What would happen if women, 51% of the world population, devoted the same commitment to nonviolent

This is a clarion call to all women to take the lead in personal conscious evolution—and in so doing, in shaping an emergent planetary culture united in peacemaking.

Peacemaking in this Age of Evolution is not a form of activism, but a leap in consciousness. A leap into an intentionally framed perception of daily reality called “peace awareness” rather than “war” awareness. And by implication, “war” also means warring, violence conflict, exclusion, divisiveness, conquering, subjugation, humiliation, shaming, prejudice, and all forms of social and environmental interaction that create separation and suffering. And “peace” refers to the underlying frequency of contentment that vibrates throughout our entire being when we are living in harmony with this “thing” called life.

Waking Up to Dreams

Many women have had the experience of being in a frightening dream, and when we call out for help, we find we have no voice. We keep trying to call out or scream, hoping someone will hear us and help us, but we can barely eek out a whisper or a squeak. We feel helpless, powerless, afraid, and at the mercy of malevolent external forces.

A recent dream I had spoke volumes—for me personally, but I believe also for many women like myself who are, as I call it,  “coming of age” in finding our voices of leadership in conscious evolution.

Dream Entry: I am alone at a bar in a restaurant, although I’m not drinking. It is late, maybe 2 am, and the bartender brings me my car keys saying they’re closing and it’s time to go home. I take the keys and then say to him, “OK, so what am I driving, and where did I park?” [Serious short-term memory loss: a preview of things to come?]

After receiving directions, I am outside and walking toward my car, keys in hand. I realize that I’ve missed the street where the car is parked and have to backtrack, so I cross the street to do so. I am in a part of town that is less than desirable, and notice two youths casually hanging out by a wall. In a flash, I am blindsided by one of the youths; he’s pinning me to the ground with one hand and ripping my shirt and bra off in one swift motion with his other hand. I cry out, “Help! Help me! Help!”

I awaken from the dream, literally hearing the waking sound of my cries for help.

Waking up, I realize that the feeling from the assault wasn’t one of terror, as one might expect, so much as being deeply distressed. Distressed by the assault itself, fearful of the inevitable outcome, and unable to change the circumstances on my own and without support.

And, what stood out for me even more upon waking was literally hearing my voice. My dream “voice” literally followed me into the world of matter.

As a dreamworker, one of the things I know about waking up from a dream without resolving the situation within the dream is that it offers the dreamer an opportunity to find resolution to whatever is happening for them in waking life. Equally important, the unfinished dream is saying that the dreamer is more than adequately up to the job of addressing the unfinished aspect of the dream story in waking consciousness.

This time, in this dream, I had a voice—and I used it. And as much as this dream was entirely my projection, I believe its message is symbolic for all women who are tuning in to their voice of feminine consciousness:

Voices for change, voices for peace, voices for truth, voices of a new consciousness for a new world.

With wise warrior strength the feminine consciousness dismantles what is out of integrity—and women around the globe are saying, “Enough!” Enough of preying on the weakened, the vulnerable, the naive, the unsuspecting; enough killing, violence, divisiveness, deception, and destruction; enough greed, lack of integrity, dishonor, and dishonesty; enough of the denigration, dismissal, diminishment, and denial.

We are also saying “enough” to and about ourselves within our quiet inner chambers where we have held ourselves hostage, in our circles of support as we weave together conscious community, in our social and collective consciousness where our voices have for far too long been subjugated and relegated to the inconsequential. We are speaking up and speaking out, celebrating our innate intelligent wisdom, our intuitive knowing, acting from our maternal matrix of relational dynamics, and modeling lucidity and cooperation. Don’t be deceived though, peacemaking isn’t always tame and still: often it roars with fierce compassion.

Feminine consciousness is not the exclusive domain of women, but generally speaking women’s innate way of perceiving the world, relating to it, and making meaning about it is archetypically representative of feminine consciousness. Regardless of gender, feminine consciousness is not a savior, a solution, or a policy to resolving the world’s problems; it is, quite simply, a dynamic principle of coherence that renders them obsolete.

Three Core Principles

There are three core principles that frame feminine consciousness—three fundamental mindsets/ perceptions/ paradigms that have “shown up as missing” in the contemporary social, moral, and manifest story of human evolution and keep us divided and polarized. I like to make the analogy of these principles as being akin to the instructions from a movie director just before filming each scene: “Lights, camera, action!”

Lights: Light is what illuminates something, allowing us to see it, or see it more clearly. Feminine consciousness is innately an awakening awareness, an illumination of our personal and collective condition, both in its brightness and its bright shadow. In the light of awakening, feminine consciousness recognizes that there is an inherent connection between all living things and the cosmos—and that love is the holy thread that binds us in both our mundane and cosmic dimensions.

