I Am

I am everything that is...I am cloud and rain and earth and tree and flower. I am every fruit I have ever tasted, I am water and fowl and sheep and cattle and lamb. I am forged in the stars, I am sunlight and heat, I am wind and the slow, chill movement of icy glaciers. I am fish and bird and dinosaur...I am Jewish holocaust victim and the one who tormented and killed those innocents. I am crusader, I am warrior, I am heathen and lover of language...I am Jesus, nailed to the cross, and I am those who wielded the hammers that caused such pain. I am Vlad the Impaler and I am Buddha, who sits and smiles because the truth has chosen to make itself known. I am rocks and mountains and sand and oil and the effervescent sheen of a morning rainbow. I am ALL of the ALL; which means I am nothing special, yet everything true.

Every atom within my body is truly non-human. They have gathered together in a playful dance to temporarily sing me into existence. They carry within them the memories of all that has come before me; they hold in their infinite centers the dark, inspiring tales of life in all its mad glory. Death, love, sorrow, bliss...the eternal pleasures and sufferings of a thousand billion trillion infinite moments...all these are etched in atomic electrons that carve their immutable truths into my soul. Whatever I think I know, I know much more than I believe.

My umbilical cord to my mother is the every breath I take - it connects me to this world that holds and loves me. My exhales are a gift to my mother, an energetic offering that feeds my brothers and sisters in this world. Every beat of my heart, every thought in my head, every feeling and sensory perception I have does not belong to ME. It belongs to this world, through which I am temporarily passing in the form I label as "me." I am the gift that keeps on giving unto infinity and beyond, the miracle of the essence of life itself. I have no beginning, no end and no destination.

I AM the journey.

Walk with me?

Personal Improvement Action Steps To Create a Better World

Whenever I talk about Sacred Economics people often respond by asking me what they can personally DO to change our society. It's a common frustration. Intuitively we're coming to realize we're stuck in a social system that doesn't support an adult approach to life, because it was created by a juvenile species. As a structure designed by adolescents to control the wayward behavior of other adolescents, our system fosters continued adolescent behavior: self-consciousness, self-absorption, alienation, competition, fear that we're not "good enough," judgment, cliquishness and group-think, rebellion, aggression, short-term gratification, unfettered growth and consumption, a need for external validation and a tendency toward self-destructiveness.

While changing "the system" is an impossible task for any single person to accomplish, what we can each begin to change, one person at a time, is our unconscious practice of adolescent behaviors. We can change those patterns by noticing where we are acting like juveniles and - without blaming ourselves for being what our society has programmed us to be - stretching toward our personal adulthood. What we're seeking to attain by doing so are higher degrees of self-governance, self-discipline, self-awareness and yes...self-love.

Adolescence sucks. Ask anyone who's been through it and come out the other side, and the almost unanimous opinion is they'd rather have their teeth pulled without anesthesia than go through it over again. Yet here we are, called upon by life itself to go through it again collectively, and emerge as a fledgling adult human species. Since we already know how good it feels to get adolescence over with, why not start now?

In that spirit, I'm attaching my practical self-guide for stepping into my own adulthood, in the hope it may provide some concrete ideas for how we can collectively begin to make this transition. Feel free to add any new ideas or practices of your own, and embrace only those that resonate with you.


Daily Practices:

1. Upon waking, offer joyful gratitude to life for the opportunity it’s gifted me to be in this world one more day.

2. When preparing meals, ask myself if the food I’m choosing best serves my cells and body, so they can serve me.

3. When greeting other people, notice – REALLY notice – who they are (instead of what they’re doing) and honor their inner aliveness.

4. When doing my chores, stay focused on the task at hand and place all my attention on what I am doing instead of distracting myself by thinking about other things.

5. Turn off the television. Read books that sing to my heart and soul, spend time in nature and pay attention to the non-human life that is going on all around me. When I do choose to watch TV, choose programs that enlighten me, inspire me, are supportive of life or bring me deep enjoyment.

6. When confronted by a challenge, slow down. Breathe deeply and do not take personally whatever is happening. Every challenge presents an opportunity for me to transform a disagreement or misunderstanding into love. Respond from a place of compassion when I feel ready.

