From the Desk of:
JOHN ANGHELI
B.Arch, M.A M.Ed M.B.A.
Leadership Counsellor
Consider the Great Paradox of Our Times
Today, despite having the greatest amount of wealth, the greatest range of freedoms, the greatest range of knowledge and possibilities, psychologically speaking – or what is present in our lived experience – is almost the exact opposite.
Today, we live in very psychologically miserable times. According to Harvard University, within the next decade 1 in 2 people are expected to be depressed, and almost 1 in 3 are already.
The leading first world country, the USA, right now consumes more prescription drugs than the rest of the world combined. Even children are given mind-bending drugs, as to apparently cure their failing mental condition.
The pursuit of happiness, as enshrined in the defining document of the very first modern democracy, the American Declaration of Independence – where all men have been given inalienable rights, to pursue life, liberty and happiness – has, in the last count, effectively become the liberty to get sedated.
Vast segments of our cultural landscape,
are now chasing ever-changing means of sedation.
Just see these statistics:
- Today 1 in 6 Americans and others in Western countries are on anti-depressant drugs – with drug use extending well beyond two years.
- The millennial generation is now diagnosed at twice the rate of the average adult for depression and anxiety.
- 1 in 12 between the ages of 12-19 are already diagnosed with depression symptoms.
- And according to most research projections, 1 in 2 people are expected to suffer a major depressive episode in their life.
Here are some shocking graphs of how this is progressing just over the last few years:
Here’s a rough-cut segment from the documentary, (which has since been cut out for brevity), put it:
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld once commented that the proof that humans aren’t that smart, is proved with the invention of ‘the helmet’.
“After all”, as Jerry put it, “why did we invent the helmet?
Because we were involved in too many ‘head cracking’ activities, like parachuting out of planes.
But we looked at the situation, and thought about it, and thought about it… And we concluded that rather than avoiding these activities, we’ll just make little plastic hats, so we could continue our ‘head cracking lifestyles’.”
Could it be that the current epidemic of depression and the way that we patch things up with ‘pharmaceutical helmets’ and ‘psychological hacks’ is but a similar way of thinking?
Could our current methods in the way we treat the ever rising levels of psychological illness, do little more than to alleviate symptoms (while leaving the root cause, firmly in place)?
Could it be that when all is said and done…
….we don’t really know how to be happy?
We Live In a Culture of Mass Sedation
What is ‘sedation’?
The dictionary definition is, “to use drugs or other means to make someone calm or to make them go to sleep”.
Consider that startling realization, that a large percentage of men and women throughout the Western World, are sedated on one or more forms of drugs, at multiple points throughout their day!
They will use these sedatives to feel better about themselves, or so that they can continue to function, in what they feel to be a corrupted and corruptible culture.
And what are these drugs?
Well that’s the thing – drugs come in so many different forms today, that we don’t even see them for what they are.
We ordinarily tend to think of just the hard illegal drugs like narcotics, Marijuana, ecstasy, speed, and so on. And certainly judging from the number of deadly overdoses, (that claimed the most talented of musicians – from Elvis, to Michael Jackson, John Bonham, Jim Morrison, Jimmy Hendrix, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Prince… and many more), to the daily addicts we notice all all around us, illicit drugging is at an all time high… (no pun intended).
But there are also so many legal drugs that also just as effectively sedate us. Huge proportions of use alcohol as their drug of choice instead – i.e. in the US, 17% of adults binge drink and 6% report as heavily drinking; and in Australia and UK, the numbers are quite similar.
Then there’s the whole range of pharmaceutical drugs as prescribed by big medicine. 66 percent of all adults in the United States, use prescription drugs in some form or another. (That’s 2 out of 3 adults!)