Camera: In filmmaking, the camera is what sets the tone for how something is perceived. The scenery, close-ups, wide angles; each gives us a different perspective, which when woven together provides the gestalt of the entire storyline. Feminine consciousness engenders views and beliefs that link people together, focusing ultimately on the potential for positive influences. It is inherently relational; that is, capable of seeing each of the interconnected and interdependent functions for themselves and as the whole: and understanding that how we think and perceive affects everything around us.

Action: The events, feelings, and situations within a film are ecological, just as in waking life; that is, there is always a dynamic tension between the individuals themselves and the environment that surrounds and supports them. The core of feminine consciousness is an awareness of participating in an energetic universe. It is an ongoing process of responsiveness and adaptability: how to respond to personal and collective circumstance without rejecting it or becoming its slave. Feminine consciousness honors heart intelligence and acts with ferocious compassion.

The very nature of the evolutionary wave of feminine consciousness is co-creative participation. If we have shown up at this time, we understand that participation in our evolution, personal and cosmic, is what has called us. When we allow our sense of connection and compassion to guide our existence, conscious evolution occurs in “real time.” We become active participants and peacemakers in our own unfolding, no longer dispassionate observers beholden to the laws of physical or social systems. We are the both dreamer and the dream, and we awaken into humanity’s emerging “myth,” even as we are creating of it.

Dream Parallels

The parallels of my dream, as a woman coming of age, to the assaults to the human condition are obvious:

1)            The feminine consciousness is not only the target and casualty of patriarchy, it is an inclusive way of being in the world, which is consequently assaulted by all systems or acts of exclusion and inequity in our physical world and our relations, in our psyche and our spirit;

2)            While we may be hopeful that positive changes will occur in time, we cannot help but entertain some apprehension of the cumulative consequences of our destructive behavior as a species;

3)            In spite of the good work that we know is being done in quiet corners, in small groups or in large measures, we can feel alone and overwhelmed—powerless and voiceless.

Finding My Voice

Reflecting on this dream the following morning, my sense of humor prevailed and I summarized the symbolic meaning of the dream this way:

“I might be losing my memory, but I’m finding my voice!”

Yes, my hair is thinning and getting kinky-grey, I am having more “moments” of forgetting, hot flashes bear down on me like a runaway train, sending rivulets of perspiration down my back and between my breasts, and the law of gravity along with a lifetime of wear and tear on my body is making itself known in ways I’d rather it didn’t.

But the gifts of feminine consciousness waiting for women within the inevitable metamorphosis that mortality brings are bountiful, beautiful, and powerful beyond any version of  “feminine” that Madison Avenue could have fabricated and tried to sell us. The gift of self-love and self-acceptance, even as the sands of time reshape the landscape of our body, brings the gift of experiencing consciousness without ego—and we are liberated. But not diminished. In fact, we shine brighter because as we turn away form the external preoccupations of our inner and outer relations, we reach deeper within to the core of our essence, to that which is unchanging, to our infinite self.

We discover that it really is OK to take care of ourselves first, to honor our inner voices and intuitive sense, to choose how we spend our time and energy, to discern without apology what is truly important for us in the time we have left, and to give our passion, purpose and power toward manifesting our personal dreams and collective vision of peace.

We find our voice. We say, “Yes, that works for me.” “No, I will not think and act in a certain way just because it is what I have always done, or because it is what is expected.” “Yes, I know what is most important beyond anything else in this life: love.” “No, I will not allow apathy to devolve my relations, community, or global family.

I know I am not alone. I know there are millions of women just like me, and many similarly coming of age into conscious cronehood, who are reinventing themselves, questing to find or re-member what is sacred, in their own life and in the world. No matter how this may appear from the outside, this is the real peacemaking work of feminine consciousness: healing and dissolving wounds, bridging divides, and mending what has been broken in our hearts, our families, communities, and world.

We are finally coming home to the indomitable voice of feminine consciousness, which not only changes the way we are in the world, but changes the way the world is in us.

Most of us can read the writing on the wall:

 we just assume it’s addressed to someone else. ~ Ivern Ball

This is the Age of Conscious Evolution, the historical epoch in which the human species realizes that everything is energy; everything has consciousness.

There may or may not be an objective reality to run into; all we can ever do is experience our mind’s interpretation of what we perceive.

When we learn something new, or remember something ancient; when we have an insight, or reflect on our own patterns of mental and emotional activity…nothing outside of us changes.

What changes, dramatically, is our perception of ourselves and the world.

Conscious evolution is thinking about and responding to those unexpected experiences of perception, from which we then reshape our visible and invisible realities.

In modernity, paying attention to this ongoing dynamic of awareness and response is often defined as a core aspect of the spiritual process, informally referred to as “waking up.”

In the cosmic context, waking up is an open-ended process of learning that is the impulse of evolution itself. It is a metaphysical principle of reflexive consciousness: indistinguishable from that moment when existence gazes upon itself.

Unity consciousness. Oneness.

The Age of Conscious Evolution is defined by this radical shift in thinking and perception to the realization of one’s own self-directing conscious presence—to one’s evolutionary nature.

