This artistic depiction of three envisioned futures for earth has been getting passed around several blogs lately. It's a large image, but definitely worth taking a look at, because the stereotypes it presents are pivotal to our understanding of our place in the context of history. Before reading further, I suggest looking at the three futures, and think about which one you would want to live in.

Over the past week or so, I've watched several movies I got from the Peerflix network, each of which has left a strong impression on me. Since I haven't felt motivated or verbose enough to write individual movielog entries about them, I'll let this be a batch entry for all of them.

A statistically significant increase in the incidence of malignant tumors, lymphomas and leukemias in rats exposed to varying doses of aspartame appears to link the artificial sweetener to a high carcinogenicity rate, according to a study accepted for publication today by the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). The authors of the study, the first to demonstrate multipotential carcinogenic effects of aspartame administered to rats in feed, called for an "urgent reevaluation" of the current guidelines for the use and consumption of this compound.

Anyone want a diet soda? Free with your next chemotherapy session!

In the wake of thanksgiving dinner, a few thoughts about food and nutrition, and how their place in my life has evolved.

Here's the deal for this week.

What: Screening of the film Wal Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices

When: Sunday, November 20. 19:00. (i.e. 7pm)

Where: Lincoln, NE. Unitarian Church. 6300 A Street. (between 56th and 70th, north side of the road)

Free and open to the public. I intend to be there, work schedule permitting.

Here we have one of those movies that, while brilliant and a blast to watch, eludes anything even resembling a simple, straightforward description. How about this for an attempt: A highly surreal comedy about the meaning of our existence.

Yesterday morning, I woke up and decided, I'm going to get up and do the same damn thing I've done and enjoyed every Wednesday since time immemorial. And so, my day began.

This morning when I arose, I found that the year's first snowfall had covered Lincoln in white. More than any date on a calandar, the sky presented true evidence that the season has turned. And my pattern with it, for I found myself driving to work. And I wonder, What new game is this that the Great Wide World of Life now gives?

Work is done. Work is yet to come. And I'm wired as a kite.

[Bitscape pulls chemicals out of the closet designed to bring his brain down from the stratosphere, and ingests a dose of each.]

This morning, I called the local mechanic that had been recommended to me and told him about my car troubles. He suggested I have it towed into their shop so they could take a look, and suggested a local towing service. I called the towtruck, and within a couple hours, Tobias had been removed from his resting place.

10 minutes ago, the diagnosis came in: It was nothing but a dead battery. A very, very dead battery. Watch as I heave out a great sigh of relief.

An inspiring article about how massive popular uprisings across South America have lead to a revolution rejecting U.S. imperialism, as they refuse to let their countries be used as resource-extraction points for foreign governments any longer. The poster child of this movement is Venezuelean President Hugo Chavez, leading the charge to return power to the people.

Here's the thing: If every country in the world did this -- steadfastly refused to allow itself to become a slave to America -- the lifestyle most of us currently lead would be impossible. So which would you rather have? True democracy, in which everyone is treated equally and fairly? Or would you prefer to continue living in what we call "luxury" at the expense of those you cannot see?

The fact that I awakened again a few minutes ago at 5am suggests that my brain is still running at a higher clock speed than normal. The fact that it was 5am this time instead of 3am would seem to confirm that it is slowing down, which is exactly what I wanted.

Today: Church in the morning, work in the afternoon, Full Moon Circle in the evening, and finally, refocusing to find my center before I return to the familiar realm of subterranean mind a few moments hence.

As expected, the past 12 hours have been intense, in all sorts of interesting ways; sometimes painful, sometimes marevelous. Probably nothing quite as glamorous or "out of this world" as it may sound. I haven't hallucinated (or at least I don't think I have), nor have I spotted any UFOs. However, I do believe I may have heard the voice of God tonight.

Nearly ten minutes must have passed since I typed the title on this one. I know this because my cd (technically a playlist of ogg files) is now on track 3. Bells For Her. I know roughly what I want to write -- on a whole bunch of topics -- but none of it is emerging. Instead, I have sat, transfixed by the music from the speakers, and the dance of my own thoughts.

I've been awake for over a half hour. By my calculations, this means I got about 4 hours of sleep. Not enough, especially considering I've been running like this for the past several nights. Some exceptional people might be able to thrive like this on an ongoing basis. I am not such an exceptional person.

This means that I must face reality. Experience tells me that I am going to crash, just as surely as the petroleum-based civilization in which we live.

Despite my ability to outwardly project an image of calmness, competence, and togetherness (so far), I can no longer doubt that inwardly, over the past few days, I have entered the "warning zone", exhibiting initial symptoms of what medical scientists would call a manic episode; the product of bipolar mental illness.

What follows may be an attempt to work out a strategy to deal with this before I cause serious damage to myself and others, or it may be nonsense. I don't know.

Back at the gas station today, I was reminded why it had taken me so long to finally make the decision to try for a job at Open Harvest.

Thursday morning, my body awoke well before the alarm I had set went off. This allowed me time to do a good chunk of meditation before showering, throwing on a couple layers of insulation, and microwaving some leftover cereal to eat. I was out the door by 05:00. According to plan, with steady pedaling, this put me at Open Harvest just in time for my orientation shift to begin at 06:00.

Knowing how things tend to work, if I don't blog this now, it will either not get written about at all, or only see a tiny summary squeezed in much later. So, as my brain winds down closer to sleep, I'll jot down the important stuff.

[Posting from downtown Lincoln Public Library. Time limited. Might edit to elaborate further later.]

I am strangely rivited. Went in knowing virtually nothing about the film. Though couched in a cinematic language that mixes horror and courtroom drama, it is filled with deeply theological symbolism and parallels. Far more affecting than the shock tactics of the classic Exorcist movie from the 70s.

After a half hour of meditation and over an hour of laying awake in bed, I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm unlikely to get much sleep tonight. So be it. To apply something I learned in tonight's class, I might be in a state of Rajas. If it continues for more than two nights in a row, then I'll have cause for worry. But for now, I'll accept it, and write a little something that's been bubbling at the back of my mind for several weeks now.

I have come to the undeniable conclusion that out of all the cds I have purchased during the past year, my favorite one by far is Sarah Fimm's Nexus. In a year that saw new releases from old favorites Tori, Trent, and Garbage, this was not an easy feat! But over the past several months, Sarah's music has consistently found its way back into my portable player, my xmms playlist, and my brain.

Deconsumption chimes in again.

There are two sides to this New American Revolution. One is to stop supporting corporations, to stop giving them the bullets to shoot you with, and to start buying instead only what is produced and made locally and sold by independent businesspeople. It ain't easy to do, but as the revolution takes root and grows it will gradually become easier. And it's infinitely preferable to actually taking up a musket and abandoning your family and home.

The other side to this insurgency is to stop buying-in to your own enslavement by borrowing money. When you have debt, you're working for another's benefit. If that "other" is a bank or finance company then you've effectively shackled yourself to a self-destructing system. Hopefully most of the readers of this site are debt-free or fairly close. And hopefully most of the readers of this site see that "debt free" is so very way cooler than a new iPod and an Audi A6.

Here's the scoop. Brief, because I want to meditate and make ready for tomorrow before bed.

• I start training as an employed member of the Open Harvest staff tomorrow. Bright and early. =-)
• The Director of Religious Education at the Lincoln Unitarian Church has an incredible knowledge of spiritual subjects. Tonight, I went to the first in a 3-part series on the Bhagavad Gita, and felt like I was taking a masters-level course. (Ok, so I've actually never taken a real masters-level course, but this is what I would imagine such an thing to resemble.) She was an encyclopedia of knowledge on all things religious. I felt slightly silly because I was the only one who hadn't brought a notebook to scribble in like a madman. (Generally, I tend to absorb knowledge better when I intently focus all my energy on actively listening instead of diverting brain power to jot notes down, but when it comes to lists of sanskrit words and definitions, note taking might be more beneficial.)
• There is more to write than can be written.

Also, I really need to fix this "More..." stuff. There is nothing more to read. This is all I'm writing. I want it all to appear on the main page, because I don't want to make people click through for the big important stuff. But my dumb engine will blindly tell everybody to read "More" anyway. I'm having grand visions of another site overhaul, but I probably won't get around to it for a while.

Ever just feel like throwing yourself to fates? Saying, "Do with me what you want, dammit! I am what I am. I am who I am. If I am to be punished for it, so be it. If I am to be elevated, then I'll accept that too."

You might even "want" to become egoless, but that is pointless, because the ego is coming along for the ride, like it or not. It might even be possible for the ego to be banished, but if so, why banish it? Isn't the desire that "wants" to get rid of ego also, itself, part of the ego?

I am a leaf on the wind. Wash's final words. (If that was a spoiler for you, then you're too late to the party for me to care, because it's already disappeared even from the cheap theatre.)

It is with these thoughts that I depart on this most auspicious of days.

I dreamed the crash of civilization this morning. Then I awoke with General Joy running through my head. Random.

Prior to that, I did some pretty heavy lucid dreaming too; except I never came to full awareness of the consciousness that exists beyond the dream. I just knew I was dreaming with each moment that passed and clung to that knowledge, reveling in the experience of observing cascading layers of reality as they crumbled, hoping that my lucidity would not crumble with them. Eventually, it did, but by then, it didn't matter anymore. It was better than the other alternative I had feared: Waking up to open my eyes before the dreaming was complete.

This morning, I momentarily woke up at 5am, and briefly reflected that if I were to be offered and accept the position at Open Harvest, this would be the time I would need to be getting up on a regular basis (though not every day, nor even every week, but once every two weeks). Depending on how long I feel like procrastinating getting my car fixed, I would also be biking to work in the cold pre-dawn air (which will be even colder with the coming of winter). And the thought hit me again. Am I completely nuts?

Sarah-Katherine has been wracking her brain to put together material for the book she's writing. Now, the first fruits of her efforts have appeared. Brilliantly articulated and touching. I want to read the book when it comes out.

What if you're smart? I mean, really smart. What if you're the kind of smart that got in trouble in school a lot, because you just couldn't sit still and listen to lies and half-truths and bullshit from disaffected public servants who cared nothing for actual education? What if you used to cut school to go read at the public library? What if you had questions -- so many questions? And nobody had the time to answer your questions? What if your questions were actually annoying to the people who were being paid to answer them, at least officially?

...

We did what we had to do for an insane amount of money, then we crept back into each other’s company and cried, or raged, or laughed. It was necessary. And for the first time in my life, I was surrounded by women like me -- smart women. Women so smart they were actually functionally nuts. Women who understood every single literary reference I made. Women who were so smart, they made me feel dumb. Women who had been on their own since they were fourteen; women who had burned everything they’d owned on the crucibles of autonomy and self-determination; women who realized it was far less humiliating to fake-finger their own pussies so some fat, ugly white man could jerk off to them, than it would be to punch in to his clock and take direction from him for eight hours a day, forty hours a week. Especially when we all knew he'd be jerking off to us anyway.

Tim's latest post reminds me why I love reading these crazy, out-there blogs. He discusses the devil's most ingeniously deceptive plot ever: To create a fake apocalypse, followed by a fake Heaven to keep all the Christians from discovering the true God. Especially relevant in light of some of the recent discussion we've had about paradise.

Imagine if you will then the following scenario - the Mock Apocalypse, the Mockalypse: The Devil causes events on earth to come to pass which match the prophetic visions of the Book of Revelation. The Devil's worst enemies are ardent Christians -- and these are precisely the people who are the most drawn into the game the Devil is playing.

The notion of the Rapture becomes extremely popular, and the Devil uses this to his advantage. He sets up a kind of "holding cell" in one of the lower astral realms. And he engineers a full-scale Rapture Event with all the bells and whistles. He singles out the people who are the most serious Christians, and sucks them right out of their clothes cars and houses, floating them up into his diabolical prison. He then has killed two birds with one stone: gotten rid of his worst enemies, and is using their life-essence to power his infernal machinations.

Meanwhile, the world below is plunged into absolute chaos. Plagues are unleashed. Various things turn to blood. Annoying songs are repeated endlessly on the radio. The devil feeds on the suffering and grows more and more powerful as he cycles through all the nastiest events described for the Apocalypse. And then when things can't get any worse, he stages an elaborate (but fake) defeat at the hands of a phony Second Coming of Christ, played by one of his actor friends.

After that is ushered in a new Golden Age of peace and prosperity, a Paradise on Earth. By this time everybody knows the Bible events were true, because they lived through them word for word (well, most people are probably dead by now, actually). So they more or less unflinchingly accept this Paradise as the Coming of God's Heavenly Kingdom on Earth. They even get to sit at the feet of God's throne and worship Him, because God has come down to live amongst the people in the New Jerusalem.

Except... it's all a sham. God is the Devil. The New Jerusalem is another prison illusion. But that doesn't matter, because everybody forgot. People are content with what they've got, and happy the suffering is over. Maybe the Devil even treats them really well, really does provide for them. Maybe he finally realizes that you really do catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

But something happens. One day somebody realizes something isn't quite right. They catch a glimpse of a cloven hoof under a divine garment. And something sparks in their memory. An old story they've mostly forgotten. They tell a friend to see if they can remember anything more. That night the friend dreams of another God -- a god different and above the one who sits on the thrown in the New Jerusalem. The friends tell their friends, and the circle widens. Soon, there is a small sect teaching that God isn't actually God, that he's the devil, and that this is all an illusion. Satan-in-disguise then begins a systematic persecution and annihilation of this tiny sect.

