You are the light of the world.
–Jesus (Matthew 5:14)

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
–Carl Sagan (Cosmos)

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.
–The Grateful Dead

Mr. Hartounian: Navin, this is my wife Lenore. Lenore, this is Navin.

Navin: Pleased to meet you.

Mr. Hartounian: Do you know why a woman of such pulchritude is married to me? ‘Cause I make very a comfortable living.

pul·chri·tude / PUL-kri-tood / noun
: physical beauty; comeliness
- pul·chri·tu·di·nous / pul-kri-TOO-di-nus / adjective

A few days ago, I was browsing a lucid dreaming forum, and one of the members posted this: “Who here thinks lucid dreaming is better than real life? Real life is just doing the same thing over and over again. It’s so boring.”

I thought about what he said. On the surface, he was right. You can fly, fight with monsters, be a superhero, swim underwater, and stop bullets in a lucid dream. You sit in a cubicle and pay bills in real life. Obviously, lucid dreaming is so much more awesome! But when I really thought about it carefully, it hit me: Why can’t we treat life like a lucid dream? Of course, there are differences such as :

• You can’t control the physical laws of the universe in real life.
• Real life usually lasts longer.
• You can’t control the reactions of other characters in real life.

But reality and lucid dreaming are also quite similar:

• You are your own creator. If you want to quit your job, you can just say the magic words. If you want to ask someone out, noone’s gonna stop you.
• You can choose what experiences you wish to have.
• You can choose which characters you want to connect with.
• You can choose when to end it.

Of course, I’m not suggesting we all go out, get drunk, and live a reckless life. Survival is important too! But viewing life as a lucid dream can be empowering and give clarity to what you desire from life. If you are confused about what you truly want in life, asking yourself these questions can be a good start:

1. If reality were a lucid dream, what would I be doing?
2. Would this endanger my survival or others in any way?
3. If not, why can’t I do it? Is it because of a lack of time, money, or skills?
4. If it’s because of a lack of time, money or skills, what steps can I take today to change that situation?

People will stop here and tell me: “Don’t be ridiculous! We need to pay bills, we can’t just quit our boring jobs, travel the world, and do things we love!”. And they do have a point. But this attitude is disempowering. Such people will never have a chance to do the things they love if they stick with that attitude. Adopting the attitude that you have the power to create your own reality is a more empowering choice. You may initially lack the resources to do what you love, but you’ll do whatever it takes if you adopt this positive “I create” attitude. A person with the first attitude simply has no chance. A person with the 2nd attitude might fail but will stand a far better chance to live a life of their own creation.

Adopting this attitude will also evaporate some of the fears you have. When people lucid dream, they often feel no fear when they connect with experiences. Yet in real life, we often are paralyzed by low-level fears that pose no danger to our survival such as asking for a raise, asking someone out, quitting our jobs, public speaking, talking to strangers, or starting our own business. If life were a lucid dream, why would you be embarrassed to ask an attractive person out on a date?

When we suddenly become lucid in our dreams, we often change the dream we were having to something else. Similarly, in real life, if you became more lucid and view yourself as a creator, you’ll often find yourself questioning your current life. You’ll start asking yourself questions such as: Do I really want to work in this job for the next 30 years? Do I really want to have a lifelong relationship with this person? Am I missing out on experiences I really want to have? Am I making pathetic excuses and wasting my life away? You may decide to change the path of your life completely.

With all the mixed messages in society, life can seem very complex. Our families tell us one thing. Society tells us another, and we constantly compare ourselves to our peers. But it’s all rather simple. We’re here to find out what we love to do, and cultivate the power and courage to connect with those experiences. Life is a giant sandbox, and we’re here to experiment, have experiences, have fun, enjoy ourselves, and be joyful. We’re not here to be wimpy creatures, victims of our circumstances. Just as we have the ability to control our dreams, we have the ability to create the reality we want to live in!

We’re powerful creators, writing our own dream every single day. It’s going to end someday, but while we’re here, why not have an experience of a lifetime?

What kind of dream do you want to live?

About Angela: Angela C. is writing a personal development book that will be coming out late next year. She is a yoga lover, personal development coach and an expert on candida albicans.

2300 Million years (Myr) – Humans and Blue-Green Algae

1400 Myr – Humans and Broccoli

1400 Myr – Triceratops and Red Squirrels

1300 Myr – Humans and Magic Mushrooms

830 Myr – Rainbow Trout and Monarch Butterflies

275 Myr – Humans and Barn Owls

57 Myr – Cats and Dogs

The time tree gives an approximate date for the last common ancestor shared by two creatures based on the molecular clock hypothesis. This hypothesis assumes a constant rate of mutations across time, so that genetic differences between species can translate into a distance in time. Though somewhat contested, I haven’t come across any better way of calculating evolutionary timescales. If anything, it’s a good first-order approximation and a fun web database to play with.

From the back cover:

Since the dawn of humanity we have gazed at the stars to ponder our existence. To the naked eye the skies are dark and lifeless, but what if, through a glass, we looked to the heavens and saw our mirror image, a twin Earth from afar? If we found our uniqueness shattered in the vast cosmic arena, then what, if anything, could we still hold sacred?

Planetary Messenger is now available either directly from Createspace or through Amazon. Thanks to all of you who have been part of my life so far and helped make this possible. Happy reading!

We have hardly begun to explore the outer Solar System and Kuiper Belt, and have searched next to nothing of the Oort Cloud–analogous to only inspecting your garden box in a 100 acre plot of land. If extraterrestrials are observing us from the Oort Cloud, we have absolutely zero chance of knowing they’re here.

Deep-seated cultural biases explain why the Western mind turns suddenly anxious and repressive on contemplating drugs. Substance-induced changes in consciousness dramatically reveal that our mental life has physical foundations. Psychoactive drugs thus challenge the Christian assumption of the inviolability and special ontological status of the soul. Similarly, they challenge the modern idea of the ego and its inviolability and controls structures. In short, encounters with psychedelic plants throw into question the entire world view of the dominator culture.

From Food of the Gods (McKenna, 1992)

Models of stellar evolution predict that a star brightens by about 30% over it’s main sequence lifetime due to core contraction as the star fuses hydrogen into helium. The inference of warmer-than-present temperatures for the early Earth despite the reduction in solar luminosity is known as the faint young sun paradox (one of my research interests). Earth seems to have sustained both liquid water and life for nearly 4 billion years, continually maintaining habitable temperatures.

So what happened to Venus? Eventually the surface received enough energy to evaporate the oceans and enter a positive feedback known as a runaway greenhouse. Today, we see a cloudy world with sulfuric acid rain and a surface hot enough to melt lead. But 4 billion years ago life could have arisen in the Venusian oceans and perhaps even lasted long enough to develop intelligence.

I can imagine a Venusian scientist carefully working out models of stellar evolution–only to find that their parent star was slowly and steadily brightening! We look back in time and find a faint young sun paradox, but the Venusians would have a contemporary warming sun catastrophe! The greatest climate disaster in the history of our solar system may well have been when Venus entered its runaway greenhouse state to become uninhabitable.

The page includes a blog with feed that will mostly entail details of my professional adventures, including updates on publications and schedules for upcoming musical performances.