Adapting to a Changing World | A Teaching from Marshall Vian Summers

So Marshall will be speaking out about the big picture, and what is happening in the world today and expanding on that. He has a very deep and abiding ongoing connection with the subject that he’s going to be speaking about today. And he also has over 20 books, or about 20 books, in publication, all of this to prepare humanity for the social, political, economic, environmental changes that are coming to the world and that we’re experiencing right now. And also this is for our emergence into a Greater Community of intelligent life and the reality of Contact. 

So today we have the opportunity to hear Marshall speak about these important topics, about adapting to a changing world. So I also want to give you just a little bit of an overview on what’s going to happen today. First we’ll hear from Marshall; we’ll hear him give his teaching. Then we will move to the live broadcast chat where we’ll have an opportunity to respond to a couple questions and share our experience of Marshall’s teaching. From there, we’ll come back to the YouTube, the same YouTube channel, and Marshall will speak a little bit again for that. So with that, let us hear from Marshall Vian Summers. 

Marshall: Good. Welcome, everyone. I’m glad you could join me today. I want to take us into the larger panorama of the world, larger panorama of a changing world, a larger panorama of the universe around us and how that is connected to our changing world in terms of visitation and Intervention in our world from races from beyond. So we’re living in a very propitious time. I’m sure many of you feel this and notice this in your own circumstances, and as you look out into the world. 

So I’d like to bring this into greater focus in terms of how we as individuals can adapt to this great change that we’re facing—great environmental change, and with it, great economic, political change, and the change in our health and everything. So it really is a very complete turning point that we’re facing here. So I’d like to bring that into focus for us, and we can discuss that. And I’d like to give you some practice to do at home that can help you begin to see more clearly the changing landscape around you, your discernment of where you live, how you live and your assessment of your circumstances because you really want to be in the right place in the future; and the opportunities to change that may diminish in the times to come. If we need to relocate or change what we’re doing, our work and so forth, we may have a greater opportunity to do that in the near future than further down the road. So this is a very timely subject I think, an important one for all of us. 

So I’d like to begin with my first slide here. Got it? Good. Okay. So this is called The Challenges We Are Now Facing. And I’m going to list them in what I believe their priority of people’s awareness, not necessarily their priority of impact. But certainly the first is climate change. The changing climate of the world is at the top of the list, both in terms of awareness but also in terms of impact and consequence. In fact, the New Message teaching tells us that this may have the greatest impact in the world of anything, that plus an alien presence—Intervention—in our world. Those are the two big exigencies of our time. 

Certainly, climate change is being studied avidly around the world. Many people are aware of it, increasingly so. The presence of an alien Intervention is hardly recognized in the public, so that’s still a very hidden reality. 

But today I’m going to focus on the changing world itself and how we should consider adapting to it because we have a responsibility to do that. It’s not going to change on our terms. It’s not going to change on our time frame. It’s going to change. And so we’re either with that, aware of that and responding to that, or we’re not. So at the top of the list is climate change. 

Then we have economic change, political change, social change, health change, and then the presence of an alien Intervention. I refer to these as the Great Waves of change. This is spoken about a great deal in the writings of the New Message. And their convergence will cause tremendous currents of change and cross currents, and they’ll be occurring much at the same time. So when that happens, you have events that are very difficult to foresee. If there was only one force of change in play, then you could strategize and project its consequences going forward. But when you have converging Great Waves of change, now you have a situation that’s much more complicated. And to try to model that or consider that, even practically, is very difficult. 

So we’re entering a very turbulent period, and we’re experiencing that turbulence even now. And there are forces at play that I don’t think we have foreseen that are already in play. I will bring the subject up at this time because of the impact of the two great hurricanes that have happened in Florida and parts of the southeastern United States. Florida: Helene and Milton, which occurred within two weeks of each other producing a level of damage and disruption that I think is significant. 

And it’s important for all of us to know because these kinds of events are going to change the cost of our living. They’re going to change, in some cases, what we can afford because we’re all going to be paying for the consequences of these events. I’ll talk more about that as we go along. 

And adding to this we have a non-disclosing alien presence in the world who, in my view, is seeking to take advantage of these great changes and disruptions for their own advantage, ultimately to present themselves as the rescuers or saviors of humanity—which is really false—when in fact, they’re here to take advantage of the situation for their own needs and goals. Humanity is very unprepared for certainly both of these exigencies and what we’re faced, even daily, with the reality of a changing world, a changing climate. 

And this is the environment in which we live. And when the environment changes, it changes everything when you think about it. If the climate changes, the environment changes, what you can do there, how you can live there, whether your work or industry can survive there-–all becoming questioned or becoming challenged or threatened. 

So the New Message says that, Environment is the most important thing—the most important thing. Now, in the list of most people’s list of important things, it may be very low or even not on the list, but it is the most important thing because, as I say, when it changes, everything changes. We don’t have, on historic record, enough evidence to make this part of our current awareness and concern. But historically this has brought entire civilizations to collapse. And you know this is something that now is moving very quickly. It’s not happening over a gradually, over a long period of time. 

And so the people who have the most need to know about this are climate scientists and people who run insurance companies because they have to foresee the future to know what to predict; to know what to cover, what not to cover. And so people live for the moment. And we have a kind of a hereditary problem here that people can be very responsive to immediate events, even heroically so. In terms of mounting an effort for a local disaster or a building on fire or some kind of local, regional environmental situation, people can be very aware of that and very responsive. 

But when it comes to gradual incremental change, it doesn’t show up on people’s radar. They’re not with that. “Well, looks good to me, still looks good to me. It’s good to me,” they’ll say to themselves; they’ll say to each other: “I don’t see a lot of change going on. Climate changing? Well, yeah, it’s hotter, it’s warmer.” But they don’t put this together as a greater event in motion that will have greater consequences than all the immediate kinds of changes or difficulties that may arise. 

