Could it be "The End of the World" as We Know It?...Yes!

 "The Promised Land has nothing to do with real estate."  

Joseph Campbell

Remember all those poor old evangelists who promised the end of the world? They all had a lot riding on that prediction, so you can't help but feel a little sorry for them when it didn't happen when and how they said it was going to. But then perhaps it did happen – it is happening, just not the way they thought it would.

May I be the first to bring you the real good news right here and right now? Despite whatever evidence to the contrary, The World – as we have known it – has ended.

It's been the "end of time," and "the end of the world" so many times now, it seems like it never will really end, and it won't. Of course, it's never actually the end of the world we're talking about. As George Carlin (the patron saint of cynical enlightenment) said: "It's not the end of the world, it's the end of people, man. The world is still gonna be here – we aren't." 

The end of the world hasn't come the way we usually think of it, because the classical "End of the World" doesn't describe a literal ending; like all scriptural spiritual scenarios it's really a metaphor. "The End of the World" is really a spiritual and psychological end – the reframing of a new reality brought about by a big change: a transformational coalescence of consciousness, a "singularity" after which old ways of thinking and doing are in an instant rendered obsolete. Sound familiar? It is a lot like what's been happening around here lately. 

It even fits quite nicely into that Mayan theory that around 2012 the Earth began to resonate with a level of consciousness that simultaneously threw things into a kind of chaos, and seriously began to inform it's occupants that a major change was taking place. The "occupiers" showed up in town squares, the "Arab Spring" took place. Hong Kong began to percolate. Fraudulent elections became unacceptably obvious, and their results provoked the most massive global protests ever known. War became obsolete (but it's chief proponents will never admit it). Now pandemic is defining the falsehoods of financial structures, the equivalent needs of all people – and the grotesque inequalities forced onto humanity by unconscious folly, greed, and self-worship. A revolution has erupted against the "Era of Power" that supports itself on lies and hatred. Climate change attests to the truth that what we do has consequences – that we can cause irreversible destruction to this beautiful world.

And all the while, arising awareness and Love demonstrates the solutions presented to us by spiritual sanity. We are all one.

Wherever you're at home now, everyone is learning that the Earth's endless potential is being mismanaged by a criminally unconscious minority (God bless 'em). It's global knowledge that misguided, destructive segments of humanity are intensely wasteful, while the majority of our brother and sister humans are subject to unnecessary want and deprivation. It's clear that our extreme economic disparities are selfishly foolish and completely unsustainable. The occupants in every small town know about the elite class of super-wealthy, extraordinarily fearful (suffering) people, who feel they need to control the world's resources and media (the true "Fake Media"); corporate agents who are happy to kill off every Mom & Pop business in the world, and control all consumption from soulless global distribution centers. We can see their duplicity and their political mess on TV everyday, and increasingly we are living in it, too.

Yet the true, vast majority of real earthly occupants are aware of what the miraculous potential of the Earth actually is.

Naturally it's all happened before, when these literally medieval disparities bring us to a spiritual renaissance. We suddenly realize that being programmed to identify ourselves with the insane demands of corporate materialism, like "trickle-down," "know your class," "what you deserve and must have," and "how our way is right," is a form of destructive insanity that's forcing us to live totally inauthentic lives. The death of that inauthentic self becomes inevitable, and that's the shift – "The End of the World." Nothing can ever be the same after that.

Here's what it means: Everyone deserves to be who they are. Everyone deserves to be reborn into a fulfilling, authentic life. Everyone deserves life, health, and sufficient wealth – the shared resources of this incredibly abundant planet. We will have that, but there almost always seems to be a kind of "Dark Age" first, where faith is not always a well-lit place. It's like that period inside the caterpillar's chrysalis that is pure chaos, before the formation and flight of a new Era of Ethics.

I can't say exactly where we are in the process – at the start of that dark age, in the middle, or towards the end of it – whether we've stopped crawling and are growing our wings...but I do know one thing for certain regarding "The End of the World:"

Humanity is currently experiencing a mass metaphysical impulse to transcend the delusion of separateness. It's the collective death of an illusion, and it's spreading faster and more completely than any virus ever could. The resurrection is arising; the "Ethical Era" is settling upon the followers of the one true prophecy: That all Life on Earth is beginning to realize that it is one in the same thing. The Earth already knows, the animals do too – it's just people that are a little late to the real party.

