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I want to be clear about what JPMorgan’s own internal documents show in this case, because this is not speculation and it is not circumstantial; it is what the bank’s own files recorded and what federal court proceedings have made part of the public record.

55 accounts and over 1.1 billion dollars processed. Payments to more than 20 named victims, most of them children. Over 600,000 dollars processed to a girl that the bank’s own internal files noted Epstein had “purchased” at age 14, and I want you to sit with that word for a moment because the bank wrote it down themselves, in their own building, in their own records, the word “purchased” about a 14 year old girl, as though she were a line item in an inventory system, and then they kept processing his transactions because the money was too good and the girl was too powerless for anyone in that building to find it worth stopping.

A lawyer for the US Virgin Islands did some arithmetic during a court hearing that is genuinely difficult to read without feeling something shift inside you, taking the roughly 9 million dollars in transfers to girls and women from Epstein’s accounts, dividing it by the few hundred dollars he typically paid per encounter, and arriving at a number of over 20,000 facilitated rapes, with her exact words being that JPMorgan was “a full service bank for Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking,” full service, like a car wash, except for the systematic abuse of children.

What’s wild is, JPMorgan’s own compliance department flagged Epstein’s accounts repeatedly, over years, doing exactly the job they were hired to do, identifying the financial backbone of what was clearly a child trafficking operation and reporting it internally, and every single time senior management buried it because the money mattered more than the children.

This is a story about a bank that knew, documented what it knew, joked about what it knew in internal emails, and made a series of deliberate institutional decisions to keep the relationship alive anyway. These facts matter because they changes the nature of what we’re actually talking about from negligence into something considerably darker.

In 2012 a senior executive sent an email to Mary Erdoes, who runs JPMorgan’s Asset and Wealth Management division, joking that a client’s home had “fewer nymphettes” than Epstein’s, and this email exists in federal court records, which means that the rape of children was office humor at the largest bank in America, that it was casual enough to put in writing, and that the woman who received it went on to be considered for the CEO position rather than facing any meaningful consequence for what that email reveals about the culture she was operating inside of.

Jes Staley was the executive who personally managed Epstein’s accounts and personally made sure the child rapist’s money kept flowing through the bank, and when he eventually left JPMorgan he didn’t face prosecution or professional exile, he became the CEO of Barclays, because in the real world version of Scarface the people who help the criminal don’t get arrested, they get headhunted by other major financial institutions who apparently found his particular skill set attractive.

JPMorgan eventually sued Staley and sought to recover roughly 80 million dollars in compensation, which sounds like accountability right up until you understand that suing your own former executive is what institutions do instead of admitting that the entire organization was complicit, a way of creating a single point of blame that absorbs the institutional responsibility and allows everyone else to return to their normal lives with their reputations more or less intact.

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Then there is Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who testified under oath that he had never heard the name Jeffrey Epstein before 2019, which requires you to believe that 15 years of accounts, 55 of them, over a billion dollars, compliance officers repeatedly flagging the accounts as connected to human trafficking, and executives emailing nymphette jokes about the children being abused somehow never produced a single conversation that reached the desk of the man running the institution. And at least one other executive has testified, also under oath, that Epstein’s accounts were in fact discussed with Dimon, which means somebody lied in federal court, and nobody has been charged with perjury, and the man who may have lied is still running the largest bank in America.

What I think is important to understand here, and what gets lost when this story gets framed purely as a banking scandal, is that the institutional failure at JPMorgan did not exist in isolation but was part of a much broader pattern of official protection that surrounded Epstein for decades and that implicates institutions well beyond a single bank.

The DOJ gave Epstein a sweetheart plea deal in 2008 that should have ended careers and prompted serious questions about who was being protected and why. The FBI sat on evidence for years. The Treasury Department received suspicious activity flags from JPMorgan as early as 2002 and did nothing with them, no investigation, no follow up, no phone call, just silence, which is either catastrophic institutional incompetence or something considerably more deliberate, and given everything else we know about how this operation was protected across multiple administrations and multiple agencies, incompetence starts to feel like a generous interpretation.

The bank eventually filed a Suspicious Activity Report with the Treasury flagging over a billion dollars in Epstein transactions as related to human trafficking, and they filed it after he was arrested and after he was dead, sixteen years after the compliance officers first started raising flags that kept getting pushed back into drawers, which a USVI lawyer accurately described as “CYA reporting after 16 years,” a final piece of paperwork designed to create the appearance of eventual compliance while the actual compliance window had long since closed.

What Was Epstein Actually Worth To The Bank?

Here is the question that the financial press has shown almost no interest in asking, which is how much money Epstein was generating for JPMorgan that the largest bank in America was willing to risk federal exposure to keep the relationship alive, because compliance officers screaming human trafficking and executives overruling them doesn’t happen for a client with a savings account and a modest portfolio.

Unsealed court documents show that Epstein helped JPMorgan recruit ultra high net worth clients, including according to internal emails the Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, which means he wasn’t just a client but a concierge for the billionaire class, someone whose value to the bank extended far beyond his own accounts into the network of extraordinarily wealthy people he could deliver, and whose implicit introduction fee was a willingness to look the other way at what he did with the children.

He was the golden goose, and the golden eggs were covered in something nobody at the bank wanted to look at too closely, and the institutional decision to keep processing his transactions was not made by people who didn’t understand what they were doing but by people who understood exactly what they were doing and decided that the financial upside was worth the moral cost, which is a different kind of evil than ignorance and considerably harder to explain away.

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JPMorgan paid 290 million dollars to victims and 75 million dollars to the US Virgin Islands, for a total settlement of 365 million dollars, and that number sounds significant until you place it in context, which is that JPMorgan Chase has paid between 38 and 40 billion dollars in fines for various crimes under Dimon’s leadership, making the Epstein settlement less than 1% of their total fine history, less than a rounding error, less than what the institution spends on executive compensation in a quarter, a number so small relative to the scale of what it was settling that it functions not as punishment but as a cost of doing business, a line item that gets absorbed and forgotten while the institution continues operating exactly as it did before.

After this ruling, nobody went to prison, nobody got fired, and the woman who received the nymphette email is being considered for the top job. The man who says he never heard Epstein’s name is still running the show. The compliance officers who tried to do the right thing and got overruled are presumably still somewhere in the building, or they left, and either way nothing changed.

Perhaps the biggest question is not really about JPMorgan at all but about the scale of what Epstein was actually running and who it was running for, because you don’t need a billion dollar banking infrastructure to abuse children by yourself, you need it because the operation was industrial in scale, because the flight logs are full of the most powerful names on the planet. Because the island had a temple on it, because the ranch in New Mexico had underground levels that have never been adequately explained, and because 20,000 facilitated rapes is not one man’s perversion but a service industry for a ruling class that apparently needed someone to handle the logistics.

The question of how many of the most powerful people on the planet were involved in this and are not in prison because the people who would need to prosecute them were on the same flights and at the same parties is not a paranoid question, it is the only question that the scale of the operation logically produces. And the fact that it remains largely unasked by the institutions with the power to answer it tells you something important about the nature of those institutions and whose interests they actually serve. Remember, this isn’t about Trump or the Left or the Right, it’s much of power in general.

I’ve written before about how our systems are not broken but are working exactly as designed, rewarding those who protect power and punishing those who threaten it, and the Epstein story is perhaps the clearest single illustration of that dynamic that exists in the public record. A case where the evidence was documented, the flags were raised, the compliance officers did their jobs, and the system at every level, the bank, the DOJ, the FBI, the Treasury, chose the money and the connections over the children, and then paid a fine smaller than its catering budget and called it accountability.

We’re not just dealing with insane people, we’re dealing with a system that incentivizes insane decisions and is optimized by putting insane people at the top.

Note: I have to hat tip Ethan Faulkner (Common Sense Rebel) for his research on this topic, as it helped me compile this story and connect it to larger systems issues.

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Trump ordered the release of UFO files, the Pentagon said it would comply, yet weeks later, nothing has come out. If you’re paying attention, the reason behind the delay is far more interesting than most people expect. It’s actually something we have been talking to our audience about for 17 years.

Perhaps right now it’s not about protecting classified technology. It’s apparently not even about hiding what foreign adversaries might learn. According to reporting published in February 2026 by the International Business Times, filmmaker and UAP researcher Mark Christopher Lee says a Washington insider told him directly: there is massive internal pushback inside parts of the Pentagon - and at the center of that resistance is a question that goes well beyond aerospace.

“What are these objects, really?” Some officials aren’t saying “extraterrestrial craft.” They’re not saying “foreign surveillance technology” either. They’re pointing to something they’re calling interdimensional entities - and for certain officials inside religious circles within the defense and intelligence world, that phrase carries enormous weight.

Here’s where it gets interesting. For many people with a strong Evangelical faith - including some embedded within national security institutions - “interdimensional” isn’t a scientific term. It’s a theological one. It describes beings that exist outside physical reality, which is exactly how multiple ancient traditions have described angels, demons, and fallen ones for thousands of years.

So when you frame it that way, the question being asked behind closed doors isn’t just about physics, aerospace, technology or foreign adversaries, it’s about whether what’s being seen aligns with what the Bible describes as spiritual warfare. And apparently, for some officials, that possibility is unsettling enough to push back against a direct order from the president.

Congressman Eric Burlison has pointed out that David Grusch’s own public testimony already includes the interdimensional theory as part of the classified conversation. Burlison has been open about what he believes that means: that the beings intelligence officials are calling interdimensional may be the same beings ancient texts have long described as angels or divine messengers.

Representative Anna Paulina Luna has publicly referenced the Book of Enoch, a text left out of the modern biblical canon, when discussing UAP phenomena. Congressman Tim Burchett has pointed to the Book of Ezekiel, suggesting the famous “wheel within a wheel” in Chapter 1 was ancient people documenting something real, filtered through the language and framework they had at the time.

These aren’t fringe commentators; they are sitting members of Congress who have been inside SCIFs (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities) and have seen classified photographs and video. And they’re openly connecting what they’ve seen to something that goes far beyond science and government secrecy.

If officials are withholding UAP/UFO information specifically because it intersects with religious interpretations of angels, demons, and spiritual entities, that’s not just a national security question anymore. That’s a question about whether unelected government insiders are allowing their personal religious worldview to shape the limits of what the public is allowed to know.

Senator John Kennedy said publicly during a State of the Union broadcast with Benny Johnson that he isn’t certain everything known about UAPs has ever been fully communicated to sitting presidents. This makes sense, of course, presidents come and go, but the Deep State is around a long time.

Career officials who answer to no election, no approval rating, and no term limit may be holding information that has never even reached the people who are supposed to be in charge. And if what they’re holding points toward something that fundamentally reframes what billions of people believe about spiritual reality - what incentive do they have to let it out?

This is precisely what we have been saying to CE readers for 17 years. An element of avoiding the UFO story is upholding religious belief, as it can be a very powerful tool for control.

A whistleblower press conference is expected in Washington on May 1, 2026. Congressman Burlison has been suggesting for months that someone new is preparing to come forward. Whatever that person brings with them, what’s unfolding may be less about a bureaucratic standoff and more about thousands of years of deeply held belief.

If the nature of what’s been encountered truly intersects with humanity’s oldest spiritual questions, what does it mean that the people deciding whether we get to know about it are doing so based on their own religious framework?

In my full interview for Steven Greer’s films, I talk about what UFO disclosure can truly mean for humanity. You can check it below.

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Dr Christina Stabell Benn is a medical doctor (1996), PhD (2003) and Doctor of Medical Science (2011) from the University of Copenhagen. She is a Professor at the Odense Patient Data Explorative Network (OPEN) at the Faculty of Health Sciences at SDU and Professor in Global Health since 2013. She is considered a world-renowned vaccine expert.

Her research group, the Bandim Health Project (BHP), was established in 1978. It is not a government group. Apart from receiving some core funding from the Danish state and the University of Southern Denmark, they are primarily funded by grants for specific research projects. They apply for these grants from governmental and private foundations. The funders have no role in the studies. They an independent research group with no conflicts of interest.

She and her team have consistently found that the DTP vaccine is strongly associated with a higher risk of dying. This effect is more prominently seen in girls. Despite being protected against three deadly diseases, girls who received the DTP vaccine had a higher risk of dying than girls who did not receive it.

Her (and her team) work on this matter has shown that being DTP vaccinated vs. not being DTP vaccinated is associated with 2.07 (95% CI=1.60-2.67)-fold higher mortality. The estimate was 2.54 (1.68-3.86) in females. Among DTP-vaccinated children, females had almost 50% higher mortality than males (1.47 (1.18-1.84)). A dose-response has been observed, with the female-male mortality ratio increasing with each additional dose of DTP vaccine.

According to her, “The conclusion is very clear: The whole-cell DTP vaccine used in low-income countries is associated with increased mortality for females. The observation has not been contradicted by good prospective studies. What remains unclear is why WHO does not act.”

But the DTP vaccine is not the only vaccine that is associated with increased overall female mortality. The same pattern has been seen for six non-live vaccines. These include the RTS, S malaria vaccine, inactivated polio vaccine, Hepatitis B Vaccine, Pentavalent vaccine, and the H1N1 influenza vaccine.

Many of these observations have been reported in Guinea-Bissau, and the findings have been consistent in countries such as Benin, India, and Malawi.

It’s also important to mention that the opposite pattern is seen for live vaccines. They are associated with beneficial Non Specific Effects and decreased overall mortality, particularly for females. No bias can explain why only non-live vaccines should be negative for females. That being said, non live vaccines do have their fair share of criticisms and non-specific effects throughout medical literature as well. Like aluminum containing vaccines for example. You can read about those concerns here.

For clarity, live vaccines use a weakened (or attenuated) form of the germ that causes a disease. Non-live (inactivated) vaccines use killed pathogens, components of microbes, or mRNA to trigger an immune response.

“Vaccines have been shown in numerous randomized controlled trials, primarily in low-income settings, to have non-specific health effects. Live attenuated vaccines have been shown to harness beneficial non-specific effects (leading to reduced risk of non-target diseases or overall mortality). However, non-live vaccines have been observed to be associated with negative non-specific effects (increased risk of non-target infections and mortality, primarily in females). The effects are seen as long as a given vaccine is the most recent and can be reversed with a new type of vaccine. The current system for testing, approving and monitoring vaccines is not set up to capture non-specific effects and has serious limitations when it comes to capturing adverse events. Thus, studies of vaccines should aim to look at overall health impacts and not just the impact on the target disease. This is particularly important when the risk of the target disease is low.”

- Tracey Beth Høeg, Md, PhD and Dr Christine Stabell Benn in their piece,

“The Child Immunization Schedule in the US vs Denmark: Why is there such a big difference & how can we use the next four years to improve our evidence base?”

