Gratitude for a Century of Breakthroughs toward Thriving

Martin Luther King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

What is justice? I believe at its core it is the process of restoring wholeness.

This move toward justice, toward the whole truth, underscores the drive for game-changing breakthroughs in our current civilization. Virtually all of our systems have been so broken — either though intention or ignorance (as we describe in our film THRIVE: What On Earth Will It Take?) — that any movement toward the restoration of wholeness appears revolutionary, and invites our gratitude.

I am grateful for pioneers of wholeness, like Vandana Shiva and Jeffrey Smith who show that returning our growing eco-systems away from toxic chemicals and GMOs and toward the integrity of organic polyculture and permaculture nurtures crop yields, nutrition and the environment.

I am grateful for courageous peaceful warriors for health freedom like Bobby Kennedy, Joe Mercola, Sayer Ji, Sherri Tenpenny, Andy Wakefield, Del Bigtree, Sacha Stone,  and Rashid Buttar who have helped expose the lethal scams of Big Pharma, Bill Gates, the Rockefeller AMA and the WHO.

I am grateful for design and technology innovators like Fuller, Jobs, Woz and Musk who show where spirituality meets science by doing ever more with less and freeing up our time for critical leaps in our experience of interconnection and for reflection on our true missions in this lifetime.

Visionary inventors like Tesla, DiPalma, Meyer, Tewari, and Inomata all humbly recognized how nature employs torus (doughnut-shaped) forms to sustain healthy systems — like atoms, solar systems and galaxies — and built devices that dance with that energy, instead of trying to explode it. The resulting clean, boundless, inexpensive energy access will change the world.

Today, perhaps the most critical area of breakthrough need for our survival is where morality and justice meet governance and economy. History reveals absolutely consistent empirical evidence of abject failure and lethal violence when any people are “given” rights that others don’t have. Call them pharaohs, kings, priests, mullahs, dictators, presidents or prime ministers…the “divine right to rule,” “manifest destiny,” or the “will of the majority” are all destructive illusions from which we are at last awakening.

I am grateful for Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Stefan Molyneux and Larken Rose, who have devoted their lives to further this critical and timely awakening, clarifying the “non-aggression” principle — the fundamental imperative for sustainable human cooperation — where no one is authorized to initiate force against another, except in true self-defense. Rules, but no rulers. Instead of  “power over,” it’s pursuing the principles of just alternatives to the coercion and centralized economic planning that has led to all modern wars. Like Ghandi, who called this transformation from politics to principle Hind Swaraj — self-governance — these ethical visionaries have laid out in great detail the philosophy and science of truly free societies based on the protection of equal individual rights with accountability, and a natural economy of voluntary exchange for mutual benefit.

The last century has seen a blossoming of consciousness, an accelerating transformation in worldview and self-realization as many of us awaken to our own calling, seeing the sacred wholeness of each being, each eco-system, each thought, feeling and vision.

As Neal Rogin used to say, “It’s not enough to become more conscious, it matters what we are becoming conscious of!” We are becoming more aware of the trends that threaten us, the nature of how we are both distinct and unified, the principles by which we can evolve toward a secure, healthy and thriving condition, and the strategies and tactics needed to “git ’er done.”

I am grateful to live in this unique era where, while risk is at its maximum, so is opportunity. Never before has an individual been able to share a vital message with most of the world almost instantaneously. We are able to collaborate in groups small and large, local and global, in ways that offer unprecedented synergy and empowerment.

I am grateful for the increasingly transparent connection with off-planet and inter-dimensional beings who are here to help us in our struggle to learn for ourselves what more mature species had to master to live harmoniously while hurtling through a wild and unknown cosmos.

I am grateful for the courage of pioneers who go for truth rather than popularity, transparency rather than deception, and ethical principles rather than politics.

I am grateful for the children of every origin who are coming in at our hour of need with memory, awareness, talents and backbone to help us survive and thrive.

I am grateful for the pioneering courage of every single parent, teacher and coach who commits themselves to never, ever spanking, beating, shaming or abusing any child, but instead listening, communicating, negotiating and inspiring.

I believe the experience of gratitude is toroidal in its wholeness. When one is in a state of awareness of the bounty of energy, information, food, air, insight, love and possibility that are flowing in to us each moment, and expresses thankfulness for that back out into the cosmos, it creates an openness, a balance and a beacon that calls in more of the same.

Yoga translates as “union.” Each of us is the center of our own experience of Universe and we are each toroidal systems. Our centers are not only connected but are one with the center of every other being. When our appreciation for this spectacular gift is alive, we realize our union and the bounty of gratitude unfolds in our ever-expanding hearts.