Life Skills, Revisited

What Is Avatar?

by Ma'ikwe Somerville-Ludwig

People often ask me what seems like a really simple question: “What is Avatar?” It’s an interesting question because Avatar has been different for every student I’ve worked with, yet consistent in what it does for them.

So I’ve searched for metaphors: it’s an adventure, and you get to decide where you are going (sounds a little like advertising); it’s a goal management course (boring); it’s an experience of enlightenment (sounds like sitting with a guru for nine days—definitely not it!); it’s anything you want it to be (huh?); it’s a way of life (sounds like you stop being yourself); it’s the most fun you’ll ever have growing a whole bunch (well, that’s a little closer.).

The difficulty in talking about Avatar comes because it is very much experiential, and how do you talk about experience without losing the essence of the thing in the shuffle? You don’t. So recently I’ve settled into talking about Avatar in the very down-to-earth terms of how you can use it in your life. The most useful metaphor I’ve come up with is something that everyone reading this article can relate to: reading.

Can you remember when you first learned to read? Whole worlds suddenly opened up, and where once someone had to read to you (and the content of what you were taking in was therefore subject to their interpretation, their voice inflection, their willingness to play), suddenly you could do it directly, for yourself. You had access to all sorts of things you hadn’t previously had access to. And a whole bunch of stuff that once looked like incomprehensible marks on a page suddenly formed into comprehensible, meaningful patterns in front of your eyes. A whole arena of previously inaccessible reality suddenly made sense, almost as if by magic.

But reading isn’t magic, it’s skill. You probably needed some initial assistance in learning it, maybe being taught and just listening to others doing it and paying close attention; but once you knew how, you could do it on your own. Of course your skills got stronger, you got more comfortable with reading, and it was just a matter of continuing to read more. Most of us are still learning new words no matter what our age or current skill level. It’s an ongoing process.

Knowing how to read is confidence-building (people who learned to read as adults can especially attest to this). Reading gives you access to your world in ways that are empowering.

One of the things I think is best about reading is that for all of it’s empowering capacity, it is essentially neutral. You can use your reading skills to read about anything: work, relationships, money, raising kids, whatever you define as just-for-fun reading. It’s all available once you know how to do it.

So I often say to people that Avatar is similar to reading. It’s a skill that helps you access certain content (particularly preferred experiences) for your life. And just as there are several components to learning how to read (Remember phonics? Learning the letters? Being able to arrange them properly to spell things? And those related, advanced skills of writing and typing?), there are several components to Avatar (including strengthening your will and attention, honesty, feeling, playfulness, creating and discreating realities) all of which add up to the all-purpose, world-opening, direct-experience, do-it-yourself, empowering skill of creating the life you’d prefer, no matter who you are, where you are or what you decide to do with it.

And like reading, when you’ve used Avatar for a while, it becomes seamless, and you forget that you had to learn all the different pieces. It becomes part of who you are, and the further refinements have the same joy as looking up some interesting new word in the dictionary, a nice sense of, “Aha! That’s what that means!”

Avatar not only gives you that same feeling of empowerment, it also has other side effects that act like grease in the wheels of your new-found skills to create a preferred life—things like compassion, peace of mind, excitement about your own life, and less time wasted not knowing what to do next.

So as you are contemplating how Avatar might affect your life, think for a few moments about what your life would be like if you had never learned to read. And notice all those things you can do, and the person you have been able to be, because you have that skill. Then contemplate for a minute what your life could look like if you gave yourself a similar leap of skills, confidence, freedom to decide for yourself, and access to new experiences.
Hmmm...now does that dream of yours feel a little more possible from that perspective?

Ma’ikwe Somerville-Ludwig, Michigan

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