When conscious presence is the fundamental frequency from which we broadcast everyday awareness and response, we harmonize with an immeasurable source of constructive and creative energies. Participating from within this larger system is the only real and legitimate purpose in the Age of Conscious Evolution.

There is no such thing as a problem-free world. Problems are a dynamic of evolutionary tension, inherent to existence. Life without problems means life without dreams or commitment. The problems of today are of our own awakening.

The promise of tomorrow is one in which today’s problems are essentially absent. To realize tomorrow is to attend to the cause of today’s problems—how we perceive and relate to our inner and outer worlds.

The Age of Conscious Evolution is a quantum leap of thought, action, and actuality, so that it is the character of our awakening that determines the character of our problems. It is a time of illuminating human perception, so that the problems we do create arise as an expression of our evolutionary vision and creative passion.

Long-term survival demands a revolution. A positive revolution, by ordinary people: not with guns and resistance, but with simple human perceptions. What we think, and hence do, echoes in eternity. There is already a swelling conscious and unconscious sense of urgency for a commitment to conscious evolution—for waking up to conscious presence.

In this Age of Conscious Evolution such urgency transmutes into resolute purpose, wherein the process of self-realization, self-transcendence, and evolutionary participation is what defines humanity’s course.

The Age of Conscious Evolution is the time of awakening the commitment to presuppose the promise of tomorrow, and persevering to make it so.

Tomorrow begins today.

She didn’t know where she had been.

She didn’t know where she was going.

She only knew she was on her way.

Dear Network Media: Do you understand what this movement is about? It is about the majority of the honest, hard-working people of this country getting a fair deal and a chance to improve their lives. It’s about no longer being willing to allow the hijacking and stripping of fundamental ethics in our society and culture: common decency, fairness, truth, honesty, integrity, et al.

Here is a quote that summarizes it: “Wall Street owns the country…. Money rules…. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us.”

In fact, this is a quote from populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease during the prairie revolt that swept the Great Plains in 1890. But it could be a quote from today’s Occupy Movement! How long this has been going on!

We the people, and I’m assuming this includes most Network employees, are done with being lied to, manipulated, ignored, dumbed-down, silenced and impoverished– and all this so that the relative minority can prosper! This is the real issue at hand: the “meta-bowl” within which many specific injustices and related issues are contained.

Not only are “they” financially prospering, but in many instances humanity’s life source, Earth, is being wantonly and irrevocably destroyed on the fast road of personal fortune for the select few and seductive consumerism for the masses. Among the many reasons why such blind recklessness is unacceptable, there is more than enough hard evidence that such myopia will not bode well for anyone’s survival on the planet over the long term.

It’s time (long overdue, actually) that we have a fundamental paradigm shift in our consciousness, in our economic and social systems, and future vision. This WILL occur eventually and inevitably—and it IS occurring, hence the Occupy Movement—whether or not the Network Media brings light to it, but why get left behind? Why endorse and perpetuate the deliberately crafted corporate-induced mindlessness and obfuscation of the Truth that keeps citizens afraid, poor, ignorant, and scrambling for daily survival, so that we barely have a moment to think about what is really happening, let alone be responsive or proactive about it? As it has been so aptly said, “If we’re not part of the solution, we’re part of the problem.” (Note to self: Rewrite this. No need to publicize your naive optimism that the Network Media isn’t part of the problem or that it might actually give a shit.)

To put it very plainly, what I am asking from the Network Media is that you do what most people know in their heart, mind, and pocketbook is “the right thing,” rather than pandering to the deceptive practices of the puppeteers jerking our strings.

Please won’t you step up and cover the REAL issues at hand –and demonstrate the kind of media-engendered leadership that will help Americans to help ourselves: to restore balance, dignity, and a culture of hope.

Thank you for your time and considered response.

I recently saw the documentary film, Chasing Madoff: the story of how the Boston accountant Harry Markopolos and his team spent ten years struggling to expose the truth of Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme. At the end of the film, and when Madoff turns himself in (undone by his own greed), Harry was revered and put on a pedestal, touted as a hero. But Harry had a different perspective: “People call me a hero. I don’t like that. I’m not a hero, I’m just someone who does the right thing.”

Now there’s an example of someone who never lost their thread of connection to Truth.

In application, consciousness is, very simply, about doing the right thing. The right thing for our planet, for our relations, for our physical, mental, and spiritual well being—personally and collectively. This notion isn’t complicated and doesn’t require years of spiritual practice, self-help, or bureaucratic committees and investigations to resolve. Today’s techno-information age provides more than enough access to external information and internal resources to be able to make sound decisions and choices, to discern what is good (and what isn’t) for our individual and planetary vigor.

The Truth about consciousness—and conscious evolution—is that it possesses two key elements:

1)    the ability to perceive in a larger context (thoughts = cause) and

2)    from that perspective, doing the right thing (action = effects).

