Six [Dangerous] Modern Fairy Tales on Being Human

 “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

                        Marianne Williamson

 

            Let’s begin by casting our imaginations into a popular fantasy that resembles spectacular science fiction a little – namely that we’re not simply human beings fashioned from muscle, bone and blood, but that in a larger reality we’re really beings of pure effervescent energy wired into these clunky human robots, yet simultaneously connected to the limitless intelligence of the Cosmos...(science fiction and fairy tales can have a lot in common).

            Escaping those misperceptions of the human form we could then detach and observe Time itself as an assemblage of discreet moments in “eternity,” and witness the greater forces at work in this world that we fail to perceive from down here on the ground.

 

            Immediately, we might realize that we humans are unconsciously confined to a set of powerful beliefs suggested by the ‘evidence’ of our world around us as we see it, as our limited powers of perception present to us – so as humans, we simply have a misperception problem.

            Then, people who knew more about manipulating these powerful beliefs could be called wizards, witches, or “movers and shakers.” They would have the power to mold human illusions to suit their own purposes. In the metaphoric terms of Fairy Tales we may say “a darkness had fallen over the land,” the result of a spell cast from the wizard’s castle – the source of all confusion…the source of all evil.

 

            In the ancient Vedas of Hindu philosophy, this world of illusions/delusions created by our limited human senses is called Maya – an elaborate veil before our eyes. This veil is universal in human experience, so its effects can be explored and uncovered personally, or manipulated through the energies of larger groups into collective systems of delusional thought and action, in short, into different “realities” (like what we see today with the QAnon phenomenon).  

            In Fairy Tales (or The Bible) when this happens, there can be plagues and pestilence, famine, fires, crazy storms; waves of fearful insanity seizing the leaders and sweeping through the masses, leading to accelerating division, the destruction of Nature and a pandemic of fearful selfishness…sound familiar?

            

“We cannot solve our problems by using the same consciousness that created them.”

                        Albert Einstein

 

            Now that we’ve got our cosmic fantasy caps on, and we’re objectively looking down on humanity, let’s look at six of the delusional beliefs being propagated by our culture, and its wizards – political movers and shakers, and magnates of the media elite:

 

1. We are separate from one another, and from Nature

 

 Because of the insular experience of our human form, our independence is probably the easiest, most persistent delusion to maintain. Our sense of our disconnected self is so powerful that we can’t seem to see ourselves like a school of fish, or flock of birds…but we are.

Ask any astronaut you know and they’ll tell you that the arms-length view they had of the Earth completely destroyed that delusion of separateness. We truly are all one life here on this planet. Why even the nature of our material composition insists that the very atoms that make up our physical selves were part of something before they were part of you – rocks, plants, animals…dust (to dust).

Even though you feel separate and special, you’re not at all. You are one with everything you see, and a lot of what you can’t see. The truth is that we are all absolutely, inexorably bound and connected by our collective thoughts, energies, elements, and actions.

 

 

2. What is “real” is observabl­e – you can only believe what you can see

 

            The old expression, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” got turned inside out years ago when Quantum Physics essentially redefined it in reverse. The fact is, we really can’t see the elemental forces that create our observable world. What we do witness is the evidence of all of those mysterious processes, like gravity, or electricity, or Love…or human ignorance. It’s a scientific fact that the apparent material reality around us – the places and things in our lives – are less tangible, less real, than they appear to be.

            Quantum Physics informs us that the subatomic particles that coalesce into what we see around us look less like Newton’s little billiard balls, and much more like tiny, fuzzy clouds that don’t actually become solid until they’re observed – and so their transformation into ‘reality’ occurs only by engaging with our limited observational perceptions. It seems to be our single global mind – it’s focus and engagement in a great, intangible reservoir of consciousness – actually constructs the “reality” of our reality.

            So as a result, it’s closer to the truth to say: “I’ll see it when I believe it.”

 

 

3. All of life has forward momentum, and all arising problems are reversible

 

            Recent discoveries about Mars tell us something amazing – that there is and has always been water there, and that at one time Mars probably looked quite a bit like Earth. Before it got too hot and started drying up, and the sun’s radiation soaked up its atmosphere and it got too cold, the folks up there probably thought they were on a carousel of never-ending abundance too. The idea that we can harvest the bounty of a planet’s resources indefinitely, ignoring the imbalances we cause, holds about as little water as logging the Sahara Forest once did. We are quantifiably in the midst of one of the great mass extinctions known to humankind, and extinctions aren’t reversible. Time isn't going anywhere, it's results are always present.

            We’re not going to terraform Mars anytime soon – not while we’re so busy transforming the Earth to look like Mars. We can see the paradise we could have, or the Hell we can create.

 

 

4. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution demands “Survival of the Fittest”

 

            While natural selection efficiently promotes characteristics that ensure survival, our cultural misunderstanding of Darwin’s theories (encouraged by the “haves” of industry and media) has to do with what characteristics actually constitute “the fittest,” and what evolutionary direction those traits take us in. In biology, and in the natural world, it’s not greedy leaders that drive evolutionary ascendence, it’s the characteristics that enhance the endurance and viability of the entire species, and that sustain those conditions that support the success of the whole community – “haves” and “have-nots” alike.