So when we talk about adapting to great change, which is really my subject for today, there’s two key words to that. The first is Adapting. I’d like to talk about adaptation. And the second is Great change. 

So adapting, when we think of adapting in our normal language and consideration, well I’m adapting to change in my work. I’m adapting to the rising cost of living, the rising cost of food. I’m adapting to that. When you think of adaptation in terms of immediate events, some of which can be very challenging, but they’re in time; they’re now. They don’t have huge consequence for the future. There are things we do have to deal with or may be subject to. 

But when we talk about adaptation and great change, now we’re talking about adaptation on a much higher and more consequential scale. In the natural world, in natural history for instance, adaptation is equal to survival. If a species can’t adapt to a changing world environment, it likely will not survive, and that survival may be challenged immediately or over time.

So adaptation connected with the words great change now means great adaptation, the whole specter of adaptation. Can we live consciously and successfully and even peacefully in a world of radically changing environment or circumstances? It’s a very challenging notion. And that is the world we are now emerging into.

So adapting to great change is now taken to a whole other level of adaptation. When we talk about great change, again, we’re talking about things that will change how we live, where we live and what we can do and what we may have to do to be able to adapt. So it’s important that we think about adaptation in terms of how we may need to change our life, our circumstances, what we concern ourselves with, what we prioritize, so forth. 

And then great change: we have to think about that in terms of where we live, its future, what’s being projected about that? We fortunately have science that can give us some understanding of what our future in any location may look like in ten, twenty or thirty or forty years, an educated view. So our environment is what sustains us and adaptation is what enables us to change with it when it is changing. So those are two very big words now and not small words. 

So the great change or big change will likely require major adjustments in your life, how you live—all aspects of your life. For some people, if you’re elderly or if you have small children or are unable to relocate or adapt, well, that’s a bigger problem. You have to deal with that differently. But for many people, this requires you to look ahead in the next five years of your life, at least, and to see where, are you in the right place? Is your industry or work going to survive the kind of change that you can perceive or that you’re aware of? What’s the social condition of where you live? How are people going to react to this? Is this going to create social dissonance or discord? Is this going to create economic or political division, which you can see already? You do your own beginning assessment.

And it’s not a one-time thing. It’s an ongoing thing. And this is how an intelligent creature in nature assesses their environment. You know, the birds are always looking at their environment. They’re always scanning the horizon of their environment. The more intelligent animals prepare for the future, building shelters for the winter, adapting themselves to changing circumstances. And so their relationship with the environment is very immediate and very constant because it determines their well-being and survival.

Human beings have been suspended from this core relationship mostly, at least in wealthier parts of the world, where they don’t think about these things. They’re just assumed to be true. “Everything will be there for me. I don’t ever have to think about it. I don’t need to plan for the future, except maybe say for retirement or, you know, go through changes in my work profession” and so forth.

So in the larger context of the natural world, adaptation, as I said, equals survival. So in the Great Waves of change, adaptation begins to mean survival—economic survival, social survival, even physical survival. So this is the kind of arena that we need to be looking at. And we don’t have all the answers. Nobody does. We can’t foresee the future perfectly. Nobody does. 

However, the forces of change are in motion, and there’s a lot of information and guidance that can help us. And the New Message itself is very adamant in encouraging this kind of environmental awareness. [Unclear] social environment, political environment, economic environment, physical environment—this is what is enabling you to live and to function and even to carry forth your life in ways that are very productive and important.

So people rarely recognize the long-term trends, as I said. But the long-term trends are the big trends and the most consequential. Reminds me of Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s law of motion—this is something I learned recently—that he spoke about, and it actually began to become very prophetic for me; and it is: “Gradually, gradually, then suddenly.” And he was referring to in his writings the process of people becoming broke financially. They have financial wealth or some sustenance until the moment they become broke. But it’s really a process; becoming broke is a process.

And so we have to be really careful now in adapting to this great world to have at least a basic understanding of the core areas of change. And I’ve listed them in the first, in this first slide: Economic change, political change, social change, health change, and even the presence of an alien presence in the world and what’s their relationship to this change? It’s a lot. It’s a lot to keep track of.

The people who are watching will see signs. They’ll get messages. They’ll be alerted to things that are coming over the horizon, or inevitably to change or more likely to change. So they have a survival advantage in this that’s pretty significant. To the person who doesn’t want to deal with it, “I don’t want to talk about it; don’t tell me about it”, they are very much a disadvantage and cannot adapt. So this is the kind of thing that we need to begin to consider.

And it’s good for us in a way. It takes us out of being obsessed with ourselves and our emotions and our needs and our thoughts, and we now begin to think about, “How am I going to function in this changing environment?” And that is a very important question. And it actually is very beneficial to us. It’s healthy for us to do that because if the environment is something that we never think about, we assume it’s always going to be there and I’m just concerned about my own self and my own consciousness or my own immediate circumstances, you’re not adapting. You won’t see the signs. You won’t want to see the signs. You don’t want to think about it. You don’t want to look because this requires looking ahead.

You know, when a Great Waves finally strikes, when it goes suddenly, suddenly and then happens, it becomes suddenly, you can’t prepare in the last moment. There’s no preparation there and you’re at a tremendous disadvantage of what you do. And you see that in these hurricanes of people who aren’t prepared or don’t prepare and they assume that this is something like this could happen but happens so rarely they don’t really have to think about it. 

These two storms in particular affected areas that hadn’t experienced storms of this nature at this level. And so…and the result of that is going to be very disastrous for people. These communities, some of which have been pretty much wiped out, particularly in the mountains, Smoky Mountains, Asheville, North Carolina, for example, which is a place you’d never think of as being subject to severe hurricane but it sure was…and the circumstances that people are facing there are extremely dire because the nature of the hurricane was flooding. And the estimate I’ve read, only one percent of the people in that whole region have flood insurance—one percent—because flood insurance is not part of your normal house insurance; it’s extra insurance and it’s expensive. But flooding was the danger, was the hazard, see? So this being mindless of the future is really dangerous.

