Powershifts, Protests, Compassionate Consciousness, and Spiritual Evolution: The Real Rapture, Pt.1

We're a lot like moss on a rock, our humanity here on Earth – a simple, opportunistic colony of life, clinging to something alive that gives us Life. In the same way that any collective life form ex-periences stress when conditions for it's survival begin to change, our world is changing, and we're experiencing the stress. For all of us looking for solutions, wondering what to do, the answers are in front of us already in the simple intuitive need to adapt consciously – in that rapidly rising awareness that's showing us the way. The simple truth of things.

Our corporate culture has wrongly modeled itself on mis-construed Darwinism. It's not about "Survival of the Fittest," it's about survival of what adapts in the most cooperative way. The triumph of which ideas benefit the most people all the time, without putting the whole at risk. So we require only the simplest reliable human mechanisms to carry us through tough times, mechanisms like Love, Compassion, and Cooperation. Like the shared vision of what's really possible here on Earth that so many of us all around the world can plainly see.

It's an altogether different definition of success. A different definition of "fitness." A success based on the shared success of the human species. A fitness comprised of spiritual consciousness – the very kind that we can feel coalescing around and within us, right now.

The qualities and dogma associated with "Power" and "Science" are dangerously anachronistic in the face of what's humanly pos-sible, and what's humanly impossible. We simply can't successfully allow our present systems of commerce, governance, and resource management to continue on their present course, or continue to deny the physical changes affecting our planet, and expect anything but catastrophe. Our reality is clearly changing.

For example: Aspects of Capitalism work very well to achieve certain goals, but the bottom line is that it's a mechanism that now serves money (and those most interested in it), not humanity. Old Science is in denial of New Science, and strongly resembles a Flat Earth Society, of sorts. Our political system is too compromised by corrupt capitalists to be effective for the vast majority of people.

All of us, red and blue, know these truths. It's an awareness born of our human spiritual evolution, of our progression. So our institu-tions of Power are losing their power. They all resemble pyramid schemes, slash and burn, where the earliest in and out thumb their noses at all the rest. Today there are ethical, spiritually conscious barbarians at their gates, and of course, they are us.

Something has happened – is happening. Human Beings are percolating together, re-configuring our world on the basis of what's real and necessary for life. Conscious humans are inspired by an awareness of what managing Earth's abundance actually entails; and understanding what science is actually telling them – all with a profound [and beautiful] kind of non-violent presence, that suddenly seems most practical. It's the inheritance of Gandhi's ahimsa. It is a rebirth of the human spirit, the awakenings of Heaven on Earth.

In an irreversible way, a kind of "Rapture" is actually taking place now amongst those awakened to this consciousness in the world. Many people are having hard times, falling through the same cracks in The Wall Street of 'Rome' that allow spiritual evolution to enter; the fractures in the falseness of materialistic consumerism, and science in denial. As patriotic humans, this consciousness inspires a profound dis-identification with the corrupt media, political, scientific, and legal structures that clearly only serve a small, pathologically ego-driven minority.

Lifting us up is a new evolutionary cooperation – a reality based on the spiritual unification of humankind, facilitated by instantaneous global communication. A tsunami of racial and sexual tolerance, and of unity and community. An understanding of our new scientific realities, including the urgent need for clean technology, and free, clean power; the impetus for universal human rights; reuse and recycling, and invigorated environmentalism; local food production; greater animal awareness; social support systems of all kinds – and the public momentum to institute these ethical concepts by means of a truer form of democracy. It is arising everywhere.

And it's all based on a simple spiritual mechanism we haven't seen enough of for a while, humility. The kind that engenders real sanity and res-ponsibility. The Christ Spirit that has returned isn't the iconic bearded redhead with all the answers – it's this spirit of ethics, cooperation, compassion, and humility that is the answer. It's the profoundly practical spirit of Love – for ourselves, each other, and our blessed Mother Earth.

The real extremists, ironically called conservative, and the self-entitled religious, financial, and militaristic radicals, are dividing themselves off from the whole. Those who suffer the delusion of superiority and entitlement, who think they can will the world (even the weather) to be what they want, are being "Left Behind" in a spiritual morass – drunk on piety, greed, and destructive self-will. They don't have to stay back while the blessed ascend to Heaven, they are living in a fearful hell already. That's why they're grasping, arming-up; why they're consolidating. They actually constitute a very small part of the world's total population. They, too can be "saved," through what I like to call Compassionate Consciousness.

