THE FALL OF MAN

I just read a book called The Starseed Transmissions by Ken Carey. His description of the Fall of Man and it's consequences is extraordinary and I have abridged it here for anyone who might never have read him.

How did you lose your God-consciousness and “fall” into the idea of separation from Me? Initially it was through a loss of confidence in the absolute perfection of My universal design. Doubt appeared through the subtle process of reasoning, and pride was conceived that encouraged you - not exactly to stop trusting in Me, but to stop trusting exclusively in Me. The moment you did this, your consciousness began to shift from God-centeredness to self-centeredness. For the first time you became aware of an identity that was distinct from the One-ness of My Spirit. This shift was minimal at first, but as you began to focus more and more upon your “personal” experience you also began to think in terms of defending it with meaningless and complicated ego structures. Such activity took you out of the present moment and diminished the pure energy of your true nature, which in turn, created greater anxiety and a greater need to protect yourself. Gradually, as you identified more and more with your own personal expression of My life, you were drawn into a long downward spiral where denser and denser levels of energy began bonding itself into matter.

This process went on for many ages before you actually found yourself in the Garden of Eden described in your Scriptures. By then you had already fallen a long way from your original state of grace. You had clothed yourself with increasing layers of material identification and had come to believe you were, in fact, separate from Me. Even so, your time in the Garden lasted for many centuries of earth time before you came to rely so much upon your physical senses that you were cut off from the direct nourishment of My divine light. In reality, you were never cut off from that nourishment. But the sense of your own identity had become so great by then that your material bodies needed even more substance for their support. You finally reached a point where you could no longer meet the demands of your bodies without “work”. It is at this point your chronicles state that you were “driven from the Garden”. But you were not driven from the Garden. The time has come for you to you understand this. You were not born into sin. It is only in the illusion of your current state that you perceive yourself to have been separated from me. Despite your belief in a Fall and an Original Sin, I do not accuse you of your free-will expression of individuality. That was my purpose in creating you. You have made it difficult for yourself - and created all the problems you are now experiencing - by misunderstanding your true nature in me. But you may take heart. It is only a misunderstanding which will one day be corrected. The truth is, you are born daily into My presence. If daily you persist in the foolish idea of sin and separation, it’s only because you are still under the influence of an illusion which has caused you to become vulnerable to confusion, disease, aging and death. Now, created by your own past-oriented guilt and future-oriented fear, Satan follows you around like some dark shadow hiding the truth about your true nature. In this fallen state of consciousness each human being functions in disregard of the song of life going on in everyone else. There is no harmony, no arrangement, and no direction. You are like random notes of an orchestra tuning before the conductor raps the baton on his music stand. But watch and listen. The Grand Conductor has approached the stand and is getting ready to call everyone to attention. It is time to stop tuning separate instruments and begin to accept the direction of One who understands the wholeness of the symphony. 

That wholeness was understood, and modeled for you by the person called Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus took on an earthly body in order to prepare the human population for a great awakening. He taught people on earth to do the opposite of what their matter-bound inclinations told them; love your enemy, give away your material possessions, disregard world acclaim. When he finished with his body and returned to One-ness with Me, his followers organized the story of his life and teachings into a book. That book was written during a time of human history when there was no science, no understanding of the evolution of life or consciousness, no concept of anything but the most basic facts of mortal existence. Nevertheless, it proved to be a living bombshell. Satan knew his influence would be ended forever if people began doing what Jesus told them to do. So he devised a clever scheme for using his teachings in a way that would prevent their actual application. He organized a vast bureaucratic structure to interpret his words, and an elitist priesthood to go and preach them in his name. Initially you were inspired by your emotional response to their beauty - but gradually you have become confused, contentious, and finally disabled. You search in vain for the victory and abundance that Jesus promised and wonder why you still can't do things he said you could do. The Deceiver knows well the transformation of the heart that is required. He doesn’t mind if you worship Christ superficially, as long as you also continue to worship your material possessions. He doesn’t care if you give lip service to his teaching about turning the other cheek, as long as you stop short of doing it. 

