 With all the positivity here and these beautiful visions and the exciting developments in China and all these things, sometimes I get caught up in that and I forget other things I know about what's happening on this planet. That leaves me sometimes kind of confused. Maybe all the stuff that I talk about the collapse of the old story and the institutions built on it, you know, maybe I'm just like not optimistic enough, maybe we're going to solve these problems indeed using the same tools and mindsets that have created them. Like, you know, maybe it's going to work out after all, I look at what's, but you know, and like, Yosef referenced humility. For me, humility is not something that I can ever achieve on purpose. It's something that happens to me when I realize again and again and again I don't know as much as I thought I did and the story I've been telling myself isn't all of reality. And so maybe if some of you are feeling like this kind of inner conflict, maybe inner like some contradictions that you cannot resolve, the despair and the optimism side by side and I don't know what to do with that or the kind of we can do it technological kind of go getter spirit that there's some appeal to that, you know, and then at the same time realizing that that very spirit and that very kind of technology has brought us to the brink of ruin and like how do those two things sit next to each other? So I think that like it's okay to not know right now that we are if this conceptualization of a new and ancient story is true, then we are just at the very, very beginning stages of a transition and an era that may be thousands of years long. So if I had a lot of time I might try to at least reconcile some of these things. But I don't think I'll do that. I'm feeling like we've been sitting here for a long time. Now Matthew had asked me to share a story from my book and I'm just wondering, are we still clear that this is the right time to do it? I mean a lot of you have probably read it already. It just seems a little out of sync with like some of these like real nuts and bolts practicalities. So no, okay, all right, I'm going to read it then, okay. And I just invite you to enter your poetic mind and not fact check it too diligently. Yeah, so this is from my book, The More Beautiful World Our Heart to Know is Possible. You may have seen copies of it on display. Those were actually, Matthew lugged them through the airport and brought them as gifts for people. And people didn't know that. People were like asking, are these for sale and stuff and they just slowly disappeared. Those of you who are entrepreneurial just like probably took one. There may be more. I'm not sure if you have a couple more if you're, if you'd really love one. Yeah. Okay, so this story is called A Gathering of the Tribe. Once upon a time, a great tribe of people lived in a world far away from ours. Were far away in space or in time or even outside of time, we do not know. They lived in a state of enchantment and joy that few of us today dare to believe could exist except in those exceptional peak experiences when we glimpse the true potential of life and mind. One day, the elders of the tribe called a meeting. They gathered around and one of them spoke very solemnly. My friends, she said, there is a world that needs our help. It is called Earth and its fate hangs in the balance. Its humans have reached a critical point in their collective birthing. The same point our own planet was at one million years ago and they will be stillborn without our help. You would like to volunteer for a mission to this time and place and render service to humanity. Tell us more about this mission, they asked. It is no small thing. Our shaman will put you into a deep, deep trance so complete that you will forget who you are. You will live a human life and in the beginning you will completely forget your origins. You will forget even our language and your own true name. You will be separated from the wonder and beauty of our world and from the love that bathes us all. You will miss it deeply, yet you will be unable to name what you are missing. You will remember the love and beauty that we know to be normal only as a longing in your heart. Your memory will take the form of an intuitive knowledge as you plunge into the painfully marred earth that a more beautiful world is possible. As you grow up in that world, your knowledge will be under constant assault. You will be told in a million ways that a world of destruction, violence, drudgery, anxiety and degradation is normal. You may go through a time when you are completely alone with no allies to affirm your knowledge of a more beautiful world. You may plunge into a depth of despair that we in our world of light cannot imagine. But no matter what, a spark of knowledge will never leave you. A memory of your true origin will be encoded in your DNA. That spark will lie within you, inextinguishable, until one day it is awakened. You see, even though you will feel for a time utterly alone, you will not be alone. We will send you assistance, help that you will experience as miraculous, experiences that you will describe as transcendent. They will fan that spark into a flame. For a few moments or hours or days, you will awaken to the beauty and the joy that is meant to be. You will see it on earth, for even though the planet and its people are deeply wounded, there is beauty there still, projected from past and future onto the present as a promise of what is possible and a reminder of what is real. After that glimpse, the flame may die down into an ember again as the routines of normal life there swallow you up. But after each awakening, they will seem less normal, and the story of that world will seem less real. The ember will grow brighter. When enough embers do that, they will all burst into flame together and sustain each other. Because remember, you will not be there alone. As you begin to awaken to your mission, you will meet others of our tribe. You will recognize them by your common purpose, values and intuitions, and by the similarity of the paths you have walked. As the condition of the planet earth reaches crisis proportions, your paths will cross more and more. The time of loneliness, the time of thinking you might be crazy will be over. You will find the people of your tribe all over the earth, and become aware of them through the long-distance communication technologies used on that planet. But the real shift, the real quickening, will happen in face-to-face gatherings in special places. When many of you gather together, you will launch a new stage on your journey, a journey that I assure you will end where it begins right now. Then the mission that lay unconscious within you will flower into consciousness. Your intuitive rebellion against the world presented to you as normal will become an explicit quest to create a more beautiful one. A woman said, tell me more about the time of loneliness that we might prepare for it. The elder said, in the time of loneliness you will always be seeking to reassure yourself that you are not crazy. You will do that by telling people all about what is wrong with the world, and you will feel a sense of betrayal when they don't listen to you. You might hunger for stories of wrongness, atrocity and ecological destruction, all of which confirm the validity of your intuition that a more beautiful world exists. But after you have fully received the help we will send you, and the quickening of your gatherings, you will no longer need to do that. Because you will know. Your energy will therefore turn toward actively creating that more beautiful world. A tribe's woman asked, how do you know this will work? Are you sure our shaman's powers are great enough to send us on such a journey? The elder replied, I know it will work because he has done it many times before. Many have already been sent to earth to live human lives and to lay the groundwork for your mission that you will undertake now. He's been practicing. The only difference now is that many of you will venture there at once. What is new in the time you will live in is that you will gather in critical mass and each awaken the other to your mission. The heat you will generate will kindle the same spark that lies in every human being. For in truth each one is from a tribe like ours. The whole galaxy and beyond is converging on earth for never before has a planet journeyed so far into separation and made it back again. Those of you who will go will be part of a new step in cosmic evolution. A tribesman asked, is there a danger that we will become lost in that world and never wake up from the shamanic trance? Is there a danger that the despair, the cynicism, the pain of separation will be so great that it will extinguish the spark of hope, the spark of our true selves and origin and that we will be separated from our beloved ones forever? The elder replied, that is impossible. The more deeply you get lost, the more powerful the help we will send you. You might experience it at the time as a collapse of your personal world, the loss of everything important to you. Later you will recognize the gift within it. We will never abandon you. Another man asked, is it possible that our mission will fail and that this planet earth will perish? The elder replied, I will answer your question with a paradox. It is impossible that your mission will fail, yet its success hangs on your own actions. The fate of the world is in your hands. The key to this paradox lies within you in the feeling you carry that each of your actions, even your personal secret struggles, has cosmic significance. You will know then, as you know now, that everything you do matters. There were no more questions. The volunteers gathered in a circle and the shaman went to each one. The last thing each was aware of was the shaman blowing smoke in his or her face. They entered into a deep trance and dreamed themselves into the world where we find ourselves today.