film analysis

knives out wake up dead man good spiritual film. Recently, I saw knives out wake up dead man on Netflix and was surprised at how poignant and special some of the scenes with the earnest priest were.

In many ways, it kind of reminds me of how this Uptrusting platform is trying to be.

In one scene, the earnest priest and the atheist detective are talking about the Catholic Church. A bit of a tense scene as I was watching with a devout Catholic with me as the detective named all the ills and lies of the church.

But at the end, the priest responds, "it's true these are all just likely stories and make believe pageantry. But the real question is whether these stories lead to a beautiful truth or a terrible lie?

It reminds me of Ernest Becker's Denial of Death where he takes an existential view that everything humans do from ambitious projects to having kids are attempts to avoid the vital lie of our mortality.

I asked at a Becker conference, is there any way out of this trap of whatever I do being based on a lie to avoid the truth of my mortality?

One scholar responded, I suppose it depends whether the vital lie is delusional or illuminating. Does it bring out truth or is it covering it over?

Anyway, strong recommend to the film. The detective who-done-it was also spectacular.

When you take one path. When you take one path, all other paths die and are left behind.

Such is the weight of all our choices.

But I'm not good at letting things die. I keep going back and dragging half-alive corpses around. Abomination!

You stink of the dead. Mark your endings and grieve them, foul beast!

Telepathy is Real. I've just listened to the podcast The Telepathy Tapes and now I believe telepathy is real.

The baseline premise is that nonspeaking autistic people have telepathic abilities with people who recieve them with open-mindedness and love. They have it with each other, and are able to meet in another realm at a place they call The Hill, where they can speak freely with each other and learn massive amounts of content instantaneously. In the final episode of the season, we get loads of clips of what individual nonspeaking autistic people wanted us to know, information they painstakingly spelled out one letter at a time. They are concepts and perspectives I've only heard from the deepest meditators I've ever come across. They are concepts that, in my opinion, can't be pretended with that level of accurately by anyone who hasn't had direct experience of Oneness.

Since then, at night before I fall asleep I practice opening my heart and exploring for The Hill. I also imagine creating invite-only Flow sessions where nonverbal autistic people and their family member and/or personal aid join, and we speakers open our hearts to listening from there. We would also speak what we find out loud, and the nonspeakers can use their spelling techniques to guide us when they want to.

Since the movie Arrival came out I've stayed captivated by its premise. Benevolent aliens arriving to show us a new way to see reality and bridge divisions. The thought that belevolent teachers are already here in the form of nonspeaking autistic people, they've always been here, and they're the people we've tended to ignore and pity is so incredibly compelling to me and gives me immense hope for humans, the earth, and the future.

The church I grew up in, and still attend when I travel home, has a member named Erin who is nonverbal autistic, though she can say "mama." My attention has always been particularly drawn to her. She seems to see me, but in a different way than other people. One Sunday during worship, she pointed into the air and behaved the excited way she did when she saw someone she really likes. I was maybe 7 or 8, and it seemed entirely true to me that she was actually seeing someone and not just imagining it. I loved it, and loved seeing clear evidence that the invisible person was someone joyous to be with.

The podcast says that the reason they are nonverbal is muscular- a lack of fine motor skills, which is what speaking is. But that they can communicate very slowly with gross motor skills by pointing to a board with letters or tapping them on an ipad. It makes sense to me that a fully capable brain inside a body that demands slowness and introspection would naturally find the realms that meditators spend their lives intentionally cultivating, as well as realms beyond.

I want to listen to what they want to teach me.

Pre VP Debate warm up. Pre VP Debate warm up. I was thinking that Trump resembles Anger from Inside Out, and in the first movie, when Anger gets fed up, he goes rogue, steals mom’s credit card and buys a bus ticket to Minnesota (Make Riley Great Again). The only problem with going back, is that back isn’t a place or time we can get to.

