It’s very strange to spend your entire life predicting something that you don’t really understand and then to see it actually start to happen. So if you’re a newbie to The Gathering Room, I have always been obsessed with this thing about how human beings would change the way they live in a dramatic way at some point during my lifetime.

And as a sociologist, I’ve always thought of it in terms of, okay, we live in these social pyramids and we live in exploitative systems. That’s not the way it’s going to be. There’s going to be a shift, and that’s not going to look like a pyramid-shaped structure. It’s more like a pool of energy where everyone is a portion of energy interacting in a sort of rip-wave function with everybody else.

I made a thing of it. I made a metaphor of it that’s online called “The Pyramid and the Pool,” and you can go see it. Well, see, here’s the thing. We all live in social pyramids where you were born and people were already in charge of you, right? You were at the bottom. You were a little weak little creature. And as you climbed in society, you got a higher and higher place in the pyramid if you could. Because everybody’s trying to get a higher place in the pyramid of wealth, status and power and all of that.

But recently, you may have experienced a sense of something else creeping in. So the pyramid is imposed upon people from above. Yeah? Pool consciousness, which is what I’m calling this new consciousness, it does not come from other people. It comes from—imagine a spring coming out, like a well spring in the mountains. I remember hiking in the Rockies when I was little, and we’d come to these streams where there was just a cleft in the rock, and this absolutely pure water would come from it, and we could all drink because it was so filtered by the stone.

Okay, so imagine that there’s this spring of clear water that’s emanating out from the center of your soul, and it’s forming pool consciousness inside you. And here’s what I figured out when I made my metaphor of sugar cubes on my online post and poured water in among the pyramid, the pyramid sitting in a pan, and I poured water into the pan to represent the pool consciousness, and the pool began to dissolve the pyramid from beneath without any violence, without any fanfare. It just quietly dissolved and included the pyramid in itself in a very gentle way. And I thought, aha! This is how people who live in the pool consciousness are going to affect a society that is built on pyramid consciousness. And the people at the bottom of the pyramid are the ones who are going to receive the pool consciousness first.

So I knew that the pool comes out from inside each individual. It is not imposed ever from the outside, but I didn’t really know what that would look like. Now, I told you a week ago, I’m not supposed to date these, but I went to see Ani DiFranco singing live, and one of her favorite songs, she didn’t sing it there, but it’s called Atom, the Atom. And one of the lines says, “Summon a congress of angels dressed in riot gear. We’ve got ourselves a serious situation down here.” I am wearing my angels in riot gear shirt. For those of you who are not on the video, you have missed the sight of my special angels in riot gear shirt because we do have a serious situation down here.

And yet Ani said in her last concert, “It’s funny, what I feel is hope. I feel this rising hope.” And boy, did my antennae ever go up because this is what I’ve been hearing from a lot of different people, people who don’t necessarily even cross paths with me very often, but we’re having an experience that seems to be synchronized to some degree.

And one of the symptoms of it is this irrational hope, this strange joy, a sense that something wonderful is happening in the midst of all the horrors. We have got ourselves a serious situation down here, but there’s a sense that something is moving. It’s changing us, and it’s coming from the inside.

So I will just level with you, I am so preoccupied with what’s happening to me that I almost canceled The Gathering Room today because I wake up in a state of, I feel dissolved. I feel this warm hum of electricity, and it’s very, very soft and very sweet, but it’s also very powerful. And there’s a sense: This has never happened to me before and I’m not sure what it is, but it’s bringing this irrational hope.

So I made a list, a listicle of the things that people have been telling me they’re experiencing. So as a sociologist, I look at things where there’s a lot of overlap. So if somebody has a very suddenly they can speak Aramaic or whatever, if they’re the only one that doesn’t go on the list. But if there’s an overlap in what people are sensing, that becomes sociologically significant.

So I have made a list of 12 things, and if you have them, you have them. I think that if you don’t have them, you may have them soon.

So number one is this quiet but implacable sense that Something (capital S) is happening. Sometimes it is just, it’s about to happen. But for a lot of people now it’s like, “Oh, it’s on.”

Okay. Two is the irrational, rising hope and joy, despite all the horrors.

