More Praise for the Film
This afternoon we watched your documentary "Closer Than Close" and loved it. Thanks very much for sharing it with us. I have posted a few sentences about it, with a link to your website, on The Zoo Fence. The direct URL to that page is Here. Please accept our best wishes for the success of this fine work.
In Love,
Stefan
The Zoo Fence - A Commentary on The Spiritual Life
“Closer Than Close: A Portrait of Seeking and Finding Our True Self” confronts viewers with the Big Questions and some Vast Answers. The film-makers, who have created here something approximating “Heartland American Zen,” with much sense of poignancy and wabi-sabi stark, bare beauty, deploy an alternating format switching between two primary scenarios. On the one hand, very near the outset of the film and recurring throughout, we find, a small discussion-group of regularly-meeting, spiritually-questing, and very honest and sincere friends who, sitting in a conventional public meeting area, muse in profound, sometimes melancholy, and also hopeful ways about the quest for meaning and integrity in their lives. On the other hand, we are treated to three distinct stories (each running about 9-10 minutes in length, including interspersed footage of various kinds) of non-pretentious individuals Mike Connors, Art Ticknor, and Bart Marshall who, in mid-life, after decades of searching and practicing, finally began to awaken to their True Nature. (The film-makers and the interviewees speak of the awakening, but don’t really explore the issue of stabilizing in this Awakening to True Nature or Real Identity.)
Mike spent many of his years meditating in the method taught by TM founded by the late Mahesh Yogi. The latter two gentlemen, Art and Bart, each had their focus or felt-sense locus catapulted back HOME to right HERE, “closer than close,” by our dear old friend, the late great British mystic-sage and spiritual genius, Douglas Harding (1909-2007), whom a few of us hosted here in Santa Barbara, CA in the early to mid-1990s. Doug’s longtime British student Richard Lang has created a terrific website in Harding’s honor, headless.org, where, at the “Experiments” section, anyone interested can check out for themselves, via Douglas’ truly brilliant and delightful intuitive-visual exercises, the Supreme Secret and Natural Truth that our own Awareness, “closer than close,” on the “near end of the mind,” is always already Open, Free, Vast, Unstructured, Unbound, Unborn, Undying, of the nature of Pure Clarity, Peace, Bliss, and Grace, the Self of all selves, the “Host” for all multitudinous “Guests”—the phenomenal worlds and beings.
I am grateful to Shawn Nevins, one of the two film-makers, for sending me a review copy of this heart-felt, humble, honest, and very IMPORTANT film. I heartily recommend getting it (from www.Poetryinmotionfilms.com or a distributor) and viewing it to help you on your own way-less way Home to What We Are: the Reality that is One, Only One, yet paradoxically and miraculously manifesting as Many.
Reviewed by Timothy Conway, author of Women of Power & Grace: Nine Astonishing, Inspiring Luminaries of Our Time, and the forthcoming two volumes, India’s Sages: Nondual Wisdom from the Heart of Freedom and India’s Sages Source Book.
I have a complaint about "Closer Than Close." It was entirely too short ;') I could have sat through five more hours, at least. And what a relief that you didn't have one guy in a robe, funny hat, or with foot-kissing acolytes chanting in Sanskrit. That stuff is fun but I really do prefer seeing regular folks at this point.
J.M.
Closer Than Close was inspiring, helpful, and beautiful. My husband was out of town when it came, and I am looking forward to watching it again with him, and sharing it with friends.
It is engaging, convicting, and encouraging. The music and visuals are beautiful. The interviews with Mike, Art, and Bart are "soul food". And the interviews with those who are looking are familiar reminders of my own questions.
Thank You,
S.E.
I wanted to let you know that the DVD arrived within days of you sending it and it is truly wonderful. I really hope you find opportunities to present it to the public.
For now, all the best from Ireland,
T.
Your film arrived today and I watched it this evening. It was an amazing experience and I thank you for this gift of poetry you have created. Just recently I discussed this need I've felt for fellow seekers in my life. There is much written and spoken of concerning the teacher/student relationship, but little about the need for brother and sisters, or friendship, that you addressed so well in filming the group. There truly is a special honesty that comes from people on the path, and this honesty and realness was weaved throughout this documentary.
Thank you and I will recommend Closer than Close and probably order more copies for friends,
A grateful viewer
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80 min, plus extras, NTSC format,
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