s the same in our world. We’re all here in this illusionary realm just to experience the challenges of life and grow from them. If we do, we get to move on to the next level—a realm beyond this one with different rules and challenges to help our soul evolve. If we don’t, we come back and play again. Even within one lifetime however, you get many, many chances to overcome your issues. Every time you fail, you are simply presented with a different version of the same life experience that will help you to overcome it.  It’s like Sawyer says to Kate as they are put into the cages again in “The Candidate”: “Feels like we’re running in circles.” While this was a subtle acknowledgement of the repeating themes and storyline of the show, it happens for a reason—it is reflective of how our world works. Through repetition, Lost is trying to get it through our thick skulls that the reason many of us and our society are stuck in this loop, is because we keep making the same mistakes and following the same patterns over and over. All we need to do is break the cycle to move forward.

Jack and Locke in particular have been doing the “I can’t let go” dance since Season 1. At the end of “The Candidate” both finally admit it. Locke can’t let go of his guilt about what he did to his father. In the original timeline, Locke couldn’t let go of the anger about what his father did to him. For Jack, in both timelines, he had trouble letting go of his need to fix everything. These two sides of the same coin are perfect for each other and will likely spend a few thousand years together on the island as its new guardians. Jack will continually want to fix Locke, and Locke will continually be bitter about his dad—or, as the Man In Black, bitter about his crazy mother. Either way, he doesn’t like being told what he can’t do, especially by Jack who tells him he can’t let go.

The message for us is so simple but takes an entire lifetime or multiple lifetimes to accomplish. All of that fear, guilt, and anger that we hold in inside…let it go. It’s living in your mind rent-free—evict it! Holding on to pain, hurt, anger, or resentment is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die. It poisons your own experience—explaining the life of most of the Losties who are really all of us. So let go of whatever resentment and anger you’ve been holding on to. The more you let go, the more room you make for new things to come into your life. These things could be good or bad, but as we learn on Lost the choice is up to you. You can chose dark, or you can chose light.

In reality, it’s not usually so black and white. You will always be influenced by these two forces. But that’s okay. You don’t need to be a pure Bodhisattva to play the role of one. If you’re going to help others deal with their issues, it can be good to still have your own, or else, how will you be able to relate to those you’re trying to help? You don’t have to be completely enlightened to help others find their own enlightenment. All you have to do is make the choice and do your best to follow through. That’s what it takes to be a candidate in our world. So, next time you have the opportunity, take what you’ve learned from Lost and help someone who could benefit from your new wisdom. That way, even if the show doesn’t provide a fulfilling ending, at least it won’t have been for nothing. It will have provided a way for you to bring about one less lost person in the world. Even if that person happens to be you.

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 or on his new blog The Layman’s Answers to Everything.

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

Fox Mulder, John Locke, and now Jack Shephard are characters that all just wanted to believe—believe in an intelligent life from a world beyond our own that is guiding our world or, perhaps even controlling it. The first question is why anyone would even want to believe this? Who wants to believe that free will is an illusion and that the course our lives have taken is beyond our control? Well, losers for one. For losers this is welcomed news because it means that their miserable lives were not their fault but in the hands of powerful beings pulling invisible strings.

In most stories, it is the loser who believes that he is meant for greater things. Greater than working in a box factory or living alone in a small cluttered apartment, or having to clean up a couple of droids on his uncle’s moisture farm.  These are the characters that long for better things. It’s not usually the popular jock or beautiful prom queen or rich and successful businessperson. They have no time or need for such frivolous beliefs. But what if that’s exactly the point? What if the losers were given these challenging lives so that they would be inspired to believe in something more, and then strive to get there? It is not the rich, fulfilled, and happy person who strives to make changes in his life and the world; it is the poor, miserable, and unfulfilled one. It’s that kind of person who will risk everything to make a difference because quite honestly, he doesn’t have much to lose.

Selling the destiny concept to those who have suffered doesn’t really take much. And as fans of a show that has focused on fate and destiny, many of us can relate to this archetype. Perhaps we too want to believe and that’s why we like the show. For this reason, maybe there is a little sucker in all of us. Or even a big one. But, is there anything wrong with that? Does only a fool believe?

So far, Lost seems to be giving us mixed messages. On the one hand, it has shown us countless times that fate does indeed exist. In “The Last Recruit” alone, weird connections and serendipitous events showed up continually throughout the episode. In the flash-sideways, even James picks up on it. “Don’t you think it’s weird?” he asks Kate. “Of all the cars in Los Angeles you smash into mine,” he says, parodying the classic line from Casablanca.  “Looks like someone’s trying to put us together.”

Flash-sideways Ilana also notes that having Claire walk into her office was “quite the coincidence” considering that she’d been looking for her as a recipient in Christian Shephard’s will. “Do you believe in fate?” Ilana later asks Jack as she is about to introduce him to the half-sister he never knew he had. If this version of Jack doesn’t believe in fate, he might change his tune after learning that he and Claire were also on the same flight from Australia, which wasn’t even noted by any of the characters. Also not noted were the chances of the adoption agency Claire was heading to being on the same floor as Jack’s attorney who was also Desmond’s friend and for their appointments to all coincide.

As the catalyst for all this, Desmond is at the center of more “coincidences” than anyone. But since he seems to be taking on the role of Jacob, we’ll just assume that he’s purposely setting up these arrangements because he has otherworldly (otherdimensional?) knowledge of the connections that need to be made. Is this how it actually works in our world? Are certain strangers that we meet really angels or course-correctors or time-travelers in disguise, guiding us to outcomes that are meant to happen…or that they want to happen? Or are the parallels not quite so direct? Maybe the guides are invisible or just worked into the code that runs the program of our world. Whatever the details, it does seem as though Lost’s message is that fate is real and that we are all here for a reason. That much is clear…except when it isn’t.

Getting back to the other hand, Lost has also given us plenty of reasons to doubt the validity of fate.  The biggest believer of fate on the show has been John Locke, and he’s dead in one timeline and a paraplegic substitute teacher who was just hit by a car in another. Then there’s original timeline Desmond who, seeing clearly to his destiny trusted the Man In Black and that trust caused him to be thrown down a well. Finally, there’s original timeline Jack who has taken over for where Locke left off in believing that the Losties were brought to the island for a reason. This belief led to him taking a leap of faith off of the Elizabeth and back towards the island, into the clutches of the Man In Black. It would appear then that all three of these characters are in fact suckers as Man In Black has claimed.

But hold on a minute! Isn’t the Man In Black, aka the Smoke Monster the entity that had been manipulating the Losties from the start? He admits to appearing as Jack’s dad so he could lead Jack to water. Isn’t that fate? Isn’t he the one that believes that man needs to be manipulated into making proper choices as opposed to Jacob who seems to be about allowing mortals to make their own choices? Wasn’t it after Locke looked into “the eye of the island” (the smoke monster?) that he began to solidify his belief (first born when he regained the use of his legs) that they had crashed on the island for a reason? And wasn’t it solidified even further when he met up with the smoke monster impersonating Jack’s dead father? So how can MIB blame Locke for being a believer when he himself was responsible for helping to create those beliefs?

A clue can be found in what Man In Black actually says. After Jack says, “John Locke was the only one of us that ever believed in this place. He did everything he could to keep us from leaving the island.” MIB replies, “John Locke was not a believer Jack, he was a sucker!” Looking back, we can see that in many ways, this is actually true. Locke’s actions were usually reactions to what was going on around him. When he regained the use of his legs and looked into the eye of the island, he believed. When he lost the use of his legs and Boone died, he didn’t. When he found out about the importance of pushing the button, he believed again, until Ben told him it was all a joke and then he didn’t. When he found out it wasn’t a joke, he believed again but then was manipulated by Ben further into destroying the sub.

So did Locke ever really believe? Or was he just easily manipulated into doing the bidding of others? Because of Locke’s crappy life, he desperately wanted to believe in his higher purpose. But even this mindset may have been instigated by Jacob who seems to have made Locke’s life crappy specifically so that he would have this belief. When Jacob apologizes to Locke for being pushed out of a building, wouldn’t it just have been easier for him to have prevented it in the first place? Or is letting Locke fall just like Desmond hitting Locke with his car and just like the really shitty stuff that’s happened in your life? It’s all designed to nudge you on your path—or shove you—depending on how traumatic the incident is.

In short, it seems that Locke was in fact a sucker for fate. But ironically, it seems to be fate that made him that way. Believing in something that’s true doesn’t make you any less of a sucker, especially when you arrive at your beliefs through manipulation. Being a sucker come from being gullible. And being gullible comes from being trusting. And being trusting comes from having a pure heart. Because when you have a pure heart, you look at the world through your own perspective and see the rest of the world as being pure too. Who else is a sucker? Well, children for one. Kids will believe anything and the reason is because they are pure of heart—not yet corrupted by the evils of our world. For the hero, this perspective is almost a requirement. Why? As Queen sings in the Flash Gordon theme, “no one but the pure at heart may find the Golden Grail.” It takes a pure heart to inspire the rest of the world. But can one be pure of heart without being a sucker?

Mythologically speaking, suckers are in good company. In nearly every Disney movie—from Pinocchio to The Lion King—the hero starts out as a sucker. In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke is a sucker, and pays the price during his battle with Vader. In some ways, even Jesus can be seen as a sucker (even though he knew he’d be betrayed) for so believing in the goodness of mankind. But after paying the price for their trusting natures, all of these heroes eventually return stronger, wiser, and ready to defeat the enemy that fooled them. At some point, we almost have to be suckers. For if we begin our journey already wise to the challenges we will face, where’s the growth? Or if we aren’t necessarily wise to it, but just skeptical of the motivations of others, then we are not pure of heart. To be pure of heart, we must be trusting. And those who trust can easily be fooled.

Thankfully, our culture gives us many clues about it being totally acceptable to make that first mistake—that it makes us wiser. The Who tell us they “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Proverbs include, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” We are expected to make mistakes and learn from them. But we must learn, and that was perhaps Locke’s downfall.

Locke believed in the island but he didn’t believe in himself. He never transformed. He always did and believed as he was told, whether by others, The Others, or the island. There is a difference between listening to the clues and completely relying on them as a crutch. This could be what the Man In Locke meant when he said that Locke was not a believer. To be a true believer, you must have enough confidence in yourself to listen to the clues without becoming dependant on them. Far too many heroes in both real life and stories become overwhelmed by their own intuition and face the consequences. In A Beautiful Mind, John Nash has a gift for picking up the clues in the universe and using them to help develop his own equations. But when he begins to become too reliant on these messages, he begins to lose his mind.

In most myths, the hero starts out naïve, becomes wiser through challenges, and lives to overcome them. While this hasn’t happened for John Locke, I’m still hopeful that his full story is not yet complete and that he will be redeemed in the end. In mythology, those who believe are rarely terminally punished—even if they are naïve. I don’t think this will be the case for Desmond, Jack, or even Locke. All of them have believed in fate and Lost seems to be telling us that their beliefs will pay off. Of the three of them though, only Jack transformed his cynical nature to become a believer. Locke and Desmond were believers from the get go, and both were fooled. Jack however, needed to shed his skepticism and become a man of faith. In this way, he may be the best candidate to replace Jacob, because his faith was not innate, but learned. Becoming a man of faith went against Jack’s nature, and as I’ve written in prior columns including last week’s, “Everybody Loves Answers,” going against our usual habits is one of the biggest challenges we can achieve in order to grow.

So why does the Man In Black hate Locke so much? After all, it’s Lock who enabled him to have his loophole. MIB believes that man is inherently selfish and cannot be changed. However, if despite having every reason to bitter, Locke was willing to die (as Smokey Christian Shephard told him to do) in order to save others, this proves MIB wrong. And no one likes to be wrong, so MIB rationalizes Locke’s behavior simply by saying that he was a fool. A fool who believed in fate—even though Locke seems to have been right.

Fate is real on Lost and no one is immune to it—even the Man In Black. When Zoe paid him a visit to warn him that he’d have until nightfall to return what he took, her deadline was no accident. It was a karmic return for MIB’s threat to kill the Temple dwellers who didn’t join his side by sundown. While he seems immortal, Man In Black is not infallible. He is constantly reacting in anger to the boy who keeps appearing to him. His misjudgment of mankind blinds him to their capacity for love and selfishness. And his decisions are sometimes, well, short-sided.

For example, what would have been the benefit of killing Desmond? Doesn’t everyone who dies on the island without being buried come back to life anyway? If MIB decides who does and does not get zombized, why didn’t he just get Sayid to kill Desmond to begin with? Why? Because in some ways, MIB himself is a sucker, only in his case, he is fooled by his own ego. An ego that makes himself out to be infallible. But even if MIB is only fooling himself, he is still being fooled. So, perhaps he too has a bit of innocence still in him, and with that, his potential to be pure of heart. And like Hugo said to James, “you can always bring people back from the Dark Side.” This includes Sayid, Claire, and yes, even the Man In Black.

Speaking of James, I just need to sidetrack momentarily to bring up one scene from his flash-sideways. During the police station scene where he walks up to Kate, he offers her an apple. Since the apple often represents the forbidden fruit, I couldn’t help wondering if this made James the symbolic snake. A snake that, as I mentioned in “’Sundown’—Temptation of the Dark Side,” shares the same archetype as the Man In Black. And if Kate is being offered the apple, would this make her the metaphorical Eve? While I could definitely see James replacing MIB on the island and Kate winding up to be the Eve skeleton from the caves, I’ll stops short of saying that this was the intention of the scene. Perhaps it is just foreshadowing that Kate will be tempted in another way, and will resist that temptation.

Getting back to the theme of the episode, what’s the message for us? Are we suckers for believing in fate or a show that has left us longing for answers for six years? In a way, yeah, we are. Just as some people are suckers for romance or spirituality or a good story, in Lost, we have sort of been taken in by all of these. And in life, many of us are suckers for believing that we are here for a reason, even though most of us will never discover what that reason is. But what if the reason isn’t to fulfill our destiny but just to make the choice that we have one and live life accordingly? What if having the belief is even more important than seeing it through? After all, believing in something that cannot be proven takes a certain amount of guts as well as gullibility—of childlike innocence.

I think this sense of wonder is what really makes us human, and fallible, and capable of falling and getting back up again, stronger than before. Being cynical and pessimistic is easy because the world makes it so easy. Believing in myths takes guts and means you’ll be criticized, laughed at, and often disappointed. “The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were,” John F. Kennedy had said. And while many might consider him a sucker who paid the ultimate price, his dreams fueled other people’s and resulted in us landing on the moon. Like John F. Kennedy, perhaps in death, John Locke will be able to achieve more than he could when he was alive. He inspired just one person—Jack, but it could make all the difference. In that way, John Locke might just be redeemed, and in doing so, will be redeeming all of us suckers who simply want to believe.

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.

“Everybody Loves Hugo” was ultimately about soul mates and guardian angels. You might be scratching your head at this assertion, but if you go back and watch the episode with these themes in mind, I think you’ll see what I’m talking about. Libby asks Hugo if he believes in soul mates. Michael appears twice and “yells at” him to take charge. Desmond mysteriously appears to give Hugo advice, telling him to go with his gut. Hugo’s gut is bigger than most, so I think the metaphor is that his instincts should be more pronounced as well. These instincts allow him to hear messages others do not. Messages from spirits like Michael. But should he be listening?

In The Myth of Lost (on page 108 interestingly enough), I wrote, “in most mythology, ghosts and visions usually speak the truth.” I also wrote this:

Very rarely in myths do ghosts or presumably imaginary characters show up speaking anything but the truth—especially when they show up out of thin air and disappear as quickly. Like Hamlet’s father’s ghost, Cinderella’s fairy godmother, Scrooge’s former partner Jacob Marley, or Locke’s visions of Boone and Walt, these characters provide information that mortal characters can’t know. Such is most likely the case with [Hurley’s imaginary friend] Dave, but we’ll explore more about that later. For now, let’s just say that Hurley may end up being the key to solving the Lost mystery.

In case there was any room for doubt within the realm of Lost, Hurley basically spells out this truth when Miles incredulously asks why he just does what the ghosts tell him to do. “Dead people are more reliable than alive people,” he replies. Good on ya Hurley! Great, so ghosts, fairy godmothers and guardian angels in myths speak the truth. But how does any of this help us in our world and what does it have to do with soul mates?

Soul mates and guardian angels actually serve a common purpose in our lives: to help guide us on our paths. In this episode of Lost, the spirit of Michael is acting as Hurley’s guardian angel by telling him to take charge because people will listen to him. However, Hurley is not a take-charge kinda guy. Of course he’s not! In fact, this is how you can recognize the message of a guardian angel—it will always require you to do something that takes you out of your comfort zone. They never tell you do something easy, because then you wouldn’t need the otherworldly push to do it.

