I AM, the Movie

Just got back from Tom Shadyac's movie, "I AM". It was quite a moving experience, as it was designed to be. In fact, we were meant to be moved to prove an important point: that we are human in relationship to one another. That we face many problems in this modern world, but that while the causes may seem disparate, our problems all stem from the fact that we think that we are separate from one another, and that we've been taught that satisfaction comes from winning, not from connection. The conclusion? That love is the answer. Not romantic love, but the kind of love that says "I am connected to you; you are an inseparable part of the fabric of life that we share. As I love you I love myself." All this was delivered against the background of quantum physics and our new understandings of how we influence the world.

An example: at the HeartMath facility, we see a petri dish of yogurt react to Tom's thinking about his agent, his lawyer, and a question about his marital status. This is hard to believe until you see it. We hear how random event generators around the world react to—and perhaps even anticipate—big events. Like 9/11, and the tsunami in 2004. This should be impossible. But this is what cutting-edge science is saying.

Now...how does this relate to the Course? The movie touches on a number of things the Course teaches. That we are One, not just in some touchy-feely feel-good sense, but quite literally. When the movie talked about how love is hard-wired into our DNA, it made me think about the introduction to the Course that says "The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite."

But in contrast to the Course, which is not the easiest thing to jump in and grasp, as beautiful and amazing as I think it is, I think the movie is tremendously accessible. Tom Shadyac tells his own story, which is the story of someone who's touched "success" in a way that few of us ever will, touched the depths of despair and agony in way that few of us will either, and come out of it to say, "We can change the world. We change it every day by our every thought and every small action. We can do life a lot better than we have been doing, not by having to recreate ourselves, but by embracing what we really are." So it's a great opening, which I think will touch a lot of people.

The Course deals in cause, and not effect. This film doesn't talk about forgiveness, really, or much about the illusory nature of what we like to call "reality" (although he does touch on it), but I think that it still gets us to ask some important questions and has the potential to help many people to open up to a new vista of possibilities.