Mind the Shift

Branko Milanovic is probably the world’s foremost researcher on inequality. His ”elephant graph” became famous some years ago because it highlighted what many intuitively knew: During the two decades up until the financial crisis, incomes in Asia went up a lot, as did the incomes of the richest percent in the West. Squeezed in the middle was the middle class in the West, whose incomes stood still. ”It highlighted the plutocracy and the contradictions of globalization”, says Milanovic. He points out that the connection between wealth and political power is stronger in the western world than many realize. The US is the most dramatic example. ”Issues that matter to the upper middle class are much more frequently discussed in parliaments than issues important to people who are poor.” Will the pandemic exacerbate or diminish inequality? ”It’s complicated.” Some rich countries have had big drops in GDP, China has fared well, while India has fared poorly. Also within countries you see contradictory movements. Affluent people have been able to continue working from home, but on the other hand government transfers to the less affluent have more than compensated for their losses. ”It’s too early to draw any conclusions.” The rise of Asia means there is a rebalancing of the world happening. The relative wealth of Asia is catching up to where it was before the industrial revolution. Now it is Africa that is at the center stage of development. Africa needs sustained growth of around 7 percent a year for two generations to achieve any substantial catch-up. ”Without convergence of African incomes we will have two big negative effects: large migration will continue and global inequality will increase.” Milanovic is personally in favor of migration as a means of diminishing global imbalances, in the same way that capital is allowed to move. But the resistance among people in the receiving countries is real. Therefore he suggests a kind of sub-citizenship for immigrants that would allow for circular migration. ”My fear is that if we accept the reluctance to allow migrants in we will get ’fortress Europe’. The middle way is to make it possible to migrate to Europe and make money but not to have an open way to citizenship and permanent residence. But workers’ rights must be the same for all.” What about the many protests we see in the streets across the globe? Are they an indication that there is a growing popular resentment against the system? ”The resentment is there. But they are not questioning the way capitalism is organized. They are questioning some of its side effects: inequality, unfairness, environmental damage”, says Branko Milanovic. He sees two grassroots trends that could constitute some kind of alternative to traditional capitalism: ”One is the movement of stakeholder capitalism. Then the shareholders would not be the sole factor influencing corporate decision making. The other one is the green economy. There I am more skeptical since they talk of degrowth.” ”If our value system were to be changed, so that acquisition of wealth weren’t our priority over priorities, capitalism would change.” Branko Milanovic is currently a visiting presidential professor at the City University in New York. Here is his CV.

One of the ambitions of this podcast is to span the border between science and spirituality. Could one have a more apt experience for that endeavor than to physically die but yet retain a high level of consciousness, come back to life to tell about it and decide to work as a scientist? That is Ingrid Honkala’s story. Ingrid’s near death experience, already at the age of three, has had a profound impact on her life. She technically drowned, but during those minutes of physical death she felt complete peace, absolute presence and agelessness. ”For the first time in my short life I felt home”. The memories are still crystal clear. ”It’s not like a dream. And it’s not just memories, it’s a sense of still feeling it.” After her NDE, she was endowed with new gifts, a new perspective on life and contact with beings of light who have guided her since. ”I now knew how to read and write, and when I went to school I realized i didn’t need to learn the things that were being taught, I was just remembering them.” But during her early years she struggled to fit into the mainstream. ”I was looking at other children and I couldn't relate. I knew I had always existed. They didn’t know anything.” However, she chose a scientific career and became a successful marine biologist and oceanographer, working for the Colombian and the American navies and for Nasa. People asked Ingrid Honkala: How could you decide to become a marine scientist after you almost drowned? Weren't you afraid of water? ”It was the opposite. Drowning brought me to see the light.” We are here to experience polarity and contrast, Ingrid thinks. ”Life is not meant to make us happy in the outside world. Who said that? Life is meant to challenge us so that we can find happiness within ourselves. To stop looking without.” ”In the depth of you, there is no persona, no name. The deepest parts of the ocean are not aware of the waves on the surface.” ”The more you misalign from the present, the more you suffer, because you're living a life of expectations. You want ’something else’.” People ask how it is possible to bridge science and spirituality. Well, that separation is only in the mind, explains Ingrid: ”Spirituality is not a belief. It’s science, because it's experiential. It’s drinking the orange juice, not describing the ingredients and how to make it.” Here’s Ingrid's book ”A Brightly Guided Life. Here’s her website. If you want more testimonials from scientists who had NDE’s, listen to Dr Eben Alexander in episode 24.

