These are times of monumental transformation, in which one world is coming to its inevitable end, setting the stage for the creation of a new and totally different one.  These intensely challenging times present us with the blessing of an exceedingly rare opportunity to transform ourselves, and our world.  This is no easy task.  These are times that demand the utmost of us as spiritual warriors and multi-dimensional beings.
This is not a time for talk, but for action – spiritual action.  In my last article, I concluded by saying that the most important thing we can do during these challenging times is to prepare, both physically and spiritually.  But how do we do this?  What steps are involved?
Let’s begin with preparing physically.  This begins, very simply, by reassuming complete responsibility for our own lives.  The old paradigm, in which we were all conditioned and programmed, is a dependency system, in which we are tricked into giving away our personal power in return for the promise of being taken care of from cradle to grave.  Reassuming responsibility means reclaiming our power as free, multi-dimensional spiritual beings, with supernatural powers yet untapped, and fully capable of taking care of every aspect of our lives.
Because we have been rendered so powerless, this is a tremendous challenge, which takes total commitment and work.  It is also a task that no one person can do by themselves.  It can only be done as part of a community of like-minded and kindred spirits.  That’s getting ahead of ourselves, but let’s keep it in mind as we move along.  Our long-term goal here is to learn how to live again in communities that are self-sustaining and in harmony with the web of life.
The first steps are things we are all capable of doing, regardless of our situation if life.  It starts with freeing our minds from the clutches of the world that enslaves us.  We must learn to understand the matrix of illusion that surrounds us.  Without this understanding, it is impossible to break free from it.  As free, evolving spiritual beings, we must also learn how to reprogram our minds.  One of the ways we do this is by practicing thinking about sustainability.  Ask yourself questions like, “If the infrastructure was to go down, where would I get my water and my food?  How would I stay warm in the winter?”  You don’t even have to do anything – just think about it.  It’s like setting the table for when the time does come to act.  When that time comes, you’re ready, and you start by doing the little things, like storing clean water in five gallon bottles or canned food with long shelf life.
It is imperative to begin to take steps to remove ourselves from the mainstream dependency system.  Yes, this is a daunting task, as this is a sticky wicket.  Just ask anybody who has ever stopped using their social security number or paying their taxes.  Once again, we can begin with the little things.  We can remove ourselves from the clutches of the medical establishment by practicing preventive health and going to natural healers.  We can take our children out of public schools, and educate them at home.  And for those who are stuck in mainstream jobs, which are nothing more than a paycheck, you can start by freeing your emotional energy from it, so that it doesn’t dissipate and distract you from what really matters.
There is only one way to create the new Earth, during this critical time.  This is in sustainable communities of free and independent-thinking individuals, who have reconnected with their power as spiritual beings.  This is what we must prepare for.
Preparing ourselves spiritually comes hand in hand with preparing ourselves physically.  When we learn to live sustainably, we learn to reconnect with the forces of nature and with the web of life.  When we start to flow with these energies, we make the most important connection of all, and that is our connection with spirit or the spirit world.  This is the connection our civilized world has lost that is responsible for its demise.
Preparing ourselves spiritually means a couple of things.  It means working at our spirituality, which is continuously evolving, developing it, and practicing it.  Our ultimate goal here is to reach our full potential as multi-dimensional beings.  When a critical mass of us do this, the scales will begin to tip in our favor.
Ceremony is our most important tool to prepare ourselves spiritually.  Ceremony can take many forms.  Ceremony is anything we do to connect with spirit with our intent and with our vibration.  The ceremony in my life has a strong indigenous flavor, influenced by my recent experiences with Mayan Wisdom Keeper Tata Erick Gonzalez.  These consist of prayer, fire ceremonies, sunrise ceremonies, music, with drums, singing bowls and shakers, and singing, chanting, and more.  But different people can do this differently.  Meditation and yoga can be forms of ceremony.
With all indigenous people, ceremony is the most important thing in their lives.  It is the foundation and the medium of their relationship with spirit and with the spirit world.  And everything important that is manifested in their world, including material things, springs from this relationship with spirit.  Ceremony is also an important way that we receive the gift of the healing energies that the Earth and the Universe have to give.  It is also a way to cleanse our minds from the insanity of our conditioning, and reprogram ourselves with our prayers.  Indigenous ceremonies also show us how hard they work at their spirituality, with hours of ceremony every day.  Life itself becomes a ceremony.
With the indigenous, it’s never a question of being too busy for ceremony.  Ceremony always comes first.  This is especially true during this incredibly sacred time of transformation.  Never was a time so ripe for ceremony to prepare us for the challenges ahead, and to guide us to live with a vibration and with actions that serve the web of life.

Now that we’re a couple months into 2012, and less than nine months from the much ballyhooed December 21, 2012, it’s time for another shift update.  In my world, this topic is so hot that there is now significant information overload.  I just returned from the Los Angeles Conscious Life Expo, with around 10,000 in attendance and a huge stable of so-called experts on the shift.  I was struck by how much information about this the average person had in their head, while at the same time, not knowing what to do with it, particularly as it pertains to the part we play.

In these circles, people seem to have a basic understanding about a few aspects of the shift.  They understand that the shift is an age of monumental transformation for our world and for us as individuals.  And they understand that this is a process, taking place over time, as opposed to a single big-bang event, and this process has begun.  The shift is happening, and we’re in its midst.  People also seem to accept that there is nothing etched in stone about 2012.  There is the possibility that our sick world could limp along for a few more years.  Or, it could come tumbling down tomorrow.  We simply don’t know.  As for the experts, let’s not forget that the New Age is potentially a serious threat to the established order.  Like all such mass movements, it is littered with disinformation, which is planted for the express purpose of keeping us off track.  Shocking and reprehensible, yes, but a common feature of our world.

I also noticed at the Expo that most people seemed to lump all the experts together, and assume they were saying more or less the same thing.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  This is particularly true for the difference between the New Age perspective, as expressed by so many white folks, and the indigenous perspective, such as the Maya and the Native American traditions.  Over the last few years, I have been blessed to experience the indigenous perspective directly through my association with Mayan Wisdom Keeper Tata Erick Gonzalez and the community he founded and leads, Earth Peoples United (www.earthpeoplesunited.org).  Understanding these differences can be very helpful in understanding the true meaning of the shift, and most importantly, what we are called upon to do at this momentous time.

One major difference is the indigenous understand that this is not about us.  In most cases, the message of the New Age folks focuses on helping people achieve the life they desire, including health, happiness, personal empowerment and manifesting prosperity in hard times.  In short, it’s all about us.  We come first.  This is a tragic error, and one of the reasons why our culture cannot sustain itself.  The indigenous understand that we are not the most important thing in the world.  We are but one part in a much larger web of life, in which everything is energetically connected to everything else, and every part shares energy for the purpose of serving the whole.  Our top priority, then, must be to serve the web of life.  Everything meaningful that we manifest in this world springs from this.  And if we are going to co-create the new Earth at this critical time, this must be the primary source of our power.

Another key difference is how they view the transformation, or the collapse, of the old paradigm world.  Everybody pays lip service to the fact that our old paradigm world is unsustainable, and destroying the very environment humans need to survive.  Again, this is where agreement ends.  The difference here is between a soft landing and a hard landing (crash) for the collapsing old paradigm.  In the New Age rhetoric, there is much more of a loyalty to our old paradigm world, and the assumption that much of it will make it through the transformation unscathed.  Like Y2K, the shift will come and go, and there will be change, but things will continue on much as they are.

With the indigenous, there are no such loyalties.  They see white civilization as a force that has plundered the Earth since its beginning, and with an agenda to exterminate all indigenous people and their spirituality.  They see the old paradigm as fundamentally out of balance and rotten to its core because it has lost its connection with the web of life and lost its connection with spirit.  In order to change, this world must be completely overhauled.  This begins with its people, one at a time, awakening to their magical heritage as spiritual beings, and making the commitment to live that way.  The indigenous also have an understanding of the true history of our planet, and that civilizations have been coming and going for far longer than our recorded history tells us.  After all, Atlantis is now at the bottom of the ocean, and it’s not unthinkable that our world could face a similar fate.

So many of the New Age folks know so much about the shift, as in facts, dates, predictions and alignments.  Yet, they know so little because this is not knowledge applied.  It has become a head game, for the purpose of entertainment and distraction.  With the indigenous, this same knowledge is a call to action.  They know that the time has come for the correction of the imbalances of our world.  For a spiritual warrior, this means one thing.  We must prepare – prepare ourselves physically by reassuming complete responsibility for our own lives, and prepare ourselves spiritually through our prayers and ceremonies.