So I’m going to be focusing on adapting to this because this is our work together. This is part of our work together. To have a future, a greater purpose in the world, you really have to secure your fundamental grounding in the world, which is the four Pillars of your life: your relationships, your work, your health, and your spiritual development. We call that the Four Pillars of Life. And adaptation has to happen in all those Pillars because adaptation requires awareness, discernment, courage and knowing what to do next. If those things are absent, then you’re sleeping, you’re sleeping on the beach and the tsunami is coming.

So this is the kind of thing that we need to take very seriously. I have been looking at it for a long time. I think by nature I’m risk averse—doesn’t mean I haven’t stumbled or made mistakes. But I’ve avoided many things that have taken people, crashed people’s lives.

So let’s talk about adaptation here. One of the things I also want to bring up is trends, the word trends. Trends are long projections of change, changes that rarely alter very much. They’re like rivers that have already carved their channel in the landscape. And so the river changes course occasionally during extreme weather, but it’s still the same river going the same direction.

So there are trends in human thought. There are trends in human behavior. There are trends that people follow in how they look at their lives, relationships, health, work, spiritual development, even. But trends can be very revealing because when you think of yourself on a trend, then you can begin to see things, [unclear] future, what’s coming over the horizon, what’s evident in the horizon that other people won’t see. This is why living for the moment is probably okay for lower level creatures, but for human beings is disastrous.

You were given a brain to prepare for the future, to know of the future, to adapt to changing circumstances. That’s why humanity has become the dominant species on Earth, because of that ability. And you have that ability. It’s built into you. It’s part of your nature. In fact, we call that part of your Knowledge. Knowledge emphasizes that because it wants to keep you safe and functional in a more hazardous world.

So I want to talk about the cost of change because I think people think that cost is always local. Those poor people went through this hurricane. These poor people in California had this terrible drought, or flooding because of atmospheric rivers, for example. And we can feel for them, but we don’t realize that every event like that that happens raises our cost of living, significantly.

We had a fire, a big fire in Boulder near not where I live, but near me, that was a freak kind of nature event. And it was a wind storm that came down through the mountains and swept over a broad specter of, you know, towns and cities. And it carried with it fire because it ignited a fire that started a fire, and that fire just spread, like incredibly—80 to 100 mile per hour winds. There was no way a fire department could fight it. It could only secure certain locations.

And that thing spread overnight just like you wouldn’t believe. And you never think of that happening. We think of fire in the mountains. We don’t think of fire down on the prairie where the town is at the foot of the mountains. This thing spread like there’s no tomorrow. And if it hadn’t snowed the next day—this was in late December, by the way—that fire would have gone all the way to Denver, 40 miles away. That’s how big its potential was. It did destroy a lot; destroyed almost a thousand homes; destroyed over a thousand structures, a hotel, a shopping center. I mean, it just, and it was all over in 24 hours pretty much. It was horrific.

That storm raised the insurance rates for everybody in Colorado, significantly for me because I live in the town, even though I wasn’t affected by that storm, particularly. It did blow out a window of my house; it did do some damage to my house. But that’s an example of we don’t know the costs that this is incurring upon us. And every event like that has broad level of cost and consequence.

There’s currently in this country, the United States, a house insurance crisis. Insurance companies are pulling out of cities, entire states because of their risk factor. And when that happens—and it’s happening in our own county here where we live, not exactly where I live, but in parts of it because those parts are more high risk for fire—this is very tragic because if you can’t get insurance, you can’t insure your house. If you can’t get insurance, you can’t even sell your house. No one’s going to buy a house without insurance. 

So all of a sudden your whole picture of living in a beautiful area like this has transformed overnight, or briefly, suddenly—gradually, gradually and suddenly. Gradually, gradually insurance costs go up and suddenly they just pull out. 

So, this is one of the hazards for these two hurricanes and their impact on southeastern states, and Florida in particular. Major insurance companies have already pulled out of Florida. They won’t offer policies there, just leaving smaller companies that may not have the solvency to really meet the kind of hazards that these storms can produce.

So I’m bringing this up as an example of what is an unforeseen force, almost like a black swan in the picture—not unforeseeable, certainly—but happening at a level that’s going to change the lives and circumstances of people in many parts of the United States, and probably many parts of the world.

So if you’re not looking, you don’t see these things. If you’re not following something…you don’t have to know everything about what you’re following, but following the sequence of events you don’t see the connection of cause and effect here. So if you’re going to be aware of a changing environment, you have to be really looking at that environment and study it to a certain extent so you actually see the forces of change; you realize what’s actually occurring beyond your visual sphere, beyond your current awareness.

So I want you to take a moment and think about signs that you have seen or senses that you have had about change in environment, change in circumstances—not necessarily in foreign countries. You can have those kind of signs, but about where you live or in the country you live in, they could have an impact on your life. So take a few minutes now to think within yourself of things you feel were signs.

And a sign isn’t like a sign, holding up a sign. It can be an ongoing sense or concern that isn’t just momentary; it keeps coming up for you. “I really worry about this over here.” “I really worry about that” or “This is making me feel uncomfortable. Sometimes a sign is an idea. Sometimes it’s an image. Sometimes it’s a feeling, a physical feeling, an emotional feeling. However that works, those currents work within your life, take a moment as I speak about these things—and I’ll take that moment now—to consult your own experience and see what kind of foreknowing it may be giving you, not only recently but even over the years.

