THE SHIFT — Overview I often think about how much language itself will transform in the coming decades, centuries and millennia to keep up with how we will need to express ourselves and our experiences. Writing this article especially, I realise these developments are needed much sooner than first thought. Until then we must start somewhere and I'll do my best to use the words available to explain the three main areas of The Shift that I believe will touch everyone and likely have already started to. Although lengthy (I have found no other way for now), I aim to keep it simple and hope you appreciate that for now it's the best way forward, if not the only. One can say there are three distinct phases to The Shift, here categorized as: 1. The Destruction, 2. The Void and 3. The New. 1, 2 and 3 are not discrete steps. There are instead major overlaps where one aspect is emerging or in full flow and another phase, which was in full flow is subsequently fading out. And yet, because this Shift is taking place over such a long period of time (years, decades and even lifetimes) two consecutive phases can easily occupy the same period for as long as they need to, thereby feeling simultaneous. For the last 200 years we have been experiencing an increase in destruction on the planet yet simultaneously new ways of living have emerged in holistic approaches to medicine, sustainable farming, eco-living, humanitarian projects etc.The overlap is evident and drawn out, I believe it has to be, not only for us to be able to adapt to what's happening but also for our safety at all levels of our being. To contemplate change within these timeframes in a world where 'the faster the better' reigns, takes some adjusting to, to say nothing of the time needed to contemplate humanity's moving locus in a moving eon! Here's a pause to ponder both. Advances in science are assisting our changing perceptions. Quantum physics is stretching our view of what time is, what is possible and what 'potential' means. Even without understanding the science, it's both simply and beautifully encompassed in the images of stars birthing and dying in our expanding Universe. We look at these images with gaping awe trying to fathom our place in 'all that', just as we have since our beginning, but never with such detailed images. We are expanding our minds. Or are we having our minds expanded? Here, two definitions. They are simple words that you know but I want you to understand what they mean in this context. The letter L brandished all over this website depicts in the vertical, the Old (the before) and in the horizontal, the New (the after), where:
In Einsteins oft-repeated and paraphrased words, "A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels". We are all individuals with patterns of thinking which have created our lives* and consequently, our patterns of thinking also affect the lives of everyone we relate to and (not wanting to overwhelm you here but) life itself for everyone. This is something we are coming to terms with. Very slowly. To understand this is to start to understand the nature of consciousness. Until we individually Shift, what we are creating in our lives will always be a manifestation of Old thinking and we'll be back to where we were; the road to stagnation, instead of "toward higher levels". What's taking place both individually and collectively (simultaneously) is that we are being asked, which way do we want to go? Backwards or forwards? Old or New? Rubbing our chin while contemplating the two directions on the signpost (under the illusion that we have a choice in the matter), it dawns that the gravity of this decision is unlike anything we have considered before. Part of our consciousness is starting to see that it's not just about 'I' anymore, there is an enormous 'we' to consider - again, simultaneously. This 'part' of our consciousness is gradually seeing for itself that 'I' and 'we' are the same. This 'part' of our consciousness is expanding rapidly and The Shift is the catalyst. For the here and now of this article however, the focus will remain on the 'I', as this is the only real starting point. Looking at what the individual is currently experiencing, it is hard to deny depression, anxiety, despair, hope- and helplessness are pervasive. Many are thinking, “The world/life is out to get me” or "the world is in crisis", but these are simply thoughts, perspectives rooted in fear. What if alternatively we consider that nature is simply forcing change on such a scale that it would otherwise be avoided? Unfortunately it is uncomfortable but it has to be, change is rarely otherwise. Life has to get so uncomfortable as to force a change which we would not embark on voluntarily. Another significant reason for this discomfort is that humanity has been thinking in linear terms for so long (she wrote, herself referring to time linearly). Shamanic and esoteric traditions aside, most of us think of life or anything we create as traversing a line from birth to death, beginning to end. Born, we then walk a line taking us (hopefully) towards what we think is success and happiness, and hope we get to squeeze it all in before we get to the end of the line. There is a minority that are aware of, and live aligned to cycles in modern life (astrologers, farmers, midwives, funeral directors to suggest a possible few). The rest of us are doing our best to control the line we are walking; wanting to widen it to get more done or lengthen it, to put off the inevitable. The discomfort of this period of adjustment, The Shift, is very much like learning to walk differently; from a straight line to a circle, or more accurately; a spiral - across time.