The New Age folks are waiting for something to happen, and acting like they hope it won’t because they’re not doing anything, except talk.  The indigenous aren’t waiting for something to happen, but rather playing their part in making it happen.  If we are to persevere in this great challenge, and co-create the new Earth, we must follow the lead of the indigenous, and prepare ourselves to play our part in reconnecting with the web of life.

You’d have to be living under a rock not to have heard about the ending of the Mayan Calendar on December 21, 2012, and the Mayan prophesies, as well as those of countless other indigenous peoples, regarding this time of monumental transformation in which we are living, known as the shift.  And with the recent events in Japan and Egypt, the world economy on the brink, and people, like you and me, experiencing unprecedented change in our lives, we are witnessing the shift play out right before our eyes.  Everything’s right on schedule, and it’s all happening exactly as the indigenous prophesies told us it would.

Most people seem to have knowledge of all this, on some level, at least they pay lip service to it.  And yet, now that these things are happening, negative emotions are running very high, with a lot of shock, panic, and resignation that we’re too helpless to do anything about it anyway.  A lot of people are snapping under the stress of all the personal changes the shift is triggering.  The intensity of these emotions tells us that in spite of whatever knowledge people might have, they still don’t understand the true meaning of the shift.  It they did, they’d be handling it differently.

In light of this, let’s do a quick review of the true meaning of these times, and how we, as human beings, can not only survive these Earth changes and paradigm shifts, but how we can take advantage of this incredibly blessed opportunity to transform ourselves, and our world.  Let’s begin with the snapshot version of the true meaning of what’s happening here.  The shift refers to the shifting from one world, which has run its course, and which is approaching its inevitable end, to the opportunity to create a brand new world from its ashes.  The metaphors of the phoenix rising from the ashes or the butterfly emerging from the cocoon of the caterpillar are both apt.  Contrary to what many are telling us, this does not mean the world is going to come to an end.  It does mean that the world is going to be profoundly transformed.  It is fair to say that the world, as we know it, is going to end.

To make sense out of the shift, we must clear up two other major misconceptions.  The first is that the shift refers to a single point in time, as in a single date, where everything happens all at once, like a cataclysmic, big-bang event.  The date that is most often referenced is Winter Solstice 2012, and the event we hear the most about is the shifting of the Earth’s north and south electromagnetic poles.  However, this is not how the shift works, and again, all the ancient indigenous prophesies support this.

The shift is not a point, but a process, and it is a gradual one.  It is not a point in time, but a window of time of longer duration.  It is debatable how big this window is, but it really doesn’t make any difference because we do know for certain that we’ve already entered it.  The shift is happening, and it’s happening now.  We know this because we are witnessing it in the world around us, and for those of us who are resonating with these shifting energies, we know it because we can feel it, and we can see the shift transpiring in our personal lives.  This doesn’t mean there won’t be big-bang events, only that they will be feature of this longer process.

The other misconception is implicit in the first.  This is the notion that the shift is something that is going to happen in the world external to us.  Like the idea of a big-bang event, it is something that will happen to us, as passive onlookers.  This too is profoundly false, and all the indigenous prophesies support this too.  The energies of this transformation are everywhere in our world, and everything is included.  This includes us, human beings, each and every one of us.  As spiritual beings, we understand that we are co-creators of our world, and this applies, as well, to the shift.  The shift is an opportunity to create a new world.  There’s only one way this can happen, and this is by us making it happen.  We play a vital part in this transformation, and this begins with transforming ourselves.  And we are not alone in this.  All the elements of creation are playing their part in this great transformation, including Mother Earth, the Sun, the Moon, and every particle of the Solar System.  Mother Earth too is in serious need of a cleansing.  This is why she is behaving the way she is.

The shift is part of a 26,000 year cycle.  It is the same eternal cycle of birth/life/death & rebirth that we see played out on so many levels throughout our universe.  The shift is the part of the cycle that is the transition from death to rebirth.  One world is coming to its inevitable end.  This is the part that freaks most people out, for the obvious reason that this is the world they’ve chosen to live in, and they don’t want it to stop.  The world that is dying is the old paradigm world of our Western Civilization, which has been running the show on this planet since its emergence 6000 years ago in Babylon.  I fully realize this is hard for many to swallow, but the death of this world is not only inevitable, it is also an unimaginable blessing.  This is because this world is unsustainable and out of balance, and is responsible for a lifestyle that is so out of harmony with the forces of nature that it is destroying the very environment humans need to survive.  There is only one way this world can survive, and that is to change.  This is what the shift is forcing us to do now – or perish as a species.

So, what does this change consist of?  What is it we are called upon to do?  Here again, this is something all the ancient indigenous prophesies agree upon.  The shift is a process, and it is primarily a spiritual process.  The shift is moving from one world to the next, and we do this on the wings of our spirituality.  Our spirituality is the primary source of our protection in these times of monumental paradigm shifts and Earth changes, and the primary source of our power to create the new world.  These are times that will test us, and we will be facing many more challenges in the time ahead.  In order to survive and flourish, we must tap into the highest of our higher powers, and this is only possible through spiritual transformation.

This is the equivalent of reclaiming our full power as multi-dimensional, magical beings.  An essential first step in doing this is reassuming complete responsibility for ourselves and our life, both practically and spiritually.  On a practical level, we do this by learning to live sustainably again, in harmony with Mother Earth and with the forces of nature.  When the old paradigm world made the fatal wrong turn of worshipping at the altar of materialism, and controlling nature for this purpose, it lost its connection to spirit, and it lost its connection with the rhythm and flow of life and nature.  This is one of the primary reasons our world today is so imbalanced.  And these are the connections we must reestablish.

And we cannot rely upon the old paradigm system to save us.  Many people fall into the trap of believing that the way to get out of this mess is to reform the old paradigm.  Nothing could be further from the truth, unless you like going down with a sinking ship.  Einstein once said that it is impossible to fix a problem with the same thinking that created it.  We must remember that the old paradigm is a dying world, built on the foundation of unsustainable, destructive energy.  If we really want to reinvent ourselves and our world, it’s necessary to let go of the old paradigm.  If we’re stuck in some aspect of it, like in a dead end job to pay the bills, we must at least let go of it energetically, in our heart and spirit.  These must be free.

In fact, the old paradigm system strips us of our power as spiritual beings.  It is a dependency system, in which our masters at the top of the pyramid of power trick us into giving up our freedom and our spirit, in return for being taken care of (controlled) from cradle to grave.  As a result, we forget how to be masters of our own destiny.  There is only one way to create the new world, and this is as self-reliant, spiritual warriors, who have reclaimed the highest of our higher powers.  Once enough of us reach this point, there is nothing that can stop us.

Invariably, those who react with shock and fear to all the changes in the world are still clinging to the old paradigm world.  They are also people who have not yet overcome their fear of death, an integral feature of the spiritual path, but that’s another matter.  It is a tragic fact that these people will be in for a very rough ride in the times ahead.  A fundamental key to navigating these times of shift is to not fight these transformations, both internal and external, but rather to embrace them, and flow with them.  The choice is ours.  Our world is splitting in two, and it’s up to us to decide whether to embrace the decadent energy of a dying world, or the energy of a new world that is in its infant stages of taking shape.

We must also be wary of falling into the trap of getting caught up in our own personal dramas in a shifting world.  Many people are having their world ripped out from underneath them, and some are hitting rock bottom.  But here again, the shift holds immensely valuable lessons for us, and forces us to do what we should be doing anyway.  It forces us to look at alternatives to a world that clearly isn’t working.  And when our old paradigm world gets ripped from beneath us, there is one thing that always remains.  This is our connection to spirit.  And herein lies the most important lesson of all.  Our connection to spirit is all we ever really need.  Everything we manifest in this world, including our material things and our relationships, springs from our connection to spirit.  This is the true meaning of manifestation, and this is the source of our power to manifest the new world.

So ultimately, this is not about us.  It’s about something bigger than us.  It does begin with us, with us transforming ourselves spiritually.  Yes, this does take work, and total commitment.  But what better thing do we have to do with our time?

