Wednesday, December 25, 2019

An Integral Cinema Christmas 2019



For those of you looking for an integral movie to go see at the theaters during the holiday season, look no further than the epic conclusion of the integrally-informed Star Wars Saga with:

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)


(In theaters around the world

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a masterpiece of integral-archetypal filmmaking completing the integrally-informed Star Wars Saga triple-trilogy journey with a visceral cinematic synergy that beautifully brings together multiple saga-wide storyworld streams to a wondrous crescendo. A must-see for integrally-informed Star Wars fans. Stay tuned for more on the movie and its integral cinematic underpinnings...

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For those of you wanting to watch an integral movie this holiday season that integrally captures the spirit of the season check out these two films:

12 Dates of Christmas (2011)


(Available for streaming online at Amazon Prime, iTunes and Disney+)

The 12 Dates of Christmas is a sweet and sappy Christmas movie that uses the integrally-informed evolutionary time loop formula from Groundhog Day with a Christmas spin and a female main character; a cute little movie filled with holiday spirit and light on the outside and deep evolutionary patterns on the inside.

Dear Santa (2011)


(Available for streaming online at Amazon Prime, iTunes and Netflix)

Dear Santa is another sweet and sappy Christmas movie that follows a female character through her evolution during one holiday season. Our main character is swept into a period of accelerated development when a little girl's letter to Santa appears to magically find its way into her hands and sends her on an emotional journey that helps her evolve from being a egocentric spoiled ditsy rich girl to a more mature woman whose circle of care and concern has expanded to include all of humanity.




Monday, December 2, 2019

February 2020 Conscious Media-of-the-Month



This month’s Conscious Media-of-the-Month is the Netflix streaming series Messiah (2020).

Virtual Discussion date: February 22, 2020 at 1 pm (PT)

Join us this month as we explore the brand new Netflix series Messiah, an integrally-informed exploration of the messiah archetype with clear and profound examples of how to capture deep shifts in our consciousness and our paradigms of self, other and world.

This series is a complex and layered work which unpacks the interrelationship of religion, consciousness, culture and society. It is also deeply reflective of what is happening in the world right now by elegantly journeying into and through multiple dimensions of the culture war and civilization-wide paradigm shift we are currently facing.

As always, you are invited to watch Messiah on your own and then join us for our virtual discussion on February 22nd at 1pm Pacific Time. In the meantime, you are invited to share your thoughts, reflections and musings about the series in our group's online discussion forum.

Messiah is currently streaming on Netflix. If you do not have a subscription to the service they offer a 30 day free trial.

Find out more about our free virtual discussion on February 22nd HERE.

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Find out more about our free virtual discussion coming up on March 21st HERE.

You can view the video recordings of all past Conscious Movie-of-the-Month virtual discussions HERE



Sunday, December 1, 2019

December 2019 Conscious Movie-of-the-Month



This month’s Conscious Movie-of-the-Month is Inception (2010)


Join us this month as we explore another groundbreaking evolutionary cinematic work, Inception (2010). This mind-bending cinematic journey into our dreams and the multiple layers of structures of consciousness inside our minds is the only cinematic work we have found that directly maps and experientially depicts the Worldview line of development. Inception gives us a visceral experience of these structures, including how they are transcended and included inside our field of consciousness.

For this Conscious Movie-of-the-Month event, in addition to our regular virtual chat about the film later in the month we will be posting an article on how the structures of consciousness are embedded in Inception. We will also provide a special viewing practice that can help make the film viewing a powerful transformative experience. This practice is designed to give us an embodied understanding of the structures of consciousness inside ourselves and in any moving image work.

If you have not seen Inception you can stream it online on most of the main streaming services or get a free rental from your local library. We recommend watching the film at least twice, the second time with the intention of seeing any patterns of consciousness you had not seen before. You can increase the transformative potential of the second viewing experience by reading the upcoming article and performing the special viewing practice beforehand. As always, you are also invited to share your thoughts, reflections and musings about the movie in our group's online discussion forum.

