Echoes of Creation - A Joyride for Your Soul

 

 Incredible nature and music....enjoy!

 

WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR! THE FIX THE WORLD PROJECT RESULTS.

From hopegirl2012

THIS IS BY FAR THE MOST POWERFUL THING ANY OF US HAS EVER EXPERIENCED.

So far not one of the 20 volunteers has been able to read through this without being brought to tears. It has this much heart. This much passion. And this much truth.

It is a book of solutions written by over 300 people from 37 countries. We have put thousands of combined man-hours into this over the last 3 months.

For all of you reading this now who have been waiting. THIS IS IT! THIS IS THE PARADIGM SHIFT!

WATCH! JUST WATCH WHAT THIS DOCUMENT DOES!

TRUST ME. THIS IS NOT A JOKE. WHEN YOU READ THIS, YOU WILL FEEL THIS ENERGY!!

SO LETS DO THIS! LETS BE THE CHANGE! LETS BE THE SHIFT! THE TIME IS NOW!!!

HOW TO FIX THE WORLD SUMMARY

Reference Library

APPENDIX

HOW TO FIX THE WORLD COMPLETE

It's a New Day and All you Need is Love

From Removing the Shackles

I am busting at the seams to say so much, yet at this moment I can say very little. 

I know that people are hurting and desperate.  I know that people are loosing hope that the changes will come in time.  I know that people- especially those who've been awake & aware for so long- are feeling the heavy hand of exhaustion and despondency as the end of the year draws nigh.  I know that the newly awakened walk the line between doubt and elation searching for proof to assure them selves that they haven't lost their minds.  I know that dinarians feel like their golden ticket is slipping from their grasp.

I have spent all day thinking about what I can write in this update. Trying to figure out what little bit I CAN say, vs the HUGE pile of what I can't say.  I hate being cryptic, but there is so much going on right now that is extremely sensitive and cannot become public knowledge... not just yet... but very soon.

I hinted at some things last week during my updates, and some smart cookies caught on right away (eh ariel?).  

In the past 7 days amazing things have taken place, changes have been made, and there is a perceivable shift that has happened.  (did you feel it?) A battle was fought this past week. A battle for not only the American people, but for every person on Earth. A battle for freedom. 

...according to everything I'm hearing, we won.

.....I'm hearing that the mail man will be extremely busy very soon

Maybe all those folks that are about to loose their cushy jobs can get work at the post office.

Over the course of the next week I think we'll be hearing some things that will shock a whole lotta people out of their stupor. It's about time.

When the party starts I hope that everyone will take a moment to  think about all the people that have made huge sacrifices for all of us. People have died to bring you freedom. Lest we forget.

Before I disappear for the night I want to remind you of what human spirit is and what it can do.  I want to show you that love conquers all and that humans, for all that they have struggled under oppression and been blinded by brainwashing and fear.... Humans rise above that.  

THIS is the mistake that the Cabal didn't figure into their equations:  HUMAN SPIRIT. 

To continue reading, CLICK HERE.

All is Welcome HERE

Here is something to uplift your heart and senses. Enjoy!

And here is a little video where my picture surprisingly appears around 1:36. Or at least "I think" it's me (haha). Love to ALL!

Trance-Formation to Transformation: Time to Wake Up

Please, do not be afraid. This is not meant to scare you, but to empower you. You are much greater than the ideas and concepts designed to enslave you. You have merely been dreaming. Wipe the sleep from your eyes, my friend, and BE FREE.

Trance-Formation from Max Igan on Vimeo.

Unstructured, Contentless and Ineffable

An Interview of Peter Fenner, Ph.D. by Alex Dijk for BewustZijn magazine

.....We set standards for our physical wellbeing that place a huge cost on the environment. We spend enormous amounts of money on our appearance: wearing the right clothes, trying to look young and attractive. In some weird way we want to be in optimum health, right up until the moment of our death! Globally, we expend vast amounts of energy and spend huge sums of money trying to retard the aging process and prolong life.

What a great asset it would be if we could just let ourselves age, for example, without holding on to some notion of agelessness or immortality. No one really believes that we can remain young forever, and still the illusion motivates us to spend enormous resources on trying to forestall the aging process.

The ecological alternative here is to discover how we already have everything that's needed to be fulfilled in the most comprehensive way possible. This isn't just a fanciful idea. There are hundreds of thousands of great spiritual masters throughout the ages that have shown us that this is possible. There are sages who lived in 'great bliss' in severe environments without any heating or air-conditioning, without the latest gadgets, and without the security of knowing that quality medical care was close at hand.

The ultimate benchmark that these sages offer us is the possibility of making the journey through aging and dying without losing a connection with the supernal bliss of unconditioned awareness. For these sages, death itself was a non-event. As the 16th Karmapa of Tibet said on his deathbed in 1981, 'nothing happens.'

....But more significantly, we can make our own experiment right now. Here we are. We've come together in this moment. How do we discover, first-hand, the very same reality that allowed the sages of the past and present to remain unperturbed in the face of the very same experiences that throw us into confusion, obsession, anger or fear.

The remarkable news is that nothing is needed in order to make this discovery. We don't need 'more time,' to be somewhere else, to receive a superior teaching, or engage in a special practice. All that's required is to see that we can be-that we are, in fact-already fulfilled. In this moment we don't need anything more. We don't need more money, a different body, a different partner-not in this very instant.

This moment-right now-is giving us everything we need just to be here; unassumingly, effortlessly, being 'no one' in particular, and with no need to be anywhere else. That's the magic of this moment. This moment is perfect. Why? Because don't need anything more. Here we are-you and me-in this tight, quite unique, perhaps slightly weird, but effortless conversation. We started with my observations about Buddhism and it's relevance to ecology, and here we are, not asking for anything more. This moment is giving us everything we need just to be here, in the simplest way possible. We don't need to be entertained, right now-enough is happening. We don't need a flashy car-we're not in it! In this moment, we don't need a different standard of living, or a better return on our investments- we are clothed, fed and comfortable. We have everything we need, in order to rest with 'what is.'

The beauty of this moment is that it's effortless and uncontrived. The magic of this moment is that it's ungraspable and ineffable. We can't say what 'this' moment is. It leaves without a trace or history. In the very same moment that it arises, it disappears. We can't say where it comes from, or where it goes. We can't even say 'where' this is, except that 'this' is where it is: where ever that is! We can't think about 'this' because there is nothing to think about. This is exactly what the sages mean when they say that 'this' is ineffable.

And now we can also see that if we are 'here' at the moment of our death, we have no fear. If we were to remain in this state, our death would be uneventful. The process of dying is nothing more than a continual letting go of everything at the conditioned level: our body, our friends, our possessions, our memories-in fact, the entire known world. At our death we say goodbye forever, to everything that we know and we never return. If we are here-resting in unconditioned awareness-everything can drop away with no grasping or attachment.

Read more of the article here:
http://www.nondualt raining.com/ nondual-ecology- interview- of-peter- fenner/

HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE - June 21, 2011

Here are some astrological observations from Barbara Hand Clow.....Enjoy!

"The Summer Solstice has arrived north of the Equator where it is time to breathe, relax, be sensual, and to become fully embodied. South of the Equator, it is the Winter Solstice where it is time to assess what you've created during the year, especially to consider your Spring Equinox intentions made during September 2010. [This site is written for readers who live north of the Equator, so those down south will need to switch your comprehension of the influences of the solstices accordingly.]

