Good News About the World Falling Apart

PODCAST · religion

Good News About the World Falling Apart

The crises we face on Earth right now are the birth pangs of a species.   Good news?  Humans have been here before.  We were at an inflection point of this magnitude when we first developed fire and language 200,000 years ago and, again, ten thousand years ago when we learned how to germinate seeds.  Although these Turnings could have led to our extinction, each time we used our superpowers—imagination and intuition—to transform our consciousness and persevere. The crises we face today announce a Third Turning.The good news lies in our name, homo sapiens, from the Latin for “one who knows,” the same meaning as the word “shaman.”  In times like these, we have always turned to the shamans among us and it is no different today.  Just as such wise ones pioneered fire and language and the germination of seeds, they offer similar guidance today, but this time both the fire and the seed lie in our hearts.</

  1. 11

    The Consciousness Shift That Ends Negative Thoughts

    You've been told to control your negative thoughts. Fight them. Push them away. But what if that's exactly the wrong approach? The consciousness shift happening right now — the very paradigm shift that's breaking the old world apart — offers a completely different answer. Not control. Transformation. Not suppression. Liberation. Modern neuroscience now confirms what ancient wisdom traditions have always known: negative thoughts aren't the enemy. They're a signal. A symptom of a consciousness still operating inside a 5,000-year-old paradigm built on fear, separation, and control. When you shift the paradigm — even internally — the thoughts don't need to be controlled anymore. They dissolve. This is what real personal growth looks like. This is the intersection of mindfulness, neuroplasticity, and spiritual evolution. And it's one of the most practical forms of good news in a world that can feel overwhelming. Here's what changes when consciousness shifts: → The nervous system stops scanning for threats → The heart opens, and the mind follows → Negative thought patterns lose their grip — not by force, but by transformation This isn't positive thinking. This isn't CBT. This is something older, deeper, and far more effective. The world falling apart is stressful. But it's also the exact pressure that accelerates inner transformation. Your negative thoughts may be the growing pain of a consciousness ready to break through. 🌿 Continue the journey: ▶ When the Heart Awakens, Everything Changes: https://youtu.be/nd9SuMHkK_M ▶ Your Heart's Hidden Jewel — How to Find It: https://youtu.be/zZAuhCDAszY ▶ Why Everything Falling Apart Is Actually Good News: https://youtu.be/dfuRSIyGx10 ▶ The Hidden History of the Last Five Thousand Years: https://youtu.be/TdYqxoDtUOI #negativethoughts #mindfulness #consciousnessshift #neuroplasticity #paradigmshift

  2. 10

    White Buffalo Calf Woman's Gift: The Ancient Breath That Heals

    She came to the Lakota people at a time of crisis — and she brought them breath. White Buffalo Calf Woman's greatest teaching wasn't ceremony or prayer. It was the power of conscious breathing: a three-part yogic breath that reconnects body, mind, and spirit. Ancient wisdom. Modern science. The same discovery, arrived at from two very different directions. The three-part breath — known in yogic traditions as pranayama — is one of the most researched breathwork practices on the planet. It activates the parasympathetic nervous system, lowers cortisol, and opens the heart. But long before modern science named it, indigenous wisdom keepers knew what breath could do. White Buffalo Calf Woman brought that knowledge as a gift during a time of great suffering and transition. Sound familiar? We are living through our own time of crisis and transition. The 5,000-year-old paradigm of patriarchy, hierarchy, and disconnection is falling apart. The gift being offered to us now — just as it was offered to the Lakota — is the same one: learn to breathe. Come back to the body. Open the heart. The healing was never out there. It was always in here. If the world feels like too much right now, this practice is for you. There is good news hidden in all of this. And it begins with your next breath. 🌿 Continue the journey: ▶ When the Heart Awakens, Everything Changes: https://youtu.be/nd9SuMHkK_M ▶ Your Heart's Hidden Jewel — How to Find It: https://youtu.be/zZAuhCDAszY ▶ The Origins of Fire, Language &amp; Shamanism: https://youtu.be/0Pji9gCP9AU ▶ Why Everything Falling Apart Is Actually Good News: https://youtu.be/dfuRSIyGx10 #WhiteBuffaloCalfWoman #pranayama #breathwork #nativeamericanspirituality #healing

