Spiritual Comic Book - A Tale of Conscious Living and Loving
This is the story about how the spiritual online comic series RIGHTEOUS, on conscious Living and Loving, was born! It´s the story of how I, through my own spiritual awakening, was inspired to create a spiritual graphic novel series showing how conscious living and loving can change the world -- for real. It was during the 2016 United States Presidential election, I learned something that I will never forget: How important it is to help others. I had no idea that it would lead me to creating my own Conscious Comic Book Series. This is how it started…
Conscious Living and Loving – how I was inspired to create a story about spiritual awakening
I was raised by scientists, so my family had no room for spirituality “nonsense.” I was a science-based atheist through-and-through. All I cared about was surviving and thriving – using the rules of our capitalistic society. But that all changed in 2013 when I did Ayahuasca for the first time. This experience was so profound that I instantly shifted away from my atheist viewpoint. There was no way that I could speak to the voice of Universal Knowledge within my own head unless I subscribed to the idea that science didn’t have it all figured out! From that point forward, my awakening was assured.
The presidential election in 2016 proved to be an unlikely catalyst. I’d always been moderately interested in politics, but when that election featured a reality TV show celebrity and a cranky old politician, I was beyond interested. I had to look deeper into who these crazy characters were, and I was not disappointed – because for both, there was no lack of material.
Many people had been sharing old film footage of Bernie Sanders in congress in the 90s and 2000s. Invariably, he was pounding his fist on the table and raging at other politicians about how their proposals were corrupt, selfish, or only harming the citizens of the country and the world. In that same footage, you could easily see the other politicians rolling their eyes or holding their heads in their hands – obviously wishing that Bernie Sanders would just shut the heck up! And I realized something. That had I been watching this during the 90s and the 2000s, I would have had the same reaction. I would have said, “Who’s this old geezer? Doesn’t he understand that’s not how politics WORKS?! You don’t champion the people. You don’t try to destroy corruption. You play the game, man! He must not be playing the game because he’s not smart enough to! He’s not in touch with reality.”
How I had my own change of heart and change of perspective
But then I kept watching more footage, where he marched in Chicago in the 60s over racial injustice, and raged in congress through his entire political career. As I continued to watch, I realized that – wait a minute – he’s acting on behalf of OTHERS. Not just himself. He’s stubbornly trying to make the world a better place. He thinks he’s just doing the RIGHT thing. And he’s not going to rest until it’s done “right.”
What a fascinating idea! You mean you could actually shift away from a selfish perspective and take every single action in your life in service to others? Not because you are trying to make money for yourself, or gain more power or influence, or get people to like you, or whatever your agenda might be? You could actually just act in purity? Sure – each individual’s idea of purity and helping others may be different, but who knew it was possible? Society never taught us that. It teaches us to get ahead. To compete! To step on who you need to so you can live the “American Dream.” This was such a paradigm shift for me, I was compelled to express it creatively.
The shift into doing the right thing, and getting a spiritual story out there
“What would happen,” I thought, “if everyone in the world suddenly woke up one morning, completely committed to helping others – to doing the RIGHT thing?” What would the world look like? What would happen on that day? Would everyone line up outside of the Red Cross to donate blood? Would the CEO of giant corporations go to work and completely change their business model to feed and house the world, to save the Amazon rainforests, to stop abusing animals in factory farms? YES! All of this and more! It would be SO PROFOUND that we would almost immediately shift into some sort of Utopian society in a single day!
I had been a producer in the video game industry for 20 years at this point, so I was wired to express this in some form of entertainment. I originally thought about creating little video skits of what this first day would be like, but that was quite ambitious for me. I didn’t have any experience with actors, lighting, filming, editing. So that idea didn’t quite resonate. I could write little short stories, but I felt like TLDR Mentality (Too Long, Didn’t Read) would be a problem.
Getting my idea and team together
As a fan of comic books growing up, and my experience working with artists and storytellers in the video game industry, I felt that I could create newspaper-style comic strips. So I wrote the first one, gave it to an artist friend, and he ended up creating an entire comic page – not a strip. As soon as I saw the first page, I fell in love. It had to be in the comic book format!
I immediately hired an artist and we started developing 1-page mini-stories. Telling the story of that amazing day. What happened at your favorite news broadcast studio? How would congress be affected? What would WAL*MART do? What would happen at the Dakota Pipeline? And I began releasing these one-page stories online. The feedback was mixed. Some absolutely loved it – they had been waiting for the expression of how our world could change to a conscious living and loving society. But others were unhappy with the work. They said that it demonstrated NO conflict, and they were right!
If everyone suddenly woke up, committed to helping others, then there would be very little conflict. We’d all know what we needed to do: To eliminate suffering the world over! If we used this as our motivation (as opposed to earning money) then everything would change – just like that! So in order to affect as many people as possible, I needed to craft a different story. So I took the same concept and boiled it down into just ONE person who would wake up, committed to helping others. And what would that look like? How could he help create change by himself? Thus, RIGHTEOUS was born!
Choosing the comic book format. Changing hearts and minds through spiritual and positive entertainment.
While I’m a fan of entertainment, I’m not resonating with negative premises, dystopian futures, murderous intentions, primitive emotions like fear, and little to no ascension. Characters aren’t experiencing unconditional love, gratitude, or enlightenment in most entertainment. They weren’t becoming WOKE! This is a missed opportunity. We humans emulate what we consume, so why not create more entertainment that opens the hearts and minds of those who consume it? We also create what we envision. Why not envision a 5D civilization and the path to get there?
In our TLDR society, I felt a novel would be a barrier to entry, and while I loved the idea of a dramatic TV show or movie, I didn’t have the wherewithal to create it. So the next best thing was to create it in comic book form. A comic book is already a made-to-order storyboard for a movie or TV show. It’s also the FASTEST medium to absorb entertainment that exists. In a novel, you have to read verbose descriptions of the environment, the person’s expression – even their clothing! With a comic book, this is seen immediately. (A picture is worth a thousand words!) Meanwhile, we speak slower than we read. So watching a show or movie, we have to wait for the characters to actually speak the words, but in a comic book, you can read the text bubbles extremely quickly! There’s simply nothing faster than a comic book, and we need fast awakening in the world.
I was ready.
Are you?
Read RIGHTEOUS now!
Order: RIGHTEOUS online comic book
Order: RIGHTEOUS hard-copy comic book
Not sure yet? Get the first chapter for free: Free online comic book download