Announcing the launch of the Lived Inquiry MetaLab

 

Dear family, friends, supporters, colleagues, students and all those new to my work, I would like to announce my latest project, the Lived Inquiry MetaLab on Substack. 

I have worn many hats and had many different journeys in different domains and on different platforms. Now I will be attempting to bring all my life paths together in this one virtual space…exploring my adventures in transformative art, media, technology, consciousness and beyond.

I believe, like many others, that we are going through a major civilization-wide transition. Anthropologists call the kind of transition we are in a liminal phase, where we experience such a radical shift in the underlying paradigms of our world that every aspect of our inner and outer beingness goes into flux. Old constructs fall apart and there is a blank space that emerges within and around us before new ones fully emerge. Some call what we are going through the Metacrisis, where all domains are in crisis…and it definitely feels that way to me.

At this moment I am experiencing this liminal-ness in all dimensions of my being and surrendering into it. 

My previous work in the domains of art, media, technology and consciousness still lives within me, yet the frames in which I have held this work are deconstructing. 

• What is art now that A.I.s are generating a wild new stream of art out of the collective consciousness of humanity? 
• What is media when there are so many new forms overlapping and inter-mingling with themselves and other previous non-media domains? 
• What is technology when it is transcending all its previous boundaries and becoming alive in strange new ways? 
• And what is consciousness when our human world appears to be going mad while our machines start to think like us?

I believe that in this liminal phase we are all called upon to be lived inquiry explorers, beta testing the future as it unfolds within us and all around us…so that we can help navigate our way toward a more positive future. For me, this calling is a calling for us to turn our lives into labs without walls, without boundaries…a meta-lab of lived inquiry…

Transformative Media Course (Spring 2020)

Announcing our next 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 Soon

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: 

https://campus-coevolve.org/transformative-media/

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

Integral Cinema 2019 Year in Review

Welcome to 2020! 2019 has been a major transition year for the Integral Cinema Project. We shifted our energy and focus toward meeting the challenges humanity is facing as part of the current global-scale evolutionary crisis (which is the root cause of all our current global-scale challenges like climate change, mass species extinctions, wealth inequality, rising ethno-nationalism and more). Our research on the co-evolution of the moving image, consciousness, technology, culture and society indicates all these crises are the products of the growing gap between the evolution of our technologies and the evolution of our collective consciousness. We seem to lack the collective capacity to use these advanced technologies for healthy, life-sustaining and life-flourishing purposes.

Our research suggests our best shot at limiting the potential suffering related to this major evolutionary transition is by using our advanced technologies to help accelerate the evolution of individual and collective consciousness. Because of the short time we have to heal this gap between our collective consciousness and our technologies before the projected collapse of our current civilizational structures, we are focusing our attention on training as many integral (r)evolutionary change agents to use these advanced media technologies to accelerate the evolution of individual and collective consciousness, open sourcing our data, tools and practices to the world, and developing a global at-scale evolutionary media intervention.

This year the Integral Cinema Project embarked on a number of exciting new ventures...

The Cinevolve Inititive

This year the Integral Cinema Project embarked on a number of exciting new ventures. We have been called to codify what we’ve learned and put it into practice so we can begin to train media makers to understand Integral thinking and incorporate it into their own work. The time for research and theory-building expands to include a new initiative to put our findings out into the world! To this end, we have joined forces with other evolutionary-oriented institutions and organizations including Conscious Good Networks and Campus Co-Evolve, and created The Cinevolve Initiative, a Manhattan Project-style research and enactment initiative to uplift humanity through these challenging times by storifying and gamifying the stages of human development and the evolution of individual and collective consciousness. Operating under the auspices of the Integral Cinema Project, Cinevolve aims to create “proof of concept” content and train others to do so as well.

Conscious Movie-of-the-Month

This year we joined with the Conscious Good Creators Network to bring integral cinema theory and practice to this collective of transformative media makers from around the world through our Conscious Movie-of-the-Month (CMoM) integral movie review and discussion series. The following are the 2019 CMoM virtual discussions:

• The Matrix
• Selma
• What the Bleep Do We Know?
• Avatar
• The Great Hack
• Game of Thrones
• Black Panther
• Inception

Integral Cinema Courses 2019

This year also saw the beginning of our initiative to train as many media-makers in integral cinematic consciousness as possible to help assist humanity in navigating through our current evolutionary crisis/transition.