 More so, it is the ability to perceive not just what is good for the personal, or the collective, or even the planet, but for existence itself.

As individuals, we see this quality of knowing and doing the right thing come to fruition with maturity. Recently there was a local news story about three teenage boys who in a drunken haze decided it would be fun to urinate into a drinking water reservoir. They didn’t know that security cameras recorded their senseless act, so they were swiftly apprehended. For health purposes, the reservoir had to be emptied and refilled: a costly and laborious accommodation. The point I’m making though, is how often do sixty-year old men behave this way?

Maturity brings with it at least a modicum of wisdom and perspective. In particular, maturity, or perhaps more often aging, brings home the realization that life is short, and that our energy and time is finite. Consequently, the world we inhabit becomes smaller and we become more discerning about how we use what remaining time we have. What is most important and meaningful comes into focus, and we gradually drop what is inessential. In terms of human consciousness we are certainly aging, but we haven’t yet matured. And we know that the clock keeping time for our existence is winding down.

Many spiritual leaders teach that conscious maturity requires we let go of judgement, that accepting what is, without emotional attachment, is a core precept for personal and collective conscious evolution. This is a true metaphysical principle and one we do need to practice to refine conscious awareness. However, the point of practicing is to align our individual vibrational patterns with the eternal stillness that transcends the limited range of incarnate potential. The point of aspiring to and achieving non-judgemental-ness is to awaken compassion, to expand the range of choices available about how we respond to circumstances; it is not to obliterate our sense of right and wrong, and not to lose our thread of connection to Truth and to doing the right thing.

To be perfectly blunt, the untenable conditions for planetary survival can no longer tolerate the insult and injury of we humans pissing away the future like senseless teenagers. The Truth about consciousness is that it’s time to grow up!

At the Threshold

by Joan Seager

I am ready: you be ready too, my love

but please, no fuss, no horses with black feathers,

no orchestrated sobbing –

Perhaps a few balloons, some pink roses and

you bring the chocolate biscuits.

What else?

Laughter, of course, on the summer air and could someone

hold my hand? I would like that but just until we reach

the Threshold,

A splendid sunset has been reserved – they are so well-

organized – and the tumbletide is waiting.

Don’t be afraid, darling, we have done this before

but you have forgotten.

The world is full of wonders and I know two-

that garfish have green bones, that my love is curled

like a silver snail inside your trillion trillion cells –

the best gift I could find.

The old woman reaches the Threshold and waves to

her children, wearing her white fuzzy, pink-lined rabbit’s

ears which she always wore to embarrass them at

the airport or the station (it worked every time)

And then -

For two and a half years I have been full time caregiving my mom, here in my home in Portland, Oregon—my mom being in her late 80’s, barely mobile, and with moderate dementia. It was more complicated than some arrangements since we are Canadians, and while Canada does provide national health insurance, there is a limit to how long citizens can be out of the country and still remain covered. My siblings and I long ago had made the decision that we could not take the financial risk of keeping Mums in the United States once her Canadian health coverage ran out: at that point we—she— would then have to return to Canada permanently.

She was winding toward the end of the out-of-country extension period, so I had purchased the plane tickets for this final departure. I had no real “plans” for how the future would unfold, but simply a commitment to care for her, which meant I had to leave my home and husband (and kitty) in Portland and live in a small one-bedroom, high-rise apartment with my mom in Toronto. One day at a time.

She had been on a wait-list for one of the nicer facilities in Toronto for three years, but it was still uncertain how soon or long it would be before she was called for placement—and when they did call, could I could actually break her heart (and mine) and leave her in a strange place with strangers, when all she ever wanted in her final years was to be with family?

As was my habit when an event or change in routine was pending, I would begin telling my mom about the trip (or hair appointment, or a family member’s visit) long before it occurred. Even though her short-term memory was practically non-existent, I believed that with enough repetition she had a better chance of remembering, and even if she didn’t ever recall, she was still very much alive and deserved to be included and treated like the intelligent, wise, and caring adult she was, regardless of the functions she had lost to Alzheimer’s.

It was about six weeks before our departure date when she carefully shuffled to the table for her usual salmon and mayonnaise on an English muffin breakfast, when I reminded her again.

“Mums, you and I are leaving for Toronto soon, and we’re going to live together in your apartment.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Well,” you don’t have any health insurance here, since you live with me in the United States, and we have to go back so you can keep your Canadian health coverage.”

“But I’m not sick,” she said plaintively.

“No, you’re not, you’re actually very healthy. Still, how do you think all this is going to end?”

“Doctors?” she responded, uncertainly.

“Yes, probably. Chances are pretty good that you’re going to need some medical care in the near future, and we have to have health insurance to cover that.”

The conversation took a momentary lull. Then I took a deep breath and spoke gently.