And if something came to mind, I recommend you write it down. I recommend you commit nothing to memory. Anything that could possibly be important—even if you’re not sure it’s important—write it down in a place where you can find it. It’s very important to do that. People have insights a lot. They never write it down. They never remember it. And it was actually important for them to be able to capture those insights. And not everything that comes to you is evidential; not everything that comes to you is important, but you write it down anyway. Later you go over it and you can see what stands out and what doesn’t stand out. So you have an ongoing log, an insight log. I have one going back for years. And it’s amazing how much I foresaw on a small scale, and sometimes on a large scale. 

And I left living in San Francisco Bay area, which is a very nice place to live or used to be, because I foresaw things there. And I also foresaw that my work would never grow from there. This is beyond your immediate experience. This is things you foresee. And I encourage this.

But it’s a practical kind of exercise. It’s not mystical. It’s not Oh, I got…An Angelic presence told me that the Earth is going to end in twenty years. No. This is like things on the horizon that you need to be aware of.

And the practice I’m going to recommend in today is all about being in the Watchtower, what we call being in the Watchtower—looking out over the horizon, see what’s coming and being able to think about it. Because to prepare for any change is not something you do when it happens. It’s something you do before it happens, right? It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark, right? So whatever change you may need to make has to be considered well in advance of the circumstances that require it, and maybe well in advance of whenever you’re ready to make it.

So the New Message talks about the Four Pillars of our life. And this is a good thing to use as a sample here. Work, Relationships, Health and Spiritual Development—like the four legs of a table, they uphold your life. This is what creates stability in your life. And at any moment your life is only as stable as the condition of these Four Pillars. And the beauty of it is is it counteracts eccentricity. It counteracts you become obsessed with one Pillar alone to the neglect of the others. Because when that happens, your life becomes inherently unstable, which means you can’t adapt to great change. You wouldn’t have the mental capacity to do it. You wouldn’t have the foreknowing to do it. You wouldn’t have the stability to do it. You’d be knocked off your horse very, very quickly, very easily. So these strengths, these Pillars are really important. We’re going to work with these Pillars today in our little practice together. 

So I want to present to you some slides now from the revelation itself talking about the future, warning us about the future. And the first is called The Future is Upon You:

The future is upon you. The world will be unrecognizable in twenty years. You have nowhere to hide and no reason to be blind. It is an emergency for humanity, for only an emergency and a great need could propel God to send a New Revelation into the world.

This is from the teaching on The Prophet, given to me in Damascus, Syria in 2009, so twenty years—2029, five years from now. And when it says in this message—and we should leave it up for a minute—the word unrecognizable doesn’t mean the appearance of things has changed, though that may occur. It’s the reality of being in that situation totally changes. The priorities, the concern, the exigencies can change.

This was given to me in Syria a few years before the Syrian Civil War broke out, which is, was a horrendous event. And I could feel it when I was there, even though I wasn’t studying the political structure of the country or its history necessarily. I always study the history of a country before I go to it. But this was a sign, okay?

Rarely are dates ever given. But this is more of a context of understanding the rate of change, which is now accelerating. It’s not a slow, gradual kind of thing. It’s not like it goes up like this. It goes like this. That’s how it goes. 

We have another slide that I’d like to read to you. It’s called The Seas Will Rise:

The seas will rise. The crops will fail. Energy resources will become expensive, and there will be much conflict over who has them and who has access to them. Growing and distributing food will be a great difficulty, and there will be great civil unrest. Nations will not have the resources to solve their problems, so overwhelming will they be—happening at so many different fronts, all at the same time, like the great waves crashing all at once repeatedly. 

Now I ask you, why would a Message like this be given to us now? These two messages: one is placed in time, the other is not placed in time. This is from The New World book called The Great Transition, the teaching. Why is this being given to us now? Why should we know this? We need to know it because it’s in motion. The civil war in Syria was in motion when I was even there, even though I couldn’t see it fully, just demonstrated. But I met people, Syrian people there who felt that something big was about to happen. I took note of that.

The other is a slow moving…this is the Great Wave of change—slow moving but unstoppable. It’s like rust; happens 24 hours a day. It doesn’t stop. It’s just…

And now people are having problems, just flooding, you know, lots of flooding in the coast of Florida, Atlantic coast of Florida in many places daily flooding, high tide flooding. So these things are happening. And you neglect them at your own peril. And the problem is no matter what happens in Florida does have an impact upon you, because you’re going to help pay for it. It’s not fair, but it is the way it is.

The insurance company that covers, or did over Florida, may also cover you. And the only way it can recoup its losses is by raising premiums on everybody in their network. That’s how it works.

So these prophetic messages are kind of to wake us up to enable us to begin to see we’re in a time of propitious change, great change—great change, not like little change, not like, yeah something happened last year and yeah this has changed. I mean the change that could really change things like wow. 

And when you think like that, you look at your circumstances differently, with a different set of criteria about stability, security. Is my community going to thrive in the future or is it going to decline? Is it going to be, do I live in a town that’s based on tourism? And tourism just isn’t happening anymore.

So, let’s go to the next slide here. This is The Environment is the Most Important Thing:

The environment is the most important thing—more important than personal wealth, more important than national military strength, more important than any country’s national security. 

This is from the book, Greater Community book, chapter 9, Protecting the World. And again, I talked about this earlier, environment changes everything. I’ll give you an example. Cities in the southwest are going to lose their water in the future, and there’s no way to replenish it. Phoenix, Arizona. Colorado River is declining. It’s been declining for decades, been overdrawn for decades. They’ll try to save it, but there’s going to be less water. As the climate warms, there’ll be less snow, or snow may evaporate from the mountains and never even enter the rivers. So this is all in motion. The things I’m talking about are not some theory or future possibility. I’m not being, I’m not projecting anything else but that, the fact of the matter. That city will probably run out of water in, I don’t know, twenty years. There’s no way to get water to Phoenix. The whole Southwest is arid and having water crisis. That’s a lot of millions of people who basically just have to leave, gradually, but that will happen. That could put this country in a national depression alone.