All the scary storms and politics and economics we're witnessing are actually bringing us together, cementing the understanding of our changing world, connecting us to each other in the most important ways. They're terrible times, yes, but they break through the stupor of fearful apartness that so many people experience in their lives. They bring us to our true purpose, which is to love and help one another; and to appropriately manage the changing resources of the Earth, which are still and always boundless. In this way, Life is getting better, as it's getting worse!

In each of our lives, we've all experienced a little Heaven at one time or another. That's because Heaven is here. Heaven is here already, has always been here, and has always been meant to be here, right now.

The personal role we can all play is to reject willful ego, and recognize it in one another as the single most destructive disease of humanity – a spiritual disease that threatens to kill Mother Earth as we know her (…and would you, red or blue, allow someone to kill your mother?).

The balance is returning – as it will and must, and if you intuitively want to be part of it, what really matters is showing up for the change (like supporting the protesters), and embracing it! Personally become part of the solution. What's important is what each and every one of us keeps in their heart, as long as it's the intention and power of Compassionate Consciousness.

"For so [humanity] moves towards the infinity of the Truth by the ex-perience of its variety; so [conscious-ness] helps to build, change, destroy what [has been] built, and prepares a new construction, in a word, to pro-gress, grow, enlarge in self-know-ledge and world-knowledge, and their works."

Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle

Occupying America – The American Dream Movement

A loud shout out to everyone who made Foley Square the place to be. Please take part in this patriotic cause for compassionate consciousness...more to come...

http://occupywallst.org/

http://www.occupytogether.org/

A Special Message From Sue Pike, The Animal Talker®

My Wife, Sue, is a wonderful healer – animal communicator, reiki master, spiritual guide; and she recently put out this urgent heads-up that I thought I'd better post for you guys...check it out (she's very connected!)

Hello All!

I've been getting to send everyone an email about messages I'm getting...so here we go!

The energy is moving very quickly right now. If you are working on something that you LOVE, keep on track – you will notice things developing quickly. Keep focused and clear about your intentions.

This is the time to make the changes you have been thinking about. Don't delay! Remove any fears or obstacles that may be blocking you from creating what you want in your life. This could mean a whole new career, starting a new business, new relationship, etc. It also could mean shifting something that you already are involved in, but need to change the dynamic of.

Universe, God/Goddess, Source, however you like to call it, wants you to be in your light, your power. Not an ego-based power, but [the power] of your authentic self.

What's important is to keep Love in your heart! Self-acceptance is the key, as well as forgiveness – for yourself and others.

If you're not sure what "you want to do," but know in your heart what you're doing isn't it, then maybe go to a career counselor, or someone who can assist you in this. [Make a change!]

If you are an "empath," remember that you can always ask your Guides. If you are feeling the energy swirling around, or heavy, or whatever....ask them to lift it from you, for relief from the weight of the world. This is very important, to keep balanced and happy.

I support all of you in whatever process you are going through right now. If you've been experiencing any type of personal turbulence, pay attention. What is it that you need to look at? Do you need to change something in your life? What's not working for you anymore? – It's time to release it. And, by the way, if you are, you are definitely NOT alone!

Please know that you are all light beings :)

Help each other. Help a friend. Help a stranger (but don't tell anyone you did). Be a listener.

Wishing you all a wonderful, joyful day.

I just want to reiterate that *energy is moving very quickly right now*, so keep focusing on what you desire, not what you don't. I feel VERY excited about this...

Love and Light,

Sue

Sue Pike
The Animal Talker®
http://www.myspace.com/suepike
http://animalchanneler.blogspot.com
Facebook Fan Page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sue-Pike-Animal-Communicator-Reiki-Master/122986468927

Tales of the Koko Lion, Part 25: Finding Grace at Art Center– Arrival

"The most important thing in life is showing up."