For those of us living in the north, our spring coincided with the opening stages of the Universal Underworld on March 9 (hereinafter the Universal). Experiencing the Days and Nights of the Universal during only 18 days is causing great changes in our personal and collective lives. Thus, letting go and relaxing will be difficult this summer. For most people, it's been hard not to be totally distracted with so much going on, so it could be easy to miss this summer's potential to flesh out and deepen what we've been creating since March. Yet, remember, you create your own reality, and the events in the outer world are deeply connected and inspired by what's in your minds. Please take a look at your Spring Equinox intentions to assess how you are doing now, and also take note of the things that are popping into your life that you didn't even plan on. During such intense time acceleration, chaos is breaking out everywhere, since chaos is always part of new creation: The reorganization of the fractal fields creates exceedingly unexpected new things in your life.

We are in the middle of three eclipses from June 1 through July 1, 2011. The June 1 eclipse occurred during the Day Three sprouting phase of the Universal. In the reading for the June 1 Gemini New Moon-which was an eclipse during Day Three-I summarized the progress of three key events that were seeded during Day One of the Universal. I will not be constantly repeating this material as I follow it through to October 28, 2011, so you should print out or save a copy of the reading for the June 1 Moon in Gemini to make it easier to follow the unfolding events.

Events since the Gemini New Moon have continued to verify the critical nature of these three themes: a crisis over the use of nuclear power, chaos in the Middle East, and global financial instability. During this Day Three sprouting phase, three Fukushima reactors are in meltdown, Syria is afflicted with a civil war, and the Americans are opening a fourth war front in Yemen. Regarding the financial crisis, on June 1 (the first eclipse), the European Union Times published an astonishing story about the real reason the president of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested by the Federal Security Bureau in New York on May 14 for supposedly having attacked a hotel maid. Apparently, Strauss-Kahn discovered that Fort Knox has been emptied of all its gold bars, which are the basis of US drawing rights in international banks, and he was trying to fly back immediately to Europe to meet with the German President, Angela Merkel! The real story about what he was doing from the European Union Times is posted on http://2012patriot.wordpress.com

My reading for the March equinox suggested that the Universal would unfold amid an explosion of chaos: The equinox Sun in 0 Aries moved right to Uranus in 1 Aries soon after the equinox. Many planets were in Aries throughout the spring, so this hot astrological influence was right in tandem with the Mayan Calendar as usual. Many of you are feeling quite disturbed and distressed right now, and during such great change, I find that deep reflection on personal growth in light of events in the collective world is essential. As humans, we keep our sanity by maintaining some kind of logical explanation for what's going on in our world, and Carl Calleman's thesis on the Mayan Calendar certainly helps. [I, for one, cannot imagine comprehending our times right now without Calleman's idea! I'm going to continue this site through the Winter Solstice 2012 mostly to reflect upon the nature of the new world that will be emerging after the end of the tun-based Calendar, October 28, 2011.] Right now, we are in the end of Night Three (Day Four opens June 25), and we are beginning to see the real implications of the Day Three sprouting: The Middle East is being totally reshaped by revolution; many countries, besides Japan, are seeking ways to shut down their nuclear reactors; and the world's financial systems are tottering. Arresting one key player after another for sexual peccadilloes will not hide the truth.

Meanwhile, the only thing that matters is how you live your life. Who do you love now? Are you faithful and devoted to each person you are connected to? Are you ready, at a moment's notice, to go right to those who need assistance from you? Do you trust the grand plan that is unfolding no matter what will happen in your personal life? During times like 2011, heroes are made. Or, are you sitting around groaning and waiting for the end of the world while you are doing nothing in your own life? I suppose if I could make a film that would characterize the current scene, it would be titled Waiting for Nibiru. Ironically, in the middle of silly apocalyptical fear, a popular film is popping up titled Tree of Life, and my dear friend Brian Swimme has announced his monumental film, The Universe Story, which premieres in September 2011! Surely we are living in a time of miracles! We are all invited to observe in wonder, breathe deeply, and enjoy the show!

This Summer Solstice chart is very musical, like an early medieval madrigal; when the theme of one planet is played, all the other planets sing along. This is because many planets are in a 0 to 10 degree range causing many more multiple aspects than usual. The Sun in 0 Cancer, for example, is exactly 30 degrees from Mars, while sextiling Jupiter; squaring Uranus; trining Neptune, Chiron, and Moon; and opposing Pluto! Quite a potent entry into summer, wouldn't you agree? The other notable character in this chart is its director-Saturn; he stands alone by the rising of the Washington, DC chart, while the other bodies are in a wide "bucket" with Saturn as the handle. Saturn directs the field of an impressive Grand Square involving Mercury/Sun in Cancer, Uranus in Aries, and Pluto in Capricorn. Saturn went direct on June 12 and is now moving forward to cross the 1776 USA Saturn on August 28 (see the USA chart at the end of this reading).

In late August, the world will be deeply immersed in the Night Five, the destruction phase of the universal. I have to wonder who set up this game? Often I wonder if the US could have avoided being central player in the National and Planetary Underworld game called Empire? But, it's not really about the US during the summer season-it's about a global emotional-body cleansing with Saturn in 10 Libra exactly quincunx the Moon in 10 Pisces. The Moon passes over Neptune/Chiron just before the Solstice, which means that we all will be experiencing acute emotional healing crises while the structures of the last 5,125 years crash and burn. Since Saturn is in Libra, this is the grand balancing, the grand culling. What could this be? For me, if we are in our hearts and coming from our hearts, we will exist in universal peace and joy. Those who are hard-hearted will be part of the culling. We are moving out of Homo Agressus into Homo Pacem; you are either a warrior or a peacemaker. It is each person's choice, it always was, yet now the field is shifting to peace and harmony.

We begin with the Sun moving into Cancer as a focus. Engaged in multiple aspects, its agenda is to seek comfort, joy, security, and nurturance. Mercury is 10 degrees just past the Sun, and so the Sun in Cancer comprehends itself and knows it wants total and enveloping nurturance. The Sun feels its power because it resonates freely with Mars in 0 Gemini, and the Sun is expanded and stabilized by a sextile from Jupiter in 3 Taurus (exact on June 25). Jupiter in Taurus is grounded and wise, so this sextile to the Sun (with Mars activating their midpoint) is like the song, "Don't Worry, Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin. Yet, as the Sun in Cancer sextiling Jupiter in Taurus lilts along, the Sun is kicked in the butt by a square from Uranus in 4 Aries (exact on June 26). Since the Sun in Cancer opposes Pluto in 6 Capricorn (exact on June 27), Uranus sits at the top of a T-square to Sun opposite Pluto. This tense T-square occurs while Uranus-square-Pluto is in close orb, so this summer will express the early stages of seven Uranus squares to Pluto that will come in 2012 and last until 2015. Described simply, this T-square suggests that this summer is when everyone on the planet will realize that the classic old ways are not coming back. Then Saturn in Libra opposing Uranus in Aries makes this T-square into a cardinal Grand Square, which anchors the shift into new realities. The exact aspects to the Sun and other planets go off like time-released capsules through June 27, so the new themes will be complex as well as very apparent-since Mercury is a strong player in the Grand Square.

As our species evolves with new cultural ways, old security blankets have to go. The most amazing thing about this Solstice chart is that it even indicates what the new patterns may be. The Sun in 0 Cancer exactly trines Neptune retrograde in 1 Pisces, which is close to Chiron in 5 Pisces; and the Moon in 10 Pisces has just passed over Neptune and Chiron. This is an exquisitely subtle planetary and lunar dance, like a sweet little Irish jig that dangles our future right in front of our noses. This Cancer/Pisces trine says it's time to heal (Chiron) our separation from spirit (Neptune), and the way to do it is to open our hearts (Sun/Mercury trine Moon). The most profound Cherokee teaching is in the stories about the "Two-Hearted's." From these stories, I learned that my people (Cherokee and Celtic) have endured because we live in our hearts no matter what the two-hearted ones-the conquerors-did to our people. We have endured; they never penetrated and split our hearts. And now, during this beautiful summer season, the end of dominant cruelty is coming for all of us...."