So these are the kind of big events that are looming on the horizon. They are foreseeable, but you have to be looking. And you’re not being fearful looking. You’re just looking. I don’t want this to happen. I have no interest or benefit from this happening. Of course not. I’m looking. You see things. And the more you become educated about what’s happening in different parts of the country you live in, the more you can see that wow, certain things look pretty inevitable. How it happens, when it happens, well, that’s variable. But certain things as we go forward the way we are are going to happen.

I was thinking about Gaza and Israel—Gaza, great problem in Gaza. The war of Gaza is kind of pointless. It won’t be inhabitable in twenty-five or thirty years. When the temperature is 125 or 130 degrees [F], nobody can live there. But that’s a tragedy for the whole Middle East.

So these trends that I’m talking about, trends of increasing heating in the world, increasing loss of water resources—which means you lose food resources—this is happening. It’s not happening equally everywhere, but it’s happening. So wherever you try to live, like in United States for example, they all have these kind of hazards, not just mountains, not just coastlines, the prairies, the deserts.

So I’m going to go into, I’m going to give an example of how one event can affect all your Pillars, okay? So this is you have a great wave disruption that affects the economy of where you live significantly, okay, like a great fire, a great hurricane. They can affect all your Pillars. Your job, your employment may be lost and unrecoverable, or unrecoverable for a long time. Business you work for may disappear, may fail, may get destroyed. There’s no assurance that they can rebuild. This could work, even end careers for people. I think about travel and luxury and tourism. I mean, in the future, not many people are going to be able to do that.

Health, okay. And these kinds of changes create real health crises for people, physical health, mental health. You can imagine stress, the stress level of going through something like this. I mean, it’s interesting with hurricanes, for example—and tornadoes are the same—there’s a rapid, a significant increase in death following these events over the next couple years. Older people get super stressed in these events. It shortens their life. They become cancer ridden. They become, they decline. People decline. It’s not only they just rebuild, they decline. This is statistical.

Relationships. This kind of great change puts huge pressure on a marriage; is really damaging for your children. They’re going to be facing lots of stress. It’s tremendous.

And then for your spiritual development, when crisis happens, people turn to God for salvation. “Save me, save me,” you know? “The government’s not going to save me, or can’t,” or you know, “help me, help me, help me.” People of faith will turn to God, but God has put Knowledge within people to guide them and to protect them.

God of the entire universe is not going to be your welfare state. But you’ve been given this inner power, which is why The Way of Knowledge is so important for people, particularly living under these circumstances. 

So managing our lives is our responsibility. But God has given us Knowledge to do that in a way that is wise, avoids consequence and tragedy, and leads us where we need to go in life. 

So real spiritual development should be preparing us for the world we live in and the world we’re going to be facing, but I don’t see many spiritual teachings or even traditions doing that. Pray for peace. Pray for security. Please God. God will help you, maybe, though we never, they never explain how that can happen. So if spirituality is a pacifier for people, they’re not going to do anything. They’ll rebuild where the hurricane came even though now they have no health insurance, they have no way to insure their properties.

So if you get pacified, you’re not going to do anything. It’s like having a binky. You’re just, you’re going to be assured it’s going to be fine, you don’t have to worry about it. 

So here’s the risk assessment. This is the practice I’d like to share with you. We have a slide on this, good. This is called Risk Assessments. You’re going to walk around every Pillar. You have four Pillars, remember? You have work, relationships, health and spiritual development. First question: What could impact this Pillar in the near future? What could impact my work in the near future, given a more broad spectrum of awareness of the things that could affect your work, not just the marketplace but the whole environment. If something comes to you, write it down. If nothing comes to you, don’t write it down. If something comes to you, write it down whether you think it’s true or not; just write it down.

Next question: What could impact this Pillar going forward? What could impact my work going forward? The more you are aware of change in the world, the more, the larger arena you have to gain a perspective on this. Is there anything I must do to prepare for change in this Pillar? Like, do I need to do something about this now? And “do something” may be gathering more information, may be learning more about the nature of your work and its stability going forward, what industry you work in. What’s happening in that industry? Are people being laid off? Is it shrinking? Is it growing. So you need to understand these things about where you work. 

Is there a change or risk where I live that I should keep watching? Ah, watching. Okay, maybe you feel some alert or alarm about it, but you need to watch it over time. You don’t just think about it once and forget about it. It’s kind of on your, it’s on your to-do list to check in with that weekly or on some kind of regular basis. And this is your Watchtower practice. I’m looking into the future on the horizon. Do I see anything coming or changing in this part of my life, given what I know about what’s going on in the world? 

And the reason the New Message wants you to know about what’s going on in the world is because you will be able to have much greater success in determining things that are coming over that horizon and what it could mean for you. If you live only within your little world of myself and my interests and my desires and fears, then you’re basically, you don’t have any criteria for making that evaluation.

And then there’s this interesting process here called foresight and foreknowing. Do I see myself living in this location going forward? It’s a yes or no question. I have used this question with students on many occasions who are considering change or thinking they need to change or want to change, to do a kind of looking and seeing. It’s a seeing process. Do I see myself living here in the future—three years, five years, ten years? And it’s amazing how it can come up yes or no, or nothing. If nothing is there, nothing is there; don’t worry about it. But if the answer is no, then you have to go to the second question: What time frame would I have to make a change? Because time is of the utmost importance now. I don’t know if in five or ten years you’ll be able to make these kind of changes. So this is really good. 

So write everything down. Every topic has its own part you can put on a computer, or written. Computers are good because they’re easy to scan and you want to look at them periodically because you aggregate insight over time. It’s not like get one big insight and everything’s revealed to you. The insight aggregates over time, but you have to collect it and store it and look at it to be able to benefit from that. People think, “Oh, I’ll know what to do when the time comes.” Too late. Doesn’t work.

