Tag: Presence

Film Journey & The Alt Unity

On Setting the Intention to Exercise Your Free Will

Grand Providentia United

Gathering Awareness – Entry #13

If we’ve already perceived that our personal will power is truly free, and in the light of that perception we’ve made a conscious decision to accept its guidance in the directing of our daily affairs, then why does it seem like such a drain of energy when we practice the use of this so-called free will? In my limited understanding of the concept of free will, I intuit that the majority of the resistance we encounter while exercising it, is arising from within ourselves. We’ve been conditioned in one way or another, to believe that being willful is somehow wrong. Many of us have been institutionalized by authoritarian systems of government who, in an effort to gain power over our freedom of will, have taught us that any expression of personal willfulness is indicative of a character defect which they’ve categorized as “nonconformity”, and they’ve placed this defect beneath the broader category of “undesirable selfish behaviors”. Quite a few of the world’s organized religions teach that our free will should be, at the very least, sublimated to the will of God, and at best, completely forsaken for fear of following your will into eternal damnation. For those who’ve adopted these theological doctrines to motivate the curtailing of their own free will, I would ask – Why would an omnipotent God create human beings with the capacity to express personal willfulness, if there was never any intention to let them practice it, freely? Surely, a benevolent Creator would have had your greatest earthly potential in mind. The God of my understanding apparently takes great pleasure in my individual expression of free will. Otherwise, why would I feel such incredible joy when I practice the art of personal willful expression? My will must be free!

“Serpent Sublime” Copperhead photo taken in Blue Ridge, GA.

The Snake, the Frog and the Freedom of Will

Whenever I’m experiencing an emotional hardship or spiritual tribulation, I feel the urge to take a walk outside. I’ve learned that a long walk alone in the woods is usually more healing to my soul than any other activity that I could choose to engage in. Nature, it seems, can absorb and transmute my human suffering, then reflect it back to me in the form of a natural panacea for whatever is currently troubling me. And so, when I am in pain, I immediately feel the need to take a walk.

On one such occasion, I was walking along a path at the De Soto National Memorial in Bradenton, Florida. On this particularly beautiful, blue-sky, sunny-day, I remember being deeply absorbed in my own troubled thoughts. My marriage of twenty-plus years appeared to be coming apart at the seams, and the pain of it was, I had no idea how to sew it back together. But walking wasn’t working, and thinking was working less than walking, so I was becoming more miserable by the step. That was when I heard it… A small but clearly distressed voice, saying “Help Meeeee!” I stopped walking so abruptly that my thoughts seemed to wrench free from my head and continue up the path, unconcerned that they were leaving my body behind. I looked self-consciously around me, completely startled and thinking someone might be playing a prank on me. Surely, I was just being punked. I half expected to see a child of the corn come running out from beneath the mangroves, giggling and carrying on, cheerfully singing “I got you! I got you! I got you!”. Instead, I saw no movement at all, but I did hear the voice again “Help Meeeee!” It sounded like the voice of a terrified tiny gnome, yelling as loud as possible in an effort to get my full attention. When I finally managed to gather my wits, I was able to zero in on the source of the voice after two or three more pleading calls for help. There, on the top of a wooden sign attesting to the exploratory genius of Hernando de Soto, was a garter snake with a leopard frog sticking out of its mouth. On closer inspection, I could see that the snake had already consumed one of the frog’s rear legs and the other one was bending backwards as the snake slowly swallowed its prey. As I watched, entranced by the unfolding drama, the frog let out another pathetic plea. “Help Meeeee!” Even when I was looking straight at it and fully aware that it was a frog and not a person, I still heard a distinctly human voice. That voice was begging for my help.

“Frog Friend in the S.M.art Studio” 2011

I quickly made the decision to enforce my own will on the situation. I bet many of you are thinking “Who in the hell thinks like that?” I mean the very idea of enforcing one’s will on a frog and a snake engaged in a struggle that has been played out over and over, without human interference, for many a millennium. Nonetheless, I really wanted to save that poor frog. After apologizing to Mr. Snake for what I was about to do, I grabbed hold of his ample head just behind the lower jaw and pulled the snake’s writhing body from the wooden signpost. Recognizing its vulnerability, the snake released the frog’s leg to free up its needle-sharp fangs with hopes that it could then sink them into my fleshy fingers. As soon as the frog had its leg free, it hit the ground jumping. Big happy leaps, seemingly. And I seemed to sense an amphibious gratitude left behind along the arched trail of its departure. As for the snake, well let’s just say that it wasn’t impressed by my heroic actions. I set it down cautiously, once the frog had a good head start, and the snake gave me a cold and disdainful look as it slithered away into the tangled mangrove forest.