His primary maneuver for distracting you from the message was convincing you to glorify the unique nature of the messenger himself. Raising Jesus up as an object of worship has only increased your sense of separation and caused you to overlook the kingdom within you. Thus, rather than taking responsibility for your eternal soul you became lost in crucifix adoration and scripture worship. The message of Jesus, to disengage yourself from the influence of man and find your life once again in the Holy Spirit, has become buried under a catalog of religious verbiage and dogmatic interpretation. Many of you kill each other in defense of your own interpretation, flaunting your superiority in the face of those who exercise their belief in Me with different words. There is nothing more sorrowful than to observe this behavior among those who claim to live by My truth. One tree nurtures many leaves, yet no two are the same. Do not separate yourselves any longer according to the different ways you think about Me. Reality is far beyond such childish ideas. I am about to come into the world again, this time through your own consciousness. Look there for my living presence. If words written in days of old continue to divide you, recognize that the time has come to begin listening to me in your heart. There I will inform you directly.

A New Reformation

John Shelby Spong is a retired Episcopal bishop who believes that a literal interpretation of the Christian faith no longer speaks to the lives of modern believers. The following is an excerpt from his book Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile (Harper Collins / May 1998).

The Catholic Church had it's beginnings in the 4th century and for more than 1,000 years was the source of much of the stability of the western world. In the 16th century it entered a period of internal upheaval that came to be known as the Protestant Reformation. The institution that called itself the Body of Christ broke first into debate, then acrimony, then violence and counter-violence and finally into open warfare between Protestant Christians and Catholic Christians. It produced the Thirty Years War and the conflict between England and Spain which led to the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Yet, when looking at the conflict from the vantage point of the 21^st century, it is surprising to see how insignificant the theological issues were that divided them. Neither side was debating the core teachings of Christianity such as the doctrine of the Trinity, Jesus as the only son of God, the reality of heaven and hell or the cross in the plan of salvation. These were faith assertions held by both sides. Instead Protestant Christians and Catholic Christians disagreed about whether salvation was achieved by faith alone, as Luther contended, or whether faith without works was dead as the Vatican argued. There was also debate over the proper use of scripture and the role of ordination. Despite being confrontational, with hostile accusations of “heretic” hurled at Protestants and “anti-Christ” hurled at Catholics, it was nonetheless a fight that pitted Christian believers against Christian believers. The Reformation was not an attempt to reformulate the Christian faith for a new era. The time had not yet arrived in which Christians would be required to rethink the basic and identifying marks of Christianity itself.

The need for that kind of change was first hinted at when Copernicus and Galileo removed the earth from its supposed location at the center of the universe, where human life had basked under the constant attention of a humanly defined parental deity, and cast it adrift into an ever-expanding universe. That understanding produced an angle of vision radically different from the one in which the Bible was written and through which the primary theological tenets of the Christian faith had been formed.

When Sir Isaac Newton charted the fixed physical laws of the universe the Church suddenly found that the concepts of miracle, supernatural, and divine intervention as explanations of everything, no longer held as much intellectual integrity. Once more believers were forced to embrace a reality vastly different from their faith tradition.

Next came Charles Darwin who related human life to the world of biology, an awareness which diametrically opposed the traditional understanding of the Creation event. The Bible began with the assumption that God had created a finished and perfect world from which human beings had fallen away. As a result, sin was the reality in which all life was presumed to live. Darwin instead postulated an unfinished and imperfect creation out of which human life was evolving.into higher levels of consciousness. In such a vision the belief that Jesus came to earth to rescue mankind becomes inoperative. So does the interpretation of the cross as the moment of sacrifice when the ransom for sin was paid. The Church clearly wobbled under the impact of evolutionary insights, and Christian leaders ever since have pretended that if Darwin couldn’t be defeated, he could at least be ignored.

Darwin was followed by Sigmund Freud, who analyzed the symbols of Christianity and found that a God who is understood as a father figure, who guides personal decisions, answers prayers, and promises rewards and punishment based upon our behavior is not designed to call anyone into spiritual maturity. Instead this view of God produces a passive dependency on end-time fulfillment in another world.

Finally in the last 75 years there have been landmark discoveries in the field of science that may be the final blow to any remaining supernatural or mythological aspects of our spirituality. The Church tells us we were made in the image and likeness of God who always was and always will be. Quantum Physics is now telling us the same thing in modern terminology. We are not solid objects of matter as we appear. We, and everything else that exists in the universe are made of pure energy which, according to the law of thermodynamics, can neither be created or destroyed. This field of energy connects all of creation and is holographic. That means everything is one with the Source and each piece mirrors the whole on a smaller scale. If one considers this field of energy which is the source of everything to be God, then there is really nothing that separates us - only a stubborn and persistent belief that we have held onto long past it's usefulness.

