Sebastian Siegel
Depth and Success with Style & Soul
By Dina Morrone
British-American filmmaker Sebastian Siegel has written, produced, and directed acclaimed trailers, commercials, documentary films, and the upcoming feature Grace and Grit, adapted from Ken Wilber’s globally popular book. Sebastian is from Oxford, England, and based in California, where he works as a writer, director, producer, actor, author, and facilitates think tanks engaging numerous modalities of meditation and storytelling. He is currently in development and production on several feature films adapted from both books and true stories.
We are very excited to introduce our readers to Sebastian Siegel.
Sebastian, your movie Grace and Grit, which is adapted from Ken Wilber’s acclaimed book and true story, comes out on June 4th. We’ve seen the trailer. We’re excited. Who is the intended audience for this movie?
Grace and Grit is a movie for anyone who believes in love, or for anyone who may have lost hope and wants to believe again. It’s for audiences who want to witness and rediscover the miracles that are made possible through love.
You write and speak about the relationship between commitment and miracles. What is the relationship?
Commitment means giving oneself fully. Imagine every thought, every feeling, every cell inside your body being fully committed to an action. This synergy is the magic that gets you to the top of any mountain and the impetus that carries us to the moon. It is even written into our molecular makeup within the sperm that joins the egg, and even before that as the magnetism that intuitively connects a proton and electron. Commitment yields an opening in the heart that allows us to engage in life more robustly. It brings us to vistas whereupon life may become abundant beyond our imagination – it is the ray of light that is both our saviour and our subtle doing. It is the pulse of God that seeks to move through you. Miracles happen by faith and doing, and commitment is the surrender in loyalty to that calling. The Red Sea doesn’t part until after Moses puts his foot into the sea. Commitment is the bridge between dreams and reality.
How does one stay committed in a relationship?
Faith. Discipline. Wonder. Faith means releasing ourselves to the guidance of our deeper intuition – a wisdom within that we may not always be able to articulate, yet that we know to be true. Discipline means putting off what we want right now for what we really want; it is the mechanism by which we channel faith into action. Wonder is the inherent playfulness and curiosity of the Universe that comes alive when we are loyal to our intuition. It’s the magnetic force that gets the party started and keeps the party going, again and again, and every time for the first time. Like listening to the waves, engaging a kiss, or looking at a flower or a sunset – wonder is the requisite that makes what may be mundane into something miraculous. We must let go to hold on. Let go of the little you – that sometimes fearful and always limited one – so that the big You, that abundant, eternal, and unlimited One can shine through. Intimacy implies staying in something, staying in the moment. By wandering, we get span. Through commitment, we yield depth. Wandering seems fresh at first, but eventually, we start to run into the same things and repeat patterns. Depth, however, is exciting because the discovery is within. It yields a new terrain by new eyes, from a new you. Commitment is the new wandering. Depth is the new span. You heard it here first. Maybe I’ll make some T-shirts for the cause.
What charities or philanthropic ventures are important to you and why?
Best Buddies California, which helps create opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. I developed a curriculum with incarcerated youth where we explore questions about purpose, love, heaven, hell, and intimacy. The process of enquiry around these questions fosters a deeper sense of self-worth. For all of us, and particularly for some of these kids, developing a sense of confidence that’s based on internal values can translate into more meaningful interactions.
“Who am I?” Tell us about what that means?
You are not your name, you are not your body, you are not your job, you are not your feelings, you are not your thoughts. These are only objects we identify with. The power of exploring this question – this meditation – is in rediscovering who you really are. It is to re-introduce yourself to the real You. It invites the big, eternal You to reiterate itself through you. You are a vehicle for Spirit, for God, and for the happening of consciousness to manifest. You are a sacred ray by which light may draw both spectacle and shadow, undoing and becoming. You are nothing less than that current of the Kosmos that seeks to find and know itself through your expression.
What are some movies you would recommend?
The Big Blue, Apocalypse Now, The Impossible, Braveheart, Minority Report, A Clockwork Orange, Dirty Dancing, Something’s Gotta Give, Lawrence of Arabia.
You say Grace and Grit is “a story about romantic, passionate, courageous, selfless, and ultimately transcendent love.” Could you briefly describe those?
Romantic love is an ideal, a notion by which we identify with love and seek to bring it into our lives. It’s a sense of what that feels, tastes, and looks like to a person. Passionate love is a wanting, a needing, an evolutionary impulse to connect with another. It may bring about a type of surrender that scares us, yet that’s strong enough that we may engage it nevertheless. Courageous love is the enactment of presence in love. It is discovered by giving oneself in service to another and by expanding into a broader sense of identity – to identifying with the other and holding the other as sacred outside of our own desires or hopes. Transcendent love expands that identity even further. It is to be in service to love itself through another. Each of these types of love is a potential gateway to the next, a viable path to a deeper love. Most people, when they talk about love, are doing it with their minds – they’re talking about attachment. Love is a space and stream that we exist in and that we can open up to. Martin Buber uses the term “I-thou” in relationship. In transcendent love, we now have a relationship with God, or Spirit, through our engagement with every other. In the eyes of your friend or lover, is it just the colors of the cornea you see around a dazzlingly dark pupil that dilates? Or is there something else happening there? That happening is a miracle. It is happening with you, for you, and through you. Just as you are happening with, for, and through it. There is an intuition that speaks to us through love, one that guides our actions to do things that we may not otherwise equate as being sensible. It’s a transrational sense. And when we heed it and are willing to surrender to its calling – when we are courageous, selfless, and trust in that omega point-pull to evolve – we can let love guide us, even shatter us, so that in the end, it may transform us.
Visionary artist Alex Grey says about your movie: “Like The Tree of Life or The Fountain, Grace and Grit is a movie that takes you on a spiritual journey into the depths of love and then beyond. Sebastian Siegel is a dexterous and original director. His movie is transcendent storytelling at its best.” What is transcendent storytelling?
The uniquely immersive capacity of storytelling by the medium of film can elicit profound state experiences that may act as pathways for the progression of our development. On occasion, a book or a movie may move us to make a change, take action, or simply open us up to a new paradigm or perspective. When you watch this movie, you will see these characters fall for each other. Though I also want you to fall with them, laugh with them, taste the irony and feel the unfairness. Transcendent art or storytelling can prime an opening for us by which we may glimpse that great mystery that is happening through us. It may bring into awareness the deep subtleties of our own sentience. Transcendent storytelling allows you to rediscover that though life will leave you – that the goodbyes of your own self are inevitable – that your place in your greater Self is here, now, and forever. It speaks to the You beyond you and celebrates the fact that no matter what may be occurring in your life at this moment, infinite beauty still seeks to move through you. Part of my particular mission as a filmmaker, and duty here as a storyteller, has been to suggest that we may touch that eternal Self by bearing witness to the beauty and fragility of life and by sanctifying it through celebrating love. Love knows no boundaries. Love lives on.
Grace and Grit will be released on June 4th in select theatres and everywhere movies stream. Watch the trailer online now.
Learn more about Sebastian Siegel at www.sebastiansiegel.com or on Instagram @SebastianSiegel1
Special Thanks to:
Sebastian Siegel
Viktorija Pashuta Photography
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