Geo-engineering is a technical term used to describe chemtrails.  I didn’t want to use chemtrails in my title or subject line because I was afraid it would scare everyone away.  This is a subject that is clearly taboo.  In case you don’t know, chemtrails are the gunk that we can see being sprayed into our atmosphere, practically every day, throughout North America and many other countries, without any discussion, and without asking anybody’s permission.  People don’t want to talk about it, or even see what’s going on right in front of their eyes. They think it’s just too paranoid, or way too much conspiracy nuttiness.  The folks in the New Age accuse you of creating negative or dark energy for even thinking about such things.

Why such resistance, particularly at a time when so many people are waking up to so many of the other crimes in our world?  I think it’s because if this is true, it’s just too huge, and it stretches people beyond where they are able to go.  I think a lot of people believe that the powers that be (we’ll talk about who they are shortly) are just not capable of something this evil.  As you’ll see shortly, they are.  For many people, it also totally blows up their traditional understanding of how the world works, and they’re just not ready for that.  But I’ve got news for you.  People better get themselves ready because things are coming to a head in our world.  Worlds are changing.  We are in the midst of the shift of the ages, and these monumental transformations are not going to wait for us.

Why do I make such a big deal out of this?  Let’s start with because it’s one of the greatest crimes in a world that is loaded with them, and it is going on in broad daylight.  In my world, that’s a big deal.  But there’s more to it than that.  My mission is always the same: to help people reconnect with their full power as spiritual beings, so that we can transform the world at this critical time.  To do this it is imperative that we understand how the world really works, instead of the illusions that are foisted upon us, which are designed to strip us of our power, and enslave us.  We cannot set our spirits free from the weight of these illusions unless we first know what they are.

In this article, we will journey down the rabbit hole of examining chemtrails, and follow the thread of what they are, who’s doing it, and why.  Along the way, we will be shedding light on a long string of illusions, which nicely illustrate the big picture of the total illusion of our world.  This is what we must disentangle ourselves from.  But we mustn’t stop there, as so many do, which is why they get stuck in fear and helplessness.  Once we are free, then the real work begins – to reach our full potential as multi-dimensional spiritual beings, which, ultimately is the primary source of our protection and our power to persevere and flourish in these challenging times.

So, let’s start at the beginning.  What are chemtrails?  To answer this, we must first distinguish between contrails and chemtrails.  The American Heritage College Dictionary (1997) defines a contrail as “a visible trail of streaks of condensed water vapor or ice crystals, sometimes forming in the wake of an aircraft.”  Another feature of contrails, about which there seems to be a general scientific consensus, is that they exist for a few moments, and then dissipate, and disappear.  How is this different from what we see today?  What we see today trailing behind jet aircraft are smoke-like fumes that stretch for long distances, sometimes virtually all the way across the sky.  They are thick and puffy, sometimes with a grayish or brownish tint, and sometimes with dark lines, like shadows, along their edges.  They do not dissipate.  They tend to expand, commonly forming checkerboard-like patterns that fill the sky.  They often expand to the point where they form their own cloud patterns, or fill the entire sky with a mist.  Since chemtrails, our entire world has become mistier.  The sky isn’t as blue, and there aren’t as many stars at night.

These are chemtrails.  Direct observation and simple common sense tell us a few other things.  First, they have not been around for that long, and nowhere near as long as jet aircraft technology.  Chemtrails first started appearing late in the decade of the 1990’s.  At first, they were infrequent, smaller, and far less in number.  If chemtrails are simply contrails, then it must follow that drastic changes occurred at this time in either jet aircraft technology or atmospheric conditions to bring this about.  We know this is not the case, especially since chemtrails are everywhere, under all atmospheric conditions.  We also know from independent researchers, with very powerful telescopes, that these aircraft are white tankers, with no identifiable markings.

Clearly, chemtrails are not contrails.  Something is being sprayed from these aircraft.  But what?  What do chemtrails consists of?  I must say at the outset that I am only going to be covering one angle on chemtrails, and it is the one I hear most commonly referenced.  It’s an angle that is also extremely pertinent to a primary theme of my work, which is our ability to survive as a species during this critical time of shift.  My primary source is a DVD, What in the World are They Spraying? – produced by G. Edward Griffin (www.realityzone.com).  It must be pointed out that chemtrails don’t necessarily consist of just one substance.  They might consist of different things at different times, and there might be multiple objectives.

If the public ever wakes up to this crime, the official line will most certainly be that it is being done for our own good, to protect us.  We will probably be told that it is to protect us from global warming, and that without this feat of geo-engineering, we would have been fried to a crisp by now.  This angle has already been analyzed and debunked by credible scientists, and it is one of the many angles I am not going to go into in depth here.  If you are interested in taking a look at the full array of theories and possibilities about chemtrails, I encourage you to do a search, but buckle your seatbelt for a wild ride.  And beware of all the disinformation, and real craziness, so rampant on the Internet.

What are chemtrails?  The research in What in the World are They Spraying? shows that chemtrails consist of tiny particles of metals.  Specifically, these metals are aluminum, barium and strontium, with the percentages of aluminum far exceeding the other two.  This finding is corroborated by most of the open-minded research.  This can be measured because these particles don’t dissolve or remain in the atmosphere, but rather fall to the Earth, and leave a residue, which is easy to distinguish from pollen or dust or similar looking residues.  These metals are toxic to humans if ingested, as well as to other forms of animal, plant and organic life.  Samples that were taken from water and soil in such pristine places as Mount Shasta, California and Hawaii showed levels of these metals, particularly aluminum, that were hundreds and thousands of times the normal levels.

The most shocking revelation comes from a sample of organic farmers, who observed that their plants, grown from natural seeds, were growing and reproducing at significantly diminished levels in this aluminum contaminated soil.  Furthermore, they concluded, if the contamination continued at its current rate, the only seeds that would germinate in this soil would be seeds that were genetically engineered to be aluminum resistant.

I trust you can see that the ramifications of this are monstrous.  It has become well known that there is an agenda to genetically modify and monopolize our commercial food supply, at the hands of the huge agricultural corporations, such as Monsanto.  The supermarkets are already filled with this synthetic food.  But this is even more insidious.  It means the human beings of this planet would be incapable of sustaining themselves by growing their own natural food, with seeds they cultivated themselves.  We have learned from our indigenous sisters and brothers that nothing is more important in life than our capability to sustain ourselves by living in harmony with the Earth and with the rest of the natural world.  This is particularly true during these monumental times of transformation and shift, in which our old paradigm world is rapidly approaching its inevitable end.  Our capability to sustain ourselves is the primary source of our power to recreate the world, and ourselves, and survive as the species nature designed us to be.

And keep in mind this is only one aspect of chemtrails.  There are numerous other possibilities.  We haven’t even touched upon the very real possibility of weather modification, not forgetting that much of the extreme weather we are experiencing is a natural feature of the Earth changes that come with the shift.  And I would be remiss in this regard if I didn’t mention HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program), which is frequently referenced in relation to chemtrails.  HAARP is a government/military installation in Alaska, which uses the highest of high-tech technology, including radio and electromagnetic waves, ostensibly to research the atmosphere, but clandestinely, as many believe, to influence and control it.  There is another theory that maintains these metals or other substances are creating an electronic soup in the atmosphere, to facilitate the transmission of other electronic or high-tech signals.

There are other grim possibilities that deserve our attention.  One is that chemtrails consist of biological organisms or agents, perhaps created in high-tech laboratories, as in germ warfare.  It is believed by many that a new and very bizarre disease, Morgellons Disease, is caused by this.  This is one of those things people have a hard time accepting because it’s just too evil, but it’s really not that far-fetched, especially when you consider the various other agendas that are poisoning the general population with so many highly toxic pharmaceuticals, like vaccines with children.  There is another school of thought that believes that chemtrails exhibit features of nanotechnology, which means these particles are part organic and part artificial intelligence, like tiny computers.  I know some of this stuff gets pretty far out, like science fiction.  But once we begin to understand the diabolical nature of what we’re dealing with, which we’ll cover more of in a second, we can’t take anything for granted.