7. If I find myself around people who feel compelled to measure, judge and compare others, be silent. Walk away…or if I must speak, comment only on how amazing, gifted and infinitely complex each one of us truly is.

8. Pay close attention to my body’s signals. If it feels tired, give it rest. If it craves exercise, take it outside for a walk. If it feels hungry, nourish it. If it feels “bored” shift my attention to the complexity and activities happening in my surroundings, or change my surroundings to place my body at ease.

9. Notice my daily habits and static patterns of behavior. Am I doing things because that’s the way I’ve always done them, or am I doing things because the way I do them makes sense? Focus on changing any habits I could do better or more efficiently.

10. Be kind to myself throughout the day. Remember to enjoy the sense of a task well done, to reward myself with the occasional joy or treat after completing something hard, and take frequent time-outs to appreciate the beauty and miracles of life.

11. Stay in the moment. Practice calmness and serenity whenever I encounter people, images or stories that try to push my attention into the future or drive it into the past. Remind myself I have no power in either of those places. Steward my energy accordingly. Anger and fear diminish my ability to respond from a state of complete awareness, so notice them if they arise and allow them to subside before I respond.

12. When I’m ready to go to sleep at night, take a moment to look back on the day’s experiences and accomplishments. Remind myself that today I’ve brought a bit more love into the world than was here the day before. Be satisfied with that knowing. If today is to be my last day of life, remind myself how very good it was.


Longer Term Practices

1. Pay attention to how we’re all relating to each other. If I am presented with an opportunity to demonstrate what it feels like to give more than I take, then do so. If I find myself in a situation where someone asks for my help, offer it without requiring anything in return. Know that whatever assistance I can offer them will enable them to assist others in the long run, which is good for me.

2. Notice my spending and consumption habits and patterns. Am I buying and using things because that’s the way I’ve always done it, or am I being thoughtful about and appreciative of the life energy that has gone into producing what I am using?

3. Notice the garbage I am producing. Are there ways to reduce or eliminate some of my waste, or to recycle it more effectively? Am I composting any food waste and returning those nutrients to Earth in a helpful way?

4. Be more conscious of my water consumption. Can I recycle my bathwater, or reduce the time I’m spending in the shower? Is my landscaping native to my environment, or does it consume excessive time and energy to support? Am I using biodegradable products wherever possible to protect the planetary water supply?

5. Pay attention to my food supply. Is the food I eat grown as locally as possible, or does it consume vast quantities of energy to bring it to my table? Am I growing my own food and learning more about the time and work it takes to produce good food? What about the animals and animal products I’m consuming – are they well-treated and humanely cared for, or am I contributing to their misery by participating in their exploitation and consumption?

6. Look more deeply at the goods I purchase. Are they well made, or are they simply cheap? Do I want to buy products that are cheap and disposable, or things that will last me a lifetime? Do I allow advertising to sway me around what I “need” by selling me things I may want?

7. Notice my own travel patterns. Do I ride when I could walk, drive alone when I could share rides, organize my chores and trips so I don’t have to make multiple excursions? If I must drive, am I using the most energy efficient vehicle possible for the trip?

8. Continually inventory my possessions. Are there things I’m holding onto I no longer need or use? Can I give them away to someone else in need and not feel deprived? If I give them away, will I need to replace them or can I do without them indefinitely?

9. Practice new ways of sharing and experiment with new ideas. Can I invite someone to share my space if I have extra space? What about tools and other things I rarely use? Can I work with my friends and neighbors to create a rotational schedule, so we all don’t need to buy these rarely used items?

10. Take inventory of the energy usage in my home. Am I conscious of lights left on, fans operating in empty rooms, appliances draining power when no one is using them? Have I continually investigated solar energy, wind energy or the geothermal options for my area?

11. Stay abreast of new technologies that are supportive of sustainability. Even if they are not presently affordable or available, keep interested and continually look for ways to apply them as they become available.

12. Participate more fully in my village. Be open to any requests for help from neighbors and friends who support the practices and policies I myself am supporting. If what is being proposed is loving, sustainable and supportive of life in all its many forms, give whatever I can to bring it to fruition.

