Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
Daily Meditations
Daniel:
How to do it:
First of all, you will need a small spiral bound notebook (nothing too large or you will be tempted to write more than you need to) and something to write with; the short story to screenplay book (and/or) the official soundtrack cd (and/or) the DVD. Somehow generate a random passage/track/scene and write down the most important part in your notebook.
If you have one of those DVD players that will skip to a random scene, it might be helpful when the DVD comes out.
Now use some book which has some philosophical or spiritual meaning for you and turn to a random page, writing down the first thing you come to. You may do this several times. Look at what you have written. Does it seem to be saying something, does it offer insight into your life or into the film or into life in general?
Turn the page and write down your thoughts and feelings....
My meditations follow. Feel free to post yours here if you like.
Daniel:
Ennis: "What're we supposed to do now?"
The Five Stages of the Soul:
"We stood there by the lifeboat stations not knowing exactly what to do when suddenly there was an earsplitting crash."
Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:
"The ocean remains faithful to the land, it always returns."
"After being hurt, it is natural and indeed necessary that we draw back inside the shell."
"Once we recognize how control and self-protection rob life of all vitality and rhythm, we will find ourselves slowly advancing towards the threshold of risk and trust once more."
Ennis' s words mirror a great and respectable acceptance of both risk and trust. For a stoic, it is astonishing. The level of trust grows deeper; the bond between he and Jack expands. Ennis is willing to risk his own control and nervous self-protection and as a result creates another lasting aspect of relationship.
Risk and trust together create a bond of will, soul, and heart. The individual must extend himself far from his comfort zone and then acknowledge that extention toward another: becoming open and caring with another is not harmful. In fact, when trust becomes mutual there is a creation of a new identity, a new realm of understanding with infinite possibilities. Anything could happen in a truly trusting relationship.
Although there are no guarantees in the kingdom of risk, nature shows us, time and again, that it is precisely at that moment of greatest risk, the moment when everything could be lost, that the greatest change happens.
A new life opens out into a new world that could not have been dreamed before this.
Phillip Dampier:
--- Quote from: Daniel on April 05, 2006, 04:21:16 am ---My meditations follow. Feel free to post yours here if you like.
--- End quote ---
This is great! I hope others will use them as well as the affirmations and other positive motivational phrases because they really do work (even if you think they are corny at first). Repetition and keeping the more powerful ones in front of you or in your mind regularly can shove out negative thinking and drag-you-down stress and replace it with more useful positive and calming thoughts which give energy, hope, motivation, and are calming at the same time.
Daniel:
Jack: Howdy, Mr. Aguirre. Wonderin' if you was needin' any help this summer?"
The Five Stages of the Soul:
" 'Now' Zenkai says, presenting himself to the son of the man he murdered so many years ago. 'You may kill me. My work is done.' "
Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
"Compassion and attention keep the [heart] clear so that beauty may illuminate our life."
"The human eye always sees twice in one look the thing and the emptiness."
"The unknown dwells in the recesses of the human heart and becomes especially explicit in our flaws... consequently the true language of the soul is hesitant, shadowed, and poetic."
Jack's sentence again reveals a type of suffering: hesitancy which reveals his fear of nonacceptance, a shadow which reveals an uncertainty in his emotional state, a poetic rhythm which is uttered with a surety of being. The rhythm calls upon Jack's most inner being for faithful expression in a world in which nothing is certain - "a world that may say that we're wrong."
"Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing, for the known way is an impasse." -Heraclitus.
We also see that Jack's compassion once again spills out into his expression: words and action - through a kind and questioning voice. When combined with the attention of his questing mind, still wrapped in uncertainty, it is revealed that Jack has opened himself almost completely once again and perhaps not in the right scenario. He is hoping, unsteadily, for a positive response, but is instead cut down by a scathing attack on his personhood. It strikes to the core and bursts with aching pain. If it had been joy, it would have been a beautiful experience far greater than any painful bursting in upon the heart.
For those who experience this pain secondhand, as in the audience, the pain is a recognition of the absence of a potentially greater and powerful joy. It is the absence of joy which is perceived and which culminates in some emotional phenomenon by which we can relate entirely to the rawest of human experiences. At the same time we realize that the experiences of pain and joy cannot be possible without the extention and presentation of the self to some other principle.
Joy and pain are jewels of attention. They are experienced because some part of ourselves is devoted to experiencing them. But this attention does not arise out of nothingness. It is accompanied by a type of compassion, an interest in provoking ourselves into becoming and being more human.
Daniel:
Ennis: Come on now, you're sleeping on your feet like a horse...
The Five Stages of the Soul:
"There is a Reality more meaningful than everything we see around us, and that the purpose of life is to find that Reality."
Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:
"Somewhere in every heart there is a discerning voice."
"People identify themselves with their stories."
"Outside, the day is seared with summer light."
"Once evicted, we can never return."
"Divine grace works without a program; it does not labor under the leaden intention of a pre-existent, fixed plan."
Sleeping on one's feet is a resistance to the call of exhaustion, and in this particular instance, in order to experience something real and meaningful: some genuine happiness brought about by a contemplation of the life filled with a loving relationship. It is ultimately heartful.
Ennis's discerning voice lovingly points out the truth, and urges Jack to take care of himself, but at the same time it allows him to position himself in direct contact. The simile provides Ennis's story which is ultimately himself, concluded shortly after.
The outside world feels distant and extreme - its pains and conflicts are not present in the small world that Jack and Ennis share intimately. Once evicted from this world in a type of symbolic death, they can never return completely.
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