Relationship Resources for Integral Singles and Couples

Integral Movie Nights

 

Every Tuesday we watch and discuss an integral movie in Zoom. Check the calendar of upcoming screenings and sign up for the next event here. 

Some Movies are multi-level, some show characters at different levels clashing with each other, some show how characters are transforming from one level to the next over a longer period of time (e.g. “Groundhog Day” and “7 Years in Tibet”).
You may also recognize if characters do better integration by becoming healthier at their level, e.g. Jack Nicholson in “As Good As It Gets”, or if they truly go through a transformation which usually takes many years.
If you have additional suggestions, please share them with me in the format below (and say why you suggest them).

If you only watch two Movies I suggest “Cloud Atlas” (also a great book) and “American Beauty”.

Module 1 – her

The four dimensions of relating

Close to the beginning, a voice asks a “simple question”.
“Who are you? What can you be? Where are you going? What’s out there? What are the possibilities?”
They then introduce the first artificially intelligent operating system, an intuitive entity that listens to you, understands you, and knows you. It’s not just an operating system, it’s a consciousness. It’s OS1.
Subsequently, the main protagonist Theodore, falls in Love with the “intelligent” computer voice (Scarlett Johansson) who becomes increasingly conscious and (spoiler alert!!!!) eventually exceeds his level of development.
Synopsis: A sensitive and soulful man earns a living by writing personal letters for other people. Left heartbroken after his marriage ends, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) becomes fascinated with a new operating system which reportedly develops into an intuitive and unique entity in its own right. He starts the program and meets “Samantha” (Scarlett Johansson), whose bright voice reveals a sensitive, playful personality. Though “friends” initially, the relationship soon deepens into love.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6p6MfLBxc

Module 2 – Into the Wild

Survival, magic, and power in love relationships

Join us to watch and discuss the movie “Into The Wild”, based on the true story of “Alexander Supertramp” as he calls himself, written by Jon Krakauer and directed by Sean Penn.
After graduating from Emory University, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandons his possessions, gives his entire $24,000 in savings to charity, and eventually hitchhikes to Alaska to “live off the land” in the wilderness where he eventually perishes.
Along the way, Christopher encounters a series of characters at different levels of first-tier consciousness that shape his perspectives, as he seemingly regresses from an arguably “egocentric” to a pure survival “archaic” level.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758758/ 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZG1FzyB8DI

Module 3 – Same Time, Next Year

Mythic conformism and modern rationality in love relationships

In Same Time, Next Year, a married man and a married woman end up sleeping with each other, and decide to meet at the same place every year on the anniversary of their one night stand. As the years go by, they observe changes in each other and their relationship.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078199/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3U2LbkkkPM

Module 4 – Captain Fantastic

Postmodern pluralistic sensitivity in love relationships

This movie fits our exploration of the Green pluralistic “sensitive self” Stage 6 this week, with all its beauty and advancements, but also with its challenges, performative contradictions, and pre-trans fallacies.
In the forests of the Pacific Northwest, a postmodern father who escaped the Orange materialistic and Blue/Amber mythic law and order stages is devoted to raising his six kids with a rigorous physical and intellectual education. 
Eventually, he is forced to leave his paradise and face the world that he tried so hard to escape, while challenging his idea of what it means to be a parent.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3553976/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1kH4OMIOMc

Module 5 – American Beauty

Integral and transpersonal love relationships

This is one of the most integral movies and highly recommended if you want to understand levels of consciousness development. On the surface, it is about the breakdown and disintegration of a middle-class American family. We will see how people with five different worldviews (magical, egocentric, conformist, rational, and pluralistic) get into irresolvable conflicts with each other, and how an Integral person critically embraces them all.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169547/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly7rq5EsTC8

