A Note on Sergei Eisenstein's Film Alexander Nevsky

This film is perhaps one of the best examples of Eisenstein's use of montage. He worked closely with the composer Prokofiev and Prokofiev was able to match
specific bars of his music with precise frames of the film.

Nevsky purports to describe a battle in which a small Russian volunteer army full of warmly empathic people, defeats an invading force of cruel, armored German crusaders in 1242.

Years ago, I saw a book about Eisenstein's films and there is a page showing a drawing
Eisenstein made of one of the characters in the film, Vasilisa. She is wearing a helmet
and gazing out over the forbidding ice of Lake Peipus, which will shortly become the field of battle. Eisenstein wanted both visual image and music that would seamlessly combine to create the apprehension one would feel when facing an icy blank, waiting, waiting waiting for the appearance of an enemy army on the distant horizon.

Prokofiev used those drawings and film footage in such a way as to tie specific bars of musical score to specific images in precisely selected frames of film.

There are other little touches. There is a fleeting, up close view of the German bishop celebrating Mass and for an instant, an alert viewer can see Nazi swastikas incorporated into the embroidered decorations on the bishop's miter.

The result is a film feasts the eyes, puts emotions through the wringer and makes a viewer feel cathartically fufilled, hopeful--and eager to keep on fighting.

The Eisenstein/Prokofiev Alexander Nevsky film project was completed and released for view in the late 1930s just before World War II. Josef Stalin arranged for the representatives of Nazi Germany to attend a private viewing of Nevsky, to give them a warning of what they would be in for if the Nazis made the mistake of invading Russia.

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The Anticult
And they give them little cookies, like maybe a group photo with the Guru, and they give them a label, like "Crew" or "Staff".

There's a recent and ongoing tweet that current full-time staffers who used to refer to their employer as 'BK', have now started calling her 'BS'. One can only guess what that stands for.

Tsukimoto wrote:

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--"In the guru and in the community at Kripalu, thousands of seekers sought the perfect Dad and Mom."

--"Orphans bring a tremendous amount of idealization and projection into their relationships with their teachers. We fall in love with our teachers and with our communities, and as a result, we do not see them at all clearly."

--"With our teacher," said Jack (Engler- a psychiatrist) our longing for love and recognition, for perfect goodness and caring, for perfect fairness and justice, is so deep that we project it and see it whether it is there or not."

--"We need our powerful love objects to help us to learn to separate from them. There is nothing more difficult."

Here is something interesting from Carol S Pearsons 1989 book, The Hero Within. She suggests that all six archetypes exist within us, at all times.

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I also believe that we all have access to every mode all the time.
What "stage" we are in has to do with where we "hang out" the
most, where we spend the greatest percentage of our time. The most
oppressed victim will have moments of transcendence.

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And none of us gets so advanced that we stop feeling, every once in awhile, like
a motherless child. In fact, each stage has a gift for us, something
critical to teach us about being human.

A good guru, Sheikh teacher or therapist will assist people to claim and internalize all the archetypes for themselves so that they will, eventually be able to leave that teacher.

Like good parents, a good Sheikh, Pir or healer will give you both roots and wings so that, eventually you can leave that teacher.

Look to Buddhist and Sufi history (Qushyari, Hujwiri) and see how many of the best Sheikhs, Murids and Pirs empowered disciples to become teachers while the Master was still alive.

The model of a monarchical Pir who has hundreds or thousands of dependants
who cling to the shrine all their lives -- that is an arrangement common in Pakistan and one which many devout Pakistanis now disapprove of.

A dictatorial and needy teacher will monopolize the Hero or Magician role and keep the followers in the orphan role -- such a teacher is covertly immature and cannot tolerate perceived abandonment.

This chronic servitude may be concealed by giving people 'hits' -- brief vicarious tastes of feeling as though they themselves are magicians or heroes.

But the dictatorial teacher will find ways to withdraw that 'high' and again find ways to active that feeling of orphanhood.

And a teacher may tell lots of stories about how he or she once was an Orphan or Wanderer and can use this to get the followers to feel powerful and nurturing toward the teacher while the teacher is temporarily revisiting the Orphan archetype--while sitting on the guru throne in designer clothes.

But....in the end, the insecure teacher is free to shift around the archetypes and return to the Magician/Hero role--and monopolize it.

If followers show signs of growing an becoming too independent of the insecure leader, or if some try to leave and set up independent careers, that insecure leader may find ways to 'push buttons' to trigger followers to feel like helpless Orphans once again--and with only The Leader as Hero and Magician and Source of All Hope.

A bad guru or poor teacher will keep you feeling like an Orphan. Even if you are given temporary shots of bliss, you can be made to feel like an orphan any time you dare to outgrow that teacher--unless you manage to grow so very rapidly you can see the entire frame and step out of it entirely. In a case like that, you may have to take the precaution of hiding your insights and new information from the despotic teacher so that you can conceal your progress and not have it disrupted before you are ready to break the frame and escape having your Orphan archetype used against you.

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And none of us gets so advanced that we stop feeling, every once in awhile, like
a motherless child. In fact, each stage has a gift for us, something
critical to teach us about being human.

The Orphan feeling is hard to examine because it is so painful it is hard to stand still and apply insight.