Then there are also the hidden, inner drugs that we don’t really think of as drugs, because these chemical concoctions are manufactured within our own bodies. i.e.:
There’s the inner sedation that comes streaming countless pornography; or the sedation of binging on hours upon hours of gaming, or in front of a TV, or internet… or the endless consumption experiences facilitated by shopping malls and virtual internet malls…
So it’s no exaggeration to say that most of us today, we are drugged out of our minds. Both from within and from without, both from the inside and from the outside, we seem to be wanting to tune out of our mind, the actuality of what’s really happening…
‘Out of our minds’, simply meaning that –
We are out of the mindset that nature has endowed with, and instead we live amidst a meaningless mirage that makes us miserable…
… which in turn, makes us want to take on even further chemical sedations.
We’re on a losing pursuit to try to stimulate ourselves to feel better. But no matter how hard we spin our wheels, like that Rolling Stones’ song once said it, “we can’t get no satisfaction”.
The saddest part being that many children today start off their life within a state of deep sedation, where…
- Little babies are plonked in front of a tablet or mobile as soon as their eyes can move;
- Then they are given medication for their apparent inability to focus or think;
- Then they will enter public education – which is to then foster within, all kinds of grievances and distortions about their ‘problematic’ identity or ‘problematic’ society… and which will have nothing to say about their purpose in life. (outside of them being a cancer of the planet, because they breathe out carbon!)
Many will probably never even realize the dark matrix that has been placed upon their minds, without their consent. They’ll just assume that what they have ‘learned’, that this is ‘reality’.
Is it any wonder then that depression in children is the highest growing segment in our population?
How could it be otherwise?
Notwithstanding the large portion of population that does have a genuine need for medical drugs – the deeper question is:
“Is the human experience that terrible that most need to be sedated to live it? Or can it be that we have learned to seriously warp our perceptions, so that existence appears as insufferable instead?”
I’m going to make the case that it’s a case of the former. And that because we have been trained in a condition of learned helplessness, and are unable to be in control of who we are…
My Sedation Story
For me, the way out my own ‘sleep-walking’, came through an encounter with a near-fatal car accident. It was then and there that I made a decision to reawaken. So I went out into the wildness to spend 40 continuous days alone, to deeply think.
Here’s another segment from the film that explains what happened:
You see, the behind the scenes reality of what I was up to until that point was that – I had completed three degrees, set up a coaching practice, and yet I was financially on the brink of bankruptcy. I was also racking up credit cards debts into the tens of thousands in the process…
My head was filled to the brim with all kinds of knowledge on how to change my psychology – from NLP, Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, Mindfulness Practices and Mediation and on and on.
Yet, after a decade of studying all these forms of mental sciences, I still was little better off for it…
For even as my head was full of different ideas about the mind, the truth of it was that my life had not changed for the better at all. In fact, I often had to deny this to myself, because the results I produced felt pathetic…
That is, physically, I was weak and unfit. I smoked. I drank. I puffed weed. A relationship with a better half was non-existent – although I had an unhealthy addiction to ‘online romance’, (if you know what I mean) – and spiritually, in my being, I was hollow and constantly hungry for that indefinable ‘something more’.
So I did what most of us are taught to do and what we see everyone else doing
– create positive impressions and ‘fake it ’till you make it’.
But now this near-fatal car accident exposed me to myself.
All this accumulated knowledge from all the fashionable gurus and mainstream education, far from making me successful, did nothing of the sort. I even wrote thousands of pages on the subject, (as if I had the answers), but my life hadn’t change for the better at all for it!
And if I had died that day and had to tell God who I had become in life, and what did I do with the privileged position afforded me – I felt pathetically small and stupid… It was depressing.
It was sheer desperation that pushed me to try out this rite of passage that the biggest names in history all undertook. (i.e. like Moses who spent 40 days on Mt Sinai; or like the Buddha who meditated for 40 days under a Bodhi tree; or like Jesus who prayed for 40 days in the Judean desert, and so on…)
For what always seemed curiously strange to me, is that even with the greatest sages of all in our history, their philosophy and teaching only came to light, only after they spent 40 days out in the wild. (and not before…)
Jesus said very little prior to his 40-day intensive out in the wild. It was the same story with the Buddha. His enlightenment only began thereafter. (and so it was with everyone else)
What if this practice could actually change my life and reveal to my purpose?