As that global entity, we can all recognize the unfathomable mystery that everything comes from somewhere and goes somewhere, to a kind of ultimate ground of being that we're becoming aware of through quantum physics, cyber-consciousness, and verifiable sixth-sensory perception. We know that a mysterious ground of being – a 'matrix' of loving intelligence – transcends this form we're in; that this "radiance of the eternal" penetrates everything and everybody, and is intuitively informing a graceful and responsible way to live that's possible for everyone, and that everyone in this world deserves as their birthright. The darkness just requires deconstructing first.

Then the "radiance" (that understanding we all share) can illuminate the dark place where we'll find trust in ourselves and each other – call it Faith. That is the light we can shine now to penetrate our media, our destructive mass-ego, our "One Percent," and expose it – penetrate through it back to the fundamental mystery where we all live free and equal lives. 

Now we can stand our ethical ground with an unassailable authority; the boundaries protecting humanity simply can no longer be contested; and if you stop for a moment, and just listen and feel, it is yours to occupy.

The best and easiest way to make all this happen is to simply show up for life with this knowledge in our hearts, and try our best to live our authentic lives – where the inspiration for our actions comes from the inside, not the outside. We're being taught the difference between what is really important, and what is completely unnecessary and destructive – just pay attention and follow that direction! 

And here is the good news, here is the real gospel – the world has ended. Welcome to the new world.

"It will not come by watching for it. No one will be saying, Look, here it is!

Or, Look, there it is! The Kingdom [of the Father] is spread out over the whole earth, and people do not see it."

Logion 113, The Gospel of Thomas

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

How to Occupy the Tea Party – Cognitive Dissonance, The Stockholm Syndrome, and the Challenge to Cultural Evolution

Well, it's 2012 already, and if everyone's going to be looking for a big unveiling by Christmastime, we have to get busy right away. The biggest problem we face isn't just with the one percent we rarely see, it's with the twenty-seven percent we often know quite well. In fact, some may be family members we get to spend the holidays with.

It's pretty clear that the obstacles preventing cultural equanimity and responsible stewardship of our country and our planet are generated by multinational corporations, whose financial power is based on perpetuating destructively anachronistic systems of resource management and social division. That's quite a mouthful, isn't it? Toppling the entrenched power structure would be a lot to bite off all at once, and couldn't be done quickly without making a real mess, so what's the most expedient way to go about it?

Saying that it starts with you and me may sound silly, since we probably all started changing a long time ago. The real problem we have is in convincing all those people that don't agree with us. People who for some crazy reason seem to think fascism and environmental destruction are good ideas. Let's start with some awareness about what we're up against, namely certain difficulties that are part of human nature.

Cognitive Dissonance is the official name given to that sad tendency of people to join in efforts and opinions that are actually harmful to their own circumstances, usually to allow them to avoid uncomfortable truths. It's kind of a volatile [and dependable] character glitch, and as such is often exploited. Patriotism, religion, racism, xenophobia, financial and sexual insecurities are all activators of Cognitive Dissonance. So you see Washington think-tanks and Wall Street ad agencies using them aggressively, and very effectively.

"Ignoring one's...self-interest may seem a suicidal move to you and me, but viewed in a different way it is...a sacrifice to a holier cause."

Thomas Frank, What's Wrong With Kansas?

At it's worst, in terms of the political divisions in our country, Cognitive Dissonance can engender "The Stockholm Syndrome" – the pathological identification of a victim with their tormentors. A 2007 FBI database study indicated that in 73% of abduction and kidnap cases the victims did not develop Stockholm Syndrome, which leaves a very substantial 27% subject to the irrational, self-destructive tendency to side with those who would use and abuse them. Not coincidentally, that's quite close to the number of people who identify themselves as Republicans. If you don't, you are part of the substantial 73% majority. 

But what can we do we do to change those minds? You know that when you try to convince someone they're wrong about something obvious, their Cognitive Dissonance kicks in, they git their back up, and there's little chance of moving them an inch. In fact, they feel even more strongly that they are right, and though you may be sincerely trying to help, they become even more convinced that your intentions are subversive and threatening. Unfortunately, a lot of human beings operate from that fearful dynamic. It's a glitch we haven't quite figured out yet...(but Roger Ailes, head of Fox News, certainly has.)

So we've got to take a careful, even therapeutic approach – a healing approach; and as healing is a spiritual activity, when we talk about "cultural evolution" we're really talking about our mutual spiritual evolution, which is the source of all the solutions to our deepest challenges. That's where it does start – with just you and me. In short, we use Love, and Time.