Find out more about our free virtual discussion on February 22nd HERE.


Friday, November 1, 2019

November 2019 Conscious Movie-of-the-Month



This month’s Conscious Movie-of-the-Month is Black Panther (2018)


Join us this month as we explore perhaps one of the most groundbreaking evolutionary cinematic works we’ve ever seen, Black Panther (2018). This extraordinary film hides its deep and expansive exploration of the evolution of multiple stages of individual and collective consciousness inside a classic pop superhero adventure. Extremely simple on the surface and infinitely complex just below, this masterwork of conscious cinema has become one of the most successful films of all time and has delivered its hidden consciousness-raising messages around the globe to millions of viewers.

For this Conscious Movie-of-the-Month event we will be unpacking just how the filmmakers achieved this amazing mix of engaging simplicity and consciousness-raising complexity, which can help any conscious media maker learn how to do the same thing in any form and at any budget. This exploration can also help conscious media viewers to deepen and expand their capacity to use media as a consciousness-raising viewing practice.

Those interested in beginning a deep dive into the film may want to check out our special podcast series on Black Panther. This series will give viewers a grounding in this exploration, which we will be continuing with our monthly live virtual chat on the 20th.

If you have not seen Black Panther you can stream it online on most of the main streaming services or get a free rental from your local library. We recommend watching the film at least twice, the second time with the intent of seeing any patterns of consciousness you had not seen before. You are also invited to share your thoughts, reflections and musings about the movie in our group's online discussion forum.

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If you have not already joined our FREE Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Group/Club, you can still join us anytime by signing up for a free membership at the Conscious Good Creators Network.

Conscious Good Creators Network presents the Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Club with Integral Cinema Project Founder and Executive Director Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D., for anyone who wants to use media to raise individual and collective consciousness.


Tuesday, October 1, 2019

October 2019 Conscious Media-of-the-Month


This month’s Conscious Media-of-the-Month is Game of Thrones (2011-2019).

During the month of October we will be having a special exploration of our first television or streaming series, the Emmy Award-winning internationally-acclaimed HBO cable series Game of Thrones. If you have not watched the series or need to review it again for our exploration and you do not have HBO, you can get a 7-day free trial of HBO Now for a quick review or pay for the full month if you are up to the challenge of trying to watch the whole series. You can also subscribe to HBO on both the Hulu and Amazon Prime streaming services.

We have chosen Game of Thrones for this month’s selection because we believe it is a groundbreaking series in the domain of conscious media and contains valuable lessons for conscious media makers and consumers. The series is groundbreaking because it represents the largest scale attempt at capturing a specific stage of human development and consciousness with the intent on taking us deep inside it and ultimately through it to the next human evolutionary stage. Hauntingly, the evolutionary turning point with which the series has ended also has profound resonance with the evolutionary turning point that humanity now faces in our "real" reality.

One of its most valuable lessons for us conscious media makers and consumers is to remind us that conscious media sometimes has to go into the darkness in order to wake us up. It is that intent for waking up that is the heart of conscious media itself. It is also important for us to realize that for media to wake us up or raise our consciousness, it first must meet us where we are at, and sometimes that means going down in the mud of life with us.

We will be posting various explorations of the series over the month and then as always have a live virtual chat about it at the end of the month. Please consider joining us on this profound exploration of a major work that has a lot to teach us about conscious media.

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If you have not already joined our free Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Group/Club, you can still join us anytime by signing up for a free membership at the Conscious Good Creators Network.

Conscious Good Creators Network presents the Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Club with Integral Cinema Project Founder and Executive Director Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D., for anyone who wants to use media to raise individual and collective consciousness.



Friday, September 27, 2019

Hacking "The Great Hack" - A Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Virtual Discussion


Please join us this Monday at 6:30pm PST for a live FREE virtual discussion of The Great Hack (2019), the recently released Netflix documentary on the Cambridge Analytica election hacking scandal and the role of Facebook in facilitating the mass data gathering that may have contributed to the passage of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.