            It’s quite democratic, really – there isn’t one strong leader or small group that determines the most beneficial direction for a community to move in, in fact it’s usually a sudden shift (about 51%) of the colony that ‘breaks’ in the direction of collective progress (As our elections should demonstrate…)

            The real lesson of Darwin isn’t dog eat dog – it’s that animals move in groups. It isn't really “survival of the fittest,” but actually “survival of the most cooperatively adaptable.”

 

5. New advances are always superior to old, and technology provides all the answers

 

            From the unimaginable aberration of an island of plastic refuse the size of Texas floating out in the Pacific Ocean, to the warped lunacy of “fracking” toxins into bedrock beneath the water table to release more hydrocarbons, to the nefarious insanity of using GPS and the internet to track every person on the planet, the benefits of technological advances clearly depend on to what purposes they are employed. Those technologies dedicated to exploitation, destruction, and personal power are harmful to the human species, and to our non-human fellow Earthlings.

            Indigenous cultures have created advanced technologies too – often to a higher level than ‘establishment’ anthropologists are willing to acknowledge – but here’s the difference: theirs have often been organic technologies of respectful sustenance, in accord with the energies of the Earth – what I like to call Spiritual Technology.

The answers actually lay in a spiritual approach to all of life, what are real “technologies of the heart” – like free energy, transpersonal communication, and inter-species collaboration – most of which are labeled “woo-woo” by the selfish guardians of our status quo who have the most to lose materially.

 

6. What's “miraculous” or “paranormal” is automatically considered foolish and impossible

 

            In an earlier article called Paranormality is the New Reality, I discuss the simple fact that most of what we take for granted as modern science was at one time considered “paranormal." ­Unfortunately this is still the case, but as those cultural blinders are being swept away by rapidly spreading Consciousness – the great field of intelligence at work beneath and beyond our human forms ­– it becomes ever clearer that our cultural delusions are kept alive and manipulated by a fairly small group of people who are ignorantly dedicated to self-enhancement and gratification, using the power of irrational fear. That is what destructively deepens their delusions and prevents them from experiencing “the miraculous” spiritual solutions to all the overwhelming problems they create.

 

     So let’s go back to our beginning sci-fi scenario and imaginatively re-enter our human bodies with this expanded knowledge, perspective, and purpose. Now we ought to be able to consciously recognize, and lovingly acknowledge, the limitations of our present human form. By compassionately freeing ourselves of those veils of human delusion, we can see that our answers lie in the “unimaginable” spiritual potential that we are all heir to – beyond simply being a human being. Life is already quite miraculous, let’s make it moreso.

 

 

            "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

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!

Paranormality is the New Reality

Have you ever met Bigfoot? Well, neither have I, but not for the lack of trying. When I was a kid, many years ago, my mom took us on a summer adventure searching for Sasquatch (although she denies it now). That was a long time ago – way back before Bigfoot even had an agent.

A lot of things have changed since then. In those days, no one used the term “paranormal” yet, referring to all the crazy stuff that science couldn’t easily explain, like UFOs, ESP, ghosts and evidence of the afterlife, unknown species of hominids, and the possibility of life on other planets. Even alternative energy sources, quantum physics, animal intelligence and all the rest were simply considered to be “koo koo,” with one finger circling your ear.

 Of course, nowadays what we call paranormal is possibly more normal than what we call normal.

“Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is opposed. Third, it is regarded as self-evident.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

What does paranormal really mean? The Greek prefix para means “besides; alongside of; or beyond.” As such, paranormal refers to a normality that runs alongside of our usually accepted standards. Geometrically speaking, it “shares a common side, and a common vertex,” or source. So in its basic sense, it is adjoined to what’s normal, and comes from the same point of origin.

To Webster, it’s basically everything that isn’t understandable scientifically. But if you go back (or especially if you stay put) anywhere in human history, that would mean that everything we’ve ever learned (or will learn) scientifically either has been, or currently is, in a way paranormal.

The ascension of the paranormal in our cultural reality isn’t the result of all those ancient alien gods or ghost hunters streaming on your flatscreen. No, those shows are simply symptomatic of the new reality I’m talking about. The real contributors to our change are the rapidly expanding consciousness flooding our world, and the realization of it through our technological global mind, the internet, which simultaneously informs and connects all intelligence on our planet. In short, it’s cause is the spiritual and technological evolution of humankind.

Way back when, the existence of the internet would have been popularly considered a scientific impossibility, but now it’s a functioning metaphor, pointing directly to the foundation of much of what we’ve always considered to be paranormal; that is, a magically interconnected world, where anything that can be imagined is truly possible.

In the wake of quantum physics, and the description of an observer-dependent, wave-based reality where matter realizes itself from the fluid energy alive in the quantum vacuum, crystallized in a musical, extra-dimensional geometry; and then consciousness arises within that matter, connected faster than the speed of light within the “cosmic plenum” or “zero-point field” (the alchemists’ unus mundus), it becomes clear that little is outside the realm of possibility – especially as long as we’re flying around on this planet in outer space. All of that “real” stuff sounds pretty paranormal, doesn’t it?