• Transformative Media Creation and Reception - This year we also joined forces Campus Co-Evolve to create a Transformative Media Creation and Reception course to train evolutionary change agent and activists from around the world to use media in support of their efforts to help humanity evolve.
• Conscious Media-Making 101 - In this introductory course for the Conscious Good Creators Network, Integral Cinema Project founder Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D. explores what is conscious media and conscious media-making, what are some of the different potential forms of conscious media-making, and how different states and stages of consciousness effect the media-making process. Mark also explores how these structures of consciousness within us are communicated between us, the works we create and the individuals and collectives that experience our works…and how this knowledge can be used to create deeper and more transformative media experiences for creators and viewers on the individual and collective levels.

Integral Movie and TV List Updates 2019

The following are all the 2019 movies and TV series that tested positive for having integral elements and have been added to our IMDb Integral Movie and TV List.

• High Flying Bird (Netflix, 2019) - Steven Soderbergh's elegantly complex exploration of the personal, interpersonal, cultural, social and historical dimensions of African American basketball behind-the-scenes politics that gives us a beautiful and deeply resonant "big picture" multi-dimensional perspective on the effects of structurally embedded white supremacy. 
• Undone (Amazon Prime, 2019) - Amazingly beautiful exploration of the line between madness and enlightenment and the indigenous magic worldview and the modern and postmodern worldviews. This little hybrid animated gem using complex storytelling to take on cinematic trip into multiple dimensions of being and becoming.  
• The Mandalorian (Disney+, 2019) - The first live-action series of the integrally-informed Star Wars Saga that marks a return to the saga's mythic storytelling roots in a clean and simple story structure. It also grounds us back intp an essential "Force"-oriented story that pulls our heart-strings with the introduction of "Baby Yoda". In many ways this series feels like an attempt to heal some of the fans wounds of the missteps taken in The Last Jedi and Solo and it appears to be doing just that. 
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Disney/Lucasfilm, 2019) - 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.

Integral Cinema Publications 2019

The following is a list of all our publications published in 2019:

• Avatar and the Co-Evolution of Consciousness, Culture and Society - An exploration of the Co-Evolutionary relationship of consciousness, cultural worldviews and societal structures and how it is reflected in "Avatar."
• Cinema and the Evolutionary Emotional-Aesthetics of Sri Aurobindo - This is a research report on one of our current research projects exploring the integral-evolutionary theories and approaches of Sri Aurobindo's work.
• Breaking the Wheel: Reflections on Game of Thrones, Selma and the Great Transition - An  exploration of the parallels between the "Game of Thrones" series (2011-2019), our current evolutionary moment and the movie "Selma" (2014).
• Healers in the Hood: Reflections on the Passing of John Singleton, Selma and the New Consciousness in African American Cinema - An exploration of the connections between the passing of African American filmmaker John Singleton, the film "Selma by African American filmmaker Ava DuVernay and the new movement in African American Cinema towards a more complex and comprehensive integral conscious-raising approach to capturing and confronting the continuing challenges faced by African Americans including structural and hidden racism and white supremacy.
• The Matrix and the Evolution of Consciousness - Or, taking the Red Pill and waking up to the coming of Winter: Reflections on meta-perspectival storytelling, The Matrix, Game of Thrones and our current global situation.
• The Pluralistic Worldview of Netflix’s Unbelievable - An examination of the ways the show is solidly Pluralistic, and how it could have been more Integral.

T.E.H.N.C. Podcast - Integral Cinema Sessions 2019

The following are this years integral cinema video podcast sessions between Integral Cinema Project founder Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D. and our Director of Communications and the host of the TEHNC Podcast series, Jonathan Steigman.

• New Black Cinema: Roundup - Jonathan and Mark do a roundup of the latest works in the movement we have dubbed "The New Black Cinema." From "Black Panther" to "Black Lightning," from "Blindspotting" to "If Beale Street Could Talk," we discuss the state-of-the-art in New Black Cinema and its integral and near-integral underpinnings. 
• Why the Game of Thrones finale is BRILLIANT! - Jonathan and Mark make the case that the GoT 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 from the Mythic structure and the end of feudalism...and the rise and fall of an authoritarian demagogue with weapons of mass destruction. 
• The Big Picture of the NOW - Jonathan interviews Mark as he explains why "All problems are problems of consciousness" and 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.  
• Why The Rise of Skywalker is brilliant! (and why it matters) - Mark and Jonathan make the case that: 1. J.J. Abrams took an impossible task and delivered beyond our expectations in this final installment of the Star Wars trilogies; 2. The Star Wars saga has important resonances throughout our culture and society, beyond almost any other popular work; 3. Critics (and film theorists and scholars) by and large don't know how to read the film, or evolutionary media in general. 

