(Clarifying My Review of Love, Reality in the Time of Transition)
This blog posting is designed with the structure of the Pause Sessions I have created for “The Wake Up Book.” It is suggested that when you see the purple heart icon, you pause and reflect before continuing to read.
We all tend to get our lessons in the strangest ways sometimes. Yesterday and today, thanks to the fallout from my review of the online movie, "Love, Reality in the Time of Transition," I have found a greater clarity on what I see our Universe is asking of us all.
Few respondents to my posting had more than a very brief statement of interest. Three of them jumped all over the case I had made for that movie being more than a little polluted. One ranter told me I was all wet, totally wrong. While I usually would let such criticism roll off may back, particularly when it is in the form of a rant, I was inspired to go back to the movie and watch it a second time. However you respond to what is to follow here, I believe that you will be inspired to find greater clarity about your own sense of exactly what is in front of us, collectively and individually, if you spend a little time with this article.
I do observe that the use of the English language in this movie is often needlessly complicated and confusing and that there are instances of one set of commentary contradicting another. First we hear that it is foolish to think that we create our own reality, and later we are clearly told that indeed we do, for example. I was reminded by one of my online friends that the movie is largely a reflection of the teachings of the Russian mystic George Gurdjieff, which is fitting because while much of his work was very positively powerful, his basic methodology for helping people to wake up was as twisted as much of the dialog in this movie.
Although some of Gurdjieff's techniques were creatively impactful, his style of writing was simply pathetic: He figured that if he made the process of waking up too easy, people would not pay attention---that they would figure if it was so easy, it probably had no value---so he made some of his more famous works purposefully convoluted and difficult to understand. The first twenty-some pages of his lengthy masterpiece, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson are mostly a rambling about his insecurities as an author in the writing of the same book. When I was about 50 pages into studying this book in a group many years ago, I asked someone who had read the whole thing what she thought of it. She said, "That's not a book. It's a torture device."
I will concede that the intent of this movie's makers may well be of noble intention, so I will back off my earlier suggestion of sinister motive. As I wrote in yesterday's review, there is a lot of worthy content in this movie. Much of it is about waking up to what is happening with our world and becoming more aware of what is going on inside of us, a battle that the apparently external world mirrors for us as a way of teaching us. Creating tools to help people wake up is a prime focus of what I do, and I like to make it simple.
While the case is expertly made that it is important for us to wake up to the challenges of our world---the corruption, greed, hunger, fear and hopelessness---the answer to these challenges that is sprinkled throughout the movie misses the mark.
First, we are told what will not work in the quest for a more harmonious and happy world: The idea that we create our own reality is said to be "fatuous", (then later touted, as noted): "Everyone who 'believes' in an attempt to 'create reality' that is different from what IS, adds to the increase of chaos and entropy." This is simply counter-intuitive from my perspective.
It also purports that sending loving energy to others who have not invited us to send it is silly. I guess that shoots prayer out the window as something they see as worth doing. Or maybe we ought to warn folks first if we want to pray for them? Also knocked is the whole idea of karma.
And on top of all that, maybe we should be afraid of malicious aliens: We should be aware that “UFOs are not signs of our 'space brothers' coming to help us but that we are actually 'food' in many ways....” What is this, some awkward allusion to the old Twilight Zone episode where the aliens had a cookbook called "To Serve Man?"
We are told that we must protest, confront, must get rid of or integrate the dark side energies, and exert great effort to avoid calamity. Please read the passage below closely. Accompanied by dramatic music, these are the words scrolled across the screen ending the movie:
"With the approach of the era of the Holy Spirit, everything must be gradually brought to the light of day, not only the secrets of the laboratory but the deepest meanings of esotericism. The same must happen with illusions, errors and lies, which must also be revealed so that they can later be rectified.
[…]
The world is suffering from a lack of harmony which gets deeper on every plane, and this is a serious danger to the moral and spiritual recovery of humanity. It also involves a serious risk of failure in the last stage of this Time of transition that we are now entering. If this risk is not overcome, the Deluge of Fire awaits us. We will have to make an immense effort to ward off this fate, and we have very little time in which to do it. Man has only himself to blame for the greatness of the effort needed: this is a result of his obstinate refusal to heed the warnings that have been addressed to him time and again by the Divine Voice, just as he continues today to blind himself to the fact that the Deluge of Fire is being made ready."
