Tales of the Koko Lion, Part 21: Two Feathers, Second Feather

............................................................................read about the first feather

Koko stood on the deck, looking across upriver to New York, to the promontory at the bend, but he didn't know why. He didn't...but then he did.

It had been a couple years. A couple difficult, challenging years in every way, except in the ways it mattered most. His work had gone disappointingly, one remarkable opportunity after another had taken a sudden turn south, until it seemed that you just couldn't even make the stuff up anymore. His big breaks had all broken. How could he be put in such unique and impossible rooms, only to have their possibilities evaporate? He worked his tail off, and yet nothing had taken flight, except his capacity for Love, which drew in the sky. His heart was full and open. She was always there. Food was always on the table. They lived a frugal life of sheer abundance, which didn't seem possible to them either. But it all worked out, somehow.

He knew the lessons he'd learned from the river, just sitting and listening to the wind, the songbirds, the bullfrogs, the sundance writing on the passing water, and the eagles' calls from the top of the white pines; it all taught him how to live a different way. An impossible way.

Now, he was being tapped on the shoulder again, by the unseen. It was telling him, the same way it had before, that the eagles had another feather for him. Another feather? Another feather. A different one, for a different reason. Look over there, they whispered in his ear, where you're looking now.

His neighbor had offered the loan of his kayak, whenever, so he took him up on it and set out upriver, rowing against the lighter current close to the bank, and then cutting across to the shallows on the other side. The sheet of water over the smooth river rock field got so thin his butt dragged and hung up on the bottom; so he hopped out, and ported the kayak up to a channel near the far side. New York.

Almost as soon as he arrived at the point, he knew he wasn't going to find anything, even though This is where you have to look for it, was what he kept hearing, with that same insistence as before. He floundered around in the lush, leafy undergrowth on the bank, looking up into the virdant cave trails that the animals had made, but he wasn't going to find anything but deer ticks in his hair, if he was willing to look for those. Or if Suzy would.

Why do they tell me something that's right, but not right? he thought.

About a week later, he repeated the futile exercise again, and then again, until his neighbor asked him what he was doing with his kayak, and all he could think of to say was, "Oh, nothing, really...just going for a paddle..." And now it was loud again in his ear, making him a little crazy, making him walk back out on the deck, peering purposelessly across the river to see what was much too far to ever see. This is crazy, he thought.

Right at that moment, a big female eagle hopped out of her New York tree on the point, and wheeled down south over the river, heading his way. She flapped her huge wings a couple times, gaining altitude and just as she did, a single white tail-feather fell from her fanned tail, fluttered lightly down, and set atop the current in the middle of the river. His heart stopped. There! They silently hollered in his ear.

"Hey!" Koko hollered back.

"What?" replied Suzy, who was planting flowers in the Vole's Garden. "Did you want me?"

He ran in, changed into a swimsuit, and ran down the rock steps, yelling crazily, "Watch that white spot on the river and tell me when I'm close to it!" and he dove straight in.

"Keep going out!" She yelled. "Keep going!" He could see it, when he craned his neck up above the little waves in the river. It was coming right to him, bobbing along, and when it arrived, he was right there for it. He put the quill shaft between his teeth, and swam in through the suddenly cold water, to his big sitting-rock. He held it up in front of his face, fourteen inches of a perfect, snowy white feather, just deposited magically before his eyes by the great female eagle whose awkward, oversized "chicks" would spend the summer learning how to fly out over that same piece of river.

Koko amazed, How and why, in the entire world, could a man be standing where I was standing, looking where I was looking, and see that, if it isn't for me?

The white feather is for having survived the years that so many never survive to see. The years until your head and tail strike pure white. Now, you know just how big this vision of life is. You've learned the lesson of Action and Repose. You can wait for it, and watch for it, but then you must dive in and swim to reach it. Have faith in the unfailing wind, in the abundance of the river, in the heavens in your heart. Now you know how to grow. Now you know how to fly.

Later, at the little town's street festival, Koko told the abbreviated tale to a woman at an Eagle Conservation booth.

"It's against the law for anyone but an Indian to have an eagle feather!" She snapped with authority. Koko could only think, I don't think she understands how it happens...