Now that we know a little about this, let’s talk about who’s responsible for doing it, and what the overall objective is.  This requires a little more time because the question of who’s ultimately in charge is a complex and mysterious one.  First of all, we can assume that this project comes from the highest levels because it is so massive and ubiquitous.  Most people leap to the assumption that the Federal Government must be involved, in cahoots with the military establishment.  This is incorrect.  In fact, the US Government is powerless, including the president.  It is a puppet, owned and controlled by people and interests external to it, a rubber stamp for decisions made higher up.  If the military is involved, which is possible, it is under some other command.  Remember President Eisenhower’s parting words: beware of the military-industrial complex.  And it’s not the huge multi-national corporations, though they might be involved, many of which clearly overlap the government and the military.  It’s becoming more and more popular to blame these guys for everything.  There’s an element of truth to this, but it goes deeper.  The same can be said for the ultra-rich families in Europe and the US, with names like Rothschild and Rockefeller, who own the largest international banks, as well as all the national banks, like the Federal Reserve, and which create our money.  We’re getting warmer, but it goes even deeper still.

As we move our way up this pyramid of power, things start to get very murky.  This is because those who are at the top of this pyramid operate in secret.  Nobody knows for certain who they really are.  The closest we can come to identifying them is through elitist secret societies, such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Group, which pose as public policy think tanks, but where, in fact, most of the important decisions are made, or at least handed down from somewhere else, and presented as policy.  And tracing who these shadowy folks are is an exhaustive and complicated project, which basically involves examining the entire traditional version of the history of our civilization, dating back 6000 years to its beginnings in Sumer or Babylon.  It also involves rewriting it because it is a hoax, one of the many illusions that are foisted upon us.  For the complete story on this, I refer you to my latest book, Prophesy, Challenge & Blessing – Visions of 2012 & the Shift, particularly Chapter Five, Understanding the Dark Side, where there are also other references.

For our purposes here, I am going to zip through this, and cover only the highlights.  For many of you, this might be a leap, but we must include it.  If we don’t, our world simply makes no sense at all, and in a divinely ordered universe, it must.  First of all, Western Civilization, or the white man’s civilization, which has been the dominant force in the world since its beginning, has always been ruled and controlled by a few elite families.  These families are also interrelated bloodlines, which can be traced back to the kings and queens of antiquity, and to the “gods” of virtually every ancient religious text, including the Bible.  It is also a virtual certainty that highly advanced civilizations existed on this planet since far before the beginning of our so-called history, on a scale of tens or hundreds of thousands of years, perhaps far longer.  It is another virtual certainty that extraterrestrials arrived on this planet during these same ancient time frames, and played the leading role in these civilizations.  These ET’s also interbred with the indigenous humans of those times, creating a race of genetic hybrids – part ET, part human.  A compelling case can be made that these elite families were (and are) composed of these genetic hybrids.  Another compelling case can be made that the entire white race is such a hybrid species.  The most recent of these civilizations, Atlantis, was destroyed, in all probability, around 13,000 years ago by a geophysical catastrophe of global proportions, a great flood, which, again, is covered in ancient religious texts from cultures spanning the globe.

OK, now that we’ve got that out of the way, what else can we deduce about these folks at the top of the pyramid, let’s call them the elite, by observing them throughout history.  These people, or beings, have no affinity for planet Earth or its people.  Its history has been one of continuous expansion and conquest, including the extermination of indigenous people around the globe, and the destruction of their way of life and their spirituality.  Actually, their agenda is the polar opposite of the indigenous, for whom the most important thing in life was to live sustainably in harmony with the Earth and with the forces of nature.  The elite worship at the altar of a different god.  This is technology, and this means continuous technological progress, without limits, and without regard for preserving the eco-systems upon which human life depends.  Their ultimate goal is a world where everything is controlled by technology, or other non-organic or synthetic processes, which are created by man, not nature.  I refer to this as synthetic reality.  This would include artificial intelligence, where people are replaced by machines, and where the rest of the natural world will be replaced by their synthetic equivalent.  Basically, what they are doing is playing god.  It is nothing less than a rebellion against the creation.

Can they succeed at this?  Ultimately, no, they cannot.  The laws of nature and of a divinely ordered universe will prevail.  But they sure can make a mess of things on this planet as they try.

Where do human beings fit into all this?  We are nothing more than pawns to be tinkered with, and to be deceived and manipulated into a state of slavery.  Like the Earth and all of the other natural elements, humanity is slowly being poisoned by the food, water and air they ingest, by a vast array of pharmaceutical substances, and by having lost their connection with the rhythm and flow of life’s vital energy.  However, humanity is its own worst enemy in this because they consent to it.  They do this by allowing themselves to fall for a trick.  This is a deal, in which their controllers promise to protect them from all the evils in the world (which they create), and provide for all their basic needs from cradle to grave.  For this, all humanity has to do is barter away its freedom and its spirit.  It’s nothing less than the proverbial pact with the devil.

Now that we know all this, what do we do with it?  This is a very delicate matter, and one that most people get wrong.  The New Age folks totally miss the boat by believing that the best way to handle this is by pretending it’s not there, or coloring it over with their rose colored glasses.  This is a total misapplication of the power of positive thinking.  The truth is never a bad thing, even if we don’t like it.  However, this information is so huge and dastardly that it invariably rocks our world, and shakes us up emotionally.  The mistake most people make is falling into the trap of fear and helplessness, and getting stuck there.  Invariably, this is because they lack a spiritual basis.  As the age-old wisdom says, when the spirit is alive within us, there is never anything to fear.   Without this, the situation is indeed hopeless.

Whether we like it or not, we are engaged in a battle, and our opponents are far more powerful, at least in the physical realm.  After all, they own and control the world.  Ultimately, this battle will not be won or lost on the battlefield of the physical, but rather on that of the energetic, or the spiritual.  This is where we must prevail, and this is where we must derive the primary source of our power, which is also supernatural power.  The only way we can persevere in this great challenge is with the higher powers of our higher consciousness and spirituality.  When enough of us reconnect with this power, we will hit a critical mass of energy.  At this point, things will begin to shift, and to change in ways that we cannot even imagine, like David defeating Goliath.

How do we do this?  My advice is always the same, regardless of the circumstances.  We must learn to live in harmony again with the Earth and with spirit.  We must reassume complete responsibility for our own lives, and detach ourselves as much as possible from the mainstream dependency system and from synthetic reality.  We must disentangle ourselves from the illusions that enslave us, and begin to stand on our own two feet again, but we must remember how, and we must be prepared.  They rely upon us to give them their power with our consent.  If enough of us withdraw our consent, and just don’t play the games anymore, this hideous system will not be able to sustain itself.  Its power base will be gone.  I know the inevitable collapse of the old paradigm world scares the dickens out of most people, but it would be the greatest blessing imaginable.  It would provide us with the opportunity to start over, and get it right this time, to fulfill our magical heritage as spiritual beings, and shepherds of the Earth.

Usually, when I write an article, I focus on specific aspects of the great shift of the ages or spirituality, or on particular aspects of this that are pertinent to what’s happening in our world today.  I try to keep myself out of it as much as possible, as far as how I am experiencing these monumental changes in my own life personally.  After all, one of the most important lessons of the spiritual path is that it is never about us as individuals.  It is easy to maintain that just the opposite is true.  Ultimately, we reach a point on the spiritual path where we let ourselves go, so that we may optimally serve the creation, and serve the web of life of which we are a fundamental part.

This will not be the case here.  I am at a point on my personal path where I am bursting with all the magnificent and mysterious things that are happening.  Not only do I have a strong need to share, but I believe there are times when this is the best way to convey one’s message.  For me, this is such a time.  The same thing happened during the writing my most recent book, Prophesy, Challenge & Blessing – Visions of 2012 & the Shift, when I decided to start disclosing more of my personal experiences because they were such a perfect embodiment of everything I was writing about.  After all, spirituality is not about talk.  It’s about taking action, and it means nothing unless we can see it in action.

This is my fifth day in my new home in Mount Shasta, in the mountains of north central California.  I am living in a tiny cottage that feels like it is on the edge of civilization.  It is about three miles from the small town of Mount Shasta, and my backyard marks the beginning of thousands of acres of virgin Redwood forest and mountains.  Bear and coyote live in the neighborhood.  The nearest cities are Redding, California (one hour south) and Medford, Oregon (2 hours north).  This part of the world does indeed feel like an island unto itself.