We used to think that only very particular things could be possible on our planet, which was clearly at the center of the stars revolving around it. Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler were paranormal koo-koos back then. Recently, the space telescope bearing Kepler’s name has discovered it’s one-thousandth earthlike planet. From that we can easily extrapolate the existence of an infinite number of planets like ours, and so too, an infinite array of human-like life forms (many of which, one way or another, possibly visit our little planet).

One of my favorite guys, Dr. Carl Jung, tried to partially describe these concepts of a paranormal cosmic ether or “Akashic Field,” and the “psycho-social” anomalous phenomena of extra-terrestrial travelers in his books, “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle,” and “Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.” But despite his careful description of an independent, interlocking field of consciousness, and his rational suggestion of an archetypal based kind of mass-illusion at work in the world, there was no real way around the overwhelming scientific evidence, and personal testimony verifying the existence of each of these “new realities.” Like most scientists and academicians, he had to tread lightly, lest he upset the conventional apple cart, and destroy his professional credibility.

In that sense, the “psycho-social,” mass-illusion based theories of skeptical scientists can cut both ways. The same type of group ‘wishful thinking’ that can be applied to the average suggestible Joe can also apply to the traditional scientific community – to their own kind of ‘cognitive dissonance’ (or denial), evidenced by centuries of their membership in a Flat Earth Society of one kind or another. Another of Dr. Jung’s famous quotes comes to mind in this case:

“One of the main functions of organized religion is to protect people against a direct experience of God.”

  I wouldn’t be the first to suggest a similarity between organized religion and the institutions of science, but I may be one of the few people you’ve ever heard say that God is paranormal, and in fact, the very foundations of all our science and religion fit into a paranormal framework, rather than the other way around. What we call paranormal is always finally reached through further evidence of an enhanced reality, permitted by a more balanced, less insistently delusional approach, or by pure faith. There has always been a metaphysical core to the progress of our understanding.

When we simply sidestep conventional, archaic beliefs, and follow the paranormal path (from a common origin) that heads more directly along our spiritual and technological evolution – engaging a sixth sensory potential, you might say – we can start considering our new realities in a much more beneficial, even realistic way. We can even start to consider some of God’s “alternative” work.

Then UFOs are simply real indications of a technology that, being available to other people from the stars, is available to us – based only on the limits of our imaginations. On a personal paranormal note, I’ve witnessed three UFO events myself: “The Phoenix Lights;” a swarm of orbs; and a ‘star’ that zipped away, drawing a huge “Z” across the sky (…and I’m only high on life).

The silhouettes of “stealthy” aircraft, regular documented occurrences of different, “unidentifiable” crafts, the odd coincidence of “The Roswell Incident” with our sudden surge of technological innovation like integrated silicon circuitry, fiber optics, microwave technology, advanced construction materials, and the development of alternative propulsion, power sources, and artificial intelligence all suggest to fascinating new realities, many that are already commonly at use.

We may find the Crystal Skull phenomena kind of silly while we read about it on devices linked instantaneously to the global brain, operating on microscopically programmed crystal circuitry.

It becomes pretty impossible to imagine that some of those intensely elaborate, precisely hewn crop circles appear overnight thanks to techies with boards and rope.

There’s a ton of evidence, conjectural and empirical, for transpersonal communication (formerly ESP) in a human sense – not just in the reliably provable context of quantum non-locality and entanglement.

Reasonable investigation of the literal mountains of alternative archaeology can bring to light an entirely different history of humankind than what ‘s conventionally accepted; and the former science fiction of genetic manipulation and fabrication of species becomes reality, once we’ve mapped the human genome, and regularly manipulate those building blocks ourselves.

The confluence of “conspiracy theory” with the paranormal gets stood on its head by the revelations of whistleblowers, documenting our super hi-tech mass surveillance by ‘secret’ corporate and governmental agencies.

I also happen to be a three time near death survivor, and as such (along with hundreds of thousands of others) can testify to the experience of a broader, enhanced field of consciousness, beyond the limitations of our physical form (and I’m not particularly paranormal). This field of consciousness then could easily contain a profundity of animal intelligence – the understanding of which is being expanded upon by science everyday; as well as ghosts, aliens, and extra-dimensional phenomena of every kind. It could provide the basis of the very “cosmic plenum” that enables and energizes everything we experience as being either normal or “paranormal.”

I’m sorry to have left Bigfoot standing in the corner all this time. He must be feeling neglected – as hard as he is to ignore. But discoveries of “lost peoples,” and samples of early hominids, whose genomic analyses demonstrate relationships to completely unknown species of early man; along with the simple vastness of everything we have yet to discover, have got to make him, at least, not so paranormal after all. “I’m not going to flat out deny their existence,” says Jane Goodall, highly credible primate researcher, I’m sure that they exist.”

Perhaps we’d be better off embracing our paranormality. Or how about this? How about we just simplify all the old definitions, and call it all Reality.

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!

Paranormality is the New Reality, on Gaiam TV

Check out this article about how "paranormal" our normal lives are becoming, on Gaiam TV!