"My great-great-grandfather was Kickapoo," Koko said softly. He knew it was okay, in his heart. His grandfather tapped the woman on the shoulder.

"Oh...well..." she sidled and smiled a bit, "then it's okay, I guess."

.....................................................................this just popped up the other day

Tales of the Koko Lion, Part 21: Two Feathers, First Feather

Koko woke up with a funny picture in his head that morning. Funny, as in different, entirely unexpected. It was a picture of a feather - a single, perfect, chestnut-brown eagle feather. Why it would be filling his mind was a mystery, but almost the instant he swung his legs out of bed, he found himself pulling his feet through the stocky green cargo pants he wore for working at the River House.

"Where are you going?" Suzy asked raising her head, his sudden, purposeful movement waking her all the way up.

"I have to go...up the river bank," he answered. He was kind of gone already, busy concentrating on an inner voice (perhaps the voice of his Kickapoo great-great grandfather), telling him: They have a feather for you, up the river bank. You must get up and go find it... It was like that. Crazy, but solid and insistent, and not to be denied, and so he found himself pulling on yesterday's socks too.

"There's a feather there."

"What?"

"A feather"

"A feather?"

"That's all. They're just telling me, "there's a feather waiting for me up the river bank."

"I'm coming too," she said, jumping up and into her clothes as he headed out the bedroom door.

Music: Ne-me'hota'tse (I Love You) by Joseph Firecrow

They started upriver, along the Pennsylvania side, she wore rubber gardening clogs, and he had the rubber knee-highs that came with the house. Each of them carried their long ash walking sticks, hers with the bark peeled down to white wood, his with the necessary girth to give any threat a good whack, if need be. If Suzy had known just how many snakes she was stepping over, or on, she would have been screaming like a schoolgirl the whole way, but she hadn't been there long enough to know yet, and Koko's intuitive calling took precedence over any phobias she was nursing. Funny, how an intangible necessity can vanquish any fear the mind might create. The snakes all seemed to know, and stayed well hidden, on her account, no doubt.

The two of them crunched and squished their way up the bank, weaving out to the river's edge and back "inland" along the scant deer and critter trail, sometimes on firm ground, or hopping rock to rock to avoid the spots you couldn't stand on without sinking.

He knew right where they were going, to the place up under the stand of towering white pines beneath the eagles perch. There, every day, from their pine-top promontory above the tree line, one or two of the great white-headed adults could keep watch on the river from the Narrowsburg bend down to Masthope. They sat stoically hour after hour, but they also did their fair share of preening and squabbling, so it made sense that a feather might be found underneath the spot, if one made it down through the tree limbs to the ground, or missed being carried away by the wind.

The longer they looked, the less likely it seemed, the grass and poplars low on the bank would have swallowed any feather landing there, and up in the barrens at the base of the trees it was easy to spot anything on the ground, if there were anything but pine needles. But still the insistence in his head: Keep looking, it's here for you.

"Let's hope they didn't get us out of bed for nothing." He said, clamoring back down the dry bank to the soft river's edge. He'd give it one last look, navigating along the base of the bank, where the pine roots held back what the river couldn't have. His eyes scoured the grasses for any sign of a feather that might have fluttered down from a hundred feet up and landed lightly, but to no avail.

"Did you find anything?" Suzy asked from up under the trees.

"Nope. I don't know why I felt so strongly..." Koko replied, like he expected all intuition to be magical, or something. He turned and looked up to her above, and as he did, something caught his eye.

There was a series of shallow, twisting caves in between the tree roots cascading down the bank. He bent down, and looked up into one that was about eighteen inches wide and a foot high. Hello, it said...you see, here I am for you.

One perfect, foot long, chestnut brown eagle feather sat tucked on a rakish angle, as though positioned by a stylist's hand, up in the mossy cubby hole. It was only visible from where Koko squatted in front of it. He

gently brought it out and held it up by the quill shaft, "Suzy..."

She looked at it with wide eyes, and looked back to him and smiled and didn't say anything.

This is to let you know that the eagle's steady gaze looks right past this world to your great-great grandfather's home in your heart. This is their gift - the gift of this feather for the faith in the voices of your ancestors that you can hear when you open your heart. This feather tells you how much more can always be seen if you look beyond this world, into the invisible world where everything comes from, and goes to. Down on the ground, it's hard to find without this faith; from up where the eagle looks out over the big picture, anything can manifest.

"Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up a stone; you will find me there."

Logion 77, The Gospel of Thomas

An Excerpt About Love...

Love rules…an edited excerpt of the chapter "Love is the Medium, the Small, and the Large" from How to Survive Life (and Death), Conari Press. 

..............................................................................................apologies to Jawlensky

All the most difficult and damaging parts of life originate in the conditions created by an absence of Love. On the grand scale of things, without the selfish and exploitative parts of human nature that create so many problems for the planet and it's inhabitants, there would only be the beautiful flow and support and creation of Love. Everyone would get along and want for nothing.

That wouldn't be such a bad world, would it? For everyone to take care of everyone else. In fact, I believe it's the actual goal we all share in "the end."

Here's something interestingly scientific: Did you know that medical science has now determined that our hearts, unlike any other part of the body, contain a complex cellular structure similar to our brain? The same neurons, neurotransmitters, support cells, and so forth. In fact, our heart is directly linked to our brain, and along with being able to independently learn, remember, feel, and sense, our heart can enable our brain to perceive certain things, to inspire types of thoughts, and to determine our emotional experience.

And what do you think constitutes the energy of the heart? The language of the heart? It's the medium...the small, and the very, very largest of all "invisible" energies.

In fact, before moving on to your next undertaking (pardon the expression), it might help you to realize that you are adrift in, surrounded by, and have always been swimming in an invisible river - a virtual ocean of Love. It's easy not to see it. We tend to keep our heads above the surface, our hearts are always down in it.

So the main job of life is simply to eliminate the obstacles that prevent our perception of Love; the free flow of Love into us, out of us, through us, and around us. But it's not so simple, is it? We need to strip down our ideas about the world, and especially about ourself, to learn to swim naked in this river of love, and become one within this medium, this beautiful dimension that can carry us through this life, and beyond. And who among us, I ask, doesn't like to swim naked...especially where we're in the dark?

Put aside your reservations (and inhibitions) for a moment, if you will, and let's go swimming. Here's how:

Since Love is all understanding and acceptance, naturally it's what allows everything to become beautiful as it possibly can be in our perception. When we open our heart, and accept everything and everyone as they are, simply and without judging or comparing, we're briefly granted the ability to really see the sometimes heart-breaking beauty of life's constant struggle to return to Love.

When we open ourselves to the current of Love, we can find ourselves within it, and realize that we actually live there. We recognize that in that flow of Love, everyone and everything, even what seems terrible to us, is being what they need to be, doing what they need to do - for their expression and evolution, and so, for ours too. Instantly within that moment, absolute tolerance and acceptance becomes literally a "no-brainer."

When we open our heart and use it like we would use our brain to look at the world, only with this filter of loving compassion up front, everything and everyone becomes okay just the way they are. And in fact, as absolutely beautiful as Love allows them to be (sometimes a little sadly beautiful) in their own right.

Each person takes on the wonderful quality of themselves, bumps and all. They might be crazy, God bless 'em, but they're amazing nonetheless. Everyone you've ever known becomes kind of perfect. Everything that has ever happened, or will happen in your life, and in the world, is fine as it is (like it or not), because it needs to be that way in order to change and connect back to the flow of Love. Back to the place where Love will carry you too.

If you try your best to become Love, you'll find you never have to worry about who you are, what you look like, what you have (or don't have), what you've done (or haven't done)...you just won't need to worry about your outsides ever again. Your insides will be your outsides.

...and there goes the swimsuit.

Stop struggling against the current (if you are), and head downstream. Let go of all those internal obstacles to Love; let go of all those petty external details (and they all are). Strip down your mind and allow the mysterious and wonderful flow of Love to carry you home, dressed only as yourself.


The book, "How To Survive Life (and Death)," is available from Conari Press, or at all major booksellers––but ask for it from your local bookshop. Read about this and much more in the new book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor available now from Llewellyn Worldwide

Tales: Channel Surfing the Cascading Ethics

"Only that which can destroy itself is truly alive." Dr. Carl Jung

I was watching a show on PBS called Nova Science Now "How Smart are Animals," which had some wonderful demonstrations of animal intelligence and emotional sensitivity, but didn't manage much more human awareness concerning the quality of our animal partners' consciousness than existed in the '60s, back when Dr. John Lilly was doing a lot of the same things with dolphins as was shown on this show documenting "the latest" science can offer. It tended to depict intelligent animals as performers - the standard egoic human-enhancing context.

