CHAPTER ONE What Is Conscious Awareness? “If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.” —Wang Fou, Hua Hu Chin Have you ever uttered the words, “I didn’t realize what I was doing,” or “I’m not sure where that came from” after doing something you later regretted? If you’re an average human being, the answer is probably yes. We all, at times, find ourselves doing and saying things without knowing why, reacting in ways that surprise ourselves, and tripping over invisible obstacles in our own psyches. As human beings, we are blessed with the ability to be conscious of ourselves—to be self-aware. But for most of us, conscious awareness is not an ongoing experience. We have the capacity to observe the movements of our thoughts and feelings and make choices about whether to act on them or not. We are not blindly driven by impulse and instinct—at least, not entirely. But our degree of consciousness can vary dramatically. We all, at times, feel like victims of our own unconsciousness, driven to make the same mistakes over and over again by patterns and beliefs we can’t even see. To liberate ourselves from this experience, we need to actively cultivate greater consciousness. Conscious awareness is the state of being aware of one’s own existence—one’s unique thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations, surroundings and external environment. It is a state of wakefulness of the mind. Consciousness is an enigma. Science generally considers consciousness to be a complex activity of the brain, but the truth is that no one has yet explained exactly where it comes from. The idea that it arises out of the brain seems implausible—if you dissect the brain, you cannot see consciousness, just as you cannot see thoughts or beliefs. I like to think of the brain is its conduit. We need the brain to process consciousness. Spiritual teachers and thinkers are less concerned with where consciousness comes from; in fact, many of them believe that everything comes from it. Deepak Chopra, in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, writes: “The source of all creation is pure consciousness … pure potentiality seeking expression from the unmanifest to the manifest. And when we realize that our true Self is one of pure potentiality we align with the power that manifests everything in the universe.”1 Like Chopra, I see consciousness as being both a human faculty and a divine state of being. In the human sense, consciousness is our awareness, cognition, perceptions, beliefs, emotions and so on; in the divine sense, it is a field of infinite possibilities; the source of all creation and potentiality. Divine or higher consciousness is the origin of everything, and therefore it is also the nature of our true selves. The premise of this book is that, when we align our human consciousness to higher consciousness, we become consciously aware beings, connected to our true selves. We come closer to understanding the relationship between our human nature and our spiritual nature and we integrate them in a meaningful way. If you are not trapped in the limiting beliefs of your past, you can start pulling any possibility you want to become from the field of the unmanifest. In this book, I have tried my best to create a process that can clear our thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and patterns to allow us to connect to divine consciousness, the universal light. There are many terms in the spiritual and religious traditions for this ultimate dimension. You can use the term God if you are comfortable with it. Or you may prefer Supreme Intelligence, Great Spirit, Creator, Higher Power, the One, or any other name that represents that all-encompassing light. I like to use several of these terms interchangeably, but I often choose “the Source” as it points to this dimension as the origin of everything. Conscious awareness is not something that we “get.” It is something we unearth within ourselves. Within all of us there is an awareness that is still and conscious at all times. It is that awareness that we need to connect to the Source or higher consciousness. Conscious awareness is a dance with the Universe—a dance between self-awareness and a conscious recognition of our union with the Source. The problem, for most of us, is that we are disconnected from our true self. We have built up layer upon layer of a false identity, based on our conditioning, our beliefs, and our traumatic experiences. To put it simply, this constructed identity is what spiritual teachers refer to as the ego, although there are many different ways this term is used in academic psychology. For the purposes of this book, I define