Is a Cultural "Anti-Christ" Bringing the Real "Rapture?"

"...our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world...as in being able to remake ourselves."

Mahatma Gandhi

We're a little like moss on a rock here on earth – a simple colony of life. In the same way that any collective life form experiences stress when the conditions for it's survival begin to change, our world is beginning to experience the very real stress of climate change, species extinction, environmental degradation, income inequality, and the spread of unsustainable lifestyles based on exploiting the planet. For all of us – as well as for each of us – there's a need to adapt. The destruction driven by blind predatory capitalism leads to the weird conflations of "patriotism" and religion, self-defeating delusions we see in the ugly ironic examples of market-based "winners," and "christians" supporting diabolical perverts and criminals because they are leading us to "The End of Days."  

Much of this grows out of a serious flaw in our culture's perception of Darwinism, which is not about "Survival of the Fittest," but actually about Survival of What Adapts in the Most Cooperative Way. What is it that carries us through the tough times, with Love? 

It's an altogether different definition of fitness. It's a spiritual fitness, based in a spiritual context – answering our human problems with the recognition of simple, spiritual answers. It's about real, quality survival.

For example, the biggest, meanest guy may clobber everyone who disagrees with him, take all the food, and force himself on the prettiest women; but his karma (created by ego and fear) and the failure to evolve spiritually in a world of expanding consciousness, will cause his destruction (sex specificity intended) – a genetic dead end. The richest guy may have the most secure, most isolated fortress, the largest vault of canned food, and the most guns and ammo; but his isolation and fearfulness will lead to spiritual atrophy, and the inward collapse of his shrinking world. Those attributes and characteristics that are associated with Power and domination are dying out, as those associated with Ethics and compassion are on the rise. Life on earth is always adapting – the parts that don't adapt, don't last on our biological time-table.

Hard times stress the colony, challenging it, forcing it to change; and now we see the shape that change is taking. It's like breaking up bad pottery, and soaking it until it softens and becomes the clay that forms the basis of real life, in order to start over. People are coming together to re-configure their world on that basis – what's actually real and important in life; inspired by a sudden common awareness of what the management of Earth's abundance actually entails, and what the real consequences of continued unconscious exploitation is leading to.

A new cooperation – an evolution –  is exploding into reality, based on the spiritual unification of humankind, facilitated by the internet, manifested in an expanding sense of a global community, called to action by the impending catastrophe of climate change. The explosion in clean energy, expanding cooperatives, reuse and recycling, uncontested environmentalism; the elections of Obama, of women, of representatives of diverse religion and ethnic backgrounds; and the impetus for universal health care, local food production, the accelerating growth of animal rights awareness, vegan and vegetarianism, social support systems of all kinds – as well as the public momentum to institute these ethical concepts by means of regulation and legislation (a result of the rise of destructive fascism in the world), is the shape of the change.

Extremists and fundamentalists – religious, financial, racist and militaristic fascists – are dividing themselves off from the majority of peace-loving, compassionate humans, and defining their differences in preparation to be shed from the whole. They actually constitute just a small part of the world's total population. The rise of climate-denying, pro-corporate racism and fascism actually marks the end of their world. It will be a little messy, but it's happening.

 Do everything you can to help it along. If you open your heart, you'll intuitively know what that is. You'll know how to behave, how to shop, how to contribute, how to vote. You already do.

In a manner of speaking, a kind of biblical "Rapture" is actually taking place now amongst those who are awakening to this new consciousness, many of whom are experiencing hard times, and finding themselves and their neighbors falling through the same cracks in the system that allow spiritual evolution to enter. These are fractures in the false world of materialistic consumerism, and a dis-identification with a media that's destructive by corporate design. The Christ Spirit that's returning isn't the bearded redhead in the paintings, it's the spirit of Ethics, Cooperation, Compassion, and Love.

Those who want it all, who think they have it all, who are trying to get as much as they can, and will do anything not to lose it; who want to prevent change and "make things great again" – who suffer the delusion of their superiority and entitlement – who think they can will the truth to be what they want, are fast being "Left Behind" in their spiritual morass, a private hell of their own making. But they won't remain here suffering while the blessed 80% ascend to Heaven – they'll simply become redundant. Their hateful opinions will hold no sway. Their methods of fear-mongering will become ineffective. 

 Your biggest job may be to help those you know and care for, who've been compromised by fear-mongering, to catch up to the change – by generously applying Love and compassion.

Heaven will return on Earth as we stop poisoning it (because we must), restore natural balance, use free energy, distribute the earth's resources equitably, and evolve into our truest "Divine State" of spiritually unifying our global human family. The balance is returning as it must, and if you're part of that change, you needn't worry about the hard times. What truly matters is what each and every one of us keeps in their heart – just be sure it's Love.

