A Life Defined In Words

For over three decades I worked with many very talented and successful people in the advertising and commercial film industries. At the end of my working life, I thought I would morph into quiet. I had begun my advertising career in the heady Man Power/Madison Avenue/Mad Men days of advertising in the early 1970s, at the top of the ad game at Young & Rubicam, 285 Madison Avenue, New York City. Y&R had the most prestigious accounts, creativity, and billing. It was a great place to work if your family could afford to send you there; their low starting salaries reflected their competitive entry value). Beyond the three-martini lunches in the haze of cigarette smoke, I would define myself.

After a few restless years, in which I changed departments four times (media to sales promotion to account management to creative), Y&R and I finally realized the advertising agency life was not in my divine soul plan. I enrolled in New York University’s film school and jumped to the other side of the advertising business: commercial film production. The ad agencies became my clients. My soul plan now linked me with some of the most gifted commercial and feature film directors in the world—the likes of Ridley and Tony Scott and George Lucas.

The Scott brothers and I, along with many other film people, founded Fairbanks Films, and that company took over the commercial film production advertising world in short order. We produced for Apple Computer founder, Steve Jobs, the famous 1984 TV spot that launched personal cyber technology into the world. Today, this commercial is still considered the most successful TV spot ever created. Mr. Jobs, I know you are still proud, wherever you are, since you put your job on the line for this production. Then the George Lucas film people decided they wanted to get into the advertising game and came knocking. Why not? After the film industry, the advertising business is one of the most influential and lucrative forms of communication.

So over to Lucasfilm I went, with all their inventive digital technology. It’s fair to say, their division of Industrial Light & Magic taught the advertising world digital wizardry, even though others jumped on quickly. It was great fun being the director of marketing of the commercial division, teaching the ad world how to bring any image to the screen (without killing anyone) if they had enough money and time. We changed commercial film forever, producing thousands of spots shown worldwide. Many of these short films became household icons.

During my three decades in advertising and commercial film production, I got to know the planet up close and personal. It was more than anyone could ask of a career! So I thought when it came time to leave it, I surely would be ready for a more peaceful and quieter lifestyle. Wrong! If you are in the film production business, you get to know California really well. At least I thought I did. The weather, locations, studios, and crews made California an alternative on any production schedule. Only strikes or clients with low budgets would prevent you from shooting in California. Fairbanks Films was my finishing school in Southern California, and the Lucasfilm organization provided my Northern California training. George Lucas preferred Northern California to the south, not resonating with Hollywood values.

While commuting to Northern California from my New York City office for Industrial Light & Magic commercials or Lucasfilm, I often took time to explore wonders the west has to offer. One of my most memorable trips was driving near the top of Mount Shasta, just south of the Oregon border. Mount Shasta is part of the Cascade Mountains, a dramatic volcanic mountain range that snakes its way north into Washington State. The size and grandeur of this mother of mountains was amazing; you could see it from a hundred miles away. We have nothing like it on the East Coast. And I thought enjoying its wondrous size and beauty was enough at the time. I would later learn otherwise. Ten years later, I would return, “awakened” for another purpose entirely.

 

Some say, as we grow older and get closer to leaving this world, some of us become more spiritually conscious, closer to God Power; women become more masculine and men more feminine, or something like that. Well, anyway, after some medical mishaps and the “enough is enough” syndrome, I did leave the film and advertising businesses.

I mean, what else was I going to do, produce another commercial? The last spot we did was the biggest commercial ever created. It was for Ford Motor Company; ninety days of shooting all over the world, the largest advertising budget ever, and aired around the globe. This was my perfect swan song. Did I need another cue to exit? No! And there was this curious notion that something inside me was yearning to express a new sense of self. Something else was next, but I had no idea what it was. Surrendering to the unknown really challenged my mind, which always had to know.

My mother was of Native American descent and my father was Irish. My father’s Celtic grandmother, my great-grandmother, was a backwoods Alabama healer. I call it my “I-and-I” links (Irish and Indian, both known for native healing). I remember sitting by my great grandmother’s bedside as a young child, listening to her stories of her healing potions and how people would walk for days to get to her for a “healing.” She knew how to pick herbs from the forest floor and to turn pine-tree sap into a soothing medicine. So I imagined this ability was also in my DNA. It was.

