An interview with Hugh Colmer in 1996
They’re out there—and they’re forty-four million strong. As a demographic group they may not be a household word yet, like yuppies became in the 1980s, but Hugh Colmer knows they are one of the most powerful forces in the marketplace and he is ready to cultivate them and give them what they want. So, who are these people and what do they want? “They are the Cultural Creatives,” says Colmer, Managing Director of the Crosscircle Group, a communications company located in Windham, New York. “They are people who believe in the search for enlightenment, desire a spiritually based lifestyle and demand fairness and social responsibility from the companies they do business with.”
Described as one of the most powerful and influential markets in the United States by Dow Jones’ American Demographics, this group could very well set the agenda for how business will be conducted into the coming millennium. Apart from being one of the strongest demographic waves of the future, the Cultural Creatives are also Colmer’s and Crosscircle’s target audience. “We are basically selling one thing in a variety of forms,” says Colmer. “Enlightenment.”
So far everything from developing movie screenplays and television programming to launching a fragrance line has crossed Colmer’s desk, but presently the company is focusing on the Internet. “Personally, what I am most drawn to,” says Colmer, “is liberating people’s minds from controlling and manipulating influences. Once people understand how they have basically been sold a false bill of goods about so many critical issues that shape their lives, gradually the thought forms and belief systems that are holding us all back will begin to disappear and be replaced by a higher consciousness.”
Is Colmer just trying to jump onto the spiritual bandwagon that is sweeping America? Hardly. he has dedicated his life to the Herculean task of knowing himself.
Since 1987, Colmer has been exploring, examining, and researching a wide variety of metaphysical theories and literature. From Sitchen’s ancient astronauts and Blavatsky’s esoteric doctrines to the great religious classics to the channelings of the Pleiadians, Colmer has delved deeply into the spiritual realm. In 1995, along with co-author Anthony Masters, Colmer published his first book entitled Hidden Gods, a metaphysical thriller in which two journalists attempt to discover who or what is behind the chaos in the Middle East.
But for Colmer, treading the path means more than just reading and writing about it. And yes, he will tell you, like the razor’s edge it is sharp.
In 1990 Colmer experienced everyone’s biggest nightmare, from being a highly paid illustrators’ agent in London to a photographer’s agent on Madison Ave.—to losing everything. But in the end I survived and now I am ready to do the major work of my life. I had my 10 years in the wilderness, I call it the ” Initiation,” says Colmer. Don’t forget, Winston Churchill didn’t come to power until he was 65.”
Born in Buckinghamshire, England, which is approximately one hour northwest of London, some of Colmer’s earliest childhood memories include walking through the London Blitz when he was five years-old and being shipped into the countryside forced to stay with his mother’s dysfunctional relatives while she kept the home fires burning.
“As a child these incidents left an imprint of abandonment on me I suppose,” says Colmer, “but they also laid seeds of heroism that led to mythical fantasies. He saw himself as an Arthurian knight., as in Monty Python’s, “Life of Brian.” He loved galloping on imaginary white horses in countryside forests that helped him regain his confidence and determination. and sitting in the garden eating soil because he instinctively didn’t like meat as a child. Yes, today Colmer is a vegetarian.
Tracing his life’s path that brought him to America, Colmer readily admits he was a bad public school student (in England “public” means private) who then went into the army and worked as an accountant. “I hated it,” says Colmer. “My father didn’t know what to do with me when I got out of the army, but fortunately I fell into selling advertising space for an advertising journal. I got fired from that job, went to work in an Italian espresso bar and from that point on, everything fell into place.” The owners of the espresso bar thought Colmer was so good with their customers that they offered him a job as an agent at their art agency, another business they owned. Literally revolutionizing the staid British paperback industry with boldly styled covers by Italian artists who painted in the Italian movie poster style; Colmer skyrocketed to the top of his field within a few years and enjoyed London’s “swinging sixties.”
“I had done Europe, so the place to go was New York,” says Colmer. That was seen as really making it,” says Colmer. He came to America in 1966 and has been here ever since. Colmer worked with the top fashion photographers of the day who worked for the likes of Look, Vogue, Glamour, and Mademoiselle, and he placed them on such glamorous accounts as automobiles, liquor, cigarettes and high fashion accounts. During that heady period, Colmer lived the lifestyle of an English gentleman who had made it in New York City. He tooled around the city in his big black Jeep Laredo, lived in a fashionable East side apartment, and was every bit a part of the city’s ongoing party lifestyle. But toward the end of the 1980s, he had had enough.
“I could feel my priorities start to shift,” says Colmer. “I knew I would be leaving that world behind to experience the next stage of my life which I hoped would be more real and lasting.” Then came an amazingly ironic twist that led him further and further in one direction—inside himself.
In 1987, Colmer began taking on a new project whose main focus was to bring the American public’s attention to both the escalating national debt and their own personal debt. Working with writers, photographers and art directors, GREED (Great Resolve to End Economic Decline) tried to create a new American dream: living within your means. The project was envisioned as a We Are the World type collaboration; part musical event, part public awareness campaign. “Ostensibly, he naively thought, it could be used by the Democratic Party in the coming Presidential elections of 1988,” says Colmer. “Several Hall of Fame” writers and directors invested their time and money in the project, but it never got off the ground because the Democrats said that the GOP blamed them for the “Debt.” This was his last hurrah and took the failure very seriously.
