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I always buy a full-festival pass to the AMDOCS film festival in Palm Springs. I go with the expectation that I’ll take what I get. Once I check in, I sit down with the schedule and make my selections. I schedule tight with only a dinner break. Films start mid-morning and go until late at night for about a week.

This time, I was a little disappointed after the first three days. Most of the films that were shown had an activist tone. Activist movies are only designed to get agreement for the filmmaker’s one-sided position. They aren’t about exposing what is false…exposure movies I like very much. Activism movies are preachy. You can blow their perspective out of the water with the win-win test in a few minutes.  Activists want to win at other people’s expense, and they just don’t see that because they don’t let go of their own beliefs.  They think their beliefs are the truth.  Often, their positions are actually lose-lose, but they can’t see that.  If the filmmaker let go, their cause would almost always disappear. They’d see that they are only fighting against their own projected problem. In fact, if they had let go, their film could have turned from a fall story that just fueled the illusion into an initiation film. It would have been a really great story.  I see that potential so often.

That’s how it is in life too.  So many of our battles disappear when we learn to let go. The potential to fall is in the same experience as the potential for initiation.  The experience itself is neutral.  It just depends on whether we reason, fix problems, and make excuses; or whether we let go and see what happens. While I don’t like activism films, it is cool to see how the person’s life could change if they let go of the projected problem; in other words, the problem they see is real, but not true.  Occasionally, the activist gets what I’m saying; and then they do make a really great exposure movie.  That’s why I go to film festivals…to see those rare polished diamonds.

Near the end of the festival, I thought for sure I’d found an initiation film. This film was called, “Arrangiarsi.” I had not originally chosen this film. But the sign outside the theater said that it was about love, pizza, and art in Naples, Italy.  I love art, Naples, and pizza so I was sure this would be pure joy. ❤ Eventually, I discovered why I wasn’t inspired to choose this film.  It was pretty much an activist film in disguise.  But this one was worth writing about.  It really demonstrates how words have fallen over time.  I have to deal with this all the time in my writing…words like God, initiation, and compassion have fallen from their original meanings.  This makes communication more difficult and tedious.  Some people live from the original meaning; and others live from the fallen meaning.  Most people can’t tell that these two people are actually existing in, and viewing life from, completely different perspectives.

Overall, “Arrangiarsi” was a decent film; it was professionally done.  It wasn’t boring.  It was woven together in a beautiful way.  The filmmaker had a great editor.  We learned about the growing of the tomatoes, we met the buffalos who produced the milk for the buffalo cheese, the main character tested the water of Naples to see if it had anything to do with the wonderful taste, and we saw how they grew and harvested the flour.

We learned how pizza was invented as a poor man’s food. Tomatoes, flour, and water were cheap in the 1600’s. If you had a couple of extra lira, you put some cheese on your pizza. That’s how pizza was born; and clearly for the pizza makers, it became a labor of love. Pizza was about creating something that was fit for a king, with a price that a pauper could afford. That was the original essence of the word “arrangiarsi.” The pizza makers lived it; and it didn’t really require a definition. They were the definition.  Initiation was the same way.  Initiates didn’t leave us a dictionary; they left us their incredible life stories.

But the filmmaker, Matteo, who was American with Italian parents, made a huge mental error. He told his story, which was a cool story; but he told it with a fallen mindset. He liked the word, arrangiarsi, very much.  He wanted to understand it.  His intention was sincere.  But he found people who taught him the fallen definition of the word.  He then imposed the fallen definition on the pizza makers, and he became unable to see the truth that the pizza makers were trying to share with him.  He was completely blind to his error. He thought that finding these pizza masters and copying their thinking was enlightening him.  It wasn’t. This is why people go study with masters and return as dicks. The master wasn’t following knowledge, he or she was inspired. The pizza masters weren’t thinking when they tossed the dough or spread just the right amount of cheese on the crust. That’s what inspiration is about.  It comes from within.

This often happens with my writing.  People bring what they learned from others to my sites.  They assume that they can add what I write to their toolbox.  But letting go is about removing what you know…it is about unschooling.  When people read what I write from the place of what they already know, they completely miss the point of what I’m saying.  In other words, they become clones that know about initiation and letting go.  But they don’t reach the true mental level of perception, which is the goal of initiation.  There is a huge difference.  I did the whole Gold Circle for just this reason.  People could not tell the difference between masters and clones of masters.  The New Age is full of clones that people erroneously believed to be masters.  This is a very common issue today.