"Our present world is conditioned by our present mode of consciousness; only when that consciousness passes from its present dualistic mode...will the new creation appear, which is the external reality of which our world is a mirror."

  Bede Griffiths

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

The "Spirituality Today" Review, by Peter J. Morris

While Spirituality Today is no longer with us, this book review from it's Editor, Peter J. Morris, still is:

Writer Robert Kopecky has the extraordinary distinction of having died and gone to heaven not once but no-less than three times during his life. On each occasion he has been unceremoniously sent back down into physical reality and these dramatic experiences have, quite naturally, led him to develop a unique perspective of what it means to be a human, alive on planet Earth at this time.

A Place of Being

In his book, How to Get to Heaven, Kopecky identifies the specific life lessons each near-death experience (NDE) has taught him. More specifically, he has come to recognize that his three NDEs were not separate events at all but that they formed an important part of an evolving sequence. He qualifies these as; Perspective, Presence, and Purpose; with each one heading up a different section of his book.

The experiences of death and brief awareness of life on the otherside’ to which Kopecky was party, leads him to conclude that what we perceive of as ‘Heaven’ is less a ‘place’ and more a ‘state of being’. He qualifies this further by saying, “Going to Heaven isn’t about dreaming a dream of the afterlife. No, going to Heaven is about being right where you are — wherever that may be — and waking up.”

A Threefold Perspective

In Part One of How to Get to Heaven the author examines our core human traits and in particular those that require development. These include humility, release of ego-control, love and kindness. He is of the opinion that practicing honesty and forgiveness aids this process.

Part Two focuses upon the state of presence as a means of creating quality to our lives. Kopecky describes this in the following way, “Awareness in this very moment informs and determines where we’ve come from in life, where we are, and the amazing potential we can access to empower where we are going.”

In the third and final part of his book the author explores how by carrying all of these spiritual principles into everyday actions it becomes easier to discover our own special purpose.

Review

So many reports of near death experiences include a single, common theme, which is that the recently deceased needs to return to the Earth plane specifically to fulfill – or complete, a personal destiny; or in order to undertake an important task for humanity. This also seems to be the case with Kopecky – someone who has clearly taken this challenge to hand and unravelled a personal destiny from which so many people can now benefit.

Whilst the spiritual philosophy that permeates his book has been drawn from mainly Eastern or Buddhist principles this does not color the book to such a degree that it becomes detached from its central theme. Indeed, the result is a deeply satisfying read for throughout its pages Kopecky presents a very personalized style of writing – one that keeps the reader thoroughly engaged and hungry for the next round of insights. The depth of revelation and enlightenment here is rarely found in spiritual publications and comes as a breath of fresh air.

How to Get to Heaven by Robert Kopecky is a comforting book for anyone concerned about the fragility of life. More importantly though it is the sad, the lost and the lonely, the dispirited, disillusioned and disengaged who will gain most from reading it. For those readers I”d personally guarantee that How to Get to Heaven offers the chance of a major personal transformation long before reaching its final page.

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

Animals Are Our Partners in The Sacred: An Excerpt

   

This selection about recognizing the Sacred and spiritual stewardship is excerpted from 

       How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near Death Survivor

      Our continued misuse of the sacred expression of animals to feed

our needs is quite harmful to our spiritual growth and realization.

This idea may sound extreme to you, but you can test it within yourself.

Does it make you uncomfortable to seriously consider livestock

factory conditions and methods of animal breeding and slaughter?

Look it up, focus on the actual techniques, and honestly consider

it in your own experience, and if it makes you uncomfortable at all,

you’ll know that you’re doing spiritual damage to yourself. You’re

making it virtually impossible to realize the graceful potential of Life

that’s available to us all when we recognize and respect the Sacred in

all things.

      Overlooking this potential is easy when we don’t recognize the

Divine Nature of Life, but many of us don’t think we can live any

other way. Acknowledging the Sacred in all things brings a saner and

more spiritually responsible way of living to light. For example, the

big beautiful steer we feel we must rely on for a source of protein got

big and beautiful by eating grass, so a more rational option, on every

level, is to do what benefits all Life, and try switching to a vegetable

protein–based diet. If it’s too big a leap at first, then take it a little at

a time. Look for providers who practice compassionate methods of

raising livestock—who treat, pasture, and feed animals in humanely

natural, spiritually evolved ways. Look at this issue from a spiritual

perspective—primarily as a respecter of Life, then as a responsible

steward of the planet.