Together we will explore how this documentary explores the relationship between our consciousness and our evolving media technologies. The Great Hack sounds an alarm that should be heard by all us conscious media makers and consumers. A war is being waged for control of our individual and collective consciousness, with our media, especially social media, being weaponized against us and used to tear our society apart.

We will also be exploring the nature of the new propaganda war on our consciousness and what we can do about it as conscious media consumers and media makers. This important conversation in our community will continue beyond this month’s exploration as we roll out courses to help train ourselves to answer the calling of this moment by using media to raise consciousness. Together, we can help win the battle for the hearts and minds of humanity.

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If you have not already joined our free Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Group/Club, you can still join us anytime by signing up for a free membership at the Conscious Good Creators Network at: https://conscious-good.mn.co/share/wPseacTS1JFJmxu8?utm_source=manual

Conscious Good Creators Network presents the Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Club with Integral Cinema Project Founder and Executive Director Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D., for anyone who wants to use media to raise individual and collective consciousness.

To find out more about this free event and register to attend visit: https://conscious-good.mn.co/events/hacking-the-great-hack-a-conscious-movie-of-the-month-virtual-discussion


Wednesday, September 18, 2019

The Big Picture of the NOW




Here, by popular request, is Mark Allan Kaplan, media psychologist and founder and Executive Director of the Integral Cinema Project, explaining why "All problems are problems of consciousness" as he unpacks the current global situation: how we got here, why it's unprecedented in world history, and why media in all its evolving forms may be the best and most powerful tool to awaken us into a new paradigm of being.




If you want to take a deeper dive, Mark will be teaching "Transformative Media Creation and Reception" for Campus-Coevolve.org starting in early October, 2019. (I am a Contributing Faculty Member.) To find out more, please visit: https://campus-coevolve.org/course/transformative-media/

You can also join us for our Conscious Movie-of-the-Month discussion group hosted by the Conscious Good Creators Network and stay tuned for our Conscious Media-making certificate program, also at Conscious Good. To find out more about these offerings visit: https://conscious-good.mn.co/


Monday, September 9, 2019

Transformative Media Creation and Reception Course




Announcing a new 13 week online course in 

Transformative Media Creation and Reception: 

Designing and Creating Transformative Media Experiences for Self, Other and World 

with Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D.


Starting the week of November 3, 2019


This is a course for aspiring and accomplished change makers who want to learn how to use media to extend and deepen their efforts to create transformation in self, other and world. It will illuminate the comprehensive toolkit for designing media to catalyze healing, personal growth and the evolution of consciousness on an individual and collective level.

Together, we will learn about the co-evolutionary relationship between moving-image-based communication mediums, consciousness, media, culture and society, and how these mediums can be used as a driving force for individual and collective healing, growth, and revolutionary and evolutionary change and transformation. We will also be exploring how to consciously create and receive moving image works as a transformative practice for self, other and world through the development of both individual and group projects. No previous media-making experience required.





For more information and to sign up for this course visit: 

Campus Co-Evolve: https://campus-coevolve.org/
Admissions: https://campus-coevolve.org/admissions/

Sunday, September 1, 2019

Media Ethics and "The Great Hack" - An Extended Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Exploration

Brittany Kaiser in The Great Hack (2019)

We are extending our exploration of "The Great Hack" into this month while we await news about a potential live discussion with the filmmakers. In the meantime we thought we would explore the ethics of media, with particular questions around the issues brought up in this movie and the ethics of conscious media in general, starting with the question: Where is the line for conscious attempts to use media to change people’s minds?

Some people believe that even if you are trying to have a positive impact on your audience, any deliberate attempt to manipulate people’s consciousness is an unethical invasion of privacy.

On the other hand, most artists working in most arts specifically intend to have an impact on their audience.

Many of us in conscious media are attempting to raise peoples consciousness itself, or to raise awareness around certain issues or ideas.