Along with that goes more laughter, more humor. There’s also a lot more crying. I cry like 12 times a day, minimum, and it usually is just with amazement and bafflement. And other times it’s because of joy, because of healing. I feel this deep, deep, deep sense of psychological and physical healing.

So there’s a tremendous amount of crying, but also things are funnier than ever. And even in the midst of what should be heavy, there’s a lightness. It’s like I’m in a theater watching a comedian, and everyone around is laughing hilariously at a really wonderful joke. It’s not mocking, it’s not mean. It’s just joy laughter, and it feels like it’s all around me and it comes up through me so easily.

Okay, here’s a good one. I call it “itchy mask syndrome.” It’s an inability to sustain inauthentic behavior. So that’s what I could only do The Gathering Room on this because if I tried talking about something different, I would not be able to talk. I would just be like, “Uhh, no.” I would have no energy. So we talk about spoons as metaphors for energy, certain situations that drain your spoons, that drain your energy, drain them horrifically. But there are also situations that seem to add energy, and they are getting more intense too. So there’s this very strong reaction to when you’re being authentic in a group of people where just your energy goes way up or when you’re being inauthentic and it’s like, I cannot stand this mask. I can’t stand it anymore. I have to take it off. Itchy mask syndrome. I just made that up.

There’s a softening in the places where you used to strive. So I think, okay, what I’ve got to do is I’ve got to get up. I’m going to do it. I’m going to write for two hours, then nah, no, maybe I’ll write for a minute or two, and then it’s 15 minutes and then Lila comes in and it’s time to play. And where there used, I used to have very rigid discipline. I just thought of it as solid discipline, but it was pretty rigid. And now it’s like I should get up and put on makeup. Really? Should I really? That’s kind of what it is: I should. Yeah, but should I? Should I really? Okay. That’s another thing. Softening where there was striving.

Number six is emotional waves that cleanse. They don’t drown you. Sometimes they’re so strong, they feel like they’re going to drown you. I’ll see something on the news or even like a TV drama where there’s a child singing or something or someone’s hurt, and it’s a totally normal thing to see on TV, but this huge wave of emotion and this absolute love for these people and for all people just comes crashing through me and I can’t actually cope with it very easily. But then when it’s gone, I feel cleaned and hollowed out. So there’s a heightened sensitivity, but also greater resilience. I can go deeply into the intense emotion for no reason, can’t hold it back, but then it goes through and then I’m stillness, clarity, softness, silence. We’re going to do the meditation later. Okay, so that’s six: Emotional waves that cleanse without drowning.

Number seven is an expanding capacity for paradox. So you’ve all read A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” That paradox right now, this, I mean, I really don’t think revolutionary France had anything on us right now. This is the worst of times and the best of times. And we can be in both. We can be going through incredible emotional difficulty, trauma even, and trauma recovery, while at the same time feeling absolutely still and safe. So the old things that used to mean separation can now be held together. I see someone who’s behaving badly, I see that, but I can also see that they’re doing their absolute best and I can love that and not love the other. And I can just hold it more.

Okay, number eight, you feel more like your true self, but you also feel more like you’re connected to everyone. So your particular personality is more loved and celebrated by the universe than it’s ever been. But at the same time, when you look around, you see that everybody is reflected in you and you in everybody. So there’s this weird sense that “I’m me. No, I’m not. I’m everything.” And of course it takes a paradoxical mindset to hold that.

All right, nine is a growing disinterest in keeping up. Like life goals. I always go through the Caribbean fishermen story very quickly in my mind, this rich dude, CEO goes out to fish on vacation in the Cayman Islands and there’s a guy on his boat fishing away that takes him out. And the CEO says, “If you got a motor on this, you could get a lot more fish.” And the guy says, “Why would I do that?” “Well, to make more money.” “Well, what would I do then?” “Buy more boats, catch more fish, build a fish factory, send fish everywhere, become a millionaire like me.” And the fisherman says, “And then what would you do?” And the CEO says, “Then you could take vacations like this and go out fishing.” So you see what I mean the circle of, I’m going to do the things they say I should do, but really is that—I’m just, why would I chase the bus I’ve already caught? I’m happy just being with my loved ones and eating nachos. I don’t really need to go out and conquer the world.

