Monday I leave the safety of our dear United States of America.  The world I have come to understand as home.  The ideology and way of life I have grown to identify with.  The idea that a car is normal part of everyday life.  The idea that food in the grocery store is always going to be there.  The lack of attention to little things that have been and still are the coveted luxuries of life, like hot water on demand.  The expectation that when I squeeze the nozzle at the gas station, gasoline will come out.

Monday I leave for Africa.  This will be an epic journey.  One that will imprint in the story of my life.  An experience that will be unlike other trips or vacations.  This is a journey of realization; not a personal realization.  Not an awakening of direction and goals, but rather the realization that despite the impression that other continents are so far that what happens there does not effect us, we are actually closely connected.

I will be spending 2 weeks on Mount Kilimanjaro and climbing to Uhuru Peak at 5895 meters (19341 feet).  I will have a chance to witness the sun rising over the flat horizon of the Serengeti as man’s first ancestors did.  Standing on top of the world seeing the stars as they were seen 10,000 years ago.  No city lights, no traffic, no grocery store, no running water.  Only what we were given by nature… stars, and the promise of the sun rising tomorrow.  All under the blanket that connects us all, our sky.

The journey to the top will be physically demanding.  But like every challenge our lives deal us, if your personal convictions and mind are focused on the destination the journey will be sweet, once you look back from the top and see where it was you stood, not so long ago.

As the ice cap of the famous volcano in the desert shrinks, I wonder will my world be the same as I left it 3 weeks ago?  With no connection to our modern world, no phone, no email, no news, I wonder will the $700 Billion bail out of the banking criminals by the American Tax Payer leave my beautiful America in desperate debt and bankruptcy?  Will I come back to a country where there is no foresight for it’s youth?  No investment in the intellectual growth and conscious advancement of its citizens?  Will I return to a country where the value of constant entertainment and the pursuit to instantly satisfy every desire are valued more than the connection to community and our home planet.  I wonder and worry.

It saddens me that this journey is overshadowed by the beginning of the demise of the great and noble United States of America.  The fall of one of the greatest ideas of mankind… a  land where the place you came from does not identify you, but participation in the way of life that gives this land, this country is divinity… the land of liberty. 

Our generation is the one that will live to see the changes that will define the next rendition of human consciousness.  I have called this the spiritual revolution.  But as with all the other revolutionary steps of human development, this one also has an achilles heel.  The rapid regression of our society into the diseased state of mass consumption and unrelenting greed is the ultimate blockade to the final evolutionary stage of human consciousness.  If we do not open our eyes this great “snow capped mountain” that stands proud and pristine in the history book of human development will be tarnished and fall the ranks of the Romans, the Mongols, the Persians or the Greeks.  The common denominator with the fall of all of our historical mile markers has been greed.  The never ending cycle of consumption beyond our needs is the beginning of the disease that ultimately kills our golden goose.

The first symptoms have started.  Government (the name of the organization YOU employ to manage your home… i.e. Your nations housekeeper) is now taking over major banking, and the largest insurance company in the world.  Decisions like what to do with a $700 Billion nest egg of the PUBLIC are no longer made with the public involved, but in the classic authoritarian way the Romans, the Mongols, the Persians and the Greeks did.  A sad and disgraceful slap in the face of the greatest document in human history, the Constitution of the United States of America.

It took 20 years.  I remember watching President George Herbert Walker Bush in his 1991 joint session of Congress speech repeat the announcement of the New World Order.   Today banks topple and your money is spend to bail out billionaire cronies of the men who sit at the top; your world is systematically being shaped into a big government, credit based, consumer economy where if you stop running on the mill, life becomes impossible.

We have systematically been pulled away from our wisdom of 10,000 years into an illusory version of reality that at the very core is based on your dependancy on forces unseen for every part of life. As I pack to live in the wilderness for 2 weeks, I realize that clean water, clean food, medical care, even warmth and protection from nature are all factors that I do not have to pay attention to living my version of life in Studio City.  If you read my essay Disease vs. Debt in the World, you will appreciate how different our experience of life is compared to others.

How did we get here?  Why have we let go of our instincts and wisdom that was passed onto us by our elders for this facade of reality?  Are we afraid of something?  Is it the ominous feeling of being an inconsequential blip in the universe every time we look up to the heavens at night?  Is that why we build cities to drown out the stars and make the sky appear dull, and the flickering cityscape appear heavenly? 

Going to Africa would not have come up in conversation if we spoke last year.  Close friends of mine can attest to that.  But it is proof that we all have the potential to grow beyond what we limit ourselves to.  I know that every one of you have the ability to open your eyes and relearn the wisdom to insure your families make it through this dangerous transition unscathed by the powerful marketing machine of consumerism.  Going to the continent that gave birth to life, I will have the opportunity to experience real poverty.  Not what we consider poor or homeless here in America.  True poverty.  A life where access to the basic luxuries we take for granted is a fairy tale. 

I can’t wait to be back and let you see what I saw, so that maybe we can better appreciate this gift we call America and start living our lives in a way that leads the world in spiritual development to a new higher consciousness.

Stay Brave.  Live Awake.