In defense of this onslaught of intellectual reasoning it has not been surprising to see Christianity degenerate into an increasingly shrill biblical fundamentalism where genuine questions are not encouraged, and if allowed, are met with preconceived and pious answers. Today such churches are declining numerically, seem intolerant theologically, are concerned more about preservation of doctrine than truth, and wondering why boredom is what people experience inside church walls. Surely the renewal of Christianity will not come from this kind of fundamentalism. If there is nothing more than this on the horizon then I see no future for the enterprise we call the Christian faith. It is my conviction that the need for a re-formation of Christian theology is facing the Church today. The pre-modern concepts upon which it was based cannot speak to the post-modern world we now inhabit. The New Reformation will be far more radical and will dwarf in intensity the changes of the 16th century, for it will not be concerned about authority, ecclesiastical nuance, ordinations or sacraments. Rather it will be an examination and rethinking of the very nature of the Christian doctrine itself. It is the only way this ancient religious system can be re-focused and re-articulated so as to become relevant in an increasingly non-religious world.

Are We Becoming What We Believe In?

In 1 Corinthians 2:16 Paul says, “We have the mind of Christ” - beautiful words that have endured for centuries and created hope in all believers. But is it something which is being realized by most Christians? Is it being realized by any Christians? If so, why is there a book on my coffee table by Che Ahn (president of an international ministry of 5,000 churches in 35 countries) called, Say Goodbye to Powerless Christianity. Powerless Christianity? Why would a prominent church leader feel the need to write such a book if Christians were becoming like Jesus?

I have part of the answer and I mention it often it in these blogs. The church has created a separation between God and man which doesn’t really exist and only serves to render us incapable of spiritual transcendence. Regrettably, the Christian community, finding no way to bridge the gap, has chosen to follow the ways of the world rather than the Life of Christ. That was the premise of another popular book on Christian coffee tables recently called Radical. How few of us really live the way Jesus told us to! And how easy it is for us to rationalize why we don’t!

Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man many times in the Bible. I always thought that was his way of saying he was just one of us. Unfortunately, rather than developing the capacities he demonstrated (which he said also belonged to us) the church projected him into a heavenly realm and built a religion around him in order to avoid the radical shift of mind and disruption of culture that he said would enable us. Separated as we are from the power source, the necessary change has not been able to take root in the heart of man. We simply cloak in religious terminology the agreed upon shortcomings of our sinful nature, accept the consequences as our reality, and ask Jesus to come and save us. I read this recently: You will never allow yourself to receive what you do not believe yourself worthy to have. If that’s true then it’s no wonder Christianity is powerless after 2,000 years of “faith”. If the evidence of that faith showed more positive results I wouldn’t still be looking for answers. But if we’re not becoming what we say we believe in (and Ahn’s book suggests we may not be) then it seems to me, it’s time to re-examine what we believe in.

As early as the fifth grade I remember being very confused about something in the Christian doctrine. The nuns and priests taught me that God was a God of love and that he created me in his own image and likeness. At the same time they said he created me in sin so unacceptable that he would have to send me to hell for it. I tried to believe that, but it seemed like such a contradiction. How could God blame me for something he made me with? As far as I can see, nowhere in the bible did Jesus ever speak of an Original sin. What he preached was God in the heart of man and he prayed that we would come to know it. So if Jesus didn’t say it then who made up this stuff about us being separated? It’s not true and it no longer serves any purpose to insist that it is just because “it is written”. We may know God through Jesus, but at some point we must learn to experience him in ourselves. The power we seek can only come with the realization that we are part of the one-ness with God that Jesus modeled. And we are. We are all part of that one-ness. That’s the really Good News that Jesus brought into this world.

It may go against church doctrine, but there comes a time when rethinking our position in God is more important than insisting on tradition. It is critical for our spiritual growth to come to the knowledge that nothing can separate us from the love of God. How can it, when in fact, nothing can separate us from God? Science is showing us that such a separation between creator and creation is not even possible. Someday we’ll understand that and accept it like we do any other great truth that was once a great mystery. Only then will we be able to give up our belief in the sinful nature of man which prevents us from knowing our true relationship to God. That alone will enable the mind of Christ in us. Finally Paul’s words will become our reality. Finally we will be able to do the things Jesus said we would do.

When that time comes there will be no more books written about powerless Christianity.

My Own Human Experience

One thing has been on my mind. If we really are eternal spiritual beings having temporary human experiences then what did I do to deserve such a good one? I could have been born in Burundi and grown up an orphan looking for food in the garbage dump. (God bless all those who are having that experience.)