Along with this, number 10, an inner rebellion against hierarchies. You look at the people who are in charge of the world, somebody who thinks they’re higher up on the pyramid than you, and you don’t feel awe and you don’t feel terror. You’re just like, seriously? Seriously. Oh, whatever. You’re just as comfortable with a billionaire as with a janitor who makes minimum wage. You don’t feel any difference in their value. And it’s kind of annoying that other people do, like seriously annoying, but not to the point where you get distraught, just to the point where you’re like, are you kidding me? It’s like, you’re still playing that game? That is so weird. So the hierarchy doesn’t work.

And the last two are first of all, time strangeness where time seems to speed up and then suddenly it’s gone and then it stretches out before you, suddenly you have time to do a task you didn’t think you’d be able to do. And then time collapses and you meet someone from 20 years before and you feel like you saw them yesterday. It’s time is doing all kinds of weird gymnastics.

And the final thing is a sense that you are being guided from every freaking direction you can look in. There are little signals and God winks and people showing up, strangers showing up and saying exactly the words you need to hear and then walking away. I mean, it’s getting hilarious how full of signs and symbols and metaphors and God winks some of our lives have become.

It is on, folks, and all of this, if you want to get fancy, I once said that I would write a book about this and I would call it Pronoid Apophenia because that is a fancy way of saying the feeling you get—apophenia is when you solve a puzzle and you feel this little burst of dopamine. And pronoid is the opposite of paranoid. Paranoid is the feeling that everything in the world is out to destroy you or hurt you. Pronoid is an irrational conviction that everything in the universe is setting out to support and delight in you and help you along. So pronoid apophenia is when you have all these characteristics, or a certain number of them, and you say to yourself, “It’s on. Let’s do this thing.”

And let’s see if anybody agrees with me or if you’ve all gone home.

All right, question: “I have a hard time feeling the hope and possibility of change that may be happening. My personal challenges are overshadowing it. I want to get plugged in. How do I do that?”

You go directly into your personal challenge. This is not about you leaving yourself, abandoning yourself. It’s not about you being abandoned. Go into whatever is challenging you and speak about it to people that you love. Write about it online. Be open about it. Share with people. This is the whole point of the pool. This is highly, highly communicative and individualism does not work. It doesn’t. They do this show on TV called Alone. They did Alone in the Canadian wilderness and then they did it in Australia. And I love it. I love to watch it because it’s these people going out and surviving on their own in the wilderness with nothing but they’re allowed to take 10 items.

And they live out there for months by themselves. But when people say, “Oh, we’re going back to the stone age, this is the way humans used to live.” No, nobody ever went out to be by themselves in the wilderness. People lived together and helped each other. And that is the reason that we were such a successful species is that we cooperate. Competition is the pyramid consciousness. Cooperation is what happens in the pool, and that’s the only reason we’re all alive—because our ancestors cooperated with each other. So go into your own challenge and then share it with the people around you, the people who love you, and you’ll find the pool filling you up and helping you float. It’s astonishing how loving this pool is.

Okay, someone else says, “Ah, I cry all the time because I feel lost in this cubicle world and I want freedom, like my soul is trapped. How to convert it to peace?”

Okay, there’s this line from an Antonio Majado poem that says, “My soul is not asleep. My soul is not asleep. It neither sleeps nor dreams but listens. Its still eyes open at the shore of the great silence.” Okay, I quote that all because your soul is not in the cubicle world. It’s not asleep, and it’s not stuck in the pyramid. It’s not stuck in the solids at all. The fact that you feel lost shows that there is a part of you that knows you’re not in the place mentally that is creating an internal environment for your soul to blossom. The yearning is there and that—it starts with yearning. Yearning is a very, very, very important power in the universe and in this transformation. I am so sorry for your sadness and I’m rejoicing that you cry all the time because the cubicle feels like it’s trapped. That shows you’re ready to break free. So keep yearning, keep looking at things that look like freedom. You may see somebody doing something and think, “I want that life. I want to do that thing.” And it just rings like a bell. Or there’s a friend you want to make or look up from the past or whatever it is. And then let go of it because you cannot stand to be trapped in cubicle world. Pyramids have cubes inside them where they bury people and stuff. So the modern corporation is very much a pyramid structure. I’m so grateful that your soul is not asleep in that structure. It is wide awake. Follow it.