“You know, Mums, it would be a lot better for all of us if we didn’t have to go to Canada because I really don’t know what’s going to happen there—and I know how much you dislike traveling…It would be so much better for you, and for me, if you just went peacefully to sleep in your cozy bed here and didn’t wake up…”

Silence.

Then, with her refined British accent and characteristic stoical optimism she replied earnestly:

“I shall do my best.”

And so she did. A week later she had a minor fall, which precipitated her being confined to bed. Her appetite had been steadily decreasing and her sleeping markedly increasing in recent months; once in bed from the fall, she slept pretty much twenty-four hours a day and only roused when I woke her—for “feeding and watering”—as she would say. A few days later her appetite had dwindled to almost nothing and then her fluid intake began to decrease. I called home hospice.

Within three weeks she passed away, mostly peacefully, surrounded by her loving family, in what was now her own home, and wearing her favorite polyester, leopard-spotted pajamas with the breast pocket for her tissue.

And I can’t help thinking that this quite remarkable woman had managed to be captain of her destiny right to the very end, and in true keeping with her character, had given one final and enduring gift of love—the best one she had to offer in that moment.

The news recently has been particularly violent. Gadaffi brutally slaughtering his own citizens, ongoing warring in Iraq and the Ivory Coast, and now the latest atrocity: Afghans storming the UN compound in Mazar-e-Sharif, looking for—and finding—Americans to brutally kill, in outraged retaliation against an extremist Florida preacher who spitefully burned the Koran and You-Tubed the event. Watching these stories in succession on the television, and with a penchant for stating the obvious that the Brits are comically renowned for, Mother suddenly said: “We have to act as if it is normal, in order to survive.”

“Act as if what is normal?”  I asked.

“All this violence.”

Turning this over in my mind, I realized how far I personally have strayed from remembering that all the violence the mainstream media shoves down our throats is not “normal.” How much I have succumbed to the trance of a manufactured, superficial, fragmented, violent reality, and forsaken awakened independence and compassionate connection. Neither the violence itself, nor our fixation on it is normal. Yes, violence seems to be a common state of affairs in our post-modern world, but it is not normal. It is an aberration.

One thing we can be sure of is that the more escalation of violence, in our communities and around the world, the farther we are from “normal” on the scale of human nature.  That is not to say that violence isn’t in human nature: obviously it is. But it is not our nature. Violence is one of the more extreme ways we act out when we feel threatened, hurt, violated, unheard, unseen, isolated or undone. It is an indicator of imbalance, of inner pain, a lack of psychological maturity, dimmed vision, and constriction of the heart. In terms of solutions and survival, violence is short-term and a dead end.How numb I have become to get up each day and attend to the inconsequential details of my life as if I were wearing blinders to the pain and suffering all around me, without going crazy, or screaming uncontrollably, or becoming violent myself. Mother is right, however, people can and do adapt to events and circumstances, which perceived in isolation seem unfathomable. In fact, what Darwin meant when he said survival of the fittest is the adaptability to change.

What my Mother does not see is that the “survival tactic” of acting as if the escalating injustices are “normal” is becoming obsolete. Denial, ignorance, and apathy must become obsolete—because if we do not each awaken to a new vision of normal, if we do not take a stand, raise our voices, and lift ourselves up and reach out a hand to help our neighbors do the same, the human race will become obsolete. And while this may be an inevitable outcome in the grander evolutionary process beyond my control, I personally want to live my life knowing that I was one of the people who made a choice for something better. That I chose to be someone who spoke and lived the Truth.

The Dalai Lama was once asked why he didn’t fight back against the Chinese. He looked pensive for a moment and then replied with a gentle smile, “Well, war is obsolete, you know.” Then after a few moments he continued, “Of course, the mind can rationalize fighting back…but in the heart, the heart would never understand. Then you would be divided in yourself, the heart and mind, and the war would be inside of you.”

Change happens from the inside out. Look inside, get real, find that peaceful place within and begin broadcasting it out in your thoughts and deeds. What we turn away from doesn’t go away, it just digs in deeper and takes on even more grotesque and distorted permeations. Look around you, find what that arouses your passion, and get involved. Let’s use the resources we have, which are limited only by our imagination, to change our reality and experience. Everyone has something special and unique to offer, in grand or subtle ways, because each of us is unique.

Here’s an off-the-top-of-my-head example of getting involved: Here in Oregon, it is not illegal to look at child pornography sites, although it is illegal federally. The “debate” is on about whether or not this state law needs revision. The “new” normal—i.e. what we know in our heart of hearts—is that child pornography is not right—period. There is nothing that justifies violating another human being and especially not a vulnerable and innocent child with few defenses or resources. This is obvious and self-evident, so why is there a conspiracy of silence about speaking this truth? There should not be any child pornography websites—period! So, why can’t the federal government hire the genius program hackers who are currently frittering away their time and talent planting viruses and getting into “secure” sites to harvest emails, to hack into child porn sites and disable them? In fact, we don’t even need the government to sanction such a “radical” act, how about you hacker guys and gals just jumping in and taking them down—because it’s the right thing to do! Because we are reclaiming the Land of Normal. I challenge anyone who has the technological savvy to do this to get started—and invite all your friends as well. As Nike says, just do it.

