The Layman's Answers to Everything

The meaning of life according to some guy who likes TV and stuff.

On the evening of October 6th, 2009, I awoke from a deep sleep with the sensation that there was a bright light shining on me from behind my head. Not only could I see this light, I could feel it and I soon became very hot. It felt almost as though the light were cooking me, but I didn’t want to move—or maybe, I couldn’t move. Eventually, the light faded and I fell back to sleep. So, what was it? Was it all in my mind? Was I getting some kind of program download or vibration upgrade? Was it a celestial connection? An angel communication? An alien probe? I wasn’t sure, but my forehead was very red the next morning and soon began peeling as though I’d gotten a sunburn. But this was October, and I hadn’t been out in sun for any length of time. Completely baffled, I decided to seek the help of my trusty mentor and longest childhood friend…television.

While the TV show Lost has now concluded, its 121 episodes provide a cornucopia of wisdom that can continually be referenced for insight into just about any mystery of our world. Since the show dealt with ancient mythological themes, the writers themselves probably don’t even realize the extent of wisdom embedded within its weekly episodes. Most likely, the writers subconsciously channeled that wisdom and then pieced it all together with a story that could help reveal it. This is what all media myth-writers, or modern-day shamans as I like to call them, do.

The whole “cooking light” I experienced reminds me of something the Lost characters went through during last year’s season five while the island was skipping through time. Whenever the island jumped, it was preceded by a bright flash of blinding light. Afterwards, the time-traveling characters experienced a series of side-effects ranging from dizziness and bloody noses, to fainting and even death. What caused the time jumps to occur? A release of concentrated energy mixed with water as we eventually came to learn. On the show, this energy was described as the energy of life, and symbolically speaking, water is often thought of as relating to love or emotion. Put it together, and the message seems to be that when you combine an increase in energy (raising the soul’s vibration) with selfless acts of love (reducing the ego), it is possible to transcend time and space (overcoming the physical limitations of our world).

If this sounds a bit hard to imagine, just think of a light bulb. Energy enters the bulb where its very thin internal filament resists the charge, resulting in light. Similarly, when we receive energy, but instead of selfishly absorbing it share it with others, we feel light ourselves. With enough energy and a small enough ego, we too may be able to escape the confines of this material world and possibly even its dimension of time like light. In fact, our world may be heading in this direction whether we are ready for it or not.

On Lost, another side effect the characters experienced from the island’s intense energy was jumps in their conscious minds to earlier times of their lives. While this all seems to be the stuff of science fiction, quantum physics does seem to indicate that what we experience as time, may in fact be an illusion. And as many spiritual practices seem to indicate, that illusion may be coming to an end. This uncovering or revealing of the world that exists beyond the illusion is what is known as an apocalypse.

While the thought of the apocalypse often brings to mind Biblical images of cataclysms and final battles between good and evil, it’s really just about us growing up, and leaving behind those parts of this world that no longer serve us. Since we’ve grown accustomed to many of these things, leaving them behind can be painful at first. For example, most of us on this planet would like to leave behind fossil fuels. So, we have created a reality where that is beginning to happen. The disastrous oil spill in the gulf is a result of the collective intention. For when we are not proactive enough to make change, often times a major disaster has to push us that way. In fact, all the images of disasters and war from the Bible can really just be seen as a reaction to change, and can all be avoided. We just have to set our minds to being more flexible while acting proactively towards our hearts’ highest desire. Judging from the precedent humans have set so far however, this outcome is admittedly not likely to happen.

The world is changing whether we like it or not. Those who choose to go through it kicking and screaming will only make the transition harder. I think the key is to base your happiness on what you are, rather than what you have. The more material possessions you need to be happy, the more vulnerable you are to problems should anything ever happen to them. Those who have an inner-peace and can just be happy in any situation are in the best position for whatever is to come. Unfortunately though, most of us are not there yet, but I think the universe is trying to help.

When we are given challenges, while it seems that the universe may be out to get us, in truth, it may have our best interests at heart. By giving us challenges to increase our spirit and reduce our ego, it may just be bringing us closer to the world that’s to come—a world that vibrates at a higher frequency and less physicality. Of course, these challenges can be painful. Remember puberty? Remember any of the intense challenges you went through going through life? While it sure sucked going through them, most of the time you were better off for the experience. In fact, the more challenges you have been able to overcome in your life, the less there are that can take you out now. The easier the life you’ve had, the harder time you’ll have dealing with future challenges.

At a comedy show I was at a couple weeks ago, one of the comedians was talking about all the movie stars who are trying to save the world. The reason they are all trying to save the world, he claimed, was because they have so much to lose if anything were to happen to it. Their lives are so great, they’ll do whatever they can to keep it that way, and that means rallying the people of this planet together to save it. The comedian admitted that he’d actually had a pretty rough life, so he really didn’t care that much about the end of the world because he didn’t have much to lose. So when that day arrives and all the Hollywood stars are panicking and crying hysterically as the world falls apart around them, the comedian said he’d just look around, shrug his shoulders and say, “Eh, feels like Tuesday,” and go back to whatever he was doing.  While obviously a joke, there’s definitely some truth in the message.