Woody Allen

Even though he was only twenty-one, the years seemed to weigh a little heavily on him. Disproportionately so. I suppose it was more a crisis of attitude than anything else, as he didn't think he'd witnessed any more trauma than normal (other than his childhood), or hadn't fairly well survived Life's most terrible tests so far...but then, what was merely terrible to him may have been ruinous to some, and he was pretty sure that he didn't know what normal was.

He just felt that he fit a bit obliquely into the world, and had a persistent, not totally uncommon sense of there being a transparent veil of sorts separating him from the happy, practical life of belonging-to that seemed to be other kids' birthrights. He'd read about that, that veil in the Existentialism he was drawn to when he was twelve, Camus and Sartre, Kafka...Marvel Comics. So was it simple suggestion, or acute and subtle injury that formed his youthful romantic alienation...and which is it with any disaffected kid?

The veil cast a decidedly purplish, or violet tint (on the blue side) to Life, like the childhood story he remembered about "Grandpa," who dropped his glasses into a bucket of purple paint, where "Purple fires were rising up...From a purple hill." In his case, the perception heightened an inescapable sense of exile, of being a visitor in an indifferent world, a feeling that many people experience, especially when they really are visiting someplace strange. Like tourists. It felt that real to him, like he was a tourist here, wherever here was.

All those dusty canyon years growing up, avoiding his unhappy parents; years floating along the foggy shoreline and chasing his future like trickster spirits through the west, and miles of Nevada. The years on the sales floor, pitching expensive toys to oversized kids; the grinding, clang, and molten sputter of the factory steel; the strange ways of "entitled" high society he'd witnessed – the whole envied class of people acting out like petulant teens – all of this enforced a sense of profoundly adult disillusionment, and when he'd intuitively sought the ground of Love, it too had turned over on him.

His Mormon girlfriend wrapped back into her relentless indoctrination; the impish, warm-hearted neighborhood girl he'd begun to date died of a rare blood disorder; and then the one most exciting "older" woman who'd seemed to secretly know Life's promise suddenly died too, at only thirty – without even telling him that she knew she was going to. Perhaps that's why she was so exciting, she'd stripped down to her mortality...she secretly knew the end was near.

And then there were his own personal goblins growing up too, forming around and within him. It wasn't all their fault.

So, it was this state of vagabond disconnection that carried him into South Pasadena, with his sculpture-making money, a matching grant from his drowning father, and his beat-up VW. He'd wanted to go back to a school in New York City, a long ways away, but as a condition of his father's largesse, instead he had to apply to the very reputable Art Center College in Pasadena, and had been accepted.

The other students occupying the huge mission-style house he got into weren't "kids," and were all a good deal more flush than he was. They agreed to let him in despite all the bedrooms being taken, so that they could secretly reduce their rent by a hundred bucks each and pocket the difference without their paying parents knowledge. So he found himself moving up into the hot, sprawling mansion attic, unfinished, ducking through the pitched roof tilting in on every space, following the house below in all directions. He staked out his "living room," bedroom, and studio between the open raw lumber braces, and lived there with the dust and the spiders.

It seemed an appropriately strange space, and gladly kept him at a comfortable distance – and so different from the others – which was what he really wanted to be anyways.

Pulling up to Art Center in the multi-colored VW that he'd been piloting around the west like an old mail plane, with his disassembled drawing board and army green duffle bag, he felt himself like a used truck without a muffler, sticking out like that from the late-model student coupes, and various trophy cars. No one noticed...but then it turned out they did. He did not care...but then, of course, it turned out he did.

The Art Center he pulled up to wasn't the southland fixture he'd heard warmly remembered by chummy old pros, it was the new Art Center, a monolithic steel and glass bridge forced onto a rolling hillside with backhoes and cranes and Caterpillars, in the familiar chop-terrace fashion of California development blight. The lauded architecture even seemed familiar, a re-hashing of all the Gropius and Van der Rohe his father had loved so much. There was something uncomfortably egoic about it that rubbed him the wrong way. He'd wanted to be in a vaguely stinky, trodden-in old school, with warmth and esprit de corps, but instead everything was cold and new – the kids' money, the hard, black painted steel, and all that polished cement.

He still didn't think he'd found the place where he might meet himself, but he was going to...in a way.

continued...