Even though a friend or family member has identified with destructive, irrational influences, we do still share mostly common ground with them. Kindly, calmly stand your ground – but never engage in the energy of confrontation. Let them be right if they need to be, and often in that quiet moment of hollow "victory," the folly of their delusion resonates uncomfortably, and gives them a chance to realize the power of your point – that the fault really comes from a manipulative third party that they don't have nearly as much in common with as they have with you. But it all takes time – we can't rush it.

Practice restraint and let things go; but be reliable – Show up for family commitments, remember special occasions, be available to help – expecting nothing in return. Sincerely be there for them (without ever being patronizing), as though it were for a person you were helping recover from a painful injury. Make your arguments subtly, by personally demonstrating that your point of view reflects good character in every other facet of your life, aside from your politics or philosophy.

Caring, consistent, and compassionate action will support any point you want to make much more effectively than a documented factoid or a raised voice. If you can be an example of reason and sanity, then the 99% of what you have in common will solidify in their experience. When we're not trying to win, the calm understanding and honest, fact-based considerations we occupy carry the profound power of a more truthful engagement in life, on every level. The real insanity becomes much more obvious, in comparison to the sanity grounded in spiritual principles.

"Occupy" life, so to speak, and soon you may be surprised to find that generosity of spirit has occupied the heart and mind of the very person who was at one time so vehemently set against you. With that we might occupy the Red States, the less fortunate, the middle class, the upper middle class, the Independents, the "moderate" Re-publicans (are there any out there?) We might even occupy the Tea Party and the 1%... After all – we are all the same thing.

"Spiritual power moulds physical and material conditions, but spiritual power is never in a hurry.

White Eagle, The Quiet Mind

Here's an excellent article on Cognitive Dissonance and the Stockholm Syndrome by Dr. Joseph Carver

It's the End of the World As We Know It!

"The Promised Land has nothing to do with real estate."

Joseph Campbell

Remember that poor old evangelist who promised his flock that the world would end soon? He had a lot riding on that prediction, so I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for him when it apparently didn't happen, like he said it would. It didn't happen like he said it would, but I wonder if it would make him feel any better if he knew that it did happen. In Dr. J.C. Calleman's interpretation of the Mayan calendar, the world (as we've known it) "ended" with the end of the Universal Underworld in October of 2011; cul-minating in a state of Trust (or Faith); and an Ethical Era. He was right about that too.

May I be the first to make the announcement right here right now? Despite whatever evidence to the contrary, The World, as we have known it, did end in 2011.

This crazy old world has seen the "end of time," and "the end of the world" so many times now, it seems like it'll never end, and it won't. Of course, it's never actually the end of the world. As George Carlin (the patron saint of cynical enlightenment) said: "It's not the end of the world, it's the end of people. The world will still be here." I expect that at this point of his own spiritual evolution, floating around in another dimension, Saint George knows that even that isn't true. Everything, including people, keeps going along just fine...at least right now.

What "The End of the World" has always been describing is a psycho-logical end; the re-framing of a new reality brought about by a singular coalescence of transcendent consciousness; a singularity after which old ways of thinking and doing are in a instant rendered obsolete – like what's happened around here in the last few years. It fits quite nicely into Calleman's Mayan theory, that at some point just after 2011, the Earth be-gan to resonate with a level of consciousness that simultaneously informed it's occupants that a major change was taking place. Then Spring came early in the Mid East. The "occupiers" showed up. Fraudulent elections be-came unacceptably obvious. War became obsolete.

Everywhere you go now, people know that the Earth's endless potential is being mismanaged by a criminally unconscious minority (God bless 'em). It's global knowledge that great swaths of humanity are intensely wasteful, while even greater ones are subject to unnecessary deprivation. That our extreme economic disparities are selfishly foolish. The occupants in every small town know about the "elite class" of super-wealthy, extraordinarily fearful (suffering) people, who feel they need to control the world's re-sources and media, who put "Big Boxes" on the edge of every town. We can see their mess on TV everyday (God bless 'em), and increasingly we live in it, too. The real occupants are aware of what the miraculous potential of the Earth actually can be.

Naturally it's all happened before, when these literally medieval dis-parities bring us to a spiritual renaissance. It suddenly dawns on us that our need to identify ourselves with the insistent demands of materialism, like "your class," "what you deserve," and "how your way is right," is a form of destructive insanity, forcing us to live the totally inauthentic lives so many of us are all too familiar with. The death of that inauthentic self becomes inevitable. Nothing can ever be the same after that.