.........................................................................................................Gnosis II, Boris Mouravieff
A pretty scary scenario, isn’t it? So is this what we are to take on: Let’s assign blame. It’s all our fault?
When it’s about to hit the fan, the egoic part of us rushes to judgment. And for what purpose?
For me, the whole idea of having to make immense effort to avoid the fiery deluge is completely misguided. While this last passage does not express just what "immense effort" is needed, scattered throughout the movie are suggestions that we must protest, we must confront, we must bring up the dark energies within us and deal with them. Some say that we must integrate this "dark side."
Society has conditioned us to think that we must fight for what we want, that confrontation is the only solution in defeating our enemies. The only perceived alternative is to sit there like a blind slug, they say. We see the task of becoming enlightened as some kind of tortuous gauntlet, that attaining such a lofty goal must require great effort.
Mirroring the human ego, our governmental, dark corporate and religious institutions are geared up to perpetuate our fear that life is just about frustration, overwhelm and having to fight each other for what we want. We tend to want to fight for control of our children, our spouses, our co-workers and friends. Living by our institutions' rules, we might perceive life to be just one big series of ongoing battles.
Do you believe that getting to the high plateau of enlightened living must be a great struggle? 
Given the fact that society has proven battling does not work to create a lasting peace, we continue to fight because it is the only potential solution we have seen as possibly viable. And of course some have simply embraced hopelessness and self-pity.
Have you thought about what it will take for you to have a happier life, and for us to have a truly harmonious way of living together in peace? What solutions have you envisioned?
If fighting is not going to work, then what is? What if there is a solution to the chaos and conflict in our world that we have simply never tried because it has not occurred to us? What if something beautiful and simple is available to us that could, in relatively speedy fashion, propel us to higher states of consciousness, happiness, peace and harmony?
What if we are able to create a revolution in which there would be no bloodshed, no harm to anyone? What if no "immense effort," fighting or confrontation was required for us to evolve into a world of harmony?
What if?
The appearance and behavior of the apparently external world will not change before there is a collective change within enough of us to create a tipping point. If we expect that we can force the so-called external world to change before we do, we invite the fiery deluge alluded to in the passage above. The Universe is calling upon us to drop the inner war we fight with ourselves, the battle between the loving will of the heart and the destructive neediness of the ego.
The strategy for this can be quite simple: we simply choose to withdraw all attention and suport from the ego. This requires trust in ourselves and each other. It takes courage to move beyond the known. As enough of us do this our world will appear much different than it is now. As we demonstrate and live with this courage, our institutions as we know them will fade away as we learn that we can deal with their destructive nature in exactly the same way that the influence of the phony power of the imaginary ego is negated: withdrawing our attention and support from them.
As we awaken, we will look upon the word "effort" in a whole new way. All our "doings" will cease to ever be knee-jerk responses to any input from the "external world." All of our doings will be natural expressions of our being as we realize it for the loving essence that it is.
Our actions in the world, alone and with each other, will simply be reflection of our inner trust and knowing that we are all divine, and all intimately connected in a way that is known by the heart but is beyond the ability of the mind to understand or put into words.
Our coming world will see us with a redefined motive for acting as we will: Instead of preoccupaton with what we can get, our focus will be on how often and how effectively we can give. In living this, we will all be adequately fed.
Clarity in the quest for a better life and a better world boils down to this: It all starts with you. The Great Shift will happen as enough of us embrace the power of love, as we redefine who we are: a united collection of loving spirits all taking a ride in mobile and seemingly separate sacks of skin designed for mutual nurturance.
Any remaining egoic part of you, having read this, may now be flying into fear or avoidance mode, for your embrace of these ideas portends the death of ego, that imaginary part of you that only exists as you feed it.
Will you listen to the panic of threatened ego and jump at the first available distraction that occurs to you?
Will you now listen to your heart?
Maybe another key to our more graceful unfolding that runs counter to ego:
Send loving energy to the "bad guys."
For references, movie links and other "wake up" content, see any of the 50 short inspiration videos here. Of particular interest may be the last one: http://www.yourpausebutton.com/videos/item/140-why-it-serves-us-to-drop-all-resistance
Just click the video menu item at the top of any page.
For more links and inspiration, see this link on the resources blog on this website:
