My Forecast for Twenty Ten

A meditator wrote me and asked, Why was 2009 so intensely turbulent and dramatic? I know several people who went through a lot of drama and who are happy that the year is finally behind us. I would love to know more about this.

Here's what I wrote: 2009? Well, to me, it was the time when things truly began to rumble. The clarity about just how unsustainable are our current paradigms rose up like a wave in consciousness—as well as waves in nature—and anyone with a pulse could feel it in their body. It was like a massive inner earthquake. I, for one, had moments of hanging onto the floorboards. But not everyone could recognize it as a collective rumbling. Most people felt the shaking was coming from themselves, their lives, from all the things that urgently needed to change, right now! And so they began to break things left, right, and center, partly to stop the rumbling, to stop the pain.

That breaking apart is important. Old things must be pruned away for new things to grow. But it seems that, because we were so dulled to the small tremors—missing all the cues from earth’s early warning signs—the breaking, when it happened, was a violent chain sawing instead of a gentle clipping. That’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way the mechanics of nature work. Ignore the early clues of rumbling sidewalks or rising tides, and you get slammed by falling debris and giant surf.

Perhaps we've cleared some overgrowth now. What I'm feeling in myself and in some of the peers and friends who I admire the most, is this sense that NOW IS TIME FOR ACTION. Like warriors who’ve shed heavy armor that was outdated and outmoded, and who’ve been initiated by the storms of change, we now have the courage to go into battle barefoot, semi nude, armed mainly with cunning skills and vast, multi-dimensional awareness. I’m talking about the people with I come into contact daily: writers, mothers, teachers, creators, doctors, scientists, athletes, marines, and more. I have this sense that a generation is rising and is going to go out into the field and make progressive change. These are the heroes. Us. If you can hear or see or sense or feel it’s almost impossible to do otherwise. I'm excited.

So perhaps 2009 was a necessary, uncomfortable shedding of old skin, like a snake slithering out of its scaly leather. Or, as many people have noted, like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, an evolutionary process, which, it turns out, is incredibly violent. New cells attack old cells inside the organism before the butterfly is created and can unfold her wings and fly.

I still think it's a major transition time; there is no sudden "smooth sailing". It will be turbulent. It will cause great collateral damage. But more of us have been initiated into the new warrior way. We have more skills, more resiliency, and a functional passion that’s grounded in capability not tethered to the stars. In 2010, we'll be more active, less passive. More vocal, more connected, and more powerful.