For years I believed that finding creativity was like mining for oil. That you had to dig yourself down into a deep, dark hole, and that if you got far enough, and the sweat and the blood and the tears came heavily enough, then your well would come in. It didn’t matter that the rest of your life had become hideously lopsided. That you’d forgotten how to love. Art was a noble aspiration.

The fact that despite ones best efforts the entire world can still deeply and profoundly not give the slightest damn about your creativity was something of an epiphany for me. Taking a good, hard look at where it was flowing from I found the water stagnant, putrefying. I can remember that time so well. Looking around and having no idea what to do, where to go, how to be any different. I remember laughing one day and thinking that I’d made progress because I’d finally realized that I was totally and utterly lost. I actually rejoiced in the absolute certainty of the revelation that, yes, I was a blind man.

I stopped altogether that day. Realizing that I’d been going over my tracks for God knows how long, I stopped walking and just sat and made a pact with Him – that I wasn’t going to move until He told me to. I didn’t even know who I was talking to. I only knew that I didn’t know who I was or where I had to go, and that I could never pretend that I did again.

Life has a funny way of teaching us how to find our deepest creativity by grinding us down, tenderizing us. By showing us what it is to love. This was not lost on me. As I continued to sit I remember my mind ever so slowly beginning to soften, the noise beginning to fade. Industrial garage was initially replaced by Enya. Not exactly what I’d wanted, but it was a start. And so I went on sitting every day until one day POOF, something happened and like a pressure valve releasing a rank, foul air, the mist parted and I was able to look around beyond my art to my life … and survey the neglect. I couldn’t believe all the areas in need of my attention. For the first time I was truly beginning to see. All the cliches were coming true for me.

I began with myself, and for several months it was hard to conceive how cruel I had been for all those years. Forcing myself to work long hours, without any acknowledgment, or affection. Like a repentant slave owner who had used my entire life to serve the most degenerate of my desires, I began to forgive myself, reconnecting slowly at first, and gradually warming over time. We were soon conversing, sharing ideas, joshing. Like a dog I was overjoyed. I held no grudges. Now looking farther afield at the rest of my life and any other areas where I might have denied my creativity, I found people who deep down, and in spite of my behavior, I had loved the most.

It was around this time that my father’s business had begun to decline. His health had taken a turn that effected him in mysterious and troubling ways. He now counted his money anxiously. Recalculated checks over and over and over again. Watching him hand bills over a counter to pay for something I would catch him wince. The exchange had become a torture. Almost all at once he seemed to have lost his impossible buoyancy, his infectious humor, his joy.

One day, during a really bad month, I could tell he was winding up for a nose dive. I tried to ignore it as I had for so many years, but this time I couldn’t. Somehow I found myself there, for the first time, right there as part of the action, implicated by my very awareness of it. I had no idea what to do, but something deep within called me. At breakfast I told him that we were going on a vision quest. As he raised his head from his croissant he gave me a look as if responding to a small child who had just declared that he would now be going to the moon.

We set off to town and went straight to the bank. I told him to take out all the money in his account because it required him to have something he valued. He had 700 euros. I said we would split the cash and go to every store in town, one by one, and ask for change. But I only wanted single euro coins. A bag of gold. Old-school style.

“And when you hand over the money I want you to feel joyful, as if you’re saying goodbye to a friend you’re going to see again shortly. Not with the fear that comes from believing you are parting ways forever.”

He smiled and said he would do it. I watched him go into the first store, playing the role, yes, giving me that.