13. Lovingly steward ALL children and young people. Know they are eagerly seeking dependable role models in this ever-changing world. They desire NOT to be told what is true or what they “should” do, but for me to demonstrate competence in the skills they hope to achieve. Honor and support their passions, talents, desires and dreams…for they are the ones who will inherit this world I'm co-creating.

There...But For Grace...

Yesterday morning a friend and I dropped by a local coffee shop to relax and chat a while. As we approached the entrance together, I happened to notice an elderly man sitting alone at one of the glass topped outdoor tables. A brown paper coffee cup was resting in front of him, but his hands were busy gesturing as he mumbled toward the sky, perhaps in response to a voice only he could hear. Something about his demeanor prompted me to approach him. I placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, smiled and said, "Good morning, my friend."

His entire face lit up as his attention shifted away from the conversation he'd been having with himself and responded to the sound of my voice. "Hello there. Is this a Club Med?" he asked, motioning vaguely toward the bubbling fountain beside the coffee shop. With the temperature hovering in the mid-eighties, the late morning sun blazing in the cloudless blue sky and the merry burbling of the water beside us, I could understand the logic - if not the nature - of his reasoning.

"Not a Club Med, no. It's a coffee shop." I replied, unsure what else to offer.

"Too bad." He shrugged. "I used to live beneath this place, you know. Ask anyone who's lived here a while what it used to be like before this. Although my home wasn't here, on top. It was inside the Earth. Before it exploded and thrust me into the past, the present and the future all at once."

His face grew animated as he began to tell me his story. He spoke to me of the spaceships, and the awful people who were trying to steal his blood for its unique DNA configuration, which resembled the molecular structure of honey. His mission, he informed me, was to stop the Earth from falling into a hole it can never get out of. Those of us who were milling around the coffee shop - he kindly included me in this explanation - were part of the human Exodus, the souls he was here to protect from the invaders.

I noticed how his fingernails were encrusted with the deep layers of dirt that accumulate from too many days without access to clean running water. His clothes, while neat, were worn and threadbare. Off to one side stood a shopping cart neatly packed with whatever precious items he'd managed to collect for himself on his travels. A blue plastic tarp covered the entire basket, preventing me from seeing the treasures within.

As I listened to his story, I found myself shifting between awe at the level of intelligent coherence he projected as he spun his tale, and compassion based on the realization he occupied a world no one else could truly enter. It was a magical realm indeed, filled with demons and heroes and adventures and lots of danger, while at the same time it was tinged with hope and wrapped in a deep sense of purpose. When he finished speaking he gazed up at me expectantly, waiting for something. What though? What could I possibly have to offer a man I couldn't understand?

Suddenly, I realized what he most needed from me wasn't for me to validate (or challenge) his ideas. By some serendipitous miracle a stranger had reached out to him and, at least in this one precious moment, had gifted him the chance to make some - any - slim connection with another person. That was what I had to offer, and it was enough. I smiled and patted his shoulder once again. "Well," I said, "That is some story. Best of luck to you, and I wish you success."

He laughed and pocketed the cash I offered him as if it was more of a distraction than something to be noted and appreciated. "I'm gonna be alright," he said, eyes twinkling. "I know how to take care of myself. Don't you worry 'bout me."

I walked away then, aware I wasn't worried about him in the least. Somehow, despite whatever dark nights of the soul and tragedies of the heart he'd experienced in his charred and broken past, he'd created a new world for himself out of the ashes. It was a world in which other people played minor supporting roles now and again, but where his primary "reality" mainly unfolded through the story inside his own mind.

It's a place I happen to know all too well, because I've been there myself the past. It's called psychosis. The alien landscape where my new friend dwells, perhaps permanently, is a world of his own creation. His mind has gotten so rooted in its own thoughts that his body has grown physically disconnected from external reality. While the body checks into the world now and then to tend to its basic needs - mundane things like shelter, food and sleep - as soon as those needs are satisfied he retreats to the world inside his mind once again. For people in his condition, sensory input is experienced not for what it actually is, but for what the mind has chosen to believe it to be so it "fits" into the story his mind is telling.