  3. 9

    Tiktaalik's Breath The Ancient Breakthrough That Can Set You Free

    375 million years ago, a fish pulled itself onto land and took its first breath. That single moment rewired all life on Earth. Something very similar is happening right now. Tiktaalik — a prehistoric fish at the boundary between water and land — didn't just evolve lungs. It crossed a threshold. What looked like crisis was actually the birth of everything that followed. The power of breath wasn't just biology — it was the doorway between two worlds. We are living through our own version of that crossing. The 5,000-year-old paradigm built on hierarchy, control, and the suppression of the feminine is losing its grip. Like Tiktaalik on the shoreline, many of us feel stranded — gasping between the world we knew and the one being born. That discomfort is not a sign of failure. It is the sign of breakthrough. Ancient traditions and modern science agree: breath is the bridge. Learning to breathe through the transition — rather than retreat back into the water — is how the next paradigm arrives. If you're confused, grieving, or overwhelmed by what's happening in the world right now, this video is for you. There is good news hidden in all of this. You just need to know where to look. 🌿 Continue the journey: ▶ The Mass Extinction No One Is Talking About: https://youtu.be/9xnyhW4wlPw ▶ The Meteor Strike That Started a Paradigm Shift: https://youtu.be/zgSQTC7CnhQ ▶ Why Everything Falling Apart Is Actually Good News: https://youtu.be/dfuRSIyGx10 #paradigmshift #evolutionofconsciousness #Tiktaalik #spiritualevolution #prehistoric

  4. 8

    The Meteor Strike That Started a Paradigm Shift (And Why It Matters Now)

    Dinosaur extinction, mass extinction, asteroid impact, meteor strike, mammal evolution, evolution of mammals, Chicxulub crater, Cenozoic era, paleontology, paradigm shift, ancient earth, prehistoric, extinction, history of the earth, science documentary      To better understand this Turning, we need to travel back in time again, this time to the previous mass extinction event. Until the moment of the Chicxulub Impact, sixty-six million years ago on the edge of the Yucatan Peninsula, reptiles ruled the planet. “Thunder lizards”—Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops—rumbled unimpeded over every continent. Our mammal ancestors were afterthoughts, flavor bites for Velociraptors. Until the asteroid struck. The nuclear winter that followed—frost across the world for several years—cut off the vast and predictable caloric intakes required to sustain the gigantic reptiles that had thrived for almost two hundred million years. Seventy-five percent of all life on earth went extinct. No animal larger than a housecat survived. Catastrophic as this was for reptiles, mammals found themselves ideally positioned to survive. Warm-blooded, temperature regulating, with small appetites and hard-wired to care for their young, mammals did much better than their cold-blooded forebears.      The proof is us. Who dominates the planet today? Who strikes terror into the hearts of all living beings? Imagine if our early ancestors had to compete with dinosaurs. Would mammals have been able to evolve even to point of becoming apes? The last mass extinction event was a kind of cosmic affirmative action program for mammals. Our current mass extinction event provides a similar opportunity.      Who are the dinosaurs today and who are the mammals? Who requires massive and predictable energy inputs and who has the capacity to innovate, improvise and make do with small and uneven inputs? Corporations and nation-states fall into the first category. Without massive and predictable and regular inputs of capital, companies and countries will collapse. However, small, egalitarian groups of individuals require no such inputs. They can grow their own food, move around easily, and develop and improvise new strategies on the fly. Recall that this is the form of social organization that Homo sapiens originally evolved into over hundreds of thousands of years.      From an evolutionary perspective, our widely accepted notion of living in pyramidally organized groups of thousands or millions, dwelling in cities, is a short-lived experiment. Margaret Meade’s oft-quoted wisdom comes to mind, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, It’s the only thing that ever has.”      This is the good news about the Third Turning. While human-driven carbon emissions, if allowed to continue unabated, will doom all or most of biological life, widespread corporate and government collapse will end such emissions. In fact, this is likely how we will survive. We will not voluntarily be able to reduce carbon emissions any more than addicts recover because they are concerned about their health. Only a massive, world-stopping crisis will end the burning of fossil fuels. We can see such a crisis emerging from the long parade of horribles stepping on to the world stage: pandemic, resource scarcity, war, economic collapse. These are immediate threats to our socio-economic order. Any or all of these in combination will be the most likely causes of widespread socio-economic breakdown. In the long run, for our descendants in the centuries that follow our own, this is very good news. 00:00 Paradigm shifts are hard. They look insane, dangerous to members of previous paradigm 01:00 Example of hostile reaction to Alvarez hypothesis about meteorite causing extinction of dinosaurs 02:00 Nuclear winter resulted from strike, killed dinosaurs 02:44 Alvarez hypothesis proved by oil companies 03:30 "That's what a paradigm shift looks like." The way you know it's a paradigm shift is that it is deeply, deeply disturbing. 04:22 The good news about the world falling apart is that we Have to try something new. Because we are homo sapiens, "one who knows," we are shamans. We have the superpowers of imagination and intuition. 04:50 Paradigm shifts super upsetting at first, but then become completely taken for granted 05:16 Mammals brought two paradigm shifts; caring for their young and temperature regulating 06:30 Nuclear winter in Vermont in 1816 07:30. Who are the 'thunder lizards" today? 08:08 Meteor was cosmic 'affirmative action' program for mammals 08:15 What entities are "thunder lizards" today? Corporations and nation states. 08:50 Covid as "gentle" pandemic, but look what it did to supply chains 09:30 Billionaires, corporations and nations states are the Tyrannosaurus of today 10:05. The "mammals" of today will be the survivors

