Many of us continue to be caught-up in our traditions, histories, rituals, and formalities – not realizing it is these very same things that serve to block us from perceiving the subtlety of our current reality.

Perception can be like trying to explain color to a blind person. Our over-reliance upon a stagnant form of intellectualism obstructs the true growth of our finer perceptions. Once the bars of intellectual imprisonment have been removed there is the possibility for more subtle modes of perception to operate.

The haphazard collection of shiny objects will not necessarily produce a functioning system. And it is highly doubtful that it ever will. This is a matter of perception, which needs to be developed upon. For this reason a degree of personal perception is crucial in recognizing the wheat from the chaff.

Many so-called ‘spiritual teachings’ have fallen to a lower level than their original functioning. Many now operate through repetition and/or emotional release mechanisms. In such systems there is an absence of real experience; replaced instead by subjective experience that the person takes to be significant, and an indicator of ‘higher knowledge’.

The developmental myth that has brought us to the tipping-point of change is a paradigm of increasing industrialization, urbanization, and population growth. This way of thinking, in the West particularly, has promoted and rewarded an increasingly isolationist way of life.

We should not abandon the usefulness and the knowledge from our past but rather apply them in a manner that is more fitting for the way ahead. Like generational knowledge handed down in history, we pass on the best from each epoch in order to infuse and inspire the succeeding one.

Our global expansion has accompanied an expansion in human awareness, empathy, and epiphany. We have now arrived at a new crossroads in our civilizational journey whereby we need to make decisions based on the tools we have already acquired.