Click HERE for more....

And The People Stand Firm, Unafraid, and Listen

This is the essence of what is happening and unfolding, moment by moment. The only thing we can do is allow, breathe, accept, say "Yes." Life is in motion, coming into balance on its own, and we are moved by this naturally into awakening. And so it is.

********* ******* ********* ******* *********

In the face of rising warmth and light, a flower opens to the new day's Sun.

In the face of rising light and love, a planet's population wakes from sleep emerges from control, and reclaims its freedom.

It wakes from fear, throws off paralysis, and reclaims its power.

It wakes from hate, throws off suspicion, and reclaims its love.

It wakes from violence, throws off control, and reclaims its peacefulness.

And the people stand firm, unafraid, and listen.

And all around, the forces that controlled them lash out with every weapon they possess – police, provocateurs, military, water cannons, tear gas, guns. They issue threats; warn of reprisals; unleash storms and earthquakes; rain chemicals from the air; disrupt their travel, business, education, families.

But the people join together not as citizens of Iran, Tunisia, Myanmar, or France; not as Hindus, Muslims, Christians, or Jews; but as citizens of the world. They recognize how they've been carved up into nations, classes, religions; had language differences and class divides imposed on them; and in every other way been divided and conquered. They reject all division and join together as one - men, women, and children.

They raise the banner of light and love, peace and harmony. They tell the truth and seek more of it. They declare the freedom of all people and the right to health and choice and learning. They reject the use of force and control, censorship and manipulation, indebtedness and impoverishment.

They set their faces against fear and hate. They refuse to harm or kill or cooperate with those who do. They lay down their weapons everywhere. They walk away from bombs and poisons, warships and warplanes.

They depart from organizations that produce pandemic viruses and tainted vaccines, plot to overthrow democratic regimes, issue threats and carry out assassinations, suppress new technologies, and pollute the Earth.

They liberate the halls of power, courts of justice, places of confinement, and mediums of communication.

And the people stand firm, unafraid, and listen.

They learn of their part in bringing on their own subservience and in throwing off their chains.

They wonder how this could have happened and what is next.

They hear how this new age has been expected and anticipated, fostered and nurtured. They learn how this awakening, emergence, and rebirth are supported by a cast of millions, who until now have worked in the shadows and behind the scenes.

They learn how these people are our families from other places, dimensions, and even ages. They learn how these people have come here to end our impoverishment, debilitation, and subjugation.

They learn how these people have seen to it that the light of freedom was never quenched or servitude imposed on us as a planet.

They learn how these people have in hand the means of abundance, freedom, and fulfillment and give it freely.

And the people stand firm, unafraid, and listen.

They hear how our controllers intended to depopulate the globe and retain a fraction of us to serve them. They hear how fear has been used to control and exploit us. They drop their anxiousness of terrorism, Armageddon, starvation, catastrophe, and annihilation.

They rejoice at what awaits us - freedom from suppression and control. They realize the future is ours to decide with no new master looming; They see that no one seeks to place us under heel but to liberate us.

They breathe in new energy, share new abundance, look upon new technologies, and see the Earth being newly cleansed. They realize the sleep of millennia is over and a new day has dawned, a day without barriers, fear, or control.

And the people stand firm, unafraid, and listen.

And the people laugh and shout for joy, in loving anticipation.

~ Steve Beckow - The 2012 Scenario

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward

Awaken from your slumber, friends...
Open your eyes!

Thanksgiving Prayer

GREETINGS TO THE NATURAL WORLD!

Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as People.

Now our minds are one.

We are all thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time. To our Mother, we send greetings and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

We give thanks to all the Waters of the world for quenching our thirst and providing us with strength. Water is life. We know its power in many forms - waterfalls and rain, mists and streams, rivers and oceans. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to the spirit of water.

Now our minds are one.

We turn our minds to all the Fish life in the water. They were instructed to cleanse and purify the water. They also give themselves to us as food. We are grateful that we can still find pure water. So, we turn now to the Fish and send our greetings and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

Now we turn toward the vast fields of Plant life. As far as the eye can see, the Plants grow, working many wonders. They sustain many life forms. With our minds gathered together, we give thanks and look forward to seeing Plant life for many generations to come.

Now our minds are one.

With one mind, we turn to honor and thank all the Food Plants we harvest from the garden. Since the beginning of time, the grains, vegetables, beans and berries have helped the people survive. Many other living things draw strength from them too. We gather all the Plant Foods together as one and send them a greeting and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

Now we turn to all the Medicine herbs of the world. From the beginning, they were instructed to take away sickness. They are always waiting and ready to heal us. We are happy there are still among us those special few who remember how to use these plants for healing. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to the Medicines and to the keepers of the Medicines.

Now our minds are one.

We gather our minds together to send greetings and thanks to all the Animal life in the world. They have many things to teach us as people. We see them near our homes and in the deep forests. We are glad they are still here and we hope that it will always be so.

Now our minds are one.

We now turn our thoughts to the Trees. The Earth has many families of Trees who have their own instructions and uses. Some provide us with shelter and shade, others with fruit, beauty and other useful things. Many peoples of the world use a Tree as a symbol of peace and strength. With one mind, we greet and thank the Tree life.

Now our minds are one.

We put our minds together as one and thank all the Birds who move and fly about over our heads. The Creator gave them beautiful songs. Each day they remind us to enjoy and appreciate life. The Eagle was chosen to be their leader. To all the Birds - from the smallest to the largest - we send our joyful greetings and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

We are all thankful to the powers we know as the Four Winds. We hear their voices in the moving air as they refresh us and purify the air we breathe. They help to bring the change of seasons. From the four directions they come, bringing us messages and giving us strength. With one mind, we send our greetings and thanks to the Four Winds.

Now our minds are one.

Now we turn to the west where our Grandfathers, the Thunder Beings, live. With lightning and thundering voices, they bring with them the water that renews life. We bring our minds together as one to send greetings and thanks to our Grandfathers, the Thunderers.

Now our minds are one.

We now send greetings and thanks to our eldest Brother, the Sun. Each day without fail he travels the sky from east to west, bringing the light of a new day. He is the source of all the fires of life. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to our Brother, the Sun.

Now our minds are one.

We put our minds together and give thanks to our oldest grandmother, the Moon, who lights the night-time sky. She is the leader of women all over the world, and she governs the movement of the ocean tides. By her changing face we measure time, and it is the Moon who watches over the arrival of children here on Earth. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to our Grandmother, the Moon.

Now our minds are one.

We give thanks to the Stars who are spread across the sky like jewelry. We see them in the night, helping the Moon to light the darkness and bringing dew to the gardens and growing things. When we travel at night, they guide us home. With our minds gathered together as one, we send greetings and thanks to all the Stars.

Now our minds are one.

We gather our minds to greet and thank the enlightened Teachers who have come to help throughout the ages. When we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the way we were instructed to live as people. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to these caring Teachers.

Now our minds are one.

Now we turn our thoughts to the Creator, or Great Spirit, and send greetings and thanks for the gifts of Creation. Everything we need to live a good life is here on this Mother Earth. For all the love that is still around us, we gather our minds together as one and send our choicest words of greetings and thanks to the Creator.

Now our minds are one.

We have now arrived at the place where we end our words. Of all the things we have named, it was not our intention to leave anything out. If something was forgotten, we leave it to each individual to send such greetings and thanks in their own way.

Now our minds are one.


~ A Haudenosaunee "Thanksgiving" Prayer
http://www.firstpeople.us/html/A-Haudenosaunee-Thanksgiving-Prayer.html

Path to A Peace Economy

David Korten presented the following speech on October 19, 2009 during a keynote lecture at the Economics of Peace Conference in Sonoma, California.

by David Korten

My subject tonight is the Path to a Peace Economy, based on ideas elaborated in my most recent book, Agenda for a New Economy, and the New Economy issue of YES! Magazine.