Angry, judgmental people become the alien abductors; the distant sounds of airplanes become invisible hovering spaceships. Kindly passing strangers become members of the Exodus team; the shopping mall becomes a cover for a hidden underground world filled with strange plants and beasts. Luckily for him, the saga he's woven is epic; it's exciting and coherent and open to lots of interesting possibilities as time passes. It is, I suspect, a story with enough of a punch to carry him for years.

It occurred to me then, as I entered the cool shaded realm of the coffee shop, ordered my tall mocha with whipped cream and prepared to settle into a comfortable chair and talk with my friend about our intertwined lives, that the only difference between him and me was that I'd managed - with the help of a loving family, good friends and an excellent doctor - to pull myself back from the precipice of mental illness before I'd fallen in so deep no one could help me. Most days these days I find myself fully connected to reality, surrounded by people who perceive the same things I perceive. Still, every so often a panic attack overwhelms me, reminding me just how fragile is the mind, and how lonely and frightening a place it can be when we're trapped inside it alone.

That's why yesterday morning I gifted a piece of myself to the man from the center of the Earth. There but for the grace of God...go all of us.

The Inherent Limitations of Capitalism

After much contemplation, below is a brief list of the inherent problems and fundamental shortcomings I've found in the capitalistic/for-profit paradigm. It's my belief that these problems reflect the adolescent mindset that created the system. Adolescents are fond of win/lose games, because they require external validation to feel good about themselves. Adults, on the other hand, prefer win/win games, because they validate themselves based on how much they are able to self-actualize and contribute to the well-being and success of others. Feel free to explore these issues more deeply, to ask questions and challenge your preexisting beliefs around capitalism for yourself. It's vital for humanity's social evolution and maturation that we let go of all the unexamined beliefs that have been instilled in us since childhood, and discern for ourselves what feels more right and true as we move forward...together.

1) Capitalism is designed to facilitate the flow of human creativity through a direct-exchange process (I'll give something to you if you give something to me) rather than an indirect one (I'll take what I need out of the larger system and when I'm able I'll give back whatever I can produce for everyone else's benefit.) Indirect exchange is nature's blueprint. The flower feeds the bee, which feeds the bear, which dies and feeds the insects, which nourish the earth, which feeds the flower. Because direct exchange is overly simplistic and highly limited - I may desperately need your corn but you have no present need for my masonry skills - we invented money to represent conceptual value and reduce the inherent problems with direct exchange. However, the human population and its concurrent ability to be more creative and productive over time have been expanding exponentially, so our need for money to change hands for an exchange to take place is actually hindering our ability to create and exchange all we're capable of doing and producing. There isn't enough money in the world to effectively match all our efforts and abilities; we now have to wait for it to become available BEFORE we can perform.

2)In a for-profit paradigm, "success" means continually taking out of the system MORE than you put into it. Even if you then reinvest your profits, you're doing so in order to take out even more than you extracted the first time at a later date. Since everyone is continually taking out more than they're putting in (or trying to) the system itself grows consistently more impoverished. One of the first rules of biology is that any whole must be greater than the sum of its many parts. Unless we design human society around that principle, the system is bound to collapse. Why be part of something that forces you to be "less than" you could be on your own? (The seething resentment this fosters explains why so many of us feel alienated and try to game or cheat the system.)

3)Allowing the "free market" (buyers and sellers) to dictate what gets produced and how it gets distributed is fundamentally undemocratic, because it denies a vote to those who don't have enough money to participate in the decision-making process. What gets produced is thus predicated upon who can afford to pay for it; how it gets distributed depends upon how much people are willing to bid for an item as they bid AGAINST each other. It's an amoral system conceptually; when applied to living beings it becomes profoundly immoral. When we fail to feed human beings who can't afford to buy the food they need to survive AND we've destroyed their ability to provide for themselves through ownership laws and other property restrictions, we're valuing monetary profits above life itself.

4)Capitalism requires constant growth and continual consumption to satisfy the ever-present profit motive and thus sustain itself. Our primary motivation is to acquire ever MORE. No living organism can consume and grow forever without destroying its host in the process, so capitalism is an inherently unsustainable model that must be released, or it will inevitably collapse.