The violence that passes for normal these days is unacceptable. It never has been, we’ve just lost our perspective. Epic change is upon humanity, environmentally, politically, economically, socially, and spiritually. We will either adapt by becoming a more evolved species that can meet the challenges with vision and wisdom, or we will perish. Human consciousness is waking up. Life is short. Life is precious. Life is to be lived.

The irony is not lost on me that it is my mother, someone with severely diminished functional capacities, who has never lost her awareness of and connection to Truth and what it truly means to be human. In this way, she is more aware and alive than most people I know, and I’m talking about myself as much as anyone. The new normal is actually the old normal. Remember?

When I was a child I was given a red, plate-sized, spinning top for Christmas. I can still remember—and remember the feeling of—the bright red color of the lower half, contrasted with the brightly painted design above (yes, the color was a feeling as well as a visual), and the wooden knob clasped in my little fingers as I pumped the metal swizzle-stem up and down to “activate” the momentum. When the time was just right (which I determined purely by a felt-sense of “now”) I would let go. The whirling, spherical blur of red and bright colors, in perfect pitch, transfixed me. Inevitably, as the principle of gravity prevailed, the top’s symmetrical orbit would begin to go off kilter, wobbling more and more—and eventually, it stopped.

I would endlessly repeat this simple exercise of pumping and observing, my young mind fascinated by the nuances of color, sound, space, and motion, and their relationship to outcome. Innocently and intuitively, I was learning that there was a direct correlation between me/my effort and the state of something “outside” of me, and their interplay within a larger matrix of universal principles–in this instance, gravity. I discovered, too, that if I intervened during the early phase of the wobbling, I could “recharge” the top and prolong its balanced spin.

The earthquake and tsunami off the coast of Japan, March 11, reminded me of this childhood treasure. For, even if our beloved planet earth is not literally wobbling (although it is rocking and rolling), human reality, both the visible and invisible, is precariously off kilter. I don’t need to cite the litany of social and environmental cataclysms within the last ten years alone, contributing to the scope of change being witnessed and experienced. When I envision the impact of this quickening of human experience, I see my wobbling, red-bottomed, spinning top.

I see humanity’s future suspended in that timeless moment of wobbling anticipation: will we act and thrive—or will we remain inert and break down? The outcome depends entirely on us: what effort we exert, knowing when to intervene and when to let go, acting in unity with inner and outer, and attuning to the principles of creation.

Specifically, humanity’s future relies first and foremost on adjusting our individual and collective consciousness—and by consciousness I mean that quality of awareness and responsiveness to our own existence, in each moment of creation.

To put this in a more tangible context, I return to Japan’s deadliest earthquake and tsunami of the last century, as the latest event in an accelerating series of environmental, social, and personal disasters. This cataclysmic event, once again, drives home the realization that change of the largest scale is upon us. Whether you believe that the undesired changes occurring are precipitated by human neglect, alien intervention, organic devolution, or the wrath of some vengeful deity, there is no denying that such moments demand new ways of thinking and responding, to achieve re-solution.

Extreme circumstances thrust us into the moment.

The beauty and gift of being thrust into the moment is that everything superfluous drops away. Our lives simplify, reduced to the barest essentials, and we instinctively know what is most important and what we need to do next. Our focus becomes laser intense. Differences dissolve into common purpose and action for the good of the all.

Thrust into the moment, the Japanese (like the New Zealanders who are also recovering from an earthquake just three weeks ago) are modeling consciousness of the highest order. With a deliberate agenda of acting in the now, but looking toward the future, the Japanese have long been aware of their precarious geographic position along fault lines and have utilized their technological insight to architect cities and societies that will bend with the larger forces of nature. The immediacy of rubbled buildings and broken lives has become the fulcrum point for engaging sustainable responsiveness. Their behavior exhibits a prevailing sense of counter-urgency, a mindfulness that in the midst of chaos, order and composure is the best course of action personally and collectively. There is no impulse to exploit the chaos because they understand that in the big picture, the all is the one, and the one is the all.

The blatant message of this wobble-point time of humanity, often book-ended with references to the Mayan prophesies of 2012, is one of immediacy. We believe—and hope—there is still a window of opportunity to make conscious choices that aren’t borne out of cataclysmic circumstances. Or, that when desperate events occur, we are already practiced in wisdom and calm rather than desperation. Each “disaster” is a calling to awaken, or re-awaken, our co-creative and evolutionary consciousness now; to co-create the future, as an all-encompassing agenda of laser focus and unity-minded attention.