We did this for almost the entire day and collected over 7000 gold coins. We then drove out to a water hole not far from town with a small cliff overlooking a basin that local kids used to jump into for fun on weekends. As we parked and began to approach it I peeled off and climbed the slope that led to the jumping point. From fifteen meters above I asked if he had given himself to the practice and could now feel the joy and trust of letting go of the money like a friend he would see again soon. He said yes. But as I pressed him he began to grow nervous, wondering where this was all leading and glancing at the surface of the water. I held the bag of coins over the edge and asked him again. His face began to change and he raised his voice and told me not to be stupid, that he had done what I’d asked him, that I didn’t have to waste money just to make a point. “I got it!” he told me. I unzipped the bag and grabbed a large handful of coins… and tossed them into the water. He began shouting at me, threatening me, swearing. I shouted back asking if he trusted. He refused to answer and continued shouting at me to stop. But he couldn’t do anything. The slope that reached up to where I was standing required you to crawl through brush to reach it. He was too far away to do anything. I threw another large handful into the water and he flipped. We were screaming at each other by this time. The more he protested the more I threw. When he began stomping his feet a final shouting match began between us, him telling me to come down and me asking if he could trust in life again. By this time I had thrown in almost half the bag. Finally, and almost abruptly, he stopped, and did something that I’ll never forget. He looked up at me and suddenly started to laugh. I watched him stupidly for a moment. Then suddenly I began to laugh too. For an eternal moment we stared at each other in what honestly felt like a place beyond time and space. A moment that pierced through the deepest layers between us so that we were able to see each other for the first time in a completely new light. Looking up at me, still laughing he said “you’re really crazy!”

With tears in my eyes I nodded, “like father like son.”

He finally took a deep breath, nodded his head and waved me back. “Ok, I trust. Let’s do it.” I crawled down the slope, returned to his side and offered him the bag. He took it, made sure it was tightly closed and then threw it in. We stood by the waters edge and watched as it sunk out of sight.

When we got in the car, he gave a deep exhalation and began driving. At a stop light before the house I reached into my jacket and pulled out a bag identical to the one he had thrown in and placed it in his lap with a sigh of my own. He looked down, unzipped it and saw all the coins in tact. On my way up I’d switched the bag with another filled with pennies that I’d prepared in town. He smiled and chuckled to himself for a moment before continuing on through the small French backroads without a word. The sun was going down by then and the light was golden over the landscape.

Meditation taught me how to love. But as it emerged I found that it required the hand of creativity to shepherd it through the world. Once upon a time I would have never understood it, never imagined, not in my wildest dreams, how much healing could take place if I endlessly gave my creative heart to the moment.

We met at a private club for lunch in midtown. One of those old boy establishments with the innocuous entrance that leads directly into a frescoed ballroom. The sort of place where the staff adore you if you speak to them like human beings because all the usual members treat them with such distain. With all the studded leatherwork and dusty portraits the energy in the place was flat. But when we sat down and I asked her how she came to know of the NWO her words were charged.

Like most people I wasn’t born knowing about the NWO. It was my interview work with people like Gadhafi and Saddam that led me to it. Unlike other journalists she had real access to world leaders. She could meet with them in private, casual surroundings. She had no one to report to. No stance to uphold. From there it was easy to see how the truth was manipulated by the media depending on who you were and what you were hearing. She said the key to controlling people was to do so without their knowledge. But I knew this. Goethe had said it. Then again I don’t think even he could have imagined how scientific the process had become. We exchanged topical observations of information that once released made it simply impossible for people to avoid reacting in very, very specific ways. It was not that people were stupid. On the contrary, they were logical. But that was the rub. Because nothing is as predictable as logic. And so nothing is more easily controlled. What do you think all the great government advisors have been specialists at? She smiled at me. Behavioral psychology.

I thought of the last century’s heavy hitters, the Henry Kissingers, the Zbigniew Brzezinskis, even the authors of the Report From Iron Mountain, who had all taken psychoanalytical theory to levels far greater than the individual. As a Globalist one had to think with the mind of an Edward Bernays – who took his uncle Freuds understanding of unconscious drives and extrapolated them to use within the collective. He didn’t see people as hearts that beat to unique rhythms but as cold robotic groups that habitually reacted to the same specific stimuli. To succeed in mass manipulation one was required to have a surgical understanding of the emotional drives of these groups and the triggers that spurned them into action. It didn’t matter whether they reacted to religious fervor, intellectual freedom, love, justice, prestige, security, anarchy or enlightenment. To the NWO no belief or drive was unworkable because it was not the belief or drive that mattered but the fact that we had them.