But I can tell you that many mistakes I have made were made when I was in a feeling state like that of a little kid who has been found and pulled from a snowbank.

If we can learn to recognize this emotion complex at a conscious level, we can learn to be alert and identify situations where this state is being evoked within us.

Then we can learn to avoid making important decisions at such times.

This is similar to the way some fortunate persons learn their actual capacity for alcohol so that it does not become a problem for them. Such persons identify various signs that
they've reached a point where it is time to stop drinking, and hand over the car keys to a designated driver.

As Pearson put it, all of us no matter how mature, still carry that orphan archetype within us. If we are alert, we can learn to sense when we have shifted into that domain
and can avoid making important decisions.

We can also identify when someone is trying to trigger that Orphan feeling within us
---or is trying to keep us feeling like Orphans all the time.

Remember that earlier quote of how Milton Erickson went on the assuption that people did have areas of strength that they did not know they had, and looked for ways to assist clients to start utilizing these capacities in areas they didnt think to look at.

That's how a real healer works. He didnt seek to end all suffering, either--just a particular problem a client had identified and come in with. He wanted to increase the areas of autonomy in someone's life, not turn them into a long term inmate of some system of his.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2015 11:26PM by corboy.

Would those be real "staff", as in people who are actually paid by the company?
Or the fake so-called "Staff", the people who work for no pay, or even pay to work at the seminars?

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Cruz

Quote
The Anticult
And they give them little cookies, like maybe a group photo with the Guru, and they give them a label, like "Crew" or "Staff".

There's a recent and ongoing tweet that current full-time staffers who used to refer to their employer as 'BK', have now started calling her 'BS'. One can only guess what that stands for.

Quote
The Anticult
Would those be real "staff", as in people who are actually paid by the company?
Or the fake so-called "Staff", the people who work for no pay, or even pay to work at the seminars?

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Cruz
There's a recent and ongoing tweet that current full-time staffers who used to refer to their employer as 'BK', have now started calling her 'BS'. One can only guess what that stands for.

This bit of info came through a paid staffmember.

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The Anticult
There appears to be a new update to the Janaki blog?
[janakisstory.wordpress.com]
There is a transcript posted of a recent teleconference with Byron Katie?
If you want to read the words of a skilled master manipulator, read that transcript.

Then you have the classic Byron Katie...first she "labels" her critics as being "wacky". Then she pulls out the Turnaround...
QUOTE: "My responsibility is to support facilitators to shift people’s negative concepts in the world. Because negative concepts are violent and this is about peace."

Transcript on Janaki's weblog of BK's teleconference:

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Byron Katie: “If there is a facilitator out there, that is saying really negative things about a facilitator, about The Work, just really anything that would negatively affect, then I would pull that person’s profile of course, and also anyone that listed their profile on that person’s website, I would pull that person. Let’s say for example someone is saying really terrible things about The Work, and other facilitators and they are listing profiles on their website, then anyone who posted on that website, I would pull their profile, because they are endorsing all that negativity about the very thing that they are doing in their life. It just doesn’t make any sense it is wacky, and so I would pull the profile because I don’t want anyone that wacky affecting you as a facilitator. My responsibility is to support facilitators to shift people’s negative concepts in the world. Because negative concepts are violent and this is about peace.”

BK's last Twitter entry:

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When they attack you and you notice that you love them with all your heart, your Work is done.

Calling her former staff members wacky is loving them with all her heart? Or perhaps BK's Work is not done yet?

GO Meadow!!

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Meadow
BK's last Twitter entry:

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When they attack you and you notice that you love them with all your heart, your Work is done.

That is such a manipulation tactic.
She is playing her Byron Katie victim Story, implying she is being "attacked"....but then she says she is loving them with all of her heart, just like it says in the bible...

Anyone have a guilt-tripping mother-in-law, or great auntie?
;-)
Then you have heard a version of that one before many times...passive-aggressive guilt-inducing phrases!

But seriously, Byron Katie should drop her victim Story, who would she be without it?

Even if the cockroach really did crawl over Byron Katie's foot, compare this "awakening" side by side with the stories of Suzanne Segal [www.nonduality.com] and Jill Bolte Taylor [blog.ted.com]. There was a MEDICAL explanation for their "spiritual awakening" experiences: Suzanne Segal died of a brain tumor and Jill Bolte Taylor survived a massive stroke.

Did Byron Katie have a legitimate spiritual awakening or was her "stroke of insight" simply a business strategy?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2009 03:52PM by scrambledeggs.

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scrambledeggs
Even if the cockroach really did crawl over Byron Katie's foot, compare this "awakening" side by side with the stories of Suzanne Segal [www.nonduality.com] and Jill Bolte Taylor [blog.ted.com]. There was a MEDICAL explanation for their "spiritual awakening" experiences: Suzanne Segal died of a brain tumor and Jill Bolte Taylor survived a massive stroke.

Did Byron Katie have a legitimate spiritual awakening or was her "stroke of insight" simply a business strategy?

That is a good point scrambledeggs, it might be a business strategy, or a carefully studying of various materials, followed by a decision of BK to start an entirely new business venue. It might as well be her best kept secret. Who knows, perhaps even those who are really close to her don't know about this.