The messages of guardian angels come to us all the time in various forms but we usually don’t want to listen to them because they challenge us to do something we don’t want to do. In fact, that’s an understatement. They challenge us to do something we absolutely abhor doing because it’s interwoven directly into our deepest fears. How can Hurley, who is afraid to simply talk to a girl, take charge of a group and become a leader? The same way Jack learned to not be a leader who fixes everything, and instead, just listen. He does it by breaking his usual habits and challenging his typical nature. And yes, like Jack and Hurley, sometimes one person’s challenge is exactly the opposite of another person’s, but that’s only because the two personalities are opposite. Often these “inverse personalities” are in our lives for exactly this reason—for us to use their strengths to help overcome our weaknesses. But how do you know what you’re supposed to be changing?

You know what your challenge is because it will almost always be the thing you most hate to do. So if you are someone who never takes charge, your challenge is to take charge and speak up for yourself—whether to your boss, your enemies, or even your loved ones. However, if you are a bossy type, your challenge will be to listen to others and take their advice and accept that you may be wrong. This will be the hardest thing for you to do. If you are someone who is always giving, learn to receive. If you are always taking, learn to give. As Jerry told George in Seinfeld, “If every instinct you have is wrong, the opposite would have to be right.” Even though this truth was told in a humorous, Seinfeldian way, as with Lost, it’s a message for us.

Lost is certainly not the first TV show to contain hidden messages. It’s just the first to attempt to cover, well, nearly all of them. Our time may be running out. So Lost has come along to try and cram six thousand years worth of wisdom into six hearty seasons. As part of the very small group who not only watch the episodes but are interesting in learning what they are teaching us, it’s your job (even though you don’t feel like it) to spread this wisdom to the world through your blogs, podcasts, articles, YouTube videos, emails, Tweets, and whatever else you do to pass along info. But you are not alone in this. The universe is giving you help. You just have to know where to look.

You should look to the messages of our “guardian angels.” Just as with Jacob, these messages come through many different mediums and show up in various forms. It could be something a friend says, a resonating horoscope or article you read, or a TV program you watch or radio show or podcast you listen to. You might overhear a message from a complete stranger on the street, see it on a billboard, have a drunk shove you and accuse you of it, or a bum yell it at you—especially a “crazy” bum since they are often the most attuned to other realities but often overload when they cannot properly channel them (as we see nearly happening to Libby). So, should we listen to every single thing our horoscope or some crazy bum or drunk says? Of course not, for one thing, there’s simply too much of it.

So how do you separate the diamonds from the diatribes?  First, you have to separate the message from the medium. Ignore whatever judgment you have about the source, and just listen to the message. Then, ignore your ego. Quiet your ego voice that’s telling you to react and not to listen to this “idiot.” Once you quiet that loud, screaming, inner voice, you might hear your quiet whisper voice—your gut instinct or intuition. That’s the voice that’s much harder to hear, often because we don’t want to hear it. You can recognize it because its messages will challenge you to grow beyond your usual habits and patterns. These messages will dig into your sensitive spots—your fears—and when they strike that nerve, you will likely react with anger, sadness, superficial agreement, or avoidance, depending on your comfort zone.

You can actually witness this drama play out on just about any web message board or in the comments section of most columns. No one is immune to it. It’s human nature. The only question is how you react and to what degree. And because I just snuck that in, let me repeat it again to be clear: the interactions on the Internet are filled with guardian angel messages meant for us. They are being relayed through others—metaphorical spirits of Michael, Ana-Lucia, Walt, or Boone—all channeling (possibly in the form of yelling) messages we are meant to hear. Not all of these messages are for us, just the ones that resonate or strike a nerve.

While the Internet has made God’s job easier, it isn’t the main source for guardian angel messages. Many times, these messages are relayed directly from (flash-sideways) Desmonds or Libbys—our best friends or closest loved ones. These messages are reserved for the most difficult challenges. The ones that cannot be expected to be overcome with some random overheard comment, frivolous horoscope message, or enlightening website comment. They are meant to help us with something that will take an entire lifetime to work out. The ultimate channeler of these hard-core, über-challenge messages, is the soul mate.

Your soul mate is the one person on this earth brought here to help you deal with your deepest issue. This issue is so big, it requires work that will take a good part of your life to resolve. That’s why it takes someone who will be with you for a good part of your life to resolve it. Think of them as your personal psychologist—one who will either inspire you to grow, or drive you mad. In fact, your soul mate is usually the one person who has the potential to drive you the craziest. That’s why, as they sing in the Broadway play Avenue Q, “The More You [Love] Someone the More They Drive You Crazy.” You have been assigned to each other because the other person holds the key to unlocking the best version of you.

I sometimes wonder if “love at first sight” is actually love at all, but instead the recognition of your soul mates from your future. The love comes when that person challenges you to be a better version of yourself, and you then grow into that person. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince wrote, “Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself.” True love connects on a soul level, transcending the illusion of time, which is why we can recognize it from our future or even from a dimension where our destiny was decided. So if there’s someone in your life who drives you crazy, instead of continually reacting in anger, thank them. Be grateful because they are giving you the opportunity to become the person you are destined to be.

Of course, not everyone reaches his or her destiny. Not everyone hears the barely audible message whispering under the loud clamor of ego. When the whispers show up, like the Losties, most people go on the defensive and ready their guns, or even fire them as the Ana Lucias of the world might do. It takes a Hugo to go with his gut and calmly walk to the source of the sound and listen, and even offer to help—even someone who may have caused us a lot of personal pain as Michael did by inadvertently killing Libby. Because of his modesty, Hugo has always been someone who could be a clear channel for guardian angels. Only, he had to gain confidence to believe it himself. It takes confidence because usually when these messages tell people what they need to hear they react—especially if it touches a nerve.

As American humorist Don Marquis wrote, “If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.” The reason is because the first makes people think they’re smart. The second makes them think they’re dumb, and therefore, must grow to understand or deal with something. Guardian angel messages really make us think. They make us take a look at ourselves, and when we don’t like what we see, it’s easier to blame the messenger than take responsibility to do something about it.

Early on in Season 2, we had a Hurley-centric episode titled, “Everybody Hates Hugo” when he was put in charge of the food supply. Everybody hates the messengers at first but as we grow we come to love them. They inspire us to become stronger, better people, and once we recognize who we are and who we were, only then can we really appreciate the wisdom that helped get us there. Hugo has become much closer to that person in Season 6, and that’s why we now have a title, “Everybody Loves Hugo.” I believe that Hugo has grown into this flash-sideways person because of what he went through on the island. I believe they are directly connected.

In this same episode, we see that Desmond has almost become a literal guardian angel by righting certain wrongs and bringing people together. One might wonder then, why try to kill a poor, defenseless, paraplegic John Locke? My first thought was that it was all due to a misunderstanding. Desmond thought that the Man In Black—the man who threw him down the well—was actually Locke, and perhaps he wanted to get revenge in the flash-sideways. But much like Jedi, guardian angels don’t seek revenge. So I was a bit confused about the message.  Until I began to put the pieces together. Locke was struck but not killed. He will likely now go to the hospital and be operated on by Jack. Jack, the surgeon who offered Locke hope about fixing his spine.

In “The Substitute” Locke came to accept that he’d never be able to walk again, albeit, more out of hopelessness than any true acceptance. Still, I think after all he’s been through, this might be enough for him to be rewarded with a functioning spine. Whether or not this was Desmond’s intention, we may never know, but it doesn’t really matter. The point is that sometimes when we aren’t proactive enough in our lives to do what we are meant to, the universe forces us to. Perhaps Locke needs a way to regain his faith in this flash-sideways world. That may mean regaining the use of his legs, or simply surviving a head-on car crash. It would be perfectly ironic and Lost-esque if Locke were to regain the use of his legs, but due to the accident have to get them amputated. In the end, he would at least be able to walk with prosthetic limbs. Okay, maybe I’m stretching it a bit here, but it is in line with the myth.

Getting back to Desmond, what was the deal with him and MIB on the island? He took his hand and walked innocently into the middle of the woods with him to a deep, dark well. The message is that there is a difference between living your destiny and living naively because you think everything will work out. Yes, Desmond is correct that he should just go with the flow, but what happens when there is a fork in the flow? What happens when there is a side-creek to the river you’re floating down? How do you know which way to go? Again, trust your instincts!

What was Desmond’s mistake? The boy. Remember, the island, aka the universe, offered him a choice. The man he is blindly following sees a boy who frightens him. When Desmond asks about the mysterious apparition, MIB yells that he should “ignore it!” The boy then smiles at Desmond and runs off. After having read this column, what do you now think was Desmond’s proper move? Think back to the wisdom of ghosts, apparitions, and other-worldly visions. Remember that they speak the truth. So, all Desmond had to do was to tell MIB to hold up a minute and follow the kid who would have surely told him to run away! Run away! But Desmond was under the impression that he had nowhere to run to. But once the boy showed up, he did have somewhere to run! He should’ve run after him, and then wouldn’t have been thrown down a well.

For those Desmond fans out there though, I say, don’t worry. And even if Desmond is dead I still say don’t worry. The writers know what they are doing. As I mentioned in last week’s “‘Lost In Myth: Where’s Your ‘Happily Ever After’?” Desmond is the messianic archetypal figure. Just like Jesus, Desmond has been left for dead in a stone tomb. In fact, he may already be dead or (coming attractions spoiler alert) be finished off by Sayid. Either way, give the guy three days and hallelujah, he will rise again! Desmond may die for the sins of those joining up with MIB, but as Widmore promises, his sacrifice will be for a greater good.

How might Desmond be revived? As I wrote in “Lost In Myth: Unwrapping ‘The Package,’” we’ve seen all this play out before. The Swan station was about to blow up the island and Desmond sacrificed himself by turning the failsafe key. Then he was reborn. Now, he’s been thrown down into a well. Why was that well dug? Because it is one of the energy points on the island—just like where the Swan was built. So, Desmond has gone down the well as his role of a failsafe, open to having to sacrifice himself. And just as we’ve already seen, he will be reborn, this time, blowing up the island in the process, which the Swan station represents. What kind of answers does this ultimately give us? MIB already told us.

The ancients who dug the well did so because their compasses spun like crazy at that spot. They dug because they were looking for answers but they got none. The message for us is that we will not be given the answers, but must uncover them for ourselves. Well, we will be given answers, it’s just that some things are not answerable. As DJ Lazlo (giving me a guardian angel message as radio DJs are prone to do) pointed out to me during our Lost segment on his show, MIB’s remark hinted to the compass that was passed back and forth between Locke and Alpert through time. The message seems to be that we cannot understand everything. This humbling fact is in itself a lesson. We will never understand all of Lost or life because then there would be nothing left for us to do. No mysteries left to uncover. Life would be boring. In fact, even the answers that we do get from the show have different meaning for each of us, depending on where you are on our own life’s journey. Are you just beginning, in the middle, at the end, or ready to pass on what you’ve learned? Are you a candidate?

Speaking of candidates, in the coming attractions for next week’s episode, ABC edited together what I found to be the best, and certainly most chilling preview yet. Intriguingly, they used a sped-up version of Gene Wilder singing, “The Rowing Song” from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Those of you who have been reading this column since the start of the season know that I compared Lost to the Willy Wonka film because of the similarities with the candidate process (see “Lost In Myth: Why LOST Can Be A Substitute For ‘Willy Wonka’”). Each child/Lostie is tempted with their own personal issue to see which one would overcome it and take over the responsibilities of the chocolate factory/island.

So, is Lost somehow acknowledging this connection, or is it all just a coincidence? Well, if Lost ends with Jacob and Hurley riding in a great glass elevator overlooking the island and its chocolate rivers and Everliving Alpertstoppers and polar bears that lay golden eggs and Others-loompas and an MIB Slugworth, well, you’ll realize that you’ve been on acid or in a coma this entire time and imagined your life for the past six years watching an imaginary show called Lost. Then, when you wake up in this Lost-less world, you can write it yourself and become a millionaire! Then again… (Pick one)

a)    maybe that only happens in your parallel life.
b)   who the heck would’ve actually bought this kooky show in the real world!
c)    perhaps in the real world you are actually lost on a tropical island and that’s why you’ve been hallucinating about one.
d)   maybe you’ll just do some more acid and see what other gems are hiding in your brain.
e)    All of the above. After all, if there’s one thing that Lost has taught us, it’s that multiple realities can exist simultaneously.

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.

First of all, let’s be realistic. The fairytale life is just that—a fairytale. Recent films like Shrek and Enchanted have poked fun at how unrealistic these fairy stories are and how they might play out in the real world. Still, this doesn’t mean that these stories should be dismissed outright. Just like any tale featuring a journey, challenges, magic and monsters, they are myths. While one definition of a myth is that of an untrue belief, another is that of a story filled with age-old truths that serves as a metaphor for how life really works. Funny how both “fairytale” and “myth” have come to have both positive and negative connotations. But just as Lost teaches us, perhaps they actually contain aspects of both. Really, it just depends if you take the stories literally—just on the surface level—or look deeper to their true metaphorical message.

Many of the problems we have in society today are due to how people interpret their culture’s mythology. Some people take the stories found in the Bible, Koran, Torah, their religion, folklore, or other cultural tales literally. Others look at their metaphorical meaning, while others, only seeing the surface stories, ignore them all together. These differing perspectives have led to wars, massacres, clashing ideologies, genocides, proselytizing, entitlements, xenophobia, prejudice, and countless other issues. Jonathan Swift noted the irony in Gulliver’s Travels, where he depicted the small-minded Lilliputians as fighting a war that’s lasted longer than anyone can remember. The cause of the war? An argument over which is the proper side of an egg to crack open—the small side or large side? Due to their disagreement, a war raged on claiming countless lives. Dr. Seuss made a similar analogy with The Butter Battle Book—the battle over which side to butter your bread. While it all seems silly, the point is that there’s really never a good reason to start a war, but especially when it’s over differing ideologies, which almost every war is ultimately about.

While mythologies all have their messages to tell, I think that when we look at them too literally, they can get us into trouble. Most of us first hear fairytales as kids though, when we aren’t old enough to understand their metaphorical messages. So, we often internalize their stories instead, resulting in generations that feel like entitled little princes and princesses. I’m glad to see that stories like Shrek, Wicked, and even Harry Potter are updating these myths to make them a bit more in line with society today. Lost is doing this too, and that’s why I think it’s so important and so much more than just a show.

I heard once that the phrase “happily ever after” was owned by Disney, and that if you wanted to publish something that mentioned it, you’d first have to get permission and then pay whatever fees they demanded. While I’m not sure if it’s true, it makes a lot of sense in our society. Of course our “happily ever after” should be owned by a corporation. It seems that corporations own our lives and whether or not we should be happy. Surely, you too have been brainwashed to believe that you need to own an iPhone to be happy, or buy “green” products, or smell great with the latest body wash. Corporations own us. They own us because most of us bought into the fairytale that we could live happily ever after. To get there, we apparently need to drive cars that everyone will stare at in awe, download hundreds of apps to make our lives easier, and buy gizmos that enable us to do mostly time-wasting tasks much more efficiently, etc. etc. Of course, it’s our choice to decide whether or not to buy these things. But what kind of choice is it when not having these things makes you an outcast—shunned by society?

All of the choices that we have collectively made have led us to the society we now live in. One where happiness is thought of as something that must be bought and there is no longer any time left to actually think about what that means. But surely, somewhere, in some other dimension, there exists a universe where we, and all our ancestors, all made different choices, and where those choices led to still other, different choices. Assuming that there is a version of you that exists in this world, how different would this alternate you be from the you that exists in our current world? Interestingly, this question is exactly what Lost’s “Happily Ever After” episode brought up.

“Happily Ever After” was all about choice. Claire chooses not to ride with Desmond after he asked, and that choice led to severe repercussions. Desmond gives Charlie the choice of whether to stay in the bar or come with him. “It doesn’t really seem like a choice,” Charlie complains, to which Desmond replies, “There’s always a choice, brother.” Daniel Faraday believes he made a choice in another timeline to blow up an atom bomb. He believes it may have been the wrong choice. At the end of the episode, Desmond chooses to peacefully go with Sayid.

In quantum physics, there’s a theory known as the many-world’s theory which states that for every option that is possible to make, there exists an entire parallel universe where that option was chosen. Should we make that choice, we leap into that universe—unbeknownst to us—where everything is a little bit different depending on the effects of that choice. This is not a fairytale brother; this may be how our reality really works. You are not really moving through time. You are simply leaping into different parallel universes. We are all. Right now, there exists a universe where I did not write this article, and therefore, you are not reading it. But, if it contains information that, even in some very slight way, will somehow influence your choices (even if it’s because you decide not to agree with its premise), chances are that you are reading some other article in that world that will yield the same or similar result.