ego as the constructed identity that obscures our true self. Contemporary spiritual teacher Ekhart Tolle refers to the ego as the illusory self, because it embodies a misperception of who we are. He writes, “Ego is always identification with form, seeking yourself and thereby losing yourself in some form. Forms are not just material objects and physical bodies. More fundamental than the external forms-things and bodies- are the thought forms that continuously arise in the field of consciousness.”2 All that we have to do is to reconnect with this awareness. Most of our frustrations stem from the fact that we believe something is wrong inside and needs to be fixed; in reality, nothing needs to be fixed, only uncovered. It all begins with self-awareness. My intention for you is that each day as you complete the chapters and do the work, your awareness will expand and will awaken to the origin of your true nature. Each day, through your readings and the stillness of the moment, you will learn how to connect deeply to your true self. You will feel joy, passion and abundant love as you reconnect […]

“Thank you, Wizard of Think,” says the Speaker as he turns to Boniface. “The floor is yours again, mister chairman.” “Mille grazie, mister Speaker,” replies the Easter Bunny. “I would now like to invite mister Jack of the Lantern to put forth the next motion.” “I object,” squawks the newly appointed Representative of Ireland as he glares at Jack with sheer disdain. “I object to that creature’s presence on the Committee; in fact, I object to his presence all together. My predecessors may have tolerated that miser turned benefactor but I refuse to transact with the living dead.” “Order in the House,” screams the Speaker to the young boy who in­tensifies his ranting and raving and jouncing and jolting, and to the other Representatives who begin to throw jellybeans at him all the while booing and hissing in disapproval of his unwarranted outburst. “Order in the House,” he screams again. “You will all be quiet and you will listen to me. The honorable Jack of the Lantern is exactly that: honor­able; and as one who has transformed stinginess, indolence and guile into honor, duty and devotion, he shall be judged no more. Junior Representative of Ireland, I order you to be indulgent or else to begone.” “What was that all about?” inquires Tiny. “It’s an old Irish grievance that surfaces now and again,” answers Maurice, “regarding Jack’s past. He used to be quite a mischievous soul three centur­ies ago; so much so that, if he were still the man that he was then, he would have no misgivings about hurting anyone in this House, including Santa.” “Then perhaps we should interrogate him,” considers Tiny. “After all, he does compete with Santa for the children’s affection.” “No; he’s not the man we’re looking for,” replies Maurice, “and he’s not the man he used to be; he’s transformed for good; in fact, he’s the liveliest dead person I’ve ever met—the pride of the living dead community.” “What do you mean by liveliest dead person?” wonders tiny. “I mean death becomes him in the best of ways,” replies Maurice; “he’s a zombie; but he wasn’t always one. Our friend Jack was once a man, and a man known to most as the miserly and unscrupulous Stingy Jack. He was a gardener by trade, who was not very good at all, and who only succeeded in growing pumpkins, which he sold at the market for an exorbitant price. Everything else he planted would not sprout, and this seriously impeded his business and his means to survive; so much so that everything came crash­ing down on him one day. “Faced with a failed business and a mountain of liabilities, Jack, now utterly desolate and desperate, made a deal with the Devil, offering up his soul in exchange for payment against his considerable debt. When the Devil came to collect his due years later, Jack tricked him by making him climb a tree and then carving a cross underneath, preventing the Devil from climb­ing down. In exchange for removing the cross, the Devil released Jack from his promise and swore never again to claim his soul. “Jack, who had cleverly outsmarted the Devil, considered himself quite bright, but, not as bright as he thought, as he would soon discover. Indeed, when Jack died and his soul arrived at the gates of Heaven, Saint Peter, repulsed by his miserable life and his wicked ways, promptly turned him away, barring him forever from Heaven; and since Jack was also barred, by his own fault, from Hell, he could not hope to enter there either. With no place to go, his soul was driven back into his dead body and he was left to wander the Earth as a living dead. “Upon learning of Jack’s