As we sat and spoke a part of me drifted into a reverie about this. It was a curious thought. That even I, who struggled for free will daily against my primordial hard wiring was still controlled in the same manner. Because the desire to escape pre-conditioning and the stimuli that triggers it is still an operating system. Yes, I too could be predicted to act in very specific ways. I would choose the truth over lie, harmony over discord. If pushed anothers life over my own. Yes, I too was predictable. I too was attached. Even if it was to non-attachment. And so where did it end? Where would I have to place myself in the cosmos to be so smooth that nothing would ever be able to catch on my coat tails? As she spoke my mouth dropped open. For a moment I was stunned. Awe struck at the task before me. This was Tao Te Ching territory. Beyond belief, honesty, morality, even light and love. Was to be truly free, to exist beyond everything?

Why do we speak. We speak because we need to manage our lives. But when we’re not managing our lives we still speak. Day after day, night after night, we jabber on and on and on. 

There is no such thing as just talking. Casual conversation is a euphemism, an excuse for what is really taking place. We do not speak because we need to. We speak because we are nervous, because we are anxious, because we are incapable of remaining silent. When we are calm we speak less. When we are sure of who we are, of what our purpose is, we don’t even speak at all – we act, we watch, we listen, sometimes we even smile. What is talking? It is a condition of the neurotic. They are directly proportionate.

The act of conversation is a self-consuming one. One forgets oneself in the flow of words. One is in love with the sound of one’s own voice. Just as in war and sex, one is so caught up in the act that one’s self is momentarily forgotten, and with it, the neuroses attached to it. There is also the interlocutor, the other, to whom our ego is completely dependent upon for existence. When we speak we are not saying I am funny, I am interesting, I am deserving of sympathy. We are saying Am I funny? Am I interesting? Am I deserving of sympathy? Though we may come to believe that we possess these attributes, we are constantly asking to be reassured of them. We are unable to remain certain on our own. We have to be given permission. We have to be congratulated, admired, provoked. We have to be told I love you, to believe it.

Lovers who speak incessantly are not necessarily deepening their bond by discovering more of each other but simply reassuring one another of their own self-worth. The words themselves mean nothing. One couple will talk of art, literature, science. Another of television, movies, magazines, other couples. There exists an established strategy in which we seek positive affirmation from our interlocutor that begins in childhood with a parent who smiles and makes faces believing it to be for the pleasure of the child alone. But in the gesture is hidden the question. Because if there was certainty there would be no question, there would only be action. And so the problem remains. And soon the child’s own dependence on the question is in turn created too. Growing up they inherit the same insecurity, looking for assurances in everyone but themselves.

Why are we so reliant on the other? Because our culture is Other orientated. We do not know how to manufacture personal happiness alone. We only know how to work for others to give it to us. What else are the ambitious, the creators of the world, the writers, musicians, architects, scientists and inventors other than those who are either burdened with a greater need for assurance or a greater ability to provoke assurance. Their work is the same as others except that it is more concentrated. They will go for long periods without any assurance at all in exchange for the hope of a great amount of assurance all at once. The creator produces for himself an independent satellite that flows around him and alleviates the need for him to actively seek out assurances one at a time like a foot soldier. The creator is a general who creates an army that now works for him while he sleeps. He need not lift a finger.

When we speak with our friends we are so often entering into a mutually beneficial agreement of self-serving satisfaction. Calling them at the end of the day we take turns to whine, unload our sorrows and exchange our pent up energy simply because we have not been provided with an alternative. We still do not know what to do with it. We have no idea how to transmute it. We only know how to redistribute it, thin it out, either all at once to a parent or lover, or bit by bit to one friend and then another, taking extra care not to exhaust the saturation levels of each. The archaic energy flow of the family unit. The spreading out of a single problem to every member available.

But this does not make psychological problems easier to solve. It enables them and gives them more fuel to thrive. Unless a problem needs physical labour, more people will only compound it. Why do we spread it from one member to another? Because we have been conditioned to avoid opportunities to grow psychologically at every turn. Yes, we are weak, and we cling to it.

The next evolutionary step in human communication is telepathy. For many it is already a reality. But before it becomes widespread the understanding that we are saying nothing will slowly and naturally become the norm. Like bad breath a certain impotence will become associated with verbosity. When the eyes of the other begin to stalk us, our blabbering will drop off entirely. From shame a truer communication will emerge. And thus, by definition, a sparser one.

You wake up and whisper sweet nothings to your wife. She smiles at you and you get it. You kiss your baby good morning, he smiles, gurgles and you get it. You say hello to your secretary at work and a clever phrase to your boss. Again, you get it. Then at lunch you go out and the man at the sandwich counter gets your order wrong. When you tell him your ego is subtly triggered by the micro sensation of superiority because you have been given an opportunity to correct him justifiably. But because you exert yourself sensitively, generously you save his face and he is suddenly in your debt entirely. Handing over your sandwich he nods gratefully. Your victory over him is total.

We have become technicians at camouflaging our demands for assurance. Most go directly but the more perceptive use inverted snobbery. Too wary of the game they simply go the other way. But the need is the same. With more perception one is simply assured less easily. But it’s a game that one plays alone. Manic depressives are simply inconsolable because their minds are too knowledgeable. They arrive at Tolstoy’s conclusion. Everything is pointless. But then they have also reached a threshold. And with a little push they too like the old man may come to find God. And where? Oh yes ho ho – inside. 

Wait for assurances and you will wait forever. But provide them to yourself all unconditionally and you will create a state of mind that is beyond games altogether. Then you will have become your own provider and in turn you will have blended with the creator. Then you won’t need anything from anyone ever again. And for the very first time, you will actually be able to give.

I can boil an egg without using a timer. I don’t count the minutes. I don’t watch the clock. I just know. I can also stop muscle spasms. Like that one that happens underneath the eye. I can just say stop and it stops. I was doing it about an hour ago and it worked then too. We all have deep, magical powers. The only question is how long we decide to deny them.

The other day I met two men who’ve done away with denial altogether. Next to them my egg magic was nothing but a stunt. A crowd pleaser. Something fancy but ultimately showing little mastery. Because Leonard Orr and Dr. Gerry Epstein are men who teach physical immortality. Men who state quite categorically that our current general rate of aging is simply a product of our conditioning, and nothing else.

Orr must be in his early eighties but he was still tanned and limber. He had this nice glow to him and a story telling style that appealed to all the ladies. He leaned into the crowd, caressed them with zingers, and dropped names like Babaji and Moses. He began his talk by telling us how he’d been a Christian, then a born again Christian and then a trouble maker. He spent his youth asking questions in Church like how did all the men in the bible live into their hundreds? Why does John 3:16 say that the gift of eternal life can be ours? And how did Enoch, Melchizedek and Elijah all attain immortality? In total sincerity he kept asking the Bishops what the hell was going on. But even in their cassocks, they didn’t know.

So he traveled to India where he sought out anyone who had lived for over 300 years; the required chops for anyone claiming mastery over the physical. He said he found seven and then proceeded to tell us about each in detail. What they ate, how they lived, what their practices were. By this time the energy in the room was electric. People were sweating, women were hyperventilating. This was no miracle cream. None of us could keep still. And we all knew what was taking place. Leonard was attempting to shift mankind’s single greatest paradigm – that death is inevitable – on a Tuesday evening from between 7 and 9 at the Om Centre on West 59th street. It was ballsy. 

But Leonard’s not new to controversy. He was pulling in crowds back in the 60s when he first started speaking about abundance management skills and how to set your emotional state to receive. And that was even before he’d invented rebirthing – a way of overcoming the trauma of being born by re-inducing the experience with prolonged underwater hyperventilation so that memories stored in the body can be brought to the surface and released. The concept is in line with most disciplines in which we draw ourselves into a state that we want nothing more than to escape. Because then if at that very moment we remain in it, a tremendous transformation can be achieved in a short space of time. Like an acceleration of the evolutionary process. Leonard calls these thresholds Urgency Barriers.

Epstein came from a different school altogether but was essentially of the same mind. An MD who teaches visualization and meditation, Epstein runs the Institute for Mental Imagery and is along time health practitioner who refers to doctors as quacks. I liked him. He wasn’t confined by conventional medicine but used it to confirm alternative forms of healing scientifically.

