Humanity has been evolving through the cycle of development since the beginning. If you were to plot major eras on the cycle, you would get something like this…
Facebook
Twitter
Buffer
VKontakte
LinkedIn
Gmail
You can see how we seem to oscillate forward and backwards, but over all, we are moving to the right. Taken in the context of a cycle, we go around and around, but spend more and more time in later stages. So what pulls us backwards? War and economic disaster… but mostly war.
Facebook
Twitter
Buffer
VKontakte
LinkedIn
Gmail
Look at all the times we went “backwards” as a species. War causes all involved to be pulled back around to Stage Three (I am my needs). It’s about survival and survival is all those involved can focus on. It’s hard to focus on concepts of the divine and questioning ideas when you don’t know if you or your loved ones might make it through the day. War, in this way, delays the progress of humanity at large, but it does not ultimately prevent it.
Even better, look at how fast each turn around the cycle takes…
Facebook
Twitter
Buffer
VKontakte
LinkedIn
Gmail
Our progress is exponential! Moving from one stage to another used to take thousands of years, then hundreds of years, then tens of years. We are moving forward at an exponential pace. We have the potential to easily see the next two steps very soon indeed.
Where Do We Go From Here? Forward Or Back? So what comes next? If you turn these charts sideways, you will see an interesting pattern… it’s called an Elliot Wave. These are common in trading stocks and in the foreign exchange world. While trading stocks and betting on the interplay of the currency of nations seems like a financial task, it is a really an exercise in understanding human behavior. So much of what we do as a species can be viewed this way. Let’s see what we get…
Facebook
Twitter
Buffer
VKontakte
LinkedIn
Gmail
Next, if we do not delay ourselves with any new wars, would be a major move up to Stages 7-11. I predict two eras to come: The Knowledge Age and the Wisdom Age.
The Knowledge Age The Knowledge Age would see the overwhelming majority of humanity in Stages 7-9. This would be what we call a Stage 8 society, where there are more people in Stage Eight than in any other stage, but significant portions of the population in Stage Seven and Stage Nine. It is a largely peaceful and economically prosperous society, marked by innovation, purpose-driven work, and a focus on understanding consciousness.
You can see the foundations of that society peeking out around the corners of our current western world. Innovation is popular and encouraged within the technology sector (that’s a good start), the idea of a purpose driven life and work model is gaining popularity, and the medical profession is beginning to research consciousness as a mainstream area of study. It would seem that the knowledge age has begun. However, at the moment, there are too many people in Stages 3-6 to allow innovation, purpose driven work and understanding of consciousness to become the MAIN thing across even western society. But we will get there soon enough.
So what does that look like? The Knowledge Age would look like a society where innovation is encouraged and expected in ALL sectors and industries, where career counseling and education focuses on helping people find their purpose and their passion, and crafting a career from that, rather than the other way around, and where the study of consciousness is so mainstream that it is part of Biology and Psychology classes at the High School level.
The Knowledge Age might seem like an outdated term… after all, didn’t we already see the Knowledge Economy come and go? Yes, we did. But the basis for an economy is just the first seed of our sprouting species. When knowledge became the basis for an economic boom, we started to pay attention to it. We started to value it. We asked our children to make it a priority. The result is that everyone wants to have all the current knowledge. But a Knowledge Age society is about a society where people crave NEW knowledge, for more than economic opportunity; they crave knowledge about themselves, about their own humanity, and about life. THIS is the Knowledge Age that is coming.
The Wisdom Age The Wisdom Age will come next. This will be a society where the overwhelming majority of people are in Stages 8-11, with an emphasis on Stage 9-10. This type of society is focused on the wisdom of intuition, a more natural connection with the divine, and a mainstreaming of energy work.
Intuition is, even today considered important, but we still base our decisions largely on data and provable fact. In the Wisdom Age, intuition will take priority, while data and fact will be used to back it up. Intuition will be taught in schools with the focus on honing your intuitive skills at an early age.
As society at large craves a deeper and more natural connection to the divine, we may see an evolution of religion away from organized, brick and mortar based hierarchies. At first, organized religion will be avoided, or even rejected by many in a bid for more natural, internal connection to the divine. This modern exodus has already begun in most western countries. Seeing their revenues drop, many organized religions will eventually innovate new ways to help their devotees find that natural, internal connection to the divine while maintaining their original sacred texts, but not their original hierarchies. Such an evolution of organized religion to something that might be better described at distributed religion will have an interesting effect… the blending of many religions within a single household. When in these later stages, the truth at the heart of all religions is far more important than the differences. You might seem for example, a single family incorporate aspects of several different religions into their daily lives. This is commonplace in many parts of Asia today, where many families blend aspects of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism for a tailored, meaningful connection to the divine. In the Wisdom Age, I don’t think it will be strange to see aspects of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, for example, used within the same family for tailored, meaningful transitions. That seems a terribly long way off right now, but when the time comes, it will be very natural.
Energy work, in its many forms, is already mainstream in some cultures. In Eastern cultures and in parts of South America, energy work for healing of all manner of emotional and physical ailments is not just common, it is expected. Energy work in the form of Reiki, a Japanese tradition, was first introduced in the 1950s and 1960s, and has since grown in popularity. There are, as of this writing, over a million Reiki practitioners worldwide, and over one hundred thousand masters (including myself). At this moment, many hospitals have incorporated Reiki energy work programs using volunteer practitioners who assist those recovering from surgery, at end of life, or even at the beginning of life. It is not so far fetched that we would see this trend continue to increase to the point of seeing energy work fully incorporated into western medicine and daily life, and to see it as a point of research for better understanding.
We see the beginnings of the Wisdom age all around us in the western world, and perhaps even more so in the Eastern world. While the Knowledge Age will be a time of looking inward, the Wisdom Age will be a time of looking upward.
