Surviving Tomorrow
Tony Crisp
On January third of 2003 I had a dream suggesting that times of great change were on their way. Two years later I experienced another such insight into what was shown as a possible future we are moving toward.
Having been professionally involved in teaching, writing about and using dreams to help people gain significant change in their life, I took the dreams seriously. I had learned that the unconscious levels of our mind that dreams portray have an amazing ability to look at the uncountable bits of information and life experience we gather, and arrive at a global view. The global view my dreams presented suggested the direction we are taking and confronting.
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The message of the first dream was that we, despite having arisen from the processes of life on our planet, have not honoured or acted as custodians of life and its creatures. Instead we have built personal ways of life, social structures and organisations that are based on greed or plundering of nature. This has cut us off from what gives life and sustains us. This is like a tree purposely cutting off its own roots. |
The breakdown may not just be your car |
But the important message wasn't an accusation. It was a forecast of what was coming, it said the time of the Lion and the Bull is arriving. Taken out of its imagery, this means a season of change is coming, just as winter follows summer. Two such seasons are coming at the same time. As a predator the Lion depicts the pulling down of all in our personal, social and business life that is weak or diseased.
The insight I gained here was that much within our personal or business life is so cut off from what is life giving, the real principles of Life, that there is an innate weakness or poison that will lead to personal or business breakdown.
Two such seasons are coming at the same time. The Lion depicts the pulling down of all in our personal, social and business life that is weak or diseased. The insight I gained here was that much within our personal or business life is so cut off from what is life giving, the real principles of Life, that there is an innate weakness or poison that will lead to personal or business breakdown.
The Bull means that everything will be shaken, as with an earthquake, and whatever has innate weakness will fall. Remember this is a season, not retribution. And just as many elderly and sick die in winter because of their condition, what is sick or weak in the world will be shaken and tried in a similar way.
Watching the economic disaster in October of 2008, it seems to be a very relevant warning. The experience of the dreams was deeply impressive; they suggested not simply a high tide, but a Tsunami of change, and the economic collapse of 2008 was just the beginning.
The second experience depicted enormous tensions or energies building up within the feelings and desires of millions of people worldwide. With a widening gap between the few enormously wealthy and the billions living in poverty, the tension grows ever more extreme. This tension is heightened by a system that dangles ways of life before people that only the rich can afford.
The imagery suggested there will be a breakthrough when that tension finds a focus. The release will produce enormous political and social changes, possibly helped by a technological breakthrough. We only need to look back to the French and Russian revolutions to see the enormous power of the people when they are being used as cheap labour by the wealthy elite. But I believe what we are facing is the passing away of an age, a sordid period in human history, a time when the spirit of ancient links with Life have been poisoned and the possibility of further growth in the direction we have taken destroyed.
Graph of banking collapse |
I am tempted to believe there is truth in these visions my unconscious showed me. However, I am a practical person, so I look around to see what is actually going on and what others have to say. I see that the internal weaknesses of the banking system during the turmoil of 2008, said by financial experts to have been produced by greed, left it wide open to be pulled down or shaken to bits. However, there are enormous weaknesses in other than our banking. The considerable amount of psychological sickness such as depression and suicide; the huge numbers of people out of work, unable to afford a home to live in, cannot afford medical care, or who cannot find meaning or purpose in life, suggest other massive areas of social and personal weakness. |
What I also see is that the world I knew as a child in 1937 has completely gone. A world war and technology unimaginable at that time brought social innovations to wipe it away. Change is part of existence. The future, even if we discount what we cannot see signs of at the moment, appears to be moving toward enormous personal and social changes.
For instance, people are living longer. A few years ago in the United Kingdom there were only about one hundred people who were centenarians. Today there are over nine thousand. That is ninety times more, and the figure is risingi There is also an enormous amount of research directed to prolonging life even further. A recent announcement explained how a mixture of two common chemicals found in health food stores, when given to rats at the equivalent age of seventy, radically improved the rats memory, their energy, and they began to look like younger animals.ii Even at present the huge increase in older population is producing social changes, ways of life, and political headaches. Further change is on the way. It has to be, because the structure of society, government and money flow, is based on the old situation of people dying earlier.
There is so much more though. As Stanley Schmidt puts it in his book Coming Convergence, 'Imagine direct communication links between the human brain and machines, or tailored materials capable of adapting by themselves to changing environmental conditions, or computer chips and environmental sensors embedded into everyday clothing, or medical technologies that eliminate currently untreatable conditions such as blindness and paralysis.'
