Characters: The Lost Dwarves, Pt. 1

Now the truth can be told - there were more dwarves working back in that mine than made it onscreen...dwarves they didn't talk about; and these recently unearthed original development artworks prove it...this is the first group of characters who "weren't good enough" for the big-time - part of a celebration of these unsung heroes leading up to a new character section coming soon on my website.

One day, I hope to color these too...

Here are three more idyllic locations belonging to a sadly suspended project...

Important Stuff!

Here's a nice spot to join in a cartoon meditation...one day I'll color it.

    April 22nd is Earth Day, so plan something earthy for Mom - a picnic, plant something, or join one of the 'official' activities planned for your area.

    Of really super special importance is Global Peace Meditation and Prayer Day, this coming May 17th, which will actually be May 16th from 10 PM EST to 12 midnite, if you want to join in this annual synchronized meditation for peace and consciousness.  What makes this so important is that it works!  Prior GPMP day meditations have been documented to have decreased global violence and increase global compassion( the "secret" force for good in the world).  Through Princeton University's Global Consciousness Project, data has been collected over a global network that indicates that the focused consciousness of a relatively small number (millions, in the case of GPMP Day, a few as 8 thousand in past experiments) of people taking part in this action has a real, measurable effect in the world.  Check the site to see the numbers.  It's evidence of the instant 'non-local' effect that quantum physics has shown us is operating in reality, and your chance to really make a difference.

    You can learn a whole lot more by reading Quantum Shift in the Global Brain, the truly amazing book by Ervin Laszlo, chancellor of GlobalShift University, and founder of The Club of Budapest.

How Animals Share Consciousness

"I am the true Self in the heart of every creature...the beginning, middle, and end of their existence."

The Bhagavad Gita 10.20

When we approach The Milky Way galaxy from "deep space," it first appears as a distant luminous pinwheel. As we get closer, it's clear that there's plenty of room to go around. Turning our focus very specifically to one area along the outside edge, we find the collection of spherical bodies we call our solar system; and there, third from the star we call the Sun is the miniscule pinprick of blue that we call our Earth.

As we grow nearer, the features of Earth become more evident; the continental land masses; the dwindling polar ice caps; the expanse of oceans and seas. And there, at times just visible through the swirling marbleized cloud cover, is a bare, grey fuzz; a scant five o'clock shadow that we call humankind. It looks like a light fungus growing on the little terrestrial orb.

When we objectively view lichen on a rock, or moss on a tree stump, do we engage on a microscopic level with each moss cell as an individual? Of course not. We just refer to it as "moss," giving no consideration to what traits moss consciousness may recognize as individual from cell to cell. It's the remarkable arrogance of man (gender specificity intended) - the pride of ego - that insists that we, as humans, are somehow all separate from one another, and our source.

Across the continents, among the races, there is little or no difference between any of us from that viewpoint in space. We all think, or have thought, more or less the exact same thoughts at one time or another. We all continuously experience the same emotions, harbor the same fears, know the exact same joys and sufferings of one another on an intimate, interchangeable level. Within certain tolerances, we are all subject to the same conditions created from within or from without. Should the earth or atmosphere become inhospitable to us, without adapting to the changes, we shall all perish at about the same time, geologically speaking.

In sharing this thing we call consciousness, we all share the singular expression of the creative source that takes place on this planet. We share what we might call "the Consciousness of Earth." Deep within us, we have a sense of the most basic elemental forces of the Earth; the deepest cold of the icy subterranean. The dense, smoldering pressure and heat of the innermost; the heedless baking burn of the unabated sun.

Deep within us, we know the natural experience of life, of the wild. We feel the elements as any animal does, and like any animal we live the play of forces that govern our needs for sustenance, for regeneration, for love in the form of the mysterious power of creation.

Look within yourself and you'll see that somewhere deep within, you understand the exhilarating speed of the cheetah, or the overwhelming seasonal sleepiness of the grizzly bear - especially on those days when it's tough to get out of bed. Likewise you can identify with the fear a young calf feels when surrounded by the slaughterhouse cries of his family; or the panic of a yellowtail tuna or porpoise as the indiscriminate mile-long nets of a fishing trawler scoop up the contents of your entire world.

It's not just humans that share the experience of this thin veneer of consciousness that tenderly wraps and energetically enlivens this planet, it's all life on earth. Despite our differences, species to species, we are all one thing: the consciousness on this earth.