When a vaccine is studied to prevent a specific illness, a study only examining how well that vaccine targets that illness is not enough. We must look for other things (non-specific effects), it’s obvious that a study is not going to find what it’s not looking for.

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As you probably know,yesterday US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to increase glyphosate production in the United States - the same toxic herbicide RFK Jr. promised to remove from our food supply.

This latest development has many in the MAHA movement concerned that RFK Jr has ‘sold his soul’ now that he is in the Trump admin. Of course, this is a very reasonable thing to think if you’ve been paying attention to the world long enough, but I want to bring forth a more comprehensive way to look at this story.

The video breaks down what’s really happening and why our system makes it nearly impossible to fix the problems we uncover. Remember: only by truly understanding and defining the problems that we face can we then implement solutions that actually solve them. This is ‘Breaking The Illusion.’

The Real Question: How do we redesign our systems that currently reward corruption and make it nearly impossible to fix mistakes once we discover them?

Key Resources:

Moloch & Our Systems Of Bad Incentives

The ‘Race To The Bottom’ Trap: Why Companies Produce Low Quality Products

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Below is a an article written by Dr. Bernard Massie, retired, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the Université de Montréal, Managing Director at National Research Council Canada. It was originally published in French on November 26, 2024 in Libre Média but remains relevant today. For more information on Dr. Massie, you can access this PDF obtained from the Canadian Covid Care Alliance.

I am sure many of our readers are interested in what Dr. Massie had to say.

Is criticism of vaccines taboo? While the establishment labels their detractors “vaccine skeptics” or “antivaxers”, voices like RFK Jr defend the right to question without being ostracized. Science is all about debate.

According to many media commentators, true experts in ScienceTM, vaccine hesitancy is equivalent to the posture that earns you the label of “cuckoo” or “antivax” shamelessly attributed to Robert Kennedy Junior (RFK Jr) and all the scientists in his Children's Health Defense (CHD) organization.

Mirroring the watered-down label of “climate skeptic” attributed to scientists who criticize climate alarmism, critics of vaccination are also referred to as “vaccine skeptics.”

RFK Jr and his organization are denigrated by the scientific and institutional establishment, as evidenced by an editorial published last August in the prestigious journal Science. It states that RFK Jr. fully deserves his anti-vax label, as do all those who join him in questioning vaccines.

As if questioning were inherently unscientific, and his detractors had the orthodoxy of ScienceTM on their side like dogma!

Blind Trust

The premise of this widely-held opinion is the belief that public health institutions are competent and honest, and that they are immune to any influence from marketing or biopharmaceutical firms. Are they really?

Should we blindly trust public health and pharmaceutical companies?

How can we ignore the immunity from prosecution for vaccine-related injuriesthatthese companies have enjoyed in the U.S. since 1986?

Far from being systematically opposed to vaccination, RFK Jr simply proposes that all vaccines be subject to the same criteria for demonstrating safety and efficacy as all other pharmaceutical products, following a transparent and independent analysis of the dossiers.

And those that fail to meet these rigorous standards will be withdrawn from the market to ensure public protection.

Should we blindly trust the health authorities, who themselves rely on pharmaceutical companies without exercising elementary caution, neglecting to demand verifications that they then regret not having requested in the first place?

This approach may work if trust is earned, but what happens when doubt arises? Wouldn't it then be wiser to check diligently rather than fight doubt as a scientistic heresy?

As if we had to be for or against vaccination, without questioning. And yet, as Didier Raoult proclaims, “we have the right to be intelligent!” For my part, having devoted part of my career in biotechnology to the development of various vaccines, I'd like to assert, in the manner of Coluche: I'm neither for nor against vaccination. Quite the contrary!

Vaccination if Necessary

So, it was with a heavy heart that I was forced to question the whole history of vaccination, after the COVID-19 vaccination debacle.

I remain dumbfounded that public health authorities, despite the unprecedented toxicity - particularly of mRNA-modified vaccines encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles - stubbornly resist withdrawing these products from the market.

This obstinacy perpetuates the damage to individual and collective health that these products inflict without any obvious benefit. At the same time, it increases the profits of pharmaceutical companies and temporarily preserves the credibility of the players involved in these gene vaccines.

The damage to people's health is matched only by the damage to trust in public health authorities, politicians and pharmaceutical companies. And it's such a shame!

At the same time, I understand that my former colleagues, who are hard at work on vaccine technologies with colossal subsidies and the best intentions in the world, are not necessarily inclined to question the foundations of this veritable goose that lays the golden eggs.

I only hope that I would have had the lucidity and integrity to question these practices if I were still active in this field, like some of my new colleagues, who have paid and are still paying a high price for daring to speak out.

Vaccine hesitancy is not a crime

Vaccination was initially conceived on the basis of observations, some of which date back to the time of the Athenian plague, according to which a person who has survived a disease appears to be resistant to it, although he or she may retain more or less serious after-effects.

From the very first attempts to propose vaccination as a means of preventing infection, there was resistance from both the general public and the medical profession. Resistance was even fiercer when attempts were made to mandate vaccination.

The question of vaccination, which has been highly polarized from the outset, and which is the subject of passionate debate in scientific and medical circles as well as among the general public, is far from easy to settle. And the Manicheanism that would reduce the debate to a question of good and evil is reminiscent of the religious wars, when everyone claimed to be on the right side of orthodoxy and faith.

It should be pointed out that, at the time, neither the germ theory nor the immune system were known, and their discovery even followed the first attempts at vaccination. This shows just how shaky the scientific and medical foundations of vaccination were from the outset.

Since then, knowledge of the immune system has progressed considerably, as demonstrated by the impressive number of scientific publications. But do we know enough to develop the right vaccines?

Above all, are we putting this knowledge to good use, as shown by the deficiencies of vaccines against respiratory infections such as influenza and colds, or COVID-19?

Of course, research is in full swing, raising hopes of developing better vaccines for viral respiratory infections, but we're not there yet, and until then, reasonable doubt is more than justified.

Natural immunity vs. vaccination

In fact, no vaccine available is more effective than natural immunity, while vaccine strategies only try to emulate, as best they can, the protection conferred by natural immunity.

This is very difficult to do when our knowledge of the protection conferred by natural immunity is still, alas, so incomplete.

Studies show that protection conferred by natural immunity is more robust and longer-lasting. This knowledge is well-founded, despite the propaganda of national and international public health bodies who tried to suppress it during the COVID-19 health crisis.

Instead of presenting vaccine hesitancy as a public health risk, wouldn't it be better to combat the denigration of natural immunity, without which no vaccine can work?

Not to mention the many simple and inexpensive strategies for fortifying natural immunity, such as adequate levels of vitamin D, which is one of the major hormones responsible for the proper functioning of the immune system.

The people most vulnerable to infection are those whose immune system is weakened and functioning below its normal capacity. How can vaccination with current strategies remedy this problem?

Vaccination exploits the immune system, not fortifies it; it is therefore dependent on a robust immune system. This is why people are vaccinated before undergoing immunosuppressive treatments for organ transplants.

Among the factors most neglected in vaccination strategies are local mucosal immunity and innate immunity, one of the most important determinants of which is the composition of the microbiota as a regulator of immunity.

The vast majority of vaccines available do not effectively stimulate either mucosal or innate immunity. What's more, in the adaptive immunity segment, cellular immunity is neglected, focusing mainly on humoral immunity, i.e., antibodies.

However, cellular immunity with T lymphocytes and NK killer cells is essential for effectively combating intracellular pathogens such as viruses.

Promises hard to keep

In theory, vaccination is a very attractive approach, because we're trying to protect people from the deleterious effects of a possible infection, with an inoculation that would be far less deleterious than the infection itself. Since we're inoculating healthy people, we'd all like it to work, with a minimum of risk.

But in practice, it's very difficult to simulate natural infection correctly, except with attenuated viruses such as the Sabin polio vaccine, which means that the vast majority of vaccines fail to stimulate natural immunity as effectively as natural infection.

But this approach is not without risks, as we have seen with the resurgence of vaccine-derived polio in several countries where mass vaccination with the Sabin vaccine has taken place. Using deep sequencing methods, we quickly demonstrated that these polios were induced by recombination of the vaccine strain with enteroviruses from the intestine, reconstituting a pathogenic virus.

What's more, demonstrating that the benefits and risks associated with vaccines are still preferable to natural infection, which has been declared more dangerous, is an enormous challenge.

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Except perhaps for very serious infections such as Ebola, which can kill over 50% of people within a few days. This is clearly a situation where prophylactic intervention with monoclonal antibodies and a gene vaccine can save lives.

Among the indirect measures of vaccine efficacy, it is often claimed that the introduction of vaccines in the 20th century dramatically reduced infant mortality from many infections such as measles, polio, diphtheria, whooping cough and the proud scarlet fever.

In fact, the incidence of all these infections fell by over 90%...before vaccination was introduced. And what about scarlet fever, for which no vaccine exists, but whose decline has followed the same trend?

The terrain plays a decisive role in fighting infection

It is most likely the improvement in general health through hygiene and good nutrition, the terrain, that is largely responsible for the dramatic reduction in health problems arising from infectious diseases. No doubt with the help of antibiotics too.

Which is not to say that vaccination hasn't hypothetically played a minor role. But it's very difficult to assess. And despite the propensity of public health organizations and vaccine manufacturers to overstate the importance of vaccination, several credible epidemiological studies dispute this narrative.

Wouldn't it be more prudent, then, to invoke the precautionary principle rather than impose vaccination when the benefit/risk ratio is unknown, or even questionable?

Insofar as establishing a favorable benefit/risk ratio for vaccination is very difficult, without this reliable information, we're dealing with belief, not science. Except that this belief is well-established, to the great benefit of the pharmaceutical industry!

And without a credible analysis of the risk/benefit ratio, from an ethical point of view, we can't confidently say that people can consent to free and informed vaccination.

With the MAHA movement and RFK Jr on the horizon, are we finally going to have debates that will shed more light on the scientific foundations of vaccine hesitancy, beyond belief and propaganda?

Is the public ready to calmly examine the data and anxiety-provoking questions surrounding vaccination, or will they instead seek refuge in comfort and indifference, swaddled in their reassuring but often dangerous beliefs, out of fear, laziness or learned helplessness?

At a time when our health is at stake, it's high time we stopped to stop gilding the lily!

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In the video below, we dive into the recently released Epstein files that reveal connections between Jeffrey Epstein, the Rothschild banking family, and major geopolitical events, including the Ukraine conflict.

We're looking to reveal the hidden complexity behind major world events and challenge mainstream narratives about war, foreign policy, and the forces that truly drive global conflicts. Understanding these connections is crucial for breaking through partisan debates and seeing the real power structures at play.

As public concern grows around Palantir and the rise of a global surveillance apparatus, these files suggest Epstein may have played a pivotal catalytic role in this emerging architecture.

Key Revelations Discussed:

Intelligence Connections - How Epstein’s ties to intelligence agencies (CIA/Mossad) shielded him from prosecution, including the CIA’s National Resources Division that routinely works with Wall Street bankers

Rothschild Email Exchange - Newly released emails showing Epstein explicitly stating he represents the Rothschilds, including correspondence with Peter Thiel and Arion de Rothschild

Ukraine Coup Connection - 2014 emails discussing how “upheaval in Ukraine will provide many opportunities” during the CIA-backed Maidan coup that brought neo-Nazis to power

Surveillance Tech Middleman - Evidence of Epstein facilitating deals between Rothschild and former Israeli PM Ehud Barak for cyber weapons and surveillance technology development

Human Trafficking Networks - How Ukraine became a black market hub for human trafficking, especially after a decade of orchestrated chaos

Recommended Resources:

Book: "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" by John Perkins - Essential reading for understanding how governments destabilize nations

Transforming the War Machine, One Human Story at a Time

What We're Not Being Told About the Russia-Ukraine War: Disaster Capitalism, CIA and the Neo-Nazis, and Media Censorship

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Below is a very good essay written by Scott Mills. I wanted to showcase this to all of you with some added thoughts, as I find this subject important to discuss out in the open. In his piece, Mills will share his thoughts and reflections about Deepak Chopra’s Epstein connection from the lens of a prominent figure in the spiritual and personal development space himself.

As I wrote on Facebook while sharing this post, many of our newer followers might not know that CE has been around for 17 years. For many years, we were the biggest website in the conscious media space, amassing over 30 million viewers monthly. As a result, everyone wanted to be part of our platform and collaborate with us. Naturally, this meant we met a lot of people in this field. We got to see a lot of things.

Over the years, we realized that many of the so called ‘conscious experts’ out there were not quite what they seemed. From manufactured rises to fame, to ghost writing, to a lack of integrity, to avoiding real subjects because they were hard to talk about. It was all common. Further, the focus was often on placating existing audiences enough to keep them, make money off them, and not hurt their brand in the process - even if it meant being disingenuous.

It was also obvious that many did not understand the real world very much. I can recall being involved in email threads with many prominent figures where I couldn’t help but feel they were deeply out of touch with political reality. There was a big disconnect between the type of spirituality they were teaching and how to actually live it in the real world.

Over time, even though CE brought personal development and consciousness into our work in a practical way that actually applied to the real world, many of these figures and brands distanced themselves from us because we spoke about controversial subjects. Not subjects that are false, just controversial ones.

They called our work ‘negative’ at times, and as if it was creating a divide. Yet our work did the total opposite to people who actually paid attention. Over time, I began to realize many of these ‘gurus’ were avoiding real subjects because they didn’t want to appear as though they were ‘unconscious’ or not a guru. They didn’t want the negative image they were projecting onto us to be placed on themselves. Further, they wanted to appear positive almost all the time. This spread to their followers who’d use positivity as a means to spiritually bypass real things happening in their lives and in our world.

Years would go by, and I’d watch more and more of their followers collapse under the weight of the spiritual bypassing. Eventually leaving personal development fields and going back to religious traditions to find what they were looking for. It wasn’t because the work in the personal development and spiritual field is bad - it was just incomplete, and it’s largely because many of the ‘gurus’ are not growing themselves. Forcing positivity in a chaotic and changing world is not what’s being asked of us right now. Creating integrated change agents is.

When I learned what I learned about Chopra and Epstein I was not surprised. And while I think all of the people Scott lists below have done some good work in this world, there is also the question of how often people choose to protect their own brand and image - so they can make money - over addressing real truths about our society and creating real change when it matters.

It’s a club. Play along with them, and you are accepted, be different - and dare I say integral - and you’ll be kicked out. Making money means more to these people than you can possibly imagine.

Almost everyone I come across in this field always points to my integrity over the years. Sticking to the right thing even when it’s hard. It took me some time to own my integrity because I wanted to stay humble and not seem egotistical about my own traits, but I can honestly say that if this field were more integral, this world would be a very different place.