rejection from Heaven, the Devil, spiteful and somewhat embarrassed for having been duped by him, rejoiced and, for good measure, threw a ball of eternal hellfire at him, ravaging his face be­yond repair. Unable to quench the hellfire and ashamed of his disfigure­ment, Jack plucked a pumpkin from his garden, carved it and wore it over his head—just like a lantern containing a flame. “After days of wandering, Jack discovered that, despite his deadness, he hungered; so he drifted from house to house, and from village to village, begging for scraps. For the most part, the villagers were friendly and gen­erous, and their children, not frightened one bit by his lantern-like skull, played with him after he fed. This impressed Jack immensely, ‘for who could befriend a zombie especially one as ugly as me,’ he had thought. “ ‘Perhaps some good can come of this,’ he rejoiced; and, at sunset, gathered the children of the village where he last begged. ‘Your parents are kind to zombies and not afraid at all. We shall therefore take on the guise of zombies, and buzz about the village like bees, asking for lots of apples, lumps of cane sugar and roasted cocoa beans. A grand time this thirty-first day of October—and the eve of the New Year—it shall be, for you, for me and for all those who would partake in our candy fricassee.’ “ ‘Zombies are fascinating I concur but may I dress as a witch instead?’ begged one girl. “ ‘I wish to disguise myself as the Devil,’ insisted a boy, leaving Jack a bit perplexed about that particular costume. “ ‘The likeness of a ghost I prefer,’ added another boy. “ ‘Fine, fine,’ agreed Jack. ‘Bring some garments; I shall trade my gar­dener’s fork and trowel for scissors and needles and fabricate masquerades the likes of which shall stir the hearts and the purse strings of your mothers and fathers.’ “The children’s pilgrimage towards a bellyful was very well received; at evening’s end their bags brimming with treats, heavy indeed. Their parents, in the aftermath of such exuberance from their progenies, heralded Jack of the Lantern, Ambassador of Abundance, and decreed the event the Hallow Eve of the Celtic New Year, the best of […]

Rahan is a French comics series about an intelligent prehistoric man, that appeared first as part of Pif gadget starting in March 1969, then published in albums of 2 to 4 complete stories. It was initially written by Roger Lecureux, and after his death in 1999, by his son, Jean-François Lecureux. Most of the artwork is drawn by André Chéret, as well as some other artists (Enrique Romero, Zam, DeHuescar).     After the destruction of his tribe in a volcano eruption, Rahan moves from land to land and tribe to tribe while spreading goodwill among those-who-walk-on-two-feet, and a powerful ethic of cooperation. With his open altruism often at odds with his powerful will to survive, Rahan’s ethic is encompassed by the qualities represented by the bear-claw necklace he received from his dying adoptive father, Crao: courage, loyalty, generosity, resilience, wisdom.   Also, after he gets married, he receives a sixth claw, the claw of curiosity. That is well deserved, since in every one of the more than 100 stories spread over 30 years and 3300 pages of illustration (as of June 2005), Rahan uses the scientific method to pick up some bit of knowledge from nature and spin it to some useful purpose – for himself, for some human tribe or even to help some animals in distress. He comes up with the catapult, the net, the fishing pole, the lens, diverts water for use in drinking and agriculture, flies on wings of leather, uses concave mirrors to concentrate the rays of the sun to heat caves and fight rampaging animals,…. Every adventure combines the positive social attitude of a true leader with the inventiveness of a true scientist.   All adventures are presented in a rich, realistic and consistent illustration by the masterful hand of the illustrator. The action jumps off the page and fairly comes to life, helping to make the lessons learned that much more memorable to the reader. The drawings are mainly signed by André Chéret. Rahan, the main character of this series is sometimes compared with Tarzan or Conan the Barbarian, though beyond the prehistoric, wild setting there are almost no similarities.   In 1986, Rahan was adapted into an animated series. In 2006 a movie version was to be released, directed by Christophe Gans and starring Mark Dacascos in the title role but it has been postponed.   The black edition of Rahan which is still available for sale at several online stores was edited by Soleil Prod in 1998 and it’s considered the most complete and beautifully crafted edition.