"...not from a law being passed, but from each human understanding innately that these are ancient, sentient earth residents, with tremendous intelligence and enormous life force. Not someone to kill, but someone to learn from."

Dr. John C. Lilly, about dolphins

But still, it demonstrates expanding global awareness to even allow that animals are much smarter and more conscious than people (corporate media) dare to admit. We're the only ones on the planet who have to wear clothes, go to school, get jobs, eat processed food, worry about our baldness (or facial hair), or try to find God. Who's really got this Life on Earth thing mastered - us, or the "lower" species?

We may not fully realize this truth until they're all gone. But I think we will. In fact many more people than publicized know plenty about animal consciousness already.

"Denial is the acceptance of ignorance as truth

through force of will."

At the same time, on The Biography Channel, there was a show called "Mediums: We See Dead People," that investigated irrefutable evidence supporting the validity of human psychic abilities; even to go so far as relating psychic powers to quantum non-locality and wave function, suggesting that there is an extra-dimensional field of accessible information within the Time/Space Continuum; and suggesting that this human form temporarily plays host to an extra-dimensional spiritual being.

Of course, all that's been very well known for thousands of years, but the knowledge has slowly, deliberately been covered-up by egoic commercial and political forces, so they could use it for their own designs. It's not covered-up anymore. It's on The Biography Channel.

"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 (1207-1273)

On yet another news channel, a young Egyptian man describes the composition of the crowds of his country's revolutionary protesters: they are young; they are educated; they are tech-savvy; they are peaceful; they consider themselves part of a global community; they are tolerant, and open-minded; and they have had enough of unethical behavior from political leaders. In short, they are the human consciousness movement that is growing exponentially in our world today.

The "power elite" is being backed into their corner, making their last stand, as the huge shadow of rising global ethics covers them, and their corrupt hegemony begins to unravel. It's obvious to everyone, except only the most intolerant, self-centered, and closed-minded minority. When these changes become inevitable, materialists squirm and consolidate, and create the conditions for their extinction in the coming tsunami of ethics, and the Great Flood of the human spirit.

"We need to work on the world, so it will not be so oppressive." James Hillman

In a wonderful interview in HuffPost, even my crafty, wise, and very congenial uncle (by marriage), Dr. James Hillman, preeminent Jungian analyst, author, and social commentarian, suggests that the "Super Rich" are considering the ethical alternative to bottomless greed and elite criminality, but his assertion is framed within the corporate media context of right and wrong, black and white, us vs. them - a context which he rightly condemns. That frame is far too narrow for what's going on here, as the spiritual consciousness of this planet, and all life on it begins to dynamically coalesce into material ethical reality. The standard of exploitation will be destroyed, and a new world will arise.

The truth is not black and white; it's not even shades of grey. The truth can be seen from all the way out in space, where, in some other planet's space-based telescope, it simply appears as a small, round ball of blue.

"The common name for God used by the sages is HaMakom, "the place." God is the place of the world, the field in which all things arise and return."

Rabbi Rami Shapiro, on The Pirke Avot

Animated Atmospheres

Things are always busy busy right before KidScreen, and I've been hard at work on a show I can't show yet, but I hope you'll get to see soon. In the meantime scratching away on d-zines and writing furiously in a hunt-and-peck style leaves me needing to meditate a little, every day if possible...While doing just that, I discovered that my wife, Sue Pike "The Animal Talker®"- Reiki Master and Playshop giver, has her sound healing friend's Eluv's new, and thoroughly amazing CD "New Beginnings," full of smooth, soothing sound healing stuff that is absolutely perfect for sitting and naval-gazing...like one might do in this bamboo meadow I recently whipped up for a Hasbro website game.

Here's what the cover of this wonderfully groovy, interiorly-oriented, luscious sound thang looks like. I highly recommend that you pick it up and sit down to some amazing healing bowls and ocean sounds...

