The Art of Watching Films with Conscious Awareness

When embarking on the journey of cinema therapy, one of the crucial elements to grasp is the art of watching films with conscious awareness. By cultivating conscious awareness, we unlock the potential to enrich our cinematic experiences. It entails approaching movies with a mindset of non-judgmental attention, genuine curiosity, and embracing acceptance towards whatever unfolds in the present moment.

Many psychotherapeutic and spiritual orientations teach us to become more aware of ourselves because they recognize the healing power of awareness. The Jewish Talmud points out that normally we do not see what we think we see, that what we perceive is more a reflection of us than it is objectively it. Everything we experience is altered and shaped by our minds. Our desires filter our selection of the items that we perceive. Our emotions color those perceptions. And finally, our attention wanders from perception to perception, virtually guaranteeing that what we see of the world and ourselves is mostly inaccurate.

Buddhism makes the same basic observation and gives it a name: mindlessness. In this usage, the term includes the absentmindedness that we mean when we say "mindless," but it encompasses more, too — that our awareness is clouded, that we are spiritually asleep. Wise men, poets, storytellers, and philosophers have echoed this idea throughout the ages. Today, many psychologists agree with the idea that mindlessness, in the Buddhist sense, is very common, much more so than we might realize.

Mindlessness conditions us to replace authentic experiences with habitual responses. Think about our state of mind when we are tired, ill, or in pain: we tend to have a short attention span and little patience. We often react with fear or anger and regress into old childhood patterns we thought we had outgrown. In such a low state of awareness, our motives and emotions are most likely to be habitual. It is no wonder that we often miss important details or react from an unhealthy place.

Though we may not always be tired, or in pain, we might experience our regular state of awareness as an almost continuous low-level discontent, nervousness, or boredom. Think of it as if everything we see, hear, touch, and smell were our own personal radio station to the world. Our low-level unease introduces background static that becomes so normal that we forget it was not always there. Just as with static on the radio, or some irritating background noise like a dripping faucet, we usually tune out this static from our direct consciousness. Often, the only time we are aware of it is when it suddenly stops. And when it does, we are relieved.

The only effective way to address this low-level unease is to bring it into the light of our conscious minds. But when first attempting to do so, we might encounter strong inner resistance and negativity. These reactions manifest in various ways: impatience, fierce anger, depression, resentment, and despair. The resistance we often encounter can usually be traced to our perceived need to hang on to our existing beliefs about what will bring us happiness. Your resistance to increasing your awareness might also take the form of doubts like this: by only focusing on the qualities of my awareness instead of taking some kind of action, I'm really just avoiding resolving my problems.

Perhaps a more realistic appraisal of this dilemma is that by being fully present to our experience, we increase the effectiveness of any potential action we might eventually take. By increasing our conscious awareness we will be less likely to react to a given situation based on past conditioning. Should a real need arise to take action, we will be more likely to respond from a place of clarity and wisdom.

In our daily lives, concentration allows us to direct attention to whatever experiences we wish. On the other hand, conscious awareness, like the Buddhist's mindfulness, allows us to explore these experiences in a more sensitive way. To live with increased conscious awareness is to be more present in every moment, to notice subtle details and nuances that all too often go unnoticed, to turn off our autopilot and heal our hearts and minds. Conscious awareness allows us to tune in to the deep motives and emotions of others and to empathize more strongly with them.

Another benefit of increasing our awareness is that it sharpens our senses, enhances our pleasure in small moments, and decreases our cravings for quantity, while simultaneously increasing our appreciation for quality. It also fosters concentration and calm and frees us from unconscious destructive dynamics that create painful emotions such as anger, fear, or despair. As conscious awareness deepens, we begin to notice not only our actions but also the emotions that underlie and empower them. Once these underlying self-defeating forces are brought into the light of consciousness, they tend to shrivel, losing their power over our lives.