5)Capitalism functions like a Ponzi scheme. All global lands have long been sold off and parceled out to the wealthy privileged few who got here first, so all new humans born into this world arrive with a huge disadvantage as the population rapidly expands. Like any Ponzi scheme, capitalism will thus always produce more winners than losers. Since the value of money is relative - I must have more money than you to outbid you for what we both want - no amount of cash infused into the system can correct that fundamental flaw. Prices will simply rise to siphon off the newly infused cash, enriching the wealthy even more.

6)Capitalism promotes unhealthy competition by fostering a 'destroy the enemy' siege mentality. A destroy the enemy approach promotes more, cheaply made products at lower prices, which cheapens society and creates more waste in the long run. Healthy competition asks the question, "how can I improve upon what has already been done by others?" Its aim is to elevate society by making it more beautiful, functional and long lasting.

7) Capitalism discourages cooperation. Anti-trust laws were invented because we can't trust our companies not to collude against the best interests of humanity in their quest to earn a profit. If companies were motivated and rewarded NOT by monetary profits, but because they performed a valuable service for the social good, they could get together and share ideas that could facilitate far more rapid advancement in how we produce things, as well as in what we're producing.

8)Because capitalism requires constant consumption to generate continuous profits, it must manufacture needs to induce spending by the wealthy once basic needs have been mainly satisfied. (An example of a manufactured need is a product like health insurance. Another would be cable TV.) Capitalism also creates artificial lack by deliberately keeping supplies of goods tightly controlled and limited, forcing people to bid up for them so adequate profits can be made. This keeps people trapped in the economic system by forcing them to continually labor to earn enough money to pay for the things they believe they need to ensure their own survival. It also destroys human trust and core competency by turning us all into children, entirely dependent upon an economic system that doesn't genuinely care about our well-being, to provide us with what we need.

9) Capitalism, through its use of money to represent conceptual value, has promoted the worship of an abstraction over a genuine appreciation of tangibles. As a result, our reverence for the importance of each thing based on its own inherent worth has been greatly diminished. For example, we intuitively consider a $10 hammer more valuable than a 20 cent orange - ask any schoolchild and they'll regurgitate the "correct" conceptual answer. Ask an indigenous person in the Brazilian rain forest which is more valuable however, and he'll tell you that if he's hungry, he appreciates the orange. If he needs to build something, he appreciates the hammer. One is NOT more valuable than the other - they're both priceless when they are necessary!

10)Capitalism fails to value the uniqueness of each individual. The social imperative to make money as a goal unto itself enslaves people to the labor force in exchange for their daily bread. People in need of a job to survive are not free to explore their skills, talents, passions and abilities and discern what they can best contribute to the whole over the long run. Capitalism therefore creates obstacles to genuine self-actualization.

11)Capitalism is a dangerous practice, in that it consistently undermines and exploits the one thing that can truly sustain us long-term - our planet - so a few people can gain short-term strategic advantage over the rest of humanity. It removes the sanctity of life - the undefinable aspect of nature that MOST defines us - from the social equation, by placing personal material success ABOVE the survival of the very fabric of life that supports us all.

12)Capitalism reinforces human frailty by blaming the "losers" for their failure to succeed in a system that - by definition - MUST always have more losers than winners for it to work. Since money is relative, I can't be successful unless I possess more of it relative to nearly everybody else. Clearly then, the more money I'm able to hoard, the more losers there will be in relationship to me. Blaming the so-called losers for not being able to lift themselves out of such a system destroys our trust in our abilities as a species, and discourages us from confidently and courageously exploring our own capacities. We "surrender" our dreams to the need to work for a living, rather than reach for the stars to discover and bring forth the best in ourselves.

Embracing the Flow of Creation

Lately I seem to be stumbling more frequently across a New Age teaching promoting the idea that reality is perfect just as it is, and that for us to criticize reality or try to change it in any way is to create suffering for ourselves and others. This seems to be an offshoot of an interpretation of certain Buddhist teachings, which propose that emptiness is our preferred state of being and that all human action is ultimately meaningless since the material world is impermanent.