The truth is that it takes pressure to grow. Just as pressure on coal creates a diamond, so too does pressure that’s put on us create something just as indestructible—our spirit. In fact, this could very well be how evolution occurs. While Darwin may have assumed that mutations occur purely by accident, perhaps, there are no accidents (there’s that Lost wisdom again). Perhaps mutations arise as we need them and then natural selection favors those who have them—natural selection in the form of natural disasters, climate change, or war.

If you look close enough at the Bible, it’s all in there. Evolution, natural selection, everything I just wrote about. It’s just that you have to read between the lines. I believe the story of Noah’s Ark is indicating this exact principle. So you got this guy, Noah, who is the only one who acts in accordance with God in his community. He is so close to God, he is able to hear Him when He speaks. God tells Noah to build an ark to survive a flood. The ark could represent the ark of the covenant between God and man—the agreement to act in an enlightened way. Noah built his life around these principles, and the idea is that by following them, you too will grow and be able to adapt to the changes of the world. God then tells Noah to take two of every animal up on his ark to also be saved. The meaning here could be that this principle relates to all living creatures. As they learn to grow themselves and increase their souls’ vibration, so too will they be able to change their genetic makeup and evolve. Then, the rains come—a catastrophe that eliminates all those who hadn’t evolved. The lower beings are lost along with their genetic makeup. The higher beings however, residing within the ark of the covenant, are saved to be fruitful and multiply. They soon begin spreading their evolved genes to the new world. A world washed clean of the old ways and ready for the new…a world like the one that may soon be approaching.

The lesson is that by having the power to separate ourselves from those who are just living life for selfish purposes, we grow into people who can handle change and survive it. This is what leads to evolution. Right now, there are people on this planet who are slightly more evolved than others. Only, it’s probably going to take some major event to see who those people are. Well, what if you’re on the boarder, or just shy of the change needed to survive in this world to come? Perhaps that’s where these spiritual upgrades come in—to act as a booster to help those on the verge of growing. While this is certainly possible, it’s more likely that the upgrades only happen for those who’ve grown completely on their own. They may simply be downloads of universal energy, filling up those who have been able to make a space for them. When you reduce your ego—your physical presence—you leave room for higher energy that can take its place. And just like most higher energy, this kind just might cause mutations—mutations your body needs to survive whatever’s headed our way.

I may never know what that light was that I experienced that night, and maybe my red forehead was completely unrelated, but it was certainly strange. On Lost when the characters experienced a high dosage of the light energy, they got bloody noses and dizzy spells. Around the time of this light download, I was also getting dizzy spells. Maybe it was allergies or maybe it was something more. And it’s definitely not just been me. There are all kinds of symptoms I’d been hearing about from people lately that seem to becoming more and more prevalent. Dizziness, anxiety, depression, swollen feet or legs, aching joints, night sweats, insomnia—over the last five years or so, I’ve heard more and more people complaining about having these issues, especially insomnia (about six girls I’d dated in a row had told me they were suffering with it). While this could all be the result of our increasingly stressful world, perhaps it is something more—something more along the lines of spiritual growing pains.

Spiritual growing pains, or ascension symptoms as they’re more commonly known, are the side effects we feel as we stretch ourselves to keep up with a spiritually evolving world. All around us, our world is changing to shed the aspects that no longer fit within its higher vibrating energy. Greed, selfishness, and the dependence on material pleasures for happiness do not fit with a more evolved world. So, the big banks failed and the world economy has suffered along with them. The upside of this worldwide shakeup is that it’s giving us a chance to pause from our race for riches and reflect on the experiences that can bring us true happiness—creating, sharing, and loving. This isn’t to say that wealth itself is bad, just the opposite. When used to help advance these causes, and not just superficial selfish pleasures, it can help make us truly wealthy.

As mentioned earlier, our dependence on fossil fuels also does not fit in our new world to come—a world where we will be able to harness energy without harming our environment. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred to quicken this reality, demonstrating the consequences of us not moving fast enough towards this goal when it has been within our reach for decades. While unfortunate, avoidance of immediate pain brings about action much quicker that the possibility of pleasure in the future. All of the hardships we are facing now are a result of us not doing enough when we had the chance. Now, we must act must quicker to make the changes that we could’ve spent years easing in to. Because of this, we now have a lot of growing to do in a much shorter period of time, and most of us are feeling it.

It makes sense really. If the world is changing, then in order to be here, we need to change with it. When we start to lag behind, we get pushed, and our bodies feel the strain. Even those of us who are proactive and flexible may be feeling symptoms of these changes because they seem to be happening so fast these days. Besides the world now pushing us to grow, we also are dealing with the speed at which challenges seem to be coming at us these days. Why does everything seem to be going so much faster? Once again, we can look to Lost.

