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Jim Carrey Almighty
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Say your prayers, Scientology—Jim Carrey and bestselling author Eckhart Tolle held their first meeting of a spiritual movement called GATE last week. Kim Masters on Carrey’s sermon.
Future Shock author Alvin Toffler and his wife, Heidi, once told me about a meeting they’d had with late Sony founder Akio Morita. They said he’d told them that if the electronics-firm idea hadn’t worked out, he had an alternative plan: starting a religion.
I flashed back to that story when I heard about last week’s inaugural meeting of the newly formed Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment, or GATE, which Hollywood Reporter blogger James Hibberd described as “a newly formed outfit of producers and artists with a shared enthusiasm for New Age uplift.”
“I can do that in the stupidest movies,” Carrey continued. “Honestly. To me, Dumb and Dumber is a study of pre-egoic innocence, you know? And pre-egoic innocence can’t lose.”
Headlining the GATE gathering on the Fox lot were spiritual seeker Jim Carrey and Eckhart Tolle, the Oprah Winfrey-approved author of The Power of Now. She did a 10-week “webinar” on his book last year. (A Winfrey spokesperson says she is not associated with GATE or the event last week.)
At this scary point in history, people could use some spiritual uplift. And even in less troubling times, many in Hollywood have felt that yearning. The nature of stardom is so mystifying, even for many of those who possess it, that the hunger for a roadmap is great. That goes a long way toward explaining the appeal of the Church of Scientology and the Kabbalah Centre.
Last week’s invitation-only GATE event drew an audience of about 500 that included Adrian Grenier, Jackson Browne, Garry Shandling, and Virginia Madsen. Melissa Etheridge was among the speakers. And if you think this group isn’t serious about transformational entertainment, consider that the meeting continued for four hours. (Tolle teaches that time is an illusion so perhaps that was not a problem.)
Carrey himself has long been into a mixed-bag of spirituality—a filmmaker once told me that the actor “talked about Jesus, Gandhi, and Mohammed in a way that made me think he had not done the reading.” He’s been into Tolle for a while now and at the meeting, he explained that he’d come to an understanding that his thoughts were illusory and thought is responsible for “if not all, most of the suffering we experience”—Tolle in a nutshell.
Carrey described his spiritual awakening to his flock: “Suddenly I was thrown into this expansive, amazing feeling of freedom—from myself, from my problems. I saw that I was bigger than what I do. I was bigger than my body. I was everything and everyone. I was no longer a fragment of the universe—I was the universe.”
And being Jim Carrey, he managed to be funny while he was preaching. He asked the last person in the last row of the audience to call out her name.
“Andrea.”
“Are you aware that—do you have the distinct, palpable feeling that your intention helped create this evening?”
“Absolutely,” she replied promptly.
“Do you understand that all of this, this entire event, is happening inside you?”
A pause, then an uncertain, “Ye-e-e-s.” The audience laughed.
“I hope you can feel that,” Carrey said. “I hope you can understand that you are one of the creators of this evening. … And then I hope you are able to ask yourself—“Why did I get such a crappy seat?”
Carrey said that entertainers can relieve suffering and asked everyone leaving the GATE meeting to “plant seeds” and put a little of that “intention” in everything they do. Clearly the bar isn’t set too high. “I can do that in the stupidest movies,” Carrey continued. “Honestly. To me, Dumb and Dumber is a study of pre-egoic innocence, you know? And pre-egoic innocence can’t lose.”
(News, on the other hand, “is all this negativity condensed.... It really is not representative of what the world is or what the world wants.” Uh-oh.)
Tolle followed Carrey. Blogger James Hibberd is a fan and, unlike me, very familiar with Tolle’s teachings. He says Tolle “generally preaches against people distracting themselves with TV and movies.” But that’s not what he had to say in front of the Hollywood crowd. Instead he talked about movies in which he finds “even a hint of spiritual truth and transformation” because “transcendence” can come from movies. And those in which he finds such hints are as diverse as Groundhog Day, The Last Samurai and Titanic.