Some of us, myself included, feel called to use the power of media as a force for good, to counter those who are using media in such unscrupulous ways as trying to convince people not to vote, to fan the flames of hatred and division, to deliberately misinform for political ends, or to suppress knowledge or action on global-scale dangers for the sake of short-term financial interests.

The big data driven propaganda machines The Great Hack spotlights are a clear and present danger to democracy itself, and emerging media technologies like “deepfake” videos can accurately create a false visual record of any person saying or doing things they never said or did. We are indeed entering a new frontier.

A war is already being waged for control of our consciousness and behavior, as evidenced in this movie, and the technologies being weaponized against us are evolving rapidly.

How do we combat this...without crossing the line ourselves? The Great Hack eloquently explores the awakening of whistleblower Brittany Kaiser's awareness of having crossed her own ethical boundaries without realizing it. It raises the question: How do we keep awake, aware and ethically grounded in a world of so many blurred lines?

Join our discussion at: https://conscious-good.mn.co/posts/3776892

If you have not already joined our free Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Group/Club, you can still join us anytime by signing up for a free membership at the Conscious Good Creators Network at: https://conscious-good.mn.co/share/wPseacTS1JFJmxu8?utm_source=manual

Conscious Good Creators Network presents the Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Club with Integral Cinema Project Founder and Executive Director Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D., for anyone who wants to use media to raise individual and collective consciousness.


Thursday, August 1, 2019

August-September 2019 Conscious Movie-of-the-Month


This month’s Conscious Movie-of-the-Month is The Great Hack (2019).


During the month of August (and September), you are invited to watch the newly-released Netflix documentary The Great Hack on your own. This documentary covers the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the role of Facebook in facilitating the mass data gathering that may have contributed to the passage of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. If you have already seen it, we recommend watching it again with the intent of seeing any patterns of consciousness you had not seen before, including the patterns mentioned below. If you do not have a Netflix account or access to one you can get a one-month free trial at Netflix.com. You are also invited to share your thoughts, reflections and musings about the movie in our group's online discussion forum.

During the month we will also be having a Netflix Watch Party, where we can watch the film together and have a running chat discussion in real-time. At the end of the month, we will have a video conference call where we will explore the movie from a conscious, integral and transpersonal perspective, and you will have the opportunity to share more of your personal reflections and ask any questions. Details on both will be forthcoming.

There are many reasons why we have chosen The Great Hack for this month’s selection. It was recommended by one of our group members, plus we received several other synchronistic indicators bringing this work to our attention. Furthermore, its timeliness in relation to what is happening in the media world right now speaks to the challenge of this moment in human history and gives us a taste of a film attempting to tap into the current zeitgeist.

Together we will explore how this documentary explores the relationship between our consciousness and our evolving media technologies. The Great Hack sounds an alarm that should be heard by all us conscious media makers and consumers. A war is being waged for control of our individual and collective consciousness, with our media, especially social media, being weaponized against us and used to tear our society apart.

Join us this month as we explore the nature of the new propaganda war on our consciousness and what we can do about it as conscious media consumers and media makers. This important conversation in our community will continue beyond this month’s exploration as we roll out courses to help train ourselves to answer the calling of this moment by using media to raise consciousness. Together, we can help win the battle for the hearts and minds of humanity.

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If you have not already joined our free Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Group/Club, you can still join us anytime by signing up for a free membership at the Conscious Good Creators Network.

Conscious Good Creators Network presents the Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Club with Integral Cinema Project Founder and Executive Director Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D., for anyone who wants to use media to raise individual and collective consciousness.

Saturday, July 13, 2019

"Avatar" and the Co-Evolution of Consciousness, Culture and Society


As we explore the movie Avatar (2009) as our conscious movie-of-the-month, we have the opportunity to use it to more viscerally learn about the different stages of human adult development and how the structures of consciousness of each stage co-evolve with human cultures and societies. We have this opportunity because Avatar masterfully gives us clean and clear examples of each stage and structure through the consciousness of the characters and the cultures and social structures that relate to each stage.