There’s more.  One hour north, totally in the middle of nowhere, is Deer Mountain.  This is where Earth Peoples United (EPU – www.earthpeopleesunited.org), founded by Mayan Wisdom Keeper Tata Erick Gonzalez, is in the beginning stages of building a sustainable community to survive these monumental times of transformation, and to provide a base to take advantage of this incredible opportunity co-create the new world.  I have attended ceremonial gatherings the last three summers at Deer Mountain, which were facilitated by several other Mayan Elders from Guatemala, as well as elders from other indigenous nations around the world.  These experiences have been profoundly transformative for me.  And it just so happens that the ancient Mayan wisdom, as carried and transmitted by Tata Erick, resonates beautifully with my own metaphysics and spirituality (reflected in my books and DVD’s), which has been developed over the last 40 plus years, from a multitude of diverse sources.  Deer Mountain (Mount Shasta too) is one of the most sacred spots on the planet, and possibly my future home.

I am almost 63 now, and I feel very strongly that moving to this area is the last move I will make in my life.  This is where my work will be completed, and I have no idea yet what that specifically means.  Many years ago, I made a total commitment to the work of the spiritual path.  My primary allegiance is to serving the creation, and a fundamental part of this is working to return humanity to a relationship of harmony with the forces of nature and with Mother Earth.  To some, that may sound like self-righteousness or bragging, but think about it for a minute.  In the indigenous world, this relationship with the creation is a given, and therefore, nothing special.  It’s the only way to make life in this world work, and that’s why they could sustain themselves, and our civilization cannot.

There is another fundamental aspect of the work of the spiritual path.  This is recognizing the awesome importance of these monumental times of transformation, known as the shift, as was prophesized by virtually every indigenous culture on Earth.  Once again, it’s not enough to simply be aware of this.  We must take spiritual action by participating in the shifting energies of this process, which is taking place on every possible level, macrocosmic and microcosmic, inside of us and outside of us.  As the Hopi are fond of saying, no stone shall be unturned.

As human beings, we live in a sea of forces, cycles and omens.  When we resonate with these energies, the creation will speak to us, and guide us.  Our old paradigm civilization has lost this connection, and that’s why it is in such a mess, and cannot sustain itself, unless this changes.  During this time of shift, the energies of our world are transformative.  When we resonate with transformative energy, it follows that what we experience will be transformative, both in the world internal to us, and external to us.  Stated simply, if we’re not changing, and if our world isn’t changing, we’re missing the boat.

For me, whatever is going to happen in relation to the shift is going to happen here, at this sacred place.  I have clearly been guided to this spot.  After all, my spirit guide, the Council of the Grandfathers, introduced itself to me on my second morning at Deer Mountain, three summers ago, during our sunrise pipe ceremony.  It doesn’t get much clearer than that.  Mount Shasta is one of the most powerful spiritual power points on the planet.  It is a vortex of incredible spiritual energy, and a portal to higher dimensions.  This is not to imply it is the only such place.  There are many other sacred sites all around the globe, and many other kindred spirits are being drawn to those.

I am here to resonate with this rarified energy for the purpose of my own spiritual ascension, and also to share the energy that flows through me with this world and with the creation.  This is connecting with the web of life, of which we are a co-creative part.  This is true for all kindred spirits who share this mission.  This can take many forms.  With me, it takes the form of my books and DVD’s, the ceremonial events I facilitate, and the individuals I help with personal and spiritual growth.  It also takes the form of the work we do to build a sustainable world, in harmony with Mother Earth, such as the community we are building at Deer Mountain.  And it takes the form of how we live each moment of our life, endeavoring to live with a vibration that is in harmony with spirit.

Another thing seems clear, to many of us.  It seems clear that the time is drawing near.  No sooner do I say that than I am forced to say that I have no idea what that means.  Unlike most of the other so-called experts on the shift, I spend very little time concerning myself with specific dates when it is all supposed to happen, such as Winter Solstice 2012, or with specific predictions about what is going to happen, such as a pass-by by a comet or the shifting of Earth’s magnetic poles.  This is a time of incredible convergence of factors and forces, and there are innumerable possibilities about what might happen, each of them just as reasonable as the others.  But it doesn’t make any difference anyway because the shift is not a point in time, but rather a process taking place over time.  And it is not one big-bang event, but many, and we’ve already had a bunch, like the earthquakes in Japan and the east coast of the US.  And it doesn’t make any difference because this time of shift has already started, and is well underway.  So, the only time that matters is now, this moment.

But I’ll say it again.  The time is drawing near, whatever that means.  And I say this for no other reason than I feel it, and I see it, which I know makes the scientists of the world crazy.  For the last several years, while I lived in Wisconsin, I’ve been saying that I had not yet received the guidance that the time had come to head for the hills, but that I knew that time would come, and when it did, I’d be gone in a flash.  That’s exactly what happened.  Early last summer, I was so bombarded by omens that the time had come to leave Wisconsin that I would have been blind to miss them.  These forces literally squeezed me out of Wisconsin, like paste out of a tube.  I really didn’t have much to do with it.  I decided to move to Mount Shasta, or somewhere in the vicinity of Deer Mountain, and I set a deadline of December 1 to leave Wisconsin.  I shifted much of the energy of my prayers and ceremonies into manifesting this move, and guidance to do it as seamlessly and effortlessly as possible.  I was settled into my new home by late September, and it took a grand total of one email and one phone call.

For me, the time came to head for the hills.  This means two things.  One is to get as far away as possible from large cities and densely populated areas.  The other is to be close to natural sources of water that come from deep within the Earth.  The cities will be places of unimaginable chaos when the old paradigm system finally collapses, as it inevitably will.  Our system of money looks like it could be the first to go, and could be the spark that topples the whole house of cards.  If not this, something else, and the time is upon us.  And clean water is the first step to living sustainably.  I currently have spring water coming out of my tap, and if the plumbing breaks, I can go up to the spring, and get it by hand.  Deer Mountain also has a natural spring.

It’s ironic that I’ve returned to California, after a ten year hiatus.  When I left Santa Barbara, after 16 years there, one of the many reasons was I was not wild about the idea of living in such an active, and potentially lethal, earthquake zone.  And now, here I am at the base of a dormant volcano, in an active range (see Mount Saint Helens).  There is a simple explanation for this.  Over the last ten years, I have come to believe more in the power of the supernatural than in the power of logic.  The divine spirit works in very mysterious ways, and we must always flow it, even if we don’t understand why.  And this brings us to another of the most important features of the shift, and something that I say over and over.  There is only one way we can survive these monumental earth changes and paradigm shifts, and this is with the higher power of our higher consciousness and our spirituality, and by plugging into the power of supernatural.  It is necessary for us to tap into our full potential as multi-dimensional spiritual beings.  Again, this may sound grandiose, but again, it is not, when you consider this was the norm for indigenous cultures that lived sustainably.  To do this, we must work at it, and the time to begin is now.  And when enough of us do this, and when we join together in the spirit to true sustainability, which means returning to our harmonious relationship with Mother Earth and with all the forces of nature, there is no limit to what we can accomplish.

