This year marks the 15th year I have been (hopefully) inspiring a conversation based around shifting individual and collective consciousness to embrace a new worldview, and then to re-design society from that new space of being.

The inspiration for this multiple-part essay came from a comment from a reader. (As a side note, I love reading comments from the community, and it often gets me thinking and creating new content, so keep sharing your thoughts.) Note that this first part is very foundational. I will address many specifics and common thoughts related to global change and solutions as we go.

The reader’s comment was asking about 'solutions' to the many challenges we face on the planet. It focused on the reality of an unelected elite of people who have their own agendas outside of doing what's best for the public. People who can buy or influence politicians no matter who is in power.

Within that context, the reader asked things like: How do we have power or a voice when powerful people do whatever they want? How do we resist the Great Reset? What can we do to stop deep levels of corruption as we saw during COVID?

This reader relays a felt sense that many people have about the state of our world: things are out of control, our systems don't work, and we are barreling toward a high surveillance, high control, and technocratic future with The Great Reset. People want to know how we move forward in creating a better world.

I always love these types of questions. I'd say they are million-dollar questions. They are the crux of what many of us have been asking for almost two decades as we've investigated the nature of consciousness, economic and political systems, and our way of life and being. Especially if you are someone like myself who believes a better world is possible.

To be honest, people don't typically like the answers I believe are the way forward when it comes to these questions. Usually, people stop their inquiry at "everyone just needs to be a good person." or "A better world will just manifest itself from our consciousness." I think this happens because that's what many popular authors have written in their best-selling books. Authors who haven't sought to truly think about what it will take to 'get there' because it's a big question.

The good news is this is all changing. People are seeing the old world develop more and more cracks in its armor but can also sense the difficulty that's likely coming as an old way of seeing the world grasps on for its last breaths. More and more people are curious about how we can move towards re-designing our society, and this is inspiring.

To attempt to answer the questions from our reader we have to recognize that the truth is our current society is vast and interconnected in how it functions and operates. To avoid extreme chaos, creating solutions will require deep thought and engagement from people who know a more thriving society is possible. We'll need to build transitionary and flexible solutions.

Still, to do all this we need to understand what's behind why our world is the way it is and how we all contribute to upholding it. Aside from being able to clearly define our problem, we also have to have the ability to communicate effectively with one another.

An Idea

In order to tackle this discussion I'll go back to a thesis of sorts I put out in 2014. It's a set of 4 ingredients I find are necessary within each of us as we prepare to hold the possibility of a new reality and the practical transition steps that will need to be taken to get there.

I don't believe my thesis is perfect per se, but it's the best I have thus far. It's not a rigid idea that makes everyone 'the same,' nor is it something I’m saying everyone has to believe in order to see “the way” forward. It's simply a set of concepts that everyone experiences at some point in their life.

This thesis came about through reaching hundreds of millions of people through my first project called Collective Evolution. I gained a deep level of insight into what makes people open up, change themselves, and explore new ideas.

We are all in very different places in how we see the world. You might argue we are at different stages in how our consciousness is evolving to hold a new worldview and way of being. This understanding is important in the context of creating the scale of change I'm talking about.

The 4 ingredients are:

Breaking The Illusion

Breaking The Illusion is coming to terms with the fact that our existing systems are not what we think they are. That what we believe about them is typically gleaned from years of propaganda and stories that act as wool pulled over our eyes so we cannot see or question the truth of what they are.

We learn The Illusion from family, friends, society, traditions, school, media and government. It is the world we are told to accept. "This is how it works and how it is."

It's true that The Illusion is just a story, but it's a powerful one that permeates our consciousness and our body. It's built right into our nervous systems. The good news is humans made up our society based on the culture and worldview we hold and uphold. To change it, we have to crack open that illusion to start wondering what else there can be.

Examples: The story that mainstream media will tell you the truth is part of The Illusion. Believing that the government is operating in your best interest is part of The Illusion. Believing that pharmaceutical companies put safe products over their own profits is part of The Illusion. You get the picture. People believe in a society that doesn't do what it says it does.

Awakening Neutrality (Embracing Uncertainty)

Here we take a step back, beyond political sides, polarity, ideologies and certainty. A sense of neutrality and uncertainty gives us the state of mind and state of being to be able to ask better questions. We act as sacred scientists truly seeking to understand why something happens - without bias stopping our inquiry.

What stories, beliefs, and worldviews shape our decisions, societal design, and more? Neutrality and uncertainty help us explore what drives society. Here we start to understand the metaphysics of our current reality and way of being.

Examples: Moving beyond political sides and ceasing to see our world as black and white is part of awakening neutrality. Stepping out of ideological thinking is part of awakening neutrality. Developing a sense of empathy enough to wonder WHY something is happening or WHY someone does something is awakening neutrality. Always seeking to one-up our competition in debate is awakening neutrality. Instead, we come together in the spirit of synthesis.

How do our beliefs come to be? Are they really true? Have our environment and systems shaped our behavior? Now we're asking better questions.

Deprogramming Limits

With more neutrality on board we are able to embrace the idea of moving past stories, ideas, and concepts we learned from 'The Illusion.' This usually involves engaging in things like personal transformation, changing habits and patterns, healing trauma, exploring our bias' and more. Nervous system health, embodiment, and wisdom become ways through which we can move past old stories and into holding new potentials for what is possible.