I start with a basic truth. A persistent pattern of violence against people, community, and nature is inherent in the institutional structure of our existing economy.

You don't treat a cancer with Band-Aids, and we can't resolve our current economic crisis with marginal regulatory adjustments. It is time to rethink and restructure.

Systemic Failure

Our economic institutions have been designed by Wall Street interests to secure personal economic and political power in the hands of members of a small ruling elite. They do it well. Unfortunately, it is the wrong purpose. We need a top to bottom redesign to put in place the institutions of a new economic system, a New Peace Economy, designed to share power and resources in a world that works for all.

So how bad is the failure of our current system? It is public knowledge. A brief review, however, is in order.

Economic Collapse

The Wall Street financial collapse has stripped tens of millions of previously middle class Americans of their jobs, homes, and retirement assets and plunged them into poverty and despair. The federal government and the Federal Reserve have responded by pouring trillions of dollars into the Wall Street financial institutions that created the crisis with minimal conditions and oversight, all in the hope that some of this money would trickle down as loans to the productive economy. The recipient financial institutions used the money instead to fund acquisitions that make "too big to fail" banks even bigger, pay dividends to shareholders who by market rules should have been wiped out in bankruptcy proceedings, award obscene bonuses to criminally culpable executives, and launch new predatory financial scams that create new systemic risks.

Wall Street says we have now weathered the crisis, which basically means the profits and bonuses of its most rapacious financial institutions have been restored. The jobs, homes, and retirement assets of ordinary Americans have not. To the contrary, job losses, bankruptcies, and housing foreclosures continue.

Social Collapse

This, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. In the absence of progressive tax and public service policies, the institutions of the old economy create an ever-growing wealth gap between the profligate few and the desperate many. This obscene injustice is tearing apart the social fabric of family and community essential to a healthy society. The resulting fear, insecurity, and sense of injustice fuel the forces of violence as expressed in terrorism, genocide, political deadlock, and high rates of crime, incarceration, and suicide. All are both consequences and indicators of a failed economic system.

Environmental Collapse

Now we come to the system's ultimate failure: environmental collapse. The rules and institutions of the Old Economy drive endless growth in wasteful and destructive forms of material consumption that deplete soil and water, disrupt climate patterns, and convert Earth's natural capital into toxic garbage, thus reducing Earth's capacity to support life, creating massive human displacement, and intensifying a violent competition for Earth's remaining resources that finds expression in bloated military budgets and wars of occupation.

Start with virtually any dysfunction or injustice in our society and it traces back to a failed economic system. Follow the money, and it leads ultimately to Wall Street.

A Failed Experiment

For some thirty years, we have been engaged as a nation and as a species in a social engineering experiment to test the claims of an extremist economic ideology known as market fundamentalism.

Ideology of the Sociopath

You've heard the sermon preached by its most fanatic true believers:

There is no public interest—only an aggregation of private interests, which are best served when we each pursue our individual greed in a marketplace unfettered by rules and other forms of government interference. Public assets must be privatized to increase their productivity and efficiency by selling them to the highest bidder. The faster we consume, the faster the economy grows and the wealthier we become as a rising tide lifts all boats.

Inequality is essential to social order and prosperity. It provides us with wealthy investors able to bear the risks of investing in the creation of jobs and a working class motivated by economic insecurity to work hard at those jobs at a globally competitive wage. There is no alternative. If a few get rich, instead of condemning them out of envy—which is a mortal sin—celebrate their good fortune, because as the rich get richer, wealth trickles down and we all get richer. In America, anyone can succeed who applies himself. Failure is a sign of a flawed character.

Is this story familiar? It is no mystery why this economic theology leads to ruthless competition, obscene accumulation, and reckless consumption that destroys the environment and tears apart the social fabric. It embodies the moral philosophy of the sociopath.

It is now time to acknowledge the lessons of this disastrous experiment. Markets do have an essential role in a healthy economy, but market extremism does not. It turns out that markets do need rules, there is an essential role for government, we all have more when resources are shared, and Jesus and the other great religious teachers were right. We are members of a community and we all do better when we care for one another and act with mindful consideration of the needs of others.

Wall Street as Operating System

The institutions of the economy determine how, as a society, we allocate whatever resources are available to us. In an earlier time, we organized ourselves into clans and tribes in which we cared for one another and allocated resources to secure the well-being of all. Resource allocation decisions were local and relationships were mediated by bonds of mutual caring and security. Money in the earliest human societies was unknown. In our current society, most relationships on which we depend for the basics of survival, including food, water, shelter, and health care, are mediated by money. This gives enormous power to those who control the creation and allocation of money. In our country, that would be Wall Street.

To use a computer analogy, the Wall Street financial system has become the operating system of the economy and the society. The values and priorities of Wall Street thus become the defining values and priorities of the larger society. Wall Street has one value—money—and one goal: to maximize financial returns to those who control the money system. Social or environmental consequences find no place in Wall Street decision making.

A Choice-Making Species

In a few minutes, I will take up the question of how we can change this. In the meantime, I want to put our situation in its deeper historical, evolutionary, and spiritual context. For the past 5,000 years, we humans have been living in a cultural trance of our own making that alienates us from the land, our true nature, and our place in the cosmos.

So who are we humans? From where did we come? And for what purpose? Here is how I understand the big story based on the data of science, the wisdom of indigenous peoples, and the teachings of Jesus and other mystics.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the Great Integral Spirit that expresses itself through what we know as creation embarked on a bold and risky experiment in reflective consciousness: bringing forth a species able to step back and to reflect on creation in awe and wonder and to participate as a conscious co-creator in the continued creative unfolding. We humans are that species.

Our reflective consciousness gives us the capacity to choose our future with conscious collective intent. It was a risky experiment, however, because the capacity for self-awareness gives us an ego that can run out of control if it forgets it exists only as part of a larger whole.

In our earliest days, we humans raised our children collectively in the clan, tribe, or village, initiating them to the ways of life and the need to care for our Earth Mother as she in turn cares for us.

Over millennia, as our human consciousness was awakening and our capacities for self-direction grew, we learned to communicate through speech, master fire, domesticate plants and animals, and construct houses of skins, wood, stone, and dried mud. We developed the arts of pottery, painting, weaving, and carving. We undertook vast continental and transcontinental migrations to populate the planet and adapted to vastly different physical topographies and climates. We created complex languages and social codes that allowed for life in larger communities.

Then, some 5,000 years ago, something began to go terribly wrong. We turned from the ways of Earth Community and embraced the ways of Empire. It was a time of separation and forgetting. Community, partnership, and the celebration of life gave way to individualism, domination, and violence.

The few expropriated the wealth of the many. The masculine drove out the feminine. We continued to worship the Sky Father, but turned against our Earth Mother. We came to value the power to kill and destroy more highly than the ability to create and nurture life. Conquest became the measure of greatness. Economies came to be based on servitude and eventually money became the prime arbiter of human relationships.

Consider the dynamics inherent in a dominator system. With a few on the top and the many on the bottom, everyone is placed in competition with everyone else for the favored positions and the bonds of caring and sharing are broken. The creative energy of the species is redirected from securing the well-being of the tribe to advancing the technological instruments of war and the social instruments of domination.

The winners expropriate the available resources to maintain the system of domination. Positions of power are too often claimed by the most ruthless and psychologically damaged members of society. And so it has been for 5,000 years

If this discussion of Empire sounds familiar, it is for good reason. The kings and emperors have been replaced by corporate CEOs and hedge fund managers, but we are still living in the Era of Empire—and the basic dynamics still hold.