1 - The Destruction
All cycles have an element of destruction or ending, where what is no longer needed or useful leaves. Alas, we are accustomed to associating an end as being something 'bad' or fearful, something that will cause change and instability. This is reflected and rooted in our personal and cultural thinking about death. If instead we see evolution and change as natural, which requires a release, degradation and/or destruction to move us to the next cycle for a newer and fresher way of living, then the fear element can dissipate. An end is simply something that is, rather than something to cower away from. The importance we have placed on finality and separation (and the fear it has had to cover up) can be seen in the divisions existing between countries, religions, castes, classes, tribes, nationalities and the people within them. “This is where I/we end and you begin”, we say or think. The boundary is clearly marked and the line is drawn, "Don't cross it!" is our final stamp. This is the outside world's manifestation of the walls of separation existing within our ourselves. For so long we have failed to realize that it is separation in our individual consciousness that's at the epicenter of the separation that we see all around us. Within ourselves is where 'it' (that's everything) all starts. The core of separation that starts within us is between the thinking we choose to see (conscious) and that which we don't choose to see (unconscious).* We all have thoughts from the past that we would rather not look at. They may be painful, shameful or memories that we were too young to know what to do with. They caused us confusion and so we separated ourselves from them. Fair enough, we did what we needed to do to survive. But then, we did our best (awarely or unawarely) for the repercussions of these thoughts to not impact our adult daily life. We created 'lives': secured jobs, had families, acquired objects, status and experiences to prove that they, 'those thoughts', didn't matter. Now and again, ripples from the past would appear in the present and when this happened, we usually ignored them or lost ourselves in avoidance. Ripples back then were fine, but the crashing 15 foot waves we now see? Our towers aren't strong enough! The Shift and its energy of truth - according to what is aligned with natural evolution and what isn't - is what is stirring up these huge waves. It is bringing with it an increase in the severity of unexpected events, forcing us to look at what we had discarded of ourselves over the tower walls. With these unexpected giant waves surface a great deal of mental, emotional and physical dis-ease. Be it related to our financial security, physical health, close relationships, life direction, cultural expectations, belief systems, family history etc., areas that once gave us security are now tremoring. We find we have no choice but to look at our deeper issues - to see why we developed these dependencies as we did. We thought they would help us survive (so that we wouldn't have to look at our past) but gradually we are seeing they stopped us from living freely. Initially the tremors are small: minor grievances, annoyances, contractual disagreements, headaches, irrational mood swings (yours or others), phones being lost/stolen, accounts being hacked or wiped, mysterious illnesses that doctors can't explain, relationship difficulties, health declining, excessive fatigue and apathy. There's a general feeling of discomfort in you and with the world around you. We'd like to think these events are isolated or can be managed, and for a while they can. The tremors then augment to be of much greater force: traumatic ends to relationships, sudden deaths of loved ones, forced redundancy, natural disasters, irreconcilable family conflict, terminal illnesses, plummeting business etc… Increasingly, bricks of once certainties plummet down causing us to feel that our very survival (as we saw it) is threatened. These shake-ups force our tower to crumble. They force us to look at what happened in the past and how the echoes have infiltrated our present. We are made to see the aspects of ourselves that we covered up, that which we separated ourselves from. We cannot talk about one love, one world, one universe until our own divisions have been restored to one-ness. Otherwise we take our fractured thinking and apply it to the world around us, where the same thinking manifests. Daily we are seeing the result of this thinking tremoring and crumbling in our uncertain world. We are (pretty much always) tempted to hastily rebuild the tower using the tumbling debris, in attempt to ignore or override the natural process. How could we know otherwise? We have never been through something like this before. The quick rebuild eventually proves futile; attempts at 'holding it all together' soon collapse or never stand up in the first place.
This is surrender like we have never known. It's not going to therapy for 5 years and wondering if it's working. This is life asking you right now, "What's the truth here?" and "What are you going to do about it?!” The Destruction phase can take years (at high intensity) or decades and for some, even a lifetime (at less intensity than others). It will be at the pace that your life situation and environment will allow and it will often leave you feeling that you are being stretched to the last micron of your ability to remain sane and keep a pulse. Regardless of the pace, there will be an intensity to it that will affect you on all levels and you will need time for recuperation, which is what much of the next phase is about. During the Destruction we have glimpses and experiences of the next stage as the phases overlap. The Void appears as more of your old life clears away. You literally find there is more space in your life where it was once filled with clutter, both mental and literal. This Void is in such contrast to what has taken place in The Destruction and to anything ever experienced before, that it takes a while to get used to.
