Animation Design – Rejections From the "Nice" Pile...

Sometimes even the nicest designs can get the boot, like these two friendly, slightly euro-UPA style salespeople (as value roughs), and the soft pastel world (with their replacements) I was hoping they would live in...

...the soft pastel world with it's graphic bubbles didn't make it either.

What I Learned From "Dying," Part 1: My Three Destinations

It isn't often that you hear someone describe what it's like to die – that's an experience rarely reported; but I have the dubious qualification of having survived three distinctly different "Near Death Experiences," and I'd like to pass on what I learned from them in hopes that you'll never find the need to try this at home. They weren't much fun, but they were very informative.

We most often think of Evolution with a capital E, as in the theory or transitioning movement of successive generations, species adapting across expanses of Time, and so it is. My experiences lead me to consider it as a personal process, largely because of realizing the importance of the Eternal Moment (in which everything alive is always living), and because the evolution of the whole spreads out from the evolution of each individual. As that phenomenon of personal experience, my life's evolution is more directly related to my NDEs than to all but a few of my "conscious" life lessons. It's like peeking behind the curtain...

So here, preceded by brief circumstantial descriptions, are the lessons I learned, set down short and sweet as possible:

I was in a serious single car accident (I'd like to say through no fault of my own, but it wouldn't be true) and instantly found myself suspended in mid-air over the crash site, observing the wreckage, my body, and the ministrations of people who rushed to my aid (God bless 'em). A while into all the hub-bub, I was gently shepherded off by a kind entity that remained out of view into what I can only describe as a soft, warm, cotton-wool cloud, to a place of great ease and comfort where I was sat down in a congenial but serious conversation regarding the true nature of things, and my position within it.

The space was idyllic, like a very nice summer's cafe. There was no sense of Time or of gravity, and certainly not of any want or necessity.Thought operated in a non-sequential, undemanding way all at once easily, rather than in any urgent, serial way – like after a good meditation. Here's what I learned:

We are avatars living spiritually within these physical bodies, very much like driving around in a car (...I wish I could afford a new one). Of course, our bodies are us, here in this place we call The World; but they aren't really us – they're the means to experience this sensory experience, "good" and "bad," and to gain as much from it as we can in the service or our own, and our greater collective Self's evolution. That's the job, should you choose to accept it, Mr. Phelps.

"The fundamental, simple, and great mystical realization is that by which you identify yourself with consciousness, rather than with the vehicle of consciousness. Your body is a vehicle of consciousness."

Joseph Campbell

There is a much greater, very different but also infinitely rich realm of conscious experience, very closely connected to the one we experience here and now, that we transition into seamlessly and effortlessly when we die; like walking from one room to another. It is a world of experiencing here and now as well – The Eternal Moment we will always be alive within.

In a fairly unconscious earlier stage of my life, as the result of living in a riotously self-destructive way, I just "keeled over" one night, from one or another of the awful things I was doing to myself (what Dr. Jung would call "a low-level search for God") – or more likely, from all of them. I was paralyzed on the floor, breathless and unresponsive to the efforts to revive me. The world as we witness it disappeared from view, filled-in by a dense bright white cloud – again all easy and comfortable. My invisible host beckoned me watch a "screen" that opened up from the center of my vision and began showing me not the most auspicious highlights of my life so far, but instead some moments of profound (suppressed) significance – injuries I'd committed; opportunities I'd missed. Here's what I learned:

Our lives are woven together with moments that may already be known in this invisible, timeless dimension that enfolds our present world of experience. These moments, these lessons serve to inform and define the quality of our spiritual evolution, and transfer from Life to Life throughout our existence within what's been called "The Akashic Field." Our role is to surmount this human form's inherent obstructions and bring conscious awareness sufficient to learn from these moments, as we can only experience them through our remarkable sensory vehicles – our "selves" in this material dimension. Joy, pain, pride, desire, struggle, surrender, tenderness, realization – these are learning moments within the larger medium of Love that carries us from life to Life.

"Though it is hidden in all things, the Self shines not forth."

Katha Upanishad, 3.12

Kind of heavy stuff, right? ...but amazing and fun. If you think it all sounds rather crazy, may I remind you that we are all on a planet in outer space.