Everyone deserves to be who they are. Everyone deserves to be reborn into a fulfilling, authentic life – and they can be, but there almost always seems to be a kind of "Dark Age" first, where "faith is not always a well-lit place." I can't say exactly where we are, at the start of that dark age, in the middle, or towards the end of it, but I do know one thing for certain re-garding The End of the World:

Humanity is currently experiencing a mass metaphysical impulse to transcend the delusion of separateness. It's the collective death of an illusion, and it's spreading quickly. The resurrection is arising in Christians; the "Ethical Era" is settling upon the followers of the Mayan Calendar pro-phecy; it's the closing bell of the Kali Yuga to Hindus.

As a global entity, we all recognize the unfathomable mystery that everything comes from somewhere and goes somewhere, to a kind of ultimate ground of being that we're becoming aware of through quantum physics, cyber-consciousness, and verifiable sixth-sensory perception. We know that mysterious ground of being transcends this form we're in; that this "radiance of the eternal" penetrates everything and everybody, and in-tuitively informs a graceful and responsible way to live that's possible for everyone, and that everyone in this world deserves as their birthright.

That "radiance," that understanding we all share illuminates the dark place where we find trust in ourselves and each other – our Faith. That is the light we can shine now to penetrate our media, our destructive mass-ego, our "One Percent," to penetrate through back to the mystery. Now we can stand our ethical ground with an unassailable authority; the boundaries protecting humanity simply can no longer be contested; and if you stop for a moment, and just listen...you can own it.

The best and easiest way to make all this happen is to simply show up for life with this knowledge in our hearts, and try our best to live our authentic lives – where the inspiration for our actions comes from the inside, not the outside. That's a nice metaphysical impulse, isn't it?

It's even mystical...

Here's the good news: The world has ended. Welcome to the new world.

"It will not come by watching for it. No one will be saying, Look, here it is!

Or, Look, there it is! The Kingdom [of the Father] is spread out over the whole earth, and people do not see it."

Logion 113, The Gospel of Thomas

The book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond, based on lessons (learned the hard way) by a three time near death survivor is now available everywhere – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

Amy Winehouse, Rupert Murdoch, And How 2012 Came Early

Will 2012 finally begin the sudden shift in consciousness promised by some? If a profound new state of human consciousness is really right on top of us, why does it often seem that the social and cultural transformation we long for threatens to be just another failed "Rapture," only this time not for some misguided evangelical cult, but for all of us – the sanely, progressively, spiritually faithful. There's one very big reason not to fear this potential disappointment: What we're waiting for is already here. 2012 has come early.

It's in keeping with the limitations of human perception that it's not so easy for us to see the progress that we've collectively made already. It requires an objectivity that most of us have trouble gaining, constrained by our pernicious human Egos, and misdirected as we are by our corrupted media.

When I was a child, only a few decades back, there was practically no environmental awareness, no recycling programs. There was no energy conservation, no Endangered Species, no locavores, microloans, sustainability, no "repurposing," or green anything. Vegetarians were "hippie weirdos." People who opposed atomic power were crazy troublemakers. A poor African-American man from a broken home could never become President. Impossible. All of this is more than possible now. It is.

Practically unimaginable just twenty years ago, we now have the means to instantly connect our progressive spiritual consciousness globally, like a single entity.

Evidence of this shift is everywhere, even in the least likely of places – the popular media.

Amy Winehouse was an amazing talent, as anyone who saw her perform at her peak would agree, but she was seized and destroyed not by personal irrespon-sibility or a lack of will-power, but what we all know as a spiritual, physical, and mental disease that so many of us have witnessed and had touch our lives that even the media celebration of her sadly ironic hit, "Rehab," was uneasy, at best.

No one was surprised when she died, and only the least con-scious among us could enter into that state of comfortable denial that would have been commonplace just a few years ago. Even corporate media talking heads couldn't package it as usual. Advertisers couldn't bumper the story with beer ads. Even they intuitively knew better.

It was Ms. Winehouse's karma to make this message about the necessity of loving tolerance through her unfortunate life and sacrifice. In this sense, she's evidence of the end of media denial, the "self-immolating" start of a revolutionary consciousness of recovery; not unlike the burning martyr who launched the Egyptian revolution.