Instead I came into this life at the end of WWII in the greatest country in the world at the beginning of what has been the most peaceful and prosperous era in modern history. I was born to good Catholic parents who loved me and taught me about God, and I grew up in the booming metropolis of Southern California, in North Hollywood. Somehow, though my sister was famous for having the brains in the family, I excelled in school. I was named Valedictorian of my grammar school class and won Science and Religion awards in high school without even knowing. Even in those early years it occurred to me that I must have favor with someone bigger than me. Father Harris told me to get to know Jesus and I undertook to read the bible for the first time in my freshman year of high school. 

In the 10th grade I had a friend who aspired to be a professional baseball pitcher who made me practice with him every day. I didn’t care much for baseball but working with him all that time made me a pretty good hitter, good enough to be selected to the All-Star team in my junior and senior year. All of a sudden I became known as an athlete and began moving in the best social circles. I got good grades and had the coolest car. My yearbook used one word to describe me when I graduated from high school: Popular. What more could a teenager ask for? Meanwhile my desire to know God was increasing and I began to study other faiths - including the eastern religions.

In college my friends and I started our own fraternity and it soon became the most popular fraternity in the school (see Animal House). I envisioned myself in a band performing at our parties but I didn’t know how to play a musical instrument, and I had no money. One day I was awarded $1,000 after a car accident and, against the advice of my father, used it to buy guitars and drums for me and some selected friends. The band we started not only played at fraternity parties, we auditioned and got booked for a week at a major nightclub on the famous Sunset Strip. It was there that we were discovered by '50s crooner Pat Boone. He got us a contract and we recorded a song that became a number one hit in California. The blessings were coming fast now. I went on to join the Turtles and then Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, touring the world several times with big hit records, appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show, even playing at the White House. The Beatles came to see us play in London and Paul McCartney told me he liked my music. Not bad for someone who didn’t know how to play an instrument five years before. But how did it happen? I continued to seek to know the source of my good fortune so that I might thank him appropriately, maybe repay him, or worship him - whatever it was he required.    

After about 10 years it occurred to me that I wasn’t limited to life on the road with a rock and roll band. It wasn't reality and it didn't make sense to be attached to it. Better to change my experience and do something completely different.  Once more against the advice of family and friends and without any definite idea of what I would do I left the music industry and moved to New York City. I knew two people there. One offered me a place to live in Greenwich Village and the other a temporary job with the New York Jets Football Club - if I didn't mind mailing Joe Namath posters and polishing the Super Bowl trophy. I didn't mind. Six months after touring the world as a rock star with Alice Cooper I was now commuting by subway in Manhattan to and from my job as a $100 a week office boy - and I loved it. One day I was called into the office of Weeb Ewbank, the head coach and general manager. He had heard that I was from Hollywood and wanted to talk to me about developing a film department for the Jets. I didn’t know the first thing about film-making but I told him I could do the job. Somehow I learned how to shoot, develop, print and edit 16mm movie film and did the job for 27 years, traveling with the team and filming all their games and practice sessions. Years later we transitioned from film to videotape and finally to non-linear digital imaging - none of which I knew anything about, yet the films were always the highest quality. I had three file drawers full of applications for the job as my assistant, all from people much more educated and qualified than myself. Whoever God was, it appeared I still had his favor in my life.

During my New York experience I practiced Transcendental Meditation, took courses in Scientology, and finally became a born-again Christian. I served in the local church and it was there I met my wife - the most wonderful gift of them all. Actually I've been married to wonderful women twice in my life. The first blessed me with a son and raised him almost by herself when I was on the road with the band. He grew up and served his country in the Air Force, then graduated with honors from the University of Washington. Now he too has a beautiful wife and I have my first grandson. For the past 23 years I've been married to a highly motivated professional woman (a doctor) and we're raising two more excellent boys. Does God’s favor ever end?

A few years ago I was ready for another new experience and moved my family to Jacksonville, Florida, where my spiritual hunger and search for God continues. After having careers in two glamorous entertainment industries I really don't remember "working" a day in my life. It's all been so interesting. We've also founded a center for children with Autism, done medical missionary work in Central America (I'm the pharmacist) and opened a growing pediatric practice in St. Augustine, Florida. My spiritual hunger and search for God continues but all I can see is his goodness. The blessings in my human experience continue to this day - none of which I planned, none of which I was qualified for, and none of which I take credit for. The only thing I’ve really made an effort to do in my life was know Him. The rest of this stuff is just happening to me.