     Proof of this improved reality exists in embodying all the benefits
that a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle can bring. Not only will you always
have more and better energy pouring through your body, and be
physically much healthier by every available measure, but you'll also
likely live a lot longer. You'll find it easier to maintain a better attitude,
and to be happy—free from the subconscious guilt of participating in
any unnecessary exploitation of the Sacred. Instead, you'll elevate
your spiritual well-being by consciously celebrating it in every form.
It's the single best way you can personally address the extreme
environmental destruction and waste that animal exploitation inarguably generates, and you'll comfortably contribute to the recovery of the environment and the spiritual balance of the world. 

Busting Out of the Bubble of Delusion (How All the Best Answers Can Pass Us By)

“Deluded by ignorance, man mistakes one thing for another. Lack of discernment will cause a man to think that a snake is a piece of rope. When he grasps it in this belief he runs a great risk. The acceptance of the unreal as real constitutes the state of bondage. Pay heed to this my friend…”

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from Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination

            It’s just the nature of the way our minds work that the world as we perceive it seems like a pretty important, pressing, and immediate thing. It’s really the tiny bubble of anxious circumstances that surround us – the bills we have to pay, the kids we have to pick up, the movies we ‘have’ to see, the politics we need to get our panties in a bunch about. In this ‘western’ society we live in, even when we expand our focus beyond that personal immediacy, we tend to look to mainstream media as the window to the rest of world – but in fact that is a tiny bubble of delusion, too. We end up getting our heads [literally] wired into a kind of sphere of presumed realities, when if we simply step back from it all and look at it objectively, we can see most of it isn’t really real at all.

What we all seem to have here is actually a perception problem – or let's call it a limited perception problem.

            There’s a lot of powerful forces that play with us in this way these days, what with all of the devices that we're constantly engaged with – hi-tech pocket belief-inseminators that enclose us in a kind of “protective and secure” bubble of reality, where our fears are managed by our ability to confirm what’s most comfortable to us. They don’t simply connect us to a very particular world, they monitor the complexities of our every reaction, and keep instant tabs on our fears and desires – in order to better form the realities they would have us presume. We walk around, staring at screens, surrounding our heads in a bubble of ideas that support a “safe” and entitled worldview—when just beyond the bubble’s confines, we clearly see that certain very very important things are going terribly wrong, and require some legitimate, immediate and principled attention too.

            Our mainstream media even goes so far as to constantly parrot that those profound values we’ve always taken for granted – values like honesty, sanity, responsibility, civility, and charity – are passé and archaic. We’re continuously told that we live in a “post-truth” world, when the actual truth we all know intuitively is this:  NO, WE DON’T.

We’re told that we have to look at things in one of two, or possibly three ways only, and by that volition we’re given the precious (democratic) gift of “choice,” when, in reality, if we’re only looking at the three choices presented in that one little bubble of delusion, we are actively surrendering a virtual ocean of far superior choices – the truly powerful potential we are actually swimming in all the time. That “acceptance of the unreal as real” is what “constitutes the state of bondage.”

It’s time for us to start paying attention to what we’re paying attention to!

“…illumining with the candle of our ego a bright circle of awareness, we also darken the remainder of the room…The process of making conscious thereby also makes unconscious…the ego concentrates into one pole the divine primordial half-light, thereby also darkening the divine.”

                                    James Hillman, from Senex and Puer

            The destruction of our planet's environmental balance, the willful vivocide of the planet’s biodiversity, the aggressive misappropriation of the Earth’s resources by a fearful minority, the rejection of the very values that keep humanity a going concern, and the suppression of Life’s collective intelligence, reason, and spiritual sanity are the ruinous symptoms of living in that little ego-bubble of delusion – of only casting light on to a tiny bubble of manufactured interests at the expense of keeping our real well-being, and our responsible stewardship of the planet and all the life on it, ignored in a realm of increasing darkness. We’re painting ourselves into a corner and trying to be happy cowering there because we’re essentially being brainwashed to think it’s the “best” choice we have.

Break out of that bubble now!

Turn away from that artificial technological reality, and place your faith in the miraculous underlying spiritual technology that supports and sustains all of being. Fear is what separates us, fear is what divides us – Love is our unifying reality. The presence of Love as a defining inspiration for change and growth is what must free us. The true reality of this amazing life is alive in that surrounding universe of infinite creativity—everything that isn’t within that tiny bubble of fear—the ocean of innovation, interdependence, and the energy of Love alive in all things, and available in absolutely every other direction we have to choose from—where all the spiritual solutions we need plainly are awaiting us.

“As you become more truly alive, you see an infinitude of universes, a beginningless, boundless sea of life, energy, and delight, full of goodness, aware of itself in its absolute ultimate peace and security, freedom and happiness.”

                                    Robert Thurman, Infinite Life

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

How Media and Science Sell Us a Dangerous Delusion

I wanted to re-post this (slightly updated) article, because I think it speaks well, and with some immediacy, about what we see going on more and more these days. I hope you enjoy it. It starts with this:  

"Yeshua said: If you bring forth that which is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

Logion 70, The Gospel of Thomas

Denial is ignorance, accepted as truth through the force of will. Our personal will, and our collective will.