2 - The Void It feels that everything in your life has fallen away and you have moved on. But to what? It feels like there's nothing there.
Rebalance says it all. This phase is a space for a major period of orientating and harmonising. It may also include periods of grieving for what has been lost or left or passed. Life very much feels as if it has been drastically slowed down, giving us the space to reflect on how we have lived and where we find ourselves. Life has become very much simplified through the Destruction process and much of the 'unnecessary' (and you were shocked to see how much of it there was) no longer exists, naturally giving you time to rest and reflect. There is the experience of having space where you have never known it. This can be disconcerting as it is so vast and empty that you don't know what to do with it. Remnants of old patterns of thinking may have you reaching out to do... or speak to... or plan... as you used to, but it's like reaching into a cloud, your hand returns empty. After initially struggling with the discomfort of this phase you come to appreciate the space and how much rest you need. The time to reflect is more important than you first realised. To avoid returning to the life that you were in, with unfinished business discarded over the tower walls, you have time to see the loose ends, tie them up as you go...or dispense with them altogether. After all you don't want to take any of it with you where you are going. Wherever that is. For now you have no idea.
Likely reflections on what took place during the Destruction can be that with each brick that fell, you saw a different element of your ‘I’ or ego. By ego I mean all that you held on to as your identity. This identity was important because you, as we all do, believed it made you "who I am". The problem comes with how much of "who I am" is entwined with the past; our pains and our 'story'. Can you see it was all enmeshed? For humans, "who I am" looks like a picture of a human being with a full 70 litre backpack on. It's me and my baggage - one and the same. We take our past with us everywhere and will fight anyone who wants to take it off us, that's also why the Destruction phase felt like a fight. This phase of rebalance is literally rebalancing your weightlessness and adjusting to live in the now, with no muffled voices from the past pointing out your next move and direction. This takes time and mental, emotional and physical adjusting. You may also see that your identity (with your backpack of course!) had become the benchmark for all your relationships, especially the one with yourself. Life had become what you thought about yourself and others - all based on your past. It was also what (you thought) you wanted others to think about you. On top of all of that, it was about how (you thought) you could control all of these elements of your life. Exhausting! Surfing around Facebook can demonstrate this as it shows how we relate with 'out there'. As does the addictive excessiveness to which we do things - texting, emailing, web surfing, talking, working, working out, drinking, smoking, fasting, dieting, gorging, shopping, yoga, self-developing, beautifying, denying, preaching, submitting, blaming, flirting, boasting, self-deprecating or anything done in excess. At it's very core all these addictions cover up our deep rooted fears. We have all found different strategies to survive and all of them involved reaching out rather than reaching in. The Shift is, you forced to go in. The Shift is, you not going anywhere until you sort through this. For some, this stage can be more difficult than the Destruction. This needing to sit and reflect and be with how it was and is, is like going cold turkey from our addictions. The solution is very much a case of sitting it out. As you clear out your backpack you will notice you refrain from rushing to do things you normally did to avoid being still. Rather than needing to check the latest update on your 'the faster the better' gadget…you notice that what you thought you could control you now know you can't, and what you want to control no longer exists. You look down at the gadget or the addiction and wonder, 'What was it all about anyway?'. Moving through this is not easy. So you sit with it until it is. In this space it also becomes starkly obvious that in our 'tower' we had obscured vision. We saw within certain limits and no more. The distortions with which we viewed life were so immense that we can now say we had no idea how to live. The basis of life as we knew it was the following:
The Shift contains the vibration of Truth. Anything not aligned to it crumbles. Time spent rebalancing is to clearly see all of this, to let the distortions right themselves and allow the wounds to finally heal. The Old story was an experience of life for us to explore, as all life is. This contemplation takes time as the discomfort discharges. As you move through this phase, there again will be glimmers of what is to come next. It may just be a brief feeling of exaltation, lightness, possibility, enthusiasm or joy - without tangible reasons as to why these feelings have arisen. However short-lived these experiences, they encourage you that there is something very new ahead, that life can feel different, as it has never done before. This, although you are still, keeps you going. There comes a time when eventually the discomfort is no longer there. You find a stillness within that is no longer fighting for or against anything. You recognize that everything really did happen for the best (and there were you thinking that that was just a nonsense saying). Everything in your life led you through priceless experiences to bring you to where you are now; transiting a major evolution in consciousness, something that has never taken place on the planet to this degree before. It was all about the experience and not about the stories. As you begin to see that everything was and is in perfect order, you know this means that whatever happens next will also be in perfect order...for the best, for the experience. Which would mean there is nothing to fear, fight or strive for, or against - it will all be as it needs to be...in perfect order and for the best. As your past is no longer in the picture, this must be what it is like to live in the present. Truth and freedom.