Avatar imagery representing Tribal or Magical consciousness, culture and society

First we have the Tribal or Magical structure of consciousness and stage of development. This is represented by the tribal characters, the cultural worldview represented in them and between them, and the very structures of their society in the film. This stage includes a magical sense of wonder and beauty and a deep connection to nature and to the tribe.


Avatar imagery representing Traditional or Mythic consciousness, culture and society

The next stage of development is the Traditional or Mythic structure of consciousness. This is represented in the human military characters, their cultural worldview, and the social structures and conventions of their world. This stage includes a black or white, right or wrong way of perceiving, being and doing in the world, a tendency toward authoritarianism, and the strict adherence to rules and regulations and a prescribed order.


Avatar character representing Modern or Rational consciousness, culture and society

The next stage of development is the Modern or Rational structure of consciousness. This stage/structure is represented by the business, corporate and politically-oriented characters, most notably the Parker Selfridge business leader character played by Giovanni Ribisi, and the cultural and social patterns of their reality. This stage is marked by an adherence to logic and reason, empirical knowledge, the discounting of anything that is not objectively verifiable, and an almost religious attachment to financial gain as the ultimate goal of human life and interaction.


Avatar character representing Postmodern or Pluralistic consciousness, culture and society

The next stage is the Postmodern or Pluralistic stage of development and structure of consciousness, represented most clearly by the Dr. Grace Augustine social scientist character played by Sigourney Weaver, and the cultural and social constructs surrounding her character. This stage includes a deep recognition and valuing of subjective experience along with an over-arching cross-cultural perspective and an empathy for the suffering of others.


Avatar imagery representing Meta-modern or Integral consciousness, culture and society

And finally the Integral stage and structure is hinted at in the final moments of the film when the main character leaves his human body that is dying and goes fully into his avatar body via a transference of his consciousness by and through the world tree. All we see are his eyes opening in that scene, but we get a sense that he has been to "the other side" and has seen the big-picture of the universe. This big-picture awareness is one of the hallmarks of the Integral structure of consciousness, along with the awareness of all the previous stages and their inherent value and limitations, and how the stages and structures evolve. The Integral structure seeks to see and understand as much as possible from as many perspectives as possible and then integrating it all into a big-picture understanding.

Individuals, cultures and societies tend to co-evolve through these stages and structures. Individuals at the leading edge create and innovate from the new emerging stage and structure, and in turn their creations resonate with the stage and structure they were created from, which then stimulates others in the culture and society to evolve to meet the new stage/structure patterning embedded in these creations. In Avatar while we do not see the various cultures and social structures co-evolving with consciousness, the main character evolves through all of them, which gives us a sense of the arc of development at the heart of this whole co-evolutionary process.


Our research suggests that this type of integration of multiple stages and structures in a cinematic work contributes to the potential success of the film, by giving the film a greater capacity to reach a wider population across the stages of development. This hypothesis is based on the results of an meta-analysis of the most successful films of all times revealing an unusually high percentage of these films having this quality.

Monday, July 1, 2019

July 2019 Conscious Movie-of-the-Month




The Conscious Movie-of-the-Month for July 2019 is Avatar (2009).

During the month of July you are invited to watch the movie Avatar on your own. If you have already seen it, we recommend watching it again with the intent of seeing any patterns of consciousness you had not seen before, including the patterns mentioned below. If you do not own a copy, you can stream it online or get a free rental from your local library. You are also invited to share your thoughts, reflections and musings about the movie in our group's online discussion forum.

At the end of the month, we will have a video conference call where we will explore the movie from a conscious, integral and transpersonal perspective, and you will have the opportunity to share more of your personal reflections and ask any questions.

Recommended by one of the members of our group, Avatar feels like a perfect follow up to our exploration last month of What the Bleep in many ways, including that both these movies were able to tap into the zeitgeist, both explored transformations of consciousness and its relationship to physical reality in their own unique way, and both were created on the cusp of an evolution in film technology. Exploring Avatar after What the Bleep is also a great way for us to get into the difference between tapping into a certain cultural stream (What the Bleep) and tapping into the full collective field (Avatar).