Getting back to Claire, in her flash-sideways, she chooses not to ride in a car with Desmond. While it wasn’t necessarily a wrong choice, why would she make it? Perhaps she had once heard a story about a well-dressed man who approached a woman and kidnapped her. Perhaps she had a bad experience with a Scotsman once. Perhaps her mother taught her that she should always be independent and never rely on people for anything. Who knows what little things influence us to make the decisions that we do? The point is though, that we make them. And every choice we make helps shape the person that we are becoming. However, there also exists a person that you want to be—that your soul (or your connection to the collective energy of the universe) ultimately wants you to become. And for that reason, when you make choices that are not in line with that, the world course corrects to throw you another opportunity that will hopefully yield the intended result.

For whatever reason, Claire’s destiny seems to be intertwined with Kate. So while Claire chose not to ride with Desmond, there is probably another flash-sideways universe where she had. But even in that universe, there would probably have been another scenario that connects her to Kate because it seems to be part of her destiny. Perhaps Kate will help her see the values of raising a child, and from Claire, Kate will learn the same. Similarly, in both timelines, Charlie has a drug problem. Although he got over it in one, it remains to be seen what will happen in the other. But since Charlie’s higher self is drug-free, the universe will continually challenge him to grow into that person. While we all have choices, there are certain markers that are set in stone. These points are built into every reality—when we are born, who are parents will be, what major challenges we will face, who we can fall in love with, when we will die, etc—and these will not change. They are constants.

In “Happily Ever After” we learn that love is the constant that connects the parallel realities. In this way, Charlie is connected to Claire, Desmond with Penny, and Daniel with Charlotte (who was eating a chocolate bar just as when Daniel last saw her when she was a child, a nod to the illusion of time and space). What Lost is telling us is that love transcends the illusion of time. That it exists in all dimensions and is ultimately something our souls are meant to experience. Why? Perhaps because that feeling elevates us to a level that gets us in touch with the highest version of ourselves. The version that would go on a dangerous voyage, battle monsters, require the aid of friends and mentors, and slay a dragon to experience love—the best version of who we are.

That’s the part of the fairytale that we should incorporate into our collective psyche—the inspiration to challenge ourselves for a greater good. As opposed to the prince/princess entitlement part—that’s a message for our physical, materialistic, lower selves…the part that our soul wants us to shake free from…the part that metaphorically represents hell. When you get stuck in that perspective, it can be hard to get the loftier messages. And the more choices you make that reward the physical, fleeting part of yourself, the more challenging it will be to break free from them. But as I’ve said, there is nothing wrong or right about either choice. One is simply about making the best of the illusionary world we live in, the other is about wanting to go beyond it.

Whether or not the Lost characters turn out to be stuck in a dream, a parallel timeline, a simulation, hell, purgatory, or a mystical island controlled by gods, the lesson is that they are existing in a realm that isn’t real. For those who haven’t caught that message with the countless references to The Wizard of Oz and Alice In Wonderland, they practically hit us over the head with it in “Happily Ever After.” When Charlie begins to tell Desmond why he knows that he isn’t happy with all his materialistic treasures, Desmond guesses, “Because none of it’s real?” When Desmond catches up to the runaway Charlie in the hospital, Charlie tells him, “This doesn’t matter. None of this matters.” When Daniel explains his dream to Desmond, he laments, “this wasn’t supposed to be our life. What if we had some other life but for some reason we changed things.”

While on the surface it seems that they are speaking about the flash-sideways, again, this is the literal interpretation of the story. What they are really talking about is physical reality period. Our reality. But like any good mythology, Lost can’t just tell us this. It has to hide its messages under symbolism and archetypes in hopes that they will sneak past our conscious minds into our deeper, subconscious understanding—a place that influences our future choices. Choices we make without really knowing why. But this is why. Star Wars is why. Fairytales are why. The beliefs you have about yourself, your culture and your reality are why. But none of them may even be true. Most of us live life thinking that we are moving through time and that everyone is experiencing it the exact same way. But if this isn’t the case, then everything we know about reality is wrong. Therefore, our choices have all been based on bad information.

Flash-sideways Desmond believes he’s never met Eloise Hawking before. As the omniscient viewers, we know that he has. What is the culprit that has created a curtain that has prevented Desmond from knowing that he and Ms. Hawking, now Ms. Widmore, have met before? It is this new dimension. This parallel time. In fact, Eloise tells him and us this, but it was so cleverly worded, few of us noticed it. Flash-sideways Eloise says to Desmond, “It’s a travesty that we haven’t met before. Well, it’s about time.” Like everything else on Lost, this wording is no accident. It is a hint as to the reason they haven’t met—time is the reason. The illusion of time. If we could see how reality really works—how everything that ever has happened, could’ve happened, is happening, or could ever happen is happening right now, then we wouldn’t need to play this game called life. The man behind the curtain would be revealed, and would be seen for who he truly is, someone just pushing a bunch of flashy buttons and gizmos to try and distract us from the real world.

Right now, I’m not sure if we live in the timeline where it’s even possible for us to get to this unveiling of reality, or as it’s more Biblically known, this apocalypse. For the record, apocalypse actually means, “unveiling.” It is the time when we are no longer living in the illusionary world and the true world is revealed to us. This is where we ultimately want to go, but I’m not so sure that we live in a timeline where we’ll be getting there. We may have to start all over again. On Lost, island-reality Widmore is convinced that he too may live in a doomed timeline, but believes that it may be possible for him and those close to him to leap to a parallel one. So, being that this is a theme on Lost, is it possible for us to do the same? Can we leap to the dimension where we, as a people, made different choices leading to a different outcome?

Lost may still yield clues to this possibility, for now though, I’d say that it is entirely possible, and that you don’t need to be gifted with Desmond’s powers to withstand high electromagnetism to get there. The high electromagnetism thing is all just symbolic for having a high vibration—a high soul, someone who is close to being the best version of his or herself—in other words, the archetypal messiah figure, who Desmond most definitely is. He has sacrificed himself by turning the failsafe key, he was reborn, and then found love—the feeling closest to the heavenly realm. He became so in tune with his surroundings, he was able to see visions of how the illusionary realm was playing out. This relates to our gut instincts—the knowing without consciously knowing, but knowing on another level.

Once you reach this level, you become like Neo in The Marix—able to see the world for what it really is. Through Lost’s archetypes, you become like Desmond, who, now aware of his ultimate destiny, is able to go with the flow and play his role without anymore suffering or struggle. This is probably why he simply agrees to go with Sayid at the end of the episode. Because he now realizes that he no longer needs to struggle and that whatever happens will lead him towards fulfilling what he is meant to do. As someone from my Lost Meetup group said, “Desmond is now moving through God’s channel.” Yes, because while a hero suffers, he suffers only so that he can get to a place where he can rise above the illusionary world. Rise above the brainwashing and the need to collect material possessions for happiness. Rise to a place where he can see that all you need is love—it is the only constant that matters.

This is ultimately where we are all meant to go. And, we will all eventually get there. Some quicker than others. Perhaps those that do will experience some kind of Rapture during the end days and be able to skip over the woeful times that may lie ahead for everyone else left behind. But even this seems to be a myth that isn’t meant to be taken literally. I think that we can jump to our sideways flash. And it will not require electromagnetism, a particle collider at CERN, meeting up with a returning messiah, or a mystical island. All it will require is the choices you make about who you are.

So decide who you most want to be and make choices in line with that ideal.  Then, watch as the events surrounding your life begin to come together to make that version of yourself happen. Again, there is no wrong choice. Some choices may require more challenging lessons than others, but if you are someone who loves materialistic pleasures then the benefits of the more spiritual choices may not be a benefit for you. Simply put, as Eloise said to Desmond, “you just aren’t ready yet.” Sideways Desmond is someone who loves materialistic pleasures and longed for the approval of a powerful man. He lived a life without love and yet, this didn’t bother him in the least until his consciousness intertwined and was influenced by his higher, island-reality self. This version of Desmond was so much more in tune, its impact stayed with the more materialistic version of himself even after it had leapt back to its own dimension.

Perhaps when we dream, or listen to empowering music, or watch an inspiring movie, we too get in touch with that higher version of ourselves. And perhaps enough of it stays behind to actually manipulate our chemistry, or cause us to leap to a dimension more aligned with our higher self. Anyone can do this, you don’t have to be Desmond, a messianic archetype, or even a hero. Anyone can make choices towards the best version of him or herself.

When I began writing this column today, I was a bit taken aback by how I ended the first paragraph. While I sometimes end my first paragraph with a teaser question, this was the first time I ended it with a question that I myself did not yet know the answer to. I wasn’t really sure what was involved in getting to this other reality and whether or not we did indeed have to be as special as Desmond to get there. But, like much of what I write, I figured I’d just be open to an answer and hope it would be given to me as I made this journey to get to the end, hopefully being able to tie together mythological themes and this past episode of Lost in the process.

While it took a while to get there, I think the answer did in fact come to me. And I tend to find that the columns that I write that resonate the truest for me are the ones that I go into without a definite plan. It’s that leap of faith thing again. Another theme that shows up quite a bit on Lost.

Many years from now, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lost turns out to inspire its own religion, perhaps even with millions of followers. While many might consider the following statement to be blasphemous, because the show is based on universal wisdom, I do not see its messages as being of any lesser value than any other religion. My only hope however, is that the followers of this faith look to the mythology, symbolism, archetypes, metaphors, messages, themes, and hidden wisdom of the show and just use the story to string it all together. In other words, I hope they don’t take the story too literally. Because then the beliefs, customs, and practices it would lead to, would really be no better than any other fairytale.  And that’s what got us here to begin with.

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.

Before we get to the question of God, I think we first need to explore whether or not the Lost writers are laughing with us or at us.  So as to not mislead with questions I don’t plan on answering, I’m going to state upfront that I won’t be answering this very question. However, after sifting through some puzzle pieces that are starting to fit together, hopefully you’ll be able to. Well, I’m not literally looking for an answer to the “laughing at us” question. What I’m hoping is that you will be able to help piece together these ideas because to be honest, I don’t know entirely what to make of them yet.

At the end of the Lost In Myth column last week, tspete posted a comment that I find very intriguing. He stated that he liked the idea of comparing the island to a cork because of its parallels with the whole button pushing exercise in the Swan station. His thought was that just as the button had to be pressed every 108 minutes to reset the system, Jacob and MIB are doing the same thing with people. Not pressing the button would destroy the world, just as letting MIB escape would destroy the world. After Locke lost faith, Desmond turned the failsafe key. This is like Locke’s downfall and Desmond possibly being a key to the island. So, is this all the same sequence of events, only one being through DHARMA and science, and the other being through Jacob and faith? Immediately, I realized he was onto something, and based on what we learned this week, really feel he’s onto something.

While I don’t remember where I heard it, about a month ago, Damon Lindelof (I believe) mentioned that we’ve already seen the scenario that’s now being played out in the final season, we just don’t realize it yet. Lost has been about the dichotomy of science and faith since the beginning. Perhaps it is now beginning to illustrate the point it was making all along—that they are not opposing forces but one and the same. That for every scientific element we can recognize in the world, there is a spiritual one that represents it. As they say in kabblah, “As above so below.” This is exactly the sort of “bigger picture” element that I’m talking about that makes what we’ve been watching so much richer for me. Yes, the bigger picture has always existed within the mythology of the story, but I have really been hoping that at some point a curtain will be revealed on the show and we will finally get to see what has been behind it all along. We now have some solid clues.

Thinking back to the Swan station fiasco, Locke had lost his faith that the button had to be pressed because Ben had hinted that it was all pointless. The two of them then were responsible for causing the system failure that caused the pocket of energy in the island to begin to escape. Specifically, the sequence of six numbers were not entered into the computer after 108 minutes and this is what caused all hell to break loose. In the last moments however, Desmond decides to sacrifice himself by turning a failsafe key, destroying the Swan station and causing him to be reborn. This seems to be the exact same story we are seeing now.

Instead of six numbers preventing the energy of the island from escaping, we now have six people representing those very same numbers. The energy of the island is illustrated as the black smoke monster which has taken the form of Locke. During the Swan station failure, Locke had lost his faith and almost caused the energy of the island to escape. Now, Locke’s image has given Smokey a way to escape from his island prison. Jacob seems to represent the faith of pressing the button—that which had been keeping the energy of the island contained. But the combination of the soulless/fake Locke and Ben kill Jacob, just as the real Locke and Ben brought about the end of the button-pushing. This led to releasing the energy pocket that would’ve destroyed the island had Desmond not stepped in. Desmond did however, using a failsafe key.

Now, we see that, just as Eloise Hawking promised, the island isn’t done with Desmond yet. Widmore has brought Desmond back to the island and considers him to be his secret weapon against fake Locke/Smokey.  Based on what we’ve already seen then, Desmond will likely once again sacrifice himself to prevent Smokey from escaping the island just as it seems imminent that he will do so. My guess is that just as Desmond destroyed the Swan station, he will somehow destroy the island, leading to it being underwater as we saw at the start of the season. Just as the Swan station had to be destroyed to prevent the energy pocket from destroying the island, now the island must be destroyed to prevent Smokey from destroying the world. But then is that it? Will this be how the series ends? How will this connect to the flash sideways? Hopefully, there is still way more to this. The question though, is what?  If you have an idea, feel free to chime in. If we truly are just seeing a different version of a story we’ve already seen, is the joke on us? Or is there a deeper message here? Are the flash-sideways the result of resetting the spiritual story that creates the events of the physical world?

Personally, I really like the idea that there is a spiritual realm that parallels everything that happens in the material realm and I think this could definitely work with what we are seeing in the flash-sideways. Despite what some readers have presumed, I don’t need a simulation resolution to be happy with the ending of the show. I’d just like a resolution that can plug into the mysteries it has given us up to now. Since these mysteries are similar to those we have in our world, once we have that key, we can use it to help unlock the mysteries of our lives.  Interpreting the mythology of the show helps, but it would be so much easier if we just had a formula written into the storyline. Of course, life doesn’t usually make things easier for us, and in fact, this was one of the themes of “The Package.”

The package represents all the things we think we want—the material pleasures that include money, sex, jewelry, power, etc. In life, we are often looking for the whole package or the perfect package and more often than not we don’t get it. And that can get us pretty pissed. Most of the time however, getting what we want is not actually in our best interest. For example, Jin was very angry about having his $25,000 confiscated at the airport. But had he gotten it, he’d be dead since it was supposed to be Keamy’s fee for killing him. Had Jin been able to run away with Sun so easily, their relationship would not be built on as solid a foundation. The island (aka, the universe) is making them work to be together. Being a man completely engulfed by materialism, Keamy assumes that Jin and Sun just aren’t meant to be together. My take is that they are, and that’s why they will have to work for it.

Just as a fraternity or sorority makes you jump through hoops to get in, you appreciate things more when you have to work hard to attain them. This is why in love, women often play hard to get while men play it cool. Or why they say everyone wants what they can’t have. Or why you have a better chance of being hired for a new job if you already have one—the recruiter sees you as being more valuable. The difficulty of attaining something is proportional to the worth we assign to having it. Gold and diamonds are hard to get and worth a lot of money. Sand and water are easy to get and worth nothing. Similarly, even in its heyday, nobody spent much time pondering the inner message of a typical episode of Three’s Company, yet a challenging show like Lost inspires quite a bit of discussion.

This is not to say that everyone wants something that’s hard to get. I have no interest in scaling Mount Everest anytime soon. But, I have to say I’d feel pretty damned proud if I had. Similarly, those who are born rich tend to not appreciate it as much as those who had to work hard to get there. And a knight who has to go to the ends of the earth to rescue his love from the clutches of an evil dragon will generally appreciate her more than someone who got a one-night stand. Of course, like any rule, there are exceptions. Arranged marriages might be one, but really, a lot of work goes into making them happen that might lead to their higher-than-average success rates.  The point is though, some things just require effort to be truly appreciated. From this perspective, God (the universe, whatever) isn’t making things hard on us because it’s a sadistic SOB. It’s doing it to see how bad we really want something and to make us really understand the value when we get it.

So the next time things don’t seem to be going your way, be grateful. Be grateful that you are being given an opportunity to appreciate what you perhaps had been taking for granted.  No matter how crappy you think your life is, there’s always someone who has it worse. And even the person who has it worse than everyone, well, he has nowhere to go but up. In many ways, that’s better than the person at the other end of the scale because they have everything to lose. So, love the struggle. It gives you something to aim for and something to really appreciate once you get it. And once you learn to appreciate something and be grateful for it, the universe has a way of giving you more of it. Okay, so maybe you don’t need to love the struggle that much…just enough to appreciate where it takes you.