Community Partnerships 

In addition to the above projects we have been doing this last year with our partners, we are working with them in various other ways as well.

• Campus Co-Evolve - We are developing additional transformative media courses and a Transformative Media Community of Practice with Campus Co-Evolve and working with the Campus’s founder, collective intelligence pioneer George Pór, to develop a collective intelligence approach to media-making. 
• Conscious Good - We are developing additional courses and workshops with the Conscious Good Creators Network, we advised them on a research study exploring the connection between consciousness and media, and some of our integral cinema research findings were presented by Conscious Good founder Trina Wyatt at the Visionaries Summit, which was also attended by Integral Cinema Project founder Mark Allan Kaplan and Director of Communications Jonathan Steigman. 
• Transformative Technology Community - This year we became a community partner with the Transformative Technology community of the San Francisco Bay Area, we were on the support team for the TransTech 2019 Conference, and we attended the TransTech Academy incubator for a second year in a row as well.

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.

"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.

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.

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

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.

References

• What Hollywood Owes to John Singleton https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/04/john-singleton-appreciation-boyz-n-the-hood
• John Singleton’s Influence on African American Cinema https://www.tvovermind.com/john-singletons-influence-on-african-american-cinema/
• John Singleton Changed Black Culture on Film Forever https://www.laweekly.com/arts/john-singleton-changed-black-culture-on-film-forever-10150468
• New Black Cinema for White People (Podcast Series) https://vimeo.com/album/5379791

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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.

"The Matrix" and the Evolution of Consciousness

Or, taking the Red Pill and waking up to the coming of Winter: Reflections on meta-perspectival storytelling, The Matrix, Game of Thrones and our current global situation

According to my research into the potential co-evolution of the moving image, consciousness, culture and society, The Matrix (1999) helped to introduce a higher form of cinematic consciousness* into mainstream pop culture. The foundation of this higher form of cinematic consciousness could be called meta-perspectival storytelling.

Meta-perspectival storytelling refers to stories that unfold through both major and minor shifts in perspective that often reveal whole new ways of understanding and experiencing the storyworld unfolding before us. Think of the red-blue pill moment in The Matrix, or the self-as-ghost revelation at the end of The Sixth Sense (1999), the shifting realities of a television series like Lost (2004) or the progressive, reality-shaking awakening of characters to the true coming threat of winter in Game of Thrones (2011). All of these works use meta-perspectival storytelling to drive their stories and characters to greater levels of understanding and capacities.

This form of storytelling has been around for a while in various forms but not until the release of both The Matrix and The Sixth Sense in 1999, did this form penetrate the pop culture cinematic language in a big way. Since then, more and more cinematic works have been using this form of storytelling, creating deeper and more expansive works with layers and layers of perceptual realities that hide and reveal themselves over time, guiding us and the characters to greater levels of understanding and revelation. Meta-perspectival storytelling is born out of a specific stage of development and structure of consciousness, often referred to as Integral Consciousness. The key to this structure of consciousness is the drive to understand all dimensions and perspectives of our reality and integrate them into a meaningful whole, a "big picture" meta-perspective.

I find it beautifully symbolic that this month is the 20th anniversary of The Matrix (1999-2019), the film that helped birth this expansion of cinematic consciousness, and the start of the final season of Game of Thrones (2011-2019), the series that helped to evolve this form of storytelling to new levels of richness, depth and complexity for a global scale audience that more easily and deeply understands, embodies and enjoys this form of consciousness and storytelling.

I also find it rather haunting and inspiring to look at how this evolution of storytelling and viewer consciousness coincides with the ever deepening and expanding deconstruction of so many of our individual and collective mental, emotional and perspectival constructs within and around us. This deconstruction has culminated in the whirlwind of reality bubbles, fake news, propaganda networks and "alternate truth" in which we currently find ourselves. I have to wonder if all these meta-perspectival stories feeding our imaginations these last twenty years are an expression of our collective consciousness preparing us to make some big perspectival transition, helping more and more of us to wake up to the coming of our own global climate change and political, cultural and social regression winter, and to individually and collectively search for the red pill that will wake us all up in time.



*NOTE: Cinematic consciousness as I define it comes from my research into the relationship between the moving image, consciousness, culture and society. This research suggests that human beings project their structures of consciousness into their creative works. This in turn appears to create similar composite structures of consciousness embedded in these works. In a sense these embedded consciousness structures create a kind of cinematic consciousness that lives within the constructed cinematic reality of these moving images. And this cinematic consciousness in turn affects viewer consciousness.

2018 Integral Movie and TV List Update

2018 was another challenging year for many of us and sometimes taking a break from all the challenges in these times is needed; sometimes we need an escape or release from the stresses and sometimes we need some distance on our lives and the world to see things from a different perspective. Great integral movies and television or streaming series can often do both at the same time. In addition, integral cinematic works can exercise our perspective-taking capacities, something that can only help us in dealing with these challenging times...plus we get to have popcorn while we are doing our integral cinematic workout...

So here are this last year's additions to the IMDb Integral Movie and TV List of cinematic works that tested positive for elements of the Integral structure of consciousness by the Integral Cinema Project. Some of these are new works released in 2018 and some are older works that have been rediscovered as integral gems from the past. For the complete list of Integral movies and series check out the full list at: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls074613980/

IMDb INTEGRAL MOVIE AND TV LIST UPDATES 2018

Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse (2018; Currently in Theaters) - This animated addition to the Spider-man movie series is an Integral game-changer, a truly extraordinary film that transcends and includes the evolution of comics, anime and superhero films, and so many other domains, worlds, dimensions, perspectives and realities and integrates them into a wondrous, fun, classic yet avant-garde, holistic, holonic, gestalt...integral masterpiece.

Black Panther (2018; Now On Demand and Disk) - Black Panther is a brilliant integral cinematic work that mirrors multiple stages of development in all aspects and levels of its narrative, visual, auditory and editorial expressions. It also shows both healthy and pathological manifestations of each stage and represents subtle ways that one can transcend the pathologies and evolve to higher stages of development. At the same time, this film tackles major psychological, cultural and social issues from primal psychological wounding to complex issues of race, class, oppression and isolationism in subtle and deep ways. And all of this is elegantly hidden beneath the surface of a wonderful and traditional superhero genre piece. Watch our Black Panther TEHNC Podcast series on this important integral work.

Wrinkle in Time (2018; Now On Demand and Disk) - Wrinkle in Time is a beautiful, rich and groundbreaking integrally-informed cinematic work that uses an advanced form of feminine-communion storytelling in its use of communion-centered editorial, camerawork and production design and its nonlinear spiraling evolutionary arc of both its characters and its story. In this multilayered work the shots and cuts are focused less on the action and more on deep and layered emotions, inner promptings and catharses, as the characters and story streams move the characters and us the viewer through various stages of development that evolve through a series of cycles back in and through each stage several times, peeling away different forms and levels of challenges in those stages that ultimately lead to deep yet subtle evolutionary growth. Regrettably this great work falters at the end with a small yet fatal flaw in the story and character lines of development at a peak transition moment. Still a great work worth seeing.

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018; Netflix) - This feature length episode of the groundbreaking integral series from Netflix breaks even more new ground by integrating the interactivity between multiple storyworld streams and the viewer/player experience as we are given choices in how the story unfolds in real time. The integration of story, character and viewer experience even includes the main character starting to act like they can feel us the viewer manipulating their life. The multi-layered complex interconnections between the on-screen storyworld and the viewer/player reality produces a potentially profound experience of deep integral aperspectival awareness in us as we watch and play along. This integration leads us and the main character into intellectually, emotionally and existentially questioning essential aspects of free will, choice and the nature of reality, and potentially shifting us into the integral-Kosmocentric witness state in search of the "big picture" of existence.

Altered Carbon (2018; Netflix) - This Netflix original series explores the question of what part does death play in the evolution of consciousness, culture and society by transporting us to a sci-fi world where death has been eliminated by using technology to digitize consciousness and transfer to other bodies (sleeves). In the first season we see how the absence of death messes with the spiral of development in ways that causes us to potentially loose our humanity while increasing class divides and losing the gravity that draws us toward healthy growth and development and the evolutionary impulse itself.

Ugly Delicious (2018; Netflix) - Celebrity Chef David Chang's cooking travelogue series that explores the evolution of food, its co-evolution with culture and society and its relationship with different structures of consciousness. Special thanks to Jeff Salzman for finding this work...and check out his Daily Evolver podcast review of it - The Integral Practice of Pizza.

Childhood's End (2015; Syfy) - A flawed Syfy cable mini-series adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's classic integral evolutionary science fiction novel that struggles to find its footing while still imparting the essential evolutionary trajectory of the original work. Even though it lacks the heart and spirit of the original story, one cannot help but feel the power of Clarke's universe and the tale of how the human race will ultimately transcend its limits (with a little help from some other worldly friends) and evolve into a Kosmo-centric species. There is also some of the wonderful archetypal power of the original's transcendent use of the demon/devil archetype.