In my last NDE (I hope...), I was attacked by a gang of "skinheads" away out west, who mistook me for a hated homosexual (to them), knocked me out from behind (again the left side of my head), and kicked and stomped me "to death" for almost one hour. I'm sure they had their reasons, God bless 'em (It's possible I gave them some, unconsciously). I was propelled into a much darker place that, while safe, was nonetheless scarier than where I had been in my two previous experiences. I wasn't quite free of my physical struggle, and although I vigorously protested and did not want to return to the "world of hurt," a number of loving entities gently forced me back into this (pretty messed-up) being. I awoke with a team of EMTs working on me. Here's what I learned:

We are on a kind of mission. We are here for a reason, not just for "ourselves," but for ourself – our greater collective being. This life is not easy. It's not supposed to be easy, we're here to learn some of our harder lessons, and can't just quit because we feel like it. "Not feeling like it" is something we're meant to learn to master. Service to ourselves – to one another and to our living world – is our means to evolutionary progress. Discovering compassion and Love as the medium in which the Eternal Moment exists is our goal. Recognizing, overcoming, and transmuting the obstructions of sensory self-obsession (the evils of Ego) is a necessary path to growth – an appropriate "divine" calling, in fact. It's a propriety defined by Love and the act of loving all Life, and is sometimes called "dying to one's self."

So I give this to you because being here ain't easy (though it sure can be a lot of fun); and because I want you to know as much joy and as little pain as possible, even though I know I can't do that for you...and I'm not supposed to.

But I would like to meet you there – here – if I can... my sisters and brothers:

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing

There is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense."

Jalal al-Din Rumi

...read What I Learned From "Dying," Part 2 here...

The latest book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor from Llewellyn Worldwide can be ordered direct 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!

Bass Angling, Animation Design Style (Fishing in the Weeds...)

This recent color-keyed flow chart is an homage to the Saul Bass, Mirisch, David DePatie/Friz Freleng schools of those wonderfully graphic show titles...and not to forget Jay Ward! This particular pitch didn't catch on, but it was a nice angle anyways...(to the tune of Malvina Reynolds "Little Boxes")

How to Occupy the Tea Party – Cognitive Dissonance, The Stockholm Syndrome, and the Challenge to Cultural Evolution

Well, it's 2012 already, and if everyone's going to be looking for a big unveiling by Christmastime, we have to get busy right away. The biggest problem we face isn't just with the one percent we rarely see, it's with the twenty-seven percent we often know quite well. In fact, some may be family members we get to spend the holidays with.

It's pretty clear that the obstacles preventing cultural equanimity and responsible stewardship of our country and our planet are generated by multinational corporations, whose financial power is based on perpetuating destructively anachronistic systems of resource management and social division. That's quite a mouthful, isn't it? Toppling the entrenched power structure would be a lot to bite off all at once, and couldn't be done quickly without making a real mess, so what's the most expedient way to go about it?

Saying that it starts with you and me may sound silly, since we probably all started changing a long time ago. The real problem we have is in convincing all those people that don't agree with us. People who for some crazy reason seem to think fascism and environmental destruction are good ideas. Let's start with some awareness about what we're up against, namely certain difficulties that are part of human nature.

Cognitive Dissonance is the official name given to that sad tendency of people to join in efforts and opinions that are actually harmful to their own circumstances, usually to allow them to avoid uncomfortable truths. It's kind of a volatile [and dependable] character glitch, and as such is often exploited. Patriotism, religion, racism, xenophobia, financial and sexual insecurities are all activators of Cognitive Dissonance. So you see Washington think-tanks and Wall Street ad agencies using them aggressively, and very effectively.

"Ignoring one's...self-interest may seem a suicidal move to you and me, but viewed in a different way it is...a sacrifice to a holier cause."

Thomas Frank, What's Wrong With Kansas?

At it's worst, in terms of the political divisions in our country, Cognitive Dissonance can engender "The Stockholm Syndrome" – the pathological identification of a victim with their tormentors. A 2007 FBI database study indicated that in 73% of abduction and kidnap cases the victims did not develop Stockholm Syndrome, which leaves a very substantial 27% subject to the irrational, self-destructive tendency to side with those who would use and abuse them. Not coincidentally, that's quite close to the number of people who identify themselves as Republicans. If you don't, you are part of the substantial 73% majority. 

But what can we do we do to change those minds? You know that when you try to convince someone they're wrong about something obvious, their Cognitive Dissonance kicks in, they git their back up, and there's little chance of moving them an inch. In fact, they feel even more strongly that they are right, and though you may be sincerely trying to help, they become even more convinced that your intentions are subversive and threatening. Unfortunately, a lot of human beings operate from that fearful dynamic. It's a glitch we haven't quite figured out yet...(but Roger Ailes, head of Fox News, certainly has.)