Onto Scott’s piece.

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Just before I turned 30, when my partner died and I was in the midst of the worst grief of my life, I turned to Deepak Chopra’s work for comfort.

It helped. His words about consciousness and healing and the nature of suffering — they held me together when I didn’t think I could hold myself. I’m not embarrassed to say that. Millions of people have had the same experience. That’s how he built what he built.

I believed so deeply that a few years later, I bought a VIP ticket at a Yoga Journal conference just to get my copy of Super Brain signed. I paid extra just to meet the man.

I believed so deeply that by 2018, I was standing on a stage in Portland introducing him to a room full of people who had come to hear him speak about consciousness. I wasn’t in the audience. I was the MC.

What follows isn’t written from a place of righteousness. It’s written from heartbreak.

I Was Hoping It Wasn’t True

When the Department of Justice released the Epstein files on January 30, 2026, Deepak Chopra’s name was in them.

I was still hoping. Being named in someone’s files could mean anything. Maybe someone was talking about him. Maybe it was peripheral. Maybe there was an innocent explanation.

The media wasn’t helping me find one. Every outlet was running the same five or six quotes with no context, no timeline. It felt like sensationalism. I wanted to believe it was.

So I went to the files myself. Not because I’m brave. Because I couldn’t stop. Part of me was hoping to save him — to save the man whose words had held me together when nothing else could.

I have now read approximately 700 documents from the Epstein-Chopra correspondence. I didn’t go looking for dirt. I went looking for a reason to still believe in the man whose work had been a comfort to me in the darkest time of my life.

I didn’t find one.

I’m not a journalist, a lawyer, or an investigator. What follows is what I found. You can read the files yourself, on the Department of Justice website, and decide what you think they mean.

3,466

That’s the number of times Deepak Chopra’s name appears in the Epstein files.

Deepak Chopra is one of the most influential personal development leaders on the planet. Ninety-five books. Tens of millions of copies sold. A global brand built on the word consciousness.

Epstein Came With Baggage

Jeffrey Epstein had already been convicted of procuring a child for prostitution in 2008. He was a registered sex offender. This was public knowledge.

Every email, every visit, every exchange about women and girls that I describe below took place after the world already knew what Jeffrey Epstein was.

“Talk About Something Nice”

When the files became public, Chopra posted a statement on X. Comments turned off.

A journalist confronted him at an airport. Video widely shared. He repeatedly said “you decide” and “I’m not answering.” He asserted “No misconduct. Zero.” He said he would testify before Congress.

His wife intervened and asked the journalist to “talk about something nice.”

In his written statement:

“Deeply saddened by the suffering of the victims”

“Unequivocally” condemned abuse and exploitation

“Never involved in, nor did I participate in, any criminal or exploitative conduct”

Contact was “limited and unrelated to abusive activity”

Some exchanges “reflect poor judgment in tone”

Meanwhile, his new book is being promoted. His AI chatbot continues to operate. His speaking schedule remains intact.

The man who built a global brand on the word consciousness posted his only response on X with comments turned off. His wife told a journalist to “talk about something nice.”

And then he went back to selling books.

A Deep and Loving Friendship, Revealed

“I’m deeply grateful for our friendship.” — Deepak Chopra to Jeffrey Epstein, July 11, 2017

Let me tell you the story of a friendship.

Overnights at the Abuse House

On January 4, 2017, Deepak Chopra was in town teaching at Google. On his way to the airport, he stopped by Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. “I will come by at 11 on way to airport. Will leave at 11:45 AM.”

Forty-five minutes between flights. To see a convicted sex offender.

That wasn’t unusual. It was a pattern. The files confirm at least 20 in-person meetings over 28 months — Manhattan townhouse, Palm Beach estate, Chopra’s own events, dinners with Woody Allen and the sitting President of the United Nations General Assembly.

Chopra stayed overnight at 358 El Brillo Way. That’s Epstein’s Palm Beach estate. That’s the house where the abuse happened.

Christmas Eve 2018 — six months before the arrest — he was still sending Epstein casual article links.

Love, XOXO, XOXOXO

They signed off with “Love.” With “xoxo.” With “xoxoxo.” With “All love” and “Sending love.”

Not once. Routinely. Across hundreds of emails.

“Will miss you then. Hope to see you in May.”

“Last night was a blast. Ended 1 AM.”

“I Will Die Riding the Tiger”

They had their own language. A private metaphor that threads through the entire correspondence.

“Are you trying to give the tiger jet lag.”

“I will die riding the tiger.”

“The tiger is hungry.”

Deepak to Jeffrey

June 2017:

“I slipped into permanent peace and joy a few weeks ago.”

November 2017:

“It was extraordinary. I came to know death. It has not left me. I sat later for 10 hours in stillness — presence with no constructs, no stories. I have no conflict, no quarrels, no judgement, no clinging, no desire to prove, convince, cajole or seduce.”

April 2018:

“Now a different phase and preparation for death.”

Epstein: “I think fun, safe fun is a category you need to add to your five dailies.”

Chopra: “Totally agree.”

He forwarded a private email from philosopher Donald Hoffman about Hoffman’s dying father.

The man who performed wisdom for millions had found someone he didn’t have to perform for. And that someone was a convicted sex offender.

The Pact

July 2016. Chopra to Epstein:

“Anything we share is between us. I share nothing with anyone but trust you.”

Epstein:

“I share nothing with anyone but trust you.”

“Better to Make Any Grant to Chopra Foundation. It’s a 501(c)(3).”

Epstein directed a $25,000 grant from his “Gratitude Foundation” through his financial associate Richard Kahn to fund savant research at UCSD connected to Chopra.

Chopra redirected the money to his own foundation.

The check was FedExed the same day.

That’s the relationship. Epstein didn’t just confide in Chopra and sign off with “Love.” He moved money for him. He brokered deals. He opened doors to some of the wealthiest and most powerful people on earth — and Chopra walked through every one of them.

“Did You Get Your Term Sheet?”

Epstein connected Chopra to David Stern’s electric car company for integration with Chopra’s Jiyo wellness platform.

Epstein checked in: “Did you get your term sheet?” Chopra: “3 more weeks.”

Epstein checked in again: “Progress?” Chopra: “Almost. Not fully formalized but soon.”

Epstein wrote the partnership terms himself: “Tell Joe in your partnership you are responsible for his physical and spiritual health, financial health ie car.”

Epstein offered to “wire money to begin project non local” — funding Chopra’s consciousness research.

Epstein fed Chopra intel: “Kaiser permanente is at the forefront of wellness.” The “potential is HHUUGGEE.”

The Road to the Crown Prince

Chopra provided medical recommendations for “Shaikha” — a title used by female members of Gulf royal families. The introduction came through Epstein.

Chopra met a Qatari contact at Epstein’s Palm Beach estate — the abuse house — and followed up with business pitches, CC’ing Epstein on the emails.

Chopra headlined a “Soul of Leadership & Future of Wellness” event in Saudi Arabia. Epstein identified the Saudi Health Minister as interested in Chopra’s platform.

Chopra emailed Epstein philosophical musings from “the flight from Dubai to LA.”

Chopra texted Epstein: “Landing in SFO. Event for Crown Prince tomorrow.”

Mohammed bin Salman’s Silicon Valley visit. And Deepak Chopra was there — connected through a pipeline that ran directly through a convicted sex offender’s living room.

That is not a relationship you walk away from. It may explain why Chopra never did.

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How He Talks About Women

“Cute girls are aware when they make noises.”

“She is v sweet — like your girls.”

“Come to Israel with us. If you want use a fake name. Bring your girls.”

Those are Deepak Chopra’s words. Written to Jeffrey Epstein. After his conviction.

I need to stop here and tell you what it was like to read these.

I came to the files hoping the quotes I’d seen in the news were taken out of context. What I found was the opposite. The context made them worse.

“Secondary to Cute”

Chopra shared a video of actress and writer Kat Foster with Epstein. “She is good.”

Epstein: “Is she in new york?”

Chopra told him she was in California. That she’d visited for a weekend. That he’d “invited again in future.” He described her as “Innocent and smart at the same time.”

Epstein: “Secondary to cute.”

The conversation moved on.

“Hair Color?”

Chopra shared a video from his trip to Saudi Arabia.

Epstein’s only response: “hair color?”

Chopra deflected — “I don’t use any hair color!” — as if it were a joke about his own appearance.

Epstein pressed: “Looks good, who is the Saudi girl?”

Chopra: “There were many beautiful Saudi girls.”

“Like Your Girls”

Chopra wrote about an unnamed woman: “She is v sweet — like your girls.”

“Bring Your Girls”

Chopra invited Epstein to Israel:

“Come to Israel with us. Relax and have fun with interesting people. If you want use a fake name. Bring your girls. It will be fun to have you. Love.”

Epstein declined.

Chopra pushed: “Your girls would love it as would you.”

“I’ll Bring the Cheerleaders”

Chopra invited Epstein to a debate with Michael Shermer and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Epstein: “great, ill bring the cheerleaders :)”

Chopra: “Yes! Do bring them! It will be fun!”

Chopra invited Epstein to his workshop in Zurich: “You should come to my 2 day workshop with your girls in Switzerland in Zurich — small village in suburbs. Will be fun.”

Epstein offered to “send two girls” to Chopra’s Wall Street speaking event.

Chopra: “Please send their names to me and I will put their names as my guests.” He CC’d Epstein’s assistant on logistics.

“Your Girls”

Your girls. Your girls. Your girls.

Not once in 700 pages does Chopra ask who they are. Their names. Their ages. How they know Epstein. Whether they’re there by choice.

“Zero in on Your Prey”

A text exchange reported by Voice of San Diego. Chopra described a woman as “more connected to reality than the brilliant scientists.”

The response: “I liked watching you zero in on your prey.”

Chopra did not object.

In a separate exchange, Chopra wrote to Epstein: “What do I enjoy most? My biological needs are met occasionally, but that too — it seems I’ve been there, done that.” He described enjoying the company of “younger, intellectually sharp and self-aware women,” saying he liked to “inspire and stimulate them.”

He saw Epstein’s “girls” clearly enough to invite them to Israel, to Zurich, to Wall Street.

He just never saw them as people worth asking about.

The Silence

Tony Robbins | 15 million followers | silent.

Mel Robbins | 10 million followers | silent.

Brené Brown | 7 million followers | silent.

Jay Shetty | 50 million followers | silent.

Gabby Bernstein | 1 million followers | silent.

Tim Ferriss | 10 million followers | silent.

Jen Sincero | 1 million followers | silent.

Eckhart Tolle | 5 million followers | silent.

Marianne Williamson | 3 million followers | silent.

Joe Dispenza | 5 million followers | silent.

Rachel Hollis | 3 million followers | silent.

Brendon Burchard | 10 million followers | silent.

Lewis Howes | 5 million followers | silent.

Marie Forleo | 2 million followers | silent.

Vishen Lakhiani | 3 million followers | silent.

Robin Sharma | 5 million followers | silent.

Mark Hyman | 5 million followers | silent.

Glennon Doyle | 3 million followers | silent.

Elizabeth Gilbert | 8 million followers | silent.

Danielle LaPorte | 500 thousand followers | silent.

Oprah Winfrey | 100 million followers | silent.

Twenty-one names. Over 250 million followers combined. The DOJ files have been public since January 30, 2026. Not one of these people has said a word.

In fairness, Brené Brown’s platforms went quiet in late 2024 following the loss of her mother. She may still be grieving. I can extend grace for that. But she is one of the most influential voices on courage and vulnerability alive today. And she is not alone in her silence.

A Sixteen-Year-Old Girl Was Braver

The coverage has come from Indian press outlets. International media. NPR. The Voice of San Diego. The Daily Beast.

It has come from individual bloggers. One practitioner wrote on February 7 that “just about everything I took from my decade-plus immersed in spiritual living and studies was built on quicksand.”

It has come from Sevda Rubens, who posted on X that Chopra gave her his phone number at a meditation event in Europe when she was sixteen and insisted they meet late at night. Her post has been viewed over two million times.

A sixteen-year-old girl had more courage than twenty-one people with a combined audience of a quarter billion.

I don’t know what Deepak Chopra did or didn’t do. I don’t know what happened behind closed doors. I’m not making that accusation.

What I know is that one of the most influential personal development leaders on the planet maintained a deep, loving, financially entangled relationship with a convicted sex offender for over two years — and when the evidence became public, an entire industry looked the other way.

That alone demands a conversation. And we’re not having it.

They Are Watching

There are women out there — real women, real girls — whose lives intersected with these men’s orbits. Some of their names are in those files, unredacted by a Department of Justice that couldn’t even protect their identities properly.

They are watching to see if anyone in a position of influence will say their suffering matters.

And the people with the biggest megaphones in the world of healing and consciousness have given them silence.

The Performance

This is not a story about one man.

This is a story about an industry that built a billion-dollar empire on the words courage, truth, and transformation — and when the moment came to actually be courageous, to actually tell the truth, to actually transform, it went silent.

We teach people to face their pain. To sit with discomfort. To have hard conversations. To tell the truth even when their voice shakes.

And then a convicted sex offender’s files dropped with one of our most famous leaders’ names in them 3,466 times — and we said nothing.

If we can’t say that the sexual abuse of children is wrong — without hedging, without disclaiming, without waiting to see which way the wind blows — then everything we teach is a performance. Every book. Every retreat. Every podcast episode about “living your truth.” A performance.

This industry has become a place of comfort, not of genuine growth. We have confused feeling good with doing good. We have built communities that are spectacular at processing emotions and pathological at taking moral stands. We can hold space for anything except accountability.

That is what the silence reveals.

Not that twenty-one people are cowards. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. But that the system we built — the whole ecosystem of followers and platforms and events and email lists — was never designed to handle a moment like this. It was designed to sell transformation. Not to practice it.

We Are Frauds If We Stay Silent on This

This industry taught me to tell the truth. So here it is.

We are frauds if we stay silent on this.

Every leader on that list has built a career telling people to be brave. To face hard things. To live in truth. And when the hard thing showed up — when it actually cost something to speak — they went quiet.

That’s not caution. That’s cowardice.

And if you are Deepak Chopra — testify. You said you would. Not on X with the comments turned off. Before Congress, under oath, as you promised.

If nothing changes — if the list stays silent, if the industry keeps selling awakening while refusing to wake up, if we keep treating courage as a product instead of a practice — then we deserve every bit of the credibility we’re about to lose.

Because the world is watching now. Not just the women in those files. Everyone.

I wish the files had told a different story. I wish I could still stand on that stage in Portland and feel what I felt before I knew what I know now.

