We are facing a future of global unpredictability and conflict, not seen since the Cold War days. There are many reasons behind this, but one stands above all else - Russia. Putin is pursuing the reassertion of the old Soviet Empire ambitions. He is clever, ruthless and prepared to use military force whