Watching Movies of Life - the Movie Meditation
These descriptions of certain emotional states of mind are intended to encourage us to watch specific aspects of our life as if they were a movie. A five star movie in this list is not rated necessarily as a highly entertaining, mainstream movie. Instead, a good movie suggested here may more accurately reflect the drama of life in all its facets -- the shadow of an emotion as well as its positive side. Find out what moves you and learn to simply let it be. Meditation is watching, unidentified and non-judging.
X -- Expert For Destruction and Resurrection
The shadow side
Running away, leaving unpleasant things behind, escaping, hunting and being hunted, indecisive and being split, having no ground under your feet, fear of destruction, fear that everything breaks down, associations which stomp everything down, to raze something to the ground, being in competition, needing to prove oneself, being constantly active, hating cessation, two parties which fight against each other until both are totally destroyed
The light side
Competence in motion, being powerful and intelligent, taking one step at a time, creating great things with small steps, supporting somebody's cause and serving them, being able to stop total destruction, destroying what needs to be destroyed, following one's impulses, acting without acting inside (Wei Wu Wei), meditation in action
Movies with these themes
K-Pax
The story opens with a man who calls himself prot (Kevin Spacey), who mysteriously appears in New York City's Grand Central Terminal. When he claims he is an alien from a planet called 'K-PAX' via 'light rays', Prot is handed over to a New York hospital psychiatric ward. A Manhattan psychiatrist, Mark Powell (played by Jeff Bridges), is given the task of treating and "curing" Prot of his supposed delusions. Right from the first psychiatric session, Dr. Powell begins to discover Prot's uncanny abilities and immense knowledge. As the story develops, Dr. Powell becomes quite attached to Prot, and starts to believe his seemingly impossible claims. Prot even baffles some of the foremost astrophysicists with his knowledge of science and astronomy.
Once Prot displays violent behavior at Dr. Powell's house, Dr. Powell decides to regress him to find out more about Prot's past. Because Prot has promised he will leave Earth on July 27th, it's a race against time for Dr. Powell to find out the real identity behind the enigmatic Prot. Prot also promises that he will take one of the ward's patients with him, and encourages an essay competition among them to determine his choice. Unfortunately, Dr. Powell is only able to find out about the human whose body Prot has been occupying who, according to Prot, was his childhood friend who witnessed the murder of his own family...
Merlin
As Christianity spreads over Britain, the power of the pagan goddess Queen Mab (Miranda Richardson) is waning, and her world of magic faces imminent extinction. In order to save it, Mab decides to create a half human/half magic being, a wizard, that she believes will bring people back to the "Old Ways" (the pagan religion is said to believe in the “Old Ways” in this story). Merlin is created by Queen Mab, and is born to a human mother, Elissa, although possesses no mortal father. Elissa dies shortly after giving birth to Merlin, leaving the child to be raised by Ambrosia, an old woman who used to be a pagan but has since rejected Mab and the "Old Ways". Ambrosia refuses to give the new born Merlin to Mab, arguing that love is needed to raise a child, and that Mab is incapable of providing it. Mab seems to agree on this, and leaves, but warns Ambrosia that one day she will return and take him away once he manifests his powers...
The Horse Whisperer
Teenager Grace MacLean (Johansson) and her best friend Judith (Kate Bosworth) go out early one winter's morning to ride their horses. As they are riding up an icy slope, one of the horses falls, dragging both horses and girls onto a road where a truck appears, resulting in a horrific collision. Judith and her horse (Gulliver) are killed, while Grace and her horse (Pilgrim) are both severely injured.
Grace eventually recovers physically, though she is left with a partial leg amputation and remains listless and psychologically scarred and prone to anger. However, her horse is traumatized and uncontrollable to the extent that it is suggested he be put down. Grace's mother, Annie (Kristin Scott Thomas), a brilliant editor, is horrified, since she knows this will involve shooting Pilgrim and she refuses to have Pilgrim destroyed that way...
Forrest Gump
The film begins with a white feather falling to the feet of Forrest Gump, who is sitting at a bus stop in Savannah, Georgia. Forrest picks up the feather and puts it in the book Curious George, then tells the story of his life to a woman seated next to him. The listeners at the bus stop change regularly throughout his narration, each showing a different reaction to his narration ranging from disbelief and indifference to rapt veneration.
On his first day of school, he meets a girl named Jenny Curran, who, according to Forrest, has the most beautiful name in the world. Her life is followed in parallel to Forrest's at times. One day after school, Forrest is being threatened by a group of bullies because of his leg braces. Jenny tells him to run, and he does so, losing his leg braces in the process. Having discarded his leg braces, his ability to run at lightning speed becomes his favored method of travel. During his senior year in high school, threatened by the same group of bullies, he runs through a football field and it gets him into college on a football scholarship playing for Paul "Bear" Bryant at the University of Alabama. He excels at football so much that he becomes an All-American, and meets President John F. Kennedy...
Apocalypto
The film begins with an epigraph from Will Durant: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."
While hunting tapir in the Mesoamerican jungle, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), his father Flint Sky (Morris Birdyellowhead), and their fellow tribesmen encounter a procession of traumatized and fearful refugees. The procession's leader explains that their lands have been ravaged, and asks for Flint Sky's permission to pass through the jungle. When Jaguar Paw and his tribesmen return to their village, Flint Sky tells his son not to let the procession's state of fear seep into him. At night, the tribe's elder tells the village a fable of man forever unable to fill his want, despite having been given the capabilities of all of the animals. The villagers follow the story with music and dance, leaving Jaguar Paw to ponder...
Remark
Although the movie list is inspired by Tibetan Pulsing typologies on the human mind, it does not claim to be completely accurate in its assessment.
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