It's a Bearchucker!

I ran across this funny weapon from Codename: Kids Next Door, and thought I'd better put it up. It would make a great Xmas gift, I think...good for a holiday hug!

A Website Update

This is to announce that I've just completed an update of my website, with the help of Mike Perkins at Setstatic. Aside from a new palette, there's lots of new material to see in Animation Design & Art Direction - with a whole new Development Art & Design page (featuring three new projects); a bunch of new Word World, Season Three; and an all-new Online Design page. I hope you enjoy it! Thanks, Mike.

Here's how that red firetruck turned out...

A little late for Halloween, but still in time for a scare - a dark and spooky boiler room for a PBS Kids project...

Backtrack to Aurobindo on Meditation

Backtracking a little bit to the earlier posts concerning meditation, I came across these quotes from the Super-Guru, Sri Aurobindo. Have you ever heard of him? This Aurobindo Wiki entry is a good introduction, but needless to say, he seemed to know just about everything about everything. He wrote prolifically about it with such amazing acuity, insight, wisdom, and supreme knowledge, that one wonders whether one might possibly overcome his propensity for sentences that run-on in the extreme, in a prosaic style which could only be described as dated, beyond what any reasonable reader may be willing to continue concentrating upon, or even caring about, so that one may eventually have to give up to the simple fact, arising from the intricate convolutions of his grammatical style and intensely profound and esoteric subject matter, that one has forgotten what he (being The Super-Guru Aurobindo) was talking about in the first place. 

Kind of like that. But bear with him and you'll find he really did know everything about everything. It's probably best to tackle his small, edited collections first, like: The Future Evolution of Man, and Bases of Yoga.

Now what was I talking about again? Oh yeah – Aurobindo"s observations on meditation. He really had a way of directly addressing the heart of meditation, it's problems and purposes. Notice how concise and enlightening these bits about it are, from Bases of Yoga:

"A quiet mind does not mean that there will be no thoughts or mental movements at all, but that these will be on the surface and you will feel your true being within separate from them, observing but not carried away, able to watch and judge them and reject all that has to be rejected and accept and keep to all that is true consciousness and true experience."

"...but I do not mean by quietness of mind entire silence. I mean a mind free from disturbance and trouble, steady, light and glad so as to open it to the Force that will change the nature. The important thing is to get rid of the habit of the invasion of troubling thoughts, wrong feelings, confusion of ideas, unhappy movements. These disturb the nature and cloud it and make it difficult for the Force to work; when the mind is quiet and at peace, the Force can work more easily. It should be possible to see things that have to be changed in you without being upset or depressed; the change is then more easily done."

He continues on (and on) in the generous and helpful manner that was his trademark. His teachings on the spiritual evolution of humankind are truly profound and essential. As you see from the above quote, he was a big influence on everyone from George Lucas to Ram Dass, Sri Chinmoy, and Michael Murphy, founder of the Esalen Institute.



Read about this and much more in the new book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor, which can be purchased on this page or online, along with the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond – or ask for them at your local bookstore!