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.

While cynical viewers have assumed for some time that the creators of Lost were going to pull a solution out of their collective ass, not even the most pessimistic among them ever mentioned that they’d be pulling out a cork. While I still have faith that there is still something more interesting going on, “Ab Aeterno” gave me a bit to be concerned about. Sure, the story itself was intriguing and many answers were revealed. But those answers were less than spectacular. And given that all those answers were dreamed up in the early seasons it got me thinking, what if all the answers to this brilliant show are just really dull?

What if the ghosts seen on the island are actually, well, ghosts—or an impersonation by the “black smoke thingie”? What if the whispers are just the voices of those ghosts? What if that black smoke thingie is just some sort of evil entity trapped on the island? What if the numbers are just random numbers assigned by a god-like being named Jacob to find his replacement? What if Richard Alpert hasn’t aged simply because he asked for it and Jacob touched him? What if the Black Rock got to the middle of the island because Jacob caused a giant storm wave to bring it there? What if doing this caused the four-toed statue to topple? And what if the island really is nothing more than a metaphorical cork in a bottle to contain the black smoke thingie? In other words, what if the answers to Lost all turn out to be the stuff of Deus Ex Machina?

If this turns out to be the case, well, we have been warned. Episode 19 of Season 1 took “Deus Ex Machina” as its title. Perhaps this was the writers’ way of trying to reduce our expectations. For those who don’t know, the term dates back to ancient Greek theater when a statue or actor representing a deity (deus) would be lowered onto the stage by a pulley system (machina) in order to magically resolve overly complicated entanglements of a plot (“Zeus saved us!”). The term came to be used whenever any artificial or improbable device was used to solve plot difficulties. In other words, using gods with magical powers to solve all the mysteries of Lost.

Personally, I don’t feel that these answers have really been all that bad, they just haven’t been up to par with the many brilliantly written story twists we’ve seen on the show up until now. Plus, all the “god” stuff so far is pretty much falling in line with where the show has been heading, and was hinted at in earlier seasons with the hieroglyphs and the statue. But if someone had come up with a theory several years ago claiming to have all the answers to Lost, and their answers were exactly those that are now being provided, would you have found them gripping? I don’t think I would’ve.

I know there are many fans out there that really dig the whole magical island thing. They compare the story to classical mythology where gods could make things happen to save the protagonist and it was pretty cool when they did. I think back to my favorite classical myth movies like the original Clash of the Titans, Jason and the Argonauts, and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. All of those movies had gods or genies interfering to help the heroes, and I loved it. So what’s the difference here? The difference for me is that those magical beings were introduced at the start of the stories, not in its final acts. If you’re going to stretch out a mystery about how an enormous statue toppled and how a ship got to the middle of an island, the answer should be somewhat more imaginative than a god-like being causing it with a giant wave.

Now that I’ve vented for a bit, I’d like to take a step back. I’ve been exaggerating somewhat to prove a point and the reality isn’t nearly as god-awful. Let’s take the whole cork thing. First of all, the island isn’t really “a cork.” It’s a metaphorical cork that is bottling up evil. Sounds to me as though the island is actually some kind of demon prison. And knowing that Lost loves to dabble in symbolism and metaphor, and knowing that the Man In Black has admitted to being human at one time with a crazy mum, I think it isn’t a stretch to guess that this demon prison is really more of a really intense maximum-security jail…or the inside of a magic lamp with the black smoke monster as the genie.

I don’t like the magic lamp idea any better than a magical island so let’s stick with the whole jail thing. Okay, what else do we know? We know that Jacob had brought a whole bunch of other folks to the island, and that at the time Ricardo arrived, they were all dead. We also know that at the time of his arrival, Ricardo was considered a criminal. Interestingly, many others who have been brought to the island have also been criminals. These include (but are not limited to): Kate, Sawyer, Ana Lucia, Mr. Eko, Sayid, Charlie, Nikki, Paulo, and Jin.  Interestingly, the island seems to tempt these criminals with the exact same issue that caused them to be criminals to begin with. So Charlie was tempted with drugs, Ana Lucia with use of her overactive trigger finger, Sawyer with revenge, Sayid with torturing, etc. When these characters are able to get over their issues, the island kills them. So, Charlie resisted the drugs and unselfishly sacrificed himself for others, Ana Lucia did not shoot Ben despite his aggressive treatment of her, and Mr. Eko was able to clear his conscience about what happened to his brother. As for Nikki and Paulo, well, technically the island didn’t kill them, the Losties accidentally did, and the writers did admit they were a mistake, so we’ll just consider them an oversight for purposes of this theory.

Besides the criminals, it seems that everyone else on the island has deep-seated issues, and like the criminals, when they overcome them, they die. Yet, are they really dead? In the flash-sideways, many of the Losties who we saw die like Boone, Charlie, and (presumably) Shannon, are very much alive. And let me throw in just one more clue Scooby before we begin to solve this mystery: Jeremy Bentham.

Locke’s first alter ego never really seemed to have much of a purpose on Lost, yet, I’ve always felt that the name itself was a solid hint. In The Myth of Lost I bring up the real inspiration behind the name:

Jeremy Bentham was a philosopher and social reformer whose work led to the development of liberalism. One of Bentham’s more important contributions was his design for a prison known as the Panopticon. The concept behind the prison is that it would enable someone to observe the inmates without them being able to tell if they were being observed or not—just like cameras in department stores or pretty much everywhere these days. This feeling of constantly being watched would convey a sense of an “invisible omniscience” and, according to Bentham, enable “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind.”

What’s particularly interesting is that I wrote about Mr. Bentham in the book a full year before his name was actually revealed on the show. So, why did I think the name would eventually be used? Because I felt that the island was a rehabilitative program of sorts. One where the “prisoners” could be viewed without their knowing it—just as we’ve seen with the lighthouse. But what if the lighthouse was just a way to get the prisoners’ histories, and the island itself is a way to watch their progress? And once they were “cured” as determined by the powers that would be watching, they would be allowed to leave. So far, those who have died could have been rehabilitated and released back into the real world. The Man In Black however, has received a life sentence and will never be allowed to leave. But much like Lex Luthor or other brilliant villains of lore however, he has a mastermind plan to enable his escape.

The whole “cork” thing might really just be the writers trying to reduce our expectations. But I do not believe the answer ends here. Even if it does though, the mythological messages are still very relevant. Whether the island is a prison of sorts, or hell, or a cork to contain evil, since it is a microcosm of our world, the meaning is pretty much the same. Hell is not a place you go when you are bad. As Matt Groening would probably agree—life is hell. Our world is the mythological embodiment of hell. You, and everyone else here (sans a few select Bodhisattvas and chosen guides), are here because you’ve got issues to work through. If you don’t work through them, you’ll get to try again in your next life on earth. If you do work through them, you’ll get a new set of issues. Having the issues is what makes life interesting and something like a game. They give you challenges to overcome. Without them, life would be peaceful, happy, perfect, and incredibly dull.

Dull, however, is still considerably better than torturous—yet this is exactly how hell is typically depicted in mythology. In Greek mythology alone there is Sisyphus who must continually roll a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll down again.  Also famous in Greek mythology is Tantalus who was condemned to stand in a pool of sparkling water with delicious fruits dangling above him. Only, when he goes to reach for the fruits, they move out of his grasp, and when he tries to drink the water, it recedes before he can get a sip. These myths reminded me of Ricardo’s efforts on the Black Rock as he tries to sip the rainwater that was just out of his reach. So, is this suffering better than boredom?

Often, we are the cause of our own suffering. This has certainly been the case of most of the characters on Lost. Yes, shit happens here in hell. But as I wrote in “The Message of “Recon”—Learning to Let Go,” we can choose to carry that pain with us our whole lives, or learn to let go. As Ricardo’s wife Isabella tells him at the end of the episode, it was simply her time to go, and there wasn’t anything he could’ve done about it. Carrying around guilt and pain would not bring her back. The only thing that could, would be to honor her memory and act as she would have. Upon that realization, Richard puts on his wife’s cross that he’d buried so long ago, restoring his positive memories of her and his own faith. Perhaps he was still in an allegorical hell, but at least now, he could be at peace there.

Another theme brought up by this episode is that of sin. Jacob tells Ricardo that he doesn’t care about the pasts of those he brings to the island. They all have a clean slate (Tabula Rasa), which he demonstrates by violently baptizing Ricardo in the ocean. The only thing Jacob does seem to care about, is the choices people make. It wouldn’t be free will if he had to tell people what was right or wrong. All he does is provide the challenges and hope the people will be able to make the right choice for themselves.  There’s that “challenge” concept again—you know, the thing that makes life interesting, or put another way, like a game.

Currently, one challenge I’m trying to come to terms with, is how I can rationalize the amount of time and energy I’ve put into a show if it all turns out to have a pretty lousy resolution. A couple years ago, I read Jason Hunter’s time-loop theory about how the Black Rock was carrying metallic minerals and was yanked onto the island by its magnetic core, and in the process, punched a hole in the invisible bubble that surrounds the island at the coordinate “305”—the one needed to escape without getting the sickness. At the time, while I thought the idea was intriguing, I figured the writers had a bigger plan. Now that I see their plan, I feel that Hunter’s theory was more imaginative. At least it connected with the other mysteries of the island.

Then there’s the whole literal hell thing. Anthony Cooper alluded to it in Season 3 when he asked Sawyer where he thought he was. “It’s too hot for heaven,” he continued. Fans had been claiming hell or purgatory ever since Season 1. Could that have been it all along? What if fans figured out all the answers to Lost after the first several episodes so the writers simply made it increasingly more complicated just to keep it interesting? Even if this turns out to be the case, I’d like to submit my own feelings on the issue: it doesn’t matter. In fact, this is the main message of the episode.

In “Ab Aeterno,” Richard has become disillusioned after blindly following someone he thought had a plan. While Richard hasn’t been alive “for eternity” as the title’s Latin translation would suggest, surely it’s felt that way to him—an eternity in hell. After dedicating his life for 140 years, Richard finds out that there was no plan after all. As with all episodes of Lost, once again the message is for us. This time however, it may specifically be just for fans of the show.

For years, many of us have invested our lives in a mysterious show that has promised answers. So far, those answers haven’t been particularly satisfying for many of us. But even if the final reveal isn’t all that enlightening, it might give us comfort to realize that the show isn’t about the final reveal. Like life, Lost is a journey, not a destination. Over the years, we’ve learned that we get clues to our destiny, that we’re all connected, there are no coincidences, and that we shouldn’t judge people without knowing their full story. We’ve learned about constants, variables, proxies and parallel timelines.  Lost has helped us solve the mysteries of our own lives, and for that, it’s already been worth it, even if the ending totally blows. But there is more to be hopeful about.

There’s another way to interpret the message of this episode. By the end, Richard decides to keep the faith in Jacob even though it seems like he never had a plan.  But, what if he does? What if there is a much bigger plan and Richard, the Losties, and everyone else who’s ever stepped foot on the island are still a part of it? In fact, what if we are all still a part of it? Personally, I’m keeping my faith that there will be some kind of cool twist at the end of Lost that will make sense out of most of the mysteries. But even if there isn’t, I still consider Lost to be one of the best written, most intelligent, meaningful, intriguing and entertaining shows ever created in the history of television. And for those insist otherwise, well, they can stick a cork in it.

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.

At some point in our lives, most of us have experienced a major trauma, loss or mistreatment that has scarred us. The question is, do we let this pain and hurt grow inside of us, causing us to become bitter our whole lives, or do we learn to let go?

Since he was a boy, James has been consumed with the guilt, pain, and hatred from a severe childhood trauma he experienced—his mother’s murder by his father and his father’s subsequent suicide before his eyes. This deep scar has made James obsessed with tracking down and killing Anthony Cooper, aka Tom Sawyer—the man who conned his parents out of their life savings and led to his father’s meltdown.

While this situation is hopefully so much more severe than anything we will ever have to experience in our own lives, the exaggeration exists for a reason. The reason is so that we may process the wisdom without consciously fighting it because its truth hits too close to home. In other words, like the issues of all the characters on Lost, James lesson is really for us.

When we first met James on Lost, his issues were so deep he had taken on the persona of Sawyer including his name and profession. His self-hatred was so intense, he was a masochist, looking for a beating whenever possible. This aspect of James’ personality was revealed when he claimed to have stolen Shannon’s asthma spray in Season 1. This led to his torture by Sayid until he finally revealed that he had, in fact, never even seen it. The message was that James simply hated himself and felt he deserved whatever beating he could get. He hated himself because he had become the person he hated the most—Sawyer.

James carried this pain around with him until he was able to exorcise his demons by killing the man he believed to be Sawyer in the Season 3 episode, “The Brig.” I say “believed” because it is still unclear who this man really was and how he got to the island. Whether or not the man James killed was really the actual man who conned his parents though is irrelevant. The important thing was that he believed that it was and thereby was able to resolve his issues.

As I wrote in The Myth of Lost, “In classic psychology, repressed hatred must be purged from the subconscious in order to alleviate its symptoms. One does this by bringing it to the conscious mind, coming to terms with it there, and finally disposing of it.” This may explain why many of the characters on Lost, from John Locke to Ben Linus, have had to kill (or witness the killing) of their fathers. They had to purge them from their minds. For James, the reasoning is the same, only his issue is not as much with his father as with the man he deems responsible for his death.

After killing Sawyer, James began to lose the self-hatred and anger he’d been carrying around with him for so long. No longer a bad guy, he became a very likable character. But while he had resolved his issues regarding the perpetrator of his parents’ deaths, he had never come to terms with the deaths themselves. He had been so full of anger, he had never let himself grieve. Instead, he channeled his pain into the letter he wrote at his parents’ funeral—a letter that Jacob helped him finish.  It remains to be seen if Jacob’s intentions were meant to help or hinder James, but I think overall, it helped him. At least the letter gave James a goal. Yes, it caused him to internalize his pain, but at least it was contained. And once contained, it could be eliminated.

After killing Sawyer, since James was still carrying around unresolved grief over his parents, the island tested him again. This time the test involved a love relationship—a relationship that would come to a tragic end with Juliet’s death in “LA X.” After Juliet’s death, James regresses to his pain-body self by blaming the death on Jack. Much like with Tom Sawyer, James swears to get revenge by killing Jack. Only, he doesn’t. Sure, he releases some pent up anger by beating on him, but stops far short of killing him. The reason is because he has grown. Not fully, but enough to lead to the life we see in his flash-sideways.

Regardless of when the flash-sideways are actually taking place, it makes the most mythological sense that they represent the epilogue of the characters’ lives—after their experience on the island.  Thanks to the growth he experienced on the island, James is a much better adjusted character than we saw from his original flashbacks. He has sublimated his conning abilities for good—working as an undercover cop to help the law bust other con artists.

The mythology is the same as the one from the movie Catch Me If You Can where the former con artist Frank Abagnale Jr. eventually comes to work for the FBI to help them uncover other con artists. Of course, in this case, the movie was based on a true story. All our life stories are based on mythology. That’s why the myths are able to help us. It’s just that some life stories are made into movies and some aren’t. But even if yours hasn’t been made into a film, there is a film with the same message. Or at least, a character on Lost.

Unlike Jack and Hugo (those who have sided with Jacob), James has not been fully redeemed on the island. If he is to be redeemed, he will need to do so in his flash-sideways. I am assuming that Jack will be redeemed while still on the island because his flash-sideways has shown that he has resolved his issues. While we haven’t seen Hugo’s flash-sideways yet, I feel that he too will be redeemed because he seems to have already resolved his issues while on the island. Perhaps not with food, but I’ll hold off on commentary about that until his centric episode. His bad luck issues though seem to have been resolved.  James, on the other hand, still has hang ups about Sawyer in his flash-sideways, so it would seem that he is not yet fully redeemed on the island. Perhaps this is because he sided with MIB/Locke, or, simply sided with no one.

Having lost someone very close to him, it is completely healthy for James to grieve for Juliet and let himself feel pain. But he must let himself feel this pain and not push it away, letting pain and bitterness consume him. He cannot project his feelings onto Jack, but let himself come to terms with them. Eventually, James must learn to love again. Mythologically speaking, that woman will likely be Kate, and that seems to be where his intentions are heading both on and off the island. (However, those intentions may wind up with Juliet off the island as insinuated with Juliet’s dying words about getting coffee some time.)

