Two short and sweet films by Constantin Pilavios (repost)

This is a short film made in 2007 by Constantin Pilavios. It says everything there is to say about father-and-son relationships. Thanks to Yasinaly, on whose YouTube channel I found it.

Cast
Father: Nikos Zoiopoulos
Son: Panagiotis Bougiouris

Directed by: Constantin Pilavios
Written by: Nikos & Constantin Pilavios
Director of photgraphy: Zoe Manta
Music by: Christos Triantafillou
Sound by: Teo Babouris
Mixed by: Kostas Varibobiotis
Produced by: MovieTeller films



Cast:
Lefteris Eleftheriou
Evgenia Deliali

Narrated by: Makis Revmatas

Directed by: Constantin Pilavios
Written by: Despina Ladi
Director of photography: Zoe Manta
Music by: Christos Triantafillou
Sound Design by: Teo Babouris
Mixed by: Kostas Varibobiotis
Produced by: MovieTeller films

Less is, more often than not, better!

[First posted 29 July 2011, reposted 31 May 2014 & 13 August 2016]

DAVID DEIDA ON LOVE, SEX & SPIRITUALITY (12-PART VIDEO)

David Deida lets it rip in Byron Bay, bringing great humor, wisdom, and light to the perennial issues surrounding love, intimacy, sexuality, and spirituality. This 12-part series presents the entirety of the professionally produced video Spirit Sex Love, which offers a lively demonstration of David's teaching methods and an introduction to his teachings on sexuality, spiritual growth, and true intimacy.

Nuggets of wisdom from David Deida...

“Everything you do right now ripples outward and affects everyone. Your posture can shine your heart or transmit anxiety. Your breath can radiate love or muddy the room in depression. Your glance can awaken joy. Your words can inspire freedom. Your every act can open hearts and minds.” ~ David Deida, Blue Truth: A Spiritual Guide to Life & Death and Love & Sex

"Spiritual practice is the capacity to offer your love even when you feel hurt, closed down, tense, angry, misunderstood, or hated."

"Masculine anger is always because you are feeling constrained, trapped by life. Feminine anger is always because you are feeling unloved."

"The simplicity of it is this: give everything you have to give in every moment, completely."

"We eventually learn that emotional closure is our own action. We can be responsible for it. In any moment, we can choose to open or to close."


[Brought to my attention by Melissa Lin. Thanks very much, Mel! First posted 2 July 2012]

In Celebration of Love’s Labors Lost (Part 1)

Radha Krishna and the Gopis

As I lean back now and look back on the life path I have taken since I first stepped out into the world, two recurring motifs dominate the pattern of events.

The first is a hardwired impulse to be free – free of all external compulsions (which is well nigh impossible when you happen to be part of a family, and all of us are). But as one whose birthdate adds up to a 5, numerologists say I’m “one of those people who is always striving to find answers to the many questions that life poses; [that I] want to be totally unrestrained, as this is the sign of freedom and independence.” So I’m only being true to my core nature in cherishing my freedom.

Freedom from debt, for a start. I don’t have a credit card, no overdraft, and I have never once applied for a bank loan. The house I’m living in is in my wife’s name and it was given to her when her entire village was relocated several hundred yards upstream on account of the Selangor Dam. So, no mortgage either - although the fine print says the land the house stands on is on a 99-year lease. We have until the year 2106 to worry about having to move.

The second motif happens to be my susceptibility to love. Some live to work, some to eat, some to make money – I live for love.

My first love was at the tender age of 4, when I shared a bathtub with a neighbor’s daughter, who arrived on earth 11 days ahead of me, and later found myself sitting beside her at kindergarten. I remember how we shared little secrets in class. She was curious to know if boys and girls had similar genitals, and neither of us had a clue – so I drew a simple diagram to show her what mine looked like, and she reciprocated, very demurely, by handing me a piece of paper on which she had written the letter V. I wasn’t satisfied with her response, suspecting there had to be more to it, that she was holding back. Then we got separated in primary school – there were no co-ed schools when I was a kid – and didn’t meet again until we were in our early teens, and I was smitten by her luminous beauty which I noticed for the first time.

When I learnt she was in the habit of roller-skating along the corridors of a school opposite my house most afternoons, I decided to take up roller-skating too – and soon became quite adept at it. But we were both too shy to go beyond smiling at each other and I felt totally tongue-tied when face-to-face with her.

So nothing at all transpired until fate brought us together again when we reached fourth form. I was appointed to the editorial board of a science magazine jointly published by my all-boys school and a nearby girls’ school. At our first informal meeting to discuss the magazine, I was astounded by how mature the girls were compared to me at 15. She and her best buddy, my co-editor, were smoking real cigarettes (not the chocolate ones I was familiar with as a kid) and even driving around without a license.