"...my own true inner being actually exists in every living creature...[and] is the ground of that compassion upon which all true, that is to say, unselfish, virtue rests..."

Schopenhauer

Animals simply live their being. Their consciousness is joined with source purpose and intention, and so they attain a purity of experience within consciousness, through their senses, that humans seldom know. They have developed senses which allow them to live in a much richer world infused by light and electromagnetic wave perception that connects them to the field of being, and so they are not burdened by elaborately convoluted thinking, as are humans.

Being ignorant, and unwilling to experience or imagine the sublimely transcendent intelligence alive in the spirit/mind of a whale or an elephant, for example, the human ego denies all other creatures their true positions in the hierarchy of being, simply because it threatens human self-enhancement and self-importance. Also because it suggests a fatal assumption of human intelligence; that we have the "divine" right to kill animals for our own purpose -which is a conclusion based solely on delusion and ignorance. Some indigenous peoples have naturally found the way through The Great Spirit to respectably cycle the energies of hunted and farmed animals to meet their needs for sustenance, but this has little to do with our mass culture today. And I wouldn't suggest that a hungry crocodile wouldn't eat me, if given the chance. That's what he lives to do. Not to accomplish. Not to steward. Not to choose.

The fact is that the actual nutritional needs of the earth's entire population could be met in a much more healthful and efficient manner agriculturally, with a bare minimum of animal slaughter and consumption. (All the flavors, textures, and nutritional qualities that are supposedly exclusive to meat can be reproduced with vegetable substitutes) In this way, wildlife populations would be brought back into balance, and humans could begin to exercise their divine dominion over the other occupants of the planet.

Unfortunately, the regressive human psyche has developed an appetite for something else: the energy of fear. The collective human ego manipulates and exploits it's animal relatives, feeding on the energy of fear generated by this exploitation. Feeding on the bodies of our animal brothers and sisters while ignoring their actual place in the divine order of life, and, without properly honoring their sacrifice, failing to release their spirits with love, imbues people with a deep, negative energy of guilt and fear.

In this way, the collective human ego, the singular most destructive force in all being, enforces the separation of human individuals from the divine source of being, which is the consciousness of the earth. It also contributes to the build-up of the energy of fear at a cellular level in the bodies of meat-eaters that leads to the inability to perceive the spiritual on a personal and collective level, and provides those fear-triggers that are regularly exploited by unethical interests to elicit the ignorant and inhumane mass attitudes that so threaten all life on earth. Simply put, it's why there are far more fist fights at barbecues than at vegan yoga retreats!

The time has arrived in the evolution of humankind, to stop the barbaric and wasteful subjugation, cannibalization, and vanity slaughter of all crawling, walking, flying, swimming, thinking and feeling sentient creatures, and instead, to seek their wisdom of simple harmonious being-ness. And to stop and redirect the earth's energy and resources, squandered by this pointlessly egomaniacal vivocide, into an intuitively intelligent and sustainable (re: vegetarian) approach to being on earth, aligned with source energy, which is the consciousness of the earth. Keep in mind that mankind is not the top of the chain of being in this system of consciousness, the Earth is. As mankind continues to hasten the grievous imbalance of energies through the destruction of earth's natural systems and expressions of it's consciousness, the world will simply adjust to maintain it's harmony. We're not talking about the end of the world. The world will continue on, finding new ways to express divine consciousness, only Man will cease to exist.

"I do not see a delegation for the four-footed. I see no seat for the eagles. We forget and we consider ourselves superior, but we are after all a mere part of the Creation...The elements and the animals, and the birds, they live in a state of grace. They are absolute, they can do no wrong. It is only we, the two-leggeds, that can do this. And when we do this to our brothers, then we do the worst in the eyes of the Creator."

Oren Lyons, to the United Nations (1977)



The latest book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor is now on sale from Llewellyn Worldwide, and can be ordered online; and the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available everywhere too – but ask for them it at your local bookstore!

Tales of the Koko Lion: Rock Visitors

Here's the rock, and where the deer were...

"The little space within the heart is as great as this vast universe. Both heaven and earth are contained in that space...for the whole universe dwells within our heart."