Module 6 – Gandhi

Compassionate communication

I sometimes say (half)-jokingly that if I would be King of the World, everyone would have to watch the movie Gandhi twice a year.
Steven Covey turned me on to Gandhi in the late 90’s. Reading his Biography “Gandhi: A Life” by Yogesh Chadha https://www.amazon.com/GANDHI-Life-Yogesh-Chadha/dp/0471350621 was instrumental for my transition into the Green Pluralistic stage of development. Winning eight Oscar’s, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Ben Kingsley), Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, and Best Film Editing, the life of the lawyer who became the famed leader of the Indian revolts against the British rule through his philosophy of nonviolent protest is a deeply inspiring movie and fitting for our Module #6: Non-Violent Communication.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083987/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7I6D3mSYTE

 

 

Module 7 – The Invention of Lying

Need-Based communication

As an Integral Relationship writer/author, and my primary Love Language being words, I am naturally interested in concepts such as belief, knowing, truth, honesty, truthfulness, rightness, validity, communication, understanding, agreement, intimacy (in-to-me-you-see) and how they impact our love relationships, and their opposites such as untruths and lying.
So “The Invention of Lying”, which is a painfully half-romantic comedy that touches on these and other subjects like the primary fantasies, is right down my alley.

Some of the questions we may explore after watching the movie include:
– What would happen if we would always truthfully share what we think and feel, and never lie or be untruthful?
– What happens if we truly believe things that are not true?
– What is truth anyway and how can we know it?
– Why do people believe different things to be true?
– Why do we lie?
– Are white lies OK?
– Does lying serve some purpose, such as being kind or not hurting others?
– Do we really want others to be totally honest?
– Is radical honesty the best way to go through life and creating a better world?
– Should we only say what is true, truthful, kind, and necessary?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1058017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhRnmyBjOLs

 

Module 8 – The Imitation Game

Integral and transpersonal communication

Join us to watch and discuss this fascinating movie about Alan Turing (1912 – 1954), a mathematical genius who is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. In it, we see many examples of relational and communicational challenges.
During World War II, Turing tries to crack the German Enigma code with the help from fellow mathematicians by building what was later called “a computer”.
Considered by some to have been autistic (Asperger’s syndrome) he proposed an experiment that became known as the Turing test, an attempt to define a standard for a machine to be called “intelligent”. The idea was that a computer could be said to “think” if a human interrogator could not tell it apart, through conversation, from a human being.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuPZUUED5uk

Module 9 – The Red Pill

Biological Differences and Learned Gender Roles

The Red Pill chronicles the journey of feminist filmmaker Cassie Jaye from San Anselmo, CA (near Santa Rosa, CA were I lived for 20 years), following the mysterious and polarizing Men’s Rights Movement, that was Godfathered by my friend Warren Farrell, author of the “The Myth of Male Power: Why Men are the Disposable Sex” (1993) and several other related books. The Red Pill explores today’s gender wars and asks the question “what is the future of gender equality?”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3686998/
For a detailed article see: https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/08/bay-area-filmmakers-new-film-the-red-pill-is-a-bitter-one-for-feminists-to-swallow/

Module 10 – Little Miss Sunshine

Avoiding the Fear – Shame Downward Spiral

Let’s watch a comedy with elements of the Fear-Shame spiral. In Little Miss Sunshine, a somewhat dysfunctional multigeneration family is determined to get their young daughter into the finals of the “Little Miss Sunshine” beauty pageant. They embark on a 800 Mile (1300 km) trip in their yellow VW bus from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Redondo Beach, California.
On one side, this is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. On the other side, it shows the struggle of the men, including their shame, to succeed professionally, and the fears of the two female characters in the movie around safety and beauty.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0449059/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvwVkllXT80

Module 11 – The Tree Of Life

Feminine-Masculine Polarities

The Tree Of Life (2011):
This is one of these slow and at times confusing movies that I could not get out of my head after I saw it the first time, and I have watched it several times since then.
After some thought, I decided to offer it for movie night, because it fits our Feminine-Masculine, Spiritual, Anima-Animus Complex and other Modules.