Branding Notions. What is a brand? A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company*. It’s a company’s effort to build lasting value by delighting customers *. * Zag, The 1st strategy of high performance brands by Marty Neumeier   The two bases of branding Branding is not about offering more; it’s about differentiation (being different). Differentiation is the art of standing out from the competition. BEING DIFFERENT. BEING RADICALLY DIFFERENT. Radical differentiation is finding a unique market positioning that becomes part of our identity, that we can defend and that cannot be duplicated.   Branding: the next generation. Here’s the evolution. What’s next? PRODUCTS/COMMODITIES TRADEMARKS BRANDS ??????? The most radical of differentiation lies in a new Brand Paradigm The journey from products to trademarks to brands has had a profound effect on how businesses deal with consumers; and how people deal with businesses.   Each step of the journey has: Turned up the voice of the consumer Added weight to what is most difficult to measure—the intangibles of relationships Pulled emotion closer to the center   Trademarks were a good start. Some have grown into enduring and untouchable icons: The MGM lion that first roared in the 1928 movie White Shadows of the South Seas. The classic Coca-Cola bottle designed in 1915. The letters of IBM. Even Stanley Kubrick couldn’t use the letters for his rogue computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, for some time, clever trademarks have no longer guaranteed successful let alone radical differentiation.   Brands were then developed to create differences for products that were in danger of becoming as hard to tell apart as chunks of gravel. Some brands made it big: Amazon Apple Disney eBay Google Harley-Davidson LEGO Nintendo Pampers Red Cross Swatch Virgin   The Attention Economy that flourished in the 1990s and that has reached epic proportions in the new Millennium has become the greatest challenge for today’s brands. With thousands of TV channels, movies, radio stations, newspapers and magazines; with millions of websites and billions of phone calls, faxes and e-mails, consumer attention is infinitely fragmented. People are overwhelmed by the choices they face. Human attention has become our principal currency.   How do most businesses react to this new reality? They go for the “-er” approach: bigger, brighter, better, stronger, faster, easier, newer—and sadly, cheaper.   How should businesses react—or rather act? They should focus on making consistent, emotional connections with consumers On creating memorable experiences On convincing people to commit for life   Why such a focus? The social fabric has spread more thinly than ever, and people are famished for new emotional connections. People need emotional pull to help them make decisions. People want more ways to connect with everything in their lives—including brands. People are looking for what they can cherish.   People everywhere are wanting to embrace emotion. Emotion has become a legitimate subject for serious research. Emotion dominates the best-seller lists with hundreds of titles (art and emotion, culture and emotion, reason and emotion, etc.) In the business world, emotion is starting to take center stage (emotional branding, emotional markets, emotional capital, etc.) How about emotional intelligence, emotional genius, emotional   Human beings are powered by emotion, not by reason. “The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions.” * Donald Calne, MD, neurologist “The way this works is very subtle. Most of the time, before seeing something in detail, you have a sense of what it is. Before understanding, you feel. And making people feel good about a brand, getting a positive emotion is key. This is what makes all the difference. If they feel good about it, they’ll find a rational reason to buy into it.”* * Maurice Levy, Chairman, Publicis Groupe Paris   Six principal emotions make up most of the volatile mix from which human relationships are formed: LOVE GUILT SHAME PRIDE ENVY JEALOUSY   Which brings us right to Emotion Number One; the most fundamental of them all… LOVE “We love our possessions, our brands. They add meaning to our lives and are not, in our minds, inert objects. We wrap our imaginations around them. We express ourselves through them.”* * Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi “Ah, good ol’ trusty beer. My Love for you will never die.” (Homer Simpson) “I Love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I’ve ever known.” (Walt Disney)   BRANDS need to become LOVEMARKS “Good brands create Trust. Great Brands create Love. Great Brands are Lovemarks Great Brands create commitment and Loyalty beyond reason.” “Being committed and being involved are not the same thing. In a plate of bacon and eggs, the pig is committed, the chicken is just involved.”   BRANDS are: Information Recognized by consumers Generic a Promise of quality Symbolic a Narrative Defined by attributes Professional   LOVEMARKS are: About Relationship Loved by people Personal Touch of sensuality Iconic About creating a story Wrapped in mystery Passionately creative Lovemarks are not owned by businesses. They are owned by the people who love them.   You only get to be a Lovemark when the people who love you tell you so. “If something gets to be a billion-dollar brand, there’s more going on than just a rational attachment. My feeling is that all the billion-dollar brands occupy a very special place in the hearts of consumers. That would make them Lovemarks.” “The idea of moving from a brand to a Lovemark means changing the relationship between the consumer and the brand. This change is from a rational decision to buy a brand to an irrational, passionate decision to be loyal to that brand. And you will find that, as the brand becomes a Lovemark, it will be forgiven for its mistakes.”   Becoming a Lovemark is within your grasp!

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” That’s what Einstein (assuming he put Relativity to good use and succeeded in time-traveling) could have told Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, after being introduced to his daughter, Pythias, which the father was quick to qualify as utterly good. “It’s unfortunate you make no allowance for utter badness,” Einstein could have added. “Your daughter could illuminate your senses and your mind like a fiery town fire, instead of a timid campfire.” Aristotle would not—could not—acknowledge this since the laws of logic he himself established (for the most part) some 2400 years ago, would only allow to be one OR the other. The river of Time has been kind to his laws, but the ice that protects its uninterrupted and unquestioned flow is cracking; and perhaps a sharp knife tipped in objective reality shall make it through. Since the onset of humanity and the rise of a cognitive culture, the birth of Logic was inevitable, evolving into a formal science, dedicated to both the study of modes of reasoning (which are valid and which are fallacious) and the application of valid reasoning. In specialized fields such as mathematics, philosophy, semantics and computers science, and more widely, in our daily lives, the laws of logic are mainly used to distinguish which reasoning is valid and which reasoning is fallacious, such validity being predicated and determined by a reasoning’s logical form, not by its content. That may not be entirely true since, after close inspection, we discover that content as it relates to the nature of things and the individuality of human beings does not readily apply to Aristotelian logic—no matter what the form. For example, the argument: I am truthful OR I am a liar, (connected by the exclusive operator/conjunction OR), is valid in accordance with Aristotelian logic. Conversely, to state that I am truthful AND I am a liar, (connected by the operator/conjunction AND) is a fallacious argument, according to the same logic—the content’s quality, and not the form, invalidating the argument. To claim the reverse would create a paradox— a statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which (if true) defies logic or reason. However, when we superimpose the paradox over factual reality, it ceases to be one. When we examine our life experiences, we cannot deny that we have lied countless times (the reasons for which are irrelevant). And, in our defense, we can also acknowledge that we’ve told the truth myriad times. For all intent, we are all truthful people AND all liars, expertly practiced in both, and not one OR the other. Even the stoical logician Chrysippos’ Liar paradox, which has brought many a thinker to the brink of mental exhaustion, is easily solved by discounting Aristotelian logic. The semantic argument is simply stated and succinct as: “I always lie.” A constant liar could never make such a statement since it would be the truth. A constant truther could never make such a statement since it would be a lie. A sometimes liar/sometimes truther (capable of both truth and lies) could make such a statement—any statement for that matter, whether it is a lie or a truth. The last argument proves a solution does indeed exist. Paradoxes in others fields also bear renewed scrutiny, having been dismissed as anomalous outliers by the long prevailing logic. In mathematics, an infinite series is expressed as: 1 + r + r2 + r3 +…rk + …; where ǀ r ǀ is less than 1 and k tends towards infinity. For some time, mathematicians could only provide an approximate numerical solution to sums of this form, until clever algebraic manipulation succeeded in closing the expression and describing the series in finite form as: 1 —— 1 – r The problem could now be expressed as infinite AND finite. In quantum mechanics, wave–particle duality postulates that all particles exhibit both wave AND particle properties. This duality addresses the inability of classical concepts like “particle” AND “wave” to fully describe the behavior of quantum-scale objects. Grasping for an explanation, some postulate the paradox is as a fundamental property of the Universe, while alternative interpretations explain the duality as an emergent, second-order consequence of various limitations of the observer. The latter diagnosis carries with it monumental significance. It suggests we need only step out of the space-time continuum (moving from being a part of the observation to being a truly independent observer) to discover how the Universe truly works—or at the very least, discover how else it works. It’s not an easy task, having been beaten down, blinded to otherwise obvious factual realities, and put to sleep all our lives by the tyranny of Aristotelian logic.   THE TIRANNY of the ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC: You are either with me OR you are against me. “You seem to be in quite a pickle,” Einstein (still on his time-travel tour) could have told Galileo, an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. “I may have been able to keep you out of the dog house,” Einstein could have then insisted, “using cunning repartee.” Indeed, after alienating astronomers, Jesuits, and the Pope himself with a controversial theory, he was tried by the Inquisition, found “vehemently suspect of heresy”, and forced to recant and spend the rest of his life under house arrest. Galileo favored heliocentrism (the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around a relatively stationary Sun at the center of the Solar System) over geocentrism (the model in which the Earth is at the orbital center of all celestial bodies). He was right of course—but only half-right—as Einstein would have demonstrated using a logic (other than Aristotelian) that rested neither on Physical nor Mathematical constructs, but rather on imagination, proving once again his famous quote that Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. What is irrefutable, as Einstein would clearly state, is that planets revolve around a central […]