But I can’t unknow it. And neither can you, now that you’ve read this far.

The system isn’t just the abusers.

It’s also the ones who stay silent.

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Written By Scott Mills, he’s spent nearly two decades in the personal development industry - not as a critic, but as a believer. He’s coached, consulted, and taught alongside some of the biggest names in the space. This is the hardest thing he’s ever written. You can see his Substck here.

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There’s a HUGE story in the Epstein files that warrants a closer look. In fact, almost every newsroom should be looking into this... but they don’t have the permission space to, so they aren’t touching it.

There’s an email inviting Ghislaine Maxwell to a secret “Shadow Commission on 9/11” and another one, dated one week after 9/11 asking her: “Where is the real pilot?”

File numbers: EFTA00578730, EFTA00580430

Any reasonable journalist would be asking what this means, especially with Maxwell and Epstein’s ties to intelligence. What did she know? Also, many intelligent,credentialed and academic folks for over 2 decades have pointed out the MASSIVE problems with the official 9/11 story, anyone... anyone who’s reasonable would see a huge headline here.

Why we bring up “permission space” here is, that’s really what it comes down to. We have worked for almost 2 decades on a ton of subjects. We’ve watched as what wasn’t allowed to be talked about 15 years ago, become commonplace over the last 5. The subject of 9/11 took big leaps in permission space growth last year, with many former mainstream journalists now talking about the subject. But still in the mainstream, it’s untouchable.

If you’re waiting for mainstream media to admit something before you reasonably look at it yourself, all I can say is, it will mean you’re 5 to 10 years behind what is already reasonably obvious. In this case, that the official 9/11 narrative is false.

We have written an produced MANY pieces on 9/11 over the last 17 years, but here is a more recent one worth looking at for those who are curious:

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The rhetoric in mainstream media, only after so much genocide has occurred in Gaza, was to condemn Israel for its actions after the October 7th attack that occurred in Israel. Condemnation and international calls for a ceasefire from countries like Canada only came well after Israel continued to obliterate Gaza. Even after the narrative shifted, and Canada insisted that it had restricted arms exports to Israel, it appears this may not have been true at all.

A July 2025 recent report by Arms Embargo Now uncovered the following:

- 47 shipments with detailed commercial shipping records uncovered from manufacturers in Canada selling military-related components to Israeli weapons companies between October 2023 and July 2025;

- 421,070 bullets exported to Israel since the Gaza assault began, including one shipment in April 2025 alone containing 175,000 bullets;

- Three shipments of cartridges from a General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems (GD-OTS) facility in Repentigny, Quebec, including one that occurred nine days after the then-Foreign Affairs Minister publicly pledged that Canada would block munitions exports from the same Quebec company to the Israeli military;

- 391 shipments including bullets, military equipment, weapons parts, aircraft components, and communication devices exported from Canada to Israel between October 2023 and June 2025, according to data from the Israeli Tax Authority (ITA) – representing only a portion of total exports;

- Shipments from seven Canadian cities destined primarily for Israel’s largest weapons company Elbit Systems and its subsidiaries, along with other Israeli defence firms including Elta Systems, WaldyTech, Snunit Aviation and NIRON Systems;

- Around 100 international flights transporting Canadian components to Israel – 64 of them commercial passenger flights where military cargo was loaded beneath civilian travelers on routes through Frankfurt, Paris, New York, Abu Dhabi, and New Delhi.

The flow of military goods between Canada and Israel operates through three distinct avenues, creating a multi-faceted trade relationship. The first channel involves direct commercial exports from Canadian companies to Israel. The second channel consists of indirect exports where Canadian arms are shipped to Israel through transfers via the United States, employing a major loophole exempting them from Canada’s permitting requirements, Canada’s human rights risk assessment regime, and any measure of transparency.

Finally, Canada also imports Israeli military technology and hardware, including the purchase of weapons that have been deployed against Palestinians during the current bombardment of Gaza, and are in turn marketed to international customers like the Government of Canada as “battle-tested” and “combat-proven.”

That said, existing Canadian PM Mark Carney still has an arrest call out for Netanyahu.

You can read the full Arms Embargo Now statement regarding the current status of these findings, here.

elow are a couple of articles we have published in the past regarding the October 2023 attacks, which may give you a brief idea of where we are coming from. The third one you see is a well-written article by Dr Madhava Setty that offers profound insight.

An Insult to Intuition

Israel's 9/11

It’s only been a few days since Hamas attacked Israel. It’s being called Israel’s 9/11. I agree and for reasons different from what the public is being told…

Read more

3 years ago · 153 likes · 170 comments · Madhava Setty, MD

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Set Your Pulse: Take a breath. Turn your attention to your body and release any tension. Breathe slowly into the area of your heart for 60 seconds, focusing on feeling a sense of ease. Stay connected to your body as you read. Click here to learn why we suggest this.

One note before getting to the video today, I want to offer the thought that we are collectively very much still in the Breaking The Illusion phase. This is part of a framework I offered many years ago that describes how we make change in our lives or in the world. (more on that here).

Breaking the Illusion is a big part of opening up to the realization that things aren’t what we thought. Without this process, there is very little - if any - motivation for societal change.

Because we are in this phase, our mass consciousness is still most affected by this type of content, as we still, en masse, don’t have clarity on what exactly the problems are that we’re facing. So while many of us might be ready to talk about solutions and even try to put them out there, it’s hard to get many to pay attention to or be open to solutions, as those don’t really fit when the masses are still Breaking the Illusion.

My theory on this is supported in part by the time I’ve spent this last year garnering over 1 billion views of my content on Facebook. I can honestly say that the solution oriented stuff (which I post a fair amount) probably makes up 1% of those views... OK maybe 2%. People just aren’t interested yet, don’t know how to integrate the ideas, and social media algorithms are unkind to things that aren’t popular.

What does get a ton of traction is content where I break the illusion and offer some grounded thoughts on a more neutral and complex way of viewing the situation - beyond partisan rhetoric and surface level blaming. This is a good sign! It suggests a growing appetite that old paradigm framing is getting old.

So, if it feels like the same old sometimes, just know that positive shake ups are happening. Things are changing, more quickly than we might realize. Like perhaps many of you, I’ve been patiently working for 17 years to see more movement beyond the Breaking The Illusion phase. Perhaps we are getting closer.

With that said, I have today’s video. It’s another collaboration with Amber Yang. We examine a disturbing journal referenced in the latest Epstein files release, reportedly written by an alleged victim with autism who describes being trafficked and exploited over an extended period of time, including being made into a "human incubator" for Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. The journal also names several high profile individuals as potential abusers.

We approach the document with care and scrutiny. Keep in mind, all of this has to be more deeply investigated to be verified, but these allegations corroborate with long-standing documentation that Epstein was involved in human cloning, eugenics, and transhumanist medical experiments. What we do see are patterns of abuse and manipulation that have long been documented within high-level trafficking networks.

This content can be heavy, so take care of yourself. And one more thing, if you appreciate the grounded heart centered approach we take with this content, please pass it on to others. Much of what is out there is overly dramatic, and I think people would appreciate a different framing.

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Set Your Pulse: Take a breath. Turn your attention to your body and release any tension. Breathe slowly into the area of your heart for 60 seconds, focusing on feeling a sense of ease. Stay connected to your body as you read. Click here to learn why we suggest this.

A little warning off the top, some of the content we offer in this video can be disturbing. We do bring the video back to more of a hopeful message in the end, but there is some heavy stuff early on. Good to take care if you are diving through this Epstein content.

In this video, I continue my new collaboration with Amber Yang, the director of WantToKnow.info. We explore a few documents in the latest Epstein files release that warrant a closer look: an interview of an alleged Epstein victim documented by a NYPD detective working within the Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force.

This interview fits a well-established pattern of the trafficking, rape, and torture of children at the highest levels of power - and the extraordinary lengths powerful elites will go to dominate and control others. Some of it corroborates well with our 2018 interview with Anneke Lucas, which you can watch here as well.

We explore these challenging topics to provide deeper sensemaking and clarity on some of humanity's darkest lessons.

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Set Your Pulse: Take a breath. Turn your attention to your body and release any tension. Breathe slowly into the area of your heart for 60 seconds, focusing on feeling a sense of ease. Stay connected to your body as you read. Click here to learn why we suggest this.

It’s perhaps not surprising that the DOJ is mysteriously hiding the names of people involved in Epstein’s network. While the US law states victims’ names must be protected and redacted, this does not apply to those doing the sex trafficking, or sending the torture videos or those who are involved in engaging in other illegal activity.

Yesterday, Congressman Thomas Massie and Congressman Ro Khanna went to the DOJ and spent two hours viewing what were supposed to be unredacted Epstein Files. What they ultimately found was that 70% to 80% of the files were redacted by the FBI before they even got to the DOJ. They also found that the DOJ has not necessarily been complying with their redaction tactics as per the law. Massie and Khanna suggest this may be to protect the rich and powerful involved.

“This is bringing down the British government. It may bring down the monarchy. It’s bringing down elites. What are we doing here in the U.S. to stand up to the Epstein class? We’ve got a commerce secretary who is all over the files.” - Rep. Ro Khanna

Last night, Massie took to X to educate the public about what he has found and how the DOJ has been conducting itself in the release of the files. Below is the thread.

You can see Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is playing the typical PR game, suggesting they have nothing to hide and are complying with an honest release of files. Should we believe him?

They hid the names of Lex Wexner, a billionaire and businessman, and Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, a powerful Dubai executive, when they didn’t have to. Further, we find out that Kash Patel and the FBI are perhaps in on protecting abusers. An honest mistake? Or power protecting power?

Pressure is mounting on the FBI, DOJ, and Trump admin with this story. As further awareness grows, someone is going to have to fall for what has been done within the Epstein network. The question is, who will they let fall?

While it would be great to see accountability come to all who engaged in abuse, something says the necessary files to implicate certain powerful people have already been destroyed or will not come out. For example, lawyers of victims have stated that from what has been released in the files, there is so much more that their victims have testified to.

All that said, this moment is a powerful one in providing the collective the opportunity to see how some of the rich and powerful function behind the scenes. To see how the political world works, how people rise to fame, and why our institutions aren’t what we think they are. This is a moment for what we call “Breaking The Illusion.

This Epstein story will continue to unfold, but it’s part of the process of a dying paradigm. What type of society we create moving forward is something we can think about as we gain more clarity on the rot in our current system. This is the bright side of all of this.

This is discussed in more detail in this essay Joe Martino wrote.

Also, we just re-launched our 2018 interview with a survivor of an elite exploitation ring like Epstein’s. Click below to watch: https://www.collective-evolution.com/anneke-lucas-exclusive-interview

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“It was very unfortunate, that from the beginning, what was presented to us by public health officials was a picture of great certainty. But the reality was that there were extremely important unknowns. We entered a situation where essentially the stakes became too high to later present that uncertainty to people...I think that’s what set us off on the wrong foot. Public officials should have been a lot more forthright about the gaps in our knowledge…They should immediately be warning people about this safety signal that we found, and they should immediately be replicating our analysis. The data are indicating there’s increased risk at a level that is much higher than has previously been realized.”

- Dr. Peter Doshi, Senior Editor at the British Medical Journal and associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy commenting on COVID-19 vaccine safety. Quote taken from this interview.

On November 28, 2025, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Chief Medical and Scientific Officer, Dr Vinay Prasad, issued a memo claiming that COVID-19 vaccines have killed at least 10 children in the United States, as well as his opinion that this number is “certainly an underestimate due to underreporting, and inherent bias attribution.”

I am writing to report that OBPV career staff have found that at least 10 children have died after and because of receiving the COVID-19 vaccination. These deaths are related to vaccination (likely/probable/possible attribution made by staff). That number is certainly an underestimate due to underreporting, and inherent bias in attribution.

Prior to this being reported, STAT published information describing an internal meeting in which FDA scientist, Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg, presented evidence of young people who had died after Covid vaccination.

Her findings triggered pushback from career FDA regulators.

Twelve former FDA commissioners published a reply to Dr Prasad’s memo in the New England Journal of Medicine. They criticized the memo for “offer[ing] no explanation of the process and analyses that were used to reach the new retrospective judgment [on the causes of deaths], nor did it indicate why that assessment should justify wholesale rewriting of vaccine regulations.”

Høeg and other top scientists at the current FDA wanted to change the label of all COVID-19 vaccines to state that the risks outweighed the benefits for men aged 12 to 24.

Let’s be clear, and it’s probably obvious to anyone reading this: Vaccine Injury Reporting systems from around the world, since the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, have reported a record number of serious adverse events. VAERS alone, the vaccine injury reporting system that the CDC has always used, had millions of reports. This drastically shattered all other injury reports from all other vaccines combined since VAERS was created in 1990. That alone, despite many of the problems and faults associated with vaccine injury reporting systems, is shocking to say the least.

Before the pandemic, VAERS was receiving nearly 60 000 adverse event reports each year. The agency had the capacity to request records for just a few thousand serious reports each year. But in 2021, the total number of reports shot up to over a million and kept climbing thereafter.

The BMJ has learnt that in the face of an unprecedented 1.7 million reports since the rollout of covid vaccines, VAERS’s staffing was likely not commensurate with the demands of reviewing the serious reports submitted, including reports of death. While other countries have acknowledged deaths that were “likely” or “probably” related to mRNA vaccination, the CDC—which says that it has reviewed nearly 20 000 preliminary reports of death using VAERS (far more than other countries)—has not acknowledged a single death linked to mRNA vaccines.

- Jennifer Block, British Medical Journal, November 2023.

These sentiments have emerged because there is an abundance of published medical literature/science showing the mechanisms of action by which serious injury and death could have occurred as a result of COVID-19, and can occur as a results of COVID-19 vaccination.

Multiple countries have experienced the same phenomenon, including Australia. In September 2025, the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS) uploaded a report summarizing Australia’s spontaneous surveillance data for adverse events following immunisation (AEFI) for Covid-19 vaccines administered in 2022.

In 2022, Australia recorded 18,398 adverse event reports following COVID-19 vaccination. Of these, 160 involved a fatal outcome. Six of the reported deaths occurred in children aged 0 to 17.

Senator Alex Antic, during the December 2025 round of Senate estimates, asked the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) why none of the reported child deaths escalated for expert investigation.

Among children, the median interval between vaccination and death was 4.5 days. For young adults aged 18–29, it was just three days.

The majority of the 160 reported deaths in the NCIRS Report occurred within a median of less than two weeks following vaccination. This fact calls into question the “reassuring safety profile” claimed by the report.

Surprisingly, the report states, “Only one death following a Covid-19 vaccine administered in 2022 was assessed by TGA as likely to be causally linked to vaccination.”