I could see that the pizza masters were struggling with this same problem.  Matteo wasn’t quite getting what they were saying.  You could tell because there was an incongruence between Matteo’s beliefs and his words.  The pizza masters were completely congruent, and so they could hear that Matteo wasn’t grasping their message.  But they just didn’t know how to get him to understand.  Well that is why letting go is so important.  Matteo needed to let go, and then he would have gotten to the pizza masters’ knowing.

The pizza master explained what he did naturally. The student, Matteo, memorized his words; and that made Matteo into a clone pizza maker. The master only talked about what he did because Matteo asked him how he did what he did, but it is hard to explain when you don’t think about what you are doing. The master’s love and passion was poured into his or her creation via inspiration (which is beyond thought). Mastery is a sort of genius without knowledge and thinking.

Likewise, I didn’t start out explaining letting go. I started out sharing the true perspective of ancient stories, and exposing the beliefs that people erroneously thought were true. I also was going to write stories myself…initiation stories.  I still will when I’m done with my websites.  But then people wanted to know how I did what I did, and I started to explain letting go. I tried to find another website to refer people to. But no one was explaining it correctly.  They didn’t understand that our emotions mean false. Their explanation didn’t take the person to the true mental level of perception.  So I had to fill in that gap; and it felt right to do so at that time.

This is how most apprenticeships begin. People want to become master pizza makers. So they study with someone who already knows how to do it.  But usually, that person doesn’t view themselves as a master.  They are good at what they do because it’s natural for them, and they love what they do.  You can’t really teach that.  However, a master can help another person (an apprentice) find their own mastery if the apprentice lets go and keeps moving mentally toward the master.  The apprentice must notice when they aren’t getting what the master says and let go.  Eventually, the gap closes.  It doesn’t work the other way.  I’ve often tried to meet the person where they are and explain things to them.  But if you dive down to the level of the apprentice, you lose your own purity of thought.  What you are doing doesn’t exist in their illusion.  That’s why they have to let go and come to you.  I can offer things that bridge the gap if I see where they are stuck.  I can sometimes tell them what to let go, but they still have to let go and come my way.

According to the pizza masters, arrangiarsi means the art of “making something from nothing.” It totally fits based on what they shared about the history of pizza beginning as a poor man’s food.  It fits with the notion of pure creation.  It’s perfect.  But the pizza master chuckled when he said, “Now rich people all want the poor man’s food.” That’s proof that the pizza master got pure creation or arrangiarsi.

But Matteo was no Bob Manry, the guy who sailed the ocean from my previous post; nor was he like the pizza makers. In fact, he was a whole lot of victim wrapped in a new technique that he “learned” in Naples. When you learn something in words, it’s knowledge.  Knowledge is learned; wisdom is something we just know.  There is such a huge difference.  That is the case even if the words we learn are true.  Education will never lead one to mastery.  It fills the false mind with information, often second-cause information.  A master comes from the True Self and uses first-cause knowledge to create.  Pizza masters don’t teach their apprentices by giving them knowledge. They make them do the art of pizza making until they get it right…like learning to ride a bike. If you think about bike riding, you fall. If you think in pizza mastery, you make a shitty pizza.

This something from nothing idea was clearly pure arrangiarsi, but that wasn’t the movie that Matteo made.  As the movie progressed, and Matteo met others who were not masters of anything, he explained arrangiarsi as the art of arranging.  Notice how the word appeared to become more literal.  This is always what happens when words or archetypal characters fall.  Matteo could not see his mental error.  In his defense, few people can see that error.  It is why religion stays in business.

Arrangiarsi had fallen from the original definition of making something from nothing. Matteo projected his New Age clone on to the pizza masters; that became very clear.  He was from San Francisco so you can draw on that stereotype to get a feel for what Matteo was like.  He saw arrangiarsi as a New Age spiritual teaching; and it wasn’t.  Arrangiarsi is practical, just like letting go.  The pizza masters knew that too. True spirituality is practical; we are born spiritual.  We don’t have to become it.  When people say we have to become spiritual with techniques or mantras, they are frauds.  That one insight will expose most of the New Age.

Matteo looked for Italians that matched his fallen point of view; and of course, he found them.  But because he was so New Age, he couldn’t imagine that his point of view was fallen.  He thought he found a new spiritual technique.  Arrangiarsi, to Matteo, became the idea that life gives you crap so you have to take what you get and arrange your life so that you survive or maybe thrive. I’d call it fixing effects. Matteo thought this was brilliant. It became like his mantra. Every time he fixed the effects of his piss poor creating, he smiled into the camera and declared himself an arrangiarsi master.

Initiation is about getting to the place where we no longer create problems.  It is about becoming the creator of our life; it can start with creating pizza.  Then we move on to creating other aspects of our life.  Matteo’s story was a fall story, not an initiation story.