The ironic twist came when the failure of the project drove Colmer himself to near financial collapse. His lucrative career as an agent had dissolved in the process. He met his nemesis in a bad real estate deal, his long time marriage fell apart and he lost interest in the advertising business.
Jerry Rubin threw one of his “Salon’s” at his multi-level apartment and he then started a weekly metaphysical salon himself and a wide range of transformational techniques which imparted to him one very important message: When you are ready, the Master will appear. And one by one, the Masters appeared, rising to a crescendo in India with an interview with the great Avatar, Sai Baba, ultimately reshaping Colmer’s worldview and life’s direction.
“From that point on, quantum change happened,” says Colmer. “It gradually occurred to me that I could use all my past talents combined with my new deeper understanding of things to become a creative force amongst people who are trying to bring about a new and better world.”
Is Colmer optimistic about the future of the United States and the planet, in spite of the insane treadmill he readily expresses that so many people are caught on nowadays?
“Absolutely,” says Colmer. “I believe, as do many others that a critical mass is forming so that we can empower each other to live the lives we’re supposed to be leading.” Though he is the first to tell you that corruption is rampant, a tremendous amount of knowledge is being suppressed and that very few people in power are truly doing what they are supposed to be doing, he readily acknowledges that changes are taking place.
Citing specific changes in attitude and opinion throughout the business, social, medical and political organizations that affect our lives, Colmer says there is little question in most people’s minds that a new paradigm is already emerging.
“The challenge for all of us,” says Colmer, “is to stay the course and to become further committed to genuinely creating a better world. If we follow the message and the principles of what the great spiritual leaders throughout time have been trying to tell us, I believe that we will see a significant shift for the better within a relatively short period of time.” And what exactly have the great spiritual leaders trying to tell us?
“In a nutshell I would say what all the world’s religions have in common is the basic tenet of “love thy fellow man,” says Colmer. “In the end, it is about prayer, spiritual practice, right thinking, right feeling and right action. These are universal truths that will take care of each and every one of us and ultimately the world we live in, if we have faith in the wisdom of their truth.”
Colmer spends most of his time in Windham, N.Y., researching and writing while orchestrating new projects from a beautiful new office that was just recently finished. He and his wife Carol, live in a beautiful 17 bedroom home known as the Windham Retreat, that plays host to a steady stream of artists, writers, business people and spiritual groups who come to replenish their minds, bodies and spirits. They also spent time in New York City, where they had an apartment near the United Nations that enabled them to keep connected to a wide range of people who in some shape or form are also committed to creating social change and spiritual renewal.
In the end, Colmer says the answer to changing the dysfunctional mess the world finds itself in is not really all that complicated. “After going through all the complexities about how do we turn this all around, the solution reverts to the Self. When we each transform ourselves individually and take care of our own business, gradually we affect the world. As we change, the whole world changes. Maybe it should be left as simple as that.”
Crosscircle is dedicated to research, decode and disseminate here-to-fore hidden truths buried in myth, religion and dogma for millennia. Our new interpretations of the conventional versions of myths, religions, and revelations of cosmological changes will affect the daily lives of people all over the world.
On Creativity: “The most creative thing I can do is to reinvent myself. To become one with the Universe. One with the Supreme Universal Mind.”
On Love: “The only love that is meaningful, is unconditional love. To be able to love whoever walks into the room when they happen to walk into the room.”
On the coming Millennium: “My feeling is, if the vested interests in the world won’t change, then a cosmic event as predicted at the end of this cycle of time will occur. Change of some kind will happen whether we want it to or not. There is both an internal and planetary cleansing happening at this time.”
On the liberation of the human psyche: “I think liberation is about realizing we are much more than this physical body we are in. Each and every one of us is a part of this universe and has a divine destiny ready to unfold.”
On his world view: “We create our realities. We can be in total control of ourselves and we are not victims. No one in particular is doing a number on us—we do the number on ourselves. Knowing that we have the potential to get out of the dysfunctional modes that are destroying our lives by taking personal responsibility is exciting.”
On world power: “Nothing has changed since the Gods in the Garden of Eden fought amongst themselves over whether their progeny should have the knowledge of themselves or not. Since then they have been controlling and manipulating us and are responsible for our dysfunctional behavior patterns. The challenge for us today is to take responsibility for our thoughts and actions and influence the world power structure to do the right thing for the planet.”
On corporate soul: “Corporate Soul is the idea that the corporations have to move beyond just buying and selling at any cost. They have to give back to us what is rightfully ours and they have to do what is good for the general welfare of the people. They have to genuinely reexamine their behavior and take both an interest and direct action in turning the world around for the betterment of the planet.”
On what he has learned thus far: “Only unconditional love of the ‘Self’ (the God Within) will eliminate the demons that plague us. It is the answer to every conflict, challenge and problem that we face.”