Okay, somebody else asks, “Does the hum make you feel less stable and grounded? I’m feeling a bit more floating around than before, not as a distraction. I feel moved by the universe.”

I would have to agree with you there. I don’t see the names anymore, but whoever you are, Tracy, it’s Tracy. Yeah, I feel like I should have a string tied to my ankle in case I float up into the sky and disappear. It’s not that I’m disassociated at all. I’m very, very present with scenery and objects and the feelings going on inside my body and my love for the people around me. Do I know how to find the bird seed store anymore? That can take some work. Like it is, I am having more and more strangeness, feeling like I’m being, it actually feels like my nervous system has doubled in the last month or so. There’s so much information that I’m taking in about nature and soul and emotion around me that it’s very hard to integrate with logistics. Maybe it’s just my ADHD, but if that’s happening to you too, we can just float around together. No harm done.

Okay, someone else says, “Wondering if your experience is such because you’re so much more ahead on the spiritual path, but how could I catch up?”

Here’s the thing, the pool has no levels. I’m not ahead of anybody, and nobody’s ahead of me. We’re all on the same level. The wave energy that we’re sharing now, if you lean into it, if there’s the slightest bit of joy that you get from what I’m saying, or even the hope of joy, if there’s the slightest yearning in you that says, “I want this, whatever she’s talking about with the pool and the love and whatever it is, I really want me some of that,” go with it. Go with it. Go with it. Drown in it. You won’t drown. You’re meant to breathe underwater, dissolve into it. And the moment you yearn for it, it’s yours. It’s given, and nobody’s ahead of anybody. Some of us are just more aware that it’s happening because I myself have been sort of looking for it my whole life, just because I had the really strong sense that Something would happen. And I’m not sure this is it, but I’m pretty sure it’s it. It’s very strange.

Okay, somebody else says, “What do you mean by the pyramid?”

So if you chimed in late, I was talking about how the pyramid represents the social structures that have dominated human life on earth, at least for the last 5,500 years of recorded history. It’s any system based on the idea that people are unequal in value and that some people deserve to be at the top of a pyramid and they deserve to exploit and extract from everything and anything below them on the pyramid. So they can sit in their ivory towers and take the crops that all the peasants have to grow and plunder the earth for resources. They get to take and take and take. And just a few people at the top of the pyramid have vast resources, and everyone else is sort of at various levels exploited. So that’s the pyramid. And we’re talking about going to a different place starting from within inside our souls, our psyches.

Next question: “How do we let go of judgment of others when we feel like we’re on the right side?”

Well, here’s the thing. When you’re absolutely flooded with empathy and you see somebody who is violent and cruel, there’s a strong feeling of that does not belong with me and an equally strong feeling of, oh, they’ll have to get over it someday. It’s not like I’m good, they’re bad. It’s like, oh yeah, I used to be like that. I didn’t have as much money, but I was really competitive. I was, oh yeah, you can sort of see yourself in all the folly of the world, even in real cruelty and violence. You say, oh yeah, no, that happens. And at the same time, you may work and work and work for peace and equality and liberty and all the things that we value so deeply, but you do it without judgment because what you want is to dissolve those rigid structures into something fluid and beautiful.

Remember, if you go watch my pyramid and pool demonstration, the whole pyramid dissolves in this pan of water, but none of the substance there is ever excluded. Nothing is thrown away, nothing is tortured, nothing is punished. It just all dissolves into the pyramid. And that’s the effect of this energy. It dissolves all the pyramid-shaped structures inside you and then around you.

Somebody says, “I relate to this so much to so much of this, but I have trouble getting in touch with deep emotions such as crying and sheer joy. Do you have any advice for getting in touch with these?”

Art, art, art, art, art. Like play songs that make you want to dance and then play songs that make you cry. And they don’t have to be songs. It could be music of any kind. Look at art. Watch films. Read books that sweep you away in the experience of the pure human dance-through-the-earth existence. Allow the great artists of the world into your psyche and feel what they’re offering you. The whole palette of beautiful, delicious, sometimes anguishing, but always intense experience that is in art, that’s the gift that people who have always lived in pool consciousness have been giving to us for centuries. So yeah.