So we've got to take a careful, even therapeutic approach – a healing approach; and as healing is a spiritual activity, when we talk about "cultural evolution" we're really talking about our mutual spiritual evolution, which is the source of all the solutions to our deepest challenges. That's where it does start – with just you and me. In short, we use Love, and Time.

Even though a friend or family member has identified with destructive, irrational influences, we do still share mostly common ground with them. Kindly, calmly stand your ground – but never engage in the energy of confrontation. Let them be right if they need to be, and often in that quiet moment of hollow "victory," the folly of their delusion resonates uncomfortably, and gives them a chance to realize the power of your point – that the fault really comes from a manipulative third party that they don't have nearly as much in common with as they have with you. But it all takes time – we can't rush it.

Practice restraint and let things go; but be reliable – Show up for family commitments, remember special occasions, be available to help – expecting nothing in return. Sincerely be there for them (without ever being patronizing), as though it were for a person you were helping recover from a painful injury. Make your arguments subtly, by personally demonstrating that your point of view reflects good character in every other facet of your life, aside from your politics or philosophy.

Caring, consistent, and compassionate action will support any point you want to make much more effectively than a documented factoid or a raised voice. If you can be an example of reason and sanity, then the 99% of what you have in common will solidify in their experience. When we're not trying to win, the calm understanding and honest, fact-based considerations we occupy carry the profound power of a more truthful engagement in life, on every level. The real insanity becomes much more obvious, in comparison to the sanity grounded in spiritual principles.

"Occupy" life, so to speak, and soon you may be surprised to find that generosity of spirit has occupied the heart and mind of the very person who was at one time so vehemently set against you. With that we might occupy the Red States, the less fortunate, the middle class, the upper middle class, the Independents, the "moderate" Re-publicans (are there any out there?) We might even occupy the Tea Party and the 1%... After all – we are all the same thing.

"Spiritual power moulds physical and material conditions, but spiritual power is never in a hurry.

White Eagle, The Quiet Mind

Here's an excellent article on Cognitive Dissonance and the Stockholm Syndrome by Dr. Joseph Carver

A Word World Valentine's (Making Machine) Day

Thank goodness this Valentine's Day device didn't have to spell itself!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Call it Sanity; Call it Being; Call it Bliss

There's a jackhammer in the distance, outside my window. My darkened smartphone makes watery drip tones each time an e-mail wants me to look at it. I hear big trucks pulling up in front of the corner supermarket to unload shrink-wrapped palettes of canned black beans. There's an ambulance siren on the horizon, wending its way to King's County Hospital. The Q train downstairs is running on time. Something awful is going on out there...

I suppose that pipe in the street needed to be fixed. I was waiting for an e-mail (just not that one). I love those beans. I hope that person on their way to King's County will be alright. Later, I'll just miss the Q train into Manhattan...good things and bad things are always happening, here and now.

Our world is a hugely complex, elaborately interconnected place, driven in a loosely syncopated way by needs and desires, options and inventions. If we allow it, it can feel like it's driven by our fears...but then those are inventions too. Look at it quietly, and what becomes obvious is the profound underlying effectiveness of our cooperative shared Being. The understanding and appreciation of each other's lives, of our interconnectedness; of one another's common Reality.

With this simple, stripped-down worldview, it becomes ap-parent how well everything works when left to the sweat and intention of the great majority of humankind. Do you need any-thing? Is there something that I can help you with? More people all the time resonate with this simple impulse, whether they let it be their main source of motivation or not. Everywhere you go everyone is in some stage of realizing it.

As unique as we all are, we are all the same thing here in this place; and that awareness is steadily, and rather gracefully crystallizing our world now, without any big fuss. And it's only this growing presence of shared Being, the impetus of unifying con-sciousness, that can change so huge and complicated a mecha-nism as our collective life has become – and change it relatively quickly. Ironically, it starts at the very simplest, smallest level; at the level of each of our understandings.

"Without an inner change [humankind] can no longer cope with the gigantic development of the outer life."

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine

Predictably, corporate media will continue to insist that people identify with an obviously unsustainable system, even when people plainly know better. By limiting coverage of expanding global awareness, they suggest that even when we join forces to effect change (Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring) we're ineffective, and that it's more practical to maintain the unworkable status quo. If we each personally buy into those messages, they'll come true (but still won't be real). If we don't, and each personally choose a sane and reasonable path, we naturally return to our increasingly cooperative state of shared Being; and merge into a real entity of immeasurable power and direction. We simply engage lightly and kindly in the chaotic machinery of life.