GATE was founded by John Raatz, who is founder and CEO of a New Age marketing company called the Visioneering Group. According to his Web site, Raatz holds a “professional certification in public relations.” He’s also been a talent manager representing “high-profile celebrity actors” (as opposed to the other kind). Raatz has also been “a professional rock blues guitarist,” “the administrator of one of Southern California’s most forward-looking holistic health-care clinics,” “a certified meditation teacher,” and he’s a certified financial planner.
According to the company’s Web site, Visioneering represents “preeminent figures in new physics, eco-psychology, brain/mind research, visionary business, and spirituality.” The Web site offers a list of guiding principles, not all of which seem entirely original. They include: “Opportunities multiple[sic] as they are seized,” “All you need is love,” and “Just Do It.”
I asked Raatz whether it wasn’t just a tad too easy if you get to count Horton Hears a Who among the films that provide transformation and transcendence. “That’s a really good point and I think that’s an idea that we want to spend some time with in the next GATE or beyond,” he said. Certainly many Hollywood releases include an element of transformation, he said, but he also believes “the element of intentionality comes into play.” In other words, you should do more than just luck into your transformation.
For now, Raatz said, GATE planted a seed in the heart of Hollywood; now he wants to see how this group grows “organically into what everybody wants it to be.” Another meeting is planned for December. “We could have easily had 1,000 people” at the first meeting, he says. “We could have had 2,000 people.” So the next meeting will be bigger.
The ultimate goal is to build up “a genre of transformational media entertainment—just like action-adventure or drama.” So far, the group has relied on a small group of donors but Raatz says he’s already had expressions of interest from investors. Meanwhile, he says, he's branching out into a new line: producing films. He's got several projects that he's developing—and all of them, it goes without saying, are transformational.
Kim Masters is the host of The Business, public radio's weekly show about the business of show business. She is also the author of The Keys to the Kingdom: The Rise of Michael Eisner and the Fall of Everybody Else.
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Jim Carrey has lost his mind he said he is the universe. To much ego what a nut
worst article ever on the stupidest concept ever.
I second this comment.
What a flippant, uninformed article. The author clearly understands nothing about the point of the book "The Power of Now". It's not a religion. It's not a cult. She mocks what she does not understand and plays on people's fears of cults. How sad. Why would the Daily Beast publish such rubbish?
Are you aware that you contributed to the creation of that article...that you make your own reality and the flippant article that ticks you off? And are you aware that you are the creator of this comment... that it is in you... it is your reality?
Back in the '70s my friends and I had an acronym for this sort of thing. We called it HMB. It stands for Hip Metaphysical Bullshit.
Ace Tolle: Soul Detective. Coming to a media outlet near you.
I personally don't care what you want to call this new group, as long as the goal is to spread a little positive energy. With all the "hate" rhetoric out there it would be nice to have a group who tries to help people tap into the "goodness" in each of us, and just maybe a little civility.
I am deeply concerned with how hostile our society has become with one another, whether on our roads or on the internet. So I hope this new group finds a way to help connect people in a positive way. Good luck!
Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own religion.---L. Ron Hubbard
Makes no more, or no less sense than the concept of a Jewish Zombie, space dudes dropping in, multi-armed deities, etc.
Yet none of the baggage! No raping crusaders sacking the wrong target because they were low on cash, no inconvenient past with polygamy, no new kids being born with extra limbs with potentially explosive religious relevance.
People who can't explain their own success often imagine it was just their own desire and positive thinking, never realizing that positive thinking is a natural result of success.
There is no true peace outside of Jesus Christ. Any so called spirituality separate from Jesus and the truth that he is is only a deception that leads men and women away from God and towards destruction in everlasting hell. People need to recognize that they are sinners and that only God, the Lord Jesus Christ, can liberate them from their sin. It is only by the grace of God and not by works. Man's attempt at religion is futile and utterly hopeless. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we are saved.
You are just as wrong as Jim.