The challenges and experiences that James faces on the island are reflected in his flash-sideways. In fact, this is the case for every character. This reflection has been symbolically portrayed in every single flash-sideways so far by the central character’s reflections: James punching the mirror in “Recon,” Ben looking at his reflection in the microwave in “Dr. Linus,” Sayid seeing himself in the window at Nadia’s house in “Sundown,” etc. The message is that both the growth and unresolved issues that the characters face on the island will be reflected in their off-island lives. It’s just like how the issues our souls want to resolve before we come to this world are reflected in the life scenarios we play out on this planet. Our entire lives are set up in order to help us experience the challenges our souls want us to overcome, and in doing so, help others to do the same. Everything else is just details.

To help us on our life journey we meet the right people at the right time, and we get clues from the universe including messages from the media. Since Lost is a major clue-giver for us, it is letting us know that these messages can be very helpful. It does this in “Recon” by showing how James comes to learn a life-changing lesson by watching, Little House on the Prairie. Who would expect that a tough undercover cop like James Ford would watch a seemingly sappy seventies show like that? Once again, the exaggeration is meant to provide insight to our own truth. That if Little House can provide meaning for James, surely Lost can provide meaning for us. Chances are, you aren’t as cool as James, and Lost isn’t as sappy as Little House. So if the message works in that exaggerated scenario, surely it could work in one that’s even more believable.

Having not fully redeemed his character on the island, James still has issues to deal with off the island. These issues come to a head when he blows up at Charlotte after she “accidentally” discovers his file on Sawyer. I put “accidentally” in quotes because the universe created that event so James could come to terms with his issues. Just as Jacob gave young James the pen to finish his letter, just as he also showed Jack that he had been watching him, and just as those trying moments have happened in your own life to help you on your path.

I myself have recently experienced such a challenge. I lost my mom to pancreatic cancer last week after her 3½ month-long battle. Like all other challenges, I believe that this too serves a higher purpose. As I said at my mom’s funeral, she had taught her family many lessons during her lifetime, but her final lesson could not be taught while she was alive. That lesson was how to live without her.

Perhaps because I am so attuned to it, or perhaps because I live in the reality that only exists from my perspective (as yours exists only from yours), but I’ve noticed that each episode of Lost has focused on the exact issues that I have been dealing with that particular week.  Last week, when I was first coming to terms with my mom’s passing, Lost had an episode about coming to acceptance when your life doesn’t turn out like you thought it would. (See “The Lesson of ‘Dr. Linus’—What About You?) Like many people, I’d always assumed my mom would be around to see her grandchildren and that her affectionate and fun-loving personality would help shape their own personalities. Lost helped me begin to come to terms with the reality that this presumed scenario would never come to pass. This week, as I was going through the early stages of the mourning period, there was an episode about learning to let go from loss. And within that episode, a message from another TV show—one that I grew up with.

The words of Michael Landon’s Charles Ingalls were so timely and relevant, they seemed to be directed specifically at me. His message was that life is too short to be spent holding onto pain and worry. And that we should just take the positive lessons and memories of the people who have been close to us and let the rest go. And that in the end, just maybe, we’ll get to see them again. Perhaps I look too deeply into the messages of these episodes in personalizing them so much, but it’s hard to deny their synchronicities.

Of all the TV shows from the past that have ever had a message about dealing with death, Little House On The Prairie seems like an odd choice for Lost. I cannot tell you what relevance such a show might have for you, but I can tell you what it meant for me. Michael Landon was born Eugene Orowitz. In and of itself this is pretty interesting given that it shares a prefix with my own name, Oromaner. (“Oro” means “gold,” coming from the root for “light.”) Orowitz grew up in Forest Hills, NY where I lived for four years with my brother. This is also very interesting, but not quite enough to give me chills. After reading up a bit more on Michael Landon’s life however, this did: he died after a 3-month battle with pancreatic cancer. For me, the message was clear: a confirmation that the message of the episode was definitely for me.

One thing I hope to accomplish in writing these columns is to teach readers to do these interpretations for themselves. I can only interpret generalizations or how episodes can relate to me personally. As for how they can help you with the specific issues of your life, only you can figure that out. I’d like to think that I’m helping by providing the tools, but you’ll have to master actually using them. With the help of Lost and the other clues the universe provides, I think most of us will one day become master carpenters, building impressive structures that just might help keep this world together. Good luck, we’re all counting on you.

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.

Life can often be frustrating. We can work hard, have faith, follow the clues, be good people, make sacrifices for the greater good, and still find ourselves in pretty dismal circumstances. When reflecting on our lives, we may wonder where we went wrong, or, if we are being punished for some reason. Perhaps something we did in a prior lifetime─karma that finally caught up to us.

From our limited perspective, it may sometimes seem that our lives aren’t amounting to much. But like It’s A Wonderful Life, we usually just don’t realize how many lives we’ve touched─lives that were made better because we were in them or at least helped influence them in some way. We might feel like failures, but in fact, may have succeeded without even knowing it. It’s just that there is a bigger picture going on behind the curtain that is more important than our own wants and perceived needs.

As Ben is told by Jacob at the end of “The Incident” it’s not about him. But it is about how he fits into the overall picture. That was why as Miles told Ben in “Dr. Linus,” Jacob continued to have hope for Ben right up until the very end. Hope that despite all of Ben’s hardships, much like the Biblical Job, he would keep the faith. So while Ben had given up on Jacob, Jacob never gave up on him. And this knowledge may have swayed Ben to return to Jacob’s side, despite his temptation from Jacob’s nemesis to join the dark side. Perhaps Ben had to go through all those hardships so that he could have the strong foundation to be able to make the tough choices he would need to make─choices that would drastically affect the lives of others.

In both his island life and parallel life, Ben had to make a choice between benefiting just himself or, someone else. And in both lives, he chose the more challenging, selfless path. Perhaps then, Ben is one of the good guys as he had claimed all along. So is there a message there? That whatever makes us who we are stays with us no matter what life situation we are placed in? Are there good souls and bad souls that will remain that way regardless of how their life turns out? Is there an inner-intelligence that determines what we are?

This question of what makes us who we are was the theme of the 1998 movie Dark City. In the film, a society of aliens has created an artificial world and placed Earthlings inside it with different professions and socio-economic backgrounds. Once the humans were comfortable in their respective lives, the aliens would change them around, complete with lifelong memories of their new life. Millionaires would become paupers, healers would become killers, cops would be criminals, and all of them would believe that this is what their life had always been. What the aliens were looking for was what stayed the same when they continually shuffled the people’s circumstances. Whatever this constant was, was presumed to be the soul, and this is what the aliens wanted to find. If you put people into different life situations, will the same people always be good while others are always evil? Or, will it depend upon the life situation they find themselves in?

This element of what makes people who they are is also explored on Lost as seen through the flash-sideways, enabling us to see what stays the same when the characters are thrown into different life situations. In both parallel worlds, Kate is running away from her problems, Locke is angry at the world, Jack is dealing with daddy issues, Sayid is a killer, and Ben devises intricate plans to suit his Napoleon-esque power-hungry ego. This all comes down to the characters’ nature. But can it be changed, or at least, tweaked?

In both versions of his life, Ben feels that he hasn’t been treated fairly and therefore, has not been able to live up to his potential. Despite this belief, he still ends up making a sacrifice for the greater good. In one life he does this by giving up his blackmailed principal position in order to ensure his student Alex’s future. In the other, he gives up the power offered to him by MIB/Locke in order to return to help the side that he felt was the good one─a side that will have him despite his past transgressions. So does this mean that the villainous Ben Linus actually has a good soul? Yes…we all do. But some of us just have to clear away the crud that life has thrown at us in order to find it. A theme of Lost has always been that no one is truly bad or good. They just do what they think is right as seen through the filter of life that they have experienced.

As seen in both timelines, the characters sometimes choose to do bad things, but usually it is the result of situations they are thrown into. Each choice they make helps determine who they really are─tipping the scale more towards the ego/selfish side, or the spiritual/selfless one­. Dogen believed that Sayid’s internal scale had tipped too far towards “evil.” But everyone can be redeemed. In fact, no matter which side of the scale we are leaning, the universe will continually challenge us to grow with experiences that require us to make a decision about who we are. These decisions don’t change our soul, but can help us to get in touch with it. In some parallel versions of our life, we have grown ourselves by making a majority of choices that went against our selfish nature. In others, we’ve stayed pretty much the same by making an equal number of selfish and selfless choices. And in others, we’ve tipped the scale entirely towards the selfish side by usually choosing for just ourselves.

Ben’s father Roger Linus is someone who lives life full of regret in both of his timelines. On the island, he’s tipped the scale entirely towards the selfish side, blaming his son for the death of his wife and becoming an alcoholic in the process. In the parallel timeline, Roger blames himself for leaving the island, and while still relatively negative and regretful, seems to have a better relationship with his son. Not shown on Lost, but existing somewhere in the multiverse is a version of Roger Linus that is even stronger. Here, there is no blame at all, but acceptance. This version was able to accept his wife’s death and play the challenging role of both father and mother to his son. In “Dr. Linus” when Ben complained to his dad about the way his life turned out, instead of agreeing and being regretful about leaving the island, this version of Roger Linus would have commended his son for completing his doctorate, dedicating his life to helping others, and being able to take care of him in his old age. This stronger version of Roger Linus would’ve told his son that he was proud of him, just as Jack told his son in his parallel timeline.

On Lost, it seems as though the decisions that the characters make on the island, influence their parallel lives. Island Hurely has risen above his belief of feeling like a jinx and is rewarded with good luck in the parallel timeline. Jack has taken a leap of faith by risking his life with Alpert and is beginning to accept that he has what it takes, enabling him to resolve his issues with his son in the parallel time. Ben’s selfless decision to return to Jacob allowed him to make another selfless decision for Alex. On the other hand, Sayid who has decided to kill on the island, eventually makes that same choice in his parallel life. Perhaps this is why he is not married to Nadia in this life, it is sort of his punishment because he does not “deserve” her. In both timelines, Sayid wants to be good but always makes the choice to kill. I personally feel that the choice was a bit unfair in the off-island timeline since he was kidnapped and Keamy had threatened his family, but hopefully, Sayid’s story doesn’t end there.

Overall, the message for us is that even though things may not appear to be going according to our plans, it is not our plans that necessarily matter. Despite how things may appear, we are part of a much bigger plan. Richard Alpert feels betrayed and misled by Jacob, dedicating multiple lifetimes to a plan that seems to have failed. Was all his hard work and dedication for nothing? Even if the plan doesn’t work out, the answer is no. The reason is because all his hard work was not ultimately about helping Jacob, but helping himself. Just as Jack thought that the lighthouse would be helping someone else, we come to learn that it was all for his benefit. Similarly, our journey through life isn’t about how we succeed in mastering the material world. It’s about how we succeed in mastering ourselves─overcoming our own selfish desires. And the better you do, the easier you’ll make it for everyone else.

If things have been particularly challenging for you, perhaps you just have more growing to do because you’ve taken on a more challenging role. Each time you are presented with a tough decision and make the more selfless, challenging choice, you’ll be presented with fewer of those types of decisions in the future. Make the more selfish choice however, and you’ll be presented with those same situations again and again.

If you want to know how you’re doing, just look at your own life. What parts appear to flow smoothly and what parts feel like a broken record? Why does Sayid continually have to make decisions about killing? So he can choose to walk away from it. Why does Jack always end up in situations that he feels need to be fixed? So he can accept something even if it’s broken. Why does Kate always have something to run away from? So she can choose not to and settle down. Why does Locke always have crap happen to him? So he can learn not to react and be grateful for what he does have. Why did Hurley always experience bad luck? So he could learn how to make his own luck. Why did Claire keep having her baby taken away? So she could really want to raise it on her own.  And why do you always have that same thing that always happens to you? Next time it happens and you’re about to act the same way you usually do, take the more challenging path. You’ll be one step closer to redeeming the main character of your life story.

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.

The song “Sundown” was inspired by Cathy Smith, Gord’s mistress at the time who he later claimed in interviews was “the one woman in my life who most hurt me.” Actually, Gord may have gotten off easy. Easier than John Belushi anyway, into whom Cathy injected a fatal drug overdose. So is the message of the episode “Sundown” that women are nothing but temptations that should be avoided? Not at all. In fact, the end of the episode hinted that the one hope the island has for survival is from a woman. But we’ll get to that later.

Metaphorically speaking, if the skeletons in the cave are Adam and Eve, and the island is Eden, and Jacob is God, who is the snake? If there was ever any doubt, in this episode it became clear that it is the smoke monster, or should we say, snake monster. He slithers about, he deceives by mixing truth with lies (promising Claire that he will retrieve Aaron from the Temple, yet, Kate is there so who knows), and now, we see that he is tempting the Losties with forbidden fruit. In addition to promising Claire that he will get Aaron back, he promises Sawyer the answer to the question of why he’s on the island, he promises Sayid to reunite him with his deceased love, and just like the serpent in Eden, he seems to be speaking the truth.

For the record, while I’m using the Adam and Eve myth as the morality parable it is most often associated with, to be clear, I do not subscribe to this perspective. The story of the Garden of Eden is ultimately not about morals, good and evil, or even temptation. It is about the creation of our physical universe with the tree of knowledge of good and evil representing opposites that exist in a physical world, as opposed to morality. It could have just as easily been the tree of knowledge of light and dark or up and down. The snake symbolizes time that also only exists in the physical realm. (Possibly because the snake sheds its skin. The symbol of the snake with its tail in its mouth is known as Ouroboros and represents the repeating cycle of time, not putting your foot in your mouth after succumbing to temptation.) Put it all together and the eating of the fruit is symbolic of the creation of our physical world. Period. The misinterpretation of the story that has formed the basis of the world’s patriarchal religions is pretty much responsible for most of the problems throughout our history—wars, ego, pride, discrimination, bigotry, self-righteousness, witch hunts, male chauvinism, etc.  But that’s a column for another day. Here, we are talking about temptation.

On the island, Sayid has taken a bite of the snake monster’s forbidden fruit—killing Dogen in exchange for the chance to be reunited with his beloved Nadia. Ah, what Sayid will do for a woman.  The writers are really trying to get us to believe that the flash-sideways are a result of the snake monster’s granted wishes. This may entirely be the case, but I’m not convinced. The major reason is that in Sayid’s flash-sideways, Nadia is indeed alive and in love with him, but married to his brother. Is this simply an example of the infamous genie/leprechaun  trickster myth—be careful what you wish for because you’ll get it but not as you want it? Perhaps, but for the first time in any Sayid-centric episode, Sayid resists the temptation.

As I wrote about in “‘He’s Our You’—How Proxies Play a Role In Our Lives”: “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.” He is lured in by the ladies and then beat up by them. From Ilana and Elsa to Rousseau and Amira, Sayid kept repeating the same mistakes by falling for the temptation of lust or violence. But in his flash-sideways, Sayid finally falls for neither. Not only does he not commit adultery with Nadia and dishonor his brother, he also does not seek out revenge—it finds him. In this way, Sayid is redeemed. As far as I’m concerned, his final act of violence in the flash-sideways was in self-defense, as well as in defense of his brother’s family.

This does not seem to be the granting of a wish, but rather, a final test or result of passing his tests. He tells his brother that he is no longer a man who seeks out violence, and tells Nadia that because of what he’s done in his past, he is not worthy of her. Here, he has clearly passed, and is rewarded by successfully beating the bad guys and rescuing Jin. On the island though, it’s another story. While he tells Dogen that he’s changed, he’s still not quite there and has been lured by temptation. Off-island Sayid has been redeemed, but on-island Sayid still has work to do. Will Christian Shephard come to the rescue and much like Anakin Skywalker, trade sides in the end to overthrow the chief bad guy and save the rebellion…and himself? Perhaps. Or perhaps the savior will be someone completely unexpected—at least from the snake monster’s perspective.

“That boy is our only hope,” the ghost of Obi-Wahn laments to Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back. “No,” Yoda replies, “there may be another.” It’s always kind of disappointed me that Return of the Jedi really didn’t play up on this comment by having Leia somehow use her Jedi powers to save the day. I think it would’ve been cool if she showed up the boys. As with Star Wars, in Lost, all the serious contenders for candidacy seem to also be men. Of the six infamous numbers, all seem to be men, and Kate’s name isn’t even anywhere to be found in the cave. Despite being described by the snake monster as Jacob’s cave, I’m still leaning towards the possibility that it’s his. At the very least, it doesn’t seem like the lighthouse and the cave would both be Jacob’s. Why would he need to write down the numbers and names twice? I’ve heard a theory that perhaps the lighthouses belongs to the Man In Black and that’s why Jacob wanted it smashed. Cool idea, but mythologically, if Jacob does represent light, it should be his while the underground cavern should represent dark, earth energy or the Man In Black.