In the past 100 years, we humans have achieved technological mastery beyond the imagination of previous generations. Yet, lacking in the wisdom of place and community that is the heritage of indigenous peoples, the cultures we call mainstream have lost their way—forgetting what it means to be human and denying our connection to the web of planetary life. The time has come to rediscover our humanity and bring ourselves back into balance with our living Earth Mother. Creation has presented us with our final examination to determine whether we are a species worthy of survival. We must not, need not, fail.

When Money Rules

At its core, our current economic crisis is a spiritual crisis framed by this well-known scriptural verse from the Sermon on the Mount:

No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Matthew 6:24.

Mammon refers to wealth as an object of worship; the worship of a false god; a form of demonic possession; an evil force in opposition to Life.

Our worship of Mammon is the consequence of an illusion: the illusion that money is wealth and that making money is synonymous with producing wealth. The truth, as Wall Street has so dramatically demonstrated, is very different. Money isn't wealth, and it is quite easy to make lots of money without producing anything of value to the larger society. Money, the most mysterious of human inventions, a magical number of no meaning or existence outside the human mind, has displaced life as our object of sacred veneration and become the ultimate arbiter of human priorities. Money determines the fate of nations and shapes the boom and bust cycles of economic life. It allows some to live in grand opulence in the midst of scarcity, while confining others to death by starvation in the midst of plenty.

This is money as a system of power, a tyranny all the more complete because it is largely invisible to those it enslaves. To liberate ourselves from the tyranny, we must demystify money and recognize that it is a mere number created from nothing with a simple accounting entry when a bank issues a loan. As economist John Kenneth Galbraith once famously observed, the process by which money is created is "so simple it repels the mind."

When you take out a loan from a bank, the bank opens an account in your name and enters the amount of the loan in its ledger. That becomes a liability on the bank's accounts, offset by the corresponding asset of your promise to repay with interest. Two simple accounting entries, and money magically appears from nowhere. This simple fact makes banking a very profitable business and is the key to the ability of the institutions of Wall Street and its global counterparts to rule the world.

Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty, once famously said, "Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes its laws."

That pretty well sums it up. In our current system, this control is centralized in and monopolized by Wall Street institutions that value only money and seek only private accumulation. From a societal perspective it is a devastatingly unwise and destructive arrangement.

Money, particularly money that is created out of nothing without any contribution to the creation of anything of corresponding value, is phantom wealth—it has no substance or intrinsic utility. Creating phantom wealth is a Wall Street specialty. They call it financial innovation. I call it theft.

A Real Wealth Economy

So what is real wealth? We might say it is anything that has a real intrinsic value: land, labor, knowledge, food, education.

Most valuable of all are those forms of wealth that are beyond price: Love, a healthy, happy child, a job that provides a sense of self-worth and contribution, membership in a strong caring community, a healthy vibrant natural environment, peace—none of which find any place on Wall Street balance sheets or in our calculations of GDP.

Pull back the curtain, as the financial crash has done, and the truth is revealed that Wall Street acquires its power by destroying real living wealth to create phantom financial wealth. Wall Street is more than immoral, it is an institutional manifestation of evil.

So what will the New Economy look like, and how will we achieve it?

Living Earth

We begin with a recognition that the old economy is based not only on the illusion that money is wealth, but as well the illusion that we live in a world of open frontiers with endless abundant resources free for the taking. We are only now as a species awakening to the reality that we are passengers on a living spaceship and must learn to live in balanced relationship with our local ecosystems everywhere, working with nature to reuse and recycle everything and to eliminate the release of any substance that nature cannot readily absorb and detoxify.

Spaceship Earth, our Birth Mother, is endowed with a wondrous self-managing, self-regulating life support system that has nourished us as a species through the years of our growing up. As a loving parent, she has absorbed the insults and injuries of our reckless adolescent behavior. Our numbers and the power of our technology, however, now exceed her capacity to absorb.

Defining Principles

We must now restructure our economic institutions to align with three foundational principles: Ecological balance. Shared prosperity. And living democracy. Let's take them one by one.

1. Ecological Balance: It's spaceship management 101. We must bring ourselves into balance with Earth's life support system-the biosphere. This requires something you don't normally hear mentioned at economics conferences. We need to reduce aggregate human consumption, global GDP, starting with the most profligate nations. I'll say more about this later. Follow me closely here: We must simultaneously redesign our human economies to function everywhere as subsystems of the local ecosystems that comprise Earth's biosphere.

2. Shared Prosperity: As we act to reduce aggregate consumption, we need to recognize that Earth's bounty is the shared birthright of all living beings and learn to share it equitably to the benefit of all. The potential benefits of sharing prosperity go far beyond securing our mutual survival. According to a massive body of public health research, people in societies in which wealth and work are equitably shared enjoy greater physical and emotional health, stronger families and communities, less violence, and healthier natural environments than people in more unequal societies. Societies that are more equal are also more democratic and more resilient in the face of crisis.

   This has important implications for those of us who live in the United States. UK social epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson observes that among the world's 30 richest countries we in the United States are number one in many things, including homicide rates, teenage pregnancy rates, rates of imprisonment, and numerous other social dysfunctions. We are also number one in the size of the income gap between our richest and poorest members. This is not a coincidence.

   The reason is simple. Greater inequality means greater psychological and emotional stress and insecurity for everyone, including for those at the top. Great sharing means less stress and insecurity.

3. Living Democracy means exactly what it says: living democracy as a daily practice of civic engagement. In a living democracy, popular sovereignty is integral to the fabric of community life. Living democracies celebrate and affirm diversity within a framework of individual rights, community responsibility, and mutual accountability. Their political and economic institutions support local decision making within a framework of cooperation and mutually agreed rules.

Ecological Balance, Shared Prosperity, and Living Democracy: three foundational principles of the new living peace economies on which the human future depends.

A Familiar Alternative

Those of us who came of age during the latter part of the twentieth century were taught that we are limited to a choice between two economic models: the model of Wall Street capitalism or the model of Soviet communism. We in the West chose Wall Street capitalism based on the false claim that capitalism is the natural champion of democracy and market choice. Now we see the reality that when Wall Street capitalism has its way, our political choices are limited to politicians who serve Wall Street interests and our market choices are limited to those that generate the greatest Wall Street profits.

Living Market Economies

We're not supposed to notice that both capitalism and communism, as we have known them, are simply alternative models of elite rule.

We have another option that is rarely mentioned, a planetary system of local living market economies that distribute and root decision-making power everywhere in inclusive, democratic, place-based living Earth communities, much in the manner of healthy ecosystems.

Many of the features of this New Economy option are more familiar than we might at first realize. They bear substantial resemblance to the Main Street economies many of us knew as we were growing up in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

The America We Once Knew

Although we had not yet dealt as a nation with crucial issues of race, gender, and the environment, the market rules of that day protected the public interest as we then understood it. Strong labor unions secured worker rights and assured a living wage. Our middle class was the envy of the world.

Banks were local and strictly regulated. Anti-trust protected the public from the abuse of corporate monopoly power. Cities and towns had vibrant lively Main Street economies served by local independent businesses that were accountable to the community and honored community values. And imagine this: Many insurance companies, hospitals, and financial institutions were organized as nonprofit cooperatives accountable to their members.

Most manufacturing was domestic, much of our food production was local, and we had a positive trade balance. Few families needed more than one car and per capita energy use was modest by current standards. There was substantial non-market household production and the typical wage for one employed working person was adequate to support a family.

Wall Street Take-Over

From the late 70s onward, Wall Street market fundamentalists mobilized to roll back the rules to unleash a consolidation of corporate power and de-link it from public accountability. Their right-wing social-engineering experiment allowed Wall Street to colonize the Main Street economy, decimated the middle class, undermined democracy and sense of community, reduced our national happiness index, and brought financial, social, and environmental devastation wherever it has reached.

