Mind the Shift

Have you heard of the Free Republic of Liberland? Probably not. But it is actually a nation that turned five this spring. There is a catch: It still doesn’t have any inhabitants on the physical area it has marked out for itself on a disputed piece of land between Serbia and Croatia, and it is still only recognized officially by Somaliland (which itself isn’t really recognized internationally). But Liberland itself has representatives in dozens of countries, it already has 1,000 citizens scattered globally, and half a million people have applied for citizenship. ”People are looking for alternatives when things are going down the drain”, says Vit Jedlička, Liberland’s first president, to Mind the Shift. He wants to create a nation with less rules, no corruption and truly free markets. To the extent that Liberland is to be ruled, it will be based on meritocracy. The country's motto is: To live and let live. ”The fewer rules, the more prosperity”, says Jedlička. ”I’ve been thinking a lot about how to bring more freedom to the people of this world. You can’t force people to change their ways. You just have to be a good example.” But doesn’t economic freedom for some mean hardship for others? No, that’s a widespread falsehood, says Liberland’s head of state.. ”This is one of the paradigms that are pushed through our educational system. It’s a big mental block. The truth is that when trade is truly free, both sides always win.” Why use money at all? ”Well, you can barter, but money has shown to be the most effective means for voluntary exchange”, says Vit Jedlička, a former libertarian politician who left politics some years ago, when he came to the conclusion that parliamentarians can’t really change anything even if they have the majority. Other forces pull the strings. On Liberland’s website one can get more information and apply for citizenship.

The EU is an attempt to accomplish democracy at the European level, but there is a glass ceiling: The heads of government have the final say, not the elected representatives in the European Parliament. And when electing those representatives, it’s a national affair. It’s not even possible to run a Europe-wide campaign. Enter Volt, the very first pan-European party, founded in 2017 to create politics for a federal Europe across European borders. Its co-president Valerie Sternberg qualifies as a true pan-European, being a German who has studied in Italy and Great Britain and worked in Belgium. ”Deep inside I identify as a European and a Hessian, but to be honest, when I am abroad I say I am German, because for some reason this still seems to be the category we are interested in”, she says in this episode. The Brexit result was a shock and an a-ha moment for Sternberg. ”I realized I had to do something. Brexit was the trigger for all of us who started Volt.” She identifies as Brussels when she comments on Boris Johnson’s Brexit trick: ”We treated you with respect and tried to find an outcome that would be acceptable for both parties, and all of a sudden this agreement is not taken seriously. It’s a terrible signal about what treaties mean, and about all international law.” ”Brexit is also based on a flawed view on sovereignty. I don’t think Britain will regain their sovereignty as they perceive it and just advance their own goals.” Volt tries to free itself from old ideologies, traditional party lines and ”the employee-employer divide we are still stuck in”, Sternberg says. ”Democracy lives out of compromise and consensus and finding a middle ground.” Climate change and migration are the two over-arching challenges for Europe on the global scene. Internally, the institutions must be reformed and democratized, according to Volt and Valerie Sternberg: ”Why is the most powerful body in the EU the national heads of government when we have representatives directly elected by us in the European Parliament?” Does she, then, believe in a future Europe without borders? ”National identity is still strong, so scrapping nations soon would feel artificial. But what could happen is an incremental change towards a European democracy, a European government combined with local government. Then, eventually, we would not need the nation states.” Volt campaigned for the EP in eight different member states in the elections of 2019, and in one of them, Germany, the party managed to get its candidate Damian Boeselager  into the parliament. It also has 30 representatives in national and regional assemblies. 

Almost everything in this physical world is ”nothingness”. It’s space. Only a teeny fraction of you, me and everything else consists of what we call particles. But that space isn’t nothing. It’s packed with all-encompassing energy, and ”we” are just more or less densified portions of that unified field of energy. How, then, can we not be connected? I think we can tap into this totality, and into each other and into every consciousness that exists.  I think we can live our lives more smoothly if we learn how. I think we create our lives that way. And if we’re all part of this unified quantum soup: How can we die? Truly die? If this episode inspires you, check out Eckart Tolle, Alan Watts, Donald D Hoffman, Nassim Haramein, Bruce Lipton, Rupert Sheldrake, Esther Hicks, Aaron Abke, Teal Swan, Robert Lanza, Ram Dass and, of course, Carl G Jung  (among many other wise teachers of the human experience, spirituality and life science)