On its own, Avatar is also the perfect film for us to explore how to integrate multiple structures of consciousness in a moving image work, which it does masterfully. It also gives us the opportunity to explore how and why this pattern appears in the most financially successful films of all times and how this approach can enable us to potentially affect more hearts and minds. Plus, even though Avatar was released during the Christmas season...it is also makes a pretty good summer movie adventure.

Monday, June 24, 2019

“What the Bleep Do We Know” about Tapping into the Zeitgeist?

What the Bleep Do We Know (2004)

Exploring What the Bleep Do We Know (2004) as this month’s Conscious Movie-of-the-Month selection has made clear that one of the major hallmarks of this work is that it somehow tapped into the zeitgeist, or the spirit of the times. The historical data suggests that a media works’ potential to achieve financial success or major transformative impact is directly related to its relationship to the zeitgeist, or collective field at the time of its release. Even traditional entertainment industry watchers have recognized this issue, as reflected in this Hollywood Reporter article from 2015. This is a wonderful insight, to be sure, but it begs a larger question: Is it possible to create a media work with the intention of connecting with the zeitgeist? Or is this too subtle and complex a connection for us to work with on a conscious and direct level?

Using What the Bleep as a case study I think is valuable for helping us examine this question. What we have learned from the filmmakers William Arntz and Betsy Chasse, and one of the distributors of the film, Ron Laurie, during this month was that they were conscious of it happening on some level at some point during the creation process, and they attempted to ride the wave the best they could in each of their own ways and as a team. Exploring their distribution efforts, we see an example of using an integral approach to consciously tap into the zeitgeist wave and maximize the ride…which they did successfully.

I have been researching this potential to consciously tap into the zeitgeist, or as we say in Integral Theory, tapping into the “evolutionary impulse,” or the driving force of the evolving universe. From this perspective the zeitgeist can be seen as the current collective field within the evolutionary stream of a culture and society. The key to tapping into it is to become conscious of the evolutionary arc behind this wave. Becoming conscious of the evolutionary arc that has led to any given moment in the life of an individual or the collective has the potential to give us the capacity to sense the energy of trajectory of this collective wave, and in turn the evolutionary impulse behind it. While this is a very complex and subtle process our research suggests it is indeed possible to consciously tap into the zeitgeist and evolutionary impulse, and thus increase our chances of both audience reach and transformative impact.

To learn more about this process and how you can ride the zeitgeist wave yourself, be sure to join Trina Wyatt, myself and special guest, What the Bleep co-creator, Betsy Chasse for our live virtual chat on Wednesday June 26th at 6 pm PST.

Monday, June 3, 2019

Why the "Game of Thrones" finale is BRILLIANT!



Join Integral Cinema Project's lead researcher Mark Allan Kaplan and associate researcher Jonathan Steigman as they make the case in this new podcast for Why the Game of Thrones finale is BRILLIANT! While they are definitely in the minority with this one they explore how the finale managed several extraordinary moves that deepened and anchored the entire series. With the finale, the whole arc and purpose of Game of Thrones became clear. The show is about the transition away from the Mythic/Traditional structure of consciousness and the end of feudalism...and the rise and fall of an authoritarian demagogue with weapons of mass destruction...leading to rumblings of the Rational/Modern structure and the transition toward democracy.

Mark and Jonathan also make the case that part of the disappointment in the finale may be because of how the last 2 seasons were truncated, moving to an archetypal storytelling style that sometimes clashed with the previous 6 seasons.


Why the Game of Thrones finale is BRILLIANT! (TEHNC 26) from TEHNC Podcast on Vimeo.




Saturday, June 1, 2019

Inside “What the Bleep Do We Know” - A Special Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Experience for June 2019


Our Conscious Movie-of-the-Month exploration for June 2019 is What the Bleep Do We Know (2004). This month we have a special treat for all us conscious media creators and fans, one of the filmmakers who worked on the film, our very own Betsy Chasse, will be joining us in our exploration along with some potential surprise guests from the production team, sharing some of their behind the scenes experiences and perspectives on the film with us both online during the month and in our virtual chat at the end of the month (date and time to be announced).