Who are you trying to convince with that wrote screed? Not me, so it must be yourself.
While I wish these people only the best, the gambit that is being played is very risky for their essential concepts. By this, I mean to say that any time the culture of showbiz is harnessed to further ideas, there is a probability that those ideas will become co-opted by the superficiality of that culture.
The truths that Mr. Tolle discovered during his period of "enlightenment" are immutable, ancient, and have been reflected in all of the great religions and spiritual teachings of our species. Ultimately, the religions themselves have subverted these very same truths to serve their own objectives.
It is a slippery slope to enlist the aid of Oprah to promote anything, simply because celebrity lends an air of shallowness to the ideas being presented.
In addition, the establishments of the various religions themselves will, by their very nature oppose new ideas, such as those presented by Tolle, and try to ridicule them as frivolous. This tends to occur, even when the ideas are not even truly "new", and may have been the exact same concepts upon which those religions were themselves originally based.
Having said all that, each of us recognizes the "truth" when we hear it spoken, and maybe this group can reach beyond the typical categorization that may occur. By labeling a group as a "new age religion", that group is put into a box which is perhaps impossible to escape.
The disparagement is insidious, and inherent in the action of being "boxed". That was a cumbersome way of trying to say that when your ideas are placed alongside Rev. Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, Ron L. Hubbard, the Branch Davidians, those who tried to catch the comet, or whomever, they are instantly discredited by association.
Paul Newman may have been the first modern celebrity to recognize this dynamic. At the top of his fame, he essentially pulled back from the public spotlight to create an altruistic business concept, and in the process regain his private life. Robert Redford followed a similar path.
I hope Eckhart Tolle, and his crew have the wisdom to navigate this troubled landscape, and wish them well!
Great post. Paul Newman seemed to be a wonderful man. I had the pleasure of meeting his daughter Nell who seemed quite down to earth and genuine (unlike the other celebrity children I've met). As I see it, the danger with Carey is his advocacy of dangerous Autism pseudoscience, which is informed by his new-age zealotry, which frequently embraces a conspiratorial worldview. I know, I used to be a new-age zealot . . . I got better.
The books of Eckhart Tolle, having been summoned from on high by Oprah, have made it a sure bet that I will not be reading them.
Even though they may contain bits of truth and the stuff of dreams, I am certainly not going to read these books.
I have read books by many of the ancient masters and find that almost all say the same thing. I have encountered many masterful souls, including one person, who is an incarnation of a lama from the beginning of Buddhism.
I could sense the very aura of this gentle and spiritual man. Yet in all this, I still proclaim myself, CaBuSuJew; Catholic, Buddhist, Sufi and Jewish. I look to all the major and even some minor groups of faith related people to gain my own thoughts on who and what we are in this world.
Good thoughts and many blessings to those who choose to run with the flow of 'GATE!' I will certainly not be looking for enlightenment from the likes of Jim Carrey, neither will I be looking forward to any transformational movies and videos from this illustrious group of self-important people.
Its too bad you didn't read the book before Oprah did!
I too have read many books from ancient masters, and studied major religions.
What I like about Eckhart Tolle's books is that it is the concept that all practices have in common simplified, without all the extra religious baggage.
I call it Zen simplified. You don't have to read volumes of work trying to figure out what they are talking about. (Reading volumes of work really does bog down the point, and make it fuzzy.)
Don't let your smugness about Oprah and celebrities keep you from enjoying Tolle's observations! Tolle wasn't writing it for Oprah. She just happened to like it. Many would have not even heard of the book if it were not for her.
Agreed! Oprah certainly promotes lots of schlock but, statistically speaking, she's bound to promote something truly good every once in a while, even if it's only luck or an accident!
I was watching DVDs of Eckhart Tolle speaking years before Oprah turned her empire's attention to him, and he just may be pretty damned enlightened.
While Oprah's celebs may or may not be all that deep, or all that anything, Eckhart Tolle's book is what it is: Zen simplified. Zen itself is Buddhism simplified in my experience/opinion. It just doesn't cover a full range of spiritual possibilities.
