Movie clips
Below are favorite movie scenes celebrating Self qualities and moving towards abiding Self-leadership.
Interesting? Helpful? What are your favorites?
I Heart Huckabees
(all is the blanket/of Self)
“Once you get the blanket thing you can relax because everything you could ever want or be you already have and are.” Thus, fulfillment is here. Burdens relax. There is no longer lack, wanting or resistance.
Hook
(Freedom & innocence remembered)
Can you remember your freedom and innocence before the should’s and the parts blended and obscured your true nature? True nature never left. Peter as a forty-something attorney, husband and father forgot. He returned to the Lost Boys in Never land to remember. The video depicts his remembering/return to Self. This scene often represents the shift back to Self-Leadership.
Yes Man (Acceptance, Welcoming, Immersion, Yes!)
Notice that Self/Being’s nature is a Yes to absolutely everything. In contrast, the nature of parts per the Buddhists is resistance or a No. Jim Carrey’s Yes is from parts. Can you disccern doing Yes from Being Yes. Can you feel your Self/Being’s Yes. What’s the somatic experience of Being’s Yes? You are the Yes Man.
Phantom of the Opera (Home, Safety, Love)
Self as Lover: “I’m here nothing can harm you, let me be your freedom, let me be your shelter, you are safe, your fears are far behind you, let me lead you from your solitude.”
Part as Beloved: “All I want is freedom and a world with no more night, share with me one love one lifetime, hold me, say you love me, promise me that all you say is true.
Groundhog Day (Love)
In this final scene of Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s character had explored every option for fulfillment, pleasure or meaning that he could imagine. He ultimately discovered that the most fulfillment came from abiding as the Self quality of Love. If you were experiencing a Groundhog Day from your deepest Self perspective, what would be your discovery or movie conclusion?
Inside Out
(What are your 5 primary parts?)
Inside Out depicts inner worlds amongst five primary parts of human systems without Self. What are your five primary parts? Are there times when your life resembles Inside Out?
Good Will Hunting (Discernment)
So much of our trauma, pain and suffering is not ours and not our fault. If we each could just discern that it’s not ours — rather, it’s a cultural burden, a legacy burden, an unattached burden. Through such discernment, we could more easily return to our intrinsic peace, love and quiet happiness. It was just innocent confusion that we took it as ourselves. And, “It’s not your fault”.
Lord of the Rings (Gollum/lack)
This is a scary 8 seconds. Gollum is possessed by parts or thoughts of desperation, urgency and necessity. When our parts believe they have found what will give them the fulfillment they seek, a Gollum aspect may appear grasping for dear life and fully eclipse our true nature.
Pleasantville (beauty colorized)
Bud argues his case in court for “You can’t stop something inside of you” as the aha’s pop and the Self quality of beauty appears, we become colorized.
The Matrix & Little Buddha (clarity/
knowing)
In The Matrix, Neo turns to face the agents (his parts or apparent others) and says no to separation. In Little Buddha, the parts attempt through desire and fear to move the meditator away from his clarity and knowing. In The Matrix, Neo enters the agent (in connectedness) and everything turns green (All is of Self/Being); In both movies, the other as a perceived threat is realized as inseparable from ourselves ending the battle between Self and parts and representing the happey ending of returning Home..
Field of Dreams (knowing)
Field of Dreams can provide a metaphor for the journey home. As we hear the whispers of Self qualities, like Ray, at first we often ignore. Eventually, something seems to become compelling. Ray heard: If you build it they will come; Go the distance; Ease their pain. What whispers from Self do you hear? Like Ray, do your thoughts or protectors try to convince you to ignore the whispers, to ignore that still small voice? How do parts in others react when you follow the whispers? Is your system like Rays where the whispers become a knowing? Do you have a sense of where the whispers are directing you? What is your Field of Dreams?
The Truman Show (freedom)
Truman hears “the creator” (perhaps external authority or fear internalized as protector) who tells him he can’t leave and that he is afraid and belongs here. Truman responds from knowing, clarity and freedom: “In case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night.”
The Wizard of Oz (home)
Dorothy realizes that it had all been a dream and that she is home. As long as we have parts that have not been welcomed home, the parts will project high drama outside of us and our lives will mirror whatever lack remains within our burdened or unintegrated parts. In reality, we never left. There is no place like home.
The Princess Bride (devotion to Self -“As you wish”)
Rumi’s poetry is almost only of love, devotion and surrender to the Beloved (Self). The Princess Bride is the same. Wesley’s life is a poem of love, devotion and surrender to the Beloved (Self) in the form of romantic love towards Buttercup expressed in “As you wish”. Can you find romantic love as a love of Self? Can you find your “As you wish” in your love, devotion and surrender to Self?
A Beautiful Mind (Discerning Me from parts/voices)
Genius John Nash developed the ability to discern himself from his overwhelming parts/voices. His parts seem same as ours except the volume and consequent blending were turned way up. Dick Schwartz considers the movie’s ending to be tragic as John succeeds by ignoring, tuning out or re-exiling those problematic parts. This re-exiling occurs because a part through will and discipline responds to the problematic parts. If instead it was Self which responded, there could have been discernment and all parts welcomed home.
Twilight Zone Movie
(Returning To essence)
This one makes the Sid top five. When given the choice, all the seniors except one choose to remain identified as their parts. One chooses essential timeless essence which in the magical scene returns his body to it’s childhood form, but it’s not about the body or youth as he exclaims tally-ho and embraces life/essence/innocence/pure you.
The Abyss (knowing)
For years this clip represented the greatest fear of my protective parts. Bud tries to inhale liquid but his protective parts freak out grasping for air until they realize that they can breathe the liquid–that the liquid gives them everything found in the air. Analogously, our parts desperately grasp for fulfillment through acquiring objects, experience, relationships and substances until they realize that fulfillment is intrinsically here in Self.
Avatar (nature)
Jake is innocently confused viewing other as enemy. Neytiri responds calling him a baby. In Effortless IFS, Nature is a Self quality expressed in flavors such as harmony, contentedness and peace. Eventually, Jake becomes intimate with nature and perhaps as nature.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
(precious essence)
To see what is true. To see the precious essence that is equally in every one of us. It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
Powder (humanity)
Celebrating true nature, our Self, as simply our essential humanity and highlighting the sometimes difficulties in being this innocent beauty within a world of protective parts.
August Rush
(the music)
August found his way home through the music. August’s last line: “The music is all around us — all you have to do is listen.” What is your music? What quality of Self is your ever-present pointer?
Beauty and the Beast
(Falling in Love With)
Which of your parts appear as a beast? Is this “falling in love with” limited to our beloveds, our children and those closest to us? Or may we, as Dick Schwartz demonstrates within his own system, fall in love with our parts, our sacred little beings?
Moulin Rouge (Love as True Nature )
Do you ever feel like Christian in your earnest devotion to and pursuit of our nature of love, connectedness and unity?
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
(Embodying Lightness of Being)
What is it to live when Self, Beingness or Self-Leadership has shifted from the background to foreground for each of us? This art film, for some provides a glimpse of that beauty.