A while ago, I made a video called “The Pyramid and the Pool” to describe what I think about changes in society. I updated that video today because it helps me feel a bit more relaxed and hopeful. Actually, a LOT more relaxed and hopeful.

For centuries, powerful and wealthy societies have taken the general shape of a pyramid. At the top, you’ve got a few powerful, wealthy people. At the bottom, the majority of people work, struggle, create value, and pass most of what they’ve made up to the privileged. This mirrors the self-centered, materialistic, judgmental aspects of the human ego. Right now, we’re watching the pyramid hit “refresh” and create yet another version of itself. But here’s the thing: I think we’re living in a time where everything may change.  

What we don’t need, I think, is revolution—which literally means just a single turn of a wheel. Throughout modern history, all over the world, rebels from lower ranks of the social pyramid have tried to create a more just and equal society. But because these rebellions came from the same egoic perspective, all these revolutions simply re-created the pyramid with different individuals at the top. 

What if there’s another way?  

For a long time, I’ve been fascinated by something called “awakening.” It’s a familiar trope in Asian philosophy, though we can see evidence of it happening to individuals all over the world and throughout history. 

Awakening is what happens when we dissolve our rigid ego structures—the ones that keep us frightened, combative, and greedy. People who experience it have described it the same way, in totally different times and places. It’s a state beyond psychological suffering, a state of peace and joy that, to quote the Good Book, “passeth understanding.”

For decades, I’ve been wondering what would happen if a critical mass of human beings were to “awaken.” What kind of society would we create if we came from a position of peace and connection, rather than competition and control?

After studying and wondering about this for decades, I came to the conclusion that an awakened society would be less like a pyramid and more like a pool. 

Think about water. It doesn’t—can’t—stack itself up in a rigid structure. It’s fluid and level, constantly moving and adjusting. In a pool, every ripple matters. Some are big, some are small, but each influences all the others. If society were a pool, our power wouldn’t come from wealth or the capacity to overpower others. It would ripple out from our presence, our kindness, the ways in which we interconnect.

After I came up with this image, I spent years wondering how to turn a pyramid into a pool. Revolutions haven’t worked, so what if we created a dissolution? Awakening is the dissolution of an individual ego. That individual then becomes fluid, flexible, inclusive, and compassionate. 

Picture a sugar cube pyramid sitting in water. The water doesn’t attack it. It surrounds it, gently dissolving it. The sugar doesn’t disappear—it blends into the water, making it sweeter and raising the level of the pool.  

I believe this process is already occurring—but in a way that comes from the bottom of the pyramid, from the people who have the least to lose by waking up. As these people awaken, dissolving into clarity, they become part of the inclusive power that helps others awaken out of suffering, too.

Change like this takes time, but it’s unstoppable—like water wearing down stone. It harms no one, and excludes no one. And it starts with each person’s commitment to waking up. Each time you or I choose connection over comparison, kindness over judgment, courage and steadfastness over reactive violence, we help dissolve the pyramid and raise the pool.  

So take heart, my friend. Be gentle with yourself. Allow your own rigidity to relax. Grieve the loss of structures you once depended upon, but then commit to your own awakening. Everything we need to create a different consciousness, a different world, is already here. Let’s see what we can do with it.

I believe awakening is a universal possibility. The potential for awakening is born into each of us. It happens when we’re genuinely willing to relax our death grip on the ego and its obsessions. 

In my new book Beyond Anxiety, I detail the way I believe this awakening occurs, as we move away from actions chosen in fear and opt instead for compassion, connection, and creativity.