That’s how I began smoking, and soon I was borrowing my dad’s car to drive – at first up and down the compound, then increasingly further around the neighborhood. Working together on the science magazine project gave me a good excuse to start visiting her in the afternoons after classes. She lived conveniently around the corner from my house, within a 3-minute walk, even less on my bicycle.

Several times a week, I’d perch my cockatoo on the handle bar and ride over to her place. She was usually home. We would sit around her airy front porch and chat till twilight. Each time I saw her she grew more beautiful in my eyes. But I just didn’t know how to shift gears from being her childhood playmate to being her beau. 

So things drifted along for a while sweetly enough, but neither of us wanted to make the first move into adulthood, although I occasionally detected a flirtatious or teasing tone in her glances. I just wanted everything to be perfect between us. The thought of doing something clumsy or saying something inappropriate paralyzed me. Much later in life I realized that the abstract notion of “perfection” itself could be the #1 Killjoy Factor in the human universe…

Anyway, many other events intruded that weren’t part of the pattern of “perfect love” and I took them all in my stride as part of love’s learning curve. As my mind drifts slowly backwards in time, scanning for precious memory fragments to rescue from analog oblivion, I become acutely aware of the many-layered nature of experience: in so many instances, I can’t draw a linear timeline marking one event without then wondering when some other event occurred.

For instance, during the years I didn’t see my first love, I enjoyed quite a few other romantic fantasies. I vaguely recall an alphabetic crush I had for a pig-tailed cutie who played the letter M in some kiddie concert I witnessed around 10. I remember a couple of stiffy-inducing dreams with me playing the letter K and somehow showing up the loutish low-class L who stood between us. I never found out her name, but I bet it began with the letter M...

Then there was WW, baby sister of one of my best buddies in whose home I used to hang out all day after school. My own siblings were much older than I, so I never felt the same sort of intense kinship with them. In this household there was a great deal of family interaction. It was an ideal atmosphere for innocent fun and puppy love to flourish: the stirrings of juicy adolescence, the brief but intense thrill of her foot brushing against mine during a game of Monopoly. I was present when her first period arrived, her face flushed as she hurried towards the bathroom.

I knew nothing about hormones and pheromones then. But I enjoyed the undercurrent of irrational desires and the heady sensation of erotic impulses. These weren’t exactly romantic – primal, more likely. Electromagnetic and biochemical, at least. No guilt was attached to these prurient fantasies; nor were they focused on any specific person. Non-specific lust is what I call this syndrome.

Girls were lovely to dream about, but my everyday reality was populated with boys. Since girls were sexually unavailable, we resorted to making lewd jokes about them; but among ourselves, we were comfortable showing off our erections and competing to see who could shoot his load the furthest. There was ample opportunity for experimentation. Staying over at male friends’ houses presented no problems with parents and it seemed natural for us to have temporary crushes on each other without their becoming full-blown affairs.

Being single-minded about anything has never been a habit of mine - which may explain why I never became a virtuoso in any specific endeavor. Looking back, if I had kept my focus on winning the heart of my first love, ignoring other distractions and settling for nobody else, perhaps we would have ended up as a couple. I can’t imagine what married life would have been like for us – but I’m fairly certain she would have compelled me to become a high flyer in the upper income bracket, since it’s clear she had set her sights on a comfortable lifestyle, being what people would consider a trophy wife. As it turned out, she subsequently dated and married a fellow who became an accountant – while I drifted in the opposite direction, devoting my energies to the arts, after a short-lived stint in the glossy advertising game.

Clark Kent look @ 1968

But I’m getting ahead of my narrative. While all this was going on, I began to visit a couple of pretty sisters – one shy and demure, the other outgoing and vivacious – both of whom eventually became integral parts of my life.

When you’re a teenager it’s very important to appear cool – and to visit a young lady on a rickety bicycle is fairly uncool (especially with a cockatoo perched on the handlebar). Since I had convinced my father that I could drive competently, he rarely protested whenever I asked to borrow his car. I had a schoolmate named Johnny who was always on the lookout for hot chicks. He didn’t have access to a car, so he would sometimes tell me about some nice girl he knew who happened to have good-looking sisters – and we’d go visit them in my dad’s car.

That’s how I got to meet Annie, my French kiss instructor only a year younger than I but slightly more experienced. It was because of Annie I decided to quit wearing glasses (which, prior to my first kissing lesson, I had believed to be a requisite accessory since they made one look smarter and older). We were both wearing glasses when the serious smooching began one sultry afternoon – and the collision of our spectacles almost turned the experience into an episode out of some Woody Allen movie.  Anyway, thank you, Annie – for your wonderful coaching which has served me well through the decades.

(In 2011 Annie tracked me down on facebook. Imagine the great joy I felt to be reconnected with her after 46 years. She's moved on from kissing coach to tai-chi instructor.)

[To be continued...]

Originally posted 1 April 2012, reposted 6 May 2016

My Funny Valentine

My Funny Valentine
(Lorenz Hart & Richard Rodgers arr. Keith Jarrett)

Keith Jarrett (piano)
Gary Peacock (bass)
Jack DeJohnette (drums)

Live in 1996

Keith Jarrett has been a tremendous inspiration to me over the decades. Love his touch!