But the sect has help. The Christians who were taken up in the original Rapture begin to come back to Earth to aid them. Though they long ago lost their earthly bodies, they begin to beam messages down to the members of the secret sect. Some even begin to simultaneously incarnate into the bodies and minds of the citizens of New Jerusalem. The cycle begins again...

Beautiful. It really leads one to think about exactly what "true" paradise might consist of. Is it a world with no suffering and no pain, or would such a world be inexplicably hollow and incomplete, waiting for that "spark" in our memory to help us rediscover it? What if we somehow found our way to true paradise, only to realize that all the flaws and the suffering never really had anything to do with the world outside us, but were instead intrinsic aspects of our human nature; something "paradise" can never change without completely altering the essence of who we are? Would we still want paradise if it would effectively mean the death of the present versions of "you" and "me"? Could we even exist as conscious beings if we are stripped from the context of the (flawed) world around us?

These are the questions I love to ponder.

Tonight, I spent a few hours in another world. The world of one of my gas station co-workers.

Via kylark, some inspirational prose culled from A Flower Called Nowhere.

I've been thinking a lot about realities and how some people just accept the one they are in, as if somehow superimposing a different reality on top of the empirical reality is some kind of cop out. Sometimes I feel like I'm so removed from society and embedded in my little synthetic reality that the juxtaposition sets me whirling. I travel mostly by bicycle and shop daily for groceries like the Europeans or New Yorkers. Often as not the music that gets cranked up when I walk in the door is free jazz or abstract noise. I don't ever turn on the television and commercials and advertising are not a part of my life. I don't buy a lot of prepackaged food. I don't try to get ahead at my job. I don't pay attention to much American media at all, the Ipod bathes me in a never-ending stream of music of my choice. I have friends that live in the empirical everyday reality and I have friends who live in their invented reality, and I have to say that the ones who have manifested their own unique reality are far more interesting. I know that my co-workers think I'm bizarre because the things I strive for and the values I uphold are in total opposition to their chosen lifestyles. I got one of my friends a job where I work and I can just imagine how the office pictures us, two crazy city people who can barely keep from floating off to la la land. That's OK. We're faster and smarter and more efficient and so they just have to put up with the subversive and sneaky paranoiac anti-establishment wierdos. If I can get a couple more dreamers into the office the balance could be altered permanently. The power base could possibly be shifted, the lunatics could possibly run the asylum.

So fucked up the room is spinning. I love time out of mind. I love it when empirical reality blurs and the magickal reality gets superimposed over everything. In my reality art and creativity is the only desire and we glide silently through darkened dripping futuristic urban wastelands on fixed-gear fighter jet bicycles and we fight the forces of oppression and evil with our magic and improvised weapons. In my reality music and writing has higher value than exploitation and capitalism. In the city reality darkness joy kicks lights gnosis secret codes and sacred texts are all strung out on a golden ribbon unwinding unspooling like a Cortez the Killer 10 minute long winding vacuum tube implosion guitar solo just undulating and shimmering and trailing off into infinity where there is no body and there is no reality just thoughts and impulses floating in the abstract cosmic ether just sparks and flashes of light in the nothingness.

In this installment of Alchemy for the Braindamaged, zac gives an example of an interview with his future self (arrived at through the process of meditative divination described here). Why am I linking to it? Because I like what his future self says.

I've been thinking lately about finding my higher self, contemplating who this person might be, and what might be needed to cross the gap between the "me" that exists in the present, and the imagined "me" from the future. What would my higher self say in answer to these questions? Something to contemplate.

Saw it again. Actually, I liked it better the second time than I did the first. I'd still cast my vote in favor of a season of tv episodes over a movie, but Joss and crew did do a damn fine job with this little baby.

The Inspire Lincoln website is designed as a resource for seekers of spiritul knowledge in the Lincoln area. It has a directory of classes and other events being offered by various organizations.

I was volunteering at Open Harvest, as I had a hundred times before. Okay, so maybe it was really closer to a dozen. But I felt like an old timer there. And yet...

I was going to call this post "Dream Premonition", except I seemed to have a vague memory of using that title once before. Turns out I was right. In any case, the forces of the deep mind have been stirring some more. The question I must face: What do I do with it?