It can be used as one of many tools to understand life, and it can be used as one of many models for explaining the universe. Sounds like something everyone would embrace. But to most people, astrology is still controversial. The fall from grace began when Newton introduced his mechanistic world view. But we have come far since then. What it is really about is to interpret energies that modern science basically tells us we are all connected to on the quantum level. ”The whole thing is really about frequency”, says Pam Gregory, astrologer. ”It’s about archetypes, symbolism and frequencies that correspond to different parts of our consciousness. I’m not a psychic. I’m a translator.” The birth chart can be described as an imprint, which doesn’t mean our fates are chiseled in stone. We have free will. The imprint is a blueprint. We must do the actual construction work ourselves. Simplistic descriptions about sun signs and star constellations and planets affecting us directly are skewed or sometimes incorrect and gives astrology bad reputation. Most skeptics don’t want to dive deeper into the subject, which is kind of a catch-22 situation. Perhaps the time is ripe to take off our blinders and open the door to understanding the universal energies that affect us. After all, we’re all bathing in the quantum soup. Pam Gregory discovered astrology at the age of 21, when she had her birth chart read thoroughly for the first time. She was blown away by how spot-on it was. ”It was a whole dimension of meaning that i had been completely unaware of.” She had a so-called ordinary job for 35 years before it became possible for her to go all-in and work as a professional astrologer. Pam’s first book, with the ingenious title ”You don’t really believe in astrology, do you?”, unveils the seeming mysteriousness of astrology with beautiful clarity and scientific rigor. She explains how it goes perfectly well with the theories about a holographic universe, a unified energy field and, of course, quantum physics and its non-local causality. Few have missed that we live in turbulent times, and this is astonishingly well reflected in astrology. There were scores of predictions about a wild 2020, for instance, and this year starts off much in the same intense way, according to the properties symbolized by certain planetary aspects. ”Hold on to your hat”, is Pam’s advice. On Pam Gregory’s website you can learn more about her and her work, you can buy her books and also subscribe to her ambitious monthly newsletter where she analyses and reflects about what's going on in the human collective.

We have been conditioned to believe an upside-down narrative about the human condition. We are told a false story about a species with an intrinsic selfishness that has to be checked with laws and top-down control. But human beings are inherently kind. If no outer force meddles with the social dynamics, people treat each other with respect and kindness. For millennia we have been living in a gloomy dream. As if the movie ”The Matrix” were a documentary. It’s, frankly, outrageous. The Dutch historian Rutger Bregman brilliantly unveils the lie in his book ”Humankind”. It should be compulsory literature in every corporation and every authority. The untrue image is reinforced by the media. The news media narrative is practically based on the false assumptions about human lowness. News requires drama, conflict and speed, which filters out the big story: a slowly but incessantly evolving humankind. The good news I bring here is that I believe we are in fact leaving this false narrative, this toxic mindset, behind. About the media’s negativity bias: Listen also to Ulrik Haagerup, episode 6.

Blossom Bamboo is a multifaceted and loving human being whom one might perhaps describe as an ”explorer and harnesser of bodily and spiritual power”. A tantra therapist running her own podcast about ageless living, Blossom is a survivor of domestic violence and emotional neglect and a ”recovering Christian”. She is, as she puts it, a ”stigma stomper and taboo tackler”. She talks about her breaking free from harmful patterns in her family: toxicity and conflict, unhealthy bonds between mothers and children, communication through aggression, physical or verbal. ”This was the blueprint the children were given. I knew that wasn't the way I wanted it to be. It’s up to me to break that chain. I am the link in the chain that is split open”, she says. Blossom Bamboo comes from a family with a long tradition of Christianity. ”I try not to identify with labels like Christian. It fucked me up in a big way. At the same time I became more open to connect with spirit. My first spiritual experience was in a church.” Blossom is on a path, she says, of reuniting body and spirit. This has its roots in a personal history of much focus on the body; sexual abuse as well as more healthy experiences. One tool to integrate body and soul is tantric yoga. ”There is a connection, which I didn't have before. I can’t not have a focus on my body. We have bodies. Bodies are like antennas. That’s how we plug in.” ”When I started with tantra, I realized that I had been experiencing these things without knowing. I experienced things during sexual contact that others didn't.” ”If it wasn't for sexual energy, none of us would be here. Orgasms give moments of oneness. But there are many other ways than sex to reach that state”, says Blossom. She cultivates the notion of ageless living (”I’d rather die living than live dying”). This is highlighted in her podcast ”Past the Pause”, which is about living life fully after menopause and liberating yourself from societal constraints. In this day and age, many feel that the world is in a constant state of crisis, which creates fear and anxiety. But it all comes down to perception, which in turn requires focusing inward and finding neutrality, says Blossom Bamboo: ”I grew up in a permanent crisis. Sometimes I equate it with growing up in a war. Going through those crises as a child has shown me what I don't want so much as to illuminate what I do want. So there is an inherent value in crises.” ”We can shift the focus of our minds onto peace and harmony, beginning with self-intimacy. And this is also ageless living: When you look at things like a child does, when you take good and bad, right and wrong, out of the equation you often see more clearly what is happening.” Blossom Bamboo, an American, lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, since the 1990s. Links to her podcast and to her Facebook page.