Markets can and do support individual liberty and the public interest, but only when they operate within a framework of appropriate market rules and are complemented and supported by strong, democratically elected governments that enforce these rules and assure the provision of essential public services and infrastructure.

Appropriate rules support local ownership, bar private monopolies except within a strong regulatory framework, secure cost internalization and balanced trade among communities and nations, and prohibit monopoly pricing, market manipulation, and financial speculation.

We hear frequent reference these days to a distinction between the Wall Street economy and the Main Street economy. The difference is crucial.

Wall Street is in the business of using money to make money for people who have money without the burden of producing anything of value in return. Wall Street creates money out of nothing, engages in predatory lending at exorbitant interest rates, and uses its control of money to hold the public purse hostage to its demands. It is best understood as a criminal syndicate engaged in counterfeiting, usury, tax evasion, fraud, and extortion rackets—and should be treated accordingly.

Liberating Main Street

The Main Street economy is comprised of local businesses and working people engaged in producing real goods and services to meet real needs and providing meaningful, secure, family wage employment for the people of their communities. It is the logical foundation on which to build a new real wealth economy of green jobs, responsible community-oriented businesses, and sound environmental practices. Although devastated by the predatory intrusions of Wall Street corporations, it is now in revival as communities all across the nation rally to declare their independence from Wall Street and rebuild the community-serving economies they once knew.

No Wall Too Tall

Bringing down Wall Street may seem a daunting challenge to some of you. To get ourselves in the right spirit, I want to share an inspirational song by Raffi that he recorded to celebrate the launch of Agenda for a New Economy at the Trinity Wall Street Episcopal Church last January. It's called "No Wall Too Tall." Get up and dance with me as you listen to the words.

How many of you here grew up on Raffi's music or have children who did? Raffi is currently devoting his life to an initiative he calls Child Honoring based on the simple truth that a world that works for all the children will work for everyone.

A Three Part Strategy

So how can we bring down Wall Street's imperial tyranny?

We the people, as global civil society, are engaging this challenge on three strategic fronts:

1. We are changing the defining stories of the mainstream culture. It is a simple but rarely noted truth that every great transformational social movement begins with a conversation aimed at challenging a prevailing cultural story. The civil rights movement changed the story on race. The environmental movement changed the story about the human relationship to nature. The women's movement changed the story on gender. Our current task is to change the prevailing stories about the nature of wealth, the purpose of the economy, and our human nature. YES! Magazine and my most recent book Agenda for a New Economy are useful tools for organizing the necessary conversations.

2. We are creating a new economic reality from the bottom up as millions of people the world over are working to strengthen locally owned human-scale business and family farms, developing local financial institutions, reclaiming farm and forest lands, changing land use policies to concentrate population in compact communities that reduce automobile dependence, retrofitting their buildings for energy conservation, and otherwise moving toward local self reliance in food, energy, and other basic essentials. The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) is building a national support system for these initiatives.
3. We are changing the rules: Current law and public policy largely favor the Wall Street economy to the exclusion of Main Street economy. We must work together to promote and support political action at local, national, and global levels to change the balance in the favor of Main Street.

A New Economy Agenda

I'm currently focusing my energy on the New Economy Working Group, a partnership between Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, YES! Magazine, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, and the PCDForum. We are working to articulate a comprehensive New Economy agenda. Here are five essential elements:

1. Implement Living Wealth Indicators as the basis for evaluating economic performance: Because we get what we measure, we should measure what we want. We currently evaluate economic performance against GDP, which is an indicator of the rate at which the economy is extracting useful resources from nature, converting them to saleable products, and disposing of them as toxic waste into our air, water, and soils—all for the primary purpose of making rich people richer. And this is what we get.

Stock price indices, another favorite indicator, measure the rate at which people who own financial assets are increasing their economic advantage over everyone else.

Imagine how different things would be if we designed and managed the economy to maximize indicators of the health and vitality of our children, families, communities, and natural systems—while simultaneously reducing environmental burdens by redistributing available resources from destructive and non-essential uses to beneficial ones that improve the quality of life for everyone, create meaningful beneficial jobs, and heal the environment.

We can end war and convert to a peace economy; reorganize our infrastructure to eliminate automobile-dependence; curtail advertising and redirect those creative and media resources to education; end financial speculation and redirect investment to productive sustainable enterprises devoted to meeting community needs. This list is just a start. It is about setting sensible priorities.

2. Create a Real Wealth Money System: Last night Don Shaffer spoke of redirecting the flow of money from global to local financial markets and moving from complex, opaque, anonymous, short-term financial relationships to direct, transparent, personal, and long-term financial relationships. This defines our charge for redesigning and restructuring our systems of money creation and allocation.

Our existing Wall Street financial system centralizes the power to create and allocate money in an interlinked institutional system of mega-banks, hedge funds, private equity funds, the Federal Reserve, and captive regulatory bodies operating in secret beyond public oversight and accountability that I earlier described as a criminal syndicate.

The Bush and Obama administrations both pumped literally trillions of dollars of bailout money into the corrupt Wall Street financial institutions responsible for the current economic mess. Note here the essential difference between the bailout money and the Obama stimulus money. Bailout money goes to Wall Street financial institutions in the hope that some of it will trickle down to Main Street in the form of loans. Stimulus money bypasses Wall Street and directly funds the creation of productive jobs to create beneficial goods, services, and public infrastructure projects.

So imagine that instead of a bailout for the corrupt banks that caused the crash, the government had taken them over, broken them up, and spun off the pieces as individual community-based financial institutions—community banks, savings and loans, and credit unions. Some might be organized as private for-profits. Others as nonprofits or cooperatives. Some might be owned by state or local governments. All would function as properly regulated, community accountable public utilities.

Now imagine that the trillions of dollars that went to bailing out Wall Street banks had instead been added to the stimulus package to directly help homeowners facing foreclosure, create new jobs, and to fund education, health care, and public infrastructure. Further, imagine that the recipients of the stimulus money then deposited a portion of it as savings in these community financial institutions to be continuously recycled as low interest or no interest loans to grow local businesses, expand home ownership, and finance public investment. How different things might now be.

Here is a really radical idea: Let's federalize the Federal Reserve and make money supply management and banking oversight transparent and publicly accountable federal functions. Why should the federal government borrow and pay interest on money created with an accounting entry by private banks, thus condemning our children to perpetual debt slavery to private banks and foreign countries, when it is within the means of the government to make the accounting entry itself?

3. Share the Wealth: As noted earlier, we all do better when we share the wealth. So let's do it with:

• Income and employment policies that assure every person who needs employment access to employment that provides a living wage.
• Progressive taxation and public services policies that continuously recycle wealth from those at the top who have more than they need to those at the bottom who have less than they need.
• Land use and regional development policies that limit sprawl and support compact multi-strata development that prevents geographical division by class and race.

• Ownership policies that eliminate the class divide between owners and workers by encouraging every owning person to do productive work and every working person to be an owner.

4. Favor Businesses Organized as Living Enterprises for which the primary business purpose is to serve the community and profit is a means, not an end. Cooperative, worker, and local public ownership models sensibly and appropriately link business interests to community interests. We can and should make them our favored enterprise models.

5. Change the Global Rules to Support Local Control and Regional Self-Reliance: Current global economy rules and institutions that put the economic rights of global financiers and corporations ahead of the economic rights of ordinary people, place-based communities, and even nations. They have it backwards. The rules and institutions of living peace economies properly support democratic self-determination at local, regional, and national levels, keep trade fair and balanced, favor local over global businesses, and facilitate the sharing of information and beneficial technology.

The goal is to shift the economic system's defining value from money to life, its locus of economic decision making from global to local institutions, its favored dynamic from competition to cooperation, and its primary purpose from growing the individual financial fortunes of the few to building living community wealth to secure the health and well-being of everyone. It is ours to so choose and create.

How to Engage

You will find further information on everything I've covered here in Agenda for a New Economy. Buy a copy, download a discussion guide from davidkorten.org, and organize a discussion group to engage your friends, colleagues, and neighbors in an exploration of the new economy alternatives.

People are always asking, "What else can I do?" I recommend YES! Magazine as the place to start. Each issue is filled with stories of possibility and ideas for action. Visit the "Path to a New Economy" section of the YES! website.

*****

Part of growing up human is putting aside the ways of our childhood to embrace the more inclusive values and responsibilities of adulthood. Our time has come to grow up as a species coming of age on a small planet. This is the larger challenge before us. In a very real sense, it is about growing up spiritually to recognize and accept our place within the larger scheme of creation.

As we engage this challenging work in its many dimensions, we must constantly remind ourselves that we are privileged to live at the most dangerous—but also the most exciting—moment of creative opportunity in the whole of the human experience. We have the power to turn this world around for the sake of ourselves, our children for generations to come, and the continued creative unfolding of life on Earth. We are the ones we've been waiting for. Thank you.

David Korten is co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine. His most recent book is Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth. He presented this speech on October 19, 2009 during a keynote lecture at the Economics of Peace Conference in Sonoma, California.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Thinking the Unthinkable: Not Growing the Economy

At what point does economic growth become uneconomic growth?

by Tim Jackson in Common Dreams

Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth. For the last five decades the pursuit of growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world. The global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate, the economy will be 80 times that size by the year 2100.

This extraordinary ramping up of global economic activity has no historical precedent. It's totally at odds with our scientific knowledge of the finite resource base and the fragile ecology we depend on for survival. And it has already been accompanied by the degradation of an estimated 60% of the world's ecosystems.

For the most part, we avoid the stark reality of these numbers. The default assumption is that - financial crises aside - growth will continue indefinitely. Not just for the poorest countries where a better quality of life is undeniably needed, but even for the richest nations where the cornucopia of material wealth adds little to happiness and is beginning to threaten the foundations of our well-being.

The reasons for this collective blindness are easy enough to find. The modern economy is structurally reliant on economic growth for its stability. When growth falters - as it has done recently - politicians panic. Businesses struggle to survive. People lose their jobs and sometimes their homes. A spiral of recession looms. Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries.

But question it we must. The myth of growth has failed us. It has failed the two billion people who still live on less than $2 a day. It has failed the fragile ecological systems we depend on for survival. It has failed spectacularly, in its own terms, to provide economic stability and secure people's livelihoods.

Today we find ourselves faced with the imminent end of the era of cheap oil; the prospect (beyond the recent bubble) of steadily rising commodity prices; the degradation of forests, lakes and soils; conflicts over land use, water quality and fishing rights; and the momentous challenge of stabilizing concentrations of carbon in the global atmosphere. And we face these tasks with an economy that is fundamentally broken, in desperate need of renewal.

In these circumstances, a return to business as usual is not an option. Prosperity for the few founded on ecological destruction and persistent social injustice is no foundation for a civilized society. Economic recovery is vital. Protecting people's jobs - and creating new ones - is absolutely essential. But we also stand in urgent need of a renewed sense of shared prosperity. A commitment to fairness and flourishing in a finite world.

Delivering these goals may seem an unfamiliar or even incongruous task for policy in the modern age. The role of government has been framed so narrowly by material aims and hollowed out by a misguided vision of unbounded consumer freedoms. The concept of governance itself stands in urgent need of renewal.

But the current economic crisis presents us with a unique opportunity to invest in change. To sweep away the short-term thinking that has plagued society for decades. To replace it with policy capable of addressing the enormous challenge of delivering a lasting prosperity.

For at the end of the day, prosperity goes beyond material pleasures. It transcends material concerns. It resides in the quality of our lives and in the health and happiness of our families. It is present in the strength of our relationships and our trust in the community. It is evidenced by our satisfaction at work and our sense of shared meaning and purpose. It hangs on our potential to participate fully in the life of society.

Prosperity consists in our ability to flourish as human beings - within the ecological limits of a finite planet. The challenge for our society is to create the conditions under which this is possible. It is the most urgent task of our times.

Is It Time to Jump?

When I peruse the various news articles that abound concerning the state of our physical world, I would have to say that the information is all in all rather grim. We are watching the collapse of an old paradigm that has been based on the mass hypnosis of the majority in order to benefit a small minority. Now the masks are increasingly falling away, yet the folly gets more and more outrageous. Bankers and CEO's are getting huge bailouts while average folks are losing their homes and jobs. Those who trusted their governments to work on their behalf for a better world are now realizing it was a vast Ponzi scheme that merely transferred their hard-earned assets into the hands of those who create debt out of nothing and make us pay for it. It is amazing that we have been duped for so long.

But people are now starting to wake up to the truth about it all, not just that we've been trained all our lives to be the slaves to this usurious economic system, but also that we are not just bit players in someone else's story. We are waking up outside of the mental matrix that has kept us on the merry-go-round of fear and confusion. We are discovering that we are not the content of our thoughts, any more than a computer is its programs. Many of us are looking for a new way to function that is outside the known, where we can finally align with our inner authenticity and creativity and give it room to breathe and grow.
When I look at the system as it is, I recognize its dysfunction. It is not designed for individual freedom at all, even though we have been taught since kindergarten that we are the free-est nation on earth. It is designed to implant in our thoughts and psyches the beliefs and reasoning that will turn us into good little consumers and taxpayers, so that the system, which benefits only those who developed the system, continues, reaping vast profits for those in control at the expense of everyone else. And the United States is the best example of how well they've succeeded in getting us to buy what they're selling.

What's really weird is when you realize that the psychological and social experiment has been an incredible success. Government and the corporate sector have received immense political and economic power because we volunteered to give it to them. In exchange, we get the burden of humongous debt. What a great ruse, eh?

So how to get out of this trap? Many believe we must go head to head with these bozos, protesting, blogging, reporting every last bit of insanity, blocking legislation or coming up with new legislation to punish the bad guys. But while we go around making a lot of noise and shaking our fists, they are quietly in the background continuing to play out their game. We think we have accomplished something by marching in the rain with our placards and signs, listening to those great inspirational speeches, and buddying up with our disgruntled neighbors for a bit, but ultimately it ends up being another distraction and nothing really changes. The number one thing we must each realize is that there is NO WHITE KNIGHT! There is no savior coming to rescue you! YOU are the only one who can create the change you seek. Why do you think you are so fed up with your cookie cutter life, based on what someone else told you it should be? The truth is, we are meant to be FREE, truly free, to live a uniquely, authentic life from your deepest dreams, not to be shuttled onto a conveyor belt where it's all decided for you.

So, if you've realized there's no rescue, what are you waiting for? Do you dare to say no to whatever is draining your energy, your attention, and your pocketbook? Whatever objects you've surrounded yourself with are your prison. Let them go. Whoever keeps you in check, afraid to say, do and be the truth, slave to a clock or a schedule or a diet or a doctrine or anything outside yourself, let them go. Not with anger and hate, but with the realization that it was just an honest case of mistaken identity. And then do what you've dared to dream. You already know what that is. You've been afraid to think it, let alone say it. But NOW is the time, and HERE is the place, and there's no getting around it this time. There's no escape.

To step outside the known is the greatest adventure imaginable. It allows for great revolutionary, evolutionary acts. It is moment to moment creation, incredibly alive and creative. It is knowing that whatever you thought you needed faith in is so real, that faith become superfluous. What is needed becomes very simple and clear. Food, water, shelter, clothing, these things are the bottom line. Life in all simplicity is absolutely abundant. It isn't about accumulating stuff or money, anymore. It's about LIVING, being FULLY ALIVE EVERY MOMENT!

What is an Intentional Community?

by Kelly N Patterson

There are thousands of intentional communities all over the world: for a better idea, just visit the intentional community international directory at www.ic.org. There are hundreds of intentional communities in Costa Rica alone. There are so many of these communities in Costa Rica that an online, open-source directory of these Costa Rican communities is currently being constructed, called the Intentional Conscious Communities of Costa Rica (ICCCR) directory (coming soon to www.icccr.info).

By definition, an intentional community is a planned, usually residential community designed, operated and maintained by a group. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious , or spiritual vision. Community members also share responsibilities and resources. Intentional communities are all inclusive; they include co-housing communities, residential land trusts , eco-villages, communes , holistic and alternative health retreat centers, organic farms, kibbutzim , ashrams, student co-ops, and housing cooperatives . They are often called “Conscious Communities” throughout Costa Rica. Usually new members of an intentional community are selected by the community's existing membership, rather than by real-estate agents or land owners (if the land is not owned collectively by the community.)

The ICCCR’s definition of an intentional conscious community is any shared work and housing group, community or program that seeks to do a combination or elements of mind-body-spirit-earth work that is eco-sustainable and empowers the local community (Ticos!): nonprofit organizations, social entrepreneurial programs, and small businesses alike.

The ICCCR, seeks to identify, assess, and unify these communities through an informational, open-source web portal, with the ultimate objective of empowering these communities through networking; skills-share; marketing their products and services locally, domestically and internationally; information exchange; capacity-building workshops; matching them with conscious investors and stewards; as well as keeping them up to date on funding opportunities such as social entrepreneurial grants and carbon credits.

Ultimately, the ICCCR seeks to empower these intentional conscious communities in Costa Rica in order that they can be economically sustainable, as well as eco-sustainable, stimulate their local economies, and protect Costa Rica’s natural resources (the rainforests are just one of many!) from big development. The ICCCR seeks to be a valuable tool for Costa Rica’s natural resource management.

The ICCCR, in collaboration with Fincas Amanecer and Fincas Paraiso Verde (both organic farm communities in Londres, Quepos) are holding their very first workshop for intentional communities in Costa Rica:

Intentional Conscious Community Planning Hands-On Workshop (For Beginners/Forming Communities to Established Communities): March 27-30, 2009

Workshops include how to write a short-term and long-term business plan for people who do not speak Business; how to market your products and services on the internet (social media network marketing); how carbon credits work; how to procure social entrepreneurial grants and seed money; pigs for propane; an edible and medicinal plant tour (which can be used as an income generation tool for eco-communities!); and then valuable information about legal, business and residency issues in Costa Rica.

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http://www.examiner.com/x-2454-SF-Alternative-Recreation-Examiner

Monetary Reform and How a National Monetary System Should Work

By Richard C. Cook in Global Research, May 11, 2007

The author has received an overwhelming response to his recent Global Research report entitled, “An Emergency Program of Monetary Reform for the United States.” The introduction to that report stated that, “the U.S. financial system headed by the Federal Reserve System has failed, and…only an emergency program of monetary reform can address conditions which may be leading to a catastrophe like the Great Depression or worse.”

This new report on “Monetary Reform and How a National Monetary System Should Work” continues the dialogue by outlining the principles and mechanisms available to help guide the creation of a monetary system for any nation that wishes to enjoy economic democracy with prosperity. This would be in contrast to the collapsing debt-based monetary system overseen by the Federal Reserve and the other central banks of the world, coordinated at the top by such institutions as the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of International Settlements.

Note that all the banks of the Western world are ultimately private institutions owned by the world’s super-rich. The international banking structure is operated by and on behalf of the world’s monetary elite primarily for their own profit.

Just below the banking system are the giant corporations of the global economy which derive capital from and funnel profits into the financiers’ empire. Bringing up the rear are the populations and debt-serfs of the no-longer-sovereign nation states, including those of the United States, whose participation in the system as consumers is essential, but whose jobs continue to disappear as manufacturing is increasingly automated.

The author had realized as early as 1970 that the central problem with the world’s economy lay on the side of distribution, not production. He came to Washington, D.C., that year and spent most of the next thirty-six years working within sight of the Washington Monument, learning how things really work, and pondering the methods that might be more in concord with such founding documents of American democracy as the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Twenty-one of these years were with the U.S. Treasury Department.

Now, for the first time, this report builds on the findings of many of the world’s monetary reformers past and present by offering a complete prescription for a new and better world. This prescription is radically different from most progressive reform agendas that address only symptoms of the underlying systemic failures.

WHERE MONEY COMES FROM

When setting out to study monetary principles, we must realize how little we know of the real facts of monetary history. Economics is an extremely limited discipline rife with untested assumptions and unchallengeable dogmas. Its most pernicious doctrine is the assertion that there is something called “the market,” where there is an “invisible hand” that makes everything work out the way it is supposed to.

Actually, an economy functions according to the principles according to which it is designed and regulated. If it is designed to funnel wealth into the hands of the monetary controllers, then that is what the “market” and the “invisible hand” will do. If it is designed to foster “the general welfare,” as it should according to the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, then the “market” and the “invisible hand” will tend in that direction.

Unfortunately, we march today to the tune of the monetary elite, so they are the ones who reap the profits and the benefits. They are the ones on whom the “invisible hand” lavishes the wealth of the world.

It is done through the process of bank-created credit. While during the nineteenth century other forms of money circulated, such as large quantities of coinage, silver certificates, and government-issued greenbacks, almost all the money that exists today originates through a loan by a financial institution to an individual or a business.

When a loan is made it is issued as a liability on the bank’s ledger. When it is repaid, the liability is canceled. With today’s computer systems, all transactions are digitized, of course. The bank keeps the interest on the loan as its combined administrative fee and profit. The money that is lent had no prior existence.

Once money is created as credit, it takes many forms according to how the loan recipient spends it. Some credit is used by businesses or individuals as investment in order to generate profits over and above the amount they must repay to the bank with interest. If the money is used simply for consumer purchases, the individual consumer must pay back the loan through future earnings. In those cases where the borrower defaults on the loan or goes bankrupt, the money simply remains in circulation however it was spent.

Unfortunately, large amounts of credit are used mainly for speculation, not for any benefit to the producing economy. This includes securities bought on margin and borrowing by hedge funds where the fund may make a profit even if the value of its investments goes down. Bank-created credit in this case is little more than chips in a casino.

Other borrowing takes place by equity funds and other types of investors for leveraged mergers or buyouts of entire companies, where the predators wreck a company’s infrastructure by reducing costs and selling its assets, then pay back their bank loans before unloading the business on someone else.

The most important thing to realize about the banking system is that the money which enters into circulation as purchasing power must eventually be returned in the repayment of loans. This is why the Federal Reserve’s monetary measures—M1, M2, and M3—are meaningless, because so much of it has liens against it.

We are taught that paying it back is the way things should be—obviously, if we borrow something, we should pay back what we owe.

But the peculiar thing is that because the borrowed money pays for labor, commodities, rent, etc., it becomes part of the prices that are eventually charged for goods and services. However, when the money goes back to the bank to cancel a loan, that purchasing power disappears. Neither the banks nor economists ever make note of the fact that this process creates a chronic shortage of purchasing power which must be filled by more loans and more bank profits. The economy is thus a treadmill that borrowers must constantly trudge along in order to have enough money for survival.

So a system which is seemingly grounded in the simple adage that if you borrow you should repay is all wrong. The reason it is all wrong is that in most cases, individual consumers should never have to borrow in the first place. And we never ask ourselves why, with the abundance that is possible from modern science and technology, should people have to borrow money at interest for the necessities of life—a house, a car, household expenses, an education, etc.

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