I’m sure that certain environmentalists would likely chastise me for this behavior, claiming that I had altered the outcome of an important environmental event – namely the predator eats prey event. And certain well-to-do socialites would say that my actions were repulsive and that I should wash my hands thoroughly after handling those disgusting creatures. But, in my final analysis of this true story, I prefer to take a more philosophical approach to describe the nature of my actions. I chose to enforce my free will in a situation that shouldn’t have concerned me at all. I did it with the intention of changing the future circumstances of both the frog and the snake. I have no idea what the outcome of my intentions were, regarding the life of the frog or the snake, or the world for that matter, because you know what they say about the butterfly effect, but I do know that it was me intentionally practicing my free will. And ultimately, I know, that exercising our free will is a very good thing, to practice!

Film Journey & The Alt Unity

How to Join the Game of Alt Unity

Grand Providentia United

Gathering Awareness – Entry #14

There are two pathways to becoming a member of the Alt Unity – There’s the fictional pathway and the factual pathway. The two pathways of membership are equally supportive of the Grand Providentia Projection (GPP), and both of them are of equal importance to the Grand Cause. All memberships to the Alt Unity are based on your free will decision to join. There are no commitments or requirements to be a member of the Alt Unity beyond your free will decision in the current moment, so please, come and go as you please! As the Alt Unity grows and real-world opportunities arise for its members to get more involved with the GPP, it will be entirely up to you whether you’d like to venture further, commit more, pursue a different role within the Alt Unity, or move away from it toward something else entirely.

“Landfill Man Part II, Recycled” Photo – Halloween, 2006

The first pathway to join the Alt Unity, and the one I’ll be writing about today, is the fictional pathway. It’s the ‘Let’s have some fun!’ pathway. In all seriousness, there is nothing serious about it! The fictional elements of the Grand Providentia Projection will be designed and executed much like a role-playing game. As with most games, there will be rules of play, but I’m willing to expect that they will be simple rules. Indeed, fun rules! Think fantasy! Think science fiction! Think theatrical, metaphysical and paranormal rolled into one! There will be lotteries, giveaways, celebrations and plot twists. Casting calls, artist calls, conference calls and music halls. A word of warning though, if you should choose this pathway into the Alt Unity, you may find yourself questioning the nature of reality more often, pinching yourself to see if you are simply dreaming more often and wondering when and how this fantastic game became your real-world reality. But please don’t be nervous, it will all be imagined and co-created in the pursuit of our most meaningful dreams!

Film Journey & The Alt Unity

An Organization Founded in Fact & Fiction

Grand Providentia United

Gathering Awareness – Entry #15

In yesterday’s journal entry, I touched on some of the early intentions and expectations I’ve been formulating pertaining to the fictional aspects of the Alt Unity (AU). Today, I’ll be venturing into the factual side of this new form of societal interaction. The AU will become a real-world entity, of that I am certain, so I would venture to say that it’s never too early to start visualizing what the objective manifestation of this ‘neo-unity’ might ‘look’ like. I also intuit that now is a great time to extend this open invitation again. So here it is – If anyone reading this blog feels as though they would like to get involved with the Alt Unity or the Grand Providentia Projection, please feel free to contact me here on this site, or through any of the platforms that I’ve provided links for on the Donate * Contact page. In the here and now, I am still the sole member of the AU, so if any of this resonates with you and you’d like to hear a more detailed explanation of the intentions I’m sending out, then I encourage you to contact me and ask any questions you may have. Whether you lean toward the fictional or the factual aspects of the Alt Unity, I have complete confidence in your decision to join, or not to join!

Thomas Edison’s inventive workspace – Edison & Ford Winter Estates, Fort Myers, Florida

Is it reasonable to suggest that many of the facts that are fully accepted now, were not accepted at all in moments past? I’ll assume this is true. Whether these facts were arrived at through inductive reasoning or deductive reasoning, they came to be accepted by the conscious collective, and that acceptance rendered them factual. In the case of the Alt Unity, there will need to be a foundation of factual functionality in order to stabilize the fictional realm of the organization. Participants who lean more in the direction of proven formulas, systematic administration, scientific observation and experiences based on the five human senses will likely gravitate toward the objective aspects of our Alt Unity. As with any unified group of people, there will be a need for structure, leadership, administrators and record keepers. Some will be organizing the moment-to-moment interactions between participants in the AU, while others will be seeking out and securing resources to keep the organization moving forward. Ideally, both the factual and the fictional participants of the Alt Unity will be working in unison to get us where our conscious collective is intending to take us. At this moment, the participants that I’m referring to are not factual (or real) at all. They exist only as thought constructs in my vivid imagination. This observation does not negate the fact that there will be participation in the AU, in fact, in certain ways it guarantees it. After all, does not the Universe always cooperate with our intentional output? Doesn’t it always provide? I would answer a resounding “Yes!” to both of these questions. I choose to live in a world of abundance, so that is where you’ll usually find me.