But, only two of the 160 reported deaths — and none of the six child deaths - were referred to the Vaccine Safety Investigation Group (VSIG) for expert causality assessment. They weren’t investigated and simply ignored.

On 27 March 2025, the recommendation for healthy children to receive Covid vaccines, was quietly withdrawn. There was no political announcement, no press conference and little media attention.

The change came via a brief statement by the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) advising that recommendations for healthy children under 18 had been revised.

Two months later, the Australian Immunisation Handbook was updated to reflect that the “risk of severe illness is extremely low in this cohort over the course of the pandemic, and benefits of vaccination are not considered to outweigh the potential harms.”

This assessment was not new. The minimal risk posed to children from the disease had been known since 2020.

During such a crucial period, reports of death — an adverse event with the potential to overturn a politically favourable benefit-risk balance — were filtered out rather than escalated and investigated.

What happened during the COVID-19 pandemic was unprecedented, and it’s one of many examples where corrupt political agendas reign supreme over truth and transparency. Information was conveyed to the public in a black and white manner, when there were many heavy shaded areas of grey.

Will we ever receive truth, transparency and acknowledgement? Or will this event be similar to others, like 9/11, where glaring and obvious holes in “official” narratives continue to exist.

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Set Your Pulse: Take a breath. Turn your attention to your body and release any tension. Breathe slowly into the area of your heart for 60 seconds, focusing on feeling a sense of ease. Stay connected to your body as you read. Click here to learn why we suggest this.

The newly released trove of documents pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein by the U.S. Department of Justice outlines some horrific details. As if child sex trafficking wasn’t already horrific enough, one document outlines an email in 2019 detailing an interview with a supposed Epstein victim.

Below is a screenshot of the email. You can access the document here.

Many names are redacted in these files, but in this particular document, we can see the sender, which seems unusual. The email was sent from Walter Harkins, an NYPD detective with the FBI-NYPD Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force. Harkins retired last year, following a 33-year career with the department.

As you can see from the first screenshot, the supposed victim outlines horrific details about ritualistic sacrifices and dismemberment he witnessed as a child. He also claims he was raped by “George W. Bush 1”.

Furthermore, he claimed he was raped by President Clinton as well as Jeffrey Epstein, and that Donald Trump and then girlfriend Melania were also on the Yacht, as you can see from the screenshot below.

Below is the first page of the email. These are indeed accusations, and it’s clear that the NYPD and FBI had no interest in investigating the matter, given the fact that there was no evidence that came forth from the interview.

I believe it would have been proper to at least interview the mother of the accuser. He was living with him at the time of this interview, and she would be able to confirm the claim about his relatives being members at the yacht club where he met Epstein, as well as the abuse he suffered from them (his great uncle).

The fact that this accuser could be fabricating this story should not detract from other cases and claims with more substance.

George H.W. Bush, former head of the CIA and President of the United States, has been implicated by multiple people and youths with regard to the sexual abuse of children. For example, Dr Steve Pieczenik, a former Department of State official who held many roles within US politics, including serving as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Henry Kissinger, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Regan, and George H.W. Bush, stated the following in 2019,

“It has been rampant in our government, if you remember Bush Sr. had a whole group of young Hispanic men who he groomed and played with. At the same time, Hillary and Bill Clinton along with their friend Mr. Epstein went down to the Bahamas and they were molesting and utilizing young girls and boys to have sexual pleasures, but nothing was done about the fact that Jeffrey Epstein had been guilty and convicted of that crime.”

Multiple youth victims in the “Franklin Scandal” also named him as an abuser.

“Research eventually led to the Franklin scandal that broke in 1989 when hundreds of children were apparently flown around the US to be abused by high ranking ‘Establishment’ members. A 15 year old girl disclosed that she had been abused since the age of 9 and was exposed to ‘ritual murder’ of a new born girl, a small boy (who was subsequently fried and eaten) and three others.”

- European Psychiatry Volume 33, Supplement, March 2016, Page S580

There were several children implicated in the Franklin Scandal, and if you want to learn more about it and take a deep dive there, I suggest reading the work of Nick Bryant.

“Nick Bryant’s seven year investigation of the Franklin sage is unsurpassed. What makes Nick’s account so powerful is that he amassed so many witnesses and so much documentary evidence as to establish his case beyond reasonable doubt.”

- Professor Warwick Middleton MB BS, FRANZCP, MD, who at the time of writing this forward (written in the book) in 2012 was the Director of the Trauma and Disassociation unit at Belmont Hospital in Brisbaine, Australia.

Prior to the revelations of Jeffrey Epstein, those who created awareness using scholarly and educated sources regarding child sex trafficking and the powerful people involved were deemed “conspiracy theorists.” Things have changed, obviously, but the human mind can only stretch so far. We at Collective Evolution & The Pulse created awareness about these issues more than a decade ago. In doing so, our research uncovered disturbing facts, and it’s unsettling that “official government release” is the basis for truth and credibility. Who knows what remains concealed from the public, and what has actually been confirmed behind the closed doors of the government?

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Having spent a great deal of my time/career investigating and uncovering such issues, I can tell you that we do not need to wait for the government in order to see things clearly. In fact, this can be counterproductive and still paints these organisations as ‘ministries of truth.’

The topic discussed in this article has been “in our face” for decades; there are multiple examples.

For example, a 2022 Balenciaga ad showed unsettling pictures of a child holding teddy bears dressed in bondage outfits. In the ad, lying on a table were legal documents from a US Supreme Court decision on child porn laws, “hidden in plain sight.”

I go more in-depth in the article below if you’re interested. The main message here is that our world is drenched in secrecy in multiple areas, from medicine to entertainment to finance and more. Transparency and coming to grips with certain aspects of our reality and healing is a key factor for our civilization to move forward and create better systems that can serve the human race.

Set Your Pulse: Take a breath. Turn your attention to your body and release any tension. Breathe slowly into the area of your heart for 60 seconds, focusing on feeling a sense of ease. Stay connected to your body as you read. Click here to learn why we suggest this.

Note: Late last year, I mentioned that in early 2026, we’d launch a new show called The Catalyst. Here is the first episode! Be sure to subscribe to the channel and look out for more episodes coming soon.

In this episode, we look beyond the headlines surrounding the tragic death of Renee Good at the hands of ICE agents. While coverage has focused on fitting the event into partisan narratives, a deeper story is being missed.

We explore how the growing civil unrest and use of militarized policing on US streets reveal deeper failures in our institutions while doing little to stop the violence and crime it’s meant to prevent. This conversation invites us to step out of dehumanization and manufactured division, and to ask harder questions about the systems driving today’s unrest.

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Set Your Pulse: Take a breath. Turn your attention to your body and release any tension. Breathe slowly into the area of your heart for 60 seconds, focusing on feeling a sense of ease. Stay connected to your body as you read. Click here to learn why we suggest this.

Further to my previous article, which discussed showing up to our current moment with the spirit of embracing complexity and building a culture where we make sense of the world from this place, I want to touch on the recent Tylenol claims from the Trump administration.

I got a text from someone a few days ago, “Trump is about to link Tylenol to Autism, is that legit?”

I don’t know. I’m not an expert on it. But what would it be like to get curious about a claim that, off the top, I was a bit confused about?

Turning to social media, I began seeing the classic tribalistic posts you might expect with a claim like this.

Senator Warren turned to cheap insults and certainties she can’t back up.

I also saw posts like this, which got 10’s of thousands of likes and comments:

The creator of such a message doesn’t understand what is being proposed by the science being brought forth, yet the general public seems to think this is a good argument. Confusion ensues.

When we choose the route of insults and attacks, whether it be like what Warren said or whether it’s calling people Libtards, MAGAts, sheeple etc, we’re left with more of the same: a culture in swift decline, where we lose more and more respect for one another each day that goes by, and we don’t create a chared understanding. As stated before, a new approach is needed.

Mainstream media largely covered the topic, casting severe doubt on the subject, turning it political, and pretending that legal courts have somehow already proved that this is an outrageous claim. This is the same mainstream media that for decades told us that Glyphosate was generally safe because Monsanto’s science and government regulators bought by Monsanto said so.

So I began to look at the claim. Not the social media posts, not the simplified takes from either side, but the claim itself.

The claim from the NIH, FDA and HHS suggested that there may be a link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and early life and autism in some cases. This was based on a re-review of prior research that was inconclusive.

Thus, the advice from U.S. public health is: if you don’t have to take Tylenol while pregnant, don’t take it. If someone had a really high fever and really needed it, that’s a different story. But if it’s not needed, avoid it until further notice.

Regardless of Trump’s rhetoric on the issue, it’s not an unreasonable position these public health organizations are taking. They are saying: we see some possible associations, we don’t know what’s going on, autism rates are rising fast, and therefore, if you don’t need it, don’t take it.

Before I mention some of the research, Kennedy has made it a goal to determine the cause of autism by September 2025. This is an unreasonable goal in my opinion, as it’s way too complex a subject to unpack in such a short time, but I also get that politics are at play here.

That said, I’m glad someone is looking at this because prior administrations have failed to properly address the issue and have avoided some of the most important considerations, which are total vaccine load, total toxic environmental load, and how these act in concert with one another to produce health issues, including neurodegenerative issues.

The truth is, there are likely many things contributing to the rise in autism rates, including the way it’s diagnosed and things like mass increases in chronic stress culturally.

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The Science

There are several epidemiological studies that report associations between prenatal or early-life acetaminophen exposure and higher rates of autism spectrum disorder or ADHD. A Johns Hopkins analysis of umbilical cord blood found that babies with the highest acetaminophen exposure were about three times more likely to be later diagnosed with autism or ADHD.

Other large studies have found small increases in risk in some models. But the picture is inconsistent across studies and methods, and when stronger controls for confounding are used (for example, sibling comparison designs), many associations weaken; however, they are still there.

Simply put, the science suggests looking more closely at the link between Tylenol and Autism is a good idea. Is it contributing for sure? We don’t know, and it may depend on things like the amount it’s taken, the effect of other environmental toxins etc.

Of course, correlation does not confirm causation, but that is the basis of any scientific process; you ALWAYS begin with signals (correlation), and look more closely.

The Trump admin isn’t saying small doses of acetaminophen = autism. They aren’t saying anyone who takes acetaminophen during pregnancy will have autistic kids; they are simply saying: Does this increase risk? In order to understand, we have to look, and the signals are there to justify looking.

I wish we could just understand this as a culture, but it’s not that simple for many reasons, which I’ll get to later.

The biological pathway for acetaminophen to cause an issue is that it is metabolized in the liver and, at least in some situations, can use up glutathione as part of how it is broken down. That biochemical pathway is real and is why massive overdoses of acetaminophen deplete glutathione and cause liver damage.

Some researchers have hypothesized that even lower exposures in sensitive infants could affect antioxidant systems like glutathione and thereby influence neurodevelopment. A number of papers discuss this proposed mechanism.

So whether we’re talking umbilical cord exposure or something that’s outlined in the image below, those at the HHS think it’s worth taking a closer look. Further, why do we often not ask what makes some infants more ‘sensitive’ to things than others? Why is general sensitivity to health issues growing in the population? Instead, we tend to make general statements and treat everyone in batches - because it’s the most profitable thing to do.

As seen in the image above, there is a specific claim that babies need glutathione to “process” vaccine adjuvants or that routine vaccines plus acetaminophen create an “overload” that raises autism risk. This is not really well understood yet. Why? It has never been studied well.

While the glutathione mechanism is biologically plausible in theory, the jump from plausibility to saying vaccines plus Tylenol cause autism is not backed by solid data yet, because it has not yet been studied in detail.

Tylenol themselves have said in 2017 on social media (which is also stated on their packaging), don’t use Tylenol when pregnant.

The bottom line here, the dramatic responses we’re seeing to this Tylenol issue are being birthed out of ignorance and political tribalism - not grounded logic and an open heart and mind. It’s reasonable to look more closely at this link.

Politics, Politics, Politics - And Some Change?

Political theatre likely plays a role in how this story unfolded as well. Sadly, it’s needed in our current culture, which is driven by a race to the bottom dynamic in order to win political debate. “My opponents will play nasty political theatre to enliven their base, so I have to as well or I lose.“ This is largely what we see in our modern political culture, even though the outcome is a more polarized and divided populace.

As mentioned, Kennedy wants to find an explanation for autism rates as quickly as possible. Further, Trump has made campaign promises around autism, and so action needs to be seen to keep the support of that part of his base. This, in part, might be why such a big spectacle is being made about the Tylenol subject - it gets everyone talking about it. Welcome to political theatre.

That said, the administration is building an “Autism Action Plan,” which includes linking acetaminophen to autism, promoting treatments like leucovorin, determining causes, and proposing new regulatory steps. This does show this admin is serious about leadership on a public-health concerns. I find Bhattacharya, Kennedy, and Makary to be refreshing bright spots in this admin, which is largely not something I align with.

This move also signals continued skepticism toward more mainstream medical recommendations that, to those in the health freedom movement, are largely influenced by Big Pharma and their biased science.

Further, by pushing for label updates for products like acetaminophen and warning of possible risks, the administration appears to be making pharmaceutical companies more cautious and the public more aware. This could potentially open up liability or regulatory pressure on Big Pharma as well.

But to be honest, we have to give this one more time to pan out, as Trump may protect Big Pharma interests more than a guy like Kennedy would want to see happen.

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Back To The Spirit of Complexity & Questioning What We Thought We Knew

I stated in a social media post a while ago that RFK Jr and the new approach to public health in the US are being informed by a health freedom movement that fundamentally comes at public health from a different lens.

Instead of the reductionist and drug focused approach, it’s more functional and holistic. This means the public has to fundamentally get used to thinking about health in a way that isn’t so black and white, and isn’t the default. That in itself is hard for people to do.

What is driving health problems at their core? How can we get out of the mindset of “I got X illnes,s” and instead realize that someone doesn’t just “get” an illness, it comes from a breakdown in their body? How do we know the medications and food we’re consuming aren’t creating more downstream problems than they are solving?

How can we look at more complex answers? How can we do science that isn’t just about approving new drugs or protecting pharmaceutical interests (which is largely what happens now), but actually seeks to understand how to build solid health amongst the people?

This is more about holistic health, which is complex, yet this is not what people know. On this fact alone, culture will have a hard time with the work Kennedy is trying to do.

Further, a massive pharmaceutical industry stands to lose billions in revenue from a new way of looking at things. By nature of financial support, this will impact the propaganda we hear from politicians and some of the media in order to protect the old ways. Confusion, smear campaigns, doubt, and fear will be used to drown out any emerging signal.

