The Desire to be Truly Helpful: Groundhog Day Movie Meaning
This month’s featured movie is Groundhog Day, a classic parable of discovering that the way out of the loop of linear time is to completely lose yourself in the urge to be truly helpful.
Now Playing at MWGE.org January 2017
The Value of Hopping Over
“Phil steps in the puddle again and again and again and at some point he hops over the puddle. It doesn’t matter how many times he stepped into the puddle, he is now aware the puddle is there. The moment when you start to feel the value of hopping over is the moment you can choose the miracle.”
David Hoffmeister
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MWGE Movie Review Excerpt
Linear time is a loop where the past just seems to repeat, over and over and over. The desire to get something back from others leads us on a fruitless search as we seek to overcome the void inside of us. And all attempts to escape this void seem futile. That is what makes the movie Groundhog Day such a powerful metaphor. Not only can you see the loop, which is symbolic of the loop that everyone has experienced, but you also see a metaphor for the way out of the loop, which is just to be totally helpful—to completely lose yourself in the urge to be truly helpful.
When the desire to be helpful awakens, the world is given a new purpose. Instead of focusing on escaping, we simply desire to extend and give love to everyone we meet. And with this change of purpose comes another way of looking at all the world, until we can finally say and mean “I love you.”
Play Before Movie
The main character, Phil the weatherman, has a closed heart. He’s looking for love and he doesn’t know where to find it. The backdrop for this movie is a day that just repeats over and over and over. When Phil realizes that he can’t get out of the loop, he decides he would like to have his producer Rita as his girlfriend. With that as his goal he gets a lot of slaps from Rita and he goes into a deep disillusionment.
Before we’re ready to be humble and be shown another way, we almost inevitably have to go into some kind of disillusionment. This is judged negatively, but it’s actually a necessary step to see the hopelessness of linear time. When Rita finally suggests to Phil that there might be a better way to live, that starts to ignite his true purpose: happiness.
Other Bill Murray Reviews on MWGE
Emotions/Themes: Defenselessness, Forgiveness, The Script is Written
Excerpt: Once the suggestion “all the world is a stage” comes to mind, the path of true forgiveness dawns. Forgiveness is nothing more than seeing the false as false and therefore not taking any of the persons, events, and situations seriously. How light and humorous is a world of actors at play in a play. How defenseless and fearless is such a perspective of the world. Nothing is taken personally when all situations are viewed as play-acting. There is nothing to fear when the world is seen as merely a theater of actors, actions, and events.
Excerpt: Who is the therapist and who is the patient? Who is the healer? The personal perspective cannot heal because it is the very definition of sickness. The Spirit’s perspective is healing, for it is of the Spirit; the only healer. The ego’s pretense of personal healing is exposed as a farce in this comedy about the unhealed healer. All anger comes from guilt, and all guilt comes from holding onto a personal self image or personal perspective on the world. The world of fragmentation and the personal self are two aspects of the same illusion: the personal perspective. How glorious is the oneness which God created perfect and eternal!
Excerpt: Vincent’s life consists of visiting his beloved wife who has Alzheimer’s, drinking to excess, and gambling to earn enough money to cover his bills. Into this lonely existence the Spirit sends Oliver, a 12-year-old boy in need of a babysitter and a friend. This pair of unlikely companions help each other out through all kinds of situations, and somehow they make it through. Beneath anger is sadness. Beneath depression is loneliness. Beneath the surface behaviors that attempt to push people away is a call for love. When the call is heard, and met with love, the blessing touches everyone’s heart.
Bonus Material
Two Movies and a Lesson in Perception
In this YouTube, David shares the parable of being guided to watch two movies back to back: The Game with Michael Douglas and The Man Who Knew Too Little with Bill Murray. In The Game, the main character takes a recreational drug that puts him into a simulation game where others are out to kill him. He is having to run, fight and defend himself because he thinks what’s happening to him is real.
In The Man Who Knew Too Little, the main character thinks he’s in an improv theatre so he’s not taking anything too seriously. The characters are trying to strangle him, poison him and kill him in all kinds of different ways. The setup is the same as the first movie, but the main character is laughing his way through every scene.
The message of these two movies from the Holy Spirit is, “I want you to see that these images are not real, they are not who you really are and you need not defend anything.” The simplicity of being in the present moment is that you don’t need to react or respond to images because you know they are not real. And wouldn’t you love to live a life of playfulness no matter what?
YouTube: Time is for Undoing the Belief in Time
Linear time was invented by the ego to keep you trapped. The present is not a blip between past and future. The present is before time was. Separation is a present decision. The present moment is the moment of decision to release yourself from the past: instant karma. There is nothing in the past that was missed or needs to be fixed.
Newest Site Features
Newly-Added Full Movies with Commentary Reveal Profound Metaphysical Themes
Funny Movies Offer Way to Undo Guilt By Not Taking the World so Seriously
The path of peace and salvation need not be one of pain. In fact, we can use entertainment as a means to undo guilt. After all, as A Course in Miracles says, “Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh.” T-27.VIII.6.
Instead of self-flagellation, the Course strongly suggests we take a light-hearted approach to salvation, joyfully laughing along the way, and what better way than through the illustrative medium of film, which lends itself to many profound “ah-ha” moments!.
