What's "Hot" in Our Media Will Make a Hell of a Life

"Stay calm. Share your bananas."

Koko, the sign-language gorilla (RIP)

Sometimes it can be pretty tough to stay positive these days, and though it seems we're going through a rough patch, maybe it's because of the kinds of messages that are directed at us. More to the point, maybe it's the messenger. This time, contrary to the old saying, perhaps we should "kill the messenger," since the messenger seems to be the true source of a lot of our troubles.

A painful example of this is the way our media covers natural catastrophes, like hurricanes, brushfires, airline crashes, and homicides; or they way they now build up normal weather events as if they were the end of the world; or the way certain events are portrayed as acts of "terrorism," when similar events aren't. What if, instead of constantly imposing scenarios of doom, our media public servants calmly and rationally supplied us with an informed strategy for getting through it together, and for rallying our resources to help the hardest hit? What a different world it could be. Why is our media so relentlessly irresponsible?

It's great to have all these cool inputs, this instant digital access to everything, but remember, to commercial media content providers, it's cool instant access right into your head (and the heads of our children). Our convenient, indispensable smartphones, tablets, and flat screens are very powerful psychic inseminators, loaded to put deliberately designed anxiety-laden attitudes and beliefs into your mind, often at barely noticeable, even subconscious levels. Amongst these are constant messages designed to make you feel agitated, ineffective, worried, and separated. (And I know I've got plenty to worry about without their help…)

I've worked in media for many years, and can tell you from experience that there really are little groups of people in media center offices making decisions directed towards making people feel personally 'less-than,' and sort of powerless on a mass-cultural level. These folks knowingly suppress anything that celebrates real extra-ordinary human potential, unless it can be turned to promote commercial goals. The true power of the spirituality they sometimes appeal to is ultimately passed over, and the power of materialism and consciousness of need put in its place. It's unconsciousness, stylishly clothed in the materialistic solution they provide, the answer to the problem they actually are creating. The goal is to make you feel insecure, envious, a bit desperate, and politically apathetic. When you succumb to those emotions, you're more ready to accept their solutions, and surrender your real spiritual potential.

It is the most disheartening part, too, that there really are people doing this to us on purpose – but fear not! Love always does triumph over evil, and it will for us, too.

First, there's an easy way to recognize the dark strategy that's pouring out of our screens and speakers. Just ask yourself three simple questions: Is this message inspiring Fear? Is Is this message propagating anxiety? Does this message have a commercial goal based on the first two questions? If the answer is yes, media pundits refer to the topic as being "hot."  A "hot" fashion, a "hot" item, a "hot" personality. (Thanks, Mr. McLuhan) Notice how it suggests, in a way, something that you have to catch up to; something that you need to have or need to know or need to see. Or that there's something to fear – something coming to get you, or coming to take away what you have. Even if it's something that's "really cool," often the bottom line is that it's something you need to be complete, and so to ameliorate the anxiety they've been creating in you; but what's media "hot" is spiritually not.

These are age-old methods of controlling people through fear. We say, "a darkness fell over the land," in the Fairy Tales, and we just can't afford this kind of selfish, unconscionable silliness anymore. Rise up, you armies of light!

Let's turn the old-school tables on our systemic perpetrators, and use a cool acronym to point out the anti-spiritual agenda:  PAGGLES! That's right – the good ol' Seven Deadly Sins! Pride, Anger, Greed, Gluttony, Lust, Envy, Sloth. Notice how these topics serve as the themes for a good deal of what is called "entertainment" or "news" in our popular media. When you pick some media to pay attention to, ask yourself, "Is this PAGGLES?" If it is, rise up, and rise above it! As soon as you become aware of it, laugh…and TURN IT OFF. Start talking to your neighbors about what's real. Join associations of like-minded people. Support spiritually supportive cooperatives and political movements; and don't trust that media provider again! Go ahead and kill that messenger!

So what's the solution? The people (maybe you know some) who are responsible for this media, and may even believe in it, need extra Love and compassion to help them return to the human race – which isn't really a race at all, as they might believe, but a cooperative. The corporate media has even twisted the real message of Charles Darwin's "Evolution of the Species" to supply a basic miseducation. Darwin didn't discover "survival of the fittest," he discovered survival of the most adaptively cooperative. Current research conclusively demonstrates that two of the careers that attract the most 'psychopaths' are CEOs and media creators.  It will take a lot of real warmth, a lot of Love to overcome a twisted pathology that's so materially rewarded; but we have to try, or the world will continue to head in an unnecessarily destructive direction.

That low, slow, painful vibration of what's media "hot" isn't even warm by the principles of our rapidly evolving spiritual collective, based in compassion, sanity, and unity. Real warmth comes with a high hum – the vibration of Love, free from false fears and dark, selfish motives. The sun on everyone's face, and Love in everyone's heart.

You can re-define "success" as seeking Love and Light, unity, responsibility, peace, and happiness; protecting Life; being of service; experiencing the vibration of expanding consciousness without worry or regret that you don't measure up in some way. You don't have to pay attention to those media messages at all – just be truly present in each moment of your life. Follow your intuitive intelligence, and pay attention to what's really important! Live well. Recognize the Eternal in everyone. That's being successful.

"It is always the false that makes you suffer...Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy; truth liberates."

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Read about this and much more in the new book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor, from Llewellyn Worldwide, and the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond. Both are available everywhere – but ask for them at your local bookstore!

Tales: (3) The Maya of Media and Science

Here's the last of these three explorations of "Maya," inspired by this beautiful Logion:

"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, directing us away from the self examination that makes us face our collective truths, and psychically cornering us in the "The Way Things Are." They preoccupy us with good enough reasons for why things are like they are, why they have to be like they are. Much of Media and Science is created to diffuse 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 Logion again: "That which will destroy you." We end up walking through a false world, looking for what's real. This is the Maya 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 works for a couple definitions of the word—in the sense of using supernatural or paranormal means- Media people know they are manipulating dark fears; and in the sense of it being only for the initiated—scientists and media people consort amongst one another to keep their stories straight. Scary secrets shared by a select few.

Popular Culture often harnesses the psychic energy of "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, that we don't measure up, and so there must be something that can fix it, something that can ameliorate our shortcomings. So Media constantly stimulates those hot buttons of judgement and comparison; Fear, and the pathology of self-enhancement, to get you to buy it:

My clothes are right. My Lifestyle is right. I have the right friends, the proper idols. My country is right. My religion is 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 standard—and we all know the truth—that Love is the only thing that really assures happiness and fulfillment.

These fears are heightened and kept malleable by the 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. In television's earlier years, human foibles were pointed out—often as a lesson. News programming reported events fairly objectively, but now media ruthlessly exploits human faults and fears, in all formats.

Television and film must be be watched very selectively to avoid these base, destructive energies; and the internet allows for content choice—but don't forget the greatest selectivity of all: Don't take part in it. And if you must, don't invest yourself in it spiritually.

Remember what Marshall McLuhan said: "The medium is the message." If you are constantly carrying, sitting in front of, looking at, a device that keeps you constantly attached to a false world, it will be impossible to live an authentic life. 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 be the same. Attachment to current media results in the collapse of your consciousness into a dark, 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. It's 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 Science was still very sure of itself, and it's description of the world. As means of observation improve, the world and being itself changes—according to Science.

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: 

 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."

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, 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 the new book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor is due out early 2018, from Llewellyn Worldwide can be pre-ordered online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available everywhere – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!