  5. 7

    The Mass Extinction No One Is Talking About (And Why It's Good News)

    Mass extinctions are paradigm shifts and this is good news when the world is falling apart. A similar predicament to our own was faced by biological life four hundred million years ago during the Late Devonian Extinction. Although the underlying causes of this extinction are still debated (volcanic activity and/or an extra-terrestrial event are two likely causes), the results are not: ocean anoxia and the disappearance of 75 percent of animal species. Oxygen levels in the ocean plunged and countless marine organisms suffocated. Keep in mind that for the previous billion years, survival depended on getting oxygen from water. Atmosphere was deadly. Survival strategy for animals during the Late Devonian was based on one assumption: the only source of oxygen is water. However, as oxygen levels in the oceans dropped, this assumption turned deadly. Eventually, it killed three quarters of marine life. During this same period, one vertebrate, Tiktaalik, developed primitive lungs and the rudiments of feet and left the ocean. All land vertebrates today are believed to have descended from this creature. We owe our existence to this bold innovator whose behavior would have appeared insane to its fellows if they had possessed the awareness to make such judgments. Think of how hard it is to extract oxygen from water. Think of the percentage of an organism’s resources that must be dedicated to this inefficient and energy-intensive process. Think of the consciousness (or lack thereof) that results. Think of the term “fish-eyed.” Now look at the relative ease with which oxygen can be obtained from atmosphere. Much more efficient that trying to get your O from H20. Although this paradigm shift required the development of additional anatomical features (lungs and legs), it opened up a new world for animal life. Again, this shift was a death sentence for any creature unable to make the necessary changes: three quarters of marine animals. Humans face a similar dilemma, but we don’t need to acquire anatomical features. We just need to open our hearts. Do we continue to get what we need to survive from the same sources we have relied on for two hundred thousand years or do we take a chance on another source that, to our current level of consciousness, is unreliable at best and likely to kill us at worst? Here, I am not talking about oxygen, but love. At this moment in history, most human beings believe that true security comes from stuff: money, food, shelter. Love is desired, too, but generally stands at the back of the line. Stuff comes first and, of course, if I don’t have a safe place to live, enough food to eat, adequate shelter, no amount of love will save my life. The first three chakras tell me this and they are correct. The key words are “safe,” “enough,” and “adequate,” and here, the first three chakras are no help at all. All they shout is “More!” There is no off switch. Especially when those chakras are guided by Second Turning consciousness. Humans, when they can, accumulate wealth regardless of the needs or suffering of others, and even themselves. It is easy to despair when presented with this evidence, when such overconsumption is causing the world’s sixth mass extinction. However, another way to respond to the frightening crises facing us is to recognize what these dismal indicators are saying: time to do things differently. Time for a paradigm shift! The first three chakras, guided by the best thinking of the Second Turning have carried us an extraordinary distance: from preliterate hunter-gatherers to the humans of today. United by the internet and the internal combustion engine, we hold the world in our hands. Never before have humans had so much knowledge and awareness and power at their fingertips. It is time for the next Turning. 00:00 Introduction to the first Three Turnings--paradigm shifts 01:00 Paradigm shift triggered by Late Devonian Extinction 02:05 Warming oceans and rising CO2 led to this extinction 02:30 75% of animal life went extinct 02:50 But Tiktaalik developed lungs and legs and left the ocean 03:28 When things got bad, they were ready 03:39 This bold innovator was the ancestor of All land vertebrates today 03:56 One tiny breakthrough led to ALL land-based animals 04:10 Radical paradigm shift 05:08 So much easier to get oxygen out of atmosphere 05:40 Paradigm shift: Getting what is most precious from a radically different source 06:16 What is most precious to us is free and unlimited 06:53 It all comes back to conscious breath 07:40. Our belief in stuff just like fish 09:10 Capacity for denial one of our greatest super powers 09:28 The heart is the most precious thing I carry

  6. 6

    Your Heart Has a Hidden Jewel — Here's How to Find It

    Consciousness awakening. Paradigm shift. Open your heart! What if we recognized the pictures on our altar as the packet picture for the seed we contain—the heart? What if we saw our practice as the spiritual equivalent of gardening? What if we saw that being—Jesus, Mary, Buddha—not just as a helpful guide but as a promise of what we were meant to be? Why were we drawn to that particular holy figure in the first place? What does the resonance we feel with her mean? Coincidence? Wishful thinking? Or a deeper knowing of who we are? These images do not represent unattainable ego ideals. They show us what we will look like when we have cracked open the shells of our egos and nurtured and tended our authentic selves. 00:00 Introduction 01:00 The Third Turning is about opening the heart 01:30 Opening your heart makes you stronger. How to do it. 02:33 The treasure inside the seed—the intelligence to make many more 03:11 Concept of exponential growth/advent of addiction: One is too many and a thousand is not enough 04:04 Imperative to find a new way to fill our hunger: Open the heart 05:05 The heart is a seed: the shell is the ribcage and the ego. Inside is the wisdom and power to transform the world 07:00 What is disaster for the shell is liberation for the germ inside 07:40 Everything falling apart is how it looks to the ego. Things falling apart is how the new paradigm is born 09:15 We have to open our hearts. How do we germinate the "heart seed"? 09:40 Images on your altar are the "seed packet pictures" of what lies in your heart 12:05. The shell is a prison cell. How do we get out?

  7. 5

    When the Heart Awakens, Everything Changes—The Third Turning

         The Third Turning is the movement from the head to the heart chakra and into higher consciousness, from a shared belief in separateness and duality to a realization of the interconnectedness of all things. This shift is not new. Individuals have achieved it for millennia. The Lakota prophet, White Buffalo Calf Woman, announced the Third Turning with her refrain, mitakuye oyasin, “All my relations!”—We are all related: All humans, all animals, all plants and rocks. Jesus said the same thing: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Einstein spoke of the ending of the “optical delusion” that all things, all beings, are disconnected and alone. What will be new about the Third Turning is groups of individuals achieving this transformation of consciousness, this paradigm shift, and, together, changing the world. 00:00 Introduction 00:29 Summary of First and Second Turnings 01:03 First use of fire and language. Arrival of Homo Sapiens aka Shamans 01:52 First agriculture leading quickly to first cities, writing and private property. 02:22 Time for a paradigm shift 02:37 Chakras as blueprint for human evolution 06:20 Fully entering the heart chakra as catalyst for Third Turning 11:13 Learning how to love oneself is the Third Turning 12:44 The Twelve Steps are a beautiful example of the Third Turning 1 3:18 Opening your heart is the Third Turning