What not to do facing great change: I’ll go through a few of these. Waiting for something to happen before you act. Hopeless. Assume that everything will work out. It will, but probably not to your benefit. Assuming the government [unclear] force will take care of you if something happens. Maybe temporarily, but not permanently, and only partially. Assuming Knowledge will alert you in time to respond. That’s only if you’re really connected to Knowledge and you’re checking in with yourself on a regular basis, then yes, Knowledge could alert you in a timely manner. If you wait till the last moment, then Knowledge is ringing alarm bells and your ability to adapt to great change there might be very limited.

So the things I’m talking about are going on all over the world. So this is not just an American phenomenon. The whole Earth is changing. There are larger forces of physical change. For instance, the AMOC, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation—AMOC—this huge change in the whole cycle of the Earth in the Atlantic Basin of climate and the movement of warm and cold water. You can read about it. It’s being studied avidly now because it is beginning to change. And one of the reasons it’s changing is from the discharge of fresh water from Greenland; it’s interfering with the AMOC. These great circulating patterns, it’s like been going around like this for a very long time. It’s being disrupted. If it changes, the impacts upon northern Europe will be profound, and profound in other parts of the world, I mean, in terms of what changes climate and what changes environment.

So these are big forces of change that are really important to keep track of; and I encourage you to do that. It’s your life. The more you know about the landscape, the more objectively—I don’t mean theoretically or politically or in terms of what you want—but the more you can see things objectively, the greater sense you’ll have of where you stand in the face of oncoming events, and your ability to prepare for them will be much enhanced by this.

So I’d like to go now to the slide, The Man or Woman of Knowledge Is Watching:

So the man or woman of Knowledge is watching—watching without coming to fixed conclusions, watching without condemning the world, watching without losing hope, watching without becoming jaded or cynical, watching without blaming leaders or individuals or nations, watching the changing landscapes of the world, looking for the signs that the world is giving to indicate how, where and when the Great Waves will strike.

This is coming from The New World book, the New Message book, The New World, The Race to Save Human Civilization, which I recommend you read. It’s really good.

So if you think about this for a minute, to really be in a state of Knowledge, you’re always watching. You’re like the bird in the air and the animal in the field. You’re always, not watching every moment, but you’re always in a state of awareness to your environment. So now you’ve regained your natural ability, your environmental ability, your sensitivities, you become more natural; but you also become more aware and more alert and you’re looking at areas of change now that aren’t just in the natural realm but in every dimension. 

So this is really important. Otherwise, you could be a student of Knowledge and you’ll be overwhelmed in the end by what overwhelms everybody else, and you’ll wonder where Knowledge was and Knowledge will wonder where you were not to become aware of this and to consider it and to look at it. That’s the encouragement.

Next, The Great Waves Will Activate Your Life:

The Great Waves will activate your life. They will focus your life. And they will call out of you your greater purpose and your greater gifts, which nothing else under these, which will not arise under normal circumstances.

I’ll read that again because I stumbled a little bit:

The Great Waves will activate your life. They will focus your life. And they will call out of you your greater purpose and your greater gifts, which will not arise under normal circumstances.

So, walk around this for a while. This is from Preparing for the Great Waves of Change, forthcoming book, Facing an Uncertain and Difficult World. And I believe that rev is already on the New Message website to be studied.

So what is this saying? I mean, this very thing that nobody wants to deal with, that’s scary at first and that people turn away from, is the one thing that holds your greater promise for being able to function successfully here to be able to find your greater purpose and your greater gifts which will not arise under normal circumstances. If your greater gifts have to do with what’s coming and not what exists already, then you have to really be with what’s coming because that will hold a key to what you’re really here to do and why you have come into the world. It wasn’t…nothing was calling it out of you ten years ago, but now it’s starting to call things out of you. 

That means the time has come for this to emerge within you in an active sense, not just a potential, not just something you’re aware of or believe in, but something that’s active in you. You’re actively engaged in it. You’re called into it. [It] takes something from the outside to do that. You don’t call yourself into something. You’re called into something by what you see and what you know and what’s happening.

So in normal circumstances, everyone just kind of goes to sleep and just tries to be self-fulfilling and lives with great anxiety about themselves and their lives and their future. But this is a whole different way of being in the world.

So the Great Waves of change are necessary to activate this in people. It’s going to be necessary to save humanity. Nothing else is going to save humanity except challenge to the Earth, either environmentally or challenge from beyond from the Greater Community. Nothing’s going to unite humanity to end it ceaseless wars and conflicts; nothing’s going to rise humanity up to a state of great responsibility and cooperation than these two great exigencies in our world today: the Great Waves of change and facing Intervention from races from the universe around us.

I’ll stop here. We’ll talk about it a little bit later.

Tyyne: Wow, thank you so much Marshall for giving this powerful teaching on Adapting to a Changing World, a rapidly changing world. So now we’re actually going to transition to the live broadcast chat on Discord. If you’re new, the description or the link is actually in the description below in YouTube, below the YouTube video. And we’re going to be spending about 30 minutes discussing two questions. One is: Looking upon the reality of great change, what strikes you as significant? And the second is: What impact might great change have on your life? So let us go to Discord and we’ll be there for 30 minutes, and then we’ll come back and hear more from Marshall.

[Discord chat]

Marshall: Thank you Tyyne, and thank you all for contributing here. It was really valuable to read some of your comments. And of course, you’re an eye, you’re an eye to the world, too, so I’m learning from your experience in the country you live in, or parts of the world that you are focused on. So it’s all very important to know. And we’re certainly going through this together as a world of people, and that will be increasingly so because the world is so connected economically that the impacts will certainly be felt in many places.

