We are currently undergoing a revolution of thought and rediscovering our spiritual connection to the whole. Ancient magical and mystical practices such as divination, which is finding the synchronicity and connection of experience, are coming to the forefront in books by such authors as James Redfield, Dianne Skafte and John Perkins. We are realizing, once again, that divination comes from the divine, much in the same way creativity comes from creation. This realization activates a stream of light, and within this light, we are reawakening the dream. By changing our vision of the future, we change our vision of who we are. We recreate our personal dream, and by doing so, the consensus dream.

"My new book, The Celestine Vision (Warner Books), elaborates on the awakening that we are now experiencing," James Redfield told us in a recent interview. He went to describe this awakening, "We are changing our expectation of the future, the expectation of ourselves and raising the collective vision. There are two levels to this process, 1) reaching one's individual potential, and 2) the new view of the cosmos and the reality of the human situation, which is our collective vision that takes us into a conscious collective future. We move into this new awareness by consensus, and a kind of sociological contagion. This new awareness is spreading around the globe through a grass roots recognition. Our thoughts are energy and every thought has impact. All the mystics have said this for a very long time. We need to become aware that our intentions do matter. Because of modern physics, we now understand that we are energetic fields of intention. We are creating intentional fields, where all of our unconscious beliefs shape our outer world and create the personal events that occur in the future."

As each of us reawaken our personal dream, we also reawaken the collective dream, and that is where major change occurs. In James Redfield's view, "By being aware of our individual effect on the collective, we can start to participate in history and evolution on a conscious level. It's exciting because the whole thing is an awakening. What we are doing is awakening to the fact that we are spiritual beings on this planet, and we have come here with a mission. We are starting to remember past life information, and starting to remember the vision we had for our own lives on this planet, and the truth that we came here to deliver. That is really what history is all about, is bringing information from the afterlife dimension into this dimension. This information is all about coming into alignment with the heavenly dimensions, so we are spiritualizing this planet. This happens as each individual awakens to what they are here to do. As people start to get intuitive glimpses of what they need to do, they take the risks and make the moves while showing the courage to evolve themselves forwards. The image we are realizing is very powerful, and all of us working together can hold this vision of where we are taking history and the world. We have to hold this new vision together, collectively. It is like a collective intent."

On the individual level, people are connecting once again to their spirituality in terms of viewing the Earth, divine energy, and the human connection to it all, in terms other than the rigid scientific and "business as usual" views that have been prominent since the industrial revolution. Part of this involves how we view ourselves as humans. James Redfield called it a "new spirituality and awareness," and he talked about how this applies to our basic level of subsistence. "Someone who is in the worst cycle of poverty in the worst ghetto in New York, if they get their first glimpse that there is synchronicity operating in their lives, then they can apply that to their material needs. It is a spiritual awareness that your needs can be filled, that there are windows of opportunity for each of us if we open up to the awareness that notices them. There is no reason that any one should be hungry in the world. The new volunteerism reflects this--that you are supposed to help the kid down the block and not just give to United Way, but get personally involved in the community, which is what this new awareness and spirituality is all about."

As we enter the 21st Century, we are both individually and collectively experiencing an energetic and spiritual revolution that will impact our lives as greatly as any before it. This is a natural progression, expressed by Declaration of Independence author and third U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, who believed every generation should have a revolution in order to keep the consensus in accordance with their individual needs.

James Redfield elaborated, "A revolution of thought and a paradigm shift is happening because we are integrating the new physical view of the universe, as well as its relationship to ourselves. That is revolutionary in its own right. The enlightenment thinkers in the 16th and 17th Centuries reacted against magic and spirituality in general, and reduced the world and human experience to the ordinary and materialistic. Today we are finding out how the world is connected. When you split an electron and reverse the spin on one half, the other half also reverses its spin. The connection is always there whether or not they are separated, which is impossible in the Newtonian view of the world. That is magic. Whether it's aliens, atoms, or icons, they all emanate from the creative force in the universe. When you subdivide it in any way, you are limiting the source and limiting your access to it. There is just one source and one experience of the source, but a lot of ways to come to that experience."

Dismissed and cast aside because they were considered mystical and pagan, many ideas are coming full circle, and now being integrated into science, spirituality and the consensus dream. We are moving away from a concrete, mechanistic, cause and effect, material world view towards a creative world view where the world is a fluid and fluxing medium. Dianne Skafte, author of Listening To The Oracle (HarperCollins), summed up this concept of fluidity when she told us, "We are effected by everything around us. The reality of plants, animals and the weather move into us and effect what is going on inside of us. If we just attend to that and notice it, then the boundary between inner and outer starts to become permeable and things can pass back and forth. By paying attention to internal messages as the external is happening, you can get these multiple realities going in your mind, like many movies running simultaneously, which is incredibly powerful for awakening and opening oracular consciousness."

Dianne continued, "Thoughts, fantasies, dreams and images are real entities, and have the same validity or reality as does a table or chair. One you can touch with the senses and the other you can't. Nevertheless, they shape what we do, how we respond, and our experience." She went on to explain why people have shied away from the magical and mystical as being due to fear. "Some people feel that if they take one step into these unseen realities, they will be engulfed or go mad, and will somehow lose their rationality while turning into blathering idiots." This comes about from the mechanistic view that whatever can't be measured by scientific means, doesn't exist, and anyone experiencing these things is crazy.

Dianne Skafte elaborated on this problem and change of consciousness. "Spirit and science started as one. The scientific attitude of objectivity was necessary to our survival, but separated us from our oracular consciousness. If you pursue any path long enough, it eventually comes back around. Imagine for a moment that music dropped out of our culture, and that none of us had ever heard a song, but then every once in a while we would hear a bird sing and something would stir in us, some memory we couldn't quite place. We are in the same relationship to these oracular traditions, which are just beginning to stir and awaken."

As we individually awaken these oracular traditions within us, we also reawaken the collective dream, which has been laying dormant. Like a flower blooming in spring, we have come full circle and are experiencing our fluorescence while opening up our inner potential. By moving the emphasis from the outside world to our inner spirit, we begin to perceive our reality energetically.

John Perkins, author of Shapeshifting: Shamanic Techniques for Global and Personal Transformation (Inner Traditions), explained this shift in perception. "In our culture we are taught not to look at things energetically in terms of energy around ourselves, our souls and our spirit. We look at energy as being an outside force. I need a chocolate bar to give me energy before I go out to play tennis. We take energy boosters. We look at energy to move mountains as coming through oil, and some big machine that moves the mountain. When we are sick, we go to doctors to get their energy through their medicine and healing powers rather than using our own. We are not taught to go into our own energy, and use the energy that is available to us from all that's around us from Mother Earth and the universe. We are taught to look at things intellectually rather than at the energy body. What we forget in that process, is the mind is also all energy. We take the rational approach to the world. It served a purpose, but now we are beginning to understand that it has a very limited purpose and is not enough. We need to move beyond this, which is why there is a tremendous interest in shamanism today. We have incredible power through our energy fields, through our spirit and our soul. We need to relearn this because we are born with this capacity."

In terms of reawakening and activating the dream, John Perkins said, "Once something is a dream, you give it the energy to manifest in this reality. The process of giving it the energy is part of shapeshifting. So you shape shift where you are now into what you have dreamed and into being this new shape. We also do this as cultures. For instance, we had a dream of tall buildings, lots of cars and heavy industries. We believed it to be a true dream, and we gave it a lot of energy, and low and behold, we shapeshifted it into what it is today. This is no longer our dream, so we need to make another shapeshift to a new dream."

Reawakening the dream, both within ourselves and on a consensus level, involves realizing the energetic connection between ourselves and the totality of existence. This includes rediscovering our connection to the Earth by taking positive ecological action. In Dianne Skafte's words, "We need to go back to the Earth for guidance and direction because within the Earth is the prototype and the history of all that has ever lived. From ancient times people knew this, but we have forgotten it."

At a recent conference in Kyoto, Japan, industrial countries agreed to reduce fossil fuels by 7%, encouraging change in this direction. Finally, we are moving away from the corporate, old school, mentality, which encourages the butchering of our old growth forests in the name of profits. In the words of James Redfield, "The forest service is allowing corporations to go in and cut old-growth forests, especially in the Northwest United States. There is a very strong argument that it is corporate welfare, pure and simple. They are big contributors to politicians. The public pays to build roads into the wilderness and then they allow the corporations to go in and cut the trees, and then they ship them to the Pacific Rim, namely Japan, and they chip them up and make plywood and particle board out of them, so it doesn't do anything for our economy. The corporations are just making money off our children's forests. There is only about 4% of old growth forest left, and I am very heavily into supporting and saving what's left of our old growth forests."

By each of us making an individual effort, we affect change on a global level, reawakening both our personal dream as well as our vision for the future. Organizations such as Save Americas Forests (202) 544-7462, one of James Redfield's primary concerns, and The Dream Change Coalition (561-622-6064, DreamChang@aol.com), John Perkins' organization, are active in shifting the mind-set of controlling and exploiting nature, to one of connecting and cooperating with the Earth Mother Gaia. All of this is part of the current energetic and spiritual revolution we are now experiencing. In the words of reggae composer Bob Marley, it's time to "Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights." By awakening our oracular consciousness, speaking our minds and standing up for our rights as human beings, we change the whole, shapeshifting the consensus dream into one that includes making the world a better place for ourselves, our children and all of nature.

(Originally published in Magical Blend Magazine.)

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