A tired but wide-eyed me at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Closing Ceremony, just before the flame in the Olympic Cauldron was extinguished. And yes, the Field of Play Marshall uniforms were colourful, weren’t they?

The Olympic Spirit: The Dark and the Light – Part 1

By Stephen Cook – 26 July 2012

There are so many rumours, stories, questions, diverse ‘predictions’ and expectations currently circulating concerning the 2012 London Olympics – which start this Friday (July 27)  – that, after discussions with some of the other editors (and despite the fact that I originally felt we shouldn’t go there) I have some things I need to share…

But first, let me tell you a bit about my background.

Twelve years ago, I was ensconced in the Olympic Games. You may not know this, but for four years I was PR Manager and later Media Advisor for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

By Games-time, I was managing the media and the media profiles of the leading organisers and performers for both the Opening and Closing Ceremonies – which I was also in, by the way, as a Field of Play Marshall (and let me tell you, there’s nothing like being out in front of an extremely excited and captivated crowd of 118,000 people!). I also ran a division of the news service during Sydney’s Paralympic Games.

My Olympic journey started back in 1996 when I was asked to be a member of the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games. At the time, I felt I really resonated with the ethos of the Olympic Games – bringing the world together – and that is what motivated me for four years. I liked the thought of working on something which appeared to embody the human spirit.

I also felt it was an honour and a privilege to be involved: it was, after all Australia’s biggest event on the world stage in its history. And, despite arriving from England in 1968, and still being a British citizen, after 29 years in Australia I became an Australian. Why? Because I was working on ‘Australia’s Games’.

Every day,I worked with the world’s media, governments, the private sector, the community, the International Olympic Committee – people from all walks of life and countries. I also travelled around Australia drumming up support and speaking about the Games.

And so, from 1996 until almost the end of 2000, I breathed, lived, absorbed – and talked about nothing else. It was all-consuming. It was my life.

I worked from early morning until very, very late at night. Six and sometimes seven-days-a-week – especially in the final 12 months leading up to the Games. On my nights off, I needed to let off steam, so I probably drank too much and smoked too many joints. In fact, I had no life; no relationship. My family hardly saw me. I had a role with the Olympics!

Relaxing before climbing to the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge to promote the Sydney 2000 Games’ Closing Ceremony. Nikki Webster, the little girl who starred in both ceremonies, me and Australian pop singer, Kylie Minogue, who played Nikki, all grown up!

In a nutshell, it was the single most exciting, tiring, educational, debilitating, enlightening and traumatic learning experience ever. In fact, I learned a lot. About other people. About myself. Many things I never expected to learn – or see.

And, mostly I saw how the original ethos of the Olympic Games had been taken over by corporates, government and political sporting ‘players’. Plus others who saw the Olympics as their ticket to glory – off the sporting field.

I witnessed people behaving appallingly. I found myself behaving the same. Doing things and saying things I would never normally do. It was bizarre. It was extraordinary. High pressured. Exhilarating and exhausting. Highs and lows. All thrown into a four-year time period that –  just as we find the days go now – simply flew by.

What unfolded on a daily basis often did not sit comfortably with my spirit either. I was happy – yet deeply  unhappy. Smiling and getting the job done; but underneath, consciously un-happy.

I was told I was respected for my abilities, but often seen as a trouble maker. Why? Because I questioned SO much. I had real difficulty with aligning certain aspects of what certain people working on the Games were doing, with my inner desire to do ‘the right thing’.

I was honest to the point of unnerving fellow workers. I could ‘see’ when they were not being honest, too. I could ‘feel’ when someone had landed a senior managerial role because they knew someone; and not for their skills.

I could ‘see’ when someone was being way overpaid for the questionable experience and skill set they offered. I could ‘see’ when politicians were meddling in the organisation, simply for their own political agendas. I could ‘see’ when people were following their own agendas rather than that of the common good. And I called people out on it; often to my own detriment in some people’s eyes.

Once, I accidentally walked in on two senior managers to find them having ‘relations’. I quickly left. I was embarrassed for them! But the next day, I found myself being ‘disciplined’ for allegedly doing something I didn’t do. Obviously, they thought they needed to silence me. Well, they didn’t. I actually couldn’t have cared less. Nor have I ever mentioned it to anyone. Until this moment.

Mostly though, I could ’feel’ the pain all this ‘stuff’ caused; despite the incredible experiences and adrenaline hits we got from the excitement of it all. It caused me pain. BUT no matter what was going on, I kept on… For this was the Olympics and we were working under such unique circumstances that I took it on-board: I was doing something good for the world. This was the greatest event in the world!

I should also add, I also met and worked alongside some truly wonderful and talented people; some of whom remain great friends, even today. I had much fun with these people. I got mentored and mentored others. (A group of whom are working away on the London Games right now…)

But after the Sydney Games were all over, I had a complete breakdown. I decided to go to the beach for several months; but found myself completely unable to relax, as those same adrenaline hits kept happening and happening. Causing serious anxiety issues. I fell apart.

But it was exactly what I needed to do. I re-built, re-examined and re-evaluated – and it set me free and towards the path I still walk. Personally, professionally and, most importantly, spiritually…

OK, so that’s my version of my personal Olympic journey.

I look back on it now for what it was and is: an extraordinary learning period in my life on this planet with both dark and light elements. Extremes of both. And I believe I faced my dark. From which came much, much light and good for me – and, consequently, those I love.

Which is why I feel I have a ‘good’ basis from which to share some important things about the Olympics, with the London Games opening, in the city I was born in, this Friday night, English time.

So today, let’s start with the darker aspects of the Olympic Games background  – and move quickly into the Light, shall we?