Spiritual Beings Having a Human Experience

For the last couple of months I’ve been sick. It’s very discouraging not being able to write or even think straight. I can understand the difficulty we're having trying to heal lepers and raise the dead, but how can a being made in the image and likeness of God be victimized by a bacteria that he can’t even cast out of his own body?

Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) was a Catholic priest, philosopher and mystic credited with making the observation that, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” I have loved and quoted that statement for years without realizing its full implications. All this time I’ve been wondering why our experience of God doesn’t seem to fulfill our expectations and have concluded that it’s because of the church and what we’ve been taught to believe. But might it be simpler than that? As human beings wouldn’t we naturally be limited in our understanding of ultimate reality? If so, why then are we surprised and discouraged by sickness? And why are we dismayed by our difficulty knowing God in an experiential way? How could it be otherwise?  

A young preacher in a Unity Church I visited recently shed a new light on the subject for me – one that I had never considered before. Maybe our shortcomings and our lack of peace are just part of what it means to be human. He told us to imagine something. He told us to imagine that we were eternal beings who had lived 8,000 years in the presence and one-ness of God, who one day offered us an opportunity to “do something different”. In an extraordinary gesture of free will he would give us our own separate experience in a world of imagination that would be unlike anything we could ever know living with him. The only drawback was, in order for it to appear real it would be necessary for us to forget where we had come from and what ultimate reality was. And we agreed.

And it really wasn’t a bad deal. For the first time in our existence we’ve been able to experience the beauty of a sunrise on the ocean, the feel of a warm fire on a cold winter evening, and the taste of a ripe strawberry. We’ve also come to know the pain of sickness and the loss of a loved one – some things pleasant and some not so pleasant, but all part of an amazing gift that we never had in our purely spiritual realm. The problem is we’ve forgotten that our real life still exists in the spiritual realm. None of these things have taken that life away from us. They’re simply part of our human experience. We may have forgotten how it all started and where we came from, but that’s what we agreed to. It’s also why so many of us live our lives in fear and caution, afraid of doing the wrong thing and holding on to this life as if it were all we had. Why else would we spend the 75 or 80 years we’re typically given trying to get the best job so we can have money to buy the biggest house and the nicest car? 

Jesus told us not to put our faith in these things. He knew they don’t bring the lasting happiness for which we deeply yearn. That only comes from remembering that we have come to this temporary place directly from God who is always our ultimate reality. Jesus was able to remember this but we don’t – at least not yet. But I’ve been thinking. Maybe we shouldn’t beat ourselves up just because we don't have the mind of Christ yet. Maybe he didn’t mean it would happen in one lifetime. Maybe we’re generations away from being able to do the things he told us we would do. And that's OK too.

But if we're ready to give up the illusion here’s a good place to start. We say that our souls are eternal. Let's make sure we know the meaning of the word. Webster’s Dictionary defines eternal as “having infinite duration”, “existing at all times”. Somehow we accept that it means without an end. But it also means without a beginning. That means there was never a time when our spirit wasn’t alive. Quantum Science is beginning to prove that to us. Once it becomes our reality we may begin to consider where and what we were before we came here. At some point we will begin to understand that we are far more amazing beings than we appear in this lifetime. We may not have all the wisdom and power we had when our lives were one with God, but that was part of the agreement. It is promised that we will have it again. 


In the meantime let’s be thankful for the extraordinary gift of our human lives. Let's enjoy every strawberry... but at the same time try not to get lost in the illusion. It’s just a part of the human experience.

Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God?

I began this blog by saying that going to a football game has become more exciting than going to church, and wondering how that could be. In so doing I came to the conclusion that we Christians don’t fully experience the reality of God’s presence in our lives. There are several reasons for this and I’ve discussed three of them. 1. Early church fathers didn’t allow the belief that we could have such an experience and succeeded in eliminating all the evidence that said otherwise. 2. The church, from its position as go-between, teaches a separation theology which infers that God exists in a heavenly realm set apart from man. 3. We don’t have a full understanding of the Holy Spirit and what it means that he is alive in us.

There is another reason which is just as debilitating. We’ve been taught to believe that we’re sinners in the eyes of a God who demands justice before reconciliation can be made. It’s very difficult to draw near and feel close to someone you think holds a grievance against you. Many Christians who’ve repented and claim to be forgiven don't seem to be sure they’ve done enough. There is historical tradition that fuels this uncertainty.