You are invited to watch What the Bleep Do We Know on your own and feel free to share your thoughts, reflections, musings and questions about the film in our group’s online discussion forum.

We chose What the Bleep Do We Know because it is considered by many to be a landmark work in the conscious media movement, being one of the very first movies about consciousness to penetrate the mass market. It was also groundbreaking in terms of visually capturing patterns of consciousness itself and creating what is now called the hybrid documentary style, integrating interviews with both compelling narrative and powerful visual storytelling.

This film was also created during the transition between analogue and digital filmmaking and was one of the first films to tap into the cultural creative field of consciousness. Because of this the film was traversing two major evolutionary convergence streams, technological and cultural, and is a great example of a work that was in synchronicity with the zeitgeist edge of the evolution of consciousness. We are blessed to have the opportunity to hear from the filmmakers themselves about what it was like to create a work at this leading edge, and while What the Bleep Do We Know is not an integral film, all of this makes it is a fascinating case study from an integral-evolutionary perspective.

Please join your hosts Trina Wyatt and Mark Allan Kaplan and our very special guests in this very special conscious movie adventure…

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Breaking the Wheel: Reflections on Game of Thrones, Selma and the Great Transition

Game of Thrones (2011-2019) Final Episode

For those of you who have been watching Game of Thrones, this is a special week...the week of the series finale. For many viewers, outsized expectations combined with mixed feelings about the final two seasons make it difficult to see the finale in a clear and deep way. Many viewers online are expressing disappointment at how the show finally turned out, while others have decidedly mixed feelings. Part of this may be due to the show’s need to wrap itself up before the book series on which it is based has even been completed. While author George R. R. Martin told the creators of the show how his saga will end, the show runners have had to create the meat around the foundational bones of the story themselves, and do it in a shorter span of time.

After a deep analysis of the series it appears that the GoT finale and the show as a whole stands as a brilliant work of integral cinema, integrating multiple dimensions of being and becoming. The series arc depicts the evolutionary transition away from the monarchy system and into the stirrings of representative democracy. Meanwhile, it lays bare the full arc of Daenerys’ rise as an authoritarian demagogue, strongly echoing the current political situation and evolutionary transition we are facing today.

For those of us who loved the movie Selma (2014) who are also fans of GoT, we can find some very fascinating parallels and differences between the transformations of consciousness explored in these two works. Selma is, of course, a story about a real-life event and GoT is a fictional representation of real-life processes and patterns. Both explore societal transitions, and both have resonances connected with the structures of consciousness that support prejudice, bigotry and slavery...and the struggle to transcend these structures. One explores the process of attempting to create a better world where violence is used (GoT) and the other, where non-violent civil disobedience is used (Selma).

Selma (2014)

The transition explored in GoT is about the shift from the traditional (mythic) to the modern (rational) structures of consciousness, where violence has been historically the most used transitional catalyst. Selma, on the other hand, explores part of the transition from the modern (rational) to the postmodern (pluralistic) structures of consciousness, where non-violence tends to be the most potent choice. Both of these methods relate to our current situation since the transition we are going through includes a conflict between the traditional (mythic), modern (rational) and postmodern (pluralistic) structures of consciousness, all at the same time.

In many ways, these types of transitions between different structures of consciousness and the cultural and social systems that have been built up around them requires one to “break the wheel” of the old system in order to make room for something new to emerge like in GoT…while there are also times when all we need do is try to fix the wheel like in Selma, there are also other times when it seems like the wheel of the old system breaks down by itself as it reaches these evolutionary transition points, like this moment we are all facing in our world today...and stories like these can help us see clearer and deeper and more expansively where we are and what we are called to evolve through and toward.