When Rupert Murdoch's "News of the World" collapsed under the weight of the oppressive soul corruption that drives his power, the fear-based tension keeping all those lies aloft was in an instant deflated, and collapsed into the shadow of the new era of Ethics and Compassion, already standing over it, sending it's irreversible message that the era of fearful, exploitative power has come to an end. The destructive delusion of it is as sadly transparent as the stories told by a bitter little man, answering to a Parliamentary panel. The Emperor has no clothes–they've been dissolved by the penetrating light of our "new" shared consciousness.

The oil spill, the earthquake and meltdown, the continuing unnecessary starvation in Africa, the financial collapses, the un-conscionable irresonsibility of corporate food production, the stupidity of fracking, the ridiculous political "good cop, bad cop" routine in Washington, the revolutionary bloodshed in the Middle East – these aren't news items to engage or enrage only "the left," they're issues of a global order, experienced tangibly, empathically, instanta-neously by the great majority of humans on the planet.

The forces tenaciously clinging to power in the face of this irreversible sea change see that "The Kingdom is already spread across the earth" (even when many of the faithful don't yet realize the enormity of the transformation already among us), and so they plot and consolidate, but too late – the genie of cooperative con-sciousness is out of the bottle. Their time is over. It's likely to be messy, the embedded power "elite" won't go easily or particularly quickly by the measure of a single lifetime, but that's okay as it is, profound change is always writ larger than just a generation. The bulk of the change has already happened.

So if the new consciousness is really here already, what can we do to bring it into it's ascendency, to create the compassionate, intelligent stewardship that will "save the world?" We've got heroes: The Ernst Laszlos, and Arundhati Roys, and Johann Callemans, and Daniel Pinchbecks (thx Evolver!), and Amy Goodmans, and George Noorys and Julian Assanges, and Eckhart Tolles and Ammas. We've got eco-activists, and "hacktivists," demonstrators and the blogo-sphere. If you're one of those action-takers, God Bless You, but if not, here's what you can do to keep powering up what has already become far more powerful than you may realize:

Keep doing exactly what you've been doing, only a little moreso! Stay open-hearted, do service, stay connected, keep actively engaging your intuitive intelligence when it comes to important decisions. Heighten environmental responsibility. Take part in the process to the degree you're able, and vote. Teach tolerance. Have compassion, even for the less conscious among us. Love each other. Keep growing into your true spiritual potential personally, and we all will collectively. Each of us truly is all of us in this era of quantum consciousness.

Step up and assume the role of the enlightened majority present on our planet now; start living in the era of cooperative con-sciousness, using the intuitive intelligence that lives in everything, in everyday, in every life, "large" and "small." You needn't wait for our time to come. Our time is here already.

"Our present world is conditioned by our present mode of consciousness; only when that consciousness passes from its present dualistic mode...will the new creation appear, which is the external reality of which our world is a mirror."

Bede Griffiths

The book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is now available everywhere, but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

A 2012 Documentary from PeaceJam.Org

While my own ideas about the Mayan calendar and the changes of 2012 (previous post) come mostly from Johann Carl Calleman's research (throw in a touch of José Argüelles), and the excellent lectures that Ian Lungold gave hundreds of times in the 2-3 years prior to his terribly premature death, the good people at PeaceJam.Org would like you to know about their new documentary called: 2012: The True Mayan Prophecy. It features the 1992 Nobel Peace Laureate, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, The Dalai Lama, and others. It's available for a $1.99 donation from this amazing organization that matches Nobel Laureates with young people to make positive changes for our planet.

Thanks to Ivan Suvanjieff and the PeaceJam Foundation.

Tales: 2012...The Stockholm Syndrome and the Era of Ethics

Happy 2011! Just that much closer to 2012, and the culmination of so many misunderstandings regarding the Mayan calendar, and the "End of Time" that it suggests to some. As is often the case, the truth is hiding in plain sight, in much the same fashion as the suggestion that December 21 next year will mark the Apocalypse. It's the same because while many people believe that the Apocalypse has to do with Armageddon, it really is more about the true translation of the word apocalypse, which means "lifting a veil," or "revelation."

It isn't the destruction of the world, but the revelation of a profound truth. The ending of a kind of delusion. A threshold, or singularity – a moment when an aging system of belief and perception finally gives way to an underlying reality. So it is the end of a certain world – a world as it has been misperceived. A destructive, delusional world.