This is why we often see people talking about RFK’s former heroin use and the “worm in his brain,” yet they cannot have a conversation about why they don’t agree with the ideas he has. Insults or cheap talking points are what we often see. Propaganda has done its job.

Bottom line: we’re talking about highly complex issues that few people understand are as complex as they are. This will take an openness and level of curiosity to understand that we just don’t see in much of media or on social media, which is often just looking to win a debate.

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In order to attempt to tackle the complexity of issues like vaccines and autism, environmental toxins, total toxic load and holistic health, as well as solve the chronic health crisis, experts who are free to do real science have to spend time looking at and understanding them in ways often not conveyed to the public.

No one has debunked a link between vaccines, environmental toxins and autism. There is no evidence to support this claim, yet people think there is.

So, in the spirit of trying to solve a problem that is clearly caused by something, we have to start somewhere. It’s important to stop pretending we are certain about these issues, to stop buying into the division, and let science happen. No one has studied the effects of the US vaccine schedule on kids, no one, especially not in concert with total toxic load.

Beyond that, it has only been about 7 months for RFK Jr (a key driver behind all of this) to do much of anything with regard to cleaning up the public health and corruption problem in the United States. In our current system, real change takes a lot of time given the system’s rigidity. Before getting all caught up in the drama, I’m curious to see how things look in another year and a half.

Further, some in the alternative space fear Kennedy is not doing enough fast enough, and therefore “we’ve all been duped yet again.“ I don’t agree with this personally, as I feel the system design itself creates the need for us to meter our expectations as to what can be done and how fast.

The best part of what’s happening now is that a new conversation is happening. A conversation that back in 2009, when we started, was rare. By 2015, it was building, and now here in 2025, it’s mainstream. That’s worth celebrating, regardless of how pessimistic we feel we should be.

When we are largely in survival stress, change is hard and slow. This is because we are not in an ideal state to be flexible when we have a baseline of stress. Instead, we dig in and are rigid. I would argue that most of our culture feels this way, and this is before we even start talking about a poisoned information landscape making change even harder.

Finally, you’re not wrong or an idiot for having an open mind and waiting to see what unfolds. It seems less wise to jump to a conclusion either way at the moment. Yet it’s those folks who are pressuring others to see the truth they’ve prematurely jumped to.

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I’ve taken a step back for a while now. Primarily, I have gone through a major change in my personal life over the last 4 months that has required me to put almost all of my attention on that. At the same time, I have taken some time to reassess the current cultural zeitgeist to ask the questions once again: what is the best way I can show up? The best way I can serve what feels like a moment of great chaos and yet great change?

For some further context, (some of you know this, so I’m sorry for the repeat) when I started CE in 2009, it was based on the premise that I felt we were already in an unfolding quantum leap in the way humanity thinks and lives – a shift in consciousness.

Leading up to 2009, I thought a lot about why our world was the way it was, what was driving humans and the way we think, and whether it was possible to create a better world. In my heart, I knew we could, but how? What would need to happen? How do we even talk about these questions? Is there anything different about revolutions now vs. the past?

It’s no secret that now, our world seems to be coming apart. Not only are challenges with mental health, loneliness and meaning greatly increasing (caused perhaps by our system designs), but deep fractures in how we speak about, trust, make sense of, and respond to what’s fracturing in society are occurring.

A common line I hear from everyday people is “I just don’t even know what’s true anymore. I don’t know what to believe. People seem so polarized, and I don’t know where things are headed with any predictability.”

This is not necessarily a new thing in history, but I do believe something else is at play here too.

Today, like back in 2009, when I think about our current human value systems, our worldviews, the way we choose to design society, relate to each other, and make meaning, I see much of it as having a flavor of being stale. I talk to many others who feel this same thing. There is a sense of “Why are we doing this?” “Something doesn’t feel right.” “Why do I feel disoriented about the state of the world?” “The old ways of understanding our world don’t make sense.”

To me, this stale feeling is a profound evolutionary pressure. And the coming apart of society sets the stage for us to ask deeper questions because we can’t ignore how obvious things are.

I’m suggesting that we can’t blame our current meaning crisis, loneliness crisis, polarization, division, and path toward self-termination as just the fault of social media, the economy, the elite, or even mainstream media, but also of a quiet call of a new consciousness.

I feel we are starting to lose a sense of meaning in our current world because we are also outgrowing it. It’s time to re-ask big questions and discover whether they invite us to move beyond old paradigms. And like any birth, the moments just before are rather intense.

This quiet call of a new consciousness is being heard and felt by millions more now than when I started in 2009 – that is clear to me.

But still, our old systems are strongly resisting change. As people are feeling disoriented and confused, and our society is fracturing deeply, many are looking to old stories to make sense of and solve this moment. But I don’t feel the old ways are sufficient in explaining or navigating our moment, and it seems neither do many others.

So how do we explore new ways of understanding ourselves and our world without simply going back to old stories? How do we navigate the stress of it all when the world seems so chaotic? Said another way, how do we make space for and hold the calls of a new paradigm?

All I can offer is what I feel was helpful for me, what I notice works for others, and what feels right in my heart.

So, below I’ve offered a few thoughts on what may be some important elements of what our world needs right now. I’m happy to be wrong here and certainly don’t feel this is an all-encompassing list. Also, I would love to hear your thoughts about what you think is needed right now.

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A Culture of Complexity

Whether we are making sense of autism and vaccines, who Charlie Kirk was and why he was killed, whether Trump is a good guy or bad guy, or whether anthropogenic climate change is a huge concern or not, we have to be willing to embrace complexity and uncertainty.

Our world, our human bodies, social systems, and nature are complex things. This means they are not mechanical and predictable in ways we see with complicated systems like a car. Complicated systems have a blueprint to tell you how they work. If you take out one part, you know what will happen next because the system is complicated and predictable.

With complex systems, there is no blueprint and thus very little predictability. You cannot know what will happen in a forest when you remove one species. You can theorize, but you can’t know for sure, as you don’t know how the other thousand (let’s say) factors will adapt to the lack of a squirrel, for example.

In a human body, just because you study a single vaccine for safety, doesn’t mean you know what will happen when you give an entire vaccine schedule to a child, especially in a world where umbilical cords are filled with hundreds of environmental toxins. Will there be too great a toxic load? How will the system handle all of this? We don’t know.

Diving deeper into that, a recent review of 40 studies reported that PFAS (“forever chemicals”) were detected in every umbilical cord blood sample tested. Other work going back decades has documented hundreds of synthetic chemicals in cord blood samples, including PCBs, pesticides, flame retardants, phthalates and bisphenols.

The point being, we are living in a soup of toxins, and then we’re adding more toxins to a child via vaccines. We don’t really know what happens when you put a complex load of toxins into a sensitive human body. No study has ever been done to understand this because our scientific studies are often reductionist and simplistic. Yet we are treating this question of vaccines and autism in a simple way instead of taking a complex look.

If you really wanted to know what’s going on, you’d have to study the effects of that entire load of vaccines on the human body. To go further, you’d want to do so in concert with the toxic environment that is also increasingly affecting our bodies as people.

That’s a very complex thing to do.

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So to say “vaccines” are safe is not taking into consideration the question of total toxic load. And when you have many autism signals coming out of children who have just received vaccines, it’s worth it to take a closer look.

Look at how Charlie Kirk was turned into a hero or a monster after his death. In my mind, having followed Charlie for years, he was neither. He was a guy who was strong in his convictions and driven by religious insight and conservative viewpoints. I didn’t agree with much of what Charlie said, but to embrace complexity and not pick a side will help you see him more clearly and not cherry pick his thoughts in either direction.

Watching our culture virtually NEED a singular explanation to latch onto to explain whether he was a hero or monster is the lack of complexity that isn’t serving us.

People aren’t that simple. Narratives aren’t that simple. And oftentimes simplicity is used for propaganda.

If we want to understand each other and our world, we have to become more attuned to complexity as a default. Right now, our default is knee-jerk and tribalistic reactions.

This scales into a large problem because we can’t solve problems well if we have not defined them clearly. In order to define them, we have to accept that our systems, including human beings, are complex. And if that’s true, then we must be willing to build a culture of complexity to collectively understand the challenges we face and thus implement potential solutions.

Interestingly, simple and tribalistic explanations tend to benefit those in power.

How can we solve this? As individuals, it starts with noticing where we tend to have knee-jerk reactions, become tribal about our thinking, and jump to conclusions too quickly.

Practicing mindfulness so we can notice our thinking, emotions, and state of being leads to the ability to self-reflect. This is how we can observe our thinking and behavior. Making a point to embrace uncertainty and not jump to conclusions will help keep our inquiry and curiosity alive as well.

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Slow Down and Reduce Stress

Chronic stress = unclear thinking.

One of the best ways to help build openness to complexity is to not allow chronic low-level survival stress to run our lives. We may not even know this is happening to us because we are so used to the high level, gas on, go go go of our modern world. We forget how wound up many of us truly are. Being wound up creates a low-level sense of one form of survival activation or another: we can be more anxious, fast moving, defensive, and aggressive, or we can be more hopeless, shut down, pessimistic, or nihilistic.

Both of these states of being are emerging from survival stress built up in the human body over the course of our lives, and not having processed this stress properly. This is what leads to nervous system dysregulation, and sadly, no, we cannot simply “reset our nervous system” by taking a few deep breaths. What’s happening with ‘resets’ is a form of temporary self-regulation, but what truly needs to happen is a release of that stored stress in the body to bring back a baseline of regulation.

Putting the complexities and joys of survival stress release aside for a moment (look what I just did there lol), what’s more approachable each day for many of us is slowing down and reducing stress in our lives. It will help us not build up more survival stress in the body, and see more clearly by simply being less activated.

To embrace complexity, we have to slow down. To want to listen to others clearly, we have to slow down.

When we are slower, we are less inclined to jump from one social media post to the next or rush to conclusions because we feel rushed all the time. Instead, there is more thoughtfulness, patience and curiosity to explore more critically.

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Some simple ways to slow down and reduce stress in our modern world would be:

- Begin slowing down as much as you can each day, moving more slowly and doing tasks more slowly will help signal to your system that it can also slow down.

- Take breaks between tasks, avoid extensive multi tasking. When we don’t take breaks between tasks, stress builds up in our system and then gets stored away. When we multitask, we also often bring about survival responses as we jump from one thing to the next. Oddly, we’ve come to glorify multitasking in our world, trading human health for ‘productivity.

- Set your phone aside as much as possible. Don’t get caught up in doom scrolling. Instead, notice what you are feeling in your body as you find yourself in the habit of doom scrolling. If you really want to take this seriously, delete social media apps from your phone and only use them via a computer.

- Take time at the end of the day to destress. One great way to do that is to use this exercise I created. It tunes you back into your body, slows your mind, and connects you back to the here and now.

Connect to Something Bigger Than Yourself

Part of what I’m presenting here is the fact that new data points are emerging that tell us a new story of who we are needs to be considered. That new story of who we are also suggests there’s something bigger going on here. (More on the new data points here.)

I cannot walk away from the fact that I have had personal experiences showing me that we are all connected in some way. That we are part of something much larger than ourselves as individuals.

From telepathy and synchronicity to what feels like resonant fields of energy that connect us, something is going on here. It also seems to me, as we’ve written about for 16 years, that emerging science supports the idea that we are connected, and that the typical materialist explanation of the world no longer fits.

This means a new story is emerging about who we are and how our world works, and that looking to our past stories may not be the best way to understand who we are.

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I also believe, from my own experience and from exploring the science, that we are reincarnating. And if we are reincarnating, the idea of separation from one another, especially by religion, culture, place of birth, etc, becomes much less important in explaining who we are. This is another data point I have to include when I consider who we are and the nature of our reality.

I feel I’ve had enough experiences in my life that suggest there is a large amount of intelligence driving this experience we call life, which includes an entire cosmos with other beings than humans a part of it. This doesn’t mean I feel everything is fate or predestined by this intelligence, but that something larger is at play that I don’t quite understand. Although this larger intelligence seems to be tending toward the evolution of consciousness, and it feels like something that can be connected to and sensed.

Within that sensing comes a knowing of sorts. A knowing that states what is playing out in our world helps evolve our consciousness through experience, at a level beyond the mind and how we identify daily. The material world is rich in its experience for the purposes of creating an experience that includes suffering, pain and difficulty. But also joy, love and other beautiful experiences.

But beyond the material world is something larger that invites me not to get STUCK in the seriousness of the drama playing out. If we indeed reincarnate and if there is a sense of non-duality when I go beyond the consciousness of the everyday, it means on some level, the everyday is not all there is.

In an individual sense, life isn’t just about me, my accomplishments, my acquisitions, and my desires, but about something greater. I don’t lose my sense of being an individual and taking care of myself and my needs by feeling this, but I don’t seek to serve just my needs and acquisitions, but that of others too. Because in some way, others are me too.

This connects me to something bigger, something beyond my life. Something beyond just my family fighting for my piece of the pie. It’s moving from the paradigm of separation to one of connection and what Thich Naht Hanh called interbeing. My personal experience and the emerging post-material science suggest this is a better explanation of the nature of our reality. In this way, I feel open to a new story of who we are.

This can become a lived experience. A default, if you will. It affects my choices, my actions, the way I see others, and the way I treat others. It informs my ideas around the design of society, policy etc. It doesn’t seek that everyone believes what I believe or follows any God or guru, but that their wellness and wellbeing are intimately connected to mine, and so I want what’s best for others too.

That connection to something bigger allows hope to be alive in a world going through chaotic moments. It doesn’t cause me to pull away and retreat into avoiding what’s happening, but to see the potential in this moment and inform how I might respond to it.

When I connect to the idea of collective consciousness, or morphic fields, even more hope can emerge. Morphic fields are an idea Rupert Sheldrake brought forth (which, to be fair, has been spoken about for thousands of years in other words). They refer to fields that carry information, not energy per se, and they influence the form and behavior of systems across time and space.

The more something happens, the stronger its “morphic field” becomes, making it easier for the same thing to happen again (this plays into what’s being found via post-material science too.) For example, if one rat learns to run a maze in New York, it might become easier for rats elsewhere to learn the same maze, because the knowledge is stored in the species’ morphic field.

Applied at the human level, if I choose kindness and heart-centered approaches to my actions, and am truly embodying a service to others way of being, I’m not just impacting those around me but also feeding into a collective field where others are invited to engage in that field as well.

I feel that our reality is shaped by these fields, and the more we collectively carry stories, actions, and ways of being based on a certain paradigm, the more that shows up in our world. In that way, our world is a reflection of our collective consciousness, not JUST the actions of a few power elite.

By sensing into something bigger, realizing the effect our individual actions can have on the whole, we move out of what feels like an impossible, hopeless linear path toward “fixing” our world, and into a space where we see how our individual power is actually great. And that the choices we make matter.