Jeremy points us to a neat article comparing the archetypes used in The Lion King to the Corn God and other tribal myths.

But the part I want to highlight discusses the fundamental difference between the linear nature of Christian mythology, versus the cyclical stories of what might vaguely be described as "Pagan" spiritualities. He compares and contrasts The Lion King (which works from the cyclical/Pagan viewpoint) with C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia (a firmly linear Christian allegory).

I see in Mufasa/Simba in The Lion King a theological counterpoint to another mythic children's fantasy, C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia. There we also see a Lion King, Aslan, who is a thinly veiled Christ analogue. He dies and rises, too, but there is no cycle; rather history ends in "the Last Battle." Here is a linear view of history: the old age ends and the new, transformed age replaces it. There is no less a death and resurrection theme here than in the cyclical Corn King myth on which The Lion King is based. It's just that it happens only once. And the renewal that comes is not the periodic return of earthly vitality and vigor; it is the replacement of that whole cycle by an imagined supernatural substitute.

Lewis tried (in his essay "Myth Became Fact") to say that all the Corn King legends were some kind of mythic expressions of the subconscious yearning of the human race for the coming of Christ once and for all. I guess the repeated, cyclical character of the thing was like the repetitiveness of the Old Testament sacrifices according to the Epistle to the Hebrews: had they been the real thing, they'd have done the trick the first time and needed no repetition. But when the real dying and rising god appeared, he did the thing once and for all. Accordingly, there will be one definitive turnabout, and one only, however long we must wait for it, when the Risen Christ returns to transform the corrupt and sinful earth into a spanking-new model. It's not going to keep happening the same way again and again, they say. All the sorrows of the world will one day be done away with and we will be sitting pretty in endless comfort, once Christ returns to dispense with the old Fallen Age.

To tell you the truth, I just can't buy this. I don't think it's even a good idea. Get real, folks. This is the world. It contains death because we are organic, mortal beings. We ought to make the best of it. There is ecstatic glory in this mortal life, though sooner or later we must fall under tragedy's scythe. [...] Why despise the Circle of Life, treat it as a mere charnel house to be escaped by a fantastic resurrection? It has death and doom, and it always will. But it also has life and joy, and it always will. The Circle turns.

The linear model of apocalyptic thinking, Harold Camping's notion that things as we now know them will be swept away to prepare for a Technicolor Oz of some kind, with a cross on top, is the cloth from which Christian triumphalism and manifest destiny have been sewn. Aslan does not really provide us a lesson about renewal. Instead he leads us to childishly deny the reality of death, while Mufasa/Simba bids us accept it as part of our assigned place in the scheme of things in which we may rejoice in the hour granted us.

I would contend that the very essence of being alive entails also death. One side of the coin cannot exist without the other. I'm also playing with the notion that the Judeo-Christian mindset that this life in the immediate present is not enough might be a cause of much suffering in the world. If one is taught to despise the nature of the world we live in, and put all their faith in the hope that one day it might magically be replaced with something ineffably better (or somehow "perfect"), then such a person would subconsciously attempt to separate themselves from direct experience of the here and now. Thus the measures by modern civilization to put ever more impregnable walls between us and the outside, or us and other people. This leads to a vicious cycle, because the discontent stemming from isolation (from nature, from other humans, from the basis of our sustenance) reinforces the notion that "this life" is inherently not enough, and we need to be "saved" from it.

I find that the more I am able to reconnect with the essence of life here, in all its beauty and tragedy, joy and misery, the less I feel the need for any form of "salvation". I suppose a devout Christian would say this is evidence that I am falling more and more under the influence of the devil, as I am being deceived into believing that I don't need their version of "God". In such a case, this would put us at an impasse, as I have no desire to even try refuting such logic, and my own mind is the unrepentant consciouness of Satan himself. (Thus I can understand the motivation among some ex-Christians who have not quite escaped the strangle-hold of Christian mythology to call themselves "Satanists.")

Oh well. To each their own. Just wanted to add that little thought.

Found via kylark's link. Tim asks some great questions of shamanic thinker Daniel Pinchbeck, and gets some great answers. My favorite bits:

On the "reality" of mystical beings:

I think, like Jung, I feel comfortable saying I believe only what I know. At this point in time, most people are trapped in dualisms, paranoias, and sensationalism when it comes to considering the occult or esoteric aspects of reality. Either the "aliens" or "demons" or "angels" are literally real, or they are phantasmal aspects of our own mind. It is harder to accept the possibility that these phenomena are truly daimonic, truly in-between or outside the definitions we might like to create for them. In fact, they may even take a special pleasure in subverting our categories and upsetting our assumptions. It may be the case that we can only explore or discover what is happening on these other levels of being if we begin from a much subtler level of understanding.