What's Love [Actually] Got to Do With It?

Revisiting this very important message:

"My religion is Love." Amma

Have you ever heard of Amma (mother), "The Hugging Saint?" Amma has given her darshan – a deep loving hug, to about thirty million people! In sessions that last 12 to 18 hours straight, Amma doesn't get up, or eat, or drink. She just gives beautiful deep hugs. To hug Amma is like hugging an ocean of love. After so much hugging, she is built for hugging. She is without a doubt the best hugger in human history. She has given herself over completely to Love, and service, and, of course, hugging.

It's difficult in our modern culture to imagine giving one's self over so completely to Love – to make Love itself the single predominant motivation for everything you do. Some of us touch on it dedicating themselves to their families, or in service occupations, but usually most of us have more important things to do that don't allow us to act solely out of Love, right?

Nope – that's not really true. That's really short-selling the power and practicality of our deepest [re]source as a way to live.

At any and every moment, we have a simple choice between two directions in our lives: towards ego gratification in one form or another; or towards Love, compassion, and the practical path to growth and contributing to Life that choosing Love can create for us. We make this choice in every aspect of our lives, from the smallest decision – like what to watch on TV, or what to eat; to the largest – like how to raise your kids, or what (or who) to vote for.

As fantastic and impossible as it may sound, if you put Love in the center of every decision, when you rely completely on Love, your intuitive intelligence will kick in and direct you as clearly as if a very wise advisor were whispering right in your ear. You'll want to stop gossiping. You'll want to stop criticizing people and institutions, and instead, start getting ideas of how to directly improve things, now. You'll stop making selfish decisions. Your open-heartedness will allow you to intuitively know what to do in tough situations.

You will become a link in a chain of Love, and experience the incredible strength, unity, and freedom that comes from making right decisions, and from acting ethically.

"We are all beads strung together on the same chain of love." Amma

Life will begin to flow in a smooth, sure way that actually requires less effort to accomplish more. Even unforeseen professional and financial solutions will show up for you right on time, because you will be supported and directed by Love, which, as the great foundational power of creative Life, never goes wrong. Of course, you probably won't win the Powerball just because you feel you bought the ticket "with love," but just ask humbly, and you'll receive everything you need to be happy.

You'll likely still hear the voice of your ego goading or belittling you or others, making fearful warnings, like: "You can't make a living by just loving," but you'll recognize that voice as an unfortunate tendency of our human form – a delusional belief in false promises and solutions based on acquiring things, or gaining the approval of others – solutions that are superficial and momentary, and not really solutions at all. Everyone knows that for all of humankind, loving has always built the best lives, and will always have that power to do so.

In a practical sense, listening to Love will cause you to show up for what's truly important in your life, to be in places where you'll find opportunity that you may have never been otherwise. Joy will arise from all decisions based in Love and service, and will defuse your worries more and more as your new open-hearted presence develops.

Could it really be so simple that just the act of holding Love in your heart as the focus of your life can connect you, guide you, and provide for you? All the great wisdom of humankind tell us it's true. In The Bhagavad Gita, for example, Krishna says: "...when one's faith is completely unified, they gain the object of their devotion. In this way, every desire is fulfilled by me." And the Bible puts it this way: "As a man [person] thinketh in his heart, so is he." So it sez-eth.

The truth is that Love is the medium of all Life, as well as a profound personal power that can create a fail-safe template for living.

So, it just comes down to that choice you know – between fear or faith. If there's a part of you that seems to enjoy living with fear, release that destructive hook and fearlessly choose the direction that Love will clearly lead you in. It's not a big secret, really, just a very nice kind of common-sense...and the best free "life coach" there is. My dear friend Anne put it this way:

"The love that you share is the only thing you need to know. It is the green place from which all good things grow and spread into your life. It's where the river of the Source is constantly carrying you, so that all your worries may disappear."

Poo-pooing these beliefs as a "naîve, unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky fairy tales" is the attitude that has created every disastrous condition ever known. Embracing them creates the healing the world seeks...and Amma says this:

"In the end, love is the only medicine that can heal the wounds of the world. In this universe, it is love that binds everything together. As this awareness dawns within us, all disharmony will cease."