The Tree of Life is a 2011 American experimental epic drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick and featuring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain. The film chronicles the origins and meaning of life by way of a middle-aged man’s childhood memories of his family living in 1950s Texas, interspersed with imagery of the origins of the known universe and the inception of life on Earth. The eldest son (Jack/Sean Penn) witnesses the loss of innocence and struggles with his parents’ conflicting teachings.
My biggest take-aways from the movie are how our childhood experiences, especially in relationship to our close family, forms who we are as adults and the existential questions that it raises.
It also shows conflicts between the Mythic Blue/Amber and Rational Orange stage, and a “patriarchal marriage”.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478304/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrAz1YLh8nY

Module 12 – I Heart Huckabees

Spiritual Development

This chaotic, funny, and thought-provoking spiritual/philosophical comedy will give us much food for introspection and discussion. The plot follows a pair of “existential” detectives (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin), who are hired to investigate the meaning of the life of their clients (Jude Law, Jason Schwartzman, Mark Wahlberg, and Naomi Watts). It is in the widest sense reminiscent of integral theory and evolutionary enlightenment with its psychospiritual developmental ideas. As the different investigations cross paths, their rival and nemesis (Isabelle Huppert) tries to drag their clients into her own “nihilistic and cynical” views that life is nothing but “cruelty, manipulation and meaninglessness” and is to be lived by surrendering to the now (reminiscent of Eckhart Tolle). At the end of the movie, the potential of a synthesis of these two opposing views emerges. There are interesting “behind the scene” videos on youtube.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356721/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eOLOmCjRPY

Module 13 – Bliss

Sexual Development

Bliss (1997) totally mesmerized me, as it touches on so many issues that we already covered and will address going forward in our training, including sexual development, tantra, sexual abuse, shadow, trauma, personality disorders, jealousy, anima/animus, healing, growth, awakening, and the 7 chakras. At times it felt that the script was written just for us. 
Bliss tells the story of a couple that is in love but has many challenges, especially with their sex life. Within six months, they’re telling their problems to a therapist (Spalding Gray), who uses a traditional psychoanalytic approach. In addition, Maria (Sheryl Lee) is sneaking to secret sessions with a sex therapist named Baltazar (Terence Stamp), who “operates on the edge of the law.” Her husband Joseph (Craig Sheffer) finds out. After an initial hostility towards Baltazar that discloses that he is better at hiding things than his wife (go figure), he also becomes a client to learn about sex as bliss (which is nine on Baltazar’s personal scale) and not orgasm (which is down around four). Eventually, the two therapists meet and gain important information that validates each of their approaches Maria and Joseph heal and deepen their relationship.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118742/

Module 14 – Marriage Story

Anima Animus Complex Development

In Marriage Story, a stage director and his actor wife struggle through a gruelling, coast-to-coast divorce that pushes them to their personal and creative extremes.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7653254/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHi-a1n8t7M

Module 15 – Love Actually

Love Languages

Let’s have some fun with this classic by identifying the Love Languages and guessing the Enneagram types (I know we are normally not supposed to do that in real life), as we follow the lives of eight very different couples in dealing with their love lives in various loosely interrelated tales, all set during a frantic month before Christmas in modern London, England.
My perspective on Love Actually has changed (or matured) over the years. Don’t get me wrong, it is still a fun, entertaining, and at times touching movie.
But it also painfully shows the misguided shallow notion that all it takes to enter into a happy relationship is to muster up the courage to say “I love you”. Similar to “He’s Just Not That Into You” and other similar movies, the protagonists have nothing visibly in common such as values, interests, or passions, beyond having a (hormonal) crush on each other and being in a rational stage of development. Other things that I more critically notice now are the objectification of women, sexist references to the people’s weight, suggestions and attempts to repress feelings, and the strange “relationship” between Peter and his best friend’s new wife. The movie is also subtly Anti-American.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0314331/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9Z3_ifFheQ

Module 16 – Winnie the Pooh

Enneagram Types

While searching for honey, Pooh and his friends embark on an adventure to find Eeyore’s missing tail and rescue Christopher Robin from an unknown monster called The Backson.
As always, we will discuss the movie and its implications for our love relationships in depth afterwards.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1449283/

Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atDrd8WQeqc

The Enneagram According to Pooh:
https://theenneagraminbusiness.com/fascinating-or-fun/the-enneagram-according-to-pooh/

The Enneagram in the Movies (and a little TV):
https://foldedandunfolding.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/the-enneagram-in-the-movies-and-a-little-tv/

Other Enneagram Movies:
https://enneagrammaine.com/the-movie-list/

Module 17 – As Good As It Gets

Attachment Styles

Fitting with our current modules on “Personality Disorders” and “Love” in Training #1 and “Communication” in Training #2, join us to watch the Oscar winning “laugh out loud” classic “As Good As It Gets” with Helen Hunt (Carol) and Jack Nicholson (Melvin).
See how bonding with his neighbor’s dog and falling in love with Carol transforms the obsessive-compulsive, egocentric, cynic, manipulative wordsmith Melvin to become more compassionate, let down his guard, and confess to Carol “you make me want to be a better man”. In turn, we see how she struggles with setting healthier boundaries and communicating her needs.
Let’s discuss the states (from lust/desire to commitment), forms (intimacy, passion, dependence), and capacity to love that they experience, and if we think their romance has the potential for a healthy love relationship.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119822/
https://youtu.be/rrRl2QQKkI8

Module 18 – Prince of Tides

The Unconscious

The film stars director Barbra Streisand as a New York psychiatrist who treats an emotionally scarred woman who tried to commit suicide, and her twin brother, played by Nick Nolte in an Oscar-caliber performance, as an unemployed, aimless and miserably married football coach. As they work together to solve the mysteries of their troubled pasts, they fall in love and find new meaning in life. The Prince of Tides supports our Module #18, in which we explore how anger and fear-based fight-flight-freeze reactions to our partner’s reality protect underlying vulnerable childhood wounds that, if unhealed, ultimately prevent us from deepening intimacy (in-to-me-you-see) in our love relationships through ongoing learning, healing, growing and awakening to live our purpose.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102713/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy1GF50_rPA

Module 19 – Good Will Hunting

Healing our Shadow

In Good Will Hunting, we see that knowledge without experience is blind, and how unresolved shadow and attachment issues limit our ability for empathy, intimacy, and living our transcendental purpose.
In the movie, the young immature genius (Matt Damon) lives in a small world where he can seemingly solve any problem with his mind, but lacks any real-life experiences outside his bubble, and struggles with his unconscious daemons.
After getting into trouble with the law again, he is assigned to a therapist (Robin Williams) to deal with his anger and emotional dissociation issues. After he falls in love with his “soul-mate” he is further challenged to overcome his anxious-avoidant attachment issues. As Williams works with the young man, he is transformed as well.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119217/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaZVjZEFkRs

Module 20 – When Harry Met Sally

States of Falling in Love

Join Martin to watch and discuss this classic, beautiful, brainy, touching, and revealing romantic comedy. We will see college graduates Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) and Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) discuss whether men and women can ever truly be strictly platonic friends, and 10 years later trying to form a friendship without sex becoming an issue between them.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098635/

Module 21 – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Personality Disorders

Our movie this week is about Module 20 “States of Falling in Love” with a person who has a “Personality Disorder” (Module 21) and the stages of decline of such relationships.
We see introverted and anxious Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) falling in love with free-spirit Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet).
Though she’s never given a mental health diagnosis in the movie, Clem is a good representation of a person with a borderline personality disorder. As the movie progresses, we see that some of the “free-spirited” behaviors she exhibits are indicative of some deeper issues.
The central conflict in the movie arises from the existence of a procedure that can erase memories — a procedure Clementine and Joel undergo to forget about each other.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338013/

Module 22 – Quest for Fire

Sharing your Biological Purpose

This story takes place in prehistoric time when three tribesmen search for a new fire source.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082484
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pcGGKtPpSE

