The seeds for this project were planted following the horrific events that took place in New York City on September 11, 2001. I, along with much of the world, sat in horror as I watched unthinkable images of the attack on the World Trade Center Towers. I struggled to comprehend what had happened and why, and how were we supposed to respond? As I sat in my office listening to the grief of my clients, and feeling my own hopelessness and despair as my government seized the opportunity and mutilated it into a global conversation of “Evil-Doers vs. Good-Doers,” “Us Vs. Them.” I asked myself, “What can I, as one person on this planet, do to combat this dangerous polarizing consciousness?” I believed that at the core of us as human beings, no matter where on the planet we live, no matter what God we pray to, or even whether or not we pray at all, that if I were to ask anyone, anywhere, what really most matters to them, that I would hear the same answer.
My belief being that at the core of us as human beings, we are fundamentally more alike then different. If I could amass a body of interviews of human beings answering that one question, “In the deepest part of your soul, what really most matters to you?” and somehow get the data out in the public, that it might work against this polarizing consciousness that my government was so determined to create and strengthen.
At the very least, it was something that I, as one person, could attempt to do to create a different conversation. So, I set about conducting my own research. I asked everyone and anyone I could to allow me to interview them and I simply asked that one question, “In the deepest part of your soul, what really most matters to you?”
While my initial belief that we would all essentially end up saying the same thing proved true, I was surprised by WHAT we all ended up saying. Essentially, what each interviewee said, in whatever language or terms they used to express it, was that, at the core, there is some kind of cellular memory of a time when we were joined in Union with Source/God/Soul/Essence/Presence; a time of no-separation from something bigger than ourselves; a time when we knew ourselves to be ONE with everything and everyone, and a deep fundamental longing/yearning to return to that knowing of our original ONENESS. ALL HUMAN BEHAVIOR, AT ITS DEEPEST MOTIVATING IMPULSE, IS A DESIRE TO RETURN TO THIS ORIGINAL KNOWING OF OUR ONENESS WITH SOURCE!!!
The research findings left me with broader questions about the implications of my findings on social, environmental, political and economic levels. If human beings are fundamentally at the core driven by a deep yearning to remember ourselves as ONE WITH SOURCE, how might this knowledge affect policy making, environmental decision-making, even marketing and advertising? Most importantly, how could it potentially impact our international relations? If there really is no US VS THEM, if we really all are part of ONE SOURCE, and we could recognize and remember this essential truth, then we are no longer capable of raping the planet, of hurting our neighbors, of killing our enemies. It simply becomes impossible when we recognize that we really are ALL ONE.
Want to show this film at your next event or class – contact me for more information.