We can control who we are, how we act, and what we do. Perhaps a good chunk of our energy could go toward that, and not the majority toward doom-scrolling social media. This isn’t to say we should avoid the outside world and use spirituality as an escape, but to integrate the two.

With this said, I don’t feel we are in for a change that is going to take hundreds or thousands of years to show signs of positive outcome, but that it can happen much more quickly due to the nature of our reality and morphic fields.

I’m not saying this to say “we are alive at the most important time in history,” but instead to suggest that we are faced with a moment of great change that seems both driven by the advancements of our material world and what appears to be a quantum advancement in our consciousness.

Look at the weapons we have. Look at AI. Look at the ways in which fundamental thought is driving dangerous narratives about who ‘the enemy’ is that we must fight. We are faced with a moment where we indeed have to get in the game and help shape our future through our way of being, thoughts, and actions.

As stated, this doesn’t have to be some grand gesture on our part as individuals, but in the way we choose to engage with our friends and neighbours. The desire to ask whether our values and stories still feel relevant to us. The ways in which we engage online, and the energetic state of being we choose to hold, which I feel affects the overall morphic field that makes up our reality.

An action item for this element might be to research morphic fields and what post-material science says about our interconnected nature. By having an intellectual understanding of this, we might be invited to reshape how we think of ourselves and our reality. I feel these theories present a more accurate way of seeing our reality than material science has offered, as many data points don’t fit into that material model, and thus that story needs to be updated.

Further, to put this into practice, we can ask: What does it look like to connect to something bigger than ourselves? How can I practice truly feeling something bigger than myself in my body and being each day?

One other question might be: if connecting to something bigger invites you into a definitive story of good vs. evil or good guys vs. bad guys, it’s worth considering if this is still feeding into the old paradigm.

Thanks for reading, and I would love to hear from you.

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Set Your Pulse: Take a breath. Turn your attention to your body and release any tension. Breathe slowly into the area of your heart for 60 seconds, focusing on feeling a sense of ease. Stay connected to your body as you read. Click here to learn why we suggest this.

Note: This piece is older but relevant for our current times. It was published in 2015 on CE. I’ve been unfolding a ton of large life changes over the past few months, and thus my work has slowed. That said, you can check out the recent interviews I’ve done here. I will continue to get back into the swing of things over the next month or so. Thanks for your support and patience!

Have you ever wondered what lies beyond the surface of our everyday experiences? What if there’s a deeper layer to our existence that we’ve yet to fully explore?

For myself, this was a big part of how I began to awaken to other ways of exploring myself and our world. I became very curious about what was driving my thoughts, experiences, and even what happens in society.

This way of thinking, being and knowing birthed CE in 2009. This is also where the concept of spiritual intelligence (SQ) comes into play. No, it’s not about how much you know about the 3rd, 4th and 5th dimensions of consciousness or where your chakras are, it’s a way of being that takes into account the wholeness of YOU as a human.

Let’s dive into it.

Awakening to Our True Selves Through Spiritual Intelligence

The term Spiritual intelligence was initially coined by Danah Zohar in 1997 in her book Rewiring The Corporate Brain. She usefully notes a distinction between spirituality and religion in her work and outlines 12 principles of spiritual intelligence that become a useful boilerplate for exploring this subject.

1. Self-awareness: Knowing what I believe in and value, and what deeply motivates me.

2. Spontaneity: Living in and being responsive to the moment.

3. Being vision- and value-led: Acting from principles and deep beliefs, and living accordingly.

4. Holism: Seeing larger patterns, relationships, and connections; having a sense of belonging.

5. Compassion: Having the quality of “feeling-with” and deep empathy.

6. Celebration of diversity: Valuing other people for their differences, not despite them. (Difference of opinion, experience etc, not limited to skin color and gender.)

7. Field independence: Standing against the crowd and having one’s own convictions.

8. Humility: Having the sense of being a player in a larger drama, of one’s true place in the world.

9. Tendency to ask fundamental “Why?” questions: Needing to understand things and get to the bottom of them.

10. Ability to reframe: Standing back from a situation or problem and seeing the bigger picture or wider context.

11. Positive use of adversity: Learning and growing from mistakes, setbacks, and suffering.

12. Sense of vocation: Feeling called upon to serve, to give something back.

I feel these 12 principles get to the crux of what feels important when outlining spiritual intelligence, how it can be fostered, and used in various contexts.

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Looking closely, it begins with self awareness. Being able to dive deep into the ocean of our inner thoughts, emotions, and motivations. Have you ever taken a moment to reflect on what truly drives you?

This awareness is more than just understanding ourselves superficially; it’s about recognizing our life’s purpose and the core values that guide us. Think about the times you’ve felt truly connected to your actions and how that alignment brought a sense of peace and fulfillment. This is the essence of self-awareness in spiritual intelligence.

We also see the importance of spontaneity, perhaps even synchronicity. Being in the moment, orienting to the here and now mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually means something. Our senses connect to now, our thoughts connect to now, our emotions are responsive to now and ultimately this is held in a greater way of being and sensing that brings about the spiritual element.

This way of orienting to the now brings about a greater sense of the whole. A holistic way of seeing and knowing. At CE, this type of orienting has informed our method of writing, discussion and making sense of consciousness and current events via deeper ways of knowing. (Updated in 2020 – we call this Embodied Sensemaking.)

When orienting to the world in this way, we naturally have compassion, empathy, a sense of our values, and an appreciation for the diversity of others. We don’t need to carry a mental model of how to live, instead, this consciousness is more naturally emergent. With this also comes humility as we are connected to the idea that it’s important to be curious, open and synthesize information – not defend it.

This way of being feels like the natural state of a human being not stuck in survival, but who can be curious and hold expanded states of consciousness. This births clarity around vocation and the ability to have resilience and capacity which helps us see a bigger picture in reframing and moving through adversity in an evolutionary way (as opposed to stagnancy.)

With an interconnected view of things, asking WHY becomes natural, as does the willingness to go against the grain because there is a deeply yet lightly held sense of conviction and curiosity to drive evolution.

To me, spiritual intelligence is perhaps the most important form of intelligence we can build, (although it does almost spontaneously go hand in hand with other forms) because it acts as a foundation and guidance system for how we use other forms of intelligence.

SQ In Context With The Shift in Consciousness

How does all of this apply to the shift in consciousness we are moving through? (Update 2020: which people now refer to as the Metacrisis) Which states that we are in a time of great change, system collapse, and expansion in individual and collective consciousness? Well, it is a driver for orienting to the world in a new way that allows us to hold new possibilities and emerge new solutions.

A Shift from Materialism to Meaning

In our fast-paced, materialistic world, how often do we pause to consider the deeper values that drive us? Spiritual intelligence challenges us to shift from competitive, materialistic values to those that emphasize community, thrivability, and spiritual fulfillment. Through spiritual intelligence we can FEEL this different way of orienting to the world, it isn’t simply a mental model.

Have you noticed how fleeting material pleasures are? In contrast, the joy derived from meaningful relationships and contributing to the common good is lasting. This is not a foreign concept either, indigenous cultures have been living and cultivating this way of living for a long time.

The Dance of Interconnectedness

Have you ever felt a sense of oneness with the world around you? Spiritual intelligence emphasizes this interconnectedness, seeing ourselves as integral parts of a larger web of life – on earth and beyond.

It’s not just about our personal journey but how our actions ripple through the environment and the lives of others. Imagine a spider’s web, where each thread is connected to the others. When one thread is plucked, the entire web vibrates. This is a metaphor for our interconnected existence.

How might our choices change if we truly understood this deep connection? I believe it is a natural part of ourselves to sense how our choices and actions affect others. It can be helpful to think about this subject too (i.e. SQ guides thinking). The indigenous ask: how will this choice affect 7 generations after me?

Experiencing Higher/Different States of Consciousness

How often do we find ourselves caught in the mundane routines of daily life, yearning for something more?

Spiritual intelligence involves accessing higher states of consciousness—moments of mindfulness, flow, and transcendence. Transcendence of what? Oftentimes our trauma, conditioning, monkey mind and the stress of everyday life.

These states allow us to tap into deeper levels of creativity and insight. Right now, psychedelics are becoming a bit trendy, but this isn’t exactly what I’m talking about here. Higher states of consciousness can be integrated into our sober everyday life, and this is a skill we can develop. (And personally, I dont’ think psychedelics are a shortcut to what I’m referring to here)

Practices like meditation and mindfulness can be helpful in bringing about these heightened states. As is doing trauma and inner work to rid stored survival stress in our bodies that keep us in more survival based states of consciousness.

Science Meets Spirituality

One of our favorite subjects here at CE is merging science and spirituality. Can science and spirituality coexist harmoniously? Of course.

Rather than viewing them as mutually exclusive, we can integrate scientific insights with spiritual wisdom to gain a more comprehensive understanding of reality. Imagine the richness of a perspective that honors both the tangible evidence of science and the profound mysteries explored by spirituality.

Nurturing All Aspects of Being

How often do we consider our health beyond just the physical? Spiritual intelligence encourages us to adopt a holistic view of health, encompassing mental, emotional, physical and spiritual dimensions. By seeking balance and harmony in all aspects of our being, we move towards a more fulfilling and healthy life.

Practices such as holistic medicine, proper nutrition, regular exercise, and spiritual practices involving inner work and meditation become integral to our daily lives. How might our lives change if we prioritized holistic health?

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Creating a Thriving Future

In a world facing several environmental challenges like air and water pollution, soil health issues, species decline etc, how can we contribute to creating a thriving commons?

A thriving environment is a foundation for a thriving future, and it interplays almost instantly with thriving individuals. As it thrives, we thrive, and as we thrive, it thrives.

The shift in consciousness is intrinsically linked to adopting new ways of thinking about thrivability. Recognizing the finite nature of our planet’s resources and the impact of human activity, spiritual intelligence drives us to reduce waste, be in concert with and part of nature, and produce a society where pulling too much from the commons is an obsolete idea. While this concept usually pushes people to think we must go backwards and do less, this is largely due to the fact that people aren’t aware of technologies and possibilities that could completely change the way we live.

Evolving Social Systems

How do our social systems reflect our collective consciousness? As our consciousness shifts, so too must our social systems and institutions and vice versa.

Education, economic models, and governance need to evolve to support what ideas and ways of knowing emerge from spiritual intelligence. Collaborative and participatory approaches become more common, fostering a sense of shared responsibility and collective action.

Instead of educating kids to become cogs in a system and move a clinical economy, their unique values and gifts can be explored. Instead of profit maximization in an economy, an entirely new set of values would drive decision making.

How might our societies look if they truly reflected the ideas I’ve discussed above?

Personal and Collective Transformation

Ultimately, the shift in consciousness is a journey of both personal and collective transformation. Individually, we find greater peace, fulfillment, and purpose. Collectively, we build societies that are harmonious, resilient, and adaptive. This transformation is not just a lofty ideal but a tangible goal. Spiritual intelligence is the basis for how we emerge this idea as it’s part of what helps us be OK with our differences and not become so stuck in material identity and in-group/out-group thinking.

The Takeaway

The journey of understanding spiritual intelligence is about exploring deeper layers of existence and recognizing our interconnectedness. It’s easy to brush all of this off as impossible for our world, and that’s because when we look at our world it is something that feels chaotic and disconnected. But by individually working to shift towards new ways of being, we change our immediate environment and collective environment in ways we might not realize. Large-scale change takes time, but planting seeds is important.

Understanding this idea is great, but practice is key. Get creative in thinking about ways to foster these ideas within your being. Here are a couple of places to start.

1. Practice building your self awareness through meditation, contemplation, and presence. Explore different embodiment practices if that helps.

2. Embrace complexity. Challenge yourself to think about our world and your life with more complexity. It helps to explore what might be driving a situation. It also helps us embrace interconnectedness practically.

3. Spend more time in nature. Don’t just go out in nature, bring a sense of curiosity, presence and openness to your time in nature. No phones or tech, just be. See if it changes how you feel. This can foster an expanded awareness of the natural world.

4. Do inner work. Whether that’s with the help of a practitioner, talking to a loved one or doing contemplative work, exploring ways in which our own pain or past trauma keeps us divided, angry, or resentful about others and the world is key. Inner work gets our bias’ and emotional trappings out of the way so we can think, feel, relate and see more clearly.

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, and share this article with others!

Peace,
Joe

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Is Humanity on A Self-Terminating Path?

Since I started this work in 2009, I’ve been asked this question at least 100 times. I give the same answer now as I did back then because it’s honest to how I have felt and still feel about the state of our world and where we might be headed.

When you’re on the internet or watch the news, there’s no shortage of claims that we’re about to see our entire planet collapse via climate change or ‘unhinged leaders’ of various countries. As all of those claims are made, with partial truth mixed in to each, I find very few voices that provide a sense of settling and hope.

I feel I used to be one of those voices that reached far and wide with a message of hope and groundedness. The tens of thousands of emails we’ve received over the last 16 years suggest that statement is true. But with all that has happened to our company and the changes in the conscious media field over the last 5 or 6 years, it often feels like panic, fear, and drama have won out, leaving more hopeful voices in the background.

And so I write this because, regardless of how far it goes, I think it needs to be said.

Where Are We Headed?

I was doing a podcast episode with Daniel Pinchbeck on the CE Podcast a few weeks ago (which I recommend checking out.) At the end of the episode, he actually posed a question to me. It was something like: “Do you feel like this is the end times, the apocalypse, the end of the world?” He asked this as he is quite concerned about the Trump admin and what he feels they are doing to America and thus the rest of the world.

I personally don’t feel the destruction of our planet or way of life would be the result of Trump or any singular recent event, but as a result of a much wider picture. So I answered the question like this:

“The way I honestly feel about it is, speaking totally from the gut here, I feel deep down like deep, deep, deep, deep down that even if we all died - I don't want that but - it would be okay. There's a part of my consciousness that has experienced something beyond this physical body and I cannot deny the fact that apparent in the way I see the world is this understanding that like “it's OKAY.”

But this does not make me passive. It does not make me not care. It does not make me not feel the emotions of what’s going on. But there is a part of me that is like, “it is what it is.” Look, we're having this conversation. I dedicate large amounts of hours of my life trying to help with this situation.

I see all the challenges we’re going through as an opportunity. Like anything else, it's an evolutionary pressure. The more things are extreme the more we have to converse. The more people have to come out of the slumber and the illusion.

If it feels like it's too easy to just live day-to-day life, we're probably not going to question things, especially given the state of humanity's existing consciousness as a collective. And by that I mean, it's very easy for us to just kind of coast along, going to work, coming home, repeat, repeat, repeat. But when things are so extreme that we have to come out of that, there's an opportunity.