There are positive worldshifts occurring as well, swelling numbers of individuals and groups already committed to an evolutionary agenda for a just and sustainable existence. There are countless “self-help” books, spiritual teachers, and social systems that facilitate personal and global evolution—although awakening to conscious evolution is a path of self-acceptance, not self-improvement. And while this may all sound cerebral and disembodied, conscious evolution is intrinsically a matter of the heart.

It is in our heart that we know what matters most.

We don’t need an earthquake or a tsunami or economic collapse to tell us what matters most: we already know and we always have known. When we feel our heartstrings being plucked by the disappearing bee population or stranded polar bears, by homelessness, soil erosion, injustice, planetary exploitation, the human slave trade, cruelty, political repression, or whatever it is that moves us, the immediacy before us is that we respond, and do so with the full complement of evolutionary potential available to us in this, and every, moment.

The idea of  “six degrees of separation” was let loose into the noosphere by a Hungarian author in 1929, in a short story he wrote called “Chains.” The essential premise is that everyone is generally six “steps” away from everyone else on the planet, “so that a ‘chain,’ a ‘friend of friend’ statements can be made, on average, to connect any two people in six steps or fewer.” (Wikipedia)

This notion was reignited in the 60s and has become a popular social perception, a meme, actually. A quick Internet search shows the name and concept of “six degrees,” now eighty years after its fictional origins, being used for a television series, a disaster relief website, business networking, social networking, a recording label, a magazine…and so on. These are the ways this thought has taken form in our physical reality.

I recently watched a National Geographic Society film, called Six Degrees Could Change the World (2008). The film explores the consequences of Earth’s core temperature rising; each successive degree wreaking increasing mayhem and havoc on our natural systems, and hence our planet and societies. The Earth—our home—our life support system—is already plus-one degree, and plus-two degrees would offer an upsurge of the already evident volatile weather extremes. At plus-six degrees, the conclusion is one of total ecological breakdown—and the renewal and rebirth cycle would begin again.

Now, this film is also just a creative idea, but it is one based on observations of the current conditions of the physical world, and a projecting forward of those patterns on a trajectory: anticipating the future. From a conscious review perspective, this film is not a doomsday message, but a vital wake-up call, or as one of the scientists in the film says, “an awakening from the nightmare”—the nightmare of an isolated species on a path of self-destruction, perhaps?

So, on the one hand the concept of “six degrees” represents an awakening to the potential of total annihilation, and on the other, an awakening to the potential for ultimate connection. An “awakening” occurs through these ideas because both challenge the notion that our own limitations are the proper—or desirable—measure of limitations.

Consequently, here’s what’s most critical about each of these scenarios: the potential for either ending exists, if only because we have collectively imagined it so. Which is not to say that either isn’t true in and of itself. But we will either land in the future alive and thriving, or we will come to a dead end: according to what we can imagine (…and think, believe, and act) as possible.

There are many for whom this concept of thoughts affecting physical reality seems lunatic or misguided. People who have confused science with scientism, who insist that we deal exclusively with facts and immovable objects forget that we live in two worlds: the visible and invisible. Governing both are metaphysical principles that we cannot see or measure. The most profound of these principles is the infinite process of creation.

Human beings are, and always have been, part of the ongoing creation process. And consciousness is present in all of creation, from stardust-born planets to personal psychosis—it is an awareness and responsiveness to its own existence.

It is this consciousness principle innate within the process of creation which determines that humanity can achieve what we intend to achieve, what we allow ourselves to imagine possible, and the actions that we take in response to our circumstances. This is true individually and collectively.

Everything that exists was an idea first, a wave, an impulse, a spark of something, which through its expression changed, creating something else. Consciousness, the awareness and responsiveness principle of creation, reflects upon its transmuted form, generating another idea or spark, which reflects upon its transmutation, generating another…and so on, into perpetuity. The cycle of change and responsive movement is the eternal rhythm of existence, of being-ness.

We consider that humans are unique in our ability to individualize the creative genesis, to “channel” the Universal Consciousness through our mind, and consequently, to manifest creation in our physical reality. The truth is, we humans are encoded with all the wisdom, knowledge and awareness we could ever need, want, or imagine. We are the ongoing process of creation, personified. We repeat, reinvent, and recreate ourselves continually in small and wondrous ways, and realizing that we are personified infinite consciousness is the greatest awakening possible.

The funny thing about “awakening” moments is that when they occur, our thoughts literally rearrange themselves. Like testing lenses for eyeglasses, our thoughts “re-vision” to the expanded frame of perception—and our entire state of being changes. And from this shift in clarity, our experience changes. Suddenly—or gradually—we realize that we have more choices, more options, more optimism—and hopefully, more wisdom from which to make decisions and take action.

This is great news because it places us squarely in the driver’s seat of human evolution. “Six degrees” is just one of numerous creative possibilities through which we can channel our thoughts, intentions, and actions into probability. In principle and practice, the potential for positive results, individually or collectively, is not six degrees away, or a million dollars away, or someone else’s solution; it is in our scope and grasp immediately, now and eternally.