This delusional fear of a fiery conflagration – a "Day of Reckoning" – is propagated by those who seek to manipulate people with fear. Take a closer look, and you'll see the truth is much much nicer...

"The Kingdom...is spread out over the whole earth,

and people do not have eyes to see it."

The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 113

If you've never explored the story of our world as described by the Mayan calendar, the diagram below (from Peter Russell's forward to the anthology, The Mystery of 2012, Sounds True) does a good job of boiling it down to a simple visual.

What the Mayans were actually describing was the history of consciousness entering the world, and so creating different worlds, so to speak. The Mayan codice found at Coba arranges the growth of consciousness, the evolution of intelligence, into ages, or eras. This spiral simplifies it into the four ages depicted, each age a quicker turn. We are presently turning into a "Wisdom Age," by the diagram, which precedes the end of the spiral- the "end of the world."

A superior diagrammatical approach to understanding the earth's history (and "end" of history) according to the Mayans would be to think of it like a Mayan pyramid, with proportionally smaller levels stepping up to the top, each step representing an era of evolution, or amount of consciousness in the world. Each era up is progressively shorter in duration, and exponentially more packed with consciousness.

In this imagined architectural chart, the base would be the Cellular Era, when cellular life first appeared on Earth. The next level, the Mammalian Era, when creatures went from simple in the sea, to more complex onto the land. Consciousness begins to accumulate and expand. The next step, the Family Era, when primates acquire stereo color vision, leads into the Tribal Era, when increased consciousness discovers the uses of fire, tool-making, social benefits. The next level up the pyramid is the Cultural Era, the dawn of Reason and Art. Up the next step to the National Era, the era of nation-states, of law, and of what Huxley called The Perennial Philosophy, that is, the wisdom underlying religion- the teaching of Jesus and Buddha, for example. Next comes the Planetary Era, the era of global power, the Industrial Revolution, E=mc². This is the era we have known for most of our lives, but each successive era is significantly shorter than the era it follows as consciousness is flooding into our plane, change is accelerating, so we are rapidly moving into and through the Galactic Era, the era of ethics and interconnection (like we now have with the internet).

To many of us, it doesn't seem that we are occupying an era of ethics, but we are (quite appropriately) heading into the heart of it. The reason the world looks the opposite is a product of how we're looking at it. If we look at it through the prism of the self-des-tructing Power era, we see what the desperate materialists of the world want us to see – a world where the great majority of people surrender the Earth's resources to a tiny, delusional minority.

When observing the current state of Washington D.C., for example, watch occult "politicians," whose position comes from corrupt power, manipulating a vociferous, fearful minority by inducing The Stockholm Syndrome, a fear-based psychological state wherein the abused identifies with their abusers. According to an FBI database resource, this phenomenon occurs with about 27% of abductees and abuse victims, coincidentally the same number, according to polls, of Americans who identify themselves as Republicans.

The future scenario intended by the Power Era Materialists must result in the violent enslavement of the great majority of humans, and the irrevocable trashing of the planet. Since evolution is not actually survival of the strongest, but in fact survival of the most effectively cooperative, the majority will insist on the adoption of the Ethical Era. It will happen. Fear tactics, fascist media, and consolidation of resources are the last gasps of unethical and delusional people whose time has actually already passed. But most of us already know that, don't we?

Look at the bigger picture, and you'll see the genie is out of the bottle. We are entering into the Universal Era, when everything becomes possible. It is the era of conscious co-creation of our Earth, when interconnectedness, wisdom, ethics, and com-passion will lead us into Universal Citizenship, and allow us to steward our planet and it's resources effectively and humanely. At "the end of Earth's history," we become The Universe. Just look all around you, the great majority (at least 73%) has already started to gratefully welcome a new spiritual world, and the end of the delusional material one. We're just not as loud yet.

As the [Power] world ends, there will be chaos, possibly violence. Stay out of it's way. Take care of one another. Keep these truths strong in your heart. We know from the lessons of quantum reality that consciousness forms material reality, so expect a lot of material manifestations – dramatic environmental and human manifestations. But don't be afraid. Fill your heart with willingness, tolerance, kindness, and Love, and you will become part of the next great step of Intelligent Evolution, when the suffering of so many indigenous peoples, and animals, and our Earth itself, will finally end.

"...the wicked carry out the will of God in their own fashion."

Spinoza

Check out: Ian Lungold Lecture in the "Heart & Art Websites" tabs to the left for a great talk on the source material.

