The Sacred Lamp of Discernment
The eternal flame — symbol of awakened consciousness, inward illumination, and the courage to distinguish true nourishment from hollow distraction. As the lamp burns through the night, so must the vigilant self burn through the fog of sorrowful soaps.
On Feeling Lacking When You Miss Your Favourite Soap Opera
What density of discernment is necessary for loathing lack — as a function of purposefully avoiding sorrowful soaps? Explore this sacred question through the lens of Beyondism and the African Renaissance.
How to Engage — The W·A·Y of the Sacred Ritual
Perspectives of the Sages — Tap a Card to Unveil
"Movies are an inherently stupid art form that often relies on scams, tricks, stunts, gambits, ploys, ruses, or gags that are logically or physically impossible..."
"The cinema, like the detective story, makes it possible to experience without danger all the excitement, passion and desirousness which must be suppressed in a humanitarian ordering of society."
— Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961)
"Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly."
"Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from the print of newspapers, the shock waves of television, and the sentimental cheats of the movie screen."
— Norman Mailer (1923–2007), novelist
"Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home."
"The goal of all art is to explain to people the reason for their appearance on this planet; or, if not to explain, at least to pose the question."
— Andrey Tarkovsky (1932–1986), filmmaker
"Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter. Africa must author her own narratives, not borrow the borrowed dreams of borrowed screens."
"What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualisation. It refers to the desire for self-fulfilment, namely, the tendency to become actualised in what he is potentially."
— Abraham Maslow (1908–1970), psychologist
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. Equally, mediocrity is not misfortune — it is the fruit of daily chosen distraction."
"To see a World in a Grain of Sand and Heaven in a Wild Flower, hold Infinity in the palm of your hand and Eternity in an hour — this is the faculty that soaps quietly erode."
— William Blake (1757–1827), poet
"I am an African. I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers... I have dared, in all these, to speak of freedom."
"The African Renaissance demands that we do more than survive — we must create, philosophise, and build civilisations of the spirit. Every hour consumed by a soap opera is an hour stolen from that sacred mission."
— Beyondism: Foundation of Self-Actualisation
"Lost time is never found again. The great tragedy of the soap-addicted soul is not that they seek story — it is that they seek it second-hand, in another's invented life."
"Your life is the greatest story ever told — if you will only write it. Stop watching others live their scripted dramas and begin authoring the epic of your own becoming."
— Beyondism: The Cosmic Imperative
What Is a Soap Opera?
A
SOAP OPERA IS A SERIALISED DRAMA which runs for fifty-two weeks of the year with continuous storylines dealing with domestic themes, personal and family relationships, and a limited recurring cast. Soap operas are open-ended. They are among the few genres where weddings are not a happy ending but the beginning of a marriage that may be troubled or doomed. Television soap operas are long-running serials concerned with everyday life. The serial is not to be confused with the series, in which main characters and format remain consistent but each episode carries a self-contained plot. In a serial, at least one storyline is carried across episodes. A series announces a specific number of episodes; serials are potentially endless.
The term soap opera was first coined in the 1930s to describe radio serials sponsored by the soap powder industry — notably Procter & Gamble. These fifteen-minute broadcasts focused on women, family, and emotional situations, with sponsors hoping to reach vast audiences of housewives who might then add their particular soap powder to their shopping lists. These never-ending stories grew massively popular and migrated to television in the 1950s, expanding from fifteen-minute episodes to twenty-five minutes, and eventually to sixty-minute productions.
Click any letter-row below to meditate on its meaning.
✦ The Reflection Chamber ✦
A sacred psychological ritual of self-inquiry — seven stations of the awakening soul
Station 1 of 7