Since we did not see Kate’s name on the cave wall, the implication is that she is not a serious contender for candidacy, and might not be a threat to the Man In Black’s loophole plan. But while the Man In Black “can picture every move that a man can make, getting lost in her lovin’ is [his] first mistake. Every move??? As in a game???? And like Gordon is he too making a mistake by underestimating a woman? The song also provides another hint: “Sometimes I think it’s a sin when I feel like I’m winning when I’m losing again.” I feel this is exactly where the Man In Black is at. Jacob has a loophole of his own, and like most villains, the Man In Black’s ego blinds him of the unsuspecting threat to his plan—Kate.

I’m not a big backgammon player, but I’ve got a mean Othello strategy. And I’ll tell you exactly what it is: let the other player take up the entire middle of the board so he thinks he’s winning, then, once he’s surrounded himself with himself and has no moves to make, use your edges to turn the tide and flip over all his pieces in mighty swoops.

At the very end of the episode, the Man In Black seems to be in a very good position. He’s killed Jacob, killed everyone in the temple who he hasn’t recruited, and even gotten a possible new candidate to join his team. He gives Kate an intrigued look, but then confidently leads his team to certain victory. Yet, just as Kate got Sawyer and Juliet to turn the sub around, I think she is going to begin to flip over all of the Man In Black’s pieces right back to white. I could be wrong, but I hope not because there is a very strong goddess energy in the air these days and I’d love to write a column about it. We just need an episode with that as the focus to make it happen.

The writers have actually given another slight hint that it might be a woman who tricks the Man In Black. Considering that up until now, all the Season 6 episodes have been following the same order of character-focused episodes as Season 1 (they’ve both focused first on everyone, then Kate, Locke, and Jack), many people assumed this episode would center around Sun since she was next in the lineup. The Season 1 episode with her was called “House of the Rising Sun,” and this Season 6 one was also a play on her name. However, it was all a ruse. The episode focused on Sayid and his love for a woman. I don’t think this title was chosen by accident.

The insinuation might be that just as we took it for granted that a woman would play a role as we expected, the Man In Black may be fooled as well. Kate, Sun, or possibly even Ilana, may give the Man In Black a challenge he wasn’t expecting. If so, that will be a great episode to talk about the goddess.

In the meantime though, what was the message of this episode for us? The theme was obviously about temptation—about making deals with the devil. We all have our weaknesses, and the universe (devil, Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, serpent, anti-Christ, whatever you wanna call it) will continually tempt us with whatever it is. Every time we resist, we get that much stronger to make the right choice the next time. However, when we give in, we reap the repercussions. Not to worry though, because either way, you’ll get tested again. No matter what your weakness, you will continually be tested until you successfully overcome it and then successfully pass the multiple retests. Why does the world work this way? Why can’t we just indulge in sex, violence, junk food, and alcohol whenever we want? Well, we can—the choice is ours. But without having vices in this world that we know we shouldn’t give into that often if at all, there would really be no challenge in living life. It would just be like the Garden of Eden where everything was handed to us.

As I mentioned in “Why LOST Can Be A Substitute For ‘Willy Wonka’” it’s like that scene in The Matrix when agent Smith tells Morpheus that humans rejected the first matrix program where everything was perfect. That program was our mythological Garden of Eden. And it was torturously boring. Much like the Man In Black, Satan isn’t truly evil. It just represents the challenge that enables us to see what we’re made of. The Garden of Eden is cool at first, but after a while it gets really old. There’s a great Twilight Zone where this crook gets shot and finds himself in Heaven. He can have everything he desires. At first, he loves it. But after several months, he begs to be sent to Hell instead. It is then that he is told that he’s already there.

So don’t hate the struggle. Embrace it. It makes life interesting. Without it, there would be nothing for us to overcome, nothing to resist, nothing to strive for. Still, while nobody gets to walk between the raindrops, there are those who’ve had charmed lives. Everything goes right for them and they rarely have to struggle. But you know what? They’re soft. There might be a parallel universe where you are such a person. Where everything has gone right for you. But judging by the way the world is headed now, I’d think twice before wishing you could switch places with that version of yourself. You are in a much better position for handling the challenges that may be heading our way.

Even if there aren’t too many of these global challenges, you are at least in a better position to handle whatever might come your way…personally.  And something will. Because you are a Lost fan. You are attracted to an intelligently written show about people with major issues in mysterious and dangerous surroundings filled with complicated questions. Lost is preparing you and other Lost fans for the future. So should time start skipping in our world, or multiple versions of ourselves begin showing up, or people begin getting bloody noses, while the rest of the world may panic, you’ll know what to do. And perhaps if you’ve grown yourself enough you can take charge and comfort everyone else by letting them know that they shouldn’t worry. You know exactly what’s going on. After all, you’re a Lost fan.

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.

The concept of parallel timelines is coming up a lot lately in various TV shows, films, and commercials. In the Season 8 premiere of The Family Guy titled “Road to the Multiverse,” Stewie and Brian explore a series of alternate universes. The episode reminded me of the nineties TV show, Sliders where Jerry O’Connell’s character leaps into various versions of earth along with three friends. Most recently is ABC’s FlashForward, which offers peaks into a future that apparently can be altered, rendering it as an alternate timeline. There have also been several commercials lately featuring doppelgangers of characters that exist in a happier existence because they chose to go back to school, save wisely, or buy a particular car. The insinuation is that if they don’t make these wise choices they will continue within their current, crappy existence. My favorite movie about alternate timelines is The Butterfly Effect from 2004 where Ashton Kutcher’s character continually changes moments from his past to yield unexpected results.  All of these themes could be teaching us how time may really work, and with the veil of our illusionary reality seeming to get thinner, we just might get to actually experience it for ourselves real soon.

According to most of the theories within the realm of quantum physics, time is an illusion, or at least, does not work in the linear fashion it appears to from our perspective. The basic idea is that every possibility that could’ve ever happened, may one day happen, or is happening all exist in one moment, and that what we focus on becomes our linear experience. The concept is most popularly known as the many-worlds or multiverse theory (hence, the Family Guy episode title). The theory holds that when there are options for an object to exist in multiple states, the universe reveals equally as many universes where that object can experience any one of those multiple options. Similarly, according to the concept of superposition, if we do not know the state of a given object, it actually exists in all possible states as long as we don’t look to see. Once we do, the object is then limited to that single possibility. (On Lost, Jack wonders why they’ve never seen the lighthouse—symbolic of spiritual enlightenment—before. Hurley responds that maybe they weren’t looking for it.) So, putting these concepts together and making it relevant for us: in any given moment there are as many parallel worlds as there are options to choose from, and wherever our mind goes, we go.

It sounds kind of confusing, but really, it’s no different than a video game. You can hold a video game disc in your hand. On that disc is all the programming that the characters within it could ever experience. Its entire life and all its life possibilities exist in one moment. As you play that game, you continually have the freedom of choice to select various paths and options that will lead to a new set of circumstances. Of course, all of these choices and circumstances have already been written into the programming code. But from the character’s perspective in the game, it all seems like a series of new experiences that have formed one path through its life. Should the character die, it’s game over from its point of view and those in that particular version of its reality. But as the game players, we can simply hit the reset button and play the game again. Perhaps if the character had memories or feelings, it might feel as though certain aspects of this second game seem vaguely familiar. It might recognize a major character on its journey or get a sense of déjà vu when it makes a particular choice it had made in the previous game.

The reason the video game metaphor seems to fit so well with our reality, is because this world may work similarly. The major difference is that we may be the ones playing our own characters’ game pieces without realizing it. How ironic that we may have had full control of our lives all along, but that since most of us tend to focus on worrying and negative outcomes that’s where we go.

Imagine you have an upcoming challenge to face.  Successful people tend to focus on the best-case scenario and imagine how they can get there. They also imagine possible hindrances to their objective, but they don’t dwell on them or worry about them. When most people have challenges however, this is exactly what they do. They imagine the worst-case scenario first, in order to prepare for it should it happen. They then imagine different ways they could deal with it. This creates a picture in their mind along with the emotions they would feel during such a scenario. What they don’t realize is that they are giving energy to this outcome, and thereby moving their game piece toward that reality.

This is what the law of attraction mentioned in The Secret is really all about. It isn’t magical thinking. It’s simply about experiencing the best version of yourself that already exists. It’s about leaping into the reality where things work the way you want simply by focusing on that outcome.  Much like the 1973 Mets, “Ya gotta believe!” You might not get exactly what you envision, but you will get that much closer. And maybe, by continuing to believe, you’ll eventually get there.

So if you wish your life were different, that’s your first mistake. You are focusing on what you don’t want rather than what you do. Instead of thinking about the negatives, think and act as though your life is as you want it to be and your mindset will carry you to that version of reality. Right now, there is a version of you that is totally fulfilled—focus on that, connect an emotion with it, live as though it’s already happened (there’s that leap of faith theme again mentioned in “Lost ‘316’ on Leaps of Faith & the Cycle of Life”). Do this and you just might begin to experience this reality, while your current reality will continue to exist for another version of yourself. Most likely, your thoughts will simply nudge you closer to where you want to be, but at least it’s a start. And once you get some momentum going, you might get to experience the very best version of yourself. This doesn’t necessarily mean that your life will be easy, but that you will be the most fulfilled. That you have come to terms with an illness or handicap, feel like the luckiest person in the world, or have patched up issues with your son.

From the beginning, Lost has focused on daddy issues. Perhaps these were simply leaked out from Jack’s consciousness all along. Perhaps everyone’s issues had kind of blended together creating a problem stew that had to be properly resolved for the characters to be redeemed. Those with the deepest issues led to events that showed up the most on the island and took the longest to resolve. Why did Jacob want Jack to see that mirror into his life in the lighthouse? Perhaps it wasn’t so much to make Jack feel watched, but to see how his life could be. Much like the ghost of Christmas Future referenced by Sawyer in “The Substitute,” maybe Jacob is just giving Jack a glimpse into a possible future where things can work out, or, remind him of his troubled past with his dad so he can deal with those issues from a new perspective—and let go of them.

Past or future—it doesn’t matter. It’s all an illusion that only exists in our head. The only thing that matters is right now, because it is from the now that we can set the course for our lives. Of course, while we do have the freedom to choose any version of our lives that have been written, we cannot leap into one that has not been. It’s just like those old Choose Your Own Adventure books I’ve mentioned before. You can choose any combination of adventures in the book, but you cannot choose an adventure that isn’t written in its pages. Similarly, you can chose to slip into a version of your life where you have a loving family or where you run a successful business or have become a famous writer, but there is probably no version of your life where you can fly or are a super villain or the richest person in the world. Chances are, it’s just not your path. But it might be someone else’s. Well, except maybe the flying thing. But then again, you never know.

In “The Lighthouse” Lost has planted a seed that encourages us to imagine what other versions of our lives might be like. What would we find by going down the rabbit hole or through the looking glass? This episode was filled with so many Alice in Wonderland references it almost became distracting. We’ve seen the storybook before, and the key hiding underneath the rabbit. Now, we’re getting tons of scenes where characters are looking at their reflections—in bathroom mirrors, in water, in lighthouses, etc. Perhaps in beating us over the head with the symbolism, Lost is simply trying to get us to take a look at ourselves. What kind of story are we creating for our lives? Is it one that is suiting us?

It would seem that Claire has created a story for her life where a group of bad guys have forcefully taken her child away from her. Does she really believe that story, or is it just one she has created to relieve guilt of abandoning her child? Someone mentioned to me that the scene reminded them of them of the film Memento, where Guy Pearce’s character comes to learn the truth about his quest, but decides to continue with his fabricated story in order to give him something to strive for. Similarly, we sometimes lie to ourselves to avoid cognitive dissonance. Unfortunately, these lies often become self-fulfilling prophecies that we create by the very means described above. Just as Claire has created an enemy out of the Others, we often think ourselves into troubled relationships and scenarios that are completely unnecessary and often even harmful. Lost simply seems to be asking us to take a good look at ourselves. Are you challenging yourself to be the highest possible version of who you could be? Is there a character on the show whose faults and issues seem similar to your own? Sometimes, we are too close to our own problems to see them for what they are. It’s easy to see what a control freak Jack is, or how Kate always runs from her problems, or how Locke creates his own troubles. But it’s much more difficult for us to see when we do the exact same thing.

So if there’s a character on Lost that you most relate to, just for fun, reflect on the possibility that perhaps you too share the same issues. If so, how might you go about correcting them? Then, do that. Stop being a victim like Locke and rise above your challenges. Face your fears like Kate will have to do if she will be redeemed. And stop trying to control every detail of life like Jack has done…until his conversation with his son. Lost has given us a cornucopia of character archetypes to choose from, so chances are, one fits you—or perhaps a combination might. Regardless, Lost gives us the tools to understand life and help make our own noticeably better. No wonder so many people see it as much more than just a TV show.

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.

Lost

In Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, eccentric candy maker Willy Wonka chooses five children from around the world to partake in a tour of his glorious and magical candy factory. While each child believes that his or her prize will include a lifetime supply of Wonka chocolate, in truth, Wonka is looking for a candidate to replace him as custodian of the phantasmagorical factory. Sounding familiar yet? If not, no worries because we’re just getting started.

Wonka’s nemesis is a rival candy maker known as Slugworth, who, we are led to believe, tempts each of the children with riches should they bring him Wonka’s newest secret candy, The Everlasting Gobstopper. This shouldn’t be too difficult because all of the children, save one, are spoiled, greedy, brats. The only one who isn’t, is Charlie Bucket who has had a rough life, but is a good kid. Helping Wonka run his factory is a group of strange helpers known as the Oompa Loomas. Despite never helping the children get out of life-threatening danger, the Oompa Loompas consider themselves to be the good guys by singing preachy songs about proper behavior.

So, plugging in our Lost proxies, we can imagine that the mystical candy factory is the mysterious island, Wonka is Jacob and Slugworth is the Man in Black. The Oompa Loompas are the Others and the children are the Losties. Which children they are depend upon which formula you use to plug in. If we were to go purely by archetype, then Shannon is the spoiled brat Veruca Salt, Hurley is the greedy Augustus Gloop, Ana Lucia is the loudmouth Violet Beauregarde, Sawyer is the sheriff wannabe Mike Teevee and Locke is the loveable loser, Charlie Bucket. For our purposes though, let’s just say rich girl Sun could also be Veruca and tomboy Kate could also be Violet. Poor little Desmond could also be Charlie Bucket, but we won’t give up on Locke just yet.

Okay, so I’ve now compared Lost to Willy Wonka, just as easily as I could’ve with say, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, or Star Wars. True, but we’ve already heard about those. And the new information we received in “The Substitute” really gives us a big clue that we can use Willy Wonka as a key to decode. The clue, is that of the concept of a candidate.

The idea of using a series of tests to pick a candidate to replace someone in a very important (and magical) position exists in many stories other than Willy Wonka. For example, after passing a series of tests in the final scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy is asked to replace the knight guarding Christ’s Holy Grail. Doing so would allow him to become immortal so that he could, say, later survive an atom bomb explosion by hiding in a refrigerator.

On Lost, we are led to believe that Jacob and his nemesis have been given eternal life so that they too can guard something of vast importance—an island that seems to defy the laws of the universe. Why are two people needed in this version of the myth? Well, Lost has set up that precedent numerous times, as explained by the button-pushing chore performed in the Swan Station. It’s basically to prevent you from going crazy. While it didn’t work for Radzinsky, (who killed himself leaving behind only a blood stain on the wall according to his partner Kelvin) perhaps the reason was because Radzinsky, as we have seen, was not up to the challenge. Radzinsky was impatient and angry and hadn’t grown enough to take on the challenge of sitting in a contained place and pushing a button every 108 minutes. What if the whole button-pushing thing was actually a test to see who could take on the responsibilities of the island? A test he failed. A test Kelvin failed. And a test that Desmond failed, but came closer than anyone else. Sorta like Charlie Bucket, who also failed by stealing Fizzy-Lifting drinks with his Grandpa Joe. But “so shines a good deed in a weary world…” Hold on, I’m getting ahead of myself.

In “The Substitue” the Man in Black tells Sawyer that he was once a man. Perhaps then, Jacob was too, and both died on the island to be resurrected as its protectors. Much like Locke not believing the button has to be pushed, the Man in Black has lost his faith that the island needs to be protected. And much like Locke, he is wrong, as we see in the parallel timeline with the island being underwater. A timeline where the Man In Black seemingly wins.

