This month's featured movie is Heaven and Earth shows the life of a young lady's struggle.　 She lives in Vietnam during the time of the war.　 It seems like she can't find peace.　 She has one tragedy after another.　 She looses her home.　 Her brother and people she loves are killed.　 Her sister becomes a prostitute.　 She herself has a child and is struggling.　 One thing after another happens, and watching one begins to feel like, “My God! When is she going to get a break?　 What is the purpose of this movie?”　

Then she meets a soldier from the U.S. and falls in love.　 Soon she moves to the United States and begins to settle into a whole new way of life.　 She is married and has a husband and kids.　 Just as it seems as though things are finally going to be alright,　then everything begins to fall apart.　 The husband is having all sorts of problems, and they are not getting along at all.　 She finally realizes that she can't make it with him.　 It's just too much.　 She takes a trip back to Vietnam, and while there she runs into her guru.　 She tells him about her problems with her husband and how she is going to have to leave him.　 The teacher tells her, "You and your husband have mixed karma. If you leave him you will never be happy with a man?"　 She goes back to try to address the situation.

Craig's Insights:

1.　 The guru tells her that they have mixed karma.　 In other words they have lessons in common.　 Those lessons are what brought them together.　 His lesson brought her to him, and her lesson brought him to her.　 If she did not address the lesson and get it, she would be destined to repeat it.　 She would simply find herself in similar situations.　 This is true with all of us; the lesson is what's most important.

2.  In the movie it looks like all these things are happening by chance or bad luck.　 It appears this way until the teacher shows up and explains.　 Many times in life, our situation looks like it is all happening by chance, but it is actually on account of a lesson that we need to get.　 We need to remember that everything is happening in order for us to get whatever lesson is attached to the situation.　 Then, we must stop and ask, “What is it about me and my approach to life that attracted this situation in my  life?”

3.　 Amazingly, when we truly see the lesson,　when we see how the way we are, and we look at the world, attracted the situation at hand. Suddenly in that moment, the world seems mysteriously magical.　 It seems tailor-made just for us - and it is.

4. 　In that moment we are actually acknowledging God.　 We are seeing the order behind all the things in our world. It is quite beautiful.　 If we want to keep this vision and the beauty of it, we have to meditate and reflect often.　 Otherwise, we will lose it and we will live in a world where things just happen by chance once again　

5.　 The truth is that the lesson is always trying to take us to a better place if we can learn to live in light of the lesson at hand.

6.　 Another truth is that there is always a lesson at hand, whether we can see it or not.　 In the movie, the lesson was there even when the couple first got together and were happy.　 It was being set up and prepared to hit her hard enough to get the lesson.　 Knowing this we should always be on the lookout for our lesson before the situation gets out of hand.　 Remember, the lesson is always trying to take us to a more beautiful place that goes along with the new higher way of living.

7.　 The guru had to explain to our hero that she had to stay and overcome her karma.　 Many times, it takes God coming through someone else to tell us what we need to hear.

8.　 The answer is not to always stay in the situation.　 Sometimes the lesson calls for us to leave.　 The trick is to focus on the lesson and who we are to become through the situation we have experienced.　 If we meditate often we will be able to see it much clearer and much sooner.

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