Love of the spirit

  I had a chance to look at a biography of Lisa Lopes, "The Last Days of Left Eye", directed by Laurin Lazin. Lopes was a music artist who had tragically died in a car accident at the age of 30 in 2002, in the Honduras. Lisa was one of the members of the musical band TLC, which had been quite popular when I was a teenager, and her nickname was "Left Eye" Lopes because someone had once remarked that her left eye was very beautiful. In fact, she started to even wear a condom on one of her eyes, to promote safe sex...so the nickname "stuck", needless to say!
    Recently, I had been thinking a lot about how she was making the headlines throughout the 90s, and how she had struggled to find meaning in her life, in spite of the troubles she was facing, including alcoholism, an emotionally abusive relationship, and falling out with her fellow band-mates. In this documentary, much of which Lisa filmed herself, she chronicles the ways in which she tries to overcome her difficulties through a seclusion and a kind of self-imposed retreat. Lisa felt that she was somehow haunted by a spirit, who she feels had even wanted to take her life. Yet she also developed interesting ideas about the spirit, which were inspired by her investigations into yoga, naturo-pathic medicine and numerology. One of the things she mentions toward the end of this documentary is that she doesn't believe in death; rather, she believes in the recycling of the elements in the universe. One of the most poignant things she says is that we are what we believe in, and that who we are is continually cycled into the cycle of life. She also mentioned that struggle is often a precursor to growth, and I came out of this movie feeling that she must have a very 'old soul', as someone who has gone through great amount of trial and pain to achieve a subtle and very moving spiritual vision. Could it be that all of her creative endeavors were precursors to this realization?
   It's strange that sometimes the darkest and most extreme forays can lead to transformation, but in a way,there is something interesting about Lisa's life. Part of it seems to be about trial through love and hate. At one point in the documentary, she describes how hate comes with the love of her band-mates, and I sense that this gave her the understanding to know that hate is not real--it is just the obverse of a loving bond, a kind of 'flip side' to it. A person often has to go through a lot of extreme ups and downs before they start to see them equally and provide a coherent narrative about them, rather than being attached to the up-side of things.
    Lopes' movie allows me to feel that sometimes the spirit can take people to scary and dark places, but that doesn't mean that the spiritual life has abandoned them. Often, as in the case of Lisa herself, periods of doubt and seclusion can often spark places for renewal and unexpected discoveries.