As I’ve written in my previous two columns from this season (“What the LA X Refers To” and “Tale of Two Kates”) , I still believe the events of the parallel 2004 timeline are really happening after the events we are seeing on the island in 2007—after Man In Black attacks the temple with Sawyer (and possibly Claire, Christian, and Sayid from the inside). Dogen has already said that the Man in Black will be coming to the temple. Why? Well, why build a temple to begin with? Why was Solomon’s Temple built and later, the Dome of the Rock in its place? Because both sit on hallowed ground where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac (the Biblical Jacob’s father) and Muhammad ascended to heaven. So the temple on the island also likely sits on hallowed ground or must contain a sacred treasure (something akin to the Ark of the Covenant?) that would allow the Man In Black passage back into our world. Perhaps it is the rejuvenating pool. Maybe Man In Black must kill Sawyer and resurrect him in the pool. Maybe his plan is to trick Sawyer into taking his place so that he can finally leave (just as Sayid the torturer is being tortured, Sawyer the conman is being conned). And what might this Man In Black do once he returns home? The end of the episode gives us a clue.

The Man in Black says he wants to get the “hell off” the island. Does Sawyer? “Hell ya.” Ladies and gentleman, should the Man In Black escape the island he will bring with him Hell on Earth. Perhaps not personally or even purposely. Perhaps in that parallel timeline, the changes in the Losties’ lives lead to a butterfly effect that alters the course of history and brings about the destruction of the world. Whether purposeful or accidental however, it all seems to be put into action by the Man In Black. And who, pray tell can stop him? Only the Christ. And who is the Christ? Well, there are many Christ archetypes on Lost: Locke, Desmond, and Jacob just to name a few. And all have good arguments to be the savior. Desmond was told by Eloise Hawking that the island wasn’t through with him yet, and he also sacrificed himself on the island only to be reborn naked (without sin). Locke has suffered in his life and also brought back from the dead (by Jacob and later physically by Man In Black). Jacob has been sacrificed, yet, we see what could be a young apparition or resurrection of him (much like the young Spock who is regenerated in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock) warning his nemesis about the rules.

As I mention in The Myth of Lost, in mythology, whenever we see ghosts, they usually speak the truth, and ghosts of children nearly always speak the truth. When Man In Black first sees what could be Jacob, the young boy is barefoot and has his arms spread out in a crucified Christ pose revealing bloody hands. He shows up first as his nemesis tries to recruit Richard and then as he begins to recruit Sawyer, seemingly to remind him that he cannot kill either one of them. Those are the rules. They must make the choice of their own freewill. Of course, this theme is right out of the Bible, which also teaches that we are given the freewill to make choices on our own. Despite Man In Black’s insistence to the contrary (as he explains to Sawyer in the cave), it is becoming increasingly clear that Jacob is the one who represents freedom of choice, though, much like the Man In Black, does offer little nudges here and there to fit his own agenda.

So, of Desmond, Locke, and Jacob, who do I think will save the world? Who do I think will most likely take on the role of the Messianic figure and sacrifice himself for the good of humanity? While I think all three characters will have a role, I believe it will be Locke. There are two clues as to why I believe this. The first was in the much talked about Lost Supper promo pictures taken of the cast. In all three pictures, Locke is sitting in the middle of the table in Jesus’ seat. When I first saw the picture, I thought that since Locke was dead, the image was actually of the Man In Black in Locke’s body. Having been given a taste of this season though, I now feel that it is actually Locke in that position. Yes, Locke who has been buried on the island and beaten down in his parallel life. Either way, I think he will rise to save the day. Why? Once again, we turn to our friend, mythology.

If there is one thing Lost teaches us, it is that we should not underestimate the power of a proxy. A proxy is basically a metaphor, or yes, a substitute, for a particular character—one that can be replaced for another because it has similar qualities (See “‘He’s Our You’—How Proxies Play a Role In Our Lives” for more). Through the character names it has given us, the allusions to books and movies, and its own storyline, Lost has taught us that stories tend to repeat themselves, and themes set up by one story are likely to show up again in another. While Lost does break the rules and surprise us every once in awhile, I highly doubt that they will go against one theme that they’ve spent their entire six seasons reinforcing: Suffering characters who rise against their challenges are, in the end, redeemed. On Lost, the redemption oddly seems to be death, but that’s an argument for a different column. The point is, they overcome their issues and can be at peace.

This theme exists throughout mythology—a hero is someone who suffers. And the more he suffers, the more he grows. The old adage is whatever doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger. One only has to look to The Odyssey, Clash of the Titans, Star Wars, The Ten Commandments, The Wizard of Oz, The Lord of the Rings, and your own life to see that this is true. And who does Lost go out of its way to show us has suffered more than any other character? John Locke. “Chin up, “Hugo tells him in the parallel timeline, “things are gonna work out.”

Cut To: Dead Locke on the beach.

The juxtaposition is humorous, but the message wasn’t really for Locke at all, it was for us. The writers know what they are doing, and things aren’t as they appear—both in the show, and in our lives during these trying times. Suffering will help make Locke, and us, stronger.

In any dimension, Locke’s life is hard mostly because he makes it hard. He became a paraplegic because he continued to harass his father who he knew was a deranged criminal. He stayed in a crappy job that had a crappy boss that no one was forcing him to stay at. Even in his parallel life, couldn’t he have asked his fiancée to pick him up from the airport? If not, he at least could’ve asked someone for help when the wheelchair platform got stuck. But no, he was too proud. He was also too proud to park in a handicap spot. And too headstrong to admit he couldn’t do a walkabout or work on a construction site. Quite simply, Locke’s ego gets him in trouble and is responsible for much of his misfortune. Locke’s handicap is the universe’s way of teaching him not to be too proud—to reduce his ego. Pride is Locke’s real handicap.

As mentioned in The Myth of Lost, Locke needs to learn to accept his paraplegic state. Insisting to Helen that he won’t call Jack and her ripping up his card is a first step, but it wasn’t for the right reasons. At that time, Locke doesn’t want to attempt to get help because he doesn’t have faith, not because he’s cool with his situation. Like island Locke before he lost his faith, Locke needs to believe in miracles as Helen tries to convince him of. Helen is good for Locke. Just like Helen of Troy, she may be the inspiration he needs to go to war with his ego, which he’ll need to do if he’s going to live up to his potential.

As with all the characters on Lost, life is hard. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be a challenge and we’d find ourselves pretty bored. In The Matrix, Agent Smith echoes this truism when he tells Morpheus that humans rejected the first matrix program where everything was perfect. We are here to be challenged and to grow.

On Lost, Man In Black tells Sawyer that candidates have three choices. First, they can do nothing. This would make them the metaphorical zombies of our world, just going through their daily lives without growing until they die. The second choice is to accept the job, using the rules of society to rise to the top. Unfortunately, this choice often leaves one blind to the hidden truths of our world, and one is often left following rules, religions, or subconscious patterns without daring to go beyond and ask the deeper question—what lies beyond? The third choice is to leave the rat race behind and seek your own truth. While this option is often the toughest and the most ideal for one’s destiny, it is often taken on prematurely, before one has grown using the challenges of society.

The trick then, is to start out playing by the rules and growing as they challenge you so that you can later break them and seek your own truth and meaning. On Lost, Jack begins as a man of science, playing by the rules, but has slowly taken on the qualities of a man of faith. Locke became a man of faith on the island, but is now retracing his steps in a parallel life to relearn the rules he always dismissed so that his faith can become even stronger later in the game. It is very difficult to find someone who excels in both the material rules and the spiritual seeking, and perhaps that is why the island’s candidacy requires two people. Two people who can keep each other balanced on the metaphorical scale—or, the real scale seen in Jacob’s cave…or, was that really the Man In Black’s cave? It is more fitting of the dark energy to be underground. Usually light energy is high up, in say, a lighthouse. But I’ll leave that until next week’s episode to discuss. For now, let’s just take the Man In Black’s words with a grain of salt.

In order to become the highest version of one’s self then, it would seem that there is a sequence to reaching enlightenment. First, one needs to follow the rules of the game. Then, one needs to be challenged while playing the game. This makes the player stronger and able to overcome increasingly more difficult challenges. Continually being beaten down by life must cause one to lose his ego, but if one is not completely beaten by life, he or she will grow their faith. This makes the player bigger than the sum of his parts. Only then can he break the rules of the game for a purpose greater than the self. This is redemption. This is destiny. This, is Locke’s destiny. And I’m not telling anyone what the Locke character can or can’t do, I’m just saying that this is how it goes according to the myth that Lost, up until now, seems to be following.

Like most “bad” guys, i.e. Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars, Emperor Palpatine in Return of the Jedi, etc., the Man In Black underestimates the power of faith—in this case, Locke’s. Man In Black and many Lost fans believe Locke’s story is over. He’s dead and buried and was scared and confused when he died. Even in his other dimension, Locke the substitute teacher doesn’t offer much of a threat to the Man in Black’s dastardly plans. Yet, did little Frodo offer much of a threat? What about the “pitiful rebellion” in Jedi? Did anyone ever think that poor little Charlie Bucket stood a chance at winning a golden ticket, let alone inheriting the entire Wonka empire? In the end, Charlie’s challenges that had beaten him down and crushed his ego enabled him to shine much like a little candle in a dark room. Charlie’s inner peace gave him the strength to resist the temptation of riches from the Everlasting Gobstopper, and so he returned it to Wonka. Wonka, in turn, soon reveals that it had all been a ruse. That Mr. Slugworth really worked for him and that it was all a test. A test concocted to find the perfect candidate to take over for him and look after the chocolate factory and the Oompa Loompas. The curtain had been pulled back at last.

Much like Charlie Bucket, Locke must make up for failing his test. All it takes is one act that can redeem him and thereby, redeem everyone.  Perhaps Jack faces a similar challenge, and he and Locke will take the place of the Man In Black and Jacob. Or, maybe Locke will arrive on the island with Helen back in 1977 and die there, becoming Adam and Eve to be reborn and start a new world.

Even if any of these scenarios are even close, there are still so many questions. If Locke is still close to his dad in the parallel world, are we to believe that he became handicapped from some other reason? When Locke was wheeling down the halls in the high school, was that young kid he spoke with supposed to be Walt from 2004 who obviously had to be recast? Why wasn’t Kate one of the numbers? Is it a men’s only club? If so, does that mean that the 42 is Jin and not Sun? Were the numbers the Losties all along, or was Jacob just keeping track of them by their seat numbers on Oceanic 815? Either way, why do they show up everywhere? Do they signify markers where each Lostie has to go, i.e., the Swan Station? Are the whispers the dead souls on the island, and the reason bodies had to be buried was because the souls would possess them? If so, has the ghost of Rousseau possessed Claire? Is the reason why Claire seemed to recognize Jin because she is actually Rousseau? If the show is ultimately about finding a candidate, what really was the purpose of DHARMA on the show? Is there still something else going on or a major twist planned?

There are still many, many questions left on Lost, and while some will be answered, much as with life, I expect most will not be.  But more importantly, I think the show has played a greater part in helping us solve our own mysteries and co-create our own lives. We may never get to fully understand exactly why the numbers appeared everywhere, why everyone was connected, or what a snozzberry is, but who cares? We are the music makers. And we are the dreamers of dreams.

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 the February 4th “Official LOST Audio Podcast,” Damon Lindelof insists that the “flash-sideways” we’re seeing in Season 6 are in fact not alternate timelines. In other words, they do not have any lesser value than the other timeline and both are of equal importance. For this reason, I will refer to events of the flash-sideways as occurring in a parallel timeline. This does not necessarily mean that the events are happening along side each other. As I pointed out last week (in “What the LA X in ‘LA X’ Really Refers To”), it is entirely possible that this off-island timeline will occur after the island storyline ends and what we are seeing is the resolution of the characters in the show.

Of course, it’s also possible that the two timelines are occurring alongside each other. If this is the case, it is likely that these ripples in time will eventually merge once the flash-sideways events of 2004 catch up to 2007. This may cause a continual loop that leads to the Losties (and the world) being stuck in time (similar to the Star Trek TNG episode “Cause and Effect” written about in “’Follow the Leader’—Can Changing One Moment Change Everything?”).

Whether the flash-sideways is occurring alongside the other timeline or will occur afterwards, since time is an illusion anyway, the mythological message is similar. The island can represent a realm where you create the story of your destiny, after which, you’re born into a life where you get to experience it. So, whereas in most of my mythological interpretations of the show, I describe the island as a metaphor for our world on earth, in this case, I’m reversing it by saying that the island could also be seen as a metaphor for a heavenly realm where we write the story of our lives. That’s the beauty of mythology: its metaphors lend itself to many interpretations as millions of Lost fans can attest to.

Imagine if before we are born, our soul (energy, karma, light, essence, player of the video game of life, etc.), decides on the story it wants to experience in this lifetime. It chooses the people and events that will help it to grow past the issues it had experienced in its last lifetime.  So, the people who are the closest to you will likely challenge you with your biggest issues since these issues will take the longest to resolve.  That’s why, as they sing in the Broadway play Avenue Q, “The More You [Love] Someone the More They Drive You Crazy.” Your family, loved ones, and coworkers are put into your life to help you overcome your biggest issues.

Some faiths even claim that we continually get reincarnated with the same set of souls lifetime after lifetime. So your best friend now could’ve been your father or mother in a previous life. Your lover could’ve been a teacher or competitor. Your boss could’ve been an enemy on the battlefield. We keep coming back with these same souls to work out these issues, just as the Losties seem to be doing in their parallel timeline, and these connections and experiences have all been planned in our soul story from the start.

From a narrative perspective, this spiritual metaphor is easier to understand if the flash-sideways is happening after the events of 2007 because it’ll give us a sense of closure. Yes, Kate started out on the run in this new timeline, just as before, but in “What Kate Does,” we see her do something that goes against her nature. Instead of running away from a problem she has created, she endangers herself by trying to make it right. By coming back to help Claire and going with her to the hospital, she puts her own life at risk for someone else. That’s redemption. Getting into the cab that was occupied by Claire is, of course, no accident. It is fate pulling the strings to enable Kate to experience a test she was always meant to have.

Speaking of “pulling the strings,” Heroes fans may have recognized the cab driver from that scene as David H. Lawrence XVII who plays “Puppet Master” Eric Doyle on the series. Doyle is a villain who can control people’s actions, and he especially likes doing so to the cute blonde on the show, Claire (the cheerleader). Was this a purposeful hint from the Lost producers or one of those happy coincidences set up by the puppet masters of our universe? Either way, the message is once again that Lost is simply giving us hidden messages that reveal truths about our world.

If our life story really is all planned out before we come to this world, it really could explain some of the more bizarre mysteries we experience here. As stated above, when we recognize some of the key players from our destiny we can get a sense that we already know someone the moment we meet them.  This could also explain love at first sight—your soul is instantly recognizing someone from your future that you are destined to have a soulful connection with. The soul doesn’t experience time, it is eternal, so it can recognize another soul from a future time or a past life. It may also just resonate with meeting someone from your predetermined chosen path—someone who is meant to help you successfully navigate it.

Another weird phenomenon this may explain is déjà vu. What if the phenomenon happens when you experience an event that your soul had planned to experience—particularly, a key event that would be pivotal for your destiny? Remembering this event as it occurs brings about a sense of déjà vu. Using Lost as an analogy, perhaps Kate got déjà vu helping Claire with her pregnancy. And if she goes on to help deliver Aaron, the feeling may really resonate. On Lost, the reason is because she has already helped deliver Aaron on the island. In life, it’s a metaphor for an event that was destined to happen—a person’s soul created a scenario to help eliminate their own selfish behavior by one day unselfishly helping someone else. Once this event actually transpires, you get déjà vu. Judging by Jack’s expression after he stares out of the window of the plane in the parallel timeline, the show is acknowledging this phenomenon. And if Sawyer and Juliet eventually go Dutch over a cup of coffee in the parallel timeline, perhaps they will have the feeling too. At the very least, it might be love at first sight. (Sorry Skaters and Jaters.)

Being that we seem to live in a realm of freewill however, what happens when we don’t successfully make the decision that will lead to our redemption? What happens when a young pregnant woman gives up the baby she was meant to raise herself or a former torturer keeps following orders to kill other people? Well, in the case of Claire and Sayid, you become taken by the dark side; possessed by a desire to do for the self alone. You do not make the hard choices; you are controlled purely by life circumstances and react to them. In a word, you become a zombie. Damon and Carlton had jokingly threatened that Season 7 would be the zombie season, but it would seem that it may have been Season 6—despite Sayid’s denial at Hurley’s accusation (a little head nod to the fans).