Peter Koenig is a Zurich-based British businessman specializing in the mental constructs surrounding money. He challenges conventional views, suggesting that money is just a projection of our inner security. Koenig believes that our relationship with money often leads to a never-ending quest for more, disconnecting us from our true self. He advocates for affirmation therapy to combat fear and insecurity, allowing individuals to embrace spending on things they love. Additionally, he discusses innovative money systems that prioritize community and personal values.

The extraordinary Jaime Onofrey, or just Jai, defines herself as a connoisseur of consciousness. She is a positive, creative powerhouse, which is the more impressive considering the number of difficult challenges she has lived through. Already at a young age she experienced a decline from being a successful athlete to having serious physical problems. She had been in an abusive relationship. And she had had no less than two near death experiences, during which she flatlined. At one point she was left for dead in a hotel room. ”It’s part of my soul mission to befriend death and see that it's an illusion”, she says. At the age of 24 she was at a crossroads. She had physical as well as emotional issues. She had difficulties digesting. ”I was a shadow of my old self. I knew that if i didn't do something drastic, something extreme, I would never have the life I was destined to live.” So she went alone into the desert for the biblical 40 days of fasting, inspired by the spiritual teacher Gabriel Cousens. It was life changing. ”I became like a scientist” She meditated, swam in the ocean and took in the sun’s rays through her eyes and her skin. And she had her enema bag with her. ”Finally, on the 39th day, I released six feet of mucoid plaque, rubber hard. My whole body was shaking. Early child memories came up. I purged rage, sadness and resentment. It was like having a good cry, and then a good scream.” On day 41 she had a final purging, and then it was all done. Her eye color changed, she says. ”The peace I felt was extraordinary. The desert came alive to me. And then I was hungry. I had cantaloupe juice. It tasted like an orgasm.” Just before our conversation, Jai had been to an Ayahuasca retreat. It was not her first one. ”The intelligence of the plant kingdom”, Jai puts it, ”has come forward and offered this unique combination of plants and roots that can create a medicine that is a portal to higher consciousness”. But she cautions against believing it is some kind of magic pill: ”It requires preparation. You really need to surrender to the process, which for humans can be really difficult sometimes. I don’t recommend it for many people. It can do damage.” Today she is passionate about ”Thrive Tribes”, an ecosystem of communities to raise human consciousness that she has initiated after having been guided from higher realms to do so. Jai brings into the project many years of experience from the film industry and from working as a spiritual entrepreneur. ”We are in one of the most extraordinary transitions in human history, and we are all called to participate. The ’Thrive Tribes’ is a global movement for transformation and change. It is really about accessing our human potential.” ”The tribes are all connected. They are basically the same, but there are twelve different ones so people can connect with those that they feel most compelled to join right now. Each sector works on an aspect of humanity that needs to be elevated”, Jai explains from her home in British Columbia, Canada. Here’s the Thrive Tribe website and here’s Jai’s own.

