Here is a review of the new movie Leap!, by filmmakers Chad Cameron and Isaac Allen, two guy curious about the nature of reality who got together and made a movie about the subject.
Review of Leap! by Jerry Katz
This movie is meatier and more nondually down to earth than What the Bleep. It’s more irreverent, too.
The beautiful thing is that no one has an inkling of what they’re talking about. That’s the great humor and joy. We are so alone and so un-knowing that we can know non-separateness through the unknowing, not through knowing.
The movie proceeds from knowing to not-knowing. “Ultimately we don’t know what anything is,” Dan Millman says in the film.
Wondrous and lucious quotations appear on the screen, supporting the words of the film’s guides.
The speakers don’t talk about their backgrounds. They talk about reality, so these are pared down interviews getting to the essence of the inquiry into the nature of reality.
It’s one thing to read quotations taken from the film and entirely other to watch them spoken with intent and knowing:
“You get out of the illusion by embracing it.” James Twyman.
“You don’t consciously will your experiencing in the current moment.” Gary Crowley
“Happiness is here, where you are, as you are.” Amber Terrell.
“This moment is an astonishing miracle. … This is the moment of bliss.” Joe Vitale.
“The purpose of the world is to show us what’s going on in our mind.” Lyn Corona
“Do you want to be free? Do you want to experience nothing but love? You don’t have to consider whether it’s possible or impossible, you just have to decide whether or not you want it. And that’s a far more difficult decision than you now can recognize. … But if you do, once you make that decision there is nothing that can prevent that from coming to your awareness.” Tom Carpenter.
Puppetji — yes, he’s a puppet — may be the star of this film. He comes out and says he doesn’t know what the heck he’s talking about or what all the questions mean. He just wants to know who where the filmmaker got his carpet from and where to get a good pastrami sandwich.
Suffering, the ego, creating your reality, happiness, reality and the world as illusions, quantum physics, perception, are all themes that are explored to some bottom line depth.
This film is not steeped in traditions. It is somewhat steeped in science, in the beginning, but mostly steeped in seeing what’s true, seeing what is. There’s a freshness, straighforwardness, and simplicity in that.
The last several minutes of outtakes are enjoyable. Including the outtakes in the film was a bold statement by the filmmakers. The outtakes help you realize that everything previously seen was an act for the camera, an effort to say something that can’t be spoken.
By the end of the outtakes, by the end of the film, you are returned to the ordinary, which may now be seen as worldless, as a smile. That is the great leap, the leap to exactly where you are, only to see it absolutely differently. This movie can do that much.
The movie confirms two of my guidelines for navigating the world: Work seriously, but take nothing seriously. And don’t do anything beyond the everyday unless it is a task bestowed upon you by the divine or by the “great intelligence.” In other words, don’t go out and start a spirituality retreat center just because you have the money and you think it would make your life meaningful. The task has to come down on you, bestowed upon you; it has to be a calling.
Leap! is a guide to nonduality, a guide to your true nature, a guide to happiness and effective living. Leap! could easily shift your entire perspective on reality. After watching Leap! you will allow reality to live you instead of you trying to live in reality. The world is ready for Leap!
–Jerry Katz
