I am happy with my life right now, but I do feel old. The older I get, the more I think about God, more about my life’s meaning, more about what we term consciousness. My friend Chris Griscom, a healer and past-life therapist, and I have conversed often about how our genetics and our DNA and consciousness merge. We talk about making a soul connection with our bodies. It occurs to me so often now that one day I will literally not have this body any longer, and I will live with only my soul memory of what my life was like living inside it. My perceptions and familiar tools of physically relating to the world will be over and gone. Someday I will look down, and someone else will be living in this house and working and thinking in this little office with his or her own beloved animal, wondering about the future of Earth.

  I don’t have much of a fear of death. Pain, yes, but not death. This may be the reason I am free to speculate on the truth of other realities.

  At the same time I’m looking forward to what life on the “other side” will be like. I wonder if my DNA strain will be broken if I decide not to come back for a long time. Will my DNA flow through my soul memory? I’m appalled when I realize that many people ridicule or become cynically angry at such speculation. Why don’t they wonder, I wonder? What could be more interesting than speculating upon who we are, where we come from, and will we come again?

  Chris says that DNA is a chemical composition that is influenced by emotions and environment. If we inherit a bad temper, we’ve inherited that emotional DNA. We have parenting and grandparenting DNA and great-great-grandparenting DNA, etc. We even, I believe, have inherited galactic DNA (I’ll write about that later). I think that there comes a point in evolutionary time when the human DNA changes. Mutations occur caused by other cosmic activity.

  I feel we are in the midst of those changes now. I feel an evolutionary pulse as though much negativity in our DNA is being loosened and released. The darkness is freed, which must occur because we cannot go on the way we are. We cannot carry the negativity residing within our DNA into the future. We need to sit down together and discuss our differences, but more important—what do we have in common? We need to call forth a higher force, which we know we have in common, even though we are killing each other over that higher force.

  We need to expand our capacity for togetherness, which we intuit is inside each one of us. There is another way to live, to expand our consciousness to include the commonality of our so-called enemies. God is either our commonality or our separation point. I don’t think enough of us realize that the God force is within us, not outside of us. In fact it has been considered heresy to say that God lies within. I believe such a heresy has been manipulated so that some powers that be can create separation and divide and conquer. Chaos and wars mean profit to many. Therefore, suspicion, rage, and anxiety become the ruling emotions and conversations of our society. Instead, we should be having conversations about the origins of greed (materialism) and the separation from the Source. We have greed and separation imprinted on our DNA. Somehow, we have allowed ourselves to be separated by the manipulation of materialism. I feel it everywhere in the movie business, and, of course, materialism is the mark of our success and identity in our culture.

  As I sit watching the gruesome results of religious conflict cross my TV screen and newspapers, I’m forced to evaluate the consequences of religious convictions relating to the definition of insanity and reality. According to the latest Gallup Poll, 35 percent of Americans believe that “God” wrote the Bible and all of it is literally true. We believe that the Lord God Jehovah said that anyone who believed in a god other than Him should be killed (Deuteronomy 13:7–11). How much of our past and present is the result of such a command? This is our world now.

  The Muslim world is living the same command: “All infidels should be killed and Hell shall be their home” (Koran 9:73). We enact our human morality according to our religious beliefs. God, Allah, has promised us all heavenly rewards as long as we believe in Him. But not only should we believe in Him, we should fight for Him against those who do not believe. “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war…” “He that leaves his dwelling place to fight for Allah and is overtaken by death shall be rewarded by Allah. The infidels are your inveterate enemies” (Koran 4:95-101).

  Martyrdom is the way a Muslim avoids judgment. He goes straight to Paradise. The fundamentalist Christian believes that Christ will return to Earth soon because the fighting in the Middle East is a sign that Armageddon is around the corner and the Messiah will usher in a thousand years of peace. As a person believes, so will he act.

  So deeply embedded are these religious beliefs that talking together to resolve differences seems unreligious. We don’t really have freedom of religion. We have religion that is free to do anything in its name. We believe in these religions with no real evidence. We only have the “belief” that facts are there. Many of us are quite willing to martyr ourselves for beliefs that we have no evidence for, Christian and Muslim alike.

  The Hebrew definition of belief is “the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things to come.”

  When I was in China and the Soviet Union twenty-five years ago, I saw the authoritative governments practice a form of political religion on their people—a political religion called Communism, while professing to ridicule the “opiate of the people” in the West. Their political religion martyred millions.

  The Old Testament required heretics to be put to death. During the Inquisition the book of Deuteronomy served as a text for the inquisitional torture. It stated that even members of one’s own family should be put to death if they so much as entertained the thought of believing in another God. Even St. Augustine believed that torture was appropriate for those who broke the laws of God. Later, the Christians saw the Jews’ denial of Jesus’ divinity as consummate evil.

  During World War II, the Catholic Church looked the other way during and after the Holocaust. Not a single German Catholic was excommunicated before, during, or after the genocide of six million people. Pope Pius XII was busy excommunicating others (scholars and theologians) for holding views not commensurate with the Catholic view of truth.