The shift – when is it going to happen?  I continue to hear people ask this question.  It’s only four months now until that providential year, at least in the minds of many, 2012, when so many people think all this is supposed to happen.  Many believe that December 21, 2012 is the date.  This is the date when it was alleged that the Mayan Calendar ended, not sure by whom.  However, the accuracy of this has been called into question by many, including many of the Mayan Elders themselves, who maintain that it is not certain when the calendar ended, at least not exactly.  Then, there are the revisionists of the Mayan Calendar, invariably white New Agers, who claim to have cracked the code, and calculated the correct date of the end of the Mayan Calendar.  The most popular of these is a date in October 2011 (I forget which), and there is another in September 2011.  These are currently the center of all the buzz on the Internet and in New Age circles.
“When is it going to happen?”  People have a sense that we are getting close to something, and that this something is very big and unprecedented.  The briefest of glances at what’s happening in our world will confirm this.  Paradigms are shifting.  The most glaring example is our global economy and systems of money, which are hanging by the thinnest of threads, but it is not alone, as virtually all the structures of our old paradigm world are falling apart.  And Mother Earth’s cleansing and purification continues to escalate, with extreme weather, floods, earthquakes and volcano activity on a scale we have not seen in thousands of years.  Unprecedented events are happening almost daily, like a 5.9 earthquake on the East Coast of the US, just days before Hurricane Irene, and Comet Elenin, about which there is much debate, an astral body that has entered our Solar System, and is due to pass by this Autumn and early Winter.  The deceit and manipulation of humanity by the hidden powers that own and control the world also continue to escalate, in the attempt to wrap us in the illusion of our dependency on a system that is killing the very environment we need to survive.  UFO sightings are even being reported on a significant scale in the mainstream media, after decades of total cover-up.
“When is it going to happen?”  The question itself illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what’s actually happening, and what part we play in it.  So, let’s take a closer look, and see if we can get a better understanding of all this.  First of all, what do they mean by “it?”  There is the clear implication in this question of something big, something Earth shattering, like a big bang event, which will take place on a particular date.  Most of the theories about the shift do seem to feature one or more of these.  There are numerous possibilities, many of which have a strong basis in truth.  A shift of the Earth’s north and south electromagnetic poles is one possibility.  Solar flare activity of a magnitude that could knock out our technological infrastructure is another.  Another fabricated event, like 9/11, which serves the purpose of shocking and frightening us to such an extent that we are willing to give up what’s left of our freedom in exchange for the promise of protection from enemies that don’t even exist, is yet another.  Many believe a fabricated UFO attack might be the next trick up their sleeve – yet another possibility.  I could keep going.  There are lots more.
This question and this kind of thinking are typical of white folks in the Western civilized world.  Underneath it all is the realization of the inevitable end of the world, as we know it, and a deep-seeded fear of this.  Over the last five years, I have learned that the indigenous people of this planet see all this very differently.  I have learned this primarily through my affiliation with Tata OmeAkaEhekatl Erick Gonzalez (www.earthpeoplesunited.org), a traditional Mayan Wisdom Keeper, and the countless hours I have listened to him elucidate the original teachings of the Maya.  I have also learned it from the many traditional Mayan ceremonies I have participated in, both in California and Guatemala, which were facilitated by Tata Erick, together with other Mayan Elders, as well as elders from other nations around the world.
In spite of all the hubbub over the Mayan Calendar, the Maya and other indigenous people don’t spend a lot of time obsessing over dates and predictions, or over the possibility of future catastrophic events.  After all, these are people who have already been attacked and murdered, with much of their cultures destroyed by the European conquest.  They are people who have already died, so they tend not to be afraid of it anymore.  They are also not afraid to die because this is an indispensable lesson of the spiritual path, in which we learn that death is merely a transmutation of our energy and consciousness into something else.  Once we learn this, and adjust the way we live to it, there is never anything to fear – ever!
The focus of Mayan cosmology, as well as their ceremonies, never strays very far from the core of the one thing that truly matters in life.  This is connecting (or reconnecting) with spirit, and with the cycles and forces of nature, and doing this each and every moment with the power of our intent, our vibration, and the actions we take in our lives.  It’s one thing to talk about these things, and quite another to actually do it.  This is one of the primary differences between the Maya and the New Age pretenders, for whom it’s all mostly talk, with the undercurrent of fear.
The Maya and the other indigenous people also have a clear understanding of the true meaning of the shift, without over-intellectualizing or sensationalizing it.  Simply stated, all their prophesies point to this time of ours as a time of monumental transformation, or transmutation, in which our old paradigm, civilized world is coming to its inevitable end – inevitable because it is built on a foundation that is out of balance with natural and divine law.  However, what might appear to be the end of the world is, in fact, an incredibly blessed opportunity to create (or co-create) a new and sustainable world, and one that has regained its connection with spirit.
They also understand one other thing we really need to know about the shift.  This is the fact that it has already started, and is well underway.  I spent an entire chapter in my latest book going over all the reasons why we know this, but the most obvious is we can see and feel it happening every day.  The shift is not a single date or big bang event, though there will certainly be big bang events along the way.  There already have been.  The shift is a process, taking place over time.  Once we know this, all the dates, predictions and time frames lose all their significance because the only time that matters is now – this moment.  We can talk about these things all we like, but the fact remains it doesn’t make any difference.  So, the answer to the question, “When is it going to happen?” is a very simple one.  “It’s happening, now!.”  And this is not a time for head games, but a time for spiritual action.
There is another part of this that’s important to understand.  There is another implication in our question, “When is it going to happen?”  This is the notion that whatever it is that’s going to happen is something that’s going to happen in the world external to us, and in which we will be passive observers, playing no real part.  Once again, this is simply not how this process works, and all the indigenous prophesies support this.  This transmutation, this shifting of energy, is happening on every possible level, internal to us, and external to us.  Mother Earth and all of her other children are participating, as are the Sun, the Moon, and every particle of our Solar System.  As the Hopi were fond of saying, “No stone shall be unturned.”
This includes us, the human beings of this beautiful planet.  We play a fundamentally important part in this great transmutation, and this always begins and ends with the same thing.  This is developing our full potential as multi-dimensional spiritual beings.  Implicit in this is reassuming complete responsibility for our own lives, and for our work of caretaking Mother Earth.  Once enough of us do this, and we band together as one tribe, at least energetically, we will reach that point of critical mass where the world will begin to respond, and to change in ways we cannot even imagine.
Yes, we have a very important job to do, and there is lots more work to be done.  But what better way do we have to spend our time?

2012 & the shift is the hottest of topics, and will continue to heat up as we head toward Winter Solstice, December 21, 2012, the date the Mayan Calendar ended.  In this regard, we are hearing more and more about ascension or spiritual ascension, which is considered, at least in the minds of many, to be a key component of the shift.  As with so much of this topic, many of the so-called experts make ascension far more complicated than it needs to be, which is quite unnecessary because, like with so much in the realm of spirituality, it is really quite simple and self-evident.

But before we get into ascension, let’s lay some groundwork about the shift, and exactly what’s going on here.  And again, I’m going to do this in a way that is simple and concise.  The more I learn about the shift the more I understand that there’s really not that much to talk about.

The shift refers to this age we are living in, which is an age of monumental transformation.  More specifically, the shift means a shifting from one world, which is dying, to the opportunity to create an entirely new world in its wake.  The world that is dying is the old paradigm world of Western Civilization.  The death of this world was inevitable because it is unsustainable.  It is a world that is imbalanced because it is built upon a foundation that is in disharmony with Mother Earth and with the forces of nature, and which is destroying the very environment that the human beings of this civilization need to survive.

The ancient indigenous people of this planet understood this, as well as the time frames that were involved.  The Maya, the Hopi, virtually all the other Native American tribes, as well as tribes from every continent on Earth, were all telling us the same thing,  They knew that the white man’s world could not survive, and they prophesized that this was due to happen during this age of ours.

They also understood that the shift was part of a greater cosmic cycle, one of approximately 26,000 years duration.  And they knew that the shift did not refer to a single date, where everything would happen at once, but that it was more of a process, taking place over time.  How long a period of time is difficult to determine.  We do know a few things for certain.  Verbal lore and artifacts from these indigenous cultures, as well as many other credible sources, present us with mountains of evidence pointing to Winter Solstice 2012 is a key date in this.  And at the time of this writing, November 2010, on the basis of what we can see happening in our world, it is clear that the shift is well underway.

The indigenous prophesies also tell us that this opportunity to shift to a new world is primarily a spiritual phenomenon.  This is where spiritual ascension enters the picture.  This begins by us, or enough of us, getting our act together here in the material dimension of this world, which means returning to a sustainable lifestyle by reestablishing our harmonious relationship with Mother Earth and with the forces of nature.  Once we, or enough of us, do this, the shift will present us with an opportunity to spiritually, or energetically, transcend this world, and to literally ascend to a higher dimension.  This higher dimension will be a world of pure energy and spirit.  If all this sounds like worlds coming apart, it is.  And this is the single-most important thing to know about the shift.

One of the best ways of understanding this is energetically, which also happens to be a wonderful way of understanding the world of spirituality.  We learned from Quantum Physics that everything in the universe, including us, is energy.  Ancient spiritual traditions tell us that in addition to energy, there is another primary force at work in the universe, and this is an unseen intelligence or consciousness or spirit.  The primary thing that distinguishes the various forms that this energy takes is the frequency of its vibration.  The energy of our 3rd dimensional material world is extremely low in frequency, which is what causes this energy to coagulate into material forms.  This is a heavy and dense world.  When this energy increases in frequency, it moves beyond (transcends) these physical forms, and into realms (dimensions) of pure energy, such as light.  These higher frequency dimensions of energy are usually where we find the spirit world, and make our connection with it.

