Seeking the Heart of Darkness

Schindler's List (1993)

There is violence in the media. There is violence in the streets. My mind has been asking why… what is cause and what is effect? I have tried to rid my thoughts and actions of violence. I have boycotted violent films and the evening news. I have prayed for peace within and without. Yet I have come to see that I am in the realm of aversion and repression.

Is the violence in the media and in our streets from our collective repression of our fear of death and pain and suffering? In many cultures there are rituals around death and dying. Is our collective unconscious giving us the experiences we are not giving ourselves?

For weeks I thought about seeing Schindler's List (1993) yet the idea of the intense physical and psychological horrors I might see held me back. Finally I decided to create a spiritual practice. As I entered the theater I asked God (Higher Power, etc.) to use this experience for my awakening and healing around my perceptions of the body. As I watched blood spiriting out of a man's head I did not turn away. I allowed the waves of emotions to sweep over me as scores of naked human beings waited to be either showered with deadly gas or cleansing water. I cried as the acts of love and kindness amidst this vast darkness appeared like golden flowers rising from the mud. After the film I sat outside in front of a fountain. All the trials and tribulations of my life were gone. The beauty and impermanence of everything around me washed my mind.

Within this journey through the darkness there was love and hope and beauty. I also found both the darkness and the beauty inside my self. And for a moment they merged into a sort of sweet sorrow.

Now I am seeking a way not to condone yet not to abhor the violence around me. I wonder if I can use it to seek the violence in me and use its dark mud to grow the golden flowers of light.

I have noticed my own tendency to see Transpersonal films in terms of films of light and not of darkness. Yet now I can think of several films, which are clearly transpersonal odysseys through darkness. There are films which show the triumph of the human spirit through the dark horrors of existence (Schindler's List, 1993); films which take us to the horrors and madness deep inside us (Apocalypse Now, 1979); and films which take us through the darkness of our minds on our way to the light (Jacob's Ladder, 1990).

But perhaps every journey through darkness and violence can be consciously used for our own healing. And perhaps as we make this journey and face our fears, the external manifestations will dissolve into the golden lotus growing up from the dark mud.

(Originally published in Focus: The Quarterly Newsletter of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Winter, 2-3, 1994)

The Medium is the Transpersonal

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

What is the connection between the Transpersonal and Cinema? Perhaps the very nature of any creative media is Transpersonal. Film and video, as well as all the arts . . . are ultimately the ideas, thoughts, and feelings of a "personal" mind (or minds) being extended outward to other minds. At this level we might say that the "medium is the message."

In the particular case of film, we have a medium steeped in alchemy, mythology, illusion, magic, and transcendence. When audiences first saw the image of a speeding train projected on a screen in front of them, they leaped from their seats and ran out of the theater screaming. A French magician made films in which people disappeared, became transparent, and flew to the moon. Like an ancient religious ritual we enter a darkened place in silence. As we sit before the giant alter, a great light slices the darkness and transforms the two-dimensional screen before us into a three-dimensional world.

Beyond the transpersonal nature of the medium itself, are some films more transpersonal than others? Surely films about angels (It's A Wonderful Life, 1946), life after death (Ghost, 1990), altered states (Altered States, 1980), dreams (Kurosawa's Dreams, 1990), archetypes (Star Wars, 1977), UFO phenomena (E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, 1982), mystical realities (The Last Wave, 1977) or religious experiences (The Last Temptation of Christ, 1988) are transpersonal in their content. And films that deal with shifts in temporal and spatial reality, like Field of Dreams (1989) and Groundhog Day (1993), weave the transpersonal into the dramatic structure itself. Then there are the films which embrace the transpersonal in the visual form as well as through the subject content and dramatic structure. In films like Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire (1987) and Lawrence Kasden's Grand Canyon (1991) the camera transcends all boundaries, moving through walls and floating through the air to capture the visceral reality of these other realms. Of course these categories tend to overlap and most transpersonal films are a combination of these elements.

I believe there is also a more subtle way that the transpersonal enters the cinema. There are films that move us in ways that are beyond just the stimulation of thoughts, ideas and emotions; beyond content, drama and form. These films cause a subtle shift inside us, they touch us on the level of soul or spirit. Sometimes these films deal directly with transpersonal realms; sometimes they are simple films about love and the human spirit; sometimes they are dark journeys into the underworld.

The power of these films seems to depend on the intersection of our own life's journey with the journey of the film. When this connection is made it seems as though this film was made for us. A chill moves through us and the notion of a grand design touches our awareness. In this way any film becomes transpersonal. From great works of filmic art to pop culture escapist adventures. Somehow the divine seems to be woven into the light of the movie projector. As the images and sounds dance before us, our realities and projections meet. Sometimes we are moved and entertained . . . and sometimes we are transformed.