Tales: The Real Rapture

"...our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world...as in being able to remake ourselves."

Mahatma Gandhi

We're a little like moss on a rock here on earth -a simple colony of life. In the same way that any collective life form experiences stress when the conditions for it's survival begin to change, our world is experiencing some stress. For all of us, as well as each of us, there's a need to adapt.

There's a flaw in our culture's perception of Darwinism. It's not about "Survival of the Fittest." It's about "Survival of What Adapts in the Most Cooperative Way" (see Dr. Bruce Lipton). What carries us through the tough times, with Love. It's an altogether different definition of fitness. It's a spiritual fitness.

The biggest, meanest guy may clobber everyone who disagrees with him, take all the food, and force himself on the prettiest women; but his karma (created by ego and fear) and the failure to evolve spiritually, will cause his destruction (sex specificity intended) – a genetic dead end. The richest guy may have the most secure, most isolated fortress, the largest vault of canned food, and the most guns and ammo; but his isolation and fearfulness will lead to spiritual atrophy, and the inward collapse of his world. Those attributes and characteristics that are associated with Power are dying out, as those associated with Ethics are on the rise. Life on earth is always adapting; the parts that don't, don't last.

Hard times stress the colony, challenging it, forcing it to change; and now we see the shape that change is taking. It's like breaking up bad pottery, and soaking it until it softens and becomes the clay that forms the basis of real life, in order to start over. People are coming together to re-configure their world on that basis – what's actually real and important in life; inspired by a sudden common awareness of what the management of Earth's abundance actually entails, and what the real consequences of continued unconscious exploitation will lead to.

A new cooperation – an evolution –  is exploding into reality, based on the spiritual unification of humankind, facilitated by the internet, manifested in an expanding sense of a global community, called to action by the impending catastrophe of climate change. The explosion in clean energy, expanding cooperatives, reuse and recycling, uncontested environmentalism; the elections of Obama, of women, of representatives of diverse religion and ethnic backgrounds; and the impetus for universal health care, local food production, the accelerating growth of animal rights awareness, vegan and vegetarianism, social support systems of all kinds – as well as the public momentum to institute these ethical concepts by means of regulation and legislation (a result of the rise of destructive fascism in the world), is the shape of the change.

Extremists and fundamentalists – religious, financial, racist and militaristic fascists – are dividing themselves off from the majority of peace-loving, compassionate humans, and defining their differences in preparation to be shed from the whole. They actually constitute just a small part of the world's total population. The rise of climate-denying, pro-corporate, racism and fascism actually marks the end of their world. It will be a little messy, but it's happening.

 Do everything you can to help it along. If you open your heart, you'll intuitively know what that is. You'll know how to behave, how to shop, how to contribute, how to vote. You already do.

In a manner of speaking, a kind of biblical "Rapture" is actually taking place now amongst those who are awakening to this new consciousness, many of whom are experiencing hard times, and finding themselves and their neighbors falling through the same cracks in the system that allow spiritual evolution to enter. These are fractures in the false world of materialistic consumerism, and a dis-identification with a media that's destructive by corporate design. The Christ Spirit that's returning isn't the bearded redhead in the paintings, it's the spirit of Ethics, Cooperation, Compassion, and Love.

Those who want it all, who think they have it all, who are trying to get as much as they can, and will do anything not to lose it; who want to keep things like they are, who suffer the delusion of their superiority and entitlement, who think they can will the truth to be what they want, are fast being "Left Behind" in their spiritual morass – a private hell of their own making. They won't remain here suffering while the blessed ascend to Heaven, they'll simply become redundant. Their hateful opinions will hold no sway. Their methods of fear-mongering will become ineffective. 

 Your biggest job may be to help those backsliders you know and care for catch up to the change – by generously applying Love and compassion.

Heaven will return on Earth as we stop poisoning it (because we must), restore natural balance, use free energy, distribute the earth's resources equitably, and evolve into our divine state of spiritual unification. The balance is returning as it must, and if you're part of that change, you needn't worry about the hard times. What truly matters is what each and every one of us keeps in their heart, just be sure it's Love.

"Our present world is conditioned by our present mode of consciousness; only when that consciousness passes from its present dualistic mode...will the new creation appear, which is the external reality of which our world is a mirror."

Bede Griffiths

Read about this and much more in the latest book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor, from Llewellyn Worldwide; and the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond. Both are available everywhere – but ask for them at your local bookstore!