The Illusion begins to move out of our mind and body, and we create space to allow creativity and our hearts to imagine and develop new possibilities. We let go to make room for something new.

Examples: We begin to see that our world doesn't have to have an economic system that has existed in the past, but we can invent a new one - perhaps we see a possibility of not needing one at all. We can embrace a new story of what it means to be human, perhaps one that isn't built on competition, dominance, and separation, but on connection, cooperation, and thrivability.

Living Aligned

Living aligned is like practicing a new worldview regularly and seeking to interact with one another and build our society around a new way of thinking and being. With a new lens of how we see our world and ourselves, gained from the other 3 ingredients, how might we create our society now?

Here is where we practice having the capacity to collectively synthesize and create new ways of living. We don't have to spend so much time arguing over political ideologies or which news if fake or not, instead we are now in the space of recognizing we don't need to protect the old world, but can plan a safe way of moving from where we are now to a world of ever-evolving possibility.

We don't need to go back in time to burning wood for heat and every human having to grow fields of food for just their family. We now have the ability to unleash technology in an ethical way that can work alongside a spirit of communing with nature and working together. Financial systems no longer need to limit innovation and access, people can be free.

We're At Different Stages

Given each of the ingredients, we can see that we are all different in how much of each make up our individual composition.

Some are in need of breaking The Illusion as they might believe everything their government or mainstream media says without question - even when they are being lied to. Others have broken The Illusion but are still very polarized and ideological in their thinking. They are in need of exploring a sense of neutrality and personal transformation to heal the wounds brought on by The Illusion. Still, others are in the midst of personal transformation and are consistently curious about what our future world could truly look like. They aren't set in their ways and are open to learning each day. They are looking for others to explore new and fresh conversations with around how our future can look.

It's a beautiful tapestry in its own way, even though it can feel frustrating that things don't change very much at times. But at the same time we all act as evolutionary pressures for one another. Sometimes we inspire each other, other times we challenge each other to develop more empathy, and other times we simply challenge each other to hone our communication skills.

Earth is a playground for deep learning. We've lost the spirit of play in a world we take way too damn seriously. This spirit of play doesn't exist too frequently in The Illusion. Usually for one to re-ignite a spirit of curiosity, wonder, connection, and play, they break The Illusion and start playing with neutrality and deprogramming limits. This is where I believe we truly start to feel freedom and know what it's like to live from our heart and soul. These concepts seem a lot more foreign when deeply invested in The Illusion. In fact, these concepts will be ridiculed within The Illusion.

In acknowledging our differences, we see the challenge that our world is a co-created reality. Those in power have achieved their level of dominance through collective perception control and by keeping everyone in a state of survival. Not to separate 'us' too much from the 'powerful elite,' as we are still connected, but in order for us to change the game we have to get on the same page to co-create a new societal design.

This, to me, means inspiring each other to explore the various ingredients I laid our in order to begin new conversations, personally transform, and become a true agent of change that can move us toward a thriving world.

For some that have followed my work for a long time you know I have jumped around from exploring consciousness to personal transformation to journalism to societal design to trauma and nervous system health and so on. This was because this underlying thesis that has been within me for a long time drove me to want to create different bits of content or 'seeds' that could grow in various people at various stages of their exploration.

Some need to break The Illusion through FOIA requests, others want to find resilience and capacity through nervous system healing and an exploration of consciousness. For some reason I want to provide something for all. I can't help it.

Getting Back To Solutions & The Great Reset

With that, there are people who are asking for solutions who still believe in 'The Illusion.' This is to say that people are looking to remove one politician for the next or believe that the Democratic party, for example, being voted into power would solve our problems. Or that the democratic process we have now works best to create a thriving society. These 'solutions' are limited, in system, old story, and often don't have a clear grasp on the reality of how our world works. They aren't good solutions because the problem they are trying to fix is not clearly defined.

Then there are people who might have broken The Illusion but are still operating from many of the wounds of the old paradigm - The Illusion. Sometimes they want revenge and to see the 'bad elites' put in jail or killed. They believe this to be the solution to our problems. This too fails to see the big picture and what is truly going on. Who do you put in power next once these people are gone? I will talk more on this later, but still we have a poorly defined problem and thus a poor solution.

We could go on with other 'types' of people, but my point isn't to boil humans down to simple boxes, as we are all rather complex. Instead what I'm trying to bring forth here is the need to look at our world and selves more deeply.

If we are to answer the question: how do we resist the Great Reset or how do we have our wishes heard in a world where powerful people dominate the masses, we have to go deeper. As you'll learn, I'm not one to believe that the only way forward is to simply go off-grid and start a community. This can be part of a solution for the time being, but for me I seek a solution that works for the planet, not just the few groups of people who can afford to buy land and do that.

I'm calling us to dream, to wonder, and to be curious about what is truly going on in our world and what parts of us stop us from truly creating a thriving society.

In the next part of this essay we will explore the reason why we must ask better questions if we wish to truly 'defeat The Great Reset' and create a thriving world. Subscribe to get the rest of this essay in the coming days.