I feel this is where it's about how we steward - or it's about how a certain number of people - stand up and steward this moment with wisdom, with connection, with a new level of consciousness.

I think that's what our best opportunity is, our best chance. And I get emotional when I think about that which means I know there's something there. There's something there that feels right. There's something there that feels accurate.”

Daniel was kind enough to allow me to have the last word on my own show after that, haha. (Do check out the full convo here, Daniel had many great thoughts to offer.)

This was maybe the third or fourth time in the span of a month that I was asked a question like this, and so I write this today because I wanted to offer something that might bring a sense of grounding in the chaos here.

When I look out at the influencers, writers and commentators out there, I feel that most everything is polarizing, doom and gloom, or uninspiring. They still provide value of course, but there are flavors missing, and I see it wearing on people.

There are perhaps 3 - 4 folks I listen to that I feel are providing good medicine, and yet their audiences are not overly large compared to the big names out there who, in my view, are just feeding into the old paradigm without knowing it.

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Beyond The Old Paradigm

The largest aspect of CE has always been to help build a new future for humanity. One built on a new story, a new level of consciousness, and a new way of being. This, of course, requires a commitment to inner work, deep levels of curiosity, and a willingness to communicate in community about what we truly want life to look like. It’s the one goal of mine I never got to fully realize, as it’s one of the hardest messages to get to catch on.

We tried a project in 2010 on this that failed to gain interest. In 2017, I tried again, and still it wasn’t time. Here in 2025, it feels more than ever the time to discuss, practice, and hold a new paradigm, yet I find myself at what feels like the end of my journey with this work due to a lack of funding. I don’t want it to be the case, but it might be what I have to accept.

Back to the topic here, if you recall, there are 4 elements/stages/themes I find important to consider when navigating our world and how we can create a more thriving society. These 4 pieces make up the CE framework that has guided our mission for 16 years, and help us answer the question of what may happen with humanity. The 4 themes are:

Breaking the Illusion
Awakening Curiosity & Interconnection
Deprogramming Limits
Living Aligned

To keep this essay efficient, I will provide a very brief outline of each, you can read more about them here.

Breaking the Illusion - realizing that what we thought was certain about ourselves or our world is not the case, causing us to begin to question many things related to ourselves or our world. (This is almost always the first stage.)

Awakening Curiosity & Interconnection - truly awakening a sense of curiosity about ourselves and the world, so we can begin moving closer to truth and clarity without getting stuck in simplistic narratives. We awaken a sense of interconnection and complexity to better understand ourselves and our world. We begin to truly define problems at their core, understanding the drivers of what’s happening, not just obsessing over the symptoms. Inner work is involved here.

Deprogramming Limits - the Illusion (what we believed was certain but wasn’t) taught us many limits - or we accepted many limits. As we hold the two previous themes, we can begin questioning what our true limits are vs telling ourselves a story of what’s possible and what’s not based on illusions. This is where we explore human potential. This is a big part of the inner work as well.

Living Aligned - to live aligned is simply to say we stay connected to these elements and themes as we continue to explore, create, and navigate what we do and create. The process is never “done” but always unfolding. To live aligned is to maintain the spirit being deeply embodied as a human being interconnected with all things. What would it look like to create and BE aligned with that?

That said, I believe there is a path where we destroy ourselves and a path where we do not. Both bad actors and system dynamics of the old paradigm are at play here, which we will explore more soon. Then there is also our worldview and consciousness.

What path we go down comes down to how we embrace the one we want and whether we take the personal responsibility to hold and embody that vision. I am personally hopeful because I see that path and see little value in constantly sitting in ideas of doom and gloom. Plus, in my practiced spirituality, I feel that underlying “this isn’t all there is” deep in my being.

We have to ensure we don’t continue to play into and create the old paradigm. Can we embrace elements of the framework above to stay out of narrative traps, fear traps, division, and illusions that keep us separate and polarized? How can we see our world and ourselves in a new light based on the chaos happening around us? What is the chaos saying about ourselves? (Hint: if you feel “it’s just the bad guys at the top,” think deeper.) How can we take short-term responsibility to create local connections, relationships and systems that end revalrous and individual-focused dynamics of competition?

As we ask ourselves these questions and truly practice a new state of being, you will often find that literally the lens through which you see the world changes. You move from seeing, perhaps, only the bad and poor outcomes, to seeing the world much more holistically.

Looking A Little Deeper

One thing I want to say is this: when I look out at the media landscape, I generally feel we have still not collectively grasped the challenges we face. It’s primarily because we are stuck in a disintegrated version of Breaking The Illusion.

That is to say, we are narrative battling or stuck in the blame game without looking deeper. Whether it’s blaming elites, one political side, one class of fellow citizens or another country, blaming doesn’t get us deeper.

Instead, I still think we have to look at the wider consciousness and the system it has created as our way of seeing the challenges we face more clearly. We have to begin Awakening Curiosity & Interconnection at a cultural level. These themes need to be part of how we make sense of the world.

Let’s consider an overwhelming story that drives our consciousness: we are fundamentally separate from each other and nature, and therefore it makes sense to compete with one another to improve our individual quality of life, even if it is at the expense of each other or the natural world.

This concept of ourselves as separate beings creates the illusion that we can thrive at others' expense, ignoring our complete dependence on natural systems like forests and soil microbiota, and establishing the foundation for increasingly dangerous conflicts.

If you look closely, this is how our world turns. Systems have been set up where it is every person for themselves, and while collaboration is an option, it’s not overly incentivized compared to thinking purely individually.

Further, in our current market economy as it is, an old, beautiful tree in a forest is seen as valuable only when chopped down and turned into lumber, yet valueless when it stands in the forest’s complex ecosystem, doing many great things for the totality of nature (including us).

This dynamic creates incentives for us to damage the environment wholesale while slowly and surely disconnecting our emotions and connection in the process, so we can more easily participate in the system.

The design of our system, regardless of who we want to blame as bad guys, incentivizes extractive and destructive behavior to survive and gain power. (Reflecting on this level represents breaking the illusion & awakening curiosity and interconnection.)

How could we expect a system that assigns no value to a tree staying in a forest, and that constantly has us in competition with no end, to produce societal results we would thrive in?

Seems silly, doesn’t it?

Within this existing system, we will see the production of bad actors who are conspiring to gain more power and influence within the game. This many people are recognizing (breaking the illusion).

But the disconnect is that people think removing the bad actors will solve the problem (a disintegrated version of breaking the illusion).

It is our programmed consciousness accepting many illusions and the system design itself that is creating the constant competition for survival, the revalrous dynamics that are constantly pulling from the earth and each other, and the race to the bottom dynamics that keep us trying to move faster and faster to beat other people out so we can gain advantage.

For us to move forward requires a new story and state of being that is not built on this deep belief of separation and competition, but one that is centered around our nature of connection and belonging to not just a human family but the natural world.

Embracing What We Can Control

For some of us, much of this seems pie-in-the-sky level thinking because it’s so different than the way our world currently works, and because considering change at this scale seems unfathomable (or maybe you just disagree with me entirely.)

But for me, when I integrate all I’ve learned and experienced in my lifetime exploring these questions, I always come back to this way of orienting.

When I look at the results we are currently creating by seeing it all through the lens of good guys, bad guys, teams, political parties, etc, things only seem to be getting worse as people descend into despair, division, vengefulness, and greater forms of competition. Something isn’t working when we look too shallowly at defining the challenges we face.

This is a call to look deeper, to truly begin to ask whether we understand what is driving our world, as this is what will help us understand solutions.

Knowing what we can and cannot control in life is key. We don’t have our hands on the levers of power when it comes to societal decisions that are made. For example, right now the world is watching Palestinians be genocided while having no way to stop it. It’s a very challenging feeling to navigate when you feel so strongly about how inhumane what’s happening is, yet have no idea of how to stop it in the immediate or short term. This is the reality of the intensity of the human experience. We can go mad focusing every day on the atrocities without integrating them into the whole and knowing what we can and cannot control immediately.

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In exploring what we can and can’t control, I’ll end with some final thoughts:

Story and narrative drive illusions or clarity, starting with sensemaking is key.

• How can we understand what is happening at a deeper level? Might we have to change our media consumption?

• How can we reflect on where our narratives are coming from, and how do we know they provide clarity vs just feeding into another agenda? (embrace curiosity!)

• Are we truly understanding what is driving our world systems, how they are designed, and what those designs produce in terms of results?

• How much content do we consume that inspires us and keeps us grounded when it comes to these themes? How much is inviting us into new ideas and ways of seeing things?

• How can we create a culture of complexity and curiosity? Perhaps starting with ourselves, how we comment and communicate with each other and on social media.

Creating local connections and parallel systems can be inspiring and actionable.

• How can we set up local connections, communities and relationships that bring us together?

• Have we considered solution framing like the difference between short term in system solutions, long term in system solutions, short term out system solutions, and long term out system solutions? (these can help us feel a sense of direction.)

Exploring our worldview and state of being is powerful too.

• How can we spend some time each day finding a sense of grounding, peace and resilience?

• How can we slow down, more intentional with our actions, and be less in survival mode throughout the day? This state shapes how we see the world and how we act. Do we want to act from survival or a sense of settling and connection? This might be one of the most important elements as the constant doom and gloom orientation I see in people is largely physiological: they are habitually in survival mode, struggling to find settling and connection to themselves.

• How can we become more personally responsible and not feel passive?

• How can we explore how we feel about being separate and competitive individuals? Have we heard other perspectives on this question?

• What is our human potential in terms of creating a peaceful and collaborative society? How do we know the stories we tell ourselves about this are true? (can we be curious?)

There is a whole course that could be taught on all of these things. But I wanted to say something that could provide a nudge to switch things up if you find yourself in a rut of despair or looking for a next step.

Honestly, I’ve found in doing this work for so many years and teaching at various stages, embracing curiosity and a ‘beginner’s mind’ in exploring our world and what else we can do is one of the most powerful pieces to this.

Finally, noting that we don’t want to simply get stuck in Breaking the Illusion all the time is key too, this is to say, “what’s next?”

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This article will probably reveal some obvious personal insecurities, but I well remember my first week at college. I remember how the most attractive women seemed to gravitate to the big jocks and I suffered quite a lot of rejection as I manifested the superficial preferences of the Playboy philosophy.

My high school did not have a football team, but Tufts University did and there were several freshman recruits in my freshman suite. I remember coming back from the library after studying to find the living room trashed as they had had a wrestling tournament in my absence.

I have to confess that I love watching football, especially the pros, but there is little doubt about what the cost of idolizing sports stars and other “celebrities” has done to our culture.

This has led to a trend of anti-intellectual and anti-science bias as universities pay for their research arms with the income from sports, especially football and basketball.

Epic Social Commentary by Tom Wolfe

Years ago, I read I Am Charlotte Simmons, a novel by Tom Wolfe, that wonderfully captured the imbalance between sports and academics in American life. The protagonist was a young woman from a small town who attended a large university and was oblivious to the heroics of the campus athletes. When she becomes a tutor to a basketball star always surrounded by groupies, who lives in a separate apartment building with its own chef, they have a relationship which demonstrates how the jocks live compared to ordinary students, and how they are treated as Gods.

What this has fostered in our society is a culture of intense competition versus cooperation; and the broad acceptance of Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest has exacerbated the way the professional sports culture, in particular, has impacted our lives in America, and now the world at large.

Winning is everything.

We have these huge stadiums filled with thousands of screaming fans, full of booze and gambling, and focused entirely on the external world – the field of course, the giant screen and the loud, drumbeat music. When a TV camera finds a group they feel the need to yell, scream and gesticulate like wild animals.

Sports is paying millions to the university but what do they contribute to values of introspection or contemplation. Does any spectator have the mental space to sit back and say, “Wow, here I am in this amazing place. Who am I?”

A Rise of Tribalism

Instead of a life of the mind, the sports craze has fostered intense tribalism, both in college and as professional teams, composed of mercenary athletes, purport to represent municipalities and their stadiums are subsidized by taxes that could be used for humanistic purposes.

As the Wolfe novel dramatizes so well, this has also led to the insane growth of celebrity status for successful athletes to the detriment of recognition of other attributes, like brains.

The problem is that this tribalism has also promoted a sense of the need to dominate rather than just win, and the adulation of only the champion -- so that a silver or bronze medal is hardly even recognized, except in the case of athletes that have overcome some personal adversity to generate interest in the media.

I believe that this quest for domination is the essence of the Paternalistic trend in our society, as a force for false masculinity at the expense of any divine femininity.

It has also led to xenophobia and the promotion of white supremacy, which is ironic since the same trend has served to elevate the financial status of great athletes of other ethnicities.

Ancient Cultures were Somewhat Different

It is interesting to compare today’s Olympics with the contests of the ancient Greeks. A few years ago, I was appalled as fans loved the utter domination by the U.S. professional basketball “Dream Team” over less experienced countries, and especially in the way America rubbed it in opponents’ faces.

Interestingly, the world has caught up, and there are some amazing pro basketball players from Europe and Africa that have equalized the competition but again emphasizing only the external physical attributes of the players over any other important qualities.

And of course, the Ancient Olympics did not have commercial sponsorships. Winners received olive wreaths and fame, often leading to political advantages and gifts upon returning home, but they did not become conglomerates like today’s top athletes.

Our modern Olympics, by contrast, are heavily commercialized with corporate sponsorships, broadcasting rights (NBC paid $7.75 billion for rights from 2022-2032), merchandise, and professional athletes.

We Pay a Steep Price for this Distortion

All of this has led to a terrible distortion of priorities among young people. It is bad enough among young men, but with young women the same commercialism and celebrity culture has led to body shaming and severe mental problems.

Of course, these distorted values have also led to unbridled materialism as opposed to any appreciation for mental abilities or spiritual attributes that students might also possess. And it has made the need to dominate, a main Paternalistic attribute, a sought-after value in our society, which has carried over into our relationship with the natural world.

It’s hard to see a solution given today’s material reality, and the influence of the corporate media in promoting and selling these cultural values; they are embedded deeply in our society.

The one silver lining I have noted, however, is that it has led to the acceptance of different cultures as their athletes succeed and the reduction of racism in some areas as white audiences have come to accept black and Latino athletes, as long as they are winners. There is also some wonderful sportsmanship displayed at the end of contests where millionaire winners shake hands with the millionaire losers.

This imbalance has created a great strain on our culture as only certain traits are valued among men and women, to the exclusion of an appreciation for the many other skills and attributes necessary for a successful and democratic society.

When we do see some of the shifts in philosophy that many of us are working for and hope to experience, it would seem that a return to a more normal valuation of athletic prowess as compared to other characteristics might happen.

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