As you look out upon the world and consider all that’s transpiring, the world seems like a frightening place. Not that we should be frightened by it, but realistically speaking it has the ability to frighten people—and certainly it is understandable that it does.

There are horrifying things that are going on in our world. When you realize that it takes just one person with a car to cause great damage, or one country with an atomic bomb to create nuclear holocaust, it is easy to wonder, How can this world come to know peace and reason? How is all this going to work out? It’s not hard to look around and come to the conclusion that in so many ways, things aren’t getting better. So many trends are going in a disturbing direction—population, concentration of wealth, climate change, and the list goes on.

The solution to so many global trends requires widespread participation for them to be effective. One nation with a nuclear arsenal threatens the entire world. And so does one nuclear power out of control. One country with highly-polluting coal power plants affects the world climate. One car in the hands of a terrorist threatens us all. One hacker threatens a world which is becoming more and more reliant on information technology.

Increasingly, we are facing issues of global proportion, with greater and greater power for us as human beings to mess the whole thing up. We’ve always had power to create havoc in relatively small things. But we are gaining power to mess up the whole thing. So what is to be done?

While this questions lurks in the minds of many people, often there is a heads-down approach, and the person focuses on what is right in front of them, or on their own little human drama, because the big issues facing us all are just too much to contemplate. Or they rail against perceived evil doers, as if eliminating them would solve everything—politicians, bankers, terrorists and secret societies.

What most people do not realize is that there is a way to be in your own life that is not only the solution to your own life, but the solution to the global issues we are facing as a species. There is a conscious way to live. There’s a way of shining your light. There is a way to live that is the answer to the whole thing. There is a traditional Christian hymn that contains these words:

And tho’ the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.

There is a process transpiring around the world that is inexorable and, in the end, it is in the hands of the creative power and intelligence that made it. It is in the hands of the creative process established by that power and intelligence, and that creative process is reliable and dependable.

In our lifetime, we are watching the cycle of humanity on this planet reach some kind of culmination. I have no predictions of apocalypse to proclaim, or time frames to announce. And yet, in my lifetime, the world population has almost tripled, and the trend continues. That is one indication of exponential movement to some kind of culminating global human experience.

It’s obvious to some—simply at the level of scientific observation, without an enlightened spiritual understanding of what’s happening—that the relationship that we now have with other people and the planet is not viable. We have moved into the agricultural revolution, and then the industrial revolution. And we are now in the nuclear age and the information age. But it is not as if the agriculture and industrial revolution are no longer in play. In fact, they continue with greater and greater impact on the planet.

With these trends, we have moved into a relationship with the planet that is essentially predatory. Humanity is preying on the resources of the planet in a pattern that is neither symbiotic nor synergistic. So we are extracting from the planet, and simple logic tells you that that can only go on so long.

Looking at this practical level of our existence, it’s plain as day that we have to change the relationship we have as humanity with the planet. We have to come into some kind of symbiotic or some kind of synergetic relationship. We have to make peace with the planet, because there’s only so much resource, only so much ability that the planet has to endure the current relationship.

While simple logic takes an honest person to this inevitable conclusion, logic alone does not provide a solution to the problem. Because the truth is that the path of humankind is proceeding as it is because of a foundational mindset that puts individuals and groups in opposition to one another and in a battle with the natural world. That mindset is not logical. So it is not undone by logic alone. To date, in the face of existential risk, we cannot even agree with each other that there is a risk we are facing. So what to do?

And still I say that all of this is in the hands of the Creator. All of it is working out. And yet we have a part to play in it. That part is to let what doesn’t work fail. It has to fail. It is craziness to try to make something that doesn’t work, work. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. And there’s a basic orientation in us as humanity that is not working. We can’t make that work, and it has to break, and it has to fail, and it has to come undone. You can call it apocalypse or whatever you want to call it. But to me this is a study of obviology. If something doesn’t work, its failure is inevitable.

What isn’t inevitable, and what is a matter of choice, is whether we bring the light of a new awareness and understanding into the world; whether we live and demonstrate what does work. That’s a matter of positive, active choice for every human being on the face of this earth. That won’t just happen. That happens because we do it. This imperative is determined by the very nature of who we are as conscious beings of choice, at a level that is unlike the rocks, unlike the birds and all the rest of the natural world.

We are beings of conscious choice, and as a matter of fact, that’s how we got into this problem in the first place! We made a bad choice! And that is how the problem is being sustained. We keep making a bad choice.

