Now somewhere at the middle of the movie, after Jake has been accepted by the Na’vi tribe, it is time for his final initiation ritual in which he will pair with a bird psychosomatically. Jake tries to mount the chosen Banshee. The featherless but winged bird struggles to shake Jake off its back in order to kill him. But with long perilous persistence, he successfully mounts the Banshee and pairs his senses with those of the fiery bird by connecting his nerve endings with the bird’s in a sahelu. Now Jake and the bird are one.
“Think and fly,” Neytiri instructs.
“Fly!” Jake commands the Banshee. But it is not as easy as it had seemed. The bird staggers in flight like a one-winged plane. I crashes into the mountain and gets caught in a tree. Its flight is not coordinated.
Then Jake snaps, “Shut up and fly straight!” Suddenly the banshee’s movement steadies in the air. “Bank left… dive lower…” The pair sails smoothly through the wind in unity of soul.
"Shut up and fly straight!"
Your mental attitude goes a long way in determining both your altitude and even the smoothness of your flight through life. You might not know it but right from when you were born, you have mounted this bitchy bird called life (and believe it or not, life indeed is a bitch!). And now the smoothness of your flight here on this planet depends on how well you have established a mental and spiritual sahelu (bond) with life. You can see two examples of cooperation between our subjects, persistent Jake and the resistant Banshee. At first Jake gave the incomplete order of “Fly!” and of course the bird flew, but in an uncoordinated manner that reflects the lack of coordination in Jake’s pattern of thought. Permit me to adapt the Bible here but “As Jake thinketh in his head, so did he fly!”
Many of us still make empty wishes like, “I just want to make it.” Nobody is disputing your desire to succeed; but how do you intend to make it? Your demand from life is not yet definite and concrete. The terms of your desired success are not clear, which is dangerous because it reduces you to an untamed bird that is bound to crash into trees and mountains instead of fly straight.
Maybe it’s time for you to snap at life just like Jake and tell it what exactly you want; enough of random instructions. Taking a look back at the excerpt from the movie, you will notice a change right after Jake snapped at the bird, “Shut up and fly straight!” Jake became aware of the various mental distractions in his head that impaired his thinking and caused his thought to be chaotic. Personally I believe that that “Shut up” was not meant for the Banshee but for Jake himself to focus his thought on a particular goal and achieve it. I guess you could use a “shut up” too! Get your mind off the end in view and focus the power of your thought on the process that will take you there. Place a high value on unwavering presence of mind; keep a hawk’s eye on your goal, and focus.
Even with cruise control, you still need to steer the vehicle; let alone when you’re cruising a ride as complex and delicate as your life itself. You can’t afford to engage cruise control. You need to constantly give definite instructions to life on what results you want. Just like Jake, tell it to bank left when right doesn’t seem the way to go. Tell it to dive low when its skyrocketing and you’re falling short of oxygen. Take the bull by the horn and be responsible for the results you get in life. “I want to be mobile” is a different prayer from “I want a Range Rover Sport.” God will do it, but He still needs you to give your wishes and prayers a bearing; except if you don’t mind a 1988 Datsun, after all, a car is a car.
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