Next year, I hear they may have to move Amma's event here in NYC to a much larger venue. It's continually growing too big for one location after another. They may have to hold it in Madison Square Garden. Next could be Yankee Stadium, or maybe Central Park. It would be nice if the whole world could share a hug with Amma, and at the rate she's hugging, they probably will.

Take a visit to Amma's Site in the links column at left.

Read about this and much more in the new 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!

Codename: Kids Next Door - More Sooper Dangerous Weaponry

Here's another group of dooper dangerous 2x4 tech weapons – these from the sooper obscure file! the "Clawzooka"

the "LunchBloxerr"

the "T-ball-aster"

the "TrikeAttack"

...enjoy – and be careful!

The 4 Signs (in progress...)

Here's a process-piece that I ran across the other day, it's my animation, "The Four Signs of Manhood" in an early, no sound/no color version, for the animatiophiles out there. (Warning kids: it's rated TV-MA!)

If you'd like to see the way it turned out with sound and color, find it right here, from the animation section of my site...

The Architecture of Word World, Pt. 1: Places in 3-D

Here's a look at the architectural aspects of designing a complex 3-D animated world, like PBS Kids' Word World. In Word World, every "where" has to start somewhere, as in this sketch of even the lowliest crab shack, which in this case (like everything in Word World) had to be constructed from perfectly legible lower case letters.In Word World, every 3-D location had to be built, much like it would be in the real world. Following the visualizing sketch, there'd have to be an architectural plan, showing all the angles that the model builders need to make the new locale into a space where our 3-D actors can work...

Combined with the architectural drawing can be a detailed comprehensive color version.

Sometimes, we got away with a simpler black & white version, as with this lower case "dock," just using a plan view, placing it in the world, and showing it's panel in the storyboard...

The color comp follows the plan drawing, and places the location in the world, in it's appropriate seasonal surrounding...

With the external plan drawn up, the location in the 3-D world determined, the color figured out, etc., etc...the building and placement of the model takes place, not (as you can see) without a bit of back-and-forth. I ended up building a fence between the Schoolhouse and the train track, for safety of course!

The new School-house location needs an interior that has to be built separate from the exterior, because the interior acting space needs to be larger than the exterior plan will allow. We stay correctly related to the exterior by sticking to the proper proportions, at least...

Finally, there needs to be a very comprehensive color version, that tell the model painters pretty much exactly what we need. The look of the world itself shouldn't vary much from this full color "architectural" rendering...I got help with this Schoolhouse interior from the very talented Gideon Kendall.

Even the most atmospheric and organic locations must be created by this plan – with sketches, technical/architectural drawings, color comps, and finished color renderings, whether it's the Schoolhouse, or the bottom of the pond!

We Are All Plastic (In a Very Real Way...)

....................................................................we're all a little bit plastic

Now and then (when we're not being particularly kind) we might refer to a person as being "plastic," meaning that they don't seem to be very authentic, or that they're overly concerned with surface ap-pearances. While we usually mean it in a mildly derisive way, it's really an entirely accurate description, not of just some people, but of everyone, and in fact, of every thing too. As an adjective, as a con-cise description, the whole world is plastic.

It's plenty easy to see in ourselves, these crazy viscous, cellular bodies we ride around in are always changing. Regenerating, re-arranging, building up, breaking down. Aging. Ripening. Come to think of it, I'm getting pretty ripe myself. I'm being rearranged in ways I never really wanted.

"As you think, so you are." The Buddha

The truth is, that like most physical conditions and material cir-cumstances; even life events, attitudes, and emotional states, I can change my state of being. Mold it – like plastic. Our acceptance of this concept is obvious in the language we commonly use, usually when we describe the potential in things. You can "make something of yourself," or "make a mess of your life." You can make a promise to get in shape (promises, promises). No one has much of a problem with this concept of malleability, based on our focus, our intention, our possibilities, and of course, our actions. But what if we take a closer look, beneath that superficial sense of plasticity?

Look at a time-lapse film of a big city the next chance you get, and you'll see a constant flux of matter coming into the picture, coming into being, and then going out of it. Buildings pile up and wear down like sandcastles. People flock and file by, suddenly accumulate, and then vanish, like raindrops evaporating in the sun. Those were important places. They were important people. Where does it all come from, where does it all go?