My interview with the amazing Marco Missinato – composer, photographer and spiritual explorer – evolved into a beautiful and mind-expanding conversation about the experience of the soul and humanity as a collective on this Earth. We are in the midst of a huge shift in consciousness. Within a decade or two, Marco thinks, the ego mind will have lost its grip. We have already unplugged the matrix we’ve been conditioned by for millennia. Missinato was a sensitive and creative child. But, essentially, we all are, he says: ”Every soul comes into this operative system with a huge amount of creativity and with its own uniqueness.” He found music early. ”Sound and music have the ability to instantly dissipate the illusion of separation, the polarity game.” When he arrived in America in the late 70’s Missinato immediately felt a sense of spaciousness and freedom that he could not find in Italy as a young creative person. A few years ago, however, he felt that his American experience had come to an end. He now lives in Rome. Marco explains the creative process, which is applicable to anything we do in life: Follow your joy by taking action with no expectations of the outcome. ”We have all these expectations because we have been programmed to believe in scarcity. When we are children we just play and don't have any expectations. Then many forget how to do that.” Perhaps we who are here now will live to see that program change. Missinato points out that the societal matrix we’ve been living in longer than anyone can remember is coming to an end. ”We can see that things are falling apart. We are going back to the original operating system, where there are no such things as disease or scarcity.” Marco Missinato thinks the process of shedding the ego mind will be more or less completed by 2030–2035. ”But it’s going to be quite intense in the years to come.” It is important in these turbulent times to embrace neutrality, he emphasizes. Where does he get his knowledge and information about these things? Basically by remembering, he says. ”Everything is inside ourselves. Nobody can teach you anything. Others can only help you remember what you already know.” Marco’s website is the best entry point to his music, photos and words. 

”I am actually astunned. I don't understand it. All the pandemic preparedness plans were there, and they were just ignored.” The words are Martin Kulldorff’s, professor of medicine at Harvard, and he refers to the harsh covid-19 policies that have been imposed almost worldwide. ”It’s a huge experiment. And it's a terrible experiment because of the collateral damage.” Martin Kulldorff’s research areas are closely connected to the pandemic. In October he published a declaration together with epidemiology professor Sunetra Gupta and professor of medicine Jay Bhattacharya. The three experts expressed a fear that the remedy, lockdowns, will show to be worse than the disease. Three basic principles of public health have been thrown out the window this year by most countries, according to Kulldorff: To look at things long-term, not to focus on just one single disease and to protect everybody in society. ”We have seen outbreaks of measles you wouldn't have expected under normal circumstances. Cancers are not being detected. And mental health is deteriorating.” ”Low risk people and affluent people, who can work from home, are being protected, but the working class is being exposed.” Thus, lockdowns are exacerbating the societal inequalities. Closing schools makes no sense whatsoever in this pandemic. Mortality from covid-19 is more than 1,000 times bigger for elderly people than for children. A seasonal flu is more dangerous than covid for the youngest. ”Every year, between 200 and 1,000 children die from the flu in the US. But we don’t close down the schools because of that.” Instead of all-encompassing lockdowns, Martin Kulldorff would like to see different forms of focused protection to keep vulnerable groups as safe as possible. The vaccine will be an excellent tool for focused protection of the vulnerable, says professor Kulldorff. But to make vaccination mandatory is a bad idea: ”A key principle of public health is trust. If you try to mandate something, that's going to lead to a lot of suspicion. The trust has already taken a hit because of the lockdowns.”

”A lot of people today are deferring their future to a very limited number of leaders – political leaders and powerful tech company leaders. That’s a tragedy.” ”There is a sense of ’postalgia’: a hankering for the present: ’This is as good as it gets. The future will be worse.’ This is a paralyzing mindset. It can spiral into nihilism”, says the Johannesburg based futurist, trend analyst and economist Bronwyn Williams. She challenges the doom and gloom and points to doors that can lead to a bright future. There is more hope and energy in some of the younger economies, with much larger youth bulges, than in the West. ”There is a lot to learn from younger countries about having more optimism about the future.” One of the reasons behind the widespread gloom is the unequal distribution of the benefits of globalization. The distribution of wealth is tightly tied to the systems of money and nation states, which we are so used to we hardly ever question them, but which are not nature-given. ”Money is propped up by faith and by force. We have to believe in it for it to work. Money itself does not have any intrinsic value. We have value. Our time has value. Our labor has value. And the real natural resources.” ”We need more equitable money, not money that makes some countries richer at the expense of others.” Cryptocurrencies are only backed by faith, not by force and the nation states. They are an interesting alternative, says Williams. But not necessarily the solution. The catch is how to arrange for social welfare in a borderless space. One idea floating right now is called open basic income. There are also trials with digital citizenship out there. In the future perhaps we can base citizenship not on our place of birth but rather on our values, reasons Williams. ”Some want more security and more rules, some want more freedom and less rules. Maybe we can group those people in a way that's fair?” She gives two examples: the democracy movement in Hong Kong and the polarization after the US election. ”How to take the ethos of Hong Kong’s freedom movement somewhere else even if the territory has to cede to mainland China? And what if there was a way to let both sides get what they want after the US election? Subscribe to either a left wing or a right wing agenda? Pay one’s taxes to either?” Here is Bronwyn Williams web site. Here is her upcoming book ”The Future Starts Now”.