Keith Jarrett: Last Solo in Tokyo (1984)


Keith Jarrett & Chick Corea play Mozart

Concerto For 2 Pianos & Orchestra In E-Flat Major, K. 365 (K. 316a): III. Rondeaux: Allegro

Anand Krishna: Lessons from Bali

ANAND KRISHNA: NO RUN-OF-THE-MILL SPIRITUAL GURU

Features - August 29, 2006
The Jakarta Post

Michele Lee, Contributor, Bali

TO SIT in the cool tranquil space of the new Anand Krishna center in Bali with the man himself is to be in the company of one of the most renowned spiritual leaders in Indonesia.

His talk the night before had been inspirational so The Jakarta Post took the opportunity to meet him to explore further his beliefs about love, religion and peace.

His Indian accent was undeniable, yet he was born and raised in Surakarta, Indonesia.

Jakarta Post: You said last night in your talk that love is the only solution. Why is it the only solution?

Anand Krishna: I would say that love is the deepest emotion in human beings. It is the deepest part of our inner selves. When the solution is deep enough, then the result is also quite long-term.

It's just like when you have a tree. If the roots grow deep into the earth, then you will have a big tree. So this is the same thing, we should have a solution that is deep within our being and then we can expect a result which is long term.

That's a beautiful metaphor. You also said that when we practice consciousness, this is love. Do you have any suggestions as to how we can become more conscious in our lives?

In Bali, especially, they have a beautiful tradition of dedicating oneself to the environment, to another human being and to God.

I would say that the generic word for God is love. When you do that you are being conscious. You are being conscious of your environment and you are being conscious of anything that you do.

How you sit. How you behave. How you converse with people and interact with them. Consciousness is not something that you can achieve from an hour of meditation every day; it's a full-time job.

It's how you practice meditation in your daily life - from moment to moment. And consciousness also means that it is important to let go of a part of your body in order to save the rest of your body.

So, to let go of part of your body as you say, is a form of sacrifice. So you do feel that there must be some sacrifices made?

I think so. We are sacrificing every minute, every moment actually. We are sacrificing certain things which we feel have lesser value. If you have a better vision, then you let go of the smaller vision of the vision that you no longer have anything to do with now. So actually we are sacrificing every moment.

It was quite enjoyable to hear your views on Gandhi. You said last night that you didn't agree with his methods of fasting because that was a form of hurting himself and love is not about hurting yourself. What do you think, then, is a better way to achieve peace?

Bring about awareness. This is why I started admiring Martin Luther King recently. He was so inspired by Gandhi but he didn't use Gandhi's methods. He would go into the street and make his point clear; he would let himself be imprisoned, but he wouldn't fight back or retaliate.

This is the way, I think. You make your point clear and you think about awareness and you make people aware of the cause you are fighting for. This is exactly what I'm trying to do ... trying to put these two great people together - Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

This is what is needed in Indonesia to bring about awareness that we are a great nation. Once upon a time we used to export spices to Madagascar and Africa. We used our own ships.

So where is that greatness? That greatness is still there within us. Why do we have to adopt something that is not suitable for us?

What I see in Indonesia is that one part of Indonesia is adapting to the Western way of life, which is quite good; I don't have any problem with this, but the whole culture from the West may not be suitable for this country.

The other part of Indonesia is adapting to the Arabic way of life and this is going to create two societies within one. That's not good because we will bring the fights, the battles and the wars to our side - to our country.

Your views on religion are very interesting. As you said, we all have many different religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, etc, but you feel that we can all come together, because even though we may all have different methods of worshiping God, there is still that one God and one truth that we are all trying to realize.

How can we overcome our prejudices about religion and become more open and less narrow-minded about the whole concept of what God is?

That's why I like to use the word love, because when you speak of love you talk about love. You can even accept the ideas of those who don't believe in God.

There was a Sufi who met someone who said, "I don't believe in God." The Sufi asked him, "Do you believe in yourself?" The man said, "Yes, I do."

As long as you believe in something - that something can be God, love, or self. In the Indian tradition God is your higher self - so I think we have to create this awareness about love.

There are many people who may think to themselves, "I have nothing to do with God." But all of us have got something to do with love.

So the state of creating a dialog between religions, what has been done especially by Christians and Muslims for the last 2,000 years, has been going on for centuries, yet we are heading nowhere because they are talking about God, yet God is not appearing before us.

When a Christian loves a Muslim or a Buddhist loves a Hindu or a Hindu loves a Muslim and if they are really deeply in love - just two human beings, then they forget about all these barriers.

Instead of talking about God - this is wrong I think - let's talk about love.

Once you talk about love and you develop that feeling of oneness with each other then God is present; then you will have no problems at all.


[recommended by Olivia de Haulleville]