...a little like this gentle crashing wave splashing up on the shores of my "Codename: Kids Next Door" EFX file...how's that for a linkin' blog?

To Be the Right One of the Two of Us

Watch this remarkable talk, linked from TED, by Jill Bolte Taylor about our dual thought processes, and finding nirvana. Ms. Taylor is a neuroanatomist and brain function researcher whose experience of her own stroke (which took eight years to recover from) led her to these incredible realizations. It's very similar to the Buddha's Fourth Dhyana, or state of nirvana, as described (for example) in the forward to Eknath Easwaran's excellent translation of The Dhammapada.

Here's a Nice Piece of Work...

Take this tour to check out a really remarkable piece of illustration and design (thanks to JFadink).

http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html

A 2012 Documentary from PeaceJam.Org

While my own ideas about the Mayan calendar and the changes of 2012 (previous post) come mostly from Johann Carl Calleman's research (throw in a touch of José Argüelles), and the excellent lectures that Ian Lungold gave hundreds of times in the 2-3 years prior to his terribly premature death, the good people at PeaceJam.Org would like you to know about their new documentary called: 2012: The True Mayan Prophecy. It features the 1992 Nobel Peace Laureate, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, The Dalai Lama, and others. It's available for a $1.99 donation from this amazing organization that matches Nobel Laureates with young people to make positive changes for our planet.

Thanks to Ivan Suvanjieff and the PeaceJam Foundation.

Tales: 2012...The Stockholm Syndrome and the Era of Ethics

Happy 2011! Just that much closer to 2012, and the culmination of so many misunderstandings regarding the Mayan calendar, and the "End of Time" that it suggests to some. As is often the case, the truth is hiding in plain sight, in much the same fashion as the suggestion that December 21 next year will mark the Apocalypse. It's the same because while many people believe that the Apocalypse has to do with Armageddon, it really is more about the true translation of the word apocalypse, which means "lifting a veil," or "revelation."

It isn't the destruction of the world, but the revelation of a profound truth. The ending of a kind of delusion. A threshold, or singularity – a moment when an aging system of belief and perception finally gives way to an underlying reality. So it is the end of a certain world – a world as it has been misperceived. A destructive, delusional world.

This delusional fear of a fiery conflagration – a "Day of Reckoning" – is propagated by those who seek to manipulate people with fear. Take a closer look, and you'll see the truth is much much nicer...

"The Kingdom...is spread out over the whole earth,

and people do not have eyes to see it."

The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 113

If you've never explored the story of our world as described by the Mayan calendar, the diagram below (from Peter Russell's forward to the anthology, The Mystery of 2012, Sounds True) does a good job of boiling it down to a simple visual.

What the Mayans were actually describing was the history of consciousness entering the world, and so creating different worlds, so to speak. The Mayan codice found at Coba arranges the growth of consciousness, the evolution of intelligence, into ages, or eras. This spiral simplifies it into the four ages depicted, each age a quicker turn. We are presently turning into a "Wisdom Age," by the diagram, which precedes the end of the spiral- the "end of the world."

A superior diagrammatical approach to understanding the earth's history (and "end" of history) according to the Mayans would be to think of it like a Mayan pyramid, with proportionally smaller levels stepping up to the top, each step representing an era of evolution, or amount of consciousness in the world. Each era up is progressively shorter in duration, and exponentially more packed with consciousness.

In this imagined architectural chart, the base would be the Cellular Era, when cellular life first appeared on Earth. The next level, the Mammalian Era, when creatures went from simple in the sea, to more complex onto the land. Consciousness begins to accumulate and expand. The next step, the Family Era, when primates acquire stereo color vision, leads into the Tribal Era, when increased consciousness discovers the uses of fire, tool-making, social benefits. The next level up the pyramid is the Cultural Era, the dawn of Reason and Art. Up the next step to the National Era, the era of nation-states, of law, and of what Huxley called The Perennial Philosophy, that is, the wisdom underlying religion- the teaching of Jesus and Buddha, for example. Next comes the Planetary Era, the era of global power, the Industrial Revolution, E=mc². This is the era we have known for most of our lives, but each successive era is significantly shorter than the era it follows as consciousness is flooding into our plane, change is accelerating, so we are rapidly moving into and through the Galactic Era, the era of ethics and interconnection (like we now have with the internet).