At that "small" level of personal understanding, we find and empower our true Reality, the authentic world rising up around us. As the delusional world of the conglomerates starts to come apart at the seams, and everything starts going wrong (like now), something very big is going right. The layer of misinformation we've been fed so long is dissolving on the surface of this rising awareness; the conscious, co-creative impulse that instant communication and sixth-sensory awareness has already been nourishing at a much deeper level. We've already crossed that threshold. The singularity is here. 

We know we can't continue in this fossil-fuel based world, wasting half the food we produce, poisoning fresh water, funneling wealth and resources to a few tortured individuals. It simply won't last. It will have to change.

When the systems used to manage the anachronisms (crony capitalism, television, corrupt politics) break down, they only serve to starkly define the true nature of the problem – the destructive backwardness of a selfish minority; and to enhance and solidify the unification of conscious Being arising in the world. 

Could it really be – that rising honesty and ethics will defuse the fearful urgencies of the corporate elite? What would happen if they were all suddenly brought back down to Earth (kicking and screaming)? Not much, really. We'd merge right back into that un-derlying force of cooperative Being that's growing so powerfully through our our selves, our communities, and our world. Nothing would erupt in total chaos. We wouldn't be at all lost without their leadership. The world would simply become a more cooperative place, whether they like it or not (and they won't); where we re-cognize unconscious entitlement as being incompatible with our authentic nature.

Honestly, isn't everything actually being dictated to us all on a much larger scale, by systems that we're only a relatively small part of? Something far greater than any of our changing institutions or desires. It's obviously not this horizontal materialistic delusion (what Hindus call maya), where we feel constantly coerced to reach outward for solutions – it's a multi-dimensional Reality that's available to everyone from the inside out; that each of us can realize by simply living one another's life, humbly and compassionately. That's what being human is so good for.

Twenty years from now we could just as easily be using liberated Tesla designs, thorium reactors, tidal turbines, and solar energy. We could be conserving irreplaceable resources; eli-minating food waste; stewarding the environment and wildlife; making war obsolete (oops! –it already is...). We're capable of Being all that, and if we can keep our head above water, we probably will be sooner than later.

If you think this is a magical impossibility, may I point out to you (again and always) that we're all floating on a planet in outer space, engaged in a simultaneous realization of the magical nature of our reality.

So call it sanity. Call it unified consciousness. Call it spiritual evolution. Call it Sat (Being), Chit (Awareness), Ananda (Bliss). Call it what you like – it's still just the same impulse that makes a wildflower grow and blossom, right up between the tracks of the Q train.

"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 more about maya

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!

Tales of the Koko Lion, Part 27: Just A Day in L.A., Part 2

.................................................................continued from Part One

Once you were out past Los Feliz, past Atwater, it was best to stay off that narrow little old Pasadena Freeway with it's non-existant on-ramps, and head right on up into Highland Park, if you could find your way. Out there on the other side of the Golden State Freeway, the roads trickle and spill uphill into the landscape you can see from Chavez Ravine, from the cheap seats at Dodger Stadium. This was really a lot like the canyonland I came from, the winding roads up to the little hilltops like where the Bobos' house sat, at the back of a circular driveway on top of it's own little hill near Mt. Washington. It was one of those white ranch-styles. White, glittery rock halfway up the sides to white painted frame and windows with white wooden blinds. White crushed rock in the planters. White trim and a black door, with a withered wreath on it, and a WELCOME mat.

I nervously rang the bell, and Mrs. Bobo nervously answered, holding her other hand like she had a lit cigarette in it. She was a small black woman, mid-sixties-ish, delicate, wearing large-framed glasses and dressed comfortably in slacks and a shirt, with a scarf tied around her hair, over her head. She asked me in and sat me in the white living room, white walls, white furniture, a cherry wood bowl full of large, white marble grapes. I felt like an interloper right away, like I had no right to be there.

There was a palpable energy of injury in the air, and she immediately began talking to me—rather out of context it seemed—about things I didn't understand, things that I knew weren't any of my business. My God, I realized, this woman's husband has just died and she's in terrible pain. I tried to be as agreeable as I could be, sipping the coffee she'd offered me, and uncomfortably agreeing with her about everything she said.

