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#3413 - Thursday, January 15,
2009 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
CINEMA NONDUALITE’ TEASER, by "Moss Campion"
THE LIVES OF OTHERS
“The Lives of Others.” The
nondual paradox is encapsulated in the very title itself. This
movie portrays what can happen when we imagine other
people—those opaque figures that move and speak all around
us—to be as maximally “other” as we can possibly
make them. It shows what can happen when an entire society
(in this case, postwar East
After all, they do appear to be living separate
lives from you, don’t they? Yes, even in
“nondualism” we would not deny that a certain kind of
separateness does seem to exist between people. The life
you are living is not the life I am living. Lucky you!
And yet... Even in the midst of the most
extreme expressions of separateness, even when the molecules of
fear are so thick, you can actually feel them rubbing against
your skin (as you could, in the German Democratic Republic of the
80s)...something else might leak through. Some sneaky sense
of sympathy. Of connection.
Not to give anything away (for those of you who
haven’t seen the movie), but that’s what happens here:
a subtle, unexpected turning. A “leaking through”
of something else, an infiltration of affinity that manages to
penetrate even one of the most cleverly constructed edifices of
separation ever conceived by mankind. It’s just the
first intimation of something far deeper—the nondual state
of reality itself—but it makes itself known anyway, and the
film’s protagonist acts on it.
He doesn’t quite know what to make of it, this
sense of yearning he feels. He doesn’t have any great
conversion experience, he doesn’t get all warm and cuddly,
he doesn’t suddenly break into song and dance. He
doesn’t try to become something he is not. No, he
remains, outwardly, within the stolid conditionings of his birth.
Yet something inside has shifted; you can see it in his
eyes. And (we trust) he will never be quite the same.
Neither will his antagonist, the so-called “other.”
~ ~ ~
Come and watch The Lives of Others
When: Friday, January 16
What: Light Potluck at
Where: Anchorage, Alaska
For more details, visit http://www.meetup.com/NewSpirituality/