To many of us, it doesn't seem that we are occupying an era of ethics, but we are (quite appropriately) heading into the heart of it. The reason the world looks the opposite is a product of how we're looking at it. If we look at it through the prism of the self-des-tructing Power era, we see what the desperate materialists of the world want us to see – a world where the great majority of people surrender the Earth's resources to a tiny, delusional minority.

When observing the current state of Washington D.C., for example, watch occult "politicians," whose position comes from corrupt power, manipulating a vociferous, fearful minority by inducing The Stockholm Syndrome, a fear-based psychological state wherein the abused identifies with their abusers. According to an FBI database resource, this phenomenon occurs with about 27% of abductees and abuse victims, coincidentally the same number, according to polls, of Americans who identify themselves as Republicans.

The future scenario intended by the Power Era Materialists must result in the violent enslavement of the great majority of humans, and the irrevocable trashing of the planet. Since evolution is not actually survival of the strongest, but in fact survival of the most effectively cooperative, the majority will insist on the adoption of the Ethical Era. It will happen. Fear tactics, fascist media, and consolidation of resources are the last gasps of unethical and delusional people whose time has actually already passed. But most of us already know that, don't we?

Look at the bigger picture, and you'll see the genie is out of the bottle. We are entering into the Universal Era, when everything becomes possible. It is the era of conscious co-creation of our Earth, when interconnectedness, wisdom, ethics, and com-passion will lead us into Universal Citizenship, and allow us to steward our planet and it's resources effectively and humanely. At "the end of Earth's history," we become The Universe. Just look all around you, the great majority (at least 73%) has already started to gratefully welcome a new spiritual world, and the end of the delusional material one. We're just not as loud yet.

As the [Power] world ends, there will be chaos, possibly violence. Stay out of it's way. Take care of one another. Keep these truths strong in your heart. We know from the lessons of quantum reality that consciousness forms material reality, so expect a lot of material manifestations – dramatic environmental and human manifestations. But don't be afraid. Fill your heart with willingness, tolerance, kindness, and Love, and you will become part of the next great step of Intelligent Evolution, when the suffering of so many indigenous peoples, and animals, and our Earth itself, will finally end.

"...the wicked carry out the will of God in their own fashion."

Spinoza

Check out: Ian Lungold Lecture in the "Heart & Art Websites" tabs to the left for a great talk on the source material.

A Rough School at Night

Here's a recent color rough of a school, after hours...

If You Happen to be in Tampa...

Please check out Sue's series of events at Yogani Studios, from Jan. 17th through the 21st. Check www.yogani.com.

Here's That Christmas Pig You Asked For!

Merry Merry! from the airbrushed Paper Moon days...these days though, we keep it vegetarian!

Tales: Too Much, Not Enough?

We are all subject to the increasing speed with which "material consciousness" floods into our life plane. It can be confusing, disorienting. How can anyone expect to know so much new information so quickly? Depending upon the media that creates this flood for guidance in the face of it all is like asking for a drink of water from a tsunami. The intent is to submerge you, to convince you that all this buffeting you is your connection to life; and that you are not keeping up with the pace required to stay afloat on this sea of information and access to material success. You are supposed to feel like you've fallen behind. That way, you'll have to buy stuff to catch up. More technology. The latest fashion. Political propaganda. Controlling the media message is an occult art - and there are some very effective artists around these days...

Of course it's probably true that this week there are a couple new programs on the market that have rendered your expertise obsolete. There are always people younger than you somewhere out there, hungry for your job, who know these new programs already. That's possibly all true. But would it surprise you to know that life in our Western Culture has always felt this way? (It's starting to feel like that in The East too- our gift to the world)

Merchants in ancient Rome suffered from increased "global" competition. At the time of the Industrial Revolution, thousands and thousands of craftsmen and laborers lost their life's work. So how does that knowledge help you in the face of impending disaster? Here the simple, positive, life-affirming solution; the strategy for dealing with this onslaught:

Stop paying attention to it! Put away your checkbook! It's only a disaster in the path of that tidal wave of "material consciousness." In the surrounding, underlying, enfolding, energizing sea of "Spiritual Consciousness" that all Life exists in, it's only Change - the most predictable, and inevitable part of Life. If you simply just switch the consciousness that you live in, from "Material" to "Spiritual," then you will immediately become aware that good things come with Change. Just turn off the TV and talk radio, close up the online news site, focus on yourself for a moment, and feel Life surging through you. Experience the joy of Love that provides a real energizing direction in your life any time you choose to pay attention to it! Don't worry about not knowing all the latest programs, and your intuitive spiritual intelligence will direct you to whatever you need to get by with ease. Gracefully. It's a completely different type of success than having a lot of apps on your I-Pad, or a job working for a soulless corporation. More profound. More lasting.