I found "The Power of Now" often trite, aime the lowest common-denomenator audience and extremely self conscious...plus it didn't tell us anything we've not found at the booksellers' the 70's. If he's teaming up with Jim Carrey, a brilliant actor, for a new religion, my prediction is they'll be the next Democratic Presidential running mates and we'll all just be swell in the now together. I agree this is better than hate mongering, but what good entertainment isn't?
great quote Granite!...I am thinking that Carrey took Bruce Almighty a little too seriously, but there's nothing wrong with spreading positive energy through entertainment... as long as ppl do not take it too seriously...
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The only problem when you form ANY organization, especially with some uplifting intent, is that you become a target for negativity from all sides. It doesn't matter who you are... You could be Jesus Christ, but then the Sanhedrin have it in for you. So, oddly, being spiritual, being uplifting, doing something positive for the world (see, for example, tm.org) you all of a sudden become visible and a target. Even worse for you if you become SUCCESSFUL at what you do.... Since the more visible you are the more suspect. Yet people do beautiful things all the time, despite potential ridicule. Admittedly satire plays a role in society, keeping it real/honest. But sometimes the most amazing things can be bitterly opposed in public. One is reminded of the (paraphrased) dictum: when you see something beautiful, praise the Maker, when you see something ugly, examine your inner self.
Love does it by seizing multiple opportunities.
May the Force be with this new spiritual group.
Let a thousand flowers blossom.
But, I believe, that in the end, our truth is discovered from within.
GATE, I have a seed to plant. All Cable producers get creative and do something other than throwing people together and asking them to yell at each other for your segments.You can almost see the high fives when blood vessels are bulging and the guests are shrill. Getting old.
Oh Gee, you mean by my just showing up to this farce gathering of mental pigmys, I was part of the counted that made it a group? OOOOOO!!!
Mr. Carrey has gone from a very primative consciousness of, "Hey everybody look at me, and love me!" to, "Hey everybody look at yourselves, and love each other!" There can be no higher enlightenment. His 40 days in the dessert have now passed, and Satan is truly behind him. Namaste, Jim.
I worked with Chopra, Walsch and Tolle on various promotional projects. If you believe your post about his apparent ego-transcendence, then you've already drunk the Flav-r-aid.
Mix shallow Hollywood actor egoism and good old fashioned American con man grifterism, add a pinch of New Age bullshit, garnish with tax exempt religious status and you have this new "religion" GATE!
This is a scam - and a LOT of idiotic rich people (and, tragically, a lot of idiotic poor and middle class people who don't have money to burn) will end up writing checks to Ms Tolle!
This is EST all over again!
But yes, the Scientologists SHOULD watch out - because there's a new set of pseudospiritual hustlers hunting on their turf!
Yes, this line in particular made me think of EST:
(Tolle teaches that time is an illusion so perhaps that was not a problem.)
Of course I was not invited, but if I was, my first question would be, will I be allowed to go to the bathroom. Because if not, that's a dealbreaker!
I listened to the "Power of Now" on CD's and I found it very helpful and not at all "religious" or even spiritual in the sense that people understand that word. I am an atheist, so even the sniff of anything religious turns me off. I have looked at Taoism and it is probably my favorite of the eastern disciplines but it is not a relgion. The Power Of Now remided me of most of the eastern philosophies. I don't know anything about The Gate though.