3 - The New
The glimmers of exaltation mentioned above eventually go from short 5-20 minute bursts, to half a day and then longer. This immense expansion is inspiring and invigorating and can be felt across the chest area. It can often be accompanied by new ideas. In time, the flashes of ideas become clear insights which eventually become undisputed direction. This internal compass feels like it is coming from your heart, which you can now hear as your head has quieted. Ideas you had never considered before or childhood dreams you long since dismissed become viable possibilities. The mental obstacles that for years restricted you by saying, "How could you ever do that?" are silent. Relatives and friends that would have you reconsider your "nonsense ideas" are either also silent or their comments bounce off you, or you look around and notice they are no longer a part of your life. In the New, all mental patterns of lack no longer exist. Whatever situation you are in you feel whole, complete and rich. Without 'lack' in your life, you find you increasingly need and want less; fewer things, less food, fewer people, less sleep, less reaching out. There is a fullness that you acquire in just being yourself, nourished by your new experiences and your new relationship with you, and with the world around you. Life is easier, simpler and things falls into place like never before. Connections to others are effortlessly made, opening doors to further possibility. You recognise what it is to flow with life and in hindsight see how tiring (and aging) the Old life was when you constantly forced it. Relationships that you are drawn to reflect the person you have become. 'Instant knowing' becomes the norm. Your intuition has become a clear guidance mechanism. A major revelation that steps 1 and 2 unveiled is how much of you life was lived because of what a person, group or doctrine told us was the way to live. This can go as far back as centuries of ancestral and cultural tradition. Parents, schooling, society, ideologies and religions all had major parts to play here, often instilling fear (knowingly or unknowingly) as a way of controlling or 'directing' us. By the time you reach this phase all of these influences are increasingly benign. The pinnacle of where you have arrived is that you see that you no longer need anyone or anything to tell you how to live. You can navigate your own life ably and confidently, knowing when to ask for help and knowing when you can go it alone. You still may not know exactly where you are going - this is just the start - but you are flowing with natural rhythms rather than because of rigid patterning. You now feel with all six senses and feel alive in your life. From this point on, you increasingly understand what it is to become your own person, ready to live the life you had always dreamed. Why else do you think you were you dreaming it?
A few people at present are experiencing what The ‘New’ is, if only with the ridges of the epidermis of their big toes which are taking their first dip. For this wave of people (traversing the second half of 2012) life is still interspersed with periods of needing to rest and recuperate and even briefer periods of fine dust left over from the tower's destruction still floating away. I envision that this last phase will eventually be renamed The Creation, as we build new lives and a new world. For now The New represents the earliest phase of The Creation, here we are still stretching and flexing our limbs, still only just preparing to walk our new walk. I look forward to sharing what immersing the big toe reveals. *Covered further in The Science of Acting (2009), by Sam Kogan, edited by Elena Kogan and Why We Think The Way We Do and How To Change It (to be published 2013), by Thomas Garvey and Elena Kogan
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Every last brick of the tower does have to collapse though. An end is really an end, it's not a 'near end and "Phew, I made it...now, where were we?'' Take comfort, you must, that this is not an end of everything but an end of what no longer supports our growth and evolution - our expansion.
In our lives to date, most will have already experienced cycles ending: the death of loved ones, leaving a job, ending a relationship, moving country - these are all the end of one cycle before the beginning of another. Very often we rush straight into the next 'thing' because we have to keep going, climbing the ladder, running the race…This doesn't give us the time to rebalance, reflect, afterburn*, sustain ourselves and rest. We have separated the mind and body to such a degree that we can't hear the messages from our body telling us what we need. 