And I know China’s going through major business contraction. It also has a tremendous problem with desertification in the western part of the country that’s driving people into the cities and overwhelming the cities. So there are tremendous things going on in the world right now that are very evidential for us to understand where we live.

So I’d like to hear from all of you, or any of you who would like to share something with me. Could post a question, and I’ll be able to see it. I’m not in the chat, so you want to give me your computer, Patricia? You’re in the chat.

One thing I do feel I want to emphasize is that we shouldn’t just be concerned or even deeply concerned. We have to look at our own situation to see how we can make our own position more stable. We’re able to adapt to changing circumstances, and that’s very, very important. And we have these four Pillars to work within. And I think they’re really encompassing when you use them in that way. Your work Pillar is, you know, very, very important. It has a lot to do with all the other Pillars and their condition.

So doing this assessment work I think is important, and it’s aggregate; it’s something you do as you go forward. It’s not like you do it once and you you see something but you don’t think about it anymore. And I want you to think about it on a regular basis. 

The New Message is really here to prepare us to be people of the world, not people living in isolation or seclusion or avoidance—not that we have to know everything in the world or be concerned about everything in the world; that’s not healthy or even possible—but that we understand major trends that are happening and how that is affecting people and how that might affect the nation and region that you live in, as well.

So this world awareness, I think, is something that is, can be very challenging and disturbing to take on, particularly if you’re not used to it. But it is very important in giving you a panorama upon which to look upon the moving forces of change that will certainly impact your life and the people you care about.

So any questions we have I can respond to?

Tyyne: There’s one question here, says, “Marshall, the New Message has come into the world giving human…has the New Message come into the world giving humanity enough time to change and then respond? 

Marshall: “Has the New Message come into the world to give humanity enough time to change and to respond?” Yes, I believe so. I mean, some of these teachings that are referred to have been with us now for ten, fifteen years. So it’s just not many people have access to them or have discovered them yet. But for those who have, I mean, it is attempting to engage us with becoming people who can contribute on a larger scale who are part of a larger reality of life and not just their local life or the local community only.

So we’re living in a world of interacting forces. So what happens with the drought in Brazil has a big impact on what happens in other countries. Brazil produces many things for other countries. And the people of Brazil are facing a a crisis that they don’t know how to control. So all of these things are in motion now. It’s almost like we’ve opened Pandora’s box in a world of change and now all these things are beginning to set in motion.

I remember when I used to go mountaineering, solo mountaineering, I remember I sat near this little waterfall, small waterfall, and I remember I looked at the waterfall and a stack of rocks and the water was flowing somewhat underneath it but over it. It’s a little waterfall. I thought that’s really sweet. I pulled out one rock out of the embankment that was creating the waterfall and the whole thing started to collapse. And it was, for me it was like, wow, this is how delicate the balance of nature really is or can be. And that impacted me. I never forgot that experience. It’s kind of a symbolic experience.

So I really want to encourage all of you to look at your life and circumstances as part of your assessment, not your only assessment, in terms of what is the world telling you that you need to be aware of and that you may need to do for yourself, because you don’t want to become unstable in these circumstances and have that be an emphasis. These messages are coming to us for a purpose, not just to make us become worried and concerned, but to tell us what we might have to consider in terms of how we approach life and how we live our lives and what we’re going to do with our lives because it’s really a calling. I mean exigencies and crisis is a calling, as well as information.

So I’d be interested to know what kind of calling you feel this might give to your life. How does this impact who you are and why you’re here living at the world at this time? So I’ll pose that question and see who would like to respond.

Tyyne: Marshall, there’s another question for you about adapting to change: “Could you speak a little bit more about adapting as a result and as a consequence of great change?” 

Marshall: Okay, the question: What would I say about adapting to the results and consequence of great change? I want to emphasize that in my view adaptation should precede great change, not just occur after great change. You have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. You have Knowledge within you that can alert you to changing circumstances and signs from the world. 

It’s always important to write down in a special place anything you see, and some of it will prove to be useful—not all of it, but some of it. Do not share it with other people unless this was somebody very uniquely special in your life who could appreciate it and support it. Therefore, you keep your kind of own log of insights. But the adaptation should precede the great change. Great change can just wipe you out otherwise, and now you’re struggling to recover. And many people don’t recover. They lose their home in a violent storm. They lose everything they’ve ever owned. There are many older people who just, they just decline after that. There’s a lot of evidence of that, so…In fact, it was noted here as an example, very profoundly, I don’t see it right in front of me, of that occurring, the degree to which that is occurring. I’ll see if I can find it in the post here—I do appreciate these posts; they are very important—and see if I can find it. I am ready for another question, sure. 

Tyyne: Mary Yett asks: “How can we have a useful conversation with our family and friends who see no sense of urgency with the coming Great Waves of change?”

Marshall: “How can I have a useful conversation with family and friends who see no urgency in the coming Great Waves of change?” I wouldn’t have that conversation because they’ll discourage you and make you feel alone and isolated. They might even accuse you of being extreme or fear-driven or, I mean, they could degrade your own certainty. You want to talk to people who can respond and who are responding, or who are open to responding. That’s where the message can be shared beneficially. To go somewhere where people don’t want to hear it or are not going to respond, then it goes nowhere. So we’re all Messengers in that regard; and if you want your message to go somewhere, you want to reach people who can respond to it in a responsible way, sincere way. So trying to talk to your family or convince your family of any of this I think is not really worth your time, unfortunately.

Also, I will go further in saying that you can find people who are interested and have some response but aren’t really going to respond or do anything. You can share a message with them, but don’t become involved in trying to educate them. Point to where the education is. “If you’d like to learn more, I recommend you read this or consider this.” Move on. You have a lot of people to communicate with. You don’t want to be stuck with people who are unwilling or unable to really respond, even if they show some interest. So you’re not here to save another person’s life. You’re here to really express wisdom and guidance and awareness wherever it can be received.