I am sure Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the ‘founder” of the modern Olympics, which started in 1896, may have had goodness in his heart – or head- when he started the Modern Olympics. Mind you, he was a member of the French aristocracy and an academic and historian…

Baron de Coubertin, proposed and devised the Olympic motto: Citius, Altius, Fortius – which, in English, is ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’.

It’s hardly “Caring, Sharing, Loving” now, is it?

Using this high and mighty motto, it has taken important ego-based and physicality-based elements of the human spirit and used them for both dark and light, while carrying out an illusory, dark agenda.

Yes, somewhere along the way – most evidently leading up to (and ever since) the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games – the Olympic ideal was hi-jacked.

By the cabal (yep, go Google Hitler and the cabal’s support for the man) by politicians, by moneymen (and women), big business, sports administrators – all of whom want us to compete against and keep on competing with each other.

Hi-jacked by those who wanted the world’s kids to spend their days dreaming of being an Olympic ‘hero’ (yes, there’s both dark and light in that!); training and training (running, swimming, jumping, riding, kicking, hitting, punching, throwing) and thinking of nothing else. Immersed in the illusion.

Pitting country against country; man against man, woman against women, singularly and in teams. Ensuring that countries strive to be ’the best in the world’, ‘lead the medal tally’, ‘set Olympic and world records’.

Hi-jacked by those who wanted to see sportsmen and women acclaimed as heroes when all they were doing was carrying on the need for the Olympics to build its role in the illusion as the diversion it is.

Absconded by those who have now created the gravy train that has become the biggest ‘event’ in the world. (Well not as big as December 21 – or what may well come before – but that’s another story…)

The London 2012 logo

I will briefly mention here that as an event controlled by the cabal, it seems to have no shame in showing this. If you have any interest in what are called Illuminati symbols, you only have to look at the London Olympic logo (which some say represents smashed glass, or the aftermath of a bomb blast); the strange one eyed, TV-headed Olympic and Paralympic Mascots with the equally strange names, Wenlock and Mandeville (below) ; or the even weirder design of the observation tower, called The Arcelor-Mittal Orbit, which looms ominously over London’s Olympic park, and resembles both a kundalini snake and a strangely mangled roller coaster (further down the page).

But I digress….The Olympic ideal also professes to bring together all of humanity. But it is an elitist event. Top athletes. Top dollar.

This is best seen in the allure of ‘being there’. The cost of many tickets, especially the best seats to any of the most popular events, are either given away to or bought by the global elite and world leaders, corporates, sporting leaders – and cost so much that the average person cannot afford to go.

Other lucky folk get to sit for free in corporate boxes – paid for by big business and the Games’ sponsors, who only invite their ‘friends’ …

Then there’s this thing called ‘sponsorship’. Corporates pay to have their brand aligned with the Olympic brand, which I read just yesterday is valued at over $47 Billion. ‘Sponsorship’ is also why someone wearing a Pepsi shirt will not be allowed to get into a Games event, even if they had a ticket. Why? Because that would be carrying out what in Olympic sponsorship circles is darkly called ‘ambush’ marketing; and Coca-Cola has paid millions to be the official Games beverage sponsor. Even the athletes’ village has more than one McDonald’s… Not the slightest bit subliminal, is it?

The London Olympic and Paralympic Mascots

Why they do this though – apart from because they can – is subliminal. Because the subliminal messaging that comes to the eyes and ears of our youngsters (and some older folk, too) means they will be seen to be corporate heroes by supporting the world’s greatest event – and thus sell more product all around the globe. This, in turn, boosts  their profits so they can pay for their sponsorship of possibly the next Olympic Games.

But, as the corporate dollar has continued to pour into the Games – sucking with it just as much money from us “taxpayers”, via massive government-funded infrastructure – even more money has been poured into selling the message of “unity’ the Games brings. Telling us that it is bringing everyone together as a team, as a nation, and as a world.

It is this “message” that is reported widely throughout the mainstream media, who also pay big bucks to be the official broadcaster, radio station, newspaper supporter. And thanks to TV, radio, newspapers and online resources, much of the world does indeed watch the Olympic Games. They can hardly find themselves avoiding it, can they? It’s everywhere!

Yet, little is ever reported on how the Olympic juggernaut’s euphoria leaves a city almost immediately once the Games have left town;leaving those cities with a terrible post-high letdown – either broke or deliriously numb.

Nothing much is heard of the non-medal-winning athletes, some of whom earn the underlying  and often unmentioned scorn of their country folk for not winning gold. Not to mention the kids who didn’t make the team…

The Arcelor-Mittal Orbit

So, for many today, the Olympic Games has become nothing more than a politically-motivated, corporate-funded and controlled, massive distraction from real-life.

One that keeps billions of people all around the world clinging to the worst of this 3D  illusion – every four years.

But in 2012, we are together as a world. And the world has changed a great deal since the last Olympics four years ago. You only had to watch the finale of Survivor: One World to see how nastiness had turned to kindness, as lessons were learned and love was shared. Yep, I could hardly believe it myself; for the first time, in all my years of being a Survivor addict!

Which is why we now find ourselves here – virtually on the eve of the London Olympic Games – seeing, reading, hearing all sorts of strange stories about what this event will bring.

But it’s what we are feeling and thinking that is actually much more important. As we are going to see.

So what’s in store with the London Olympic Games?

Well, firstly, as Lightworkers, we will all be going for Gold – the Golden Age – no matter what transpires. So you can award yourself a medal there. Ha! (That’s a 3D joke!, by the way)

But my personal belief – and what my understanding, intuition and guides are telling me – is that, just as our consciousness is continually rising and the light quotient bumps up each and every minute of every day right across this wonderful planet right now, we have much love and light to behold from the world’s (current) biggest event.

I will share more on that ‘Olympic Light’ tomorrow…