Wednesday, March 2, 2011
David Lynch gives his infinite ocean to UM students
Posted by Erika Fredrickson on Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 6:00 PM
University of Montana Media Arts students got a lesson today in "Transcendental Meditation" from the one and only David Lynch. The artist and film/television director ("Twin Peaks," Blue Velvet, Lost Highway) and Missoula native conducted a video conference today set up by Mark Shogren, a professor in the Media Arts program.
Shogren says he's been a fan of Lynch's work for a long time and was interested in incorporating him into the classroom in some way. Last year he stumbled upon Lynch's foundation, which works on using stress-reducing "transcendental meditation" for at-risk populations. It's a technique Lynch has written a book about and something he uses to approach his own art projects.
- Photos by Greg Twigg
In the conference, Lynch addressed, among other things, inner treasuries and girls—as metaphors for art.
Other issues he addressed:
Art ideas: "All of it exists within. An unbound, infinite ocean of it and it's yours.
Competition: You've gotta be in love. You don't have to worry about anybody else. If you're going down the street and you meet a girl around the corner and you see her and she sees you, and it's pure, beautiful love, you don't care what Sam in Philadelphia thinks of this or the president of the United States thinks about it.
Negativity: Negativity is the enemy of creativity. You all have a treasury within, a technique called transcendental meditation will take you to that treasury and give you a key to that treasury that works. You'll experience the deepest, eternal level of life.
Comments (11)
Showing 1-11 of 11
I am a former TM teacher. David Lynch is a brilliantly creative man, but people want to be careful about celebrity endorsements from *anyone*. He has become the "Tom Cruise" of Transcendental Meditation which is a full-blown cult past the "twenty-minutes-twice-a-day" level. I discuss this here: www.suggestibility.org.
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More importantly, Lynch was born in Missoula. And his father was from Highwood, home of the mighty Mountaineers.
There are so much prooven facts about the beneficials of Transcendental Meditation, among others see here: http://www.fakten-zu-transzendentaler-medi…
Please this cult stuff is getting so old and so without any credibility... The NIH, Harvard, Stanford, UCLA medical schools, the Veterans Administration, Indian Health Services, the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association have all either conducted research, funded research or published research on the benefits of TM... Go to www.DavidLynchFoundation.org for facts...
Regarding the "former TM teacher" above (Joe Kellett, AKA "Tanaats"), who scours the Internet warning people about the so-called bad effects of meditation — and crying "cult!" — know this: out of the 45,000 people trained as TM teachers over the past 45 years, most are intelligent, together people dedicated to sharing the benefits of meditation, but out of 45,000 people it's not surprising to find one or two whose heads weren't screwed on right to begin with. Tanaats admits to being one of them. TM is the opposite of a cult -- and the comparison to Cruise's Scientology is absurd. For a revealing look at Tannat's website, see http://skepticsontm.blogspot.com/2009/03/r…
I love David Lynch for his creative work but respect him even more for his tireless endeavor to dispel the misunderstandings about Transcendental Meditation and for spreading the word about TM's good effects -- especially for its benefits for people at risk. Nothing has been found to reduce stress and save people from the harmful effects of PTSD, chronic anxiety, depression and so on like TM has. But the real benefit of TM is how it uplifts one's life to levels of greater happiness and well-being by opening awareness to the vast creative potential within every human being. The point of David's speaking out is not to encourage "celebrity endorsements." His aim is to draw attention to the scientific research that provides an empirical, objective basis for assessing the value of TM.
TM is totally cool and Lynch is a genius. Here's a great article about TM and the non-profit organization that teaches it: "Meditation Myth #7: Yikes! It's a cult!" http://meditationasheville.blogspot.com/20…
Neither the NIH, Harvard, Stanford, UCLA medical schools, the Veterans Administration, Indian Health Services, the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association have researched why many people who start TM ending up seriously delusional: http://bit.ly/ehG99E http://bit.ly/en4BYe. They've only researched "twenty minutes twice a day" levels of involvement, not the insanity that occurs past that level (http://www.suggestibility.org/stillFalling…).
As a former TM teacher and practitioner I can vouch for tanaats description of TM as a cult. The "scientific" claims the TM Organization makes are almost entirely speculative. They draw ridiculous conclusions about the changes in brain waves produced by TM. The rhetoric used by the faithful that run things can only be described as delusional. RESEARCH THEIR WEBSITE AND FAMILIARIZE YOURSELF WITH THEIR BELIEF SYSTEM. See for yourself before jumping on this bandwagon. They endorse all kinds of mystical and pseudoscientific nonsense. We don't need this type of irrational "magical thinking" in our society on any level. Especially in our educational system, which is the DL Foundation's main target.
As a former TM teacher and practitioner I can vouch for tanaats description of TM as a cult. The "scientific" claims the TM Organization makes are almost entirely speculative. They draw ridiculous conclusions about the changes in brain waves produced by TM. The rhetoric used by the faithful that run things can only be described as delusional. RESEARCH THEIR WEBSITE AND FAMILIARIZE YOURSELF WITH THEIR BELIEF SYSTEM. See for yourself before jumping on this bandwagon. They endorse all kinds of mystical and pseudoscientific nonsense. We don't need this type of irrational "magical thinking" in our society on any level. Especially in our educational system, which is the DL Foundation's main target.
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