So the issue really is whether we as human beings will take stock of the choice that we have, and, in the face of all that we’re seeing in our own immediate lives and in the world at large, whether we will make a positive, affirmative choice to express the Creator that is within us and that’s within all Creation. Here is the critical question: In the midst of all that’s breaking apart, will we be a living embodiment of the very mechanism of Creation, which is consciousness? That is the mechanism of Creation for us, and it is the part that we are given to play as human beings.

That part that we have to play, that we speak of as consciousness, begins with the blessing of Universal Love moving through the heart. That sets the stage for wisdom. Because there is no wisdom without heart. I respect people with a high intellect, but some of the most stupid people I’ve met are highly intellectual and highly ignorant, because there’s no true intelligence, there’s no true wisdom, without an open heart. With an open heart we are connected to each other and we’re connected to the planet. We know our oneness in the whole circle of life that we are a part of. And then we can think intelligently about that connection. What’s the alternative? Let me think intelligently about you as someone I see as separate and adversarial to me. Let me think intelligently about the earth that I don’t care about, that I don’t feel my connection to, so that I can extract something from it.

That’s not intelligence! Where there’s heart connection, there’s the opportunity for real intelligence, real wisdom. And in that, we inherit the magical powers of consciousness.

I don’t claim to know all the mechanics of how this works, but I know it’s magical. I use that word because I don’t know how else to describe all that can happen between two people. Or what can happen in a roomful of people. There is power and light that can appear, seemingly out of no place. We can find ourselves lifted up into another sense of who we are individually and who we are together. That’s magic. And it’s magic because not only can I have the experience as an individual, but it can spread like wildfire. When we’re having a profound transcendent experience, we can connect with others and find they’re having it too. There is some kind of influence in that match that we light. There’s an influence of the open heart, and then there’s something profound that happens in a space in consciousness of which so many are unaware.

There’s all kinds of prophecy about the end of the world. Members of the so-called Islamic State are waiting for the appearance of The Guided One after a final apocalyptic battle. Some Christians foresee a time of tribulation followed by the second coming of Jesus and the final judgment. Other Christians see Jesus’ second coming after the coming of a Golden Age. Contemporary culture depicts all kinds of apocalyptic visions from Mad Max to Waterworld and The Day After Tomorrow.

But what is really happening? And how can awakening people see what is transpiring and play their part in it?

Very simply, the best formula we have is to fill this world with the power of love and the light of who we are. This is the power and light of an illumined consciousness. The best formula we have is to fill the whole space of human consciousness with power and light. What’ll happen then? There will be a choice illuminated for all to see. It will be presented directly within the range of the human experience.

I choose to come together with all who have that intention, from whatever faith, whatever background, whatever walk of life they may come from, and to find ourselves together, filling that space, without prejudice, without bias as to who’s joining us in doing that.

We’re just filling the space we share with power and light, because what we know is that we have to let this come to culmination. In the middle of what is failing all around us, our choice is to live and demonstrate what is awakening in us and being born through us. We have to bring this choice to that very last person who could drive a car into a crowd of people. What we’re doing has to reach everybody. It has to be global, it has to be universal. There’s no other way this can work. We can’t get partway there and leave somebody with an atomic bomb to ruin the planet. The reach of what we’re doing has to be global.

That is our stated mission as Emissaries of Divine Light: The spiritual regeneration of humanity, under the inspiration of the spirit of God. Each of us could question the part that we have to bring to that mission, which is unique to each of us. But whatever age or stage of life you are in, whatever your life path is that is unique to you, whatever the gifts are that are unique to you, it is, in another sense, all the same. If we are awake, we have our power and light to bring the world. And that is the most crucial thing about our life—about anybody’s life. If you give that, you don’t need an “Atta boy!” You don’t need a slap on the back, and you don’t need encouragement. When you are bringing the power and light of Being to the world, you are with everybody else who’s doing that, and you have the affirmation of that experience. It is self-affirming.

And then we get to do it together, which is an act of great love that we get to perform together—great love for each other, great love for this planet, and great love for the very origin of all things, by whatever name you want to use. In essence, we have the opportunity to say, We’re here for You. We’re doing this for Your world. And we are together as one, as You see us and know us to be, not as we have made ourselves to be in all our small-mindedness and separateness. We are one in Your sight.

And even if, for whatever reason, I see it differently on a given day, I will let that go and I will accept how we are seen by the Creator. I will see with those eyes. And with those eyes, I bring light into the world.