Question: “How do we systematically harness this pool of energy? I’m great at systems, only too happy to help.”

I don’t know. I’m not that great at systems. I can barely remember my name. I think that what will happen is a joint discovery. So in the pool, things don’t happen in lines. They happen in circles. So what happens when somebody has a great idea and there’s a lot of energy around it, is there’s a wave resonance with other people who really love that idea. And it forms a circle of people who are good at systematizing it, who are good at getting it out to more people, who are good—there will be circles, I think, of people who are great at making and shipping articles, tools that are useful. I think there will be circles of people making food. Boy, I’m jumping ahead a long time in history now.

Because I think if the pool consciousness takes us all on board, if we all dissolve into it, we’re going to begin systematizing the work of society in a very new way where it’s not going to be as extractive. It’s not going to be hierarchically led, but it’s going to be very, very efficient. I think it’s going to be more like parallel processing than linear processing, which means we can get a lot more done in a shorter amount of time.

Love that question. Going on to a few others. Oh, someone’s saying, “Major DNA activation happening over here. Also ADHD combined type.”

It’s interesting that people with neurodivergence seem to be feeling this more. And I have had people tell me that, I’ve had scientists tell me that some of the DNA in our cells that is labeled “junk DNA” because it doesn’t seem to be very active in people, isn’t junk, that they think it might be something reserved for an epigenetic switch that may turn one consciousness, one form of consciousness to another. Yes, they’re wacky like Bruce Lipton, but a good scientist still. Yay.

Someone says, “I guide forest therapy sessions and I’ve seen a huge uptick in people having profound feelings of oneness. It started a couple months ago. It’s beautiful to see.”

Oh, what a great piece of data that is. Yeah, it did start a couple of months ago, and it’s rising kind of in synchrony with some of the darker things that are happening, the terribly dark things that are happening. That’s the paradox. All this amazing, brilliant, joyful activity is happening at the same time things are absolutely going to hell in a handbasket. It is wild. But I’m so happy you’re out there in the forests that are left with people feeling that oneness. I believe there’s a power there that will change things more than we can understand at this point.

Next question: “How does on the right track feel? For example, when you have to make a choice.”

It feels like rest. It feels like exhaling. It feels like easy laughter. It feels like physical looseness and joy in the body. It feels like home. It feels like celebration, but a quiet one, there’s no mania to it. It’s like a baby laughing, go look at videos of babies laughing. That’s what it feels like.

Okay, next question: “I experienced every item you listed with the exception of feeling led, not for lack of seeking it. Any idea as to how I might reconnect to being led?”

Well, you’re here. And one of the things I wanted to tell you is you’re being led. So now look for really improbable coincidences. Really, really on-the-nose information coming in when you least expect it. Certain phrases or words might be repeated over and over and over and over. And then you finally find out what it means and it means something powerful. I don’t want to get too, a lot of people are like, “I saw a bird in flight. That’s a symbol that I must—” No, there are a lot of things that are not necessarily symbols or guidance, but if you set the intention to be guided, I believe that intention is served. So instead of, “Oh, please, please guide me,” you say, “Hey, I’m on a journey here. Who wants to show up and guide me? Come on, bring it.”

There’s a kind of joyful companionship with the universe. It’s not, “Oh great universe, please give me—” That’s pyramid thinking. “Oh, please God, help the wormy little me.” No, no, no. It’s more like, “Hey y’all, let’s have an enlightenment experience. Come on!” And then it happens. So set the intention, but do it with joy.

And last question, “Just thinking the word ‘dissolve’ feels better than anything.”

Yes, it does. And I don’t know where I’ll be next week because it seems to be accelerating. And fortunately I can still speak English as of today. I can still know that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and that something is rising out of the world that is falling, that we’ve all been waiting for our whole lives.

And maybe that the human species has been waiting for since it first evolved, since we first evolved. So we’ve got a squadron of angels dressed in riot gear here. And if you want to keep a list of those things I just mentioned and then tick ’em off when they happen and send me an email or something or what, comment on something online. I don’t know how these things work. I’m busy undergoing a transformation. 

All right, so everybody, let’s go change the world. I love you. I have no idea what we’re doing. We move at dawn!