What did I have to lose, except my excuses?
A Revelation About What Is Happiness
There, I came to realize, that happiness is something much more important, than merely the state of ‘feeling good’ psychologically. Happiness is much more than just a rush of chemicals, which enter the brain and we experience of ‘pleasure’…
Happiness is condition of alignment. It is an orientation where how one thinks within, matches the objective reality outside of oneself.
In other words, the maps that we use to describe our world, our relationships to other people, our relationship with ourselves – when these match up with the objective reality of what is beyond us.
That delightful phenomenon we describe as happiness, or fulfillment, or joy (or what ever else synonym we would prefer), this happens, when the ‘map’ and the ‘territory’ match….
– i.e. when we experience a profound alignment between these two aspects.
Thus, in having one’s life ‘work out well’.
But enough ‘philosophy’ for now…
Let’s just break this down with the practical example of having a map, and trying to use it, to navigate a particular territory or a geographical outer realm that you do not know:
What would happen if you had in your hands a map of New York, and you tried to navigate the streets of Melbourne, but you were convinced that the map you held is correct?
After all, this is the same map that all of your mates are using… It’s the same map that higher education says is the one most up to date. It’s the same map that commercial media nods in unison as being ‘D’uh! Obvious’… as ‘Of Course It is True…’
And certainly you could recognize many familiar landmarks on the map – i.e. how the streets meet at right angles, how you are indeed passing a park, how you have bridge there, a building here, a coffee shop… and on an on.
But nevertheless, you’re walking the streets of Melbourne, with a map of New York in your hands!
How often would you feel lost and confused – not knowing where you are, or how you can potentially get somewhere new?
How often would you experience the disappointment of not arriving at places that you thought you should arrive at, but didn’t?
How disheartened would you feel, when you decided to follow the map with all of your might, to give it your very best efforts – but you still did not arrive at your desired destination?
(So even when you gave it your best – ‘your best’ repeatedly fails…)
Now imagine operating with this wrong map in place for years and years – which now quickly turns into decades.
In fact, not only were you certain that the map is true, but you were also oblivious to the fact that you were even using a ‘map’. You just assumed the map ‘was’ the territory…
Walking around like this, would you not eventually feel depressed?
For this is in a nutshell what the documentary, ‘The Great Aha!’ explores…
For what if what we label as depressive brain chemicals, these are not just ‘random occurrences’?
What if these ‘brain chemicals’ are built into a human being, and are released on purpose – i.e. in order for us to reassess our ‘inner maps’? So that we would discover the true (or truer) map – the map that most matches our particular territory?
‘The Great Aha!’ is a unique documentary that looks at the mental maps within us, and where we believe our happiness is to be found.
That is, the very map that sources our motivations!
‘The Great Aha!’ looks at the very matrix of our motivational system – the mental maps we have within, for what we label within as happiness.
We seek to rationally assess and to evaluate the fundamental maps we have that organize our entire lives.
We will explore such ideas as happiness-as-pleasure vs happiness-as-ethics… hedonic happiness vs eudemonic happiness… and what these mean in real-life practice.
If these ideas sound foreign or vague, that’s ok…
All these will make perfect sense by the end, because in this film, we look at our capacity to be our own ‘cartographers’ or ‘map makers’.
This project is an invitation for you to assess the mental maps you use to organize your life.
Inside ‘The Great Aha!’ we will examine our internal ‘operating system’, why we do what we do, and what kind of mental maps we use in our decision making.
Our objective behind the production of this documentary, is not to just merely inform or entertain – but that longterm, we will be better equipped to recognize our own mental maps…
Furthermore, that we would know how to a truer map of what is real, so that our pursuit of happiness, works for our long term good, rather than selling us short…
… so that ultimately, we’re willing and able to do the good that we know we should do.