Selma (2014; On Demand and Disk) - Selma is a multi-dimensional and multi-perspectival cinematic exploration of an event in the life of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. that reveals the various individual and collective forces that moved all sides of this profound political moment in American history. During this exploration, Dr. King is revealed to be both a flawed human being on the personal relationship level and a masterful integral thinker with the capacity to see a greater depth and span in the events around him than those around him could see. 

Andromeda (2000-2005; Syfy) - A brilliant, integrally-informed science fiction universe and series based on some unused material by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. This wonderful little series has a progressively unfolding Kosmocentric center-of-gravity at the center of a hybrid mythic, rational and pluralistic storyworld that includes a wondrously simple yet complex exploration of the involution and evolution of consciousness, and an expanded perceptual field of sentient life and all its potential variations of beingness and becoming. Special thanks to Mark Le Sueur for bringing this work to our attention.

Star Trek Universe (1966-Present; Various) - Starting with the original Star Trek television series in 1966, through many itinerations up to the current Star Trek: Discovery streaming series, the Star Trek universe has given us a cinematic example of what an Integral moral universe would look like. With its evolutionary-aware Prime Directive and its trans-species post-Capitalist worldview, the Star Trek franchise has been planting integral consciousness seeds for over 50 years. While the episodes of the original series and the many spin-off series and the various theatrical itineration's vary in terms of just how integral they are in form and content, the center of gravity of the Star Trek universe is decidedly integral and evolutionary in heart and spirit, with the most recent works starting with the Star Trek (2009) theatrical reboot up to the current Star Trek: Discovery streaming series becoming much more integral across all expressive domains. Special thanks to Corey W. DeVos and Cindy Wigglesworth for their major contribution to an integral understanding of this profoundly influential cinematic franchise; be sure to check out their work on the Star Trek universe at IntegralLife.com.

Andrei Tarkovsky's Collected Works (1962-1986; Russia; On Demand and on Disk) - One of this year’s major research breakthroughs was the completion of our testing of the major cinematic works of Russian filmmaker and theorist Andrei Tarkovsky. What we discovered was that Tarkovsky's unique cinematic style, which he calls "sculpting in time," pervades all of his major works and is a masterful integrally-informed capturing of experiential reality. With long simple yet complex poetically choreographed shots that allow for a multi-layed unfolding of each successive cinematic moment, along with subtle shifts between narrative, visual, auditory, and temporal dimensions of individual and collective interior and exterior realities, Tarkovsky miraculously appears to be capturing and expressing a lived experiential reality in a profoundly visceral way. In addition, he seems to have a masterful capacity to capture and orchestrate gross, subtle and causal cinematic energies to create potential transcendental experiences and deep witnessing states in the viewer. With the addition of Tarkovsky's films into the integral cinema historical/evolutionary timeline we can see the deep impact his work has had on the evolution of integral cinema in particular and world cinema in general. The works included in this analysis are: Ivan's Childhood (1962); Andrei Rublev (1966); Solaris (1972); The Mirror (1975); Stalker (1979); Nostalghia (1983); and The Sacrifice (1986). Special thanks to Eugene Pustoshkin for bringing Tarkovsky to our attention and for sharing his deep knowledge of this integral cinema master and his work. For more on the Energetic Lens see Integral Cinema Studio (Kaplan, 2012)

La Jetée (1962; France; On Demand and Disk) - An avant-garde short using all still images to explore the nature of time, memory, dreams, human nature, the impermanence of the world of form and the evolution of self, culture and world, and in the end touches on the Kosmocentric witness at the edge of life and death.

Wild Strawberries (1957; Sweden; On Demand and Disk) - Ingmar Bergman's deeply reflective film explores the evolution of one man's life through memories, dreams, interactions and self-reflections. Through this process Bergman shows us how generational patterns imprison us and cause evolutionary regression, and how becoming a witness to these greater evolutionary and de-evolutionary patterns can awaken us and help us evolve further.

The Razor's Edge (1946; On Demand and Disk) - Adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's classic tale of a young man in search of the meaning of existence and his evolutionary journey toward a higher and deeper level of being and becoming.

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As you can see this has been a groundbreaking year for integral cinema with several works going beyond what has been done before in terms of integral cinematic expression and storytelling. In addition, the discovery of several important integral works from the past has given us a much clearer sense of the evolution of the embedding of the integral structure of consciousness in the moving image medium. In a strange way it seems that as our everyday reality is facing profound evolutionary challenges we are given a banner year of moving image works that help us expand and deepen our evolutionary awareness. Perhaps the collective evolutionary impulse is sending us a message...