Module 23 – Cloud Atlas

Transcendental Purpose

The movie plays in six different time periods from 1849 to 2321. The main actors change gender and race throughout the movie, and some move from Evil to Neutral to Good (and back). The main protagonists in each epoch are connected (through their deeds, souls, or re-incarnations??) indicated by their birthmarks. What makes the movie interesting and challenging is that it jumps around between the time periods every few minutes to show the connections and similarities e.g. of enslavement, epic battles, and liberation. I will give a brief introduction so that we can watch the movie through the lens of stages of development and transformations from archaic to transpersonal, and the good, true, beautiful, and functional, as the characters good (heroic), neutral, and evil words and deeds, and soulmate love connections ripple through the centuries.
In a more subtle way, we will also notice that Robert Frobisher’s Cloud Atlas composition will be heard as an (1) initial piano performance, (2) a symphony, (3) a rendition by a jazz sextet, (4) nursing-home Muzak, (5) futuristic Korean street music, (6) a solemn hymn sung by a hoard of clones.
To quote Sonmi 451: “To be is to be perceived, and so to know thyself is only possible through the eyes of the other. The nature of our immortal lives is in the consequences of our words and deeds, that go on and are pushing themselves throughout all time.” “Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1371111/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWnAqFyaQ5s

Module 24 – Groundhog Day

Soulmates

In this transformational movie, we see Phil (Bill Murray) growing from his Egocentric to a Mythic/Greenish level of consciousness, awakening from the gross to the subtle level of spiritual awareness, and advancing from only living his biological purpose to identifying and enacting his transcendental purpose of creating more beauty and goodness (not truth and functionality) to win the heart of Rita (Andie MacDowell).
Join us for new insights during, and discussions after the movie.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/ 

Module 25 – Inside Bill’s Brain

Co-Creation at the Seven Chakras

Let’s watch and discuss a Netflix documentary about passion, purpose, and making the world a better place in partnerships with others/with a partner. No matter what we may personally think about Bill Gates, I find this series utterly inspiring. We will see how Bill lived his calling early on (to solve problems or absent absences), how he co-created with others, how he seemingly became more compassionate, how he met his wife Melinda, how they co-create in their foundation, and how he is now driven to make the world a better place. We will see his triumphs and even more so his failures and how he deals with both. Utterly fascinating and inspiring (to me).
Join us for new insights during, and discussions after the movie.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10837476

Module 26 – Idiocracy

Path to Healthy Relationships and Why they Matter

In Idiocracy we see why co-creation and procreation in healthy Integral love relationships not only matter for our own well-being and development but even more so for a peaceful and sustainable future for humanity. Unfortunately, we now increasingly see that this movie is not a joke, but becomes reality in front of our very eyes. Let’s discuss the political, social, and ecological implications of people at post-conventional levels of consciousness procreating much less than people at earlier levels and how it impacts our future.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

Stage 5 -> 1 – 127 Hours by Danny Boyle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlhLOWTnVoQ
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1542344/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Stage 2 – Quest For Fire by Jean Jacques Annaud
https://youtu.be/EOtOkNgdZTU
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082484/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_lk1

(Netflix) * Stage 2/5 Room by Lenny Abrahamson (Cognitive Prison)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_Ci-pAL4eE
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3170832/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Stage 3 – Natural Born Killers by Oliver Stone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVizhLGaEmk
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110632/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Stage 4 – Rabbit Proof Fence by Phillip Noyce
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbnk8wSVMaM
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0252444/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

(Netflix) * 3 -> 4 – Seven Years in Tibet by Jean-Jacques Annaud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSyr_vJ5t3k
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120102/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Stage 5 – The Wolf of Wall Street by Martin Scorcese
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idAVRvQeYAE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pabEtIERlic
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993846/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

(Netflix) Stage 6 – Into the Wild by Sean Penn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7ArZ7VD-QQ
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758758/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Stage 6 – La Belle Verte by Coline Serreau
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiuVYBpeK-g
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115650/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Stage 7 – Ted talk
https://www.ted.com/talks/thordis_elva_and_tom_stranger_our_story_of_rape_and_reconciliation

Other suggestions from Participants
Stage 5 – The Beauty Inside by Jong-Yeol Baek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly7rq5EsTC8
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169547/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0