There’s the theory.  But how do we do this?  How do we participate in this spiritual ascension?  The answer, again, is not complicated.  We too are an embodiment of this consciousness and energy, and as we progress on our spiritual path, we learn that we have the capability to exercise some control over our energy with our consciousness.  We have the capability to raise the frequency of our energy with our thoughts, feelings, actions, and the choices we make regarding how we live our lives.  Specifically, we do this by choosing to live our lives with feelings of peacefulness, joy, reverence, gratitude and trust.  Gratitude here means gratitude to spirit for all the blessings of this world.  And trust means trusting that when we live our life with this vibration, then spirit will provide everything that we need in this world.  This is the true meaning of manifestation.  Any spiritual work we do should always be geared to learning how to live life with these feelings.

We also do it by living our lives in a way that is truly sustainable.  When we begin to live again in harmony with Mother Earth, Mother Earth not only provides for our physical needs, but she also provides answers to all our metaphysical questions.  Living in this way allows us get reconnected with the forces of nature and with the rhythm and flow of life.  This is the connection civilized humanity has lost, which has caused its imbalance, and which is leading to its demise.  Living in harmony with the forces of nature leads us to our most important connection of all, our connection with the divine spirit of a living universe.

What about tools we can use for spiritual ascension?  My favorite is ceremony, and this too is something our indigenous brothers and sisters have been telling us for thousands of years. Ceremony is anything that we do for the specific purpose of connecting with spirit with the power of our vibration.  Examples of ceremony are prayer (talking with spirit), meditation, fire ceremonies, sweat lodges, smoking the sacred pipe, drumming and music, singing, chanting, and dancing.  Ceremony helps us raise the frequency of our vibration, and this is how we connect with spirit.

For our indigenous relatives, who lived sustainably and never lost their connection with spirit, ceremony was the most important thing in their lives.  Everything they manifested in this world came from their connection with spirit.  And they made this connection primarily with ceremony.  Ceremony was the primary way to practice, develop and work at their spirituality.  It’s also a way for us to reprogram ourselves from the craziness of the old paradigm world.  In spite of what many in the New Age tell us, developing our spirituality does take time and work.  The ancient Hopi had ceremonies that lasted two weeks, non-stop, night and day.  Mayan Wisdom Keeper Erick Gonzalez is fond of saying that it takes five days of ceremony before you can understand what the creek is saying.

Yes indeed, these are times that call for lots and lots of ceremony.  Say let’s say our prayers, light our fires, and sing our songs to spirit.

         The frequency is rising.
        That’s the report, and yes, it is that simple.  
        Here’s the slightly longer version: the Earth has reached a point, in its 26,000 year cyclical journey through the galaxy, where it has entered a vast cosmic energy field.  This field consists of energy of a higher frequency, and as the Earth continues on its course into this field, the frequency will continue to rise.  This is what is meant by “the shift” or “the Great Shift of the Ages.”  It is a shifting of the Earth’s vital energy fields.  It happens every 26,000 years, or so, and when it does, the Earth and all of its life forms experience monumental transformation.

         It is essential to an understanding of all this to understand what is meant by “energy” in this context.  Energy here does not refer to the electromagnetic energy we are all so familiar with, such as the kind that radiates from the Sun, or the kind that flows through the wires that run our electrical devices.  The energy we are talking about here, of which the visible electromagnetic spectrum is only an infinitesimal part, is infinitely vaster.  This new energy is holographic.  This means it also consists of consciousness.  This is energy that thinks.  It is the unseen intelligence at work in the universe, which governs the behavior of energy, and the multitude of forms it takes.  It is the cosmic consciousness of a living universe. 

         How do we know this?  There are lots of ways.  One of the most important are the ancient prophecies from indigenous cultures spanning the globe, such as the Mayans, the Egyptians, the Hopis, and many, many more, who understood these galactic cycles and spiritual principles.  New Science also clearly establishes that the Earth is already experiencing these shifting energies.  Examples include the fact that its electromagnetic field is diminishing in intensity; its base resonant frequency is increasing, and its temperature is rising (the vast majority of which is not caused by humanity). 

         But for my purposes here, the source I want to cite is us.  We, as spiritual people, with higher consciousness, know these things because we are feeling them.  Everybody can feel that something is happening.  Our world is changing.  Time seems to be speeding up, which it is.  The experience of living is intensifying.  More and more experience is packed into smaller and smaller increments of time.  Our old paradigm world, built as it is upon the foundation of materialism and control, instead of spirituality, is falling apart. 

         Most people don’t know these things.  So, they lack a frame of reference, and the world just seems like it’s going haywire.  And most of these people are going haywire along with it.  For those of us, as spiritual people, who do have an awareness of these things, this colossal challenge morphs into a monumental blessing.  To us, the world feels lighter and brighter, and our primary responsibility is to personally raise our own frequency to match the rising frequency of the forces around us. 

         What about the date December 21, 2012 and the ending of the Mayan Calendar?  In my opinion, far too much emphasis is placed upon this date.  The Mayan prophecies were just one of innumerable others, which came from indigenous people all over the planet.  Plus, the Mayans were the only ones, to my knowledge, with a specific date, and even what was prophesized for that date is open to interpretation.  Virtually all of these other prophecies refer to this time in general. 

         All of these ancient prophecies share one other major thing in common, and it is the one thing we need to remember here, if we are to persevere in this great challenge, and create the new world.  And it is this: it’s up to us – the human inhabitants of this magnificent Planet to make this happen.  And there’s only one way to do it, and this is with the power of our higher consciousness and spirituality.  The old paradigm of materialism and controlling the forces the nature cannot possibly sustain itself.  To create the new paradigm, humanity must reestablish its lost connection with life’s vital energy and with the rhythm and flow of life.  Losing this connection was where everything went off track to begin with. 

         Once again, it’s just that simple.  One of the reasons so many people struggle with all this, and cave in to feelings of fear and doomsday, is because most of the so-called experts on the shift make it so complicated.  There seems to be an obsession with dates, and predicting all the possible scenarios, such as calculating those places that will remain above water, and astral bodies or ships that are due to arrive, and on and on.  I believe most of the prophecies would agree that this can be a distraction.  There are limitless possibilities regarding what might happen, and nobody knows for certain what will happen.  People really only need to hear one thing – relax your body, quiet your mind, raise your frequency, and harmonize your energy with the forces surrounding us.  Our spirituality is the primary source of our protection in the face of these Earth changes, and the primary source of our power to make the dimensional shift to the new world of light and spirit.

        The Earth has entered an exceedingly rare geophysical and astrophysical age, known as The Shift or The Great Shift of the Ages. It is the completion of a 26,000-year cycle, which was well understood, and predicted by ancient cultures spanning the globe, including the Mayans, the Hopis and the Egyptians. The Shift involves forces of colossal magnitude, such as the reversing of the Earth’s magnetic poles, and its entrance into a vast intergalactic energy field, known as The Photon Belt. In general, The Shift involves shifting the Earth’s vital energies, and forces that have the potential to change the face of the planet, and life on it, forever. I have heard both December 12, 2012 and December 21, 2012 cited as the specific dates for the turn-over point for The Shift, kind of like the clock striking midnight on New Year’s Eve. These dates also correspond to when the Mayan calendar ended.

        There is much debate, confusion and disagreement regarding these specific time frames. When you consider the multitude of diverse and ancient sources, as well as the vast length of the time periods involved, it is reasonable to assume that there is a significant margin of error regarding these predictions. Much of this information is also derived from the oral traditions of these ancient cultures, which can be imprecise. Besides, there’s no reason we should trust the accuracy of our Gregorian calendar any more than anything else.

        My friend Cayelin Castell, Co-Founder of the Shamanic Astrology Mystery School, informs me that from the point of view of Shamanic Astrology, The Shift is a more gradual process, lasting in the neighborhood of 150 years, and that we are currently just past the midpoint. The 26,000 year period is called The Great Wheel of Time, which is the time it takes the Solstices and Equinoxes to pass through all the constellations, and return to a starting point. The Earth is currently at the end of this cycle, and the 150 year period is the time the Earth is aligned to certain key points in the heavens before the cycle starts over. (see www.CelestialTimings.com).

        At the time of this writing, October 2007, that would seem to be the case. The Shift appears to be well underway. One clear manifestation of this is the dramatic increase in extreme weather, earthquake, volcano and tsunami activity. The Earth is feeling it.

        Another is the shocking move toward fascist world government that is taking place throughout the world, spearheaded by America and Europe. The hidden powers that rule the world are well aware of The Shift and of the energetic forces that are at work, and they are doing everything possible to make sure these changes don’t upset the apple cart of their power structure. Essential components of this are keeping the human race enslaved, unaware of what’s happening, and dependent upon them for their survival under any and all circumstances.