But could it really be that easy? Of course not - it requires a sort of vigilance. You have to live by the highest principles you can possibly muster. You have to try your best not to do anything you know to be wrong in your heart. It doesn't happen overnight. It's a little hard work at times, but the payoff is huge.

Aim high. Show up. Be kind. Be generous with your time and resources. Help others. Everything will begin to work in your Life in a way that "keeping up with the I-Joneses" could never allow. You'll find your real connection and purpose. And once you're living that way, you won't have to be trying to get somewhere else. You can "make the road home be home."

Check out this wonderful little talk about why we need to believe in each other by Viktor Frankl, the author of "Man's Search for Meaning." When you aim high, you have to take into account the speed of the wind, and the rotation of the Earth, but even if you're a little off, you'll land much closer to where you want to be.

"Why do you wash the outside of the cup?

Do you not understand that

the one who made the outside

also made the inside?"

The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 89

"Clay is molded to form a cup

yet only the space within

allows the cup to hold water."

The Tao te Ching, 11

"Toto Mes Heroes"

I recently found this illo promo from '94 picturing all my heroes. I have a lot more heroes now including women of course, but these are still good. Notice no Yeshua, Buddha, Lao Tzu... Back then, you couldn't find a picture of Heinz Edelmann...I've added one in memorium. Click on the key below for legibility.

Tales: A Look at Looking

Let's start by looking at a bunch of quotes...

The great Tao flows everywhere

It fills everything to the left

and to the right

All things owe their existence to it

and it cannot deny any one of them

Tao te Ching, 34

"I am the light that shines on everyone

I am the All.

The All came forth from me

and the All came into me.

Split the wood and I am there.

Turn over the stone,

and you will find me."

The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 77

"I am ever present to those who have realized me

in every creature. Seeing all life as my manifestation,

they are never separated from me. They worship me

in the hearts of all, and all their actions proceed from me.

Wherever they live, they abide in me."

The Bhagavad Gita, 6:30-31

"To God belongs the East and the West;

and wherever you turn,

there is the face of God."

The Qu'ran, Surah 2

Surfaces create a great many of this world's problems, with the suggestions that they are the most important and compelling part of life, being the most visible, and what we interact with the most; none of which is true. You can neither tell a book by it's cover, nor the content of a person's heart from the clothes they wear. It's impossible for our eyes to see into the whirring masses of sub-atomic particles all dancing inside our supposedly "solid" world. There is an exponential relationship of the outside to the inside of everything.

When we are confronted by surfaces: appearances, behaviors, "final results," we can't compare our insides to those outsides, but only what we don't know of the insides of each. By what we can identify with.

This occupation by spirit is as mysterious as it is miraculous, and it is the most important, the most evident, interactive, and compelling whether we can see past the surface or not. We can see that dance plainly, if we allow ourselves to. So pay as little attention to the surface as possible. Practice seeing the spirit arising as often as you can manage.

All of these quotes from all of these wisdom sources are saying the same thing, aren't they? We display our ignorance by relying on some visible affirmation, when we know that every surface changes, that the mystery within alone remains Eternal. And everything we witness with our minds, and our eyes, and our hearts is actually the proof of our shared composition, the substance of our source and ineffable connection. The "Face of God."

It's just a matter of perception. Of allowing yourself to look past the surface by looking with a vision that's free of judgment and comparison, and so fully engaged by compassion. Here, a couple more quotes, that say the same thing:

"A human being is part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Albert Einstein

"The disciples asked him:

'When will the Kingdom come?'

Yeshua answered:

It will not come by watching for it...

The Kingdom...is spread out over the whole earth,

and people do not have eyes to see it."

The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 113

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!