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Last night, Judy and I saw an incredible one hour show on Nova called “Ghosts of Machu Picchu.”
If you get an opportunity to see it, do so. It is fascinating about the Incas who lived over 500 years ago and had the most remarkable skill of farming, architecture & design, ritual, military weaponry, knowledge of skull surgery, masonry, irrigation systems, astronomy, and more. It is a current 2010 documentary, worth every minute. The DVD will be available from Amazon on April 27, 2010.
Last night, Judy and I saw AVATAR in 3D. This film is a milestone in cinema. Though I have no words to adequately describe my experience, I will try here. Great art changes the person who experiences it, or the group who experiences the art collectively by seeing, reading, hearing or feeling a new art form. It changes how you view the world, how you feel about the world, what you think about it. It hands you a vision, a freshness that asks you: NOT “Do you see what I see? Do you hear what I hear” BUT, “Can you see what I see? Can you hear what I hear? Can you think what I think?”
In historical terms, AVATAR will rank up there with pivotal cinematic thresholds, the first film ever made, first “talkie” sound film, first FX film, first color film, first film with digital CGI technology … you get the picture. But AVATAR is far more than that. It has a depth and resonance so crucial to the times in which we live, when we are on the brink of possible worldwide extinction and forced to ask profoundly significant questions, the answers to which will affect our survival and connections in the universe.
AVATAR in 3D allows you to live in this incredible visceral and sensory world that is spiritual, ties to indigenous peoples and profoundly interconnected nature that we in the 21st Century have lost, and to a new philosophy of life that unifies people and nature (in the broadest sense of the word). It is a blend of a revolutionary cinematic technology and ancient spiritual wisdom passed on over thousands of years from indigenous cultures (Maya, Hopi, Lakota Sioux, Aborigines, Inca, Navajo…) who have left a wealth of information about how the very soul of this massive universe works, how EVERYTHING on the most basic level is connected. This is not just a mythical, “feely-good” sentimental concept dreamt up by New Agers, but a series profound revelations discovered by Pulitzer-Prize and Nobel Prize winning scientists over the last two decades, much of which has been made as a result of Hubble, the complete mapping of human DNA, and other milestones of scientific discovery, not to mention the spiritual leaders of the planet who have been “preaching” this unifying premise for years.
AVATAR’s story is at times predictable, but that predictability is more a product of the very laws of human behavior proven by thousands of years of wars and conflict, and the struggle of a people to protect the most significant things which those people consider to be far great than themselves.
The alien characters in AVATAR, who live in the world Pandora, each have radiant dots on their faces. The dots look like stars. Each character has a different star mapping, yet they are united by the stars that are part of who they are, just as we are an integral part of the night sky and stars that shine above us, whether we are aware of it or not.
On Friday, June 5, in three weeks at The Bodhi Tree, 8585 Melrose Avenue in West Los Angeles, I will be giving a slide presentation of my research locations in the Andes, Machu Picchu, Mauna Kea, and rare Inka rituals, to be followed by a twenty minute lecture on the literary and symbolic structure of The Ascendancy. Then, there will be Q&A followed by a book signing. Check out the postcard ad below.
The Four Winds Society has published their Newsletter for this December Solstice of 2008. My friends Alberto Villoldo and Linda Fitch asked me if they could use my photo as the cover photo for the issue. I was humbly honored. I took the photo atop Salkantay Mountain in the Andes at an altitude of about 19,200′. It shows Quero Inca Shaman Don Pasqual (called the “Golden Boy,” even though he’s a man) making a coca leaf offering to Apu Salkantay. It was one of many sacred moments at the top of the Andes outside of Peru. The Four Winds Society does magnificent work for people all over the world, training them to be healers.
“I remember the Betty & Barney Hill incident vividly, all the press, the interviews, and the subsequent television MOW, the book rights which were bought by James Earl Jones (who played Barney in the movie). This book authored by Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden, Betty Hill’s niece, was in 2007. I found the book to [...]
What a Great Nation America is! Envision and founded upon great ideals. If part of our nation suffers an injustice or just bad luck, we all feel it, especially in the digital age that has brought us closer together in many ways, on many levels. Worldwide, we share everything, information, drama, voyeurism, pain, happiness. The [...]
“The Ascendancy” is a 21st Century fantasy-adventure about the volatile world in which we live today. Dr. Thomas Allen Nelson says, “An inspiring and compassionate twenty-first century epic adventure, part Paradise Lost and part Wizard of Oz… An evolutionary and cultural vision that blends the grim equations of survival and extinction with the regenerative powers [...]
Last night, Judy and I saw an incredible one hour show on Nova called “Ghosts of Machu Picchu.” If you get an opportunity to see it, do so. It is fascinating about the Incas who lived over 500 years ago and had the most remarkable skill of farming, architecture & design, ritual, military weaponry, knowledge [...]
Dr. John E. Mack is one-of-kind genius. The loss of his life when he was hit by a Czech drunk driver in London was our loss. John E. Mack was a Harvard professor of psychiatry, who wrote and won the Pulitzer Prize for A PRINCE OF OUR DISORDER, a biography of T.E. Lawrence, or Lawrence [...]
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