Once you’ve been taken by the dark side, can you escape? Yes, but often it will require much harder sacrifices than what was originally required, if only because after sinking further down you have that much further to climb up.  Sometimes, you sink so low that the ultimate sacrifice is required, as Anakin Skywalker found out in Return of the Jedi. Most of the time though, the challenges, while difficult, are not overwhelming and the universe will continually offer you opportunities to take them on. But the harder you fight against these challenges, the more aggressively the universe will throw them back at you. In other words, what you resist, persists.

The whole zombie resolution opens up a lot of possibilities on Lost. Is the reason why Richard Alpert has never aged because he was a zombie all along? Are Claire, Yemi (Mr. Eko’s brother) and Christian Shephard also zombies? If so, why would zombie Christian go through the trouble of wading out to sea where Jack saw him standing in Season 1? Was it just for the creepiness factor? His body couldn’t have been there because the “Missing Pieces” episode (acknowledged as canon) showed him on the island already before Jack even woke up. And, more importantly perhaps, how did he appear to Jack off island in the hospital in Season 5? On the other hand, since the smoke monster can take the form of the unburied dead without the need to posses the body, has he just taken the form of Christian, Claire, and Yemi? Has he also taken the form of the people who were the Adam and Eve skeletons from Season 1? Is that who Charles Widmore and Eloise Hawking are? When we first saw Jacob’s enemy, aka, the man in black, was this his original appearance, or was he simply taking the form of a dead person too?

So far, Season 6 seems to be bringing up more questions than it’s answering. Every time it answers one, it gives us three more. Whether or not we ever get any satisfying answers to Lost, I think the show has been more than redeemed in the answers it has given us about life. Helping us to understand why we’re here is really the biggest question that the show is helping us to answer. Sure, most of the wisdom is only coming through on a subliminal level, but it is coming through. And, this wisdom is helping to make us stronger so that we will be able to better navigate the challenges in our own lives. This is why most fans feel that Lost is more than a show. It’s a guide to our own redemption.

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.

My first thought was that Jack’s plan will have failed, and that the X stood for an error—that the Losties would not be getting back to LA (as in LA? Survey says: X!) Then I thought that maybe both possibilities would exist—that an alternate reality could occur where the Losties both would and would not get to LAX (theory #3 of the “Season 6 Spoiler-Free Theories” post). This twin realities possibility has been a popular theory for the last nine months and did seemingly come to fruition with this episode. Still, I think the genius of the title name is that it has many meanings and that it’s main implication is not quite as apparent as the others.  I’d also thought about the possibility of LA X, translating into “The X”—as in X marks the spot, or “the wrong choice” for Jack.

Now that I’ve seen the episode however, I think that the true meaning of the “X” is that of a variable in an equation. It is the unknown. A possibility that can go multiple ways.  Thinking back to “The Variable” episode, what was it that Daniel Faraday said that the variables were in the equation of life? He said that they were us. And what do we now see in the “LA X” episode? We see two versions of the characters. One version where they were able to resolve their issues and one where they haven’t. One where they are struggling with challenges, and one where they have overcome them. One where they are motivated by greed and one by good. One where they are consumed by dark, and the other by light. One where they are dead, and another where they are alive. One where they have had it easy, and one where they have had it hard.

The message here is clear. Each of us has the potential to become the best version of ourselves or the worst…or, somewhere in between. This is our freedom of choice. Yet, while it is our choice, we are also often the victims or benefiters of our circumstances. So both fate and freewill have a hand in our destinies.

The duality theme has run through Lost since the beginning, and I’ve written about fate versus freewill and the good versus bad aspects of ourselves numerous times in relation to Lost and other recent films. The theme of whether or not we are actually the bad guys, or the dual sides of our personalities has been especially popular in films lately. District 9, Avatar, and other films have all explored the possibility of us being on the wrong team or learning to revaluate who we think our enemies are.

One version of this theme also explores the dark sides of our personalities—the beast within us so to speak. Surely, there will be those who saw the many trailers of The Wolfman that aired during this episode of Lost as a complete coincidence and those of you who, like me, saw something more. (There is also the fact that this episode came out on Groundhog’s Day, the day when a hibernating animal affects the future positively or negatively depending on whether or not he can see his shadow self.) Yes, I’ve been accused of being a bit apophenic in my world view, but I’ve just experienced far too many serendipitous occurrences in my life to believe they are completely random. There is something bigger going on. Something that the universe is trying to tell us, or that our collective unconscious is trying to tell ourselves. It almost seems that much like the Losties, we too may be given a choice about who we want to be, and there may not even be a right or wrong answer. So far, which reality is the better one for the Losties—the one where they are on the island or the one where they are in LA? To some extent, it depends which character you’re talking about, but even still, some of the answers aren’t so clear-cut.

To me, the island seems to be the version of life that explores fate, whereas LA seems to be more about free will. And something tells me that these two dichotomies will be merging together. After all, the LA Losties are in 2004, while the others are a bit over three years ahead of them (so technically, it isn’t really a flash-sideways, more like a flash up-and-over—like a knight move in chess). Regardless of whether or not the timelines eventually merge however, the dual timelines offer all kinds of juicy possibilities.

For most of Lost, many of the so-called “shippers” have wondered who Kate will end up with—Jack or Sawyer. Perhaps the answer is both—Jack on the island and Sawyer in LA.  Will John Locke end up dead or alive? We can see both. We can see two versions of Jin and Sun’s relationship. A bad luck Hurley versus a good luck Hurley. A Jack who was a man of science who converted, and a Jack who was mostly a man of science but open to faith (he tells Locke in LA that nothing is impossible, so perhaps this Jack was more swayed at having fixed his former wife’s spine?) We might also learn if Shannon was better off using men, or getting to know true love before dying, and if Charlie would be better off as a living drug addict or a dead man who sacrificed himself for others.

Speaking of sacrifice, one new question that Lost presents us with in this episode is why didn’t Jacob fight back? Ben asks Smokey the Locke, “why did he let me just kill him?” To which his manipulator replies, “I guess he knew that he was beaten.” Deep down, all of us know that there is something more going on here. Why did Jacob let Ben just kill him? Let’s refer to our old friend mythology for a clue.

“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine” Ben “Obi-Wahn” Kenobi tells Darth Vader in Star Wars. Once in his spiritual form, Obi-Wahn is able to guide Luke to destroy the Death Star. In The Lord of the Rings Gandalf the Grey sacrifices himself to save his friends and is transformed into the more powerful Gandalf the White. So, knowing how muchLost pays tribute to Star Wars and other mythology, it is highly probable that Jacob is sacrificing himself for the greater good and will eventually be returning in a more powerful form as well. The message for us (as discussed in “Choosing to Sacrifice for the Sake of the Island”) is that by challenging ourselves we grow into stronger people, better able to handle the challenges of the future.

While Jacob’s enemy has certainly come up with a long con to find the loophole that could defeat Jacob, perhaps Jacob’s con is even longer, or at least, more involved. Perhaps the reason why Christian’s body is missing in the alternate timeline is because Jacob plans to beat his nemesis at his own game—taking Christian’s body from that realm in order to put his plan in effect.  Whatever the details, it’s probably safe to assume that Jacob’s story isn’t over. And that he has a plan too.  And that his plan will likely work. Maybe this is what Juliet is referring to when she posthumously tells Sawyer that, “It worked.” Yes, the implication is that Jack’s plan to prevent Oceanic 815 from ever crashing worked, but perhaps the real meaning refers to the bigger picture. In fact, perhaps the alternate timeline isn’t happening alongside the other, as their juxtaposition would suggest, but will happen after.

After Jacob wins, he may offer the Losties a chance to have lived as though none of this ever happened. Certainly, he will allow them to choose for themselves, as seems to be his modus operandi. And perhaps, we will never know what choice they make, for that will be the moment that Lost will cut to black for the last time—leaving us to spend the rest of our lifetimes pondering over which realities would be better for which characters. Will fate be better for the Losties or pure free will? This is one of the major questions of the show and the crux of the argument between Jacob and his nemesis. With this kind of ending, I can see why Lindelof and Cuse do not want to do a movie or spinoff series. The rest of the story will be up to us—both to discuss, and incorporate into our own lives. We will still be a bit lost, but at least we’ll be able to see the many paths before us, and hopefully chose them more wisely this time.

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.

1. The Bomb Prevents Flight 815 From Ever Crashing
I LIKE BECAUSE: Well, I would hope we might get to see a lot of “what would’ve happened if” scenarios. Will fate still bring Jack and Kate together…or Kate and Sawyer? Would Kate have gone to jail? Who was the couple awaiting Claire’s baby?
I DON’T LIKE BECAUSE: It would seem to be a challenge to resolve everything we’ve seen up to Season 6. Will this render the entire Ben/Faux-Locke/Jacob storyline moot? What about Richard Alpert and the Others in the Temple? And are the Losties going to have to go back to the island yet AGAIN to set everything right? If not, is that the end of the island??? Not to mention, how will they show young Walt? And wouldn’t the creators had to have planned to get back most of the original cast members and have them all look five years younger right from the start? How would the show have continued longer if they hadn’t made the end-date? Nope, doesn’t feel right.

2. The Bomb Prevents Flight 815 From Crashing, But It Brings About a Mobius Loop
I LIKE BECAUSE: I can see how this might explain the skeletons. And supposedly, LOST was originally going to be titled, “The Circle.” The thing that gets me about the bomb preventing 815 from crashing is that it causes a paradox. If 815 doesn’t crash, how will Jack and crew go back in time to prevent the incident that caused it to crash? Even though the Incident happened in 1977, Jack has to go back in time in 2007 to change it. If he never ends up on the island, he can’t do that. Perhaps once they get to the point in 2007 where they are supposed to go back in time, they are suddenly back on the island in 2004 and have to start all over again. They are stuck in a loop or circle. May help explain why Jacob’s enemy says that it always ends the same. But then Jacob says it only ends once and everything that happens before that is progress.  Of course, an alternate timeline can possibly resolve the paradox, but that’s the next theory.
I DON’T LIKE BECAUSE: How will the story come to a resolution? The creators have said that once LOST ends, that’s it. No real room for a movie. So it seems like there is a definite ending. Maybe they can somehow break the cycle, but then what? Have the characters grown, or are they still lost?

3. The Bomb Prevents Flight 815 From Crashing, But Only In An Alternative Timeline
I LIKE BECAUSE: If the timelines somehow eventually link up again, this could be kind of cool. Have we been seeing the two timelines all along? Is this why sometimes characters have different eye colors, or why we see pictures on the walls change? Will we get to see some of the same scenes that left us baffled, but only now we’ll know why they are happening or get to see things behind the scenes?
I DON’T LIKE BECAUSE: C’mon, Lost is confusing enough as it is without two timelines! Nuff said.

4. The Bomb Prevents Flight 815 From Crashing, But the Losties Begin to Remember What Happened on The Island
I LIKE BECAUSE: What starts as major déjà vu could turn into major memory rush. Knowing the mistakes they made, will the Losties be able to set their lives right? Will the characters that had died have a new appreciation for life?
I DON’T LIKE BECAUSE: Even if they remember their island adventure, I still have the same issue with this ending as from resolution #1 which is that it kind of renders seasons 1-5 moot. Even if they remember everything, what was the point? Charlie is still a heroin addict, right? Shannon is still gonnna be a spoiled brat. I dunno, unless they can not only retain their memories but be the changed people they had become, it still falls flat to me, and if they are going back to the exact moment they had all their issues, I don’t see how they can really have changed.

5. The Bomb Causes the 1977 Losties to Flash Back on Ajira Airlines, Just Before It Crashes on the Island in 2007.
I LIKE BECAUSE: I just thought of this theory this week. I haven’t heard anyone else say it yet, but it seems to solve everything so nicely and works well with the theory presented in The Myth of Lost (#7 below). The characters have still gone through most of the growth they’ve experienced. And by landing on the island in 1977, we only have to redo some of the Season 5 storyline. We now know that Locke isn’t Locke, but maybe now other things happen differently. Maybe Ben doesn’t kill Jacob this time. At the very least, Jin and Sun will be reunited, as well as all the surviving Losties (perhaps Juliet is still gone), and they are all on the island so they don’t have to go back yet again. We can get to see who was chasing after them in the canoes (remember that?) And all issues can be resolved, including why Richard Alpert saw the Losties “die” in 1977: he just thought they were obliterated but they really flashed to 2007!
I DON’T LIKE BECAUSE: Wait, we have to redo part of season five? That could get old. And how will it resolve dead Locke? Locke better not really be dead or I’ll feel bamboozled!

6. The Bomb Caused the Incident to Begin With and the 1977 Losties Are Stuck in 1977
I LIKE BECAUSE: This could totally explain the skeletons since Jack and Kate know what’ll happen to DHARMA and might hide in the caves. It also might give us some more info on the DHARMA Initiative because face it, Season 5 explained close to nothing about them.
I DON’T LIKE BECAUSE: How is Jin gonna get back with Sun? Will he be 30 years older? Kinda sweet I guess if they can work it out, but feels a bit flawed. For that matter, how will the 1977 and 2007 storylines be reunited? Will it continue as two storylines? Seems unlikely. And how does this explain the alternate reality storylines seen at Comic Con? Even if that wasn’t canon, then how do you explain the cast line-ups for season 6 [I won't say what they are for spoiler purposes, but suffice to say it's hard to explain some of the actors/actresses if Season 6 will just be a continuation of 5, which is pretty unlikely].

**NOTE: When I wrote, “spoiler-free” I meant free from spoilers from the show, not my book. What follows is a spoiler for The Myth of Lost theory.**

7. We Think That The Bomb Has Prevented Flight 815 From Crashing, But Actually Something Else Has Happened…
I LIKE BECAUSE: Imagine at the start of Season 6, we see Shannon living her life at some time in the future. She’s married with a kid and not her 2004 spoiled self at all. Charlie is alive and drug-free and dating that rich chick Lucy and back with the band. Mr. Eko has been ordained as a real priest. Leslie Arzt is a happy and content college science professor working on an important experiment on the side. Yet, Jack and company are back on the island in 2007—reunited with the other island Losties. What’s going on? What’s going on is that the island was actually a computer simulation, created to recondition prisoners, mental patients and other deeply troubled rich people who could afford it. We come to learn that the numbers were a glitch, fixed by Jack and company going “back in time” within the program; the monster was a computer anti-virus that “killed” those who were ready to be ejected or didn’t belong there to begin with, the freightees were hackers trying to infiltrate the program, the whispers were the voices of the Losties’ loved ones who were outside the program to start with or got out after being “killed” and were talking to their unconscious family members(i.e., Boone talking to the unconscious Shannon before she was shot in the simulation). Why was everyone connected? Because they were really connected within the program, so their memories were entangled. How did Desmond time-travel? Only his “consciousness” time travelled. How did the Oceanic Six go back to 2007? They went offline when they crashed in the helicopter and went “Someplace Nice Back Home” in their minds. Who are Jacob and his enemy? They created the program and are testing it to see if you can “fix” humanity. Jacob says yes. How did he visit Kate and crew when they were kids? He didn’t. He only visited their memories much like a psychiatrist would—he regressed them to help solve early childhood issues! How is Locke dead if he isn’t? Because once the Locke character died, Jacob’s enemy was able to go back into the simulation and play Locke’s avatar. There isn’t anything this theory can’t explain. If you can think of something though, ask me on The Myth of Lost Facebook Page.
I DON’T LIKE BECAUSE: Some fans feel that this is a copout. I disagree because the characters have gone through real change. Unlike a dream, their experience was really shared and they went through true growth. The only reason I don’t like the theory, is because it was made needlessly complex. I’m not really sure why the time travel storyline was necessary, or why the Oceanic Six got off the island. To me though, no one theory neatly explains everything, and to date, “The Myth of Lost” theory is still my favorite. Admittedly though, I’m a bit biased.

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.

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.

Source : sl-LOST

Read on for information on Lost air time and also some minor spoilers about the season:

jengod:  Good morning TV fans! We’re about to get started on all the ABC headlines. To start, an ABC rep tells us: “Elizabeth Mitchell will not be a regular on Lost next season…but she will be able to appear.”

jengod:  McPherson says Lost has been “a phenomenal show and a phenomenon…this season has stronger than it has ever been…no more infinite middle…because it has an end date.

jengod:  Lost has no confirmed time slot for season six.

jengod:  NOTE: FYI, don’t panic about that Lost time slot thing. It will be on, for sure, they just don’t know yet if it’s Wed at 9 or Tuesday at 10 or whatevs.

jengod:  McPherson re Elizabeth Mitchell: “Fantastic actress and thrilled to be able to have her do both…You’ll see her on Lost, but V is her next piece.”

Source : EOnline

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.