What is the greatest cause of premature aging? Epstein said that it was the perpetual instigation of the False Emergency State. Not to be confused with Urgency Barriers a False Emergency State is any instance in which we allow ourselves to enter into a state of fear, stress or anxiety that is not justified. Unless someone has a gun to your head you have no reason to get stressed. And why would you want to? Releasing chemicals from the endocrine system, the pituitary glad, the adrenals and countless others that will need to be broken down by an entirely different set of chemicals if you don’t immediately run a mile or fight your way out of crowd is the fastest way to die. Stop taxing your body as if it’s life and death every time your lover leaves the knife in the jam or your mother gives you a guilt trip for not calling her. You want to know what causes a system to break down? Undue stress.

Epstein’s advice was self-control. Stress inducing situations are like the weather – they’re going to keep doing what they’ve been doing for thousands of years whether you like it or not. So you have to ask yourself – how is it that after all these years I still haven’t learned to control my triggers? He indicated to the woman who’d asked the question. What are you? 60?

This, they both agreed, was the first stage of physical immortality. Next to that stage two was easy – feeling the energy body. Another one of the many aspects that we’ve pushed out of conscious range because of the noise, din, and sheer racket of daily life. Feeling the energy body is like attempting to feel the movement of fluid in the space between your skull and your brain if that space went all the way down to your toes. And usually, along with meditation it’s exactly where the cynic stops. Right at the moment where they could have all the proof they need. Because for proof you just have to sit and feel it. But no cynic ever sat for a serious amount of time attempting to feel the energy body because  any of them that did, were converted.

Don’t try to escape it – unless your parents are immortal, you have inherited a death urge. Orr spoke of the four foods of an immortal; Fire, Air, Water, and Ether. You have to sleep near a fire he said because it cleanses the auric field. You have to drink and bathe in water filtered of all heavy metals because it cleanses the physical. Air he went on and on about. He even laughed and said that since he’d walked in the room he hadn’t noticed a single one of us breathing deeply. Shallow breath is a symptom of stuck energy. One of the classic mechanisms of suppression. Breathe deeply and you stop fidgeting, you stop the elegant habit of eating the inside of your mouth and, yes, you have better sex.

They both spoke about breath for the rest of the night. The consensus was unanimous. Breath controls your state, your centre, even your health. When asked what life was Gurdjieff said breath, and if you watch a clock long enough and connect your inhalation with your exhalation like babies you can slow down time. Orr finished by saying that if there was one thing that all the great immortalists agreed on, it was that breath was the key to life. Then again what advice did the oldest immortal that I ever met give me? – Stay away from humans.

He said that the public was about 40 years behind the truth. When I asked him about what in particular he laughed. Advanced weapons systems, propulsion, bionics, genetics, T&D, APA, A&P. He went on and on. I nodded my head and made a face like I knew exactly what he was talking about.

The extra terrestrial question came up soon after that. He mentioned John Podesta being appointed head of the Obama transition team. A man who’s twice publicly called for ET disclosure who you can even see on You Tube doing it at the National Press Club in 2002. The fact that he’s Clintons former chief of staff and clearly a real human being makes the clip that much more surprising. You rub your eyes just to make sure you’re not dreaming. Apparently he was primed to go through with the whole thing when the Lewinsky scandal blew up and Tony Robbins was called in.

People are preparing for disclosure all over the world, he said. Any number of governments could go public and in a way the Vatican already has. He described their chief astronomer Gabriel Funes announcing that aliens are our friends with a so-so Italian accent. I fake laughed and agreed that it could only have been a preemptive strike so as not to look foolish if and when something did happen. And really there’s no other reason the Church would suddenly decide to announce that believing in aliens does not contradict faith in God other than to prevent people turning their back on Him when they realize we’re not the only ones made in His image, or the first.

He also told me that the timing of the British government declassification of their UFO files in May was no coincidence. The possibility has never been closer, he said. But that in his opinion it would still never happen. I asked him what he meant. He said that the government has never freely admitted to lying. And they never would. You open up the ET case and you have to revise religion, dependency on fossil fuel, and the economy, all in one foul swoop. Everything would be turned on its head. He made the hand sign for traveling in basketball. And that’s not to mention the psychological trauma. I mean people are still having trouble acclimatising to gay marriage and abortion. How do you expect them to handle genetic manipulation and abduction?