Popular Media and Science justify and enforce this will, misdirecting us from the self examination that makes us face our collective truths realistically, and psychically cornering us in the "The Way Things Are." They preoccupy us with good enough reasons for why things are like they are – and why they have to be like they are. Much of Media and Science is created and used to obscure the truth and replace it with a designed objective, to sell an idea or product – turning the truth into an obstacle that needs to be suppressed, where it becomes, as stated in our Gospel of Thomas quote again: "That which will destroy you." We end up confused, walking through a false world trying to find what's real. This is the Maya (or illusion) of Media and Science.

It may sound funny to call this Occultism, and to suggest that media operatives and scientists are occultists, but unfortunately it does work for a couple definitions of the word, in 1. The sense of using supernatural or paranormal means and methods: Media people know they are manipulating dark fears; and 2. In the sense of it being only for the initiated: Scientists and media people consort amongst one another to keep their stories straight. They both harbor scary secrets about what motivates them, shared only by a select few.

Popular Culture often harnesses the psychic energy of cruel self-judgement, "that which would destroy you," as it's chief attraction. The Collective Ego is always on the lookout for something to prove that humans are not particularly Divine and that we don't measure up, and so there must be something that can fix it – something that can calm or repair our shortcomings. So Media constantly stimulates those hot buttons of judgement and comparison – Fear, and the pathology of self-enhancement, to trick you to quite literally buy into it:

My clothes must be right. My lifestyle must be right. I must have the "right" friends, and the proper idols. My country must be right. My religion must be right. If you don't keep in line with these artificial demands, you won't measure up, or deserve material reward and the acknowledgment of others – which in reality can do nothing to assure happiness or fulfillment. You're made to fear that you might not even deserve Love unless you've achieved some cultural standard – and we all know the truth – that Love is the only thing that really assures happiness and fulfillment, and it's available to everyone for free.

These common fears are manipulated, heightened and kept activated by an intentional ever-increasing exposure to explicit violence, explicit selfishness, and explicit narcissism, without which there would be practically nothing on television, or increasingly at the movies, or on the radio either. And lately these fears are increasingly exploited to define our political choices too. In mainstream media's earlier years, human foibles were often pointed out as a lesson, or morality play. News programming reported events fairly objectively. But nowadays a corporate business model prevails that requires media to ruthlessly divide the audience by exploiting human faults and fears, in every format where selling products, ideas, or candidates is possible.

Television and film must be be watched very selectively to avoid these base, destructive urgencies; and while the internet also allows for content choice, you musn't forget the greatest selectivity of all: You have the choice not to take part in it at all, if you don't feel it's serving your best interests. And if you must take part, don't invest yourself in it spiritually. You simply will never find happiness with an unhealthy spirit; TV programmers and political strategists know that.

Remember what Marshall McLuhan said: "The medium is the message." If you are constantly carrying, sitting in front of and looking at a device that keeps you constantly attached to a false world, it will be impossible to live the easy, authentic, love-filled life that everyone deserves. If the forms of input you receive are superficial and fragmented and designed by people who don't have your best interests at heart, your life will always feel the same. Attachment to current media results in the collapse of your consciousness into a dark and selfish place.

In a generally (though not always) less intentional way, Science does the same thing by manipulating the agnosticism of the seeker. It's kind of like a religion whose dogma is always changing – a religion of logic, of data, of "empirical" observation, based solely on what our current senses and devices permit us to perceive and calculate. In the past, these means were limited, but even in those 'dark ages' Science was still very sure of itself and its authoritative description of the world. As means of observation improve, the world and being itself changes –according to Science – but still needs to be subjected to a healthier, more spiritual interpretation.

Now, as evolving Consciousness allows perception beyond our five senses (and is verified scientifically), and technology enables us to observe more and more of our (formerly invisible) nature of being, Science begins to resemble a dogma chasing a tale that Mysticism has been telling for a long, long time. And here's how that tale ends, and what it tells us about the real nature of our reality:

 Everything is connected and interdependent; and, if we aren't willing to investigate the truth behind our being, and the motivations that suppress that truth, then "That will destroy us."

But there is a form of Maya that can free us from the delusional limitations of the other (scary) three: We can switch to a Maya of inner experience and collective ecological sanity...The Maya of Nature. Turn off your mind, open your heart and your senses to the beauty and balance alive in the natural world, and the truth will rise up out of the ruins of our false structures of ego—media and science.

The Universe is an awesome and beautiful mystery, activated by our shared Consciousness. If we bring forth that Universe that is within us—that we all share—then what we bring forth will save us.

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!