  8. 4

    The Hidden History They Didn't Teach You About the Last Five Thousand Years–The Second Turning

         The birth of civilization and the seeds of patriarchy: around a large inland sea bordering the northern edge of our home continent, groups of hunting and gathering nomads became larger and more numerous and there was less room for them to hunt and gather successfully. They found once plentiful resources depleted by other groups like themselves and found themselves more often in competition with these groups. Fighting became more frequent as did hunger and disease.      These challenges grew slowly, of course, as did our solution—gardening. With the advent of agriculture, food requirements could be met within a much smaller area and a sequence of events rapidly occurred. Teach humans the power of seed germination, wait a few thousand years, and a number of extraordinary things will happen. First, because of the ability to provide adequate food within a vastly reduced territory, population increased. Groups grew larger and no longer needed to compete to the same degree for food with similar groups. People had more time to specialize in specific crafts and art forms. Because they were no longer constantly on the move, they could begin to acquire more possessions. Social and economic inequality increased.      Within roughly five to ten thousand years, humans, who had for two hundred millennia roamed in small groups, found themselves living in the first cities, ruled by kings, owning property and relying on the written word. This was the Second Turning, the advent of civilization. A little later, first on the great flood plain of eastern Asia and then on the isthmus connecting the American continents, the same thing happened. After several millennia of gardening at increasing scales, former hunter-gatherers became literate urban dwellers with a high degree of social hierarchy.      Take a look around you. Where do you live? In a city? Working in a pyramidally organized organization? Depending on your facility with the written word to determine your place in the existing social hierarchy? Worried about how much you have (or don’t have)? This socio-economic form—so small and rare when it first appeared—now surrounds the world and threatens the planet’s survival with its basic precepts—the unquestioned importance of wealth and social status. Our accelerating advancements of the last two hundred years (fossil fuels, computers, AI) have only made the original pyramidal construct bigger and faster. They have not elevated us to another level of social organization and behavior the way fire and language did, the way agriculture did. Our basic priorities and motivators have not changed.      While we live in a world that looks very different from the one inhabited by the first urban dwellers, if you took people from any social class in that long-ago world and put them in a room of modern people of the same class, they would understand each other perfectly: my boss is a jerk; it’s impossible to find capable subordinates; I will do anything to maintain my grip on power. Although enormous intellectual and technological leaps lay millennia ahead of Sumer and Egypt, the basic paradigm for modern urban-based life was set. The fundamental preoccupation with wealth and status would continue to be the primary drivers of human society for the next five thousand years. It is precisely these ancient and near universal drivers which are making our myriad crises impossible to solve. As the saying attributed to Einstein puts it, “The level of thinking which created a problem (or set of problems) will, by definition, be unable to solve this problem.” A new level of thinking is required. This new level of thinking will drive the Third Turning. 00:00 Summary of First Turning-Origins of fire and language 01:24 Motivators for Second Turning/agricultural revolution 01:45 Learning to germinate sees the next major paradigm shift after fire and language 02:18 Neolithic revolution, Larger sedentary groups living in smaller areas 02:45 Ancient writing, cuneiform--increased grain supplies and population catalysts for new form of communication 03:18 Ancient writing first used to keep track of grain supplies 03:25 First cities in Mesopotamia and Egypt; first pyramids, kings, armies, slaves, writing; template for how we live today; at first only 3 or 4, each with a population of a few thousand 04:20 Today, there are more than 10,000 cities with a combined population of over four billion; appetites and waste products leading to 6th Mass Extinction 04:50 Humans have capacity for making paradigm shifts in face of serious threats. We have been here before. 06:47 Wealth and status primary motivators of our current paradigm. Accumulation did become a goal until humans became sedentary. 07:22 Second Turning ending; time for a paradigm shift