  Muslims are entreated to “share power with the enemies of God.” The word jihad literally translated means “struggle” or “striving” or as in English translation, “Holy War.” A devout Muslim declares jihad against his own sinfulness. Then an armed conflict in defense of Islam is a dutiful obligation. They, according to Bernard Lewis, “expect victory in this world as well as the next because the world will adopt the Muslim faith or submit to Muslim rule.” Jihad is the duty of a Muslim. He who dies without having taken part in a war against the infidels dies in a state of unbelief. Paradise is in the shadow of swords. If a Muslim renounces Islam, the penalty is death. “Whoever changes his religion, kill him” (Koran 3:86–91).

  The threat of mutual destruction in a nuclear world won’t matter to an enemy who longs for Paradise anyway. I don’t see how democracy would work in a Muslim theocratic state, and for that reason I don’t understand the “democracy building” fantasy of the Bush administration. Islam, just like any fundamental religion, doesn’t depend on what its “God Book” says. It depends more on what the people think it says. How many people devote their entire lives and energy to this invisible God, which they believe is the only God?

  What happens, then, to a civil society if it is inundated with fundamentalist religious beliefs? And how do we stop those beliefs from fascistically running a society? It’s as though we’re back in Inquisition days.

  When will human beings identify with human beings instead of an invisible God? It’s as though we are compelled like moths to flame to rush headlong into the Armageddon that has been prophesied because of the fear of our own sins. Fundamentalist Christians support Zionism and the Apocalypse because such a prophecy would usher in the Second Coming of Christ!

  I wonder what our natural human nature is. Is it basically violent or is it because we see our Gods as violent? Since the beginning of recorded time, 93 percent of that time has been spent on war! Seven percent of all time has been devoted to peace.

  More than 50 percent of Americans have a negative view of people who don’t believe in their God. Seventy percent of Americans believe it is important for a president to be “strongly religious.” Most of our social issues (stem-cell research, gay marriage, abortion, free speech, pornography, assisted suicide, and even a declaration of war) are framed in the context of our Judeo-Christian theology.

  When will we stop revolving ourselves and our enemies around religion and begin to look more seriously at the exercise of expanding our own consciousness? We would be able to transcend our conflicts if we understood that we are spiritually and scientifically interconnected. We would then have a paradigm shift in thinking and behavior. “Do unto others as we would have them do unto us” would shift to “Do unto others because they are us.” We need to learn more about what consciousness really is. It has emotions, perceptions, attitudes, and ultimately worldviews that come from spiritual beliefs.

  We have become familiar with the feeling of spiritual separation—separation of other members of the human race, separation from ourselves (division), separation from God (outside not inside). Somehow we’ve agreed that separation is natural. How can separation from the Divine Source be natural? But because of that belief, we have defined ourselves on a self-destructive level. We are killing ourselves and each other because we “believe” it’s human nature to fight over territory and God and country.

  Where will our perceptions of God and religion take us in the twenty-first century? Do we have to go through yet another religious crusade and war in order to truly understand that our perceptions of God are literally insane? Our Earth family constellations include members of that family we have never met. We’ve inherited DNA through intermarriage that expands our fixed notions of who we are and should fight to continue to be. Through our religions we are usually focused on what we should do to feel God…pay our dues, pray, feel insignificant, obey the religious laws, never relinquish our sacred territory, and obey the Ten Commandments, even though these commandments came from a God who warned that he was jealous, vengeful, and must be obeyed at all costs, including death and execution. It’s time we got in touch with our spiritual DNA. All DNA is connected to the Divine. I believe it’s time to fully understand and believe this connection or we are lost. I believe such an understanding of this truth will alter our negative DNA.

  If we think and feel we are born to suffer, struggle, and succumb, then we can change our thinking and feelings. We can replace them with divine feelings of balance and contentment. We would be feeling what has been there all along. Once we find the feelings, we can hang on to them, then we change. We become more balanced. That is truly channeling one’s own perfectly balanced soul. Once that happens, there is no need to fight or be angry about anything. Such negative feelings fall away, and possibly so does our negative DNA.

  Living in a global society today, we can no longer hold together in this world unless spiritual (not religious) conversation becomes a part of daily conversation. We need to talk with one another about nature and beauty and the miracles of synchronicity so that we can relax and trust that there is indeed a guidance in our lives. We need to talk about the unity of our yin and yang, our soul. When we are in touch with our oversouls we are mirroring the divine. In that mirror we will find ourselves. I can’t say that I’ve done this yet. But at times I am truly content and happy. I am without angst, which is a real accomplishment for an overachiever.

  Perhaps I need to reinvent what I think of as God, which automatically means I have to reinvent myself. Perhaps that is what I’m learning and teaching myself. Obviously, the violence and killing isn’t working in our world. We need to aspire now to resonate to our “better angels” within which is, I believe, our basic human nature. We need to reinvent God in a positive way that supports the highest octave of human society. Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, all spoke of divine love. Why are we fighting over it? Why is one person’s God better than another? What in God’s name is really going on?