(Originally published in Focus: The Quarterly Newsletter of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Fall, 1-2, 1993)

Gravity Waves

I ride the waves of gravity,

surfing on the cosmic sea of light,

rippling distortions in the fabric of space-time,

rising from the past,

cresting in this very moment,

falling toward an unknown future shore.

Have to remember to ride the now,

looking back or looking ahead,

is always how I wipe out.

Night Watch

In the fall of 1985 I visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. I remember walking into the room where Rembrandt’s “Nightwatch” was hung. I froze in my tracks and softly gasped (in-spired). The painting’s presence was so powerful that it felt as though I had entered the presence of some great force. The painting seemed alive, as though Rembrandt had captured the life energy of himself, the people he was painting and the presence of the divine, and fused it all into the paint and canvas. I sat in front of the painting for hours, while it spoke to me through image, character, story, color and light about human struggle and divine yearnings within myself and within all of humanity. The messages I was receiving from the painting seemed to be answering some of the inner questions that had been on my mind just before I entered the museum. That night I lay in bed feeling a deep sense of gratitude for the gifts of the inspiration and guidance I had received at the foot of that giant wondrous canvas.

Zen Ox Herding

Seeking the Ox

Finding the Tracks

First Glimpse of the Ox

Catching the Ox

Taming the Ox

Riding the Ox Home

Ox Forgotten, Self Alone

Both Ox and Self Forgotten

Returning to the Source

Returning to Help Sentient Beings

Creating Without Expecting

"The Tao gives birth to all beings...
nourishes them,
maintains them,
cares for them,
comforts them,
protects them,
takes them back to itself,
creating without possessing,
acting without expecting,
guiding without interfering."
- Lao-tzu (Tao Te Ching, 51)

The Sacred Tetrad

The Sacred Tetrad

"Meditate upon my counsels;

love them; follow them;

To the divine virtues

will they know how to lead thee.

I swear it by the One who in our hearts

engraved the sacred Tetrad,

symbol immense and pure,

Source of Nature and

model of the Divine."
- Pythagoras (The Golden Verses)

The Primordial Poet

"Meditate on the Guide,
the Giver of all,
the Primordial Poet,
smaller than an atom,
unthinkable,
brilliant as the sun."
- Bhagavad-Gita 8:9 (Mitchell)

The Eye of the Heart

"I am blind and do not see the things of this world; but when the light comes from above, it enlightens my heart and I can see, for the Eye of my heart sees everything; and through this vision I can help my people. The heart is a sanctuary at the center of which there is a little space, wherein the Great Spirit dwells, and this is the Eye. This is the Eye of the Great Spirit by which He sees all things, and through which we see Him. If the heart is not pure, the Great Spirit cannot be seen." - Wallace Black Elk

Knocking on Heaven's Door

"Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find;
knock, and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives;
and he who seeks, finds;
and to him who knocks,

the door will be opened."
- Jesus

Seeking Water

"Not only the thirsty seek the water,
but the water seeks the thirsty as well."
- Rumi

The Kabbalist

The Kabbalist at Work

This image reminds me that...

To receive wisdom and express creativity
we must act as the Kabbalist
moving between and opening to
the forces that flow through
the Four Worlds (Domains) of Existence:

EMANATION

CREATION

FORMATION

MANIFESTATION

Integrative

"Integrative" simply means that this approach attempts to include as many important truths from as many disciplines as possible--from East as well as the West, from premodern and modern and postmodern, from the hard sciences of physics to the tender sciences of spirituality." - Ken Wilber

Transfigurations

Transfigurations by Alex Grey

Alex Grey's work so beautifully re-minds me of the multi-domain nature of inner and outer reality.

Multi-Domain Reality

"…All our different ways of thinking are to be considered as different ways of looking at the one reality, each with some domain in which it is clear and adequate. One may indeed compare a theory to a particular view of some object. Each view gives only an appearance of the object in some aspect. The whole object is not perceived in any one view but, rather, it is grasped only implicitly as that single reality which is shown in all these views." - David Bohm

The Seeker

Artist and Title Unknown?

This image reminds me that...

The true seeking of knowledge and wisdom

requires whole person, or embodied learning,

as well as a deep commitment to

a life of lived inquiry,

in which every experience

is taken as a lesson to learn.

Lived Inquiry

"By lived inquiry, I mean simply
the active, innovative and examined life,
which seeks to both transform
and understand more deeply
the human condition... "
- John Heron

GUN

 

GUN was created as an experiment in the application of cinematic design to capture and represent the inherent power of guns and the effects their mere presence can have on individuals. GUN is a film by Mark Allan Kaplan and was student produced at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts. GUN premiered at the Los Angeles Film Exposition in 1980.