Chandogya Upanishad, 8.1

One day, Koko was sitting on the rock in the river, chanting the sacred word OM. It seemed a little corny, sure. But it was working. He said the word over and over, from his root and his heart and his throat. His eyes were a little bit completely closed, though he was beginning to see things quite clearly, in a different way. After a while, he felt a presence, and cracked his eyes slightly to look. There, on the bank just across from the rock, were three young, curious deer -just five or six feet away. The young leader looked like: Is there room on the rock for me? I'd like to step across. There wasn't enough room on the rock, but in their hearts, there was all the space in a thousand universes.

Have you ever heard of The Unified Field Theory? Physicists have been working on it for a hundred years, at least. But there's one major ingredient that they keep leaving out of their formulae: Consciousness. The deer, the river, even the breeze on Koko's face (even Koko), are drifting particles, realizing their material forms in and out of wave phases. Some things just are, formed out of our shared consciousness. Some things are just for you, formed from the energy of your heart, which is like a giant light-energy top, spinning in the middle of your being. In fact you could say, it is you.

Live from your heart. Release all the expectations you have for the things you want. You're getting everything you need already. You don't have to go any where else to be where you want to be. Or try this: get on the bus, go across town, sit in a new cafe, open your heart, and be half way around the world, in the most beautiful and romantic place you've ever wanted to be. Covet what you already have.

"The whites always want something; they are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think that they are mad."

I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad.

"They say that they think with their heads," he replied.

"Why of course. What do you think with?" I asked him in surprise.

"We think here," he said, indicating his heart.

The Pueblo Indian, Ochwiay Biano (Mountain Lake) to Carl Jung,

from Memories, Dreams, Reflections

""The heart is a sanctuary at the center of which there is a little space, wherein the Great Spirit dwells, and this is the eye...by which He sees all things, and through which we see Him."

Black Elk

one of the very first color illos from the deep past...supposedly based on an actual occurrence.

Tales of the Koko Lion, Part 8: Canyon times.

"Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other, thus should we do, for this was the wish of the Grandfathers of the World."                                                                                              Black Elk  

    The sun was hot, and my moccasined feet stuck like monkey palms down on the broad granite boulder.  The big boulders were strewn around the chaparral covered hills, jumbled atop one another like they'd been cast out with some beautiful zen intention.  Golden tan no-tan.  Grasshoppers whirred their surreal, penetrating background buzz as Santa Ana winds blew the red-clay dust off the hilltop paths.  I and my dusty compadres occupied these canyons, laying just beyond the edge of San Diego, and stretching out to what seemed like forever.  Gray squirrels rhythmically chirped away in their boulder villages.  A lizard did push-ups on a rock.  The quails' call punctuated the humming stillness:  "kee KAW kaw... kee KAW kaw..."  This was where I would choose to live, if I could... and so I did.  From early childhood on, I'd disappear out the door, and across the street, on to the dusty oxide canyon trails and into the deceivingly welcoming wilderness there, to the best host a kid could have.  Later, when we moved farther out on the fringes, to the monolithic Mies Van der Rohe-inspired house that my father built, where the land surrounded us completely, all I needed to do was walk out the downstairs door next to my room, right into my scrub-brush sanctuary.  I could move free then, around the path-cut hills, out of the sightlines of the house's big windows.

    I had my rifle or my bow, and cut the knees of my jeans out, front and back, to allow the breeze to circulate; and there was always a cat or two out in the field with me.  Like Cathy, the tawny little tiger with one tooth, who retrieved like a hunting dog- bounding back over the low scrub with a lizard in her mouth.  Or Armando, the muscular white-chested tabby I'd raised on egg yolks and road work (he trotted alongside my paper route bike like the middle-weight he was).  Eventually, they would both fall prey to the coyotes' insidious gang-tactics- the heart-breakingly repetitive fate of all of my childhood cats who ventured into the canyons on their own.  The canyons seemed placid, but in truth, they buzzed and simmered with that kind of dusty menace.

    No one really seemed to see the beauty of the semi-arid wilderness back then.  It all appeared to the unconscious developers to be a lot of nothing but potential dollar signs, and everything but a few parcels were buried by bulldozers and covered with an unsustainable layer of suburbia.  But all things change.  Most of those developers are probably dead and gone on now.  All things come and go.  One day the canyons will reclaim it all-- when the water runs out, and the sun, the creosote, and the jackrabbits and horny-toads take it back.

    But for me in that evening of childhood, the big rocks stayed warm as the sun sunk.  Cathy would pull up a boulder nearby, her stripey arms outstretched in front of her, and we'd watch the dusk descending over the Pacific horizon, like the big cats do.