  There are those who feel we are into the “Shift of the Ages.” It’s been predicted by the Mayans, the Incas, the Hopis, Nostradamus, and the Bible Code. The shift is supposed to occur somewhere between the 1980s and through 2012. They say time will begin to move more rapidly; therefore, we will feel an increase in energy and electromagnetic frequency all around us. We will feel we are able to get things done more quickly. If we are not driven crazy by the speeding up of the electromagnetic frequency, we will feel more of a sense of personal empowerment.

  I feel all of this is happening now. And from what I’ve read, it is happening as a result of our solar system moving into the Photon Belt. The Photon Belt is a belt of energy generated by what quantum physics calls quarks, neutrinos, photons, etc. All of these tiny, infinitesimal but extremely powerful particles of light illuminate the un-solid, un-physical world. You might say they cause an illumination of the Spirit World. Our solar system passes through this Photon Belt of light particles every twenty-six thousand years. Apparently, we entered this belt in the early 1980s and will be going through it for a thousand years. The photon energy frequencies accelerate everything. They accelerate understanding, awareness, self-knowledge, and the primal understanding of the Divine Energy itself, which means…they also accelerate confusion, chaos, anger, and negativity. I believe that is what we see accelerating. We are having a healing crisis. When that crisis subsides, I believe we will begin emotionally to feel that we are all one and that we are divine as well. Because of this crisis and acceleration, karmic issues will become resolved. We will go through a healing process, which will also be extremely painful because we will be detoxing, releasing and cleansing pains, aches, traumas, psychological terrors and fears, hatreds, anger, and desperation.

  So, in effect, every twenty-six thousand years the buildup of emotional and karmic toxins is cleared. We will seem to experience a disintegration of our Earth cultures and feel that the world is coming to an end. But in truth, the cleansing of negative karma is necessary and positive so that we can go on to a new world of light and love. I call it Karma-geddon. Instead of Armageddon, a Karma-geddon will be occurring, which will be the resolution of all our karmic issues down through the ages. Therefore, yes, the world will shed the old ways of living and come into a new life of peace and happiness. This is not unlike what the Book of Revelation portends when it says that after Armageddon, we will have one thousand years of peace.

  chapter

  10

  BECAUSE OF MY AGEING AND THE QUESTIONS IT POSES, I think a lot about the future and what I’ll miss if I decide to go soon. Knowing me, I’ll want to stick around for the action, whatever it might be—so I’m thinking a lot about the prophecies. Should we believe the prophecies? They have been with us since recorded history and they are fundamentally the same…there will be cataclysmic Earth changes, wars and rumors of war, pestilence, starvation, disease, all leading to the elimination of two-thirds of the Earth’s population. In short, the end of life as we know it. Not necessarily the end of life on the Earth, but certainly not what one could describe as a bright future.

  “All the armies of the world gather at Meggido [Armageddon] and unite; as they go to move on Jerusalem they become consumed by a sacred flame,” says the Book of Revelation.

  I ask, is the sacred flame a nuclear blast from star beings who find our human behavior finally too insane? Is it a nuclear flame from one of Earth’s armies as we come into the End of Days? Would the stopping of a military campaign against Jerusalem by star beings be considered participatory or interference? Is it an unconscious synchronicity that is meant to happen? Must all human players come together to determine whether there will be the destruction of life as we know it or one thousand years of peace, which Revelation also prophesies?

  I have been to Meggido (Armageddon) several times. It is a field now, quite a beautiful landscape of Earth, which used to be an ancient fortress along the trade routes. Meggido has been the focus of many ancient battles and, therefore, the place where ancient armies developed the world’s first peace treaties. It is fitting, then, that Meggido would be the focus of potential peace treaties now.

  From Revelation to Edgar Cayce, Nostradamus, Isaiah, Matthew, and the Dead Sea Scrolls as well, all portend a future of despair and apocalypse. However, there are alternative realities prophesied also—one thousand years of peace, cooperation between people and the angels of Heaven, and a great healing for all the peoples of the Earth. It’s our choice, they say.

  Ancient prophecy has haunted us for millennia, taken from ancient texts found in the Middle East, Tibet, South America, Mexico, the American Southwest, and in the psychic minds of those who claim to see the future.

  Gregg Braden has examined one of the ancient texts called the Isaiah Scroll. It was written more than five hundred years before the time of Jesus and was discovered intact among the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1946 and resides, well preserved, at the Shrine of the Book Museum in Jerusalem. I have seen it. It is unrolled and mounted upon a vertical cylinder. It is considered irreplaceable, of course, and is designed to retract into a steel vault in case of a nuclear attack.

  Through Gregg Braden I discovered its meaning. Isaiah describes a future world completely laid to waste and utterly stripped of life. This description is not unlike the Hopi prophecy, as well as that of the Maya of Mexico. The Gospel of Matthew says, “There will be famine and earthquakes from place to place. But all these things are the beginning of the labor pains.”