She was making me look underneath, you know—under the cover of her life—the thirty or forty years she'd spent married to a traveling latin jazz star. I wasn't at all ready for it, for the intimacy, for the exclusivity. She looked steady into my eyes and spoke like I knew just what she was talking about—like she was telling me something as familiar to me as it was to her. And then I began to believe that it was familiar, looking into that particular wound, and that this was a private disclosure meant only for the two of us and the commensurate spirits there in the room with us.

I uneasily assumed some of her injury as we shuffled through the box of photos, a box full of their life. She stopped to tell each of the stories accompanying the shiny, curling black and white photos and faded kodachromes, few of which would serve my actual purpose for being there. Blurry moments at sunny cafés. Hasty group shots at family occasions. Party goers mid-conversation. And then I realized, this was my purpose, to be present as she made her careful in-ventory, before she could put the box away.

I picked out a few photographs that might work, but not very well—my original intentions had been gently taken hostage by sharing the trauma of this stranger who sat before me, her hands quietly shaking. Now she seemed to be speaking in directions where I didn't belong, that I didn't understand, about how none of it was right, how all of it was such a shame, how a boy ought to respect his mother.

"He never showed her the proper respect...he never did!" She said, and I realized that it wasn't her dead husband she was talking about anymore, or was it? "She's my best friend, you know...we've been best friends for years," she said, "Mrs. Gaye...I was over there last night, you know. Lord, such a sad, sad thing. Such a shame for a boy to do that." Like I knew...

It was April 3rd, 1984, and I remembered that just two days before, Marvin Gaye's father, the elder Mr. Marvin Gaye, Sr., had shot and killed his son, the iconic soul singer whose voice had played such an important part of a lot of our lives, and whose "What's Going On?" album was the smooth, profound soundtrack of a country's wounded soul. Drugs and alcohol and ego were the drivers of this tragedy, like they were for so many. Mrs. Bobo and Mrs. Gaye were the very best of friends, and had been for years, and suddenly the true size and shape of that wound I'd been witnessing became clear to me... Can I Get a Witness?

"He should have shown her the proper respect," she said, as she led me back out to the door, and sent me back down the drive, back down the little road wrapping around the hill, spilling me out onto San Fernando Road, past the Eagle Rock turn, past Forest Lawn, and on up the valley towards home.

The portrait didn't come out all that well—it was sufficient I suppose. Colorful and certainly accurate, but not one of my best. The program was printed, the festival happened, and finally one day I called to check Mrs. Bobo's address, to send back the pictures, and to see if she'd like the original painting I'd done, as a gift.

"That picture was the worst thing I ever saw," she said on the phone. "No thank you—I do not want it. It looked nothing at all like my Willie. Just send me back my pictures." So that's what I did.

It had really just been on account of one phone call, that day in L.A. Just a little ride to the edge of the box, and a peek underneath it's lid.

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!

Animation Design Comes to Life – Actual Shots from Different Spots

Here are shots from actual spots demonstrating how animation design fits content and brand; a variety of looks I've come up with for a variety of requirements – and shown in a variety of venues...

from online to on-the-air...

Design for an online animation, the kind I specialize in at

IdeaRocket Animation

The hand-drawn style supplies unfolding action to the storyline...

Designing an entire world

where every character

is built from it's own word,

for Word World, airing on

PBS Kids...where I created a lot of easily-read characters,

their legible locations, and lots of their well-spelled stuff.

An editorial look for a groovy trip back in history...

And an upcoming animation describing what animation can do...

...maybe we'll end up with a corner office!

See what I do with IdeaRocket,

And a lot more animation design of all kinds at my site.

Call on me for any kind of animation design solution,

particularly if it's perplexing, pop, or playful!

Check out my profile on LinkedIn

Codename: Kids Next Door - 2 x 4 Technology, Flying Vehicles!

The KND needed lots of different vehicles built out of whatever I (and #2) could find out in the cartoon junk yard. A lot of them rolled, a lot of them sailed, and a whole lot of 'em – like these four here,

flew like crazy...

This was called "The TrailerChopper"

Here's "The BaitPlane"

...and "The CazhShip," cuz it was just so casual...

And of course they needed a "KndAirliner," for those special travel arrangements...

...color on these has been adjusted to meet original specifications.

It's the End of the World As We Know It!

"The Promised Land has nothing to do with real estate."

Joseph Campbell

Remember that poor old evangelist who promised his flock that the world would end soon? He had a lot riding on that prediction, so I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for him when it apparently didn't happen, like he said it would. It didn't happen like he said it would, but I wonder if it would make him feel any better if he knew that it did happen. In Dr. J.C. Calleman's interpretation of the Mayan calendar, the world (as we've known it) "ended" with the end of the Universal Underworld in October of 2011; cul-minating in a state of Trust (or Faith); and an Ethical Era. He was right about that too.