In my experience, these sorts of beliefs fly in the face of reality itself. While I can grasp a limited benefit to adopting them, I suspect they're really just conceptual intellectual exercises designed to train people to detach themselves emotionally from both the challenges and the seductions of this world so they don't suffer unduly when the world around them changes or the time comes for them to leave it all behind. The rationale goes something like this: If you don't attach meaning to anything that is temporary, how can you feel emotional pain when it inevitably disappears? Likewise, if you don't ascribe any value to your own actions or discern any purpose behind how you relate to the external (material) impermanent world, what does it matter if your actions are not appreciated by others, or if you fail to create the intended result through your actions? In short: if we don't care about anything we experience or do, nothing that happens (or fails to happen) can bother us.

To try and train one's psyche to detach from reality in that way seems absurd. Perhaps it helps lessen the fear of future suffering based on the fear of future loss, but at the same time - for me, at least - it would also require me to surrender all love, joy, appreciation for beauty and the intimate experience that comes from knowing myself to be embedded in, and participatory in, this ever-changing energy that is life.

Do we need to deaden our souls in order not to feel pain? Is the suffering that comes from losing something inevitable if we connect to this impermanent world in an intimate, loving way? Is suffering even something we want to avoid at all costs, or is it simply the price we're required to pay in exchange for experiencing joy? These are all open questions, and I find myself frequently exploring them as I continue my own exploration of this life.

What I seem to be discovering is this: it's possible to open-heartedly and completely embrace an experience, a task or a relationship without experiencing undue or endless suffering when it changes. It's possible if we ALSO embrace an attitude of gratitude, if we remain fully conscious of whatever is still PRESENT once the event we were experiencing or the person we were loving so completely has gone away. Yes, we may feel deep sadness at the loss of a loved one, a temporary hole where that person used to be, but that hole CAN be filled and joy can return to our lives if we make the effort to refocus our attention on giving that same amount of love to everything else around us that is manifesting.

The challenge then, is to discover within ourselves the capacity to be both fully present to life and remain lovingly engaged with it, while learning not to cling to the temporary form it happens to take or try to recover that which is irretrievably lost. A line from a song from the '60's expresses this idea rather nicely: "If you can't be with the one you love, honey...love the one you're with."

While some may interpret that to be a statement promoting free sex, I perceive it to be promoting a deeper truth. To love whatever you're experiencing in every moment, or at the very least to be able to accept your life situation and interact with reality so as to change it for the better if it's not exactly to your liking in the moment, is what life seems to be all about. After all, we were gifted a brain, a body, arms, legs and opposable thumbs for a reason - we're not ethereal minds floating disconnectedly through some vast expanse of empty space. Let's USE the gift of reason then - not to pretend that reality is an illusion, though it clearly is an illusory (temporary) experience in its present form - but to discern how we can make the BEST of what we have in every moment we have breath remaining in us.

Who cares if no one but me ever knows how much I've loved and appreciated being an integral part of this world, or realizes all the things I've done to add a bit more love to the space around me? That I know it of myself, and that when I die I'll get to appreciate both this amazing world AND the gifts I was able to bring into it is what ultimately matters for me in the end. I suspect I'd rather face death from a place of gratitude for having lived my life as fully and deliciously as possible, than from a place of regret that I failed to attach meaning to any of it and as a result lived a meaningless - ultimately wasted and emotionally unsatisfying - life.

I don't have any idea what comes next, or even if there IS such a thing as "next." The best I can do then, is embrace THIS, enjoy this, love this and appreciate this, and allow whatever wants to happen to be.

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference."

Resolving Human Bipolarity

As a woman who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder for a while now, I've had the opportunity to observe how this so-called "disease" manifests inside me, as well as to notice when and why it manifests. I've also learned what to do to help myself move beyond it, to the point where it no longer feels like a medical disorder but has actually become a helpful tool for navigating reality.

The good news is, bipolar disorder isn't "personal." It's actually happening to a whole lot of people these days, which means it's probably something humanity has to move through as part of a collective evolutionary shift in our consciousness.

The best way to explain what I see as the cause of bipolar disorder is to use a computer metaphor most people can understand. Anyone who's ever owned a computer knows that they rely on a basic operating system to make them work. Programmers write applications specific to the operating system using languages the system understands. Things may run smoothly for a while, but inevitably we learn that the operating system we've been using has some serious limitations, so we upgrade to a new operating system. Unfortunately though, after we upgrade we often discover that our old applications will no longer run on the new operating system. That means we need to buy brand new applications (or application upgrades) to get our new system to work.