And then I thought about Kamala, and her refrain We’re not going back but recognize she is talking about a different back, and the two sides don’t see back the same way. But her refusal to go back is also not so great. The Democratic party is kind of like Sadness, ready to flood us into liquidity such that no fires can start.

This metaphor isn’t great, I’ll admit, but it does bring up a notion about lesser of two evil’s approaches. If we are only restricted to Trumps sparky forest fire, or Kamala’s rainy kumbaya that eventually leads to massive mud slides while Mickey prays for the wizard to stop to water-bearing brooms (sorry Ashville and Georgia), we could spend so much time trying to combat the other guys (you know, team evil), that we’re not really spending any time doing something better.

Tribal allegiance, nor simple bipartisan get-along-ism isn’t going to change the fact that we need much more innovative approaches to changing our global ways. We’re not even being honest about the impacts we’re inducing.

Dang, I was hoping this was heading somewhere inspirational. Come on Joy pull a rabbit outta that hat, and make Pizza Delicious again.

It's too intimidating for men to be men. Alright, here’s one of my most controversial opinions, and I’m gonna try to take the filter off as much as possible:

Feminism has played out as retribution instead of solution. The Barbie movie is an entirely thorough example of what I’m talking about. You suppressed us, so we’re gonna use any means necessary to take over. And then they recreated the same imbalance in its opposite.

I see most social movements do this too. True solutions to imbalances aren’t fair because they don’t have human-enacted payback. You suppressed us, so we’re going to move toward balance.

I’ve been spending about 2 years trying to set aside my learned default into my masculine energy (having grown up in highly feminist orange/green) and learn how to root in my feminine. But my feminine longs for a tether to something rooted. Masculine energy feels rooted, solid, grounded, and my feminine very much doesn’t (though it is held by a spacious ok-ness, but it’s so airy it easily gets chaotic when not balanced in connection with a grounded masculine.)

But I’ve had a hell of a time finding grounded healthy masculine men. Many of them can do it for a time, but then flee to an extreme, like angry resentment at one end and non-binary softness at the other end. And I think it’s because the culture has become super aggressive to men who are solidly men.

It's too intimidating for men to be men. Alright, here’s one of my most controversial opinions, and I’m gonna try to take the filter off as much as possible:

Feminism has played out as retribution instead of solution. The Barbie movie is an entirely thorough example of what I’m talking about. You suppressed us, so we’re gonna use any means necessary to take over. And then they recreated the same imbalance in its opposite.

I see most social movements do this too. True solutions to imbalances aren’t fair because they don’t have human-enacted payback. You suppressed us, so we’re going to move toward balance.

I’ve been spending about 2 years trying to set aside my learned default into my masculine energy (having grown up in highly feminist orange/green) and learn how to root in my feminine. But my feminine longs for a tether to something rooted. Masculine energy feels rooted, solid, grounded, and my feminine very much doesn’t (though it is held by a spacious ok-ness, but it’s so airy it easily gets chaotic when not balanced in connection with a grounded masculine.)

But I’ve had a hell of a time finding grounded healthy masculine men. Many of them can do it for a time, but then flee to an extreme, like angry resentment at one end and non-binary softness at the other end. And I think it’s because the culture has become super aggressive to men who are solidly men.

A podcast about more joy. I’m entertaining the idea of rebooting my podcast and having a season of episodes that explore different ways of being that lead to experiencing more joy.

I’m particularly interested in hearing about ways that people don’t often associate with feeling joy. For instance, I had a recent experience where I got to express my anger, take up space, and be more vocal. It’s not a thing I would normally do because I’ve been conditioned to keep things in and be more soft-spoken. But having had that experience, I felt a greater sense of freedom and aliveness. It freed me to speak up in other situations which led me to feel more joy.

I also want to explore what it’s like to lead with joy, to prioritize joy.
(I have it in my body to prioritize being responsible.)

What other angles/perspectives might be worth exploring?
Do you have any experiences/stories you’d like to share on the show?