culture
How Many Other Things Are We Missing?
Courtesy of JoshuaBell.com © 2011 Sony Music Entertainment. All Rights Reserved.
Spiritual seekers tend to be very keen to beat the drum of abundance – which is too often merely a thinly disguised obsession with material wealth and earthly comforts.
We simply take too much for granted every day; blessings of Joy, Beauty and Divine Grace are seldom acknowledged in our lives. How spiritually aware can we truly be if we hardly ever stop to smell the roses?
Have you heard the story of the internationally acclaimed violinist who disguised himself as a street busker with a baseball cap, and then proceeded to play Bach undercover at a metro subway station? An email outlining this intriguing story has been circulating since December 2008. There have been claims that it may be a hoax, or an urban myth, but it is indeed a true story. The event was captured on video with a hidden camera. Continue reading
Movie Psychics: Villains, Freaks, Heroes
Psychics and mediums in the movies are traditionally depicted as shrewd, flaky or simply evil. To this day it remains the exception to the rule to find a decent film or television show that genuine psychics will be able to relate to. Very few films in the archives offer a reasonably authentic representation of the ordinary psychic’s true life experiences.
The range of stereotypical stock characters in film is almost never-ending: from the typical dumb blondes and computer-hacking geeks, to corrupt Catholic priests, zany black cops, Las Vegas mobsters, flamboyant gay men, conspiring politicians, sex-obsessed teenagers and bombastic corporate executives with fat cigars.
Of course, psychics and mediums also make the perfect stereotype. We are ideal to be cast in the role of the satanic villain, or merely as an odd source of comic relief. For example, Whoopi Goldberg’s madcap portrayal of Oda Mae Brown, the fraudulent medium in Ghost (1990), was so well-received after the film’s release that she won a Golden Globe for her hilarious antics, as well as an Academy Award!
Hollywood relies on these stereotypes to increase box office success. Portraying misrepresented characters in a one-dimensional manner has a much wider audience appeal. Sadly, it also leads to ignorance, misconception, prejudice and discrimination. Continue reading
The Age of Indigo Man
Our world seems to be in cultural and environmental chaos, but you and I are living in great times!
Yes, true, the world has gone somewhat mad. But there is also method in all this. The mess we have made is merely a part of our evolutionary process. The frog had to drink up almost half the pond it lives in, before it could leap across it and into the Light.
No, we did not get here by accident. It’s all part of the Big Plan, the Blueprint.
Gerald Heard, the philosopher, realized this fact many years ago when he speculated on the evolutionary growth of our cultural consciousness and the psychological make-up of modern man. Continue reading