Ciergan - The Occupy Wall Street protests are at least getting some of the "pink elephants" named so that they come out from the basement of our subconscious into our consciousness, so we can complete with our own issues and create something new. With many different sources working together like a network to create a certain reality - religion, media, government, corporations - we have been successfully distracted and lulled into a lack of awareness. We have become complacent and lazy, and now our current situation is shaking people up enough so that some real change might now be possible.
My hope is that out of the current maelstrom of thoughts/feelings, we all search deeper inside, and we all gain more clarity and understanding about what we are doing to ourselves, how we perpetuate our own suffering, how we give our power away, and how we would like to re-create our society. I'm going to create a list of changes that I would love to see in government, corporations, religion, and place it on Youtube to see who it might inspire.
Yes, unfortunately, whatever is getting marketed the most or yelled the loudest can predominate in our consciousness. Despite the fact that mystics have been trying to tell us that 2012 isn't the end of the world but rather the end of time as a unit of measurement, the collective shift from seperation to unification, I'm sure there will be plenty of marketing, speaking, movies, blogs, etc that will highlight the fear of the end of the world (i.e. mass destruction, chaos, death, etc). I'm grateful for forums like this to counter the fear-based misinformation that becomes so widespread.
The ET's that will make themselves known will show up in a physical humanoid type form, and there are other ET's that are more inter-dimensional type beings that don't need a physical form. An example of a being that can shift into any physical form they want would be an angel - they don't have souls per se like humans do, and yet are still composed of energy and consciousness.
A Dr Who style regeneration - makes me smile just thinking about it.
There are a variety of reasons someone can live so long. There are chi techniques, like we can learn through various yogic disciplines, where we can replenish the body with chi. When we don't have any internal conflict we naturally live longer because we don't wear down the body so much. Back when the collective consciousness was living in a unified state thousands of years ago, there were people who had lives that lasted up to 800 years or so.
An ascended master can live as long as they want to - they don't need to be re-born into another body. Once we ascend a body, we have the body's blueprint so to speak, so that we can look any way we want. We can also exist in other dimensions and simply take physical form when we want.
Using your sci-fi analogy, ascended masters can be more like Connor McCloud in "Highlander", in that if they are hiding their identity while being in public, they are more likely to pretend to grow old and die, then take on a different identity.
Living without conflict means to fully align every thought, feeling, word and action while being in the present moment. Enlightenment is the consistent state of no internal conflict, meaning we lovingly, fully accept ourselves and stay in the present moment, not living from our minds as much as from a "stream of consciousness" type of perspective. In this state, we live in the Oversoul perspective, having access to all of our lifetimes memories so that we can use all their wisdom in the present moment. In the states of consciousness beyond enlightenment, we then start having experiences of time/space in other dimensions.