And I know many people, maybe most people, will not respond to the things that we’re talking about here today. I understand that. I think it’s tragic, but it’s the way; it’s the way of things, particularly if you’re early, if you’re early in presenting these things. I mean, if things get really, really bad, okay, then people will become more responsive but it will probably be too late for them to do much about it.

So our gift to each other and the gift to us from the New Message is this gift of vision and preparedness that is so rare and so valuable, and so few people in the world have it today. And I would say to people in the Third World, learn The Way of Knowledge. Knowledge will guide you. Within the circumstances that you have, within the limits of your mobility and what you can do, Knowledge will guide you and attempt to protect you in whatever circumstances you’re in.

So The Way of Knowledge is just very, very important for people. And in the Third World, you know, people don’t have social mobility. They can’t just move to some other country. They can’t just give up their profession and go somewhere else because everything is very locked down and opportunities like that may only be available to people who have wealth and opportunity.

So The Way of Knowledge, though, is valuable everywhere to guide people, to protect people, to alert people even to become sources of contribution in their own cultures and societies, regions, neighborhoods, even families. So somebody in a family that’s under duress needs to become strong and purposeful and committed to taking action, and that may be the person who has been ignited through this teaching or other teachings to have that kind of strength and purpose.

So Knowledge is needed everywhere by everyone. But whoever can adopt it and learn it through whatever means, through whatever channel, they become essential people to serve others and guide others and provide what may need be needed where they live.

And I’ve been to very poor places. I’ve traveled to 35 countries. I don’t go to the resorts normally. I don’t go to high-profile tourist locations. I walk back streets of towns. I talk to regular people, poor people. I go to slums. I go everywhere that normal tourists would never go. You get a feel for the people and what they see and what they know and what they’re facing, and that’s been part of my world education. And I have a compassionate feeling for all the people that I have encountered in the nations that I have had the opportunity to visit.

So this is a worldwide phenomenon. It’s going to be very costly. I mean, our job is do what we can with what we have where we are and become a source of confidence and determination in a rising sea of distress, discouragement and lack of faith and awareness. So, it’s very important. 

Tyyne: One more question?

Marshall: Sure. 

Tyyne: Okay. “How do we balance the gradual growth of Knowledge within us and the urgency of action needed by living in a Great Waves world?” So, balance, Knowledge and urgency.

Marshall: “How do you balance the development of Knowledge…?

Tyyne: “…the gradual growth of Knowledge.”

Marshall: “…the gradual growth of Knowledge.” Oh, that’s a good question. With your work in the world, well, Knowledge will grow around your work in the world. It will grow based on what you do, not just upon your personal awareness. You may have extraordinary spiritual experiences, but if you can’t do anything with them, if they have no traction in the world, if they have no contribution to give other people, even in the most practical situations, then the message is being lost on you. 

This is a call to action. Spirituality now is a call to action. It’s not a retreat. It’s not enlightenment. It’s not self-elevation. That’s the essential element of our time. It’s a call to action. The New Message is a call to action. It’s not a call to realization, not a call to higher conscious. It’s a call to action. You’re the person who’s responding. You’re the person who has some degree of sense of Knowledge and direction in life. You’re a person who knows how to care for people. You’re not just self-serving. You’re not self-obsessive. So therefore, you’re a person of opportunity for Knowledge.

And Knowledge will grow as you take action in your life. If you don’t take action in your life, then Knowledge stalls. It’s waiting for you to take action in your life. This is why I always encourage you to look and see what action you need to take in your life—action. What you do will determine what you can know and your ability to follow what you know. That’s what’s been my training. That’s what’s been my life. That’s what’s been my journey. I mean, I was called out of where I lived and had to take radical measures to get to where I am today. And I was aware of environmental issues were part of the reason for that, but there was a mysterious reason for that. And part of the reason you do anything might have a very mysterious component to it. It’s preparing you for a future you can’t yet see, for an encounter in the future you can’t yet recognize.

Knowledge moves not just within our coherent realm of experience, but beyond it as well. So maybe you’ll make a big move and you aren’t even sure why you’re making it, but you need to make it. There will probably be circumstantial reasons for it, but it may have a much bigger component than that.

So I’ll stop here and just end [with] the blessing that

Knowledge will guide you as you’re willing to be guided and able to be guided. Your guidance will be mysterious and concrete. It will serve others in ways you cannot foresee. It will relieve you of pain and sufferings in ways you cannot see. It is living the mysterious life, part of which you know and part of which remains to be discovered. The presence of the Teachers is with us. Nasi Novare Coram

Good. [unclear] I put some pebbles in your shoes today and that I think about these things because they’re very important.

Tyyne: Oh thank you, Marshall, for that deeply moving blessing and for all of the teachings that you presented today about the Great Waves world that we are living in right now, so…

And also I want to thank each of you for all of your comments, your insights, your questions, things to be with for sure as we move forward.

So let’s, if you could bring up the slide that has the resources. So there are so many things within the New Message itself that we can access as resources to help us develop as students of Knowledge to prepare for a Great Waves world and a world that’s emerging into a Greater Community of intelligent life. 

So there is the book, Preparing for the Great Waves of Change, and that is found at newmessage.org/PGW, Preparing for the Great Waves of Change. 

And The New World is another excellent resource with multiple chapters speaking to Great Waves world; The Great Waves of Change itself, that book; Navigating the Difficult Times Ahead; and of course, Steps to Knowledge, our practice and pathway as we learn to navigate these really difficult times and challenging times.

So again thank you to Marshall. Thank you to all of you here; very, very honored to be here with all of you and with with the New Message and all that we can receive through this. So thank you for being here today. And I look forward to seeing you the next time. Thanks, bye-bye.