After watching Fierce Light I felt like maybe there’s a chance that humanity will make it through the current world crises after all… After seeing this film I feel less alone and more hopeful, like the world has many genuinely spiritual people trying to make the world a better place whether they label themselves that way or not. A truly powerful documentary and work of art with masterful direction and sound design.

When humanity awakens it will be to a fantastic welcome from all who have been watching and encouraging you on your homeward journey since it began, eons ago.  Time has frequently seemed interminable as you struggled with the confusion and inconsistencies of your gaming arena, trying to make sense of it and to appease the various imaginary gods with which you endowed it.  And, as time passed, the confusion and inconsistencies seemed only to grow.  We have been with you throughout the eons offering comfort and support, although most of the time you have remained locked in your tunnel-vision perception, unable to bring yourselves to awareness of our presence and of our intense desire to help you awaken.

Of course you did not realize that you were basically asleep and dreaming, mostly nightmares of fear, suffering, and conflict with one another, or of judgment and condemnation from a merciless god of wrath who spent his time watching you to ensure that you diligently obeyed his endless rules and regulations.  Nevertheless, there were always a few who, aware of our presence and availing of our help, attempted to show you by loving example how to move forward and awaken into the knowledge of your divine origin and destiny.  However, these kind and generous souls were mostly disregarded as their loving messages did not conform to the overriding belief that life had to be an interminable struggle, in which frequent wars were the honorable way to show the might and prowess of those who would be leaders, kings, and dictators, and for the rest of you to demonstrate your misguided loyalty to them.

Even today many still believe in that insane philosophy, and in the need for preemptive military action to preserve their homes and their cultures.  But after all these eons the majority are finally deciding that enough is enough, that there has to be a better way to live, and this perception alone is enabling you to begin the process of really listening to one another so that true communication can occur, replacing the dishonesty of endemic bluster and bluff that has for so long made a mockery of all but your most basic communicative functions.

This enormous change in perception is the driving power that is propelling you forcefully forwards towards the grand awakening that is both your desire and your destiny.  And because it is also the divine Will for you, your success is assured.  Your increasing awareness that others are often well-meaning is lifting your spirits and encouraging you to look for that attitude instead of expecting to be attacked and therefore needing to be ready to defend yourselves from some kind of assault.  As you become able to release the need to be ever ready to protect yourselves at short notice, your available energy to communicate lovingly and compassionately grows, with the result that interactions with others become pleasurable and harmonious instead of competitive and defensive.

Discovering that cooperative friendly interactions achieve far greater success in resolving issues than your old confrontational methods builds confidence in your abilities deal with situations as they arise.  This further strengthens your self-confidence and self-esteem, and gives you the faith to start accepting, valuing, and loving yourselves – as your Father always does – for the wonderful divine creations that you truly are.

Focus on valuing yourselves and others highly.  Why would you not?  After all, God does.  And because He does, then you must all be of infinite worth and value, and to value yourselves less highly than He does makes no sense at all. He will bring you all together to show you the truth of that as soon as you will allow Him to do so.  Open your hearts to Him and allow Him to fill them with the Love and acceptance that you so desperately desire, and know that there is nothing that would give Him greater joy.

With so very much love, Saul.

http://johnsmallman.wordpress.com

KODAK IS DEAD
My work is done.

Those words were some of the last penned by George Eastman. He included them in his suicide note.

They mark an ignoble end to a noble life, the leave taking of a truly great man.

The same words could now be said for the company he left behind.

My work is done.

For all intents and purposes, the Eastman Kodak Company is through. It has been mismanaged financially, technologically and competitively.

For 20 years, its leaders have foolishly spent down the patrimony of a century’s prosperity. One of America’s bedrock brands is about to disappear, the Kodak moment has passed.

It is as wrong as suicide, and, like suicide, is the result of horrifically poor decisions, a fatal wound of self-infliction.

But George Eastman is not how he died, and the Eastman Kodak Company is not how it is being killed. Though the ends be needless and premature, they must not be allowed to overshadow the greatness that came before.

History testifies of the greatness of George Eastman. It must also bear witness of the greatness of Kodak. Few companies have done so much good for so many people, or defined and lifted so profoundly the spirit of a nation and perhaps the world.

It is impossible to understand the 20th Century without recognizing the role of the Eastman Kodak Company.

Kodak served mankind through entertainment, science, national defense and the stockpiling of family memories..

Kodak took us to the top of Mount Suribachi and to the Sea of Tranquility. It introduced us to the merry old Land of Oz and to stars from Charlie Chaplin to John Wayne, and Elizabeth Taylor to Tom Hanks.

It showed us the shot that killed President Kennedy, and his brother bleeding out on a kitchen floor, and a fallen Martin Luther King Jr. on the hard balcony of a Memphis motel.

When that sailor kissed the nurse, and when the spy planes saw missiles in Cuba, Kodak was the eyes of a nation. From the deck of the Missouri to the grandeur of Monument Valley, Kodak took us there.  Virtually every significant image of the 20th Century is a gift to posterity from the Eastman Kodak Company.

In an era of easy digital photography, when we can take a picture of anything at any time, we cannot imagine what life was like before George Eastman brought photography to people. Yes, there were photographers, and for relatively large sums of money they would take stilted pictures in studios and formal settings.

But most people couldn’t afford photographs, and so all they had to remember distant loved ones, or earlier times of their lives, was memory. Children could not know what their parents had looked like as young people, grandparents far away might never learn what their grandchildren looked like.

Eastman Kodak allowed memory to move from the uncertainty of recollection, to the permanence of a photograph.

But it wasn’t just people whose features were savable; it was events, the sacred and precious times that families cherish. The Kodak moment, was humanity’s moment. It was that place in time where there is joy, where life has its ultimate purpose..

From the earliest round Brownie pictures, to the squares of 126 and the rectangles of 35mm, Kodak let the fleeting moments of birthdays and weddings, picnics and parties, be preserved and saved. It allowed for the creation of the most egalitarian art form. Lovers could take one another’s pictures, children were photographed walking out the door on the first day of school, the person releasing the shutter decided what was worth recording, and hundreds of millions of such decisions were made.

And for centuries to come, those long dead will smile and dance and communicate to their unborn progeny. Family history will be not only names on paper, but smiles on faces.

Thanks to Kodak.

The same Kodak that served is in space and on countless battlefields. This company went to war for the United States and played an important part in surveillance and reconnaissance. It also went to the moon and everywhere in between.

All while generating a cash flow that employed countless thousands of salt-of-the-earth people, and which allowed the company’s founder to engage in some of the most generous philanthropy in America’s history.

Not just in Kodak’s home city of Rochester, New York, but in Tuskegee and London, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He bankrolled two historically black colleges, fixed the teeth of Europe’s poor, and quietly did good wherever he could.

And Kodak made that possible.

While doing good, Kodak did very well.

And all the Kodakers over all the years are essential parts of that monumental legacy. They prospered a great company, but they – with that company – blessed the world.

That is what we should remember about the Eastman Kodak Company.

Like its founder, we should remember how it lived, not how it died.

My work is done.

Perhaps that is true of Kodak.

If it is, we should be grateful that such a company ever existed. We should rejoice in and show respect for that existence.

History will forget the small men who have scuttled this company.

But history will never forget Kodak.