The near-death experience of Dr Eben Alexander is astonishing in its depth, and it is especially interesting since Dr Alexander was part of the mainstream scientific community. He was in a week-long coma, and his brain was all but destroyed. He shouldn’t have been able to experience anything. Yet he visited realms that he describes as far more real than this physical plane. Against all odds he recovered to tell about it. His story has been the key for many other scientists to open the door to a non-physical reality. ”The reason the scientific community has taken my experience so seriously has to do with the documentation of the damage to my neocortex. It should have, by all principles of modern neuroscience, eliminated all but the most rudimentary forms of consciousness. But what I experienced was an extraordinary expansion of consciousness”, says Dr Eben Alexander in this episode. ”And my recovery has no explanation in modern Western science.” Alexander tells about a timeless existence, first in what he describes as the realm of the earthworm's eye view. Later a light which served as a portal ushered him into an ”ultra-real gateway valley”. ”I was merely a speck of awareness on a butterfly wing. There were millions of other butterflies. The valley was fertile and lush, no sign of death or decay, there was a crystal clear pool, sparkling waterfalls. It was a real paradise. I had no memory of Eben Alexander’s life. I had no language. I just had this phenomenal experience, which is sharp and clear in my memory even to this day, twelve years later.” In the gateway valley Eben Alexander was accompanied by a soul who conveyed a profound message: ”You are deeply loved and cherished forever, you have nothing to fear, you will be taken care of.” ”I cannot tell you how comforting and validating that message was. It basically welcomed me home.” When he reached what he describes as the core realm, language fails almost completely. ”I often use analogies. It was like standing on the edge of a black hole, on the event horizon, where time has stopped and the universe has crystalized.” Couldn’t it have been a vivid dream? No, says Dr Eben Alexander: ”This existence is dreamlike compared to that. That is far crisper, far more alive, far more real. And modern neuroscience will tell you that if we are to have a dream or hallucination, the details of that experience must be assembled in some part of the neocortex. My neocortex was off, that’s documented.” For all of this to make sense, says Dr Alexander, you must realize that a huge part of how it all works is reincarnation. ”The scientific support for reincarnation is overwhelming. At the University of Virginia, over 2.500 children’s memories of past lives have been discerned objectively. It completely violates conventional materialistic neuroscience, but that’s because conventional materialistic neuroscience is completely wrong.” ”The scientific community is shifting very rapidly. Interviewers used to try to set me up with a materialist scientist that represented ’the other side’, but it got harder and harder to find anybody that had anything meaningful to say from that camp.” Dr Alexander’s website features his books Proof of Heaven, The Map of Heaven and Living in a Mindful Universe (with Karen Newell). He is an adviser to the Galileo Commisson, which advocates ”exploring and expanding the frontiers of science, medicine and spirituality”.

Our world is ever more a cyberworld, but we still treat the digital part of it as if it weren’t real. Those who develop tech solutions surprisingly often forget about the people whom those solutions are for. Nadine Michaelides is a cyber psychologist and behavioral scientist. She works with understanding the relationship between human behavior and technology. Some years ago she realized the need for this skill. ”We could spend hours in boardrooms talking about tech innovations, but nobody mentioned the people who were going to use them”, she says in this episode. ”It was all about budgets. People seemed to be an afterthought. I was shocked. What kind of strange universe was this?” Nadine was seen as rebellious. But metrics, like surveys, showed that she knew what she was talking about. Today there is much more understanding of the human factor in technology, she says. But flawed ideas about how to best achieve cyber security still abund: ”I have asked cyber security professionals how long they think it takes to actually do the tasks that they need the employees to do to be secure. They have no idea.” Nadine Michaelides is concerned that technology is moving faster than our ability to see the whole picture. ”How can we train our children to watch out for electric cars that don’t sound anything? A culture change can take six to eight years. Can you imagine the tech change that will happen during that time?” ”But ultimately it can only go as far as we let it.” On the much debated conflict between transparency and privacy Nadine says: ”Transparency is not just something that is nice to have, it is something we need in a democracy. But I do think transparency and privacy can work together. We need to filter to protect our children. But at the same time we need freedom of speech. It’s absolutely critical. The most important thing is that we don’t allow abuse of power.” And on social media algorithms and polarization: ”The problem is that it gives even the extremes a voice that may not have been heard otherwise, and that can be dangerous. There is a case for regulation. But it can’t be based on financial gains, it must be based on democratic values.” Nadine Michaelides’ consultancy is Anima.

One day when I was 20 years old the whole world around me changed in appearance. I had tunnel vision and I had an eerie feeling of not being rooted. The thought that I, the real ”I”, was just that lump of flesh in my skull scared the hell out of me. I didn’t understand it at the time, but today I am convinced it was my higher self trying to tell me that my inkling was correct. The babble going on in your head is just an annoying roommate. At your core, you are something much larger. The separation between science and spirituality was probably necessary a few hundred years ago, when science was challenging the supremacy of traditional religions. But religion and spirituality are different things. Today it’s ever harder for science to state without hesitation that consciousness is solely placed between the ears. It’s time to end that complete separation. Thesis and antithesis should meet in a beautiful synthesis. To get a glimpse of what’s happening on the border between science and spirituality today, check out books by Donald Hoffman, Robert Lanza and Eben Alexander and the work by Bruce Lipton and Nassim Haramein.