        People are also feeling these energy shifts in their bodies. The world feels different, more intense. Time itself seems like it’s either speeding up or slowing down. People are feeling things they‘ve never felt before, and it can feel both enlightening and overwhelming. Many people sense that things are going haywire, often to the point where they feel like they‘re losing their marbles, but this is only because they lack a frame of reference for what’s really happening. As always, understanding dispels fear.

        It’s a pretty good guess that things are going to get quite a bit more intense in the years ahead. Its probably going to get a lot worse before it can get better, and the chaos that results might be just what is needed to shake things up, and help create real change. Some of this may be caused by humanity, and some not. On the man-made side, certainly the world economy, built as it is on the vacuous foundation of fiat paper money and mountains of unpayable debt, could topple at any time, with a ripple effect that would be felt by all. On the non-man-made side, it is a fact that the north and south magnetic poles reverse themselves on the order of every 26,000 years, perhaps even more frequently. And we are being told this is due to happen. If it does, the technological infrastructure of the world would certainly wobble severely, if not collapse.

        Yet, my purpose here is not to fan the flames of doomsday scenarios. Quite the contrary. Again, perhaps chaos is just what is needed to cleanse the Earth, and its human inhabitants, and create the opportunity to create the new world. Whether The Shift hits its apex on 12/12/12, or before, or after, or whether there even is an apex, doesn’t make any difference. It’s happening, and it’s happening now. It’s time for us to gear up, and prepare ourselves to ride the wave of these forces, rather than be submerged in them.

        One thing is for certain: we are living in a time with the potential for unprecedented transformation. And the outcome of all this is by no means certain. It could go either way. Many people believe these are the end-times that were predicted in the Bible. Then, there are also those of us who see this challenge as a blessing, and a monumental opportunity to create the new paradigm.

        The solution, which to many might seem terrifying and overwhelming, is really quite simple. It all comes back to us. The fate of the planet rests in our hands. Changing the world starts with changing ourselves. In order to create the new paradigm we must do a few exceedingly important things. We must reclaim our minds and our spirits, and we must take back responsibility for the world we create. We must wake up to the fact that we have allowed ourselves to be duped by the hidden powers that rule the world into seeing the world the way they want us to, instead of the way it really is. And we must align ourselves with the shifting energies in the world, so that rather than being overwhelmed by them, we are in harmony with them.

        And there’s nothing new about any of this. The primary reason the world is so messed up is because humanity has allowed itself to become unplugged. We have lost our connection to life’s vital energies, and to the rhythm and flow of life. When enough of us reestablish that connection, we become a force that cannot be stopped. This is what is known as critical mass. I am going to deal more extensively with critical mass in my next blog.

        As Robert Ghost Wolf, a Hopi elder, reminds us in Last Cry – Native American Prophesies & Tales of the End Times (www.wolflodge.org/bluestar/bluestar.htm):

        No living thing will go untouched, here or in the heavens. The way through this time it is said is to be found in our hearts, and reuniting with our spiritual self. Getting simple and returning to living with and upon the Earth and in harmony with her creatures. Remembering that we are the caretakers, the fire keepers of the spirit. Our relatives from the Stars are coming home to see how well we have faired in our journey.

        Yes indeed, things are shifting, and they are shifting now!

        On Wednesday, January 30, we kicked off our 2008 Infinity’s Flower book tour with a presentation, with powerpoint, and snacks, at Yogasylum in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Nine days later I was speaking to a packed house at the LA Conscious Life Expo. My talk is based on the novel, and it is entitled Transforming Challenges into Blessings. It deals with this time of monumental transformation in which the Earth’s vital energy fields are shifting, and this unprecedented opportunity to create an entirely new world. However, this isn’t just going to happen on its own. It’s up to us, the human race, to make it happen by creating a vibration of peacefulness, joy and love. Then, two days later, at the finale of the Expo, I had the honor of participating in a distinguished panel, discussing 2012, the Shift, and creating the new world.

        Here’s the progress report: the Shift is most definitely happening. Our world is changing, and it is changing at an exponential rate. The old paradigm is crumbling of its own inertia, and the possibility of the new paradigm is beginning to take shape in our minds, hearts and spirits.

        One of my most significant observations from the last few weeks is how people are shifting in harmony with the shifting energy in the world. The venues were all packed, and they were packed with people who are doing two vitally important things. First, they are waking up to the truth about how our world really works, and how for thousands of years the hidden powers that own and control the world have suckered them into a game that robs them of their freedom, their power and their spirit. These people are no longer willing to play this game. And second, they are becoming aware of the awesome, unstoppable power of their higher consciousness and spirituality .

        As a speaker, I was struck by how different these audiences were than in years past . As recently as five years ago, I would have been lynched for saying the things I was saying. But now, people were open and listening. Obviously, people are gaining the awareness that the old paradigm just isn’t working, and if we are going to make it, we must start to look at things completely differently. I was struck by how locked in these people were. Everyone stayed in their seat, and every eye in the house was clear, focused and alert. There was none of the customary yawning, glassy eyes, or going to the bathroom, or walking out. And what was this replaced with? It warms my heart to say it was replaced with nodding. That’s right – a whole room full of people nodding. They may not have understood it all, but they got it. It felt right.

       We are becoming extraordinarily powerful. We could feel it at Yogasylum, and we could feel it at the LA Expo. We are approaching critical mass. Critical mass is the final ingredient that is needed to create the new world. It is that energetic point, where our numbers reach a certain quantity where the dominoes will start to fall, and the unimaginable will start to occur.

       Many people struggle with their understanding of critical mass. This is because it does not work in the accustomed, mathematical, linear way. It does not work according to the rules of the old paradigm, but rather the new paradigm. Critical mass works on the basis of energetic, spiritual and magical principles. Critical mass is not of this world. It’s power is other-dimensional.

        Most skeptics of changing the world base their doubt on old paradigm thinking. It goes something like this: it is impossible to change the world because of “the masses.” The vast majority of the people in the world are brainwashed, dumbed-down. They don’t understand any of this, and they don’t care. They believe what they see on their TV’s, and all they want is to perpetuate the illusion of material, third dimensional reality, with the primary emphasis on their money, their property, and all their other “stuff.” Majority rules. If you don’t have the masses on your side, it’s impossible to change the world.

        The truth is you don’t need a majority. This is where critical mass comes into play. In fact, it is only necessary to have a small percentage of impassioned and powerful people to change the world. Critical mass works on the principle that small groups of people with a connection to the true source of their power have exponentially more impact than much larger groups with little or none.

       Critical mass can not be measured in the accustomed quantitative way because you’re dealing with more intangible variables – energy, consciousness, spirit and magic . It also does not work in the accustomed way, as in which ever side has the biggest army, with the most guns and bombs, and the most money, will win. We also don’t know at what precise point critical mass is. The only way we’ll know is by all the amazing things that will start happening when we get there.

        With critical mass, the outcome also cannot be foreseen in the traditional, old paradigm manner. We are operating in an arena where an entirely different set of rules applies. The new world we create will not be a variation of the old, built on the same foundation. It will be a totally different world, built upon a fresh foundation of light, energy and spirit. It will be other-dimensional. The only thing we know for sure is this will be a world in which the primary emphasis is on spirit, peacefulness, joy and love – not matter and control. All we know for sure is the new world will be magnificent beyond what we can imagine with old paradigm thinking .

        Yes, we are becoming very powerful. We are definitely approaching critical mass. I wish all of you could have experienced what Peter, Cayelin and I did, spending an entire weekend at the LA Expo with something like 10,000 other like-minded, kindred spirits. And the feeling of hundreds of these gentle souls crammed into a ballroom for the panel on 2012, The Shift, and creating the new world. It was awesome to behold and feel.

        Yes, we are becoming powerful, but we must remember that the hidden powers, the forces of darkness, are not going to give up without a fight. And needless to say – they don’t play fair. They’ve had a firm grip on this planet for thousands of years, and they’re not about to just let it go. I fear the time may have come for them to blow up another building, invade another innocent country, unleash a killer virus, or some such thing, in order to manipulate people back into fear and helplessness mode, so they can consolidate their power and control . I hope that this time our power has become so great that we will not be fooled.

        And we will continue to flow toward critical mass, and creating the new world by connecting with the divine spirit with our vibration of peacefulness, joy and love. Therein, lies the true source of our power, which is unstoppable.