I regularly watch the news on television, not because I particularly want to, but because it allows me to join in an “activity” with my Mom, an Alzheimer’s pioneer. In fact, on any given day we will watch local news, national news (twice), and the BBC world news, in sequence. One story after another of death, violence, injustice, loss, pain, and devastation from the elements predominates the airwaves, sprinkled with a few sound-bite feel-good stories.

There is much I could say regarding the media manipulating our minds and emotions with fear-mongering, and all in the name of profits. But tonight I am clutching my heart in horror by this latest of human atrocities on the global stage: the Moscow airport suicide bombing that has killed at least thirty-five people and injured one hundred and sixty.

Well, that and the cold snap in northeastern North America which has burst water pipes and threatens power grids, the continuing flooding in eastern Australia, political revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, earthquakes in Pakistan, cholera in Haiti, Ivory Coast in-fighting, despots and crackpots, homeless victims, gang killings, psychotic vigilantes, baby stealing…

It is challenging, at best, to remain positive, peaceful, or optimistic in the face of what seems to be an incessant tide of human blood that the news offers. Like many of us, I want to scream, sob, rage, and get on my non-religious knees and pray for divine intervention. And while I realize, as we all do, that bad news “sells” and that the mainstream “news” only offers one biased slice of the human experience, this does little to console or soothe me.

So, I take a few deep breaths and recalibrate, stepping back, way back in my mind’s eye, and looking at the patterns which make up the bigger picture. And I remember. In the big picture, every event, especially those that are tragic, is an attempt and an invitation to restore balance.

Chaos, what we call chaos, is what happens when systems break down or disrupt or alter their relational rhythm in some way. The balance is upset. Chaos is the precursor to a new order, or what we humans call “change.” The more imbalance, whether it be within a human body, a corporation, a culture, or a galaxy, the more chaos that will ensue until a new order is established.

A new evolutionary order of human consciousness is being birthed and each of us can feel this to some degree, regardless of our ability to perceive it or even our belief in it. More specifically, the consciousness of humanity is undergoing a profound revolution; literally, a turning around on the spiral of creation to see where we have been, where we are, and where we are going.

Today, other countries — namely India and China — are forging ahead in economy, education, and innovation–and the U.S. is fading into the shadows of our former glory days. The present, and the future, seems dim and somewhat bleak-looking. What is the fundamental difference? India and China are cultivating a culture of hope.

As energetic beings, each of us carries the seeds of the highest vibration of light within us. The more darkness presses upon us, the more the individual and collective light grows to envelop it. Remember, what we put out is what we will get back. Those individuals who resist the changes taking place now will struggle and perpetuate the chaotic order, and spread the veil of darkness. Bless them, for they too are catalysts. Those who embrace the shift to an awakened consciousness will become even stronger and more unified—

–if we choose it so

–if that is our intention

–if we imagine that this outcome has already come to pass.

And while I understand that all this talk of abstractions can seem very disconnected, Polyannish, and irrelevant to daily existence, remember that we humans have overdeveloped our mental faculties and consequently are enslaved to understanding and explanations that make rational “sense” to us. Perhaps even more so, we have become disconnected from our source of inner knowing and self-authority—and have conditioned ourselves to rely on externals as the “experts.” I remind you of what you already know: this evolutionary shift is a time for returning to the deepest knowing of truth we can feel—in our intuitive nature, in our hearts, in our being, in our cells—in all the places that reason or the five senses alone can’t substantiate. And we need to do this in a very pragmatic way.

The good news is that I see more and more people responding to tragedy and chaos with a conscious intention of awareness, with the highest of human values, with caring and kindness, with forgiveness, acceptance, and hope. I see victims forgiving their perpetrators, communities united in their emergency responses, organizations moving toward harmonious solutions, governments reaching out in relief efforts and communications, and visionaries casting Indra’s multidimensional net of positive reflections for all the world to see.

Each time I notice another being shining their light, I see the sparks of this great nation rekindling a fiery culture of hope and anticipation. And truth be told, we need this as our beacon, above all else.

“Yes we can” has been overplayed, but it is pragmatic and sums up the cultural shift in consciousness that will lead us into our evolutionary future, as a nation and a species. We can’t wait until all of our challenges have been resolved and then feel good about where we’re going; we have to feel good now, in order to get there!

Intention determines the outcome. You may think I’m still talking metaphysics, but study statistics, just as one example, and you’ll learn that this principle is tried and true in the hard sciences as well.

As we intend it, so shall it be. Where our attention goes, our energy follows. As we think, so shall we believe. As we act, so shall we create.

The United States is a great country. If we intend to continue to be a world class country with world class citizens, then it is up to each of us individually to renew, reinvigorate, and foster a culture of hope and anticipation.

In spite of what we see on the 6 o’clock news there is an abundance of good news to arouse the best in us : the best news of all is that positive possibility, a culture of hope, is just a thought away. Yes we are!