May I be the first to make the announcement right here right now? Despite whatever evidence to the contrary, The World, as we have known it, did end in 2011.

This crazy old world has seen the "end of time," and "the end of the world" so many times now, it seems like it'll never end, and it won't. Of course, it's never actually the end of the world. As George Carlin (the patron saint of cynical enlightenment) said: "It's not the end of the world, it's the end of people. The world will still be here." I expect that at this point of his own spiritual evolution, floating around in another dimension, Saint George knows that even that isn't true. Everything, including people, keeps going along just fine...at least right now.

What "The End of the World" has always been describing is a psycho-logical end; the re-framing of a new reality brought about by a singular coalescence of transcendent consciousness; a singularity after which old ways of thinking and doing are in a instant rendered obsolete – like what's happened around here in the last few years. It fits quite nicely into Calleman's Mayan theory, that at some point just after 2011, the Earth be-gan to resonate with a level of consciousness that simultaneously informed it's occupants that a major change was taking place. Then Spring came early in the Mid East. The "occupiers" showed up. Fraudulent elections be-came unacceptably obvious. War became obsolete.

Everywhere you go now, people know that the Earth's endless potential is being mismanaged by a criminally unconscious minority (God bless 'em). It's global knowledge that great swaths of humanity are intensely wasteful, while even greater ones are subject to unnecessary deprivation. That our extreme economic disparities are selfishly foolish. The occupants in every small town know about the "elite class" of super-wealthy, extraordinarily fearful (suffering) people, who feel they need to control the world's re-sources and media, who put "Big Boxes" on the edge of every town. We can see their mess on TV everyday (God bless 'em), and increasingly we live in it, too. The real occupants are aware of what the miraculous potential of the Earth actually can be.

Naturally it's all happened before, when these literally medieval dis-parities bring us to a spiritual renaissance. It suddenly dawns on us that our need to identify ourselves with the insistent demands of materialism, like "your class," "what you deserve," and "how your way is right," is a form of destructive insanity, forcing us to live the totally inauthentic lives so many of us are all too familiar with. The death of that inauthentic self becomes inevitable. Nothing can ever be the same after that.

Everyone deserves to be who they are. Everyone deserves to be reborn into a fulfilling, authentic life – and they can be, but there almost always seems to be a kind of "Dark Age" first, where "faith is not always a well-lit place." I can't say exactly where we are, at the start of that dark age, in the middle, or towards the end of it, but I do know one thing for certain re-garding The End of the World:

Humanity is currently experiencing a mass metaphysical impulse to transcend the delusion of separateness. It's the collective death of an illusion, and it's spreading quickly. The resurrection is arising in Christians; the "Ethical Era" is settling upon the followers of the Mayan Calendar pro-phecy; it's the closing bell of the Kali Yuga to Hindus.

As a global entity, we all recognize the unfathomable mystery that everything comes from somewhere and goes somewhere, to a kind of ultimate ground of being that we're becoming aware of through quantum physics, cyber-consciousness, and verifiable sixth-sensory perception. We know that mysterious ground of being transcends this form we're in; that this "radiance of the eternal" penetrates everything and everybody, and in-tuitively informs a graceful and responsible way to live that's possible for everyone, and that everyone in this world deserves as their birthright.

That "radiance," that understanding we all share illuminates the dark place where we find trust in ourselves and each other – our Faith. That is the light we can shine now to penetrate our media, our destructive mass-ego, our "One Percent," to penetrate through back to the mystery. Now we can stand our ethical ground with an unassailable authority; the boundaries protecting humanity simply can no longer be contested; and if you stop for a moment, and just listen...you can own it.

The best and easiest way to make all this happen is to simply show up for life with this knowledge in our hearts, and try our best to live our authentic lives – where the inspiration for our actions comes from the inside, not the outside. That's a nice metaphysical impulse, isn't it?

It's even mystical...

Here's the good news: The world has ended. Welcome to the new world.

"It will not come by watching for it. No one will be saying, Look, here it is!

Or, Look, there it is! The Kingdom [of the Father] is spread out over the whole earth, and people do not see it."

Logion 113, The Gospel of Thomas

The book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond, based on lessons (learned the hard way) by a three time near death survivor is now available everywhere – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!