Fearing that his congregation was falling away from the faith, renowned 18^th century theologian Jonathan Edwards began a revival in Northampton, Massachusetts that became known as the Great Awakening. In 1741 he set the stage for future fire and brimstone preachers by “awakening” the church to these fearful thoughts: 

O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in! You hang by a slender thread over a great furnace of fire held up by the hand of one whose wrath is provoked against you. It would be dreadful to suffer the fierce wrath of Almighty God for one moment; but you will suffer it for all eternity. There will be no end to this horrible misery. When you look to the future you will see a boundless duration lying before you. It will swallow up your thoughts, and amaze your soul. And you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any rest at all. You will know with certainty that you must suffer for millions and millions of ages in accordance with God’s merciless vengeance. And then, when so many ages have been spent by you in this manner, you will know that it has only been a moment compared to what remains. The horror of your punishment will indeed last forever.

Authorized as church doctrine and offered for scholastic study in religious Colleges and Universities, this frightening message may sound overly dramatic today, but it hasn’t been easily dismissed from our culture. We still sing these words in my church every Sunday as we continue to speak the reality of our unworthiness into existence, thinking it will somehow excuse us and maybe soften the heart of God.

Lord of our shame. Lord of our sinful hearts.

I know I’m undeserving, so I get down on my face and call out to you.

Help me know you are near.

Here I am, knowing I’m a sinful man.

Naked and poor, wretched and blind I come

Break these chains. Wash these filthy stains.

Clothe me in white so I won’t be ashamed.

Is it any wonder we feel separate from a Holy God? Is it any wonder we go to church and pray to him, and sing to him, and listen to stories about him, and then leave without any feeling that we’ve been in his presence?  

In order to overcome the idea that we’re separate from God we’ve got to come to an understanding of two things. 1. We have created that idea ourselves, and 2. We can un-create it anytime we want to. We are separate from God only as a cup of water drawn from the ocean. As the water retains the true nature of what it was in the ocean, so we, drawn from God in the beginning, have retained the true nature of what we are in him. 

Imbued with the gift of creativity by God, we have created the separation we’re experiencing. Imbued with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we’re beginning to see what we’ve done.  

The Times, They Are a'- Changin'

Come gather 'round people wherever you roam
Admit that the waters around you have grown
Accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
and don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Your sons and daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly aging
Get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall
For he who gets hurt will be he who has stalled
The battle outside is ragin'.
It'll shake down your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

I thought it might be appropriate to read these words again today. Bob Dylan wrote them in 1963 and boy was he right! The ‘60s were a time of change for many issues that defined our cultural identity. It may not have happened as quickly or as completely as we expected but fundamental systems were being exposed that needed attention - so many that it was sometimes hard to define it as a unified movement. As a result we discarded much of what we had inherited and wound up leaving a lot of things undone. Being a peace-love hippie myself I’ve often felt guilty about that. I feel a Iot better today seeing it all in hindsight. What we thought was the beginning was only the beginning of the beginning. Now we're seeing the real Beginning. The Sit-ins of the ‘60s have become the Occupy movements of today. Local Civil rights, Women’s Lib, Gay rights and anti-war protests were only the predecessors of a global awakening which now involves everything from government, political and financial institutions to environmental issues, energy development and health care. Nutrition is the latest thing to come under scrutiny. On top of everything else we’re realizing we’ve been poisoning ourselves with the things we eat. It seems as if every aspect of life is being readied for correction.

No one intentionally engineered the systemic collapses we’re facing today. We've created them ourselves little by little while watching Monday Night Football and Dancing With The Stars. The good news is if we created them we can also create something new. There weren’t as many of us in 1963. Today we are a global community connected by electronic media and social networking devices. Now the whole world is watching.

Unfortunately the Occupy Movements seem to have the same problem that we did in the ‘60s. There are so many things in our culture that need attention no one is able to voice a unified vision for the future. The reason for this is because there’s one other thing that needs to be corrected - the correction of which will solve everything. Our religious systems and the beliefs that support them must be reinvented. It’s been 2,500 years since the world’s great religions first started separating us. As Dr. Phil likes to say, “How’s that been working for you?”

A major shift is underway right now. The changes that are made in the years ahead may bring us to a new and wonderful place on this planet. In order for that to happen we need to accept the truth about our oneness with each other. For that to happen it is critical that we have a new understanding of our oneness with God. Once we find that, the other changes we want will happen by themselves. To put it another way, if we seek Him first everything else will be added.