I hope you enjoyed the reading! As always, you are invited to comment in favor of, or against, any of the content I’ve expressed here. And if you’re absolutely in favor of it, then please subscribe to this website. I promise that it will only get more adventurous, and more real, as each new moment arises and subsides!

Film Journey & The Alt Unity

Getting Down to Some Nitty Nuts and Gritty Bolts

Grand Providentia United

Gathering Awareness – Entry #16

Transformative entertainment would be one way to describe where I’m headed with all of this. The blog, the growing involvement with film, the intentions to follow through on that growth by earning a graduate degree in film directing, the Grand Providentia Projection, and recently, the introduction of the Alt Unity are all flowing in the direction of a transformative entertainment experience. An immersive real-world experience, rooted firmly in our collective conscious intentions. I use the word transformative because I expect that the effects of what is to be manifested will be transformational for those involved directly with the production, but also for anyone who is attracted by the entertainment value of it. I expect also that it will be transformational for our planet, and all the lifeforms that inhabit it. In an expansive way, it might also transform our conscious connection with the Universe.

“Mechanical Attraction” – Providentia – detail

Here’s the idea in a nitty gritty nutshell: As an independent filmmaker, with the help of the Alt Unity, I intend to produce a continuous, reality-style, running documentary, which will be focused on the realization of the Grand Providentia Projection. Simultaneously, we’ll be producing a fictional version of the same story using all of the traditional movie making techniques (and hopefully introducing a few innovative techniques of our own). Here’s the twist – As the factual and the fictional productions are becoming a reality, we will introduce collisions, integrations, cross-migrations, and a number of other blending techniques to arrive at a place where no one person is ever really certain about which elements are fictional and which are factual. And all of this will take place under the umbrella of an organization that has been consciously conceived with the intention to aid in the healing of humanity, preserve the environment we depend on, and bring conscious awareness to the forefront of our decision making for the future.

During the coming three years, while I am achieving a film degree, it is my intention to grow the Alt Unity. Its growth will be measured in terms of human connections based on a common cause, and the support and resources gathered to bring this vision to reality. It is likely that it will be primarily internet based in the beginning, but I expect that it won’t be long before the hands-on work begins. It’s sure to be collectively transformational!

Film Journey

Magnus Manifesto

Grand Providentia United

In order to manifest any meaningful positive change in our lives, we must first be willing to commit our deepest intentions to the change we seek. A conscious decision in the present moment is all that is required to commit our intentions, thus permitting positive and progressive change to manifest. God and the Universe will always cooperate if our intentions are unburdened by fear and self-doubt. Remember though, that God and the Universe will also cooperate if our intentions are set forth with deep seated negativity attached to them. If we are putting out fear-based intentions, we are likely to be rewarded with fearful outcomes, or at the very least, outcomes that are dissatisfactory to our most positive expectations. In my experience, it is best not to become attached to any particular outcome, anyway. Better to remain flexible and trust in universal consciousness to manifest the most positive and appropriate outcome to our specific intentions. When we relax and enjoy the journey, with enthusiasm and joyful expectation, our intentions will always be rewarded with successful change and powerful personal growth.

My immediate intentions have been set since the beginning of this year. I intend to achieve a master’s degree in film, at the Savannah College of Art and Design in GA. While I am working toward the manifestation of a film degree, I will also be setting intentions to further the Grand Providentia project. With the unlimited potential of the Universe and the extraordinary communicative “reach” of film production forwarding this project, I am absolutely certain that the Grand Providentia will become manifest!

For admission to Savannah College of Art & Design I am required to submit a portfolio (film). The film will be focused on the mill and town of Hope, Rhode Island, where I spent my early childhood. In mid-May, I’ll be returning to Hope to start the film making process. I hope to meet up with some of my old friends while I’m visiting!

I also hope to be making regular weekly posts to this blog! Please subscribe if you are so inclined, it would be reassuring to know that there are friends who care about my progress toward this lifelong dream. By all means, feel free to comment, whether it is in agreement or disagreement with the views that I’m expressing here. And, may each and every one of you manifest your grandest dreams!