Although this documentary came out a few years ago, I just saw it. The movie is about a New Jersey-born man whose cultural background is Indian who decides to create himself as a spiritual guru to discover how far he can go to create followers. He designs his own forms of yoga, spiritual teachings, chants, and practices. The movie shows us what happens in the lives of his followers and how the experiment impacts his life.
Most interesting is how people can view someone the way they want him or her to be in order to satisfy their yearning for meaning and focus. Enter what’s going on in our country right now and you have an explanation for why people are jumping on bandwagons that others can’t understand. It can be attractive and easy to believe what someone tells us because they have led us to believe they have our best interests at heart when, in fact, they are playing a shell game. Sometimes, people tell us to look in one direction so we can’t see what they’re doing in another.
The answer? Discrimination - we were given the power to discriminate, to look beneath the surface of what someone says or does and make our decisions in a fully informed manner rather than letting emotional needs sway our thoughts and actions. Ask yourself: what’s the long view here and what’s in it for the people trying to sway my opinion?
I won’t spoil the ending of the movie in case you want to watch it (on iTunes). I think I’ll try to track down the man who made Kumaré and see if I can interview him. It would be interesting to find out what changes have happened for him and how he sees what’s going on in the world today in terms of his movie.
3/365
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