Monday, March 21, 2011

Dance With Destiny Documentary

'The Prophetic Heart explores the true frontiers of consciousness, where past, present and future meld seamlessly into activist art, an inclusive pulsing web of which we are both but a single inextricable strand and one of the crucial conscious weavers. We learn that our work is not only to create a sustainable future, but to develop the presence and judgment necessary to discern what values and ways of being are truly worth sustaining. Even as we face political repression and wars, environmental destruction and a culture of distraction and denial, we are each being given an assignment and opportunity to create holistic alternatives. We see that our personal struggles are part of a shamanic process of falling apart and being remade, much as the tumultuous Earth Changes tell the story of a living planet restoring balance through dramatic transformation. We come away from watching this film not paralyzed with fear but called to attempt the so called “impossible”…to be an active part of the shift and cure.'
-Jesse Wolf Hardin  
 
Today is the Equinox, and my dreams continue to be about Balance, which is also what this sacred day is all about.  Balance of light and dark, conscious mind and shadow, above and below.  Syncronistically I am sending off today a Persephone mask that someone ordered - half light, half dark is her face.  There is a personal synchronicity in that as well concerning a dream I've been mulling over for more than a year now, but I'll have to wait a bit to write on that.  All things are woven..........

I was writing about Kali, the Dark Goddess, and the urgent need to wake up and shatter the "demons of delusion" in my previous post.  While searching for information about a true visionary I met, Jesse Wolf Hardin, I learned of an important new  film he participated in - Dance With Destiny, a documentary by (syncronistically again) Bruce Weaver.   Describing himself, the filmmaker comments that:

"At seventeen, in the U.S. armed forces, he found himself assigned to load nuclear weapons on B-52 bombers. Dressed in full chemical warfare gear on a training exercise, Bruce’s dreamscape images flooded to his mind in vivid detail. It was then the dream became all too real. Bruce left the Air Force, and began a life of earnest study of spirituality, mythology, and of ancient peoples.".
Among his travels, he spent time with Hopi elders exploring their prophecies, and was able to interview the Kogi ("Elder Brother") of the Sierra Nevada mountains of Columbia.   This is an important film, and rather than paraphrase, I copy from the website:

"This film will show that modernity’s problems are rooted in a host of unchecked “isms,” corporatism, statism, militarism, egoism, etc. Solutions will come not from rulers of vested systems, such as politicians or corporate directors. Only radical, heartfelt, internal revolutions of the spirit – which many of the interviewees in this film focus on -- can mend our souls and the web of life.   By combining deft reporting on a range of issues that contextualize the various interviews, Dance With Destiny shows how Mother Nature is paying humanity back for its hubris, excesses and neglects. In the tradition of Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of balance, the classic documentary by Godfrey Reggio, Dance With Destiny will probe the conceptual ties between manmade and natural phenomenon (koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi word meaning "life of moral corruption and turmoil" or "life out of balance"). It will show, for example, how in unprecedented numbers and with unprecedented fervor, the scientific community is warning that the planet’s resources are being stretched to the point of collapse. 

It will explore how media focuses on the political and diplomatic aspects of global warming while ignoring its impact on agriculture, water supplies, plant and animal life, public health, and weather. It will show how the coal and oil industry spend millions of dollars to plant public doubts about global warming’s role in recent natural disasters from tsunamis, hurricanes, abnormally massive rainfall, unprecedented wind storms and severe draughts. 
 
After two world wars left 100 million people dead, a new imperial war machine marches unchecked across the globe.**  As war marches on, new pandemics threaten vast populations..........Information is the currency of the age yet meaning and spiritual intelligence are scarce.  Millions awake daily to spiritual isolation as ubiquitous technology dulls human curiosity and powers of observation.


**I was impressed with this comment, in that, so shortly after the media announced the disaster proceeding in Japan, attention was quickly turned to a new war in Libya, once again creating a distraction from a much, much greater problem that no war can resolve.

***I also have to note that the one thing I see lacking in this film (having not seen it in it's entirety)..........is there are no voices of women.  This was disturbing to me.  I'm not going to negate this important documentary...........but I was saddened that, once again, women somehow aren't included.  I'm tired of this, the omission of women  (unless they are ornamental young women with sexual interest or value).  The unconscious assumption that women are invisible is a very important shadow that needs to be addressed as we speak of Restoring the Balance

Since I am (perhaps unfairly)  feeling that my otherwise brilliant colleagues here have, as usual, ignored women in collecting interviews with  spiritual leaders, I would like to add that recently the Dali Lama made a surprising comment that he felt the world will be saved by women. 

3 comments:

Valerianna said...

As watched the first preview, I was waiting for a woman to appear, when she didn't, I got angry, too. Its sort of astounding, at this point, but here we are again!
Thanks for sharing what the Dali Lama said!

Unknown said...

Great post, with tons of info. Perhaps someday these eco-villages will be the norm. Wouldn't that be something?
Trish

Lauren Raine said...

I think someday they will be the norm, or at least, these experiments will develop into the models for "eco-cities". A hopeful thought!