  9. 3

    The Origins of Fire and Language and the Birth of Shamanism—The First Turning

    Humanity's three turnings began with fire and language and shamanism. The first repeated and controlled use of fire is fairly easy to date using the radiocarbon method—around 200,000 years ago. Although it is impossible to find equivalent evidence for the first use of language, it is not hard to see how the two go hand in hand. Not only is the creation and use of fire complex, hard to convey with grunts and gestures, but the nuances of fire are subtle and subject to change. If people were not able to communicate in precise and abstract ways about this new power, it was going to become another predator. No other animal uses fire. Fire is the most terrifying force any animal has ever encountered. When it showed up in the wild, as out of control savannah or forest fires caused by lightning strikes, everyone ran. What caused our ancestors to think they were different? The things that make us human: intelligence, imagination, curiosity, playfulness, fascination with risk, love, terror. Before we domesticated fire, a leading cause of death among hominids was “big cat related.” Lions and leopards ruled the night and although they eventually inspired spears, they still had the edge. Fire leveled the playing field. With fire at your command, you could keep any predator off. If you could control fire, you controlled the greatest power on earth. And before you could control it, you had to be able to imagine controlling it. You had to see something in your mind that did not exist. This took time, of course, probably many thousands of years. But, when they were done, our ancestors had mastered two of humanity’s greatest powers—fire and language—and were no longer Homo erectus. Homo sapiens had emerged, another word for "shaman." For 200,000 years they wandered, eventually out of Africa, in small groups—as small as five, as large as thirty or forty—overcoming all other predators and multiplying. There were significant developments during this time. A cognitive revolution around 70,000 years ago may have led to increasingly complex forms of belief; sculpture, painting, along with our ancestors’ first departure from Africa, all occurred during this period. But our form of social organization—small cooperative, egalitarian kin groups—remained the same until our success threatened to undo us. 00:00 Intro 00:16 Good news About the World Falling Apart 0:27 First Turning 00:34 First appearance of homo sapiens 00:45 Fire and language 01:43 Bi-polar nature of fire 02:33 Origins of language 03:05 fire and language 04:30 Danger of big cats-- lions and leopards 05:00 Fear as motivator to work with fire 05:25 Danger of fire inspired language 06:25 Fire extended our days; laboratory for developing language 07:00 Fire and language as "super powers;" Huichol word for fire, 'tatewari," means "oldest grandfather and "first shaman"; shamanism explained; what is shamanism? 07:40 Imagination, intuition, inspiration are essence of shamanism 08:00. "shaman: is another word for human being 08:49 Our current crises are a failure of imagination

  10. 2

    Why Everything Falling Apart Is Actually Good News: Spiritual evolution leading to paradigm shift

    We are witnessing the birth pangs of a new paradigm, a mass shift in consciousness, a shift from power to compassion, from the third chakra to the fourth : the awakening of the Heart. In these episodes, I will share how to recognize and nurture this awakening, around you and within you. As this 5000 year old paradigm falls apart, many are confused, angry, in despair. As the title of this channel promises, there is good news to be found! Like the accelerating contractions in the transition phase of the birth process, the pain of these times doesn't just herald the ending of patriarchal civilization; they tell of an impending birth. I will be drawing on a lifetime's experience : --over 20 years as a college instructor of anthropology and history; --almost thirty years as a member of 12 step groups and a water pourer; --over 30 years on a spiritual path; --over 30 years as a dad to three remarkable children. 00:00 Good News About the World Falling Apart; paradigm shift 00:26 Consciousness 00:45 Mayan Calendar 04:50 Maitreya 04:52 End of Days 05:56 End Times 06:12 12th Imam 07:15 Age of Aquarius 08:16 Mass consciousness shift

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ABOUT THIS SHOW

The crises we face on Earth right now are the birth pangs of a species.   Good news?  Humans have been here before.  We were at an inflection point of this magnitude when we first developed fire and language 200,000 years ago and, again, ten thousand years ago when we learned how to germinate seeds.  Although these Turnings could have led to our extinction, each time we used our superpowers—imagination and intuition—to transform our consciousness and persevere. The crises we face today announce a Third Turning.The good news lies in our name, homo sapiens, from the Latin for “one who knows,” the same meaning as the word “shaman.”  In times like these, we have always turned to the shamans among us and it is no different today.  Just as such wise ones pioneered fire and language and the germination of seeds, they offer similar guidance today, but this time both the fire and the seed lie in our hearts.</

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