In Lost, physicist Daniel Faraday describes time like a record. While he was using the analogy to describe skipping time, it works in another way too. Like a record, time can move at one speed, but imagine that on this record there are lines going from the edge to the center, like slices of a pizza. As the needle on the record gets closer to the center, it would hit each line quicker and quicker. Now imagine each line represents a different theme in history. Let’s say one of the lines represents the theme of arrogance and the consequences that follow. When the needle of our record hit this theme in Biblical times (closer to the edge of the record), it resulted in the story of the Tower of Babel. Man tried to reach God and in doing so, his tower toppled. Later we had the unsinkable ship—the Titanic, which sunk. By this time we were getting closer to the center of the record. Then 9/11 happened in 2001—the fall of twin towers that represented the epitome of commerce and materialism. Just seven years later, the banks that were too big to fail, failed. Now, just two years later the oil industry that was too advanced to screw up, screwed up, causing one of the greatest manmade ecological disasters in history. The themes are happening quicker and quicker because we are getting closer to the center of the record where the lines begin to converge. And once we hit the center, everything will happen at once. Just a heads up.

Now, not everything that will happen is bad, it’s just bursts of new energy to be played out as our minds dictate. But with so much higher consciousness energy happening in shorter and shorter bursts, it’s no wonder that we are feeling the symptoms. At the very least, our bodies are getting huge doses of this higher energy faster than they can adapt to them, and the strain is wreaking havoc on us. For the record (pun intention undisclosed), I’m not the only one who’s claiming that the rapidly increasing energy of our world is responsible, at least in part, in our ever-increasing symptoms. I’ve read other viewpoints that share this belief. While that doesn’t make it true, it at least shows that others have reached the same conclusions, often from completely different starting points.

So, is your head buzzing? Brain tingling? Eye twitching? Can’t sleep? Can’t breathe? Can’t think? Either you’re in love, or it just might be spiritual growing pains (or both.) Spiritual growing pains cannot be cured with prescription drugs, despite their skyrocketing surge in popularity. Without making any real changes in your actions, these drugs will only cover up your symptoms instead of curing them. Of course, since symptoms may be an indication of other problems, you should seek medical attention when necessary, but if no other serious issue can be found, take comfort in knowing that there is still hope.

The best prescription for spiritual growing pains is to get out of your comfort zone, challenge yourself, share with someone less fortunate, and perhaps most importantly, do all of these from your heart, not your ego. In short, give your soul a workout! While your symptoms may initially get worse as you stretch your spiritual muscles, they should eventually lessen as those muscles grow strong enough to handle the changes of our new world. This is the secret big pharma doesn’t want you to know! They want you to spend money on the quick fix, but your body is usually the best pharmacy for spiritual growing pains! Let it heal itself.

It all begins with letting go of your old habits and beliefs that no longer serve you. Once you do, you’ll be making room for the light, which will be able to work its magic in the form of energy upgrades. Each upgrade consists of higher-vibrating energy that resonates with your own, helping you to adapt to our higher-energy world. Chances are, your upgrade experience will be different than the last one I went through. Still, you might want to put some moisturizer with SPF on your face before going to bed at night, just in case.

May your inner spark grow to light your way,

Marc

2010: THE YEAR WE MAKE CONTACT
The long-awaited orowriter.com website and The Layman’s Answers to Everything blog are now up and running! My hope is that they will allow all of us to benefit from each other’s wisdom with posted comments and exchanged ideas. For updates on new columns, videos, interviews, and more, join The Myth of Lost Facebook page or follow me on Twitter!

New Friends:
If you aren’t familiar with my books, here’s a brief synopsis:

The Layman’s Answers To Everything is a spiritual comedy (or spiromedy) about an unlucky guy who believes he’s meant to do something amazing, but has no idea what it is. After experiencing many challenges and meeting a bizarre cast of characters, he stumbles upon secret messages hidden in TV, movies, and music that are aimed at guiding humanity. Using these messages, he starts a new religion that changes his life, and ultimately, the world. This is so much more than just a story though, because throughout the journey, we learn how to discover and fulfill our own destiny using the clues of the universe that are all around us.

I truly feel this book is going to make a real impact on the world, and set into motion a spiritual domino effect that’ll help change it for the better. And judging from the way the world is heading, I’m thinking that changing the way we’re heading would be a good thing, no? If you don’t agree, or would just prefer not to get any further emails from me, just let me know, and I’ll take you off the list—no hard feelings. Of course, I can’t promise that my book won’t track you down and find you anyway, but you have a while yet to worry about that.

The Lost book is called, The Myth of Lost: Solving the Mysteries and Understanding the Wisdom. It not only reveals a solution that explains all the mysteries of the show, it also explains how the show’s wisdom can be applied to our real lives.