Filmmakers are often multifaceted people. Once, while working with one of my film directors on a project, I developed a cold and shared my family’s healing background. My film director friend immediately suggested that I see his alternative medicine doctor, Dr. Herbert Fill. This particular director knew I was at the end of my film career and there was more to cure than a cold. Dr. Fill was a rare mix of psychiatrist, acupuncturist, and homeopath. He had been a commissioner of mental health for the City of New York, working from a Park Avenue office that he ran by himself. It was not long before the patient became a student of alternative medicine under Dr. Fill. This was my transition from advertising into the “healing arts.”

Once my transition—or should I say, my transformation—began, it went fairly quickly. After a couple of years of studying under Dr. Fill, I easily moved into training for Reiki, the energy therapy, and light ascension, and became certified in these. These new alternative medical worlds introduced me to an entirely new community of people not associated with  advertising or film. I began to know this was not going to be the beginning of a quiet retirement, but a reinvention of myself through a broader use of all my talents and gifts.

My next transition took me into other higher-realm dimensions, not unlike the worlds George Lucas brought to the silver screen. Maybe that’s the reason my career included the Lucas organization—to better prepare me for what was to come. Anyhow, what transpired next felt organic, extraordinary, and natural at the same time. And I realized many of George Lucas’s stories were real.

The next destination/stop on my transformation train took me on a sacred journey to Egypt, where I connected with higher beings in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid. Later, I considered working with New York Times best-selling author Neale Donald Walsch of the Conversations with God books, and began to connect with higher beings myself. If George Lucas could imagine other worlds that gave us hope, and people like Neale Donald Walsh could communicate with God, why couldn’t I do something similar?

As I was often enthralled by divine messengers (God, archangels, galaxy and star beings), could I listen to the message, apply it, and see if it could improve my life or the lives of others? Yes, I could! Today, there are millions people worldwide who connect with multiple dimensions through cyberspace, books, films, workshops, or by directly experiencing messages from other realms. Can we accept wisdom from sources other than the human mind? That is the question of the day. The number of people connecting beyond the human mind seems to be increasing daily. Something is shifting, not only in me but in the world. We are beginning to realize that we are not alone; that our planet, our galaxy, and the universe are more diverse than we ever imagined, and there is a plan in it all. And we need the help of those other realms if we are to grow and evolve in a healthy way.

Through years of personal processing work and working with others who were already “connecting,” I began to trust and know that ours was not the only frequency/dimension in existence (Einstein and string theory physicists had already suggested this). Now I would begin to connect with these higher frequencies myself, along with many others. OK, I want to be the first to acknowledge this is the tricky part for some. I, too, come from a world that says, “If you cannot show me or prove it, it does not exist.” Some people simply will not be able to accept or believe my story from this point on. For those who know the truth, that’s cool, a gift. For those who cannot accept what is being said, or see it simply as fiction or untrue, that’s OK. The mind believes; the heart knows. But try to apply the message, if it resonates.

Ten years after my first journey to Mount Shasta, I returned there as a transformed guy with a lot of hardcore business experience behind me. I joined other like-minded/spirited people on a sacred journey back to Mount Shasta. Little did I know ten years earlier that it is considered one of the most powerful spiritual portals on Earth. We were there to serve as proxies for humanity, performing specific rituals on the mountain to assist the planet and all of us to move into higher levels of consciousness through a unique opportunity called ascension—a consciousness of being at one with all that is.

On our journey, we would heal some wounded aspects within ourselves, which allowed us to connect with a higher-dimensional civilization inside the planet that coexists with us and intends for us to join together with it in the future. Where was George Lucas now?

Later, I would co-found a website, The Angel News Network , and a metaphysical school to teach and share what I had learned. I began connecting with other like-minded/spirited people, writing and connecting more with various higher realms. Each day, I sense I am always at the beginning of an ever-growing process of a sense of self and an expanding universe.

So when you get ready for a life change, watch out! You never know what destiny (your soul plan) may have in store for you. You just might end up talking to angels and all sorts of higher-realm beings that define who you are and why you are here.

Phillip Elton Collins is a teacher, healing arts therapist, conscious channel, former journalist, ad man, author/poet, and cofounder of the Angel News Network in Fort Lauderdale, New York City, and Los Angeles, and Modern Day Mystery School. His books include: Coming Home to Lemuria: An Ascension Adventure Story (being adapted into a stage play and screenplay), Sacred Poetry and Mystical Messages: To Change Your Life and the World (116 original poems and twenty Inner Earth messages), Man Power God Power (a volume of higher-realm teachings), The Happiness Handbook: Being Present Is the Present Phrases of Presence to Set Us Free to Be…Happy, Activate Your Soul Plan: Angel Answers & Actions, and God’s Glossary: A Divine Dictionary (definitions directly received from whence we all came). These books define author through words.