Thus, it would be to our advantage to take a good look at what we actually need to prosper. For centuries we have bought into the current financial model. Is it necessary? I think not. Can we change it to better fit our desires and at the same time benefit our earth? Certainly. It is simple choice. Our desire and our intent can bring this about, even if we don’t clearly see the end result.

For too long we have wrecked disharmony on this world. We can change that, and in the process discover the joys of team working with our environment. And, as usual, this change comes about with individuals… you and me.

For Michael Reilly’s article “What Happens when the Economy Eats the Planet” go here.

Peter Calhoun is one of these. He wrote Soul On Fire about his experiences. Rather than expound on what he and his wife Astrid have done, I’ll let him give you some hints. His website is www.petercalhoun.com.

Entering into Ecstasy

“Our destiny as human beings is to enter into ecstasy. This is accomplished by achieving a conscious union with All That Is. A number of people today have achieved partial ecstasy, but this is only in group highs such as some religious ceremonies, listening to a symphony orchestra or attending a rock concert. On the individual level, it is sometimes achieved through the runner’s high or edge sports such as rock climbing, auto racing and white water kayaking. Soldiers on the battlefield have been known to experience great ecstasy, but who wants to wait until their lives are imperilled to receive Enlightenment?

But such euphoria can only be experienced under rigid or very limited conditions, and it is but a shadow of true ecstasy. When one has once experienced partial ecstasy, there is little taste for anything else. It always leaves one hungry for more, and the only recourse, for one not engaged in spiritual practices, is to keep reproducing those same conditions. This is not always that easy.

My decision to start an apprenticeship program was to offer a means of achieving that total ecstasy in the only way possible, which is through union with our Conscious Creation – to discover that there is a deep awareness in all of creation: the animals and great trees, the mountains, rivers, canyons, the desert springs, the wind and the fire, and, as I discovered in my numerous trips to the red rock country in the Four Corners area, in the stones themselves, with which I’ve had some of my most loved communication.

And this unity consciousness includes one another! How could it not? Some of you have remarked to me how Astrid is totally present with everyone she meets and is always laughing. And you wondered how she is able to be like that so much of the time. I’ve said that it is her sheer joy and elation of being one with our conscious Creation, with all life on this planet.

Astrid has said to me, “You shouldn’t write such things about me because people would have expectations, and I’m not always like that.”

I’ve pointed out that she has achieved a level in which this is her normal state of consciousness.

“That doesn’t mean you are always like that,” I said. “No one is. When you deviate from that, you always return quickly to that place.”

I told her that when she is in that place, she is a manifestation of the Goddess. And it enables others, especially women, to see their own higher reflection in her.

When an ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church, I was given the directive to teach the Father God, and yet, ironically, all of my direct encounters with Deity, including but not limited to those described in Soul on Fire, have all been with the Devine Feminine. In those encounters, including with Artemis, who is the goddess of nature magic and the Earth Mother, as well as the Cosmic Mother, which has happened on several occasions, I was told that in the years ahead there will be an increasing number of women as well as a few men such as myself who will be manifesting the Goddess in her many faces.

When Artemis Huntress came to me three times in my lucid dream, I knew I’d better take note, and it was on her third visit (there’s that magical “three” again) that she told me accurate things about my future that did come to pass. She also said, “You will bring many back to the Earth Mother, for you are the Servant of the Goddess.”

So it was inevitable, I suppose, that my future partner would be a manifestation of the Goddess.

Recently, the Dalai Lama made a startling statement. He said that western women will save the world. I believe he was speaking a profound truth. Man, today, will have to let go of their egos and learn to step aside and share or even turn over the helm to enormously talented women emerging in every field. To refuse to do so, as some seem committed to be doing, is to become shipwrecked as a species.

Another reason for my offering an internal apprenticeship program is that the time in which we are able to make changes in our lives is rapidly coming to an end.

There will continue to be opportunities for growth on this and other planes, but change can occur only in the context of linear time in which we have no memory of our cumulative past.

We’ve come here not only to bring light to this world but also to change those aspects of ourselves that do not serve us. The vast majority of those persons who live lives of materialism are souls who have given up on themselves – souls who have realized on a level the conscious mind can’t fathom that in the present life and previous ones they continue to fail to correct those aspects of their being they came here for. Of course, those who use their wealth to uplift the masses or help to heal the Earth for the Greater Good are exceptions.”

In the loving complexity of this universe, there is no evil, bad, or un-useful entities. [Those are only limited personal points of view.] Even if we don’t perceive their usefulness, that usefulness and integration in All That Is remains. To attempt to eradicate what we might perceive as harmful or unwanted has upset the balance of nature more than once.

Fortunately, our awareness of what we are, and of what our relationship truly is with Nature, had begun to expand. This new awareness is still quiet, still on the edges of medicine, health, as well as physics, and every other category that we have attempted to divided life into.

The following is an excerpt from an article published at Physorg, found here.

Solution to killer superbug found in Norway
December 31, 2009 By MARTHA MENDOZA and MARGIE MASON , Associated Press Writers(AP) — Aker University Hospital is a dingy place to heal. The floors are streaked and scratched. A light layer of dust coats the blood pressure monitors. A faint stench of urine and bleach wafts from a pile of soiled bedsheets dropped in a corner.Look closer, however, at a microscopic level, and this place is pristine. There is no sign of a dangerous and contagious staph infection that killed tens of thousands of patients in the most sophisticated hospitals of Europe, North America and Asia this year, soaring virtually unchecked.The reason: Norwegians stopped taking so many drugs. [more]

The Mexican replied, “only a little while.”

The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish?

The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.

The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”

“But what then?”

The American laughed and said that’s the best part. “When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions.. Then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”