Too much wealth, self importance and boredom results in this nonsense
Serves 2 purposes:
1. Fills that hole between his sense of prophetic self-awe and his meager accomplishments
2. Tax loophole
This is actually very sharp and again foresighted. The next great wave is likely going to be some kind of spiritual revival. It will include things like New Age, whole food diets, attachments to nature, attachments to the universe itself, attachments to others as we become increasingly interdependent through hard times. The thing about Carey is that he's bright and thoughtful. While he's being completely outrageous in comedy, he is always making a reasonable point. The magic here is as St. Thomas Moore claimed. Faith and Reason both arrive at the same conclusions. In fact, some might point out that Science (Reason) itself proves Religion (Faith) correct by claiming that there even is a design in Nature. More and more we are discovering that there is a design in Nature, and not always a design which works to our felicity as a people. It is most peculiar, but if there is a design, as Science seems to think there is, it begs the question "who's fingerprint is that in the design?" Or, "where did the design come from?". "If the universe and everything in it is random, then how does it work at all?" If it is random, shouldn't it all just fail from lack of maintenance and direction, just as everything else in nature, when left to neglect, rots and withers away? So then, what is the force which binds that which is random? What is the force that gives it a design such that it functions? How do people interact with the design in order to feliciltate it's smooth function, creating order out of disorder? How do people even know to attempt to do this? Isn't that also a design too?
You are incorrect when you say, "If it is random, shouldn't it all just fail from lack of maintenance and direction, just as everything else in nature, when left to neglect, rots and withers away?" Trees do not rot away when left alone. Mountains do not rot away when left alone.
You have no idea what science is do you?
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I have 4 comments to add to this discussion:
1) What a creepy acronym - GATE - really? It's so heavy handed and syrupy and creepy.
2) Transformational movies are those that are sincere, personal and honest stories about humanity and the human experience. This will not change just because you belong to a group that tells you to now write something transformational. Some people do need to belong to groups in order to create the intention to create transformational media. Others do it without belonging to the group. This is similar to belonging to any religion. Just because you belong to the religion does not make you spiritual and vice versa. So, while it's not necessary, perhaps it will help Jim Carrey create something transformational. Probably not though.
3) Dumb and Dumber is not a "transformational" film and I think that's a valid point made by the author. D&D is Hollywood at its, well, dumbest. You can't tell me that Jim Carrey decided to do a pre-egoic piece when he did that film.
4) The author was a little unnecessarily snarky about Eckhart Tolle, which is uncalled for since she has no idea who he is or what his books are about. In fact, her friend is wrong in saying Eckhart asks you to not watch tv or movies. In fact, he talks more about bringing awareness to any activity, whether it be watching a movie, doing the dishes, or communicating with your partner.
Great match, those Hollywood buffoons and this little jester, Tolle - the first time I saw him on TV I though he was a Tolkien creature, clicking his tongue and giggling.
Then the content - meister Eckhart has caught the notion of day - sheer gibberish, a iota better than scientologists' rants or TM crew's ratiocinating.
With Maddona as herald of the New World, a funny man like Tolle is good as ideologue.
Oh, by the way, now a huge thought has illuminated me - aren't the crowd listening to Tolle the same who voted for Obama?
Wow! What a telling snapshot!
I can only guess what drives the celebrity to be so credulous. Most movie-stars (not actors, movie-stars) seem to have huge holes in their psyches that nothing will fill, I think this leaves them open to all manner of woo. As a recovered moonbat myself, I can say that for me it was a simple existential fear that drove me to be so credulous when it came time to examine channeling, homeopathy, auras, crystals, past-lives, gurus, conspiracies, UFOs, "creating my own reality" and the rest of the factually-challenged worldviews I once embraced. Nobody I knew personally ever died until I was in my forties. I was so scared of, and offended by, the idea of ceasing to exist that I just went into la-la land around it. Once I actually experienced the deaths of a few people up-close and personal, I found them to be sad, beautiful, terrible, moving and ultimately ordinary, very, very ordinary. I wasn't so afraid anymore, and curiously I found myself looking around at all my suddenly goofy beliefs in horror. I realized three things:
1. The real universe is way more amazing than the metaphysical one.
2. I'm a Dawkins-6 agnostic.
3. I have really wonderful, patient friends, who never judged me about the latest wackaloon thing I was into.
Now that I have come to understant that this is the only life I'll have, it means so much more to me. So if "I" survive death, I'll be amazed and surprised, but if I don't, I'll never know . . . sounds like a good deal to me.
Thank you.
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