Most economists point out that economics isn’t particularly much about money, it’s about people’s behavior. Yet, most of them wouldn’t go so far as to suggest we scrap money altogether. ”When people ask how something is going to work in a money-free world I always say: ’Well, how does it work today?’. That’s always a good place to start. And the current economy allocates resources terribly badly. Money is what prevents us from sharing ideas and innovations.” The musician, writer and social activist Colin R Turner was always a lover of nature and a problem-solver. When he was young the problems were often about practical things, like fixing the dishwasher. But he was to dive into deeper problems. Around the time of the financial crisis and the movements against inequality that followed, Colin got more and more engaged in the idea of a new kind of world order – a world without money. This is what his book ”Into the Open Economy” and the petition he founded, Free World Charter, are all about. ”Suspend for the moment your disbelief that a money-free would work. What would your priorities be? Most of us would put things like health, social life and environment first”, says Colin R Turner. ”When you take away money, all the other motivators grow bigger. We can create a new social contract where we prioritize these things.” Isn’t a money-free world communism? No, says Turner: ”Communism obviously always existed with money, a hierarchy and state control. It imploded because it wasn’t working and it wasn't even doing what it was supposed to do.” ”What governments mostly do is make sure that the money system works, by supervising budgets and see to it that money goes where it is supposed to go.” Won’t people be too lazy? ”Happiness is about being productive and knowing that you have done something good and that you have helped someone.” Won’t new elites emerge? ”It’s  ridiculous to pretend we’re all equal. Life is unequal. We have different skills, abilities and intelligence. But we are all of equal importance, and in the current society there is a sort of learned helplessness, we defer power. At the very least we should give everybody access to the basic living necessities. It’s incredible that we don’t already do that.” Will it happen? ”People are getting much more aware. There is a good trajectory. I’m optimistic that we can shift over more to a sharing economy. The only way we can achieve a money-free world is gradually.” On Colin R Turner’s website you’ll find links to his books and the Free World Charter.

The narrative about aviation's impact on the climate is muddled by a desire to use moral ammunition. Trains can never substitute airplanes on long distances, air traffic is crucial for global integration and there is no point in knocking out aviation anyway — its share of the world’s CO2 emissions is too small. If all the billions that are invested in trains instead were to be invested in clean aviation, we would soon have it. The railway boom is a side track. This essay was originally published on Medium. 

”The notion that we are stuck in matter is a huge mistake. For example if you listen to music, there are no molecules of a certain type flying through the air, it’s just energy, a small amount of energy, but it has a huge effect on the body.” The words are Karl Moore’s, an American Irishman who is a physicist, writer and homeopath, and as from this summer also a podcaster. In this episode, Karl takes me on a winding path through some of the big questions about the true nature of the physical world and the essence of life. ”We have so much information today we can’t see it. It’s hard to navigate. It’s almost as if the information is made to be confusing. Maybe the times are forcing us to navigate realms of information by the heart and not by the intellect. The important judgments we do by our hearts comes down to realizing who we really are”, says Karl. ”We have an ability to connect already. It is within us. It has been shown by indigenous peoples, like the kogi.” From an early age Karl Moore loved going out into nature. He has always been fascinated by what he experiences when he stays longer than he has planned. ”When I go out my head might be full of thoughts, but I say to myself to let the body make the decisions. And that makes me feel good. It is as if a deeper, bigger aspect of myself guides me.” When he was young he often went into the deserts of the southwestern US. ”I would move my hands slowly, and I almost sensed this field of energy. And I realized: I was doing tai chi. Sometimes there were flies bothering me, and I asked them not to. They complied.” Karl Moore’s book ”Nature’s Twist: Water and the Spirals of Life” revolves around one fundamental finding: everything in the Universe spins. And electrodynamics tells us that any rotating object will also self-magnetise. The effect that music has on us is analogous to homeopathy, says Karl. ”It’s about finding the appropriate vibration. It’s like finding the right note. The person writes the music, the homeopath sees where the notes are missing.” In mainstream camps, to be a licensed and registered homeopath is still seen as something of a contradiction in terms. But Karl Moore has explored the depths of water and discovered the extraordinary regenerative properties of this essential element, ”almost magical” in Karl’s words. ”It’s just too diluted” say skeptics about the homeopathic preparations, but the point is that the trick is done by the water, this powerful carrier of information, explains Karl. New discoveries show that water can appear in hitherto unknown shapes, like the more ordered end denser ”exclusion zone water”, which repels microscopic particles. Here is a link to Karl Moore’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Natures-Twist-Water-Spirals-Life/dp/191607569X And to his podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/20d2Xqb9xmEItTJjxevIdq

What if the conventional view that the past has formed what we are today is false? What if it is the other way around: The present creates the past. The consequences of changing your mindset about past, present and future is mind blowing, and it has the potential to liberate you from the enslaving chains of history. Why do you feel an urge do do certain things and not others? Maybe you feel the pull of the future you, not the push of your past.