Inside you’ll meet three titan thinkers from the Age of Enlightenment – Soren Kierkegaard, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau – who shall illuminate our most important distinctions and insights, about happiness and how we best go about it.
As Kierkegaard himself put,
“All essential knowledge relates to existence,
or only such knowledge as has an essential relationship to existence
is essential knowledge.”
Like it was stated, this documentary DVD is free.
I’ve payed for their duplication, and all I request is to cover the shipping and handling costs of the post office
to bring it to your door, for Australia $6.95 or $12.95 for anywhere in the world. Alternatively, you can stream it instantly
to your phone, desktop or laptop. Just help me cover the third-party streaming costs for $1…
Claim Your FREE DVD/ Steaming Now
and
Get These FREE Bonuses!
If you’re tired of the superficiality and clichés regarding our mental well-being, this is YOUR FILM!
The Great Aha! is a philosophical investigative documentary, which goes deep into the structure of lasting happiness. Unlike other documentaries on the subject, this film unmasks the limiting world-views that rob us of mental well-being, and reveals the time-tested truths behind lasting fulfillment.
Plus, as a thank you for watching this documentary, you will also receive:
Bonus #1 – The Great Aha! Extended Edition
How Happiness Ideas (or Maps) Form In Our Minds, and How to Reform Them
(Total Value: $37.00)
Featuring almost one more hour of film content, The Special Extended Edition of The Great Aha! features my internal dialogue on this self-actualization quest.
Based on the journal entries that I kept at the time, the film renders the philosophical and practical application of these ideas, as I saw them at the time… (These ideas are filmed as a heated dialogue between 7 characters, or seven departments of the soul – in the style of the animated film, Inside Out).
Come to understand the implications that our happiness maps have upon our lives and upon society at large, at a whole new level. More important, what are the implications on how we actually become happier and more effectively motivated.
This extended edition is only available here, and exclusive with your download today.
Bonus #2 – Secret Meanings Masterclasses
How to Recover a Shinning Experience of Being
(Total Value: $97.00)
What Are the Most Important Things to Get Right When Leading, Educating or Parenting? And How Did the Greats in History Crush Conformity, Complacency and Corruption?
In this 4-part masterclass series, ‘Secret Meanings’, John explores the hidden ideas that most often control our thinking, our actions and our well-being, in our current post-modern world.
Volume 1: what ideas has our educational system conditioned us with – so we see the world in a particular way – and how it is the source of today’s cynicism and current ideological battles;
Volume 2: what vital idea has been hidden from our education, and why without this, we’re lost in a fog of information and are crippled by endless choices;
Volume 3: what dangerous idea is behind the present conviction that we live in a meaningless universe and how did the classical world cut through this illusion;
Volume 4: what critical ideas did J.R.R. Tolkien hide in the best-selling work of the last century, ‘The Lord of the Rings’, and how can we use them to reclaim a shining experience of being.
Bonus #3 – iReawaken 4-Day Workshop
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(Total Value: $497.00)
iReawaken is for leaders, entrepreneurs, content creators, consultants and so on – who want get more from themselves and their capacity to lead their life well.
That is, for those who want to increase self-motivation, self-mastery and self-discipline (i.e. self-leadership) in a measurable and meaningful way – as to accomplish all that is possible to accomplish.
Based on the frameworks revealed in ‘The Great Aha!’, iReawaken is an inner leadership 4-day online workshop, that reveals the hierarchy of our personal motivation-inspiration maps.
Within, we expose the inner four levels of performance that we can operate from, and the difference that each level makes – both in terms of the quality of work that we produce, as well as the quality of life that we experience internally.