There was a side story going on which is relevant. Matteo’s mother was from Northern Italy, and his dad was from Southern, specifically Naples. Matteo’s mother didn’t want him to be like his father. I understand that in hindsight. She must have seen that her husband didn’t have the “make something from nothing” win-win point of view. Matteo had acquired his dad’s fallen point of view. That’s why he projected that out on to the people in Naples.  We all start life with our parents’ viewpoint. That’s just part of our story.  But that isn’t where we remain if we live life as the initiates lived life.

Matteo went to Naples and saw his dad’s point of view everywhere he looked.  He used the proof of what he saw to validate that false point of view.  He was seeing his own projection, just like the activists. Letting go would have allowed him to drop the beliefs of his father, and he would have started his story with arrangiarsi as arranging and ended his story by truly knowing how to make something out of nothing. But that never happened.

The movie explained that the mafia was predominant in Southern Italy, which divided Italy. Ah, that made sense. Matteo’s art of arranging had a distinct mafia tone to it. Mafia people have a poverty mentality, but they become very willful; and they get what they want. Often they become very rich, but they didn’t earn their wealth.  Their life becomes about getting others to give them what they need or want for free or near free.  Mafia-minded people think in win-lose terms; and they always expect to win.  They have no concept of win-win.  That’s where Matteo was stuck.  He wasn’t making something out of nothing.  He was deceiving and manipulating other people to get what he wanted. He was very pushy and willful. That’s a fallen mental state.  He wasn’t creating; he was stealing.

Along the way, Matteo lost his camera, broke his camera, and lost his wallet. He slept in horrible places because he was often flat broke. He got WiFi by slumming on someone’s unprotected internet. He forged a press pass. He complained about money at least once every fifteen minutes. Then he got people to give him what he wanted or needed for free. He was a pro at the victimhood advantage.  He was always a victim…never responsible for his problems.  That wasn’t the universe giving to Matteo, or arrangiarsi; it was kind people being manipulated.

Of course, most viewers of the film didn’t see it this way. If Oprah was still on, I suspect he’d be a guest. She loved that kind of crap because she does it too. Put a nice word on false behavior, and it is no longer a false behavior; it’s like calling illegal aliens immigrants. It’s dishonest.  You can’t get to freedom when you do that; it is impossible.  You must always face reality, and you must face it with clarity and honesty.

Arrangiarsi sounds so sweet and nice. It rolls off your tongue. That’s how these things start. Put a nice interesting word on top of deception or win-lose, and you’re on your way to a book deal. However, if you are dishonest with others, you’ll be dishonest with yourself. At the end of the day, you are left with yourself. Win-win is about sleeping soundly because you didn’t arrange things to suit your needs at the expense of other people.  You created something out of nothing because your mind was free of beliefs. Getting to this place takes work. It’s certainly not easy.  So I’m not saying Matteo was a bad guy; he was quite normal in fact. But my readers want initiation; so I must expose what is false in his perception.

People like Matteo are outer directed and expressive.  That’s not a bad thing. It means that they are more masculine minded. They prefer expression to listening.  It means they must give, not use their outer directedness to receive.  Wanting to receive makes them mafia-like. That’s what Matteo needed to learn.  Receiving is feminine; giving is masculine.  I would bet money that his dad had that issue; and his mother knew it.  She felt it, but she didn’t know what she was feeling.

The Italians that were happy and produced great pizza were natural givers. They found the true masculine within when they were serving their pizza, and everyone loved them. Takers do not have a true masculine within; they are mafia Dons.

There were actually a few people who called out Matteo, but he made it look like they were mean because they didn’t understand arrangiarsi. They were exposing his error, but he didn’t receive their message. He made those who followed his view of arrangiarsi good; everyone else was evil.  It always comes back to good and evil.  That’s what people do in the illusion. Often people call themselves enlightened or spiritual.  Those who don’t understand them are not yet enlightened or unspiritual.  If you let go and take each concept to true and false, it isn’t about the person.  You don’t have to label them.  It’s about that particular interaction.  It is highly likely that the pizza masters were not as clear in other areas of their life.  That’s why I wouldn’t turn them into gurus; but I’d learn how to make pizza from them for sure.

The filmmaker, Matteo, tried to tell us how he grew and how this was his initiation story. But it wasn’t growth or initiation. Yes, he followed a strong desire to go to Naples and understand pizza making. He should of stayed with that desire. Then he would have had an initiation story. It would have happened somewhere between the tossing of the dough and the spreading of the cheese.