On apocalyptic thinking:

My personal hypothesis is that our consciousness is co-creating reality, therefore we want to be increasingly careful about the kind of thoughts we are allowing to absorb our awareness. If we spend too much time worrying about surveillance and Grey Alien predation and the HAARP Project, it is like we are attracting negative energy and negative vibrations towards us. We are substantiating that kind of material. I don’t mean that one should become polyannaish -- one should stay grounded, but one should realize that one is better off practicing an inner ecology on the level of thought, or you will end up in a frothing state of apocalyptic terror, which is what much of our culture seems to be trying to induce.

On scientific skepticism:

The fact is that the areas of mysticism, shamanism, the occult, etcetera, are available to intelligent questioning. It is not a question of "turning off your mind" to enter these areas. In fact, I found that it required the deepest level of intellectual engagement to clarify my own understanding of what is happening on these levels, and how you can integrate it with the modern, scientific view. For me, it is not a question of rejecting science for shamanism, but of integrating these approaches to reality.

On our planetary and cultural situation:

I think we have to realize that the world is literally melting down right now -- along with the great extinction crisis and accelerated climate change, we are in a period of vast cultural extinction, with half of the world's 6,000 languages on the verge of disappearing. Let's take stock of the urgency of the situation, and measure our actions according to reality rather than some nonexistent ideal of purity. I actually always feel incredibly comfortable whenever I am in the indigenous world -- I feel like I understand their way of looking at reality, and have no conflict with their value system, intentions, or priorities. Frankly, I generally feel far more confused, nonplussed, and depressed sitting at a table of upper middle class white people, who will exert enormous amounts of energy talking about stupid gossip or idiotic vacations or dumb junk they have purchased, rather than examining things that are actually important -- like the fact their opulent lifestyle and refusal to take responsibility for their thoughts and actions is condemning an entire planet to death.

On the lessons of Christ:

The meaning of Christ’s life is missed by Christianity: He did not "save our souls" through the crucifixion. He provided a model for how we should act, if we would like to save our own souls. And that activity is one of conscious sacrifice -- not stupidly throwing one's self on a machine gun, but figuring out how to utilize your psychic energy and your particular position for the best possible outcome. The way to bring "Heaven down to Earth" is to match your actions with your intentions.

On Buddhist notions of gurus:

The guru/disciple relationship is different than the one between a shaman and a participant in shamanic rituals. In Hindu and Buddhist traditions, you are supposed to elevate the guru to the status of a divine being, holding them in your heart as one who can do no wrong. Theoretically, by meditating on the guru in this way, you are also identifying with the guru and elevating yourself, but in practice, it often means giving up your will and agency to another. I personally suspect this is an Eastern practice that doesn't benefit Westerners, who have chosen a different dharma. I think that the shaman is never presumed to have that deified status, and in fact in tribal societies, people tended to be wary of the shaman.

On prophesy and global transformation:

I believe that 2012 is happening this minute, right now, in a very real sense. It is the work that we do on ourselves, transforming our own psyches and our communities and our global systems, that brings "2012" into existence as a positive outcome for the world. There is nothing passive about this at all – it is completely active, absolutely "here and now" oriented. We have to entirely awaken to the current situation -- with its death-like grip of totalitarianism and foreshadowing of mass genocide -- and then put all of our energy and clear, cogent thought into creating the alternative that will supersede the current form of globalized inequity based on greed, fear, and ego-centrism. The phase-shift takes place, first of all, in our own minds, and moves outward from there.

On our place in time:

I would take the Hopi perspective that in a sense "All time is present now," but we still have to pass through the cycle or the sequence as it takes place from our limited view into the spacetime matrix, which is already pre-existent in four-dimensions, as quantum physicists tell us. We are moving towards this event – and yet, in another sense, it has already happened. We have to hold paradoxes in our mind in order to appreciate this – for instance, roles are preassigned, yet freely chosen and self-willed. This kind of understanding is syntactically embedded in the Hopi language.

On paradise:

We will enter the Kingdom [of Heaven] by transforming our consciousness, which can only be done through the pragmatic labor of transforming the Earth, bringing compassion and light and generosity and intelligence down into this world. Once we accomplish this, we won't have to argue about it anymore, as we will find ourselves actually living in the Kingdom.