Past mystics called it "the ether." Buddhists call it emptiness. A physicist might call it the Quantum, or Higgs Field. Whatever you call it, it is an ocean of invisible fluctuating energies from which and into which everything we see and know precipitates, takes form, and exists "here," at least for a little while until it returns back. I plan on doing that very thing myself.

"The fact that the mass of a particle is equivalent to a certain amount of energy means that the particle...has to be conceived as a dynamic pattern, a process involving the energy which manifests itself as the particle's mass."

Fritjof Capra

Before I really get personal with it, let's consider this plasticity on a geological time scale, like an archaeologist might. Over what seem to be great expanses of time in our perception, these energies manifest themselves in broad cultural movements, and massive re-arrangements of man-made stuff. A lot of people all suddenly seek and find the same solutions for their life needs, and they swarm, like those great, organic flocks of birds undulating through the sky. They get busy, like ants. The plastic surface of the planet evolves – waves of biospheric change spread, peeling over the Earth's surface, re-forming entire continents. For example, lots of people once lived in the green region that is now the Sahara Desert. Human actions are adding to these processes as we speak.

If we just allow our evolving consciousness to lift us to an adequate vantage point, where we can gain a perspective on this change, we can see ourselves not just as a part of it, but of even determining it through our participation. So our participation has direction, and creates our constantly shifting state of being. If we can manage this big mind, we can see the direction we want to be going collectively, and focus our own plasticity in accord. Now it's getting more personal.

Have you ever walked into a room or a space, and just not felt right? Or experienced a "weird" day, when you, and everyone you came in contact with all noticed something off. What you're experiencing are real perceptions that our expanding consciousness gives us. An awareness of the invisible fluctuating energies I'm talking about. Tuning in to these energies changes and informs all aspects of your personal life, and reconnects us to the world in a less self-centered way. We engage in a more external way, and by doing so, engage ourselves with that greater underlying energy.

Then you might suddenly see that things aren't going great for anybody. Or that someone isn't really being a jerk – they're suffering. Or, more importantly, that you can contribute to changing those states of being in yourself and others, those plastic attitudes and directions, by just exercising your awareness, adjusting your focus, aiming your intention, and taking the right actions.

Have you ever had a flurry of synchronicitous events take place in your life? Coincidences that really couldn't be completely coincidental, usually guiding you towards positive connections, places you need to be, people you need to meet? Those situations are opportunities to join with this source dimension that you access by accepting this invisible spiritual mechanism. This is the definition of faith as "the evidence of things unseen."

Coincidentally, when you become willing to allow your normally constrained perceptions to expand into the shared "field of being" that lives right under the surface of things, the actions you'll intuitively want to take will contribute to the spiritual evolution of all Life on Earth, and you'll become part of the collective conscious co-creation of a positive, abundant, sustainable future. You'll become part of our greater solution.

"When you make the two into One, you will be a Son of Man,

and when you say: Mountain move! It will move."

Logion 106, The Gospel of Thomas

All you need to recognize, to become fully aware of, is that the two most powerful of all the underlying energies – the ones you want directing all of your important decisions (and unimportant ones),  are Love and Truth. Then try to occupy these two ideals as the medium of your life, the very best way you can.

"Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field.

I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other"

doesn't make any sense."

Rumi

Read about concepts like these 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 at your local bookstore!

Codename: Kids Next Door: More From the Sooper Obscure Files...Logos!

There were always "other" organizations, kind of like the KND, but made up of hamsters, evil cats, Amish, whatever,
and they all needed logos...

Most of these were done in about an hour, just because that's how show production goes, and they weren't even done in Illustrator...

...they were inked (remember that?) by Sir Robert Smith, and colored by interns

– God bless interns (color slightly adjusted here...)

...then there were the holidays, and of course the KND needed to add a little cheer to the standard logo!

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!

Codename: Kids Next Door, From the Sooper Obscure Vault

The last of the real strange Rainbow Monkeys...
Here's a soda-pop/champagnish sort of cycle thang that runs on carbonation, I'm sure...I'll be rolling out some more obscure vehicles soon!