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Robert Wold's avatar

"Dances With Wolves" was the book carefully written by Michael Blake and became the storyline and spiritual guide that his friend Kevin Costner converted into the screenplay for the film. Kostner contacted a true Lakota heritage woman in South Dakota for advice during pre-production and, later, he was honored with an honorary membership in the Lakota tribe. I met him while playing a very small role in another film he produced in 2018 and we talked briefly about the arduous saga of colonialism that all Native American tribes suffered under during breaks in the production. I had been asked to help produce another film about the legend of Okanagan Indian named Johnny McClain which was written by Glenn Raymond of the Okanagan tribe of North Eastern Washington State set in the 1890s.

If you'd be interested, I still have the story and production notes for that film @ woldrob@gmail.com. I have followed all of Arjun's deeply involving papers since about 2012 or so and include passages from them in a novel I'm finishing, excerpts of which can be read at: www.lightningonthemoon.com

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Simon Esler's avatar

What does it mean to have an open mind to you?

The ability to rest in doubt. To be able to sit comfortably with uncertainty and to be able to use this to refine discernment. This means flexing our ability to cognize different narratives, contradictory truths, and attach to none of them with immediacy.

What does it mean to have an open heart to you?

The open heart to me has to do with embodiment. When we are embodied and using empiricism to seek truth then the body becomes the means by which we can use the heart and the mind together.

How do both change the way we listen to and communicate with others?

If we can use both of these states then we can counter the constant pressure to live in certainty reinforced by echo chambers and our fear of doubt. To me there is no discernment without doubt. When we learn to move through natural states of doubt towards truth, we cultivate trust in our own discernment and it becomes a sovereign process that isn’t tied up with groupthink or tribalism.

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