The Time Loop

2007 was the year of the great rock band reunions.Led Zeppelin, The Spice Girls , Prince , Take That , The Police , The Sex Pistols and The Eagles all reformed . All their gigs were sold out almost immediately and they were able to charge large sums of money for the pleasure of seeing them . The audiences were not just confined to the age groups that grew up with these artists but included many younger fans who were probably not even alive in the groups heydays. But why do so many people want to see mainly middle aged men , with grey hair ( if they have got any ) , pot bellies and dodgy hips and knees prancing around a stage to songs , that in some cases are nearly forty years old . The television clips of the Spice Girls reminded me of some ghastly school reunion when all the mums get drunk , on their one night out in the year and give everybody their rendition of Its Raining Men badly out of tune . The groups' voices are worse , the energy levels are lower and in many cases more bland than when they were at their peak. The reason is nostalgia - this is a sentimental yearning for some period of the past and is a universal habit . Our ego tells us that the past was better and urges us to replay it even when we know that it wasn't all that pleasant .

In the film Groundhog Day , a weather man is reluctantly sent to cover a story about a weather forecasting " rat " ( as he calls it ) . This is his fourth year on the story and he makes no effort to hide his frustration . On awakening the ' following ' day he discovers it is Groundhog Day again, and again , and again . First he uses this to his advantage , then comes across the realisation that he is doomed to spend the rest of eternity in the same place seeing the same people do the same thing every day. Finally , he manages to find break the cycle by losing his selfish attitude and doing good deeds .

Don't our lives seem somewhat like Groundhog Day ? Even when we change ourselves , with new jobs , new relationships , new houses etc we still seem to fall back into our old ways . In fact our relationships and jobs seem to mirror what has happened before . In my view we are actually replaying a moment in time which occurred a long , long time ago. This is best described in the Bible : " And when the woman ( Eve ) saw that the tree was good for food , and that it was pleasant to the eyes , and a tree to be desired to make one wise , she took of the fruit thereof , and did eat , and gave also unto her husband ( Adam ) with her and he did eat . And the eyes of them both were opened and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons . " In effect Original Sin . This thought of guilt , as well as other unreal concepts as death , fear , anger , hatred and the rest all came into being at this time and have continuously been repeating themselves like some eternal Broadband permanently pumping itself into our psyches . Wars follow wars , dictators follow dictators , abuse follow abuse .

We are living in the past . This is actually physically true-whatever you look at you are seeing the past . Light needs time to travel between two objects and by the time your eyes receive this information that moment has passed . We are seeing the world through the eyes of guilt and an instant in time eons ago . Our ego does not want us to live in the present and view the world , and ourselves, through guiltless eyes and so it keeps repeating itself in a never ending Groundhog Day or Time Loop .If we want to see the real world our belief in guilt needs to be expunged from ourselves . Otherwise we will be forced to watch the Spice Girls when they are grandmothers - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED .