The Layman's Answers to Everything

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

There is certainly no shortage of theories about what may or may not happen on December 21. Of course, nearly all of them will turn out to be wrong. My experience has shown however, that there is one thing you can do that will likely be beneficial regardless of what’s in store for us: think positive.

Let me guess, you don’t have time to read this right now, do you? Yes, the holiday season is always busy and yes time seems to go faster as you get older but doesn’t life seem to be moving at an even more frantic pace than usual lately? I know I’m feeling it. But I’ve been expecting this time crunch for a while now, so it may be a bit easier for me to deal with. Since I tend to be pretty sensitive about this stuff, what I wasn’t sure about was whether others would be able to pick up on it too. In the last few weeks however, I’ve heard at least fifteen different people exclaim in near shock about how fast time’s been going lately. And this without my even bringing it up! So, what’s going on? Can time really be going faster? If so, how much faster can it go before we can no longer keep up? And what then? Are we literally running out of time?

The ancient world has left us with lots of mysteries that have been baffling mankind for millennia. Mysteries like the Great Pyramid of Giza, Stonehenge, the Crystal Skulls, the Nazca Lines, and many more. In addition, our history is filled with unanswered questions about who we are, what inspired the stories of our gods, what all this extra DNA is doing in our genes, and so on. What if I told you that all of these seemingly unrelated mysteries all share the exact same explanation—and that this explanation will completely change life on earth as we know it?  Oh, and the epiphany for this explanation hit me while I was watching a horror movie that came out earlier this year. This movie’s tagline was, “You think you know the story. Think again.” The same can be said of this edition of “Answers to Everything.”

Have you been feeling a bit dizzy lately? Does time feel like it’s been flying by faster than ever? Experiencing ringing in your ears? Seeing flashes of light or fleeting glimpses of things that aren’t there? If you’re not head-over heels in love, pregnant, or smokin’ da ganja, you may be going through what’s known as ascension symptoms. What are they, why are they happening, what do they mean, and will they ever go away? If you’d like answers to questions like these, the latest installment of Layman just might be the prescription you’ve been looking for.

Have you seen them? They’re everywhere: in movies and TV shows, on ads and product packaging, in architecture, design, floor patterns, the Olympics, online, and even on the paper wrapped around hero sandwiches. They are honeycombs and hexagons, and they are taking over. Sure, design styles come and go, but why has this one seemed to have popped up so suddenly, become so incredibly prolific, and been so invisible to so many? Of course, now that you’re in the know, you’ll begin seeing them too (if you haven’t already). The question is why are they here, what do they mean, and why should you care?

Disney taught us that, “when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.” Unfortunately, if your dream is to have both of your parents live to see you succeed, you’re sheer out of luck. In fact, of Disney’s forty full-length animated features from 1937 until 2000, I know of only one where the protagonist’s parents remain alive for the entire film.* Then there’s the fact that just about every super-powered hero is an orphan. If this isn’t bad enough, one or both of the hero’s adoptive parents often dies too! Superman lost his adoptive dad, Spider-Man lost his uncle, and Luke Skywalker lost both his aunt and uncle. With the Amazing Spider-Man movie set for release this summer, and that movie actually exploring the mysterious back-story about Peter Parker’s real parents, I thought it would be a good time to delve into the topic of why so many of our heroes—both super and animated—are orphans, and what the message means for all of us.

Anyone who travels within spiritual circles has probably heard about “vibrations.” The context is usually that someone with a higher vibration is somehow more spiritual or that the goal of the individual is to raise his or her vibration. But what does this really mean? Is it all just spiritual mumbo jumbo or is there actually a science behind vibrations? As you probably figured out from the title of this article, I believe that there is absolutely a science to this spiritual concept. And I believe I can prove it.

If you’ve ever wondered why we are here, this article is for you. If you’ve never wondered, some part of you has been wondering without your knowledge or else you wouldn’t be reading this now. There’s been a lot written about what life is and what we’re doing here. Some of it is very technical and philosophical. Some of it is very metaphorical and poetic. And then there is the actual answer, which we may never know. However, one truth I’ve noticed about this world is that cycles exist within cycles within cycles. Electrons swirling around a neutron are similar to our planets swirling around the sun. The shape of a leaf is indicative of the shape of the tree it came from. History repeats itself. Myths evolve over time but their basic elements all remain the same. Putting these truths together I was able to trace back to the origins of the first story and, to my shock and awe, uncovered an answer to a question I’ve been wondering for a very long time: why did the universe evolve to become so seemingly complicated? The answer, ironically enough, is incredibly simple.

In a New York Press article from August, 2011, film producer and director Tommy Pallotta, said, “I am a fan of audience participation, but I also think audiences like to be told a story. There’s this thing video game designers call a ‘golden path’—there’s a definite way that the majority of people are going to experience the game, and the designers plot that. A lot of the interactivity in a video game is really just the illusion of interactivity. It’s about engaging the audience and giving at least the feeling of volition. But as the artist you have the sense that you are, in some way, controlling it, blending the craft of storytelling with the illusion of agency.” In other words, in a game you think you are controlling the action, but really it’s already been pre-programmed. Kind of like what we think of as destiny. In fact, maybe that’s exactly what destiny is: the path we are meant to take in order to have the most fulfilling experience.

By now you have no doubt heard that according to astronomers and anthropologists, December 21, 2012 correlates to the “end” of the Mayan calendar. And, despite having repeatedly heard about this for many, many years now, it is also very probable that you still have no idea exactly what this means. The reason is because it’s very complicated. To even begin to understand it you need to look to the Mayan myths of the Sacred Tree and understand their incredibly complex Long Count calendar of tuns, k’atuns, and b’aktuns as well as their concepts of the Great Cycle, the Great Great Cycle, and cycles within cycles. You’d also need to understand astronomical occurrences involving the precession of the equinoxes and the conjunction of the sun at the intersection of the plane of the ecliptic and the Milky Way. You can do all that, or, you can simply read my interpretation of this summer’s Green Lantern movie, which shares the same message as the Mayan mythology.