The modern human brain - like many computers nowadays - is concurrently running dual operating systems: let's call them Humanity 1.0 and Humanity 2.0. Humanity 1.0 has been mankind's default operating system for many thousands of years now. It's a system that basically tells us we're each separate from everything else and that life is a win/lose game. Humanity 1.0's programs are filled with usses and thems, victims and persecutors, the victors and the vanquished. In Humanity 1.0, mankind is the ruler of all that he sees and the entire natural world is his to exploit for strategic advantage. Virtually all our present social applications - our traditional religions, judicial systems, educational systems, economic infrastructures and political systems - were designed to operate effectively using Humanity 1.0.

Sometime in the recent past a new operating system birthed itself into being, one with fewer limitations and a lot of exciting possibilities for the future. It's a pretty cool system too, in that it removes the fear of loss from the game of life and replaces it with things like trust, love and social harmony. Humanity 2.0 informs us we live in a unified, interconnected and fully alive world in which our differentiation doesn't separate us from everything else so much as makes us more valuable to the whole, which in turn nourishes and supports us as individuals and as a collective. Humanity 2.0 proposes that, because everything in life is inextricably interconnected, the only way any of us can truly win is if we all play a win/win game. In Humanity 2.0, mankind's role is to carefully steward the world's natural resources for the long term benefit of all the life forms with whom we share our space. While Humanity 2.0 is a wonderful operating system, to date mankind hasn't written many applications that run on it. That makes it really hard for our brains to function well in 2.0, because our existing programs only run on 1.0.

What, you're probably asking by now, does any of this have to do with human bipolar disorder? My proposition, based on my own internal experience, is that what we presently call bipolar disorder is actually a clinical observation of what happens to people under one of four problematic operating conditions:

1) Their minds are running on Humanity 1.0 and they perceive themselves as big losers in the game of life (depression.)

2) Their minds are running on Humanity 1.0 and they momentarily perceive themselves as huge winners in the game of life (mania.)

3) Their minds are running on Humanity 2.0, but they keep bucking up against those who are running on 1.0 and don't understand how to play a win/win game (depression.)

4) Their minds are running on Humanity 2.0, but they haven't yet found enough useful applications to help them manage the system's immense capacities and bring some working structure to the game of life (mania).

The trouble is, none of the programs we've written for Humanity 1.0 will run on Humanity 2.0, because win/lose games are fundamentally incompatible with a win/win operating system. If we try running a 1.0 program on the 2.0 system we wind up with a total system crash, which I can tell you REALLY hurts the head! A hard reboot will eventually restart the system, but it isn't a pleasant experience from inside.

For an example of the kind of system incompatibility I'm talking about, let's consider the environmental folks known as "ELF," which stands for "Environmental Liberation Front." As 2.0 operators, they fervently want all of us to do whatever we can to nurture and support the environment that sustains us. So far, so good. The trouble begins though, when they then go out and blow up automobile dealerships that sell gas guzzling trucks and SUV's to make their point. That's clearly a 1.0 solution for a 2.0 operation. It's also bound to get the attention of the 1.0 police, who perceive the new system as some kind of worm, virus or other no-good intruder and try to kill it, or at least box it up for a good long time so it can't create any more conflict with the 1.0 system.

An example of 2.0 software that some people tried - and failed miserably - to run on the 1.0 system would be (don't bite my head off!) communism. As an economic philosophy communism was a win/win application, written to illustrate what our world could look like if everyone supported everyone else in maximizing their talents, passions and skills, then we each gifted of our abilities freely to everyone else. It predicted a world of peaceful abundance, and would have been just fine running on Humanity 2.0. The trouble with applying communism to society at the time it was first implemented was that the 2.0 operating system wasn't up and running in nearly enough human beings, so the proponents of communism tried to jam it onto Humanity 1.0 using the power and fear of fascism to make it work. Win/win games can't succeed at the point of a gun, so the 2.0 program crashed and burned and everyone assumed the program itself was very badly written. Unfortunate, but predictable with the benefit of 2.0 hindsight.