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*Special thanks to Jonathan Steigman for his editorial assistance in creating this article and for his contributions to the research into the “Game of Thrones” series.

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Breaking the Wheel: Reflections on Game of Thrones, Selma and the Great Transition, Integral Cinematic Arts Journal, May 21, 2019. Available at: https://medium.com/integral-cinema/breaking-the-wheel-4fca74846a12


Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Healers in the Hood: Reflections on the Passing of John Singleton, "Selma" and the New Consciousness in African American Cinema


John Singleton at the Premiere of “Selma” (2014)

As part of the Conscious Movie-of-the-Month Club hosted by Conscious Good Creators Network, we are viewing the film Selma (2014) as our monthly selection. I was struck by the news of African American filmmaker John Singleton (1968–2019) passing away just a few days before we started. I noticed some synchronicities or resonances between our choice of film and the life, work and passing of Singleton. Selma is the work of African American filmmaker Ava DuVernay who is part of a whole new movement and consciousness within African American cinema that most likely would not exist without Singleton’s groundbreaking work.


--> Selma filmmaker Ava DuVernay pays tribute to John Singleton Twitter (2019)    
The history of African American cinema has been profoundly affected by the history of African Americans and their struggle against great individual, cultural, social and systemic injustices and challenges. The evolutionary journey of African American media artists and their works is like a creative mirror on our collective journey as a country. Because of this great injustice gap, the evolution of African American cinema is the story of many creative, cultural and social groundbreakers fighting against a system that was and still is in many ways rigged against people of color.

Every generation has had courageous individuals who sought to break some of these barriers and open the doors to those generations to come. John Singleton was one of the brave creative souls who raised and deepened the cinematic consciousness of African American cinema by unpacking the overt and covert effects of living within the shadows of racism. His breakout film Boyz n the Hood (1991), made when he was just 23, depicted the everyday lives and realities of African Americans, going deeply personal to tap into the universal.

Since his passing many African American film scholars, critics, historians and commentators have written about Singleton’s various contributions to African American cinema and American cinema in general, including: What Hollywood Owes to John Singleton, his Influence on African American Cinema, and how he Changed Black Culture on Film Forever.

My colleague Jonathan Steigman and I created a video podcast series called New Black Cinema for White People in which we take a deep dive into the new generation of masterful young filmmakers standing on the shoulders of John Singleton and other trailblazing African American media artists. One of the groundbreaking elements of the works by this new generation is their use of both subtle and extremely overt complex communication to pierce the veil of structural white supremacy. From broad satire to quiet drama, from big budget pop culture films to low budget independent works, these filmmakers are working at the top of their game and creating cinematic works designed to raise the consciousness of American culture and society to the hidden dimensions of racism and structural white supremacy. By exploring the personal and collective costs of the hidden dimensions of racism, these creators seek a way to transcend and heal them with love and compassion for all sides.

Ava DuVernay is one of this movement’s leaders, helping and mentoring others the way Singleton did. DuVernay and this group of the new wave in African American cinema are operating at an integral or near-integral structure of consciousness, integrating all the gifts from the previous generations of activists and artists. One of these gifts is the integration of Singleton’s collective through the personal stories approach with a higher, deeper and more expansive “big picture” perspective producing more complex and multi-layered storytelling.

In Selma, DuVernay unpacks the personal, interpersonal, cultural and social dimensions of Martin Luther King’s racial and social justice consciousness raising effort during the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights marches in 1965. So we have a film about the consciousness raising efforts of Dr. King and others on the individual and collective front lines, made by a filmmaker who herself seeks to raise consciousness even further around these issues through her works. In this, DuVernay and her cohort in this new generation are standing on the shoulders of those who came before them, including Singleton, and pushing the dialogue ever forward.

And so, this month, we take this moment to mourn and honor the passing of one of these groundbreakers as we explore one of the cinematic works that has sprung from the creative garden he helped seed.

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*Special thanks to Jonathan Steigman for his editorial assistance in creating this article and for his contributions to the research into this new movement in African American Cinema.