For anyone who has been around since the year 2000, it is very clear that Big Changes are afoot.  The financial meltdown, the monumental failings of our leaders and the institutions we used to trust as well as the onslaught of  natural cataclysms like the Haiti earthquake, Hurricane Katrina and South Pacific tsunamis, are but a few of the harbingers of a new period of deep transformation.  

Daily reports of wrong-doing, stupidity and cowardice on the part of the people whom we've trusted with our institutions tells us very clearly that the Collective Consciousness Story we've been telling ourselves no longer holds up.   The new Age of Information and Technology is helping us to "pull back the curtain of public ignorance" so that it is now nearly impossible for governments and other obsolete organizations to successfully control the flow of content and distribution in order to exert control over their populations.    Individuals around the world are now using technology to write a new Story of complete Freedom.  People are ready to fulfill the Promise of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Technology has changed our world more radically in the last 100 years than in the last 10,000 years combined.  Our knowledge and manipulation of our environment have increased exponentially, while our spiritual life has remained in the dark, ruled by primitive religious, social and economic systems based on daily oppression of the masses as a way of life.   We've been nurturing a Mass Media Consciousness Story that prescribes that the world is dangerous and evil and that one must protect oneself from other people.  "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," or "It's a dog-eat-dog world," I've been advised before.

We're also obsessed with the delusions and falsehoods of our own Personal Story.  The story each of us tells ourself about how see each other in the world and what we call "reality."  For most of us, that story was programmed into us in childhood by our parents, teachers, priests, politicians and everyone of the other, very loud systems of indoctrination that are at work in our society 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Basic beliefs forged millennia ago and passed down since time immemorial continue to dictate our lives:  Men and women get married and have children, etc..  Go to church, go to school, don't do drugs, etc.   Beyond that, we have thousands of age-old stories and "traditions" based on superstitions and false beliefs that serve to separate people into perennially at-war groups.  We tell each other and accept as truth all sorts of falsehoods about which race is better, or which religion or which system of government, sports team or army or architecture or even food.  Our entire life is devoted to the separation and classification of people and then using those separations as an excuse to punish or even kill those who are different than us.  Most times, we do it under the delusion that God wants us to do so.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the current Mass Media Consciousness that continues to focus only on darkness and hopelessness as the status quo state of affairs around the world.  We are told that we have enemies and must be vigilant here at home and abroad.  We must give up more and more of our liberties in exchange for an uneasy feeling of safety from terrorism.  We must give the government a large part of our earnings to keep supporting a bloated federal government that no longer serves the people but itself.

Airwaves today are filled with a cacophony of propaganda and facts are freely mixed in with fiction by the corporate owners of the very media we're supposed to trust to report only the truth. Never before were our airwaves so bereft of factual reporting and only filled with rumors, innuendo, propaganda and age-old ignorance and superstition.  The result has been an increasingly shrill and misinformed public that has reverted back to age-old fears and prejudices, such that bitterness threatens to tear apart the country.  And,  shockingly, the U.S. Supreme Court just gave corporations a green light to spent unlimited amounts of money to drown out all other voices and elect their own candidates to Congress, where they'll pass only laws that protect their corporate patrons.  For those of us with the uneasy feeling that most in Congress were bought and paid for by special interests, the supreme court just made it official.

We continue to be ruled by those stories because we are too busy chasing money ourselves and frankly, too afraid of the real truth.  Well, we are all now faced with a stark choice:  Either go inward and begin our own personal journey of self-discovery of our true nature, or be shaken out of our comfortable McMansions by painful economic circumstances that will force us to wake up.

And, as always, it is not governments or institutions but Individuals who are at the forefront of the trend.  Individuals, young and old, across the world are changing their own stories and using social media and technology to spread their new "reality."  We can see it in the "tweets" out of Iran where they have decided that they can no longer endure personal oppression simply to uphold a delusional and insane religious system.

In China, the showdown over Internet freedoms will be coming to a head in the next few years and it will be the old system that will crumble under its own weight.  Here at home, Independent Voters now outnumber both Republicans and Democrats, a clear reflection of the failures of our present system of elections and government, which is based simply on the flow of money.  Cell phone photos and videos uploaded by regular people are now holding our politicians more accountable than ever, pulling back the curtain of hypocrisy and demanding more personal integrity.  YouTube, FaceBook and other social media networks have unleashed a torrent of unprecedented public discussion on every issue facing us and the solutions are not coming from governments but from everyday people.

In the coming years, as we move deeper into Aquarian energy of information, we will evolve to live out Jesus' words:  "Thou Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free."  Technology and Science will continue to allow us to live deeper and more meaningful lives and to delve further into our physical universe to create a world where people are truly free of all oppression.   The recent global financial collapse and ongoing shaky economic situation has forced millions of Americans to face the excesses of an empty life.  Many of us have been given the gift of quiet self-reflection in the midst of crisis.  The self-reflection that can quickly crystallize for us what feels good and right in our lives.  Once we know how that feels, we will use technology and social media to let others know about our experiences and establish deeper connections based on a new story of that will literally Change The World.