The key to successfully navigating this complex systems/programming mess seems to be twofold. First, we must remember there is always an operator - our own internal sense of awareness - who can choose, at any moment, which operating system he or she wants to run. If we don't choose consciously, our unconscious mind will choose a system for us, which means by default we'll mainly be running the very limited Humanity 1.0, since it's the system most compatible with our existing applications. If we choose instead to consciously run Humanity 2.0, which is kind of like an iPhone on super steroids, we then have to take some responsibility for designing new software for everyone else so they can see what a really cool system we're able to run. The early software we write probably won't shake up the world, but if we can design a couple of really neat applications and begin using them consistently we're going to demonstrate swiftly how much more we can collectively accomplish - and how much faster - using 2.0. One amazing 2.0 application already in operation is the Internet itself, which offers a dizzying array of information and fresh new ideas to anyone with access to a computer...and does so for free, out of the deep desire to give and share of ourselves.

My recommendation is that everyone check out the new Humanity 2.0 operating system for themselves and play around with the possibilities. Let's then put our heads together and see what software we can come up with to make it work for us all. The sooner we do so, the quicker we can retire Humanity 1.0 with honors, and the sooner "bipolar disorder" will become a disease of the past.

Your Money or Your Life

If you ever played the game of Cops and Robbers as a child, you know that one of the most common questions posed by the person who played the robber was, "your money or your life!" It seems on the surface like a very simple question, and as children most of us didn't hesitate to turn over our fake wallets and imaginary wristwatches to the kid who was holding the plastic gun to our head. In real life though, that question seems to have become more difficult for humanity to answer. What I'm wondering then is why, and how, we've reached a point where our collective obsession with money - with conducting business as usual even in the most unusual or dire of circumstances - has caused us to cling to our money instead of our lives.

I pose this question because I listened to President Bush in 2001 exhort Americans to do the patriotic thing and go shopping after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. I pose it because I witnessed the near-collapse of the entire U.S. banking system in 2008, which triggered a panicked government (spelled taxpayer) infusion of cash to encourage the banks got back to business as usual, even before we understood what caused the problem. I pose it as nation after nation and state after state are cutting essential human services out of concern for their "budget deficits." I pose it as I hear the citizens of the Gulf of Mexico demand in one breath that BP and the U.S. government immediately stop the oil spill that is gushing into the ocean, and in the next breath demand the president lift his temporary moratorium on deep water drilling so they can go back to business as usual.

Perhaps, if there's a lesson in all this, it's that there is no such thing as "business as usual." There is only the business of business, which focuses on earning a monetary profit; and there is the business of life itself, which focuses on conducting ourselves in a way that honors ALL life forms and the amazing ecosystems that nourish and sustain them...as well as us.

This planet is literally holding a loaded gun to humanity's head right now. The question she is asking us as she insistently reveals to us her eroding soils, her polluted rivers, her massive species extinctions, her corrupted and depleted oceans, her raped and pillaged resource reservoirs, is this: "Your money or your life?"

We can continue to stubbornly look away from nature's loaded gun and pretend to continue to go about business as usual. We can ignore the increasing desertification of the land, the destruction of crucial rainforests, the strip mining, the decline of organic food supplies, the disruption of crucial migration patterns, the frightening changes in weather patterns, the melting glaciers, the toxins polluting our water and our foods. Even so, the weapon remains cocked and loaded, and Mother Nature's finger is slowly easing off the trigger. How many of us, I wonder, will act surprised and appalled when the bullet at last hits our brain, claiming we never saw the gun or heard the question?

This is NOT a diatribe against business, or patriotism, or the right to earn a living. This is a diatribe FOR the essential nature of life, without which none of those other ideas are possible. This is a call, to all who read these words and grasp the truth of them in their hearts - to WAKE UP and be counted as one who speaks for life in all its beauty, magnificence and glory. This is a spiritual cry from the heart of one who loves this life and holds to the hope of us learning to thrive as an organism rather than a virus upon this planet, NOT to murder our mother, but to love and honor her as the beautiful being that birthed us and gives us life.