Change is flowing into our lives daily, and building up to greater speed. Just a few years ago there were no nano materials. Now nanotechnology is entering our lives, even in beauty products. I also remember the emergence of the stem cell revolution, and how the in-depth understanding of DNA is transforming medicine and people's lives. Not long ago I read the first report of someone who had been paralysed through spinal injury beginning to walk. I saw an account in New Scientist of how the blind could now see through the use of electronics linked to their nervous system. A woman, who had not been able to stand for years due to vertigo, could now balance again through the same technology.
Moving on to personality and the brain, a fairly new line of research is under way with tiny 'pacemakers' that can be placed deep in the brain.iii So far it has been used mainly to treat Parkinson's disease, but I watched a video of a woman who, after twenty years of unremitting depression, found a new experience of life and smiled for the first time in years. And of course, those are just the first strands of progress. It seems possible the amazing potential the brain has, that most of us hardly use, can be accessed. But there is also the emerging science of neuroeconomics that scans the brain to see what we are likely to purchase. What will that do to the way advertising assaults us? There are so many directions research is exploring we cannot predict what will be found next.
Another area of change is connected with how we form, or fail to form, sexual relationships. One of the most obvious changes is in regard to homosexuality being more open. But also the way we partner has altered. Less people marry than was true thirty years ago, and more people cohabit. Divorce has increased, and the age we get married has gone up by seven years to average at thirty five for men and thirty two for women. There is a great change in the number of single mothers raising their child or children alone. However, one of the areas of greatest change, illustrated by both the acceptance of homosexuality and the increase in unmarried mothers, is the much wider public acceptance of different ways of relating one to one, and the varieties of sexual relationship. Lengthening life, the enhancement of personal abilities and mental functioning will give rise to very different types of personality, and this means different ways of relating.
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Such changes, singly or together, are producing a groundswell that shifts the way people live, what they expect, and how industry and governments need to relate to them. Such a change of worldview is called a paradigm shift - an alteration in the way we see the world, or even in what we believe reality to be. Such a change is obviously already running and gaining speed, one of its greatest underlying energies is the recognition of quantum physics as it demonstrates that the material 'so solid' world we took to be fundamental, is not what we thought it was. This has fed through into the arts, drama and the way we see life and death. |
Where is change leading us? |
The ancient Izapa, Mayan, and Aztec cultures of South America believed that a totally new world order is emerging at the moment. The Mayan prophecy gives the exact date for the end of an old cycle as December 21st 2012. The Mayans were great astronomers, and they left records stating that in 2012 a particular galactic event occurs marking the ending of a long period and the beginning of a very different phase of human life. iv
Whether that turns out to be true we have to wait and see. What we can be sure of is that, as always, our old world is changing, and the changes are coming thick and fast. Change is happening, and our personal stumbling block might not be global warming or the loss of fossil fuels; it might not be population explosion leading to food shortages, or enormous economic and social change. Perhaps we love the thought of unprecedented technological innovation and greater medical transformation. Your children or friends might have found their way through the temptation of drug abuse, alcohol dependence, or the meaningless of our times that can lead to depression and suicide. Maybe you see extended life as a joy and not a burden, or the challenge of very different ways of relating, loving and working easily met. But what about the loss of your car, genetically modified babies and adults, or the emergence of artificial intelligence as it changes our world forever? Somewhere in all of that you are going to hit the brick wall of your boundaries, and you might hit it at speed. And then, where will you be when you can't fuck around any more?
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The changes we face may not be ones we have ready made attitudes or skills to meet. We need to understand the situation we are facing, and be aware of how people have faced enormous change in the past. In the midst of change we need mobility, creativity and a mind not locked into rigid beliefs or conceptions. It is therefore important to prepare ourselves and family, even our business or creative direction, for a different world, and a different way of life. |
Some chapters are now online: The Vision; Life's Little Secrets; Dreaming a New Life; Martial Arts of the Mind; Growing up to Love; The Power Game - Secrets of a new work plan.
i From Medical News Today.
ii The chemicals used were Acetyl-L-Carnitine and Alpha-Lipoic Acid,
iii Deep Brain Stimulation.
iv See http://www.edgarcayce.org/2012.asp
Tony's in print Books in the UK or USA
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