Unlike other leadership programs, (like by Simon Sinek, Stephen Covey or John Maxwell), which give a general overview of the leadership landscape and how to lead others well, iReawaken looks specifically at our inner leadership dimension… How do we lead ourselves?
iReawaken gets to the heart of the key issue that governs our personal capacity to intentionally motivate ourselves, as to do the good that we need to do long term, yet is not naturally motivating in the short term…
Like it was stated, this documentary DVD is free.
I’ve payed for their duplication, and all I request is to cover the shipping and handling costs of the post office
to bring it to your door, for Australia $6.95 or $12.95 for anywhere in the world. Alternatively, you can stream it instantly
to your phone, desktop or laptop. Just help me cover the third-party streaming costs for $1…
Oh, and in case you’re wondering…
There is NO CATCH!
There are no hidden clauses attached, no fine-print continuity programs, or anything like that.
So, why do all this? Well, it’s two-fold:
The first reason is because this is my life’s mission. And I know that the more people watch this film, the more we all understand what is the basis of genuine happiness in life – the better our world will become.
This is especially urgent, in a time of ever-growing decline in mental health – which even as we speak, is sourcing ever more troubled systems of education, of economics and of politics.
These insights have potential not only to change your life for the better, but to contribute to the holistic healing of our culture, across board.
And the second reason why I’m doing this, is because I also hope that we can open up a dialogue in the future.
Your attention is not a given, nor can it be expected.
I believe it has to be earned with integrity and trust. This film is my way of showing you something profoundly meaningful for your life journey. So you judge for yourself.
But you do have to act right now! Because I don’t have thousands of DVDs in stock. They’re expensive to burn, and we just burn a few hundred at a time. So, if you’re seeing this page right now, this means there are still some copies in our warehouse.
But when they’re gone, they’re gone.
So if you want your copy, and all the bonuses with it, take action right now. Otherwise, you will miss out on this special opportunity.
Oh, and one last thing, because I really want you to have no reservations about this decision.
The film also comes with a…
100% MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE FOR 90-DAYS
We realize there’s a lot to take in, and so the best way to really know, is just to see ‘The Great Aha!’, directly.
Just see it already! Because you have a full 90-day, ‘love it or leave it’ guarantee.
Yes, if for any reason you don’t like this film, just let me know and I’ll refund your entire shipping or streaming cost as well.
Keep the DVD. No need to sent it back. We’ll just refund all your money, no questioned asked.
Just ask for an instant refund on our support page, and that’s it.
Why? Because we’re not jerks! 😉
Since this project is all about ideas that lead to our total mental wellbeing, the time tested way – we think that it’s only fair and decent that you judge this for yourself, with no risk.
We always honor this. We want you to be happy. This is our core message after all… 😉
So Here Is Everything You’re Going to Get When You Order ‘The Great Aha!’ Today!
Total Value: $650.95
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(Just Cover the Small Shipping/ Streaming Cost)
'The Great Aha!' Promotional Release Offer and All The Bonuses Is Strictly For a Limited Time Only - So Claim Your FREE Copy Now Before It's Gone
Thank you for visiting this webpage and learning more about this project. I hope you’ll enjoy and be transformed by what you’ll see.
All the best,
John Angheli
P.S. Just to very quickly recap everything that was covered on this page – here’s the offer in short:
To celebrate the release of my brand new feature documentary, I want to send you a DVD copy of ‘The Great Aha! The Secret Happiness of Enlightened Minds’ (which retails for $19.95) for FREE, along with 3 tremendous bonuses (also all free).
The DVD film has been duplicated at my cost, and all I ask is that you cover my shipping costs of getting it to you ($6.95 for Australia or $12.95 International), or cover the online streaming costs for just $1.
There’s no catch, no hidden clauses, no ongoing programs that you’re signing up to, or anything like that. It’s just an introduction to a great project that I hope you’ll recommend to others.
In fact, if you don’t love this film – I’ll even reimburse your shipping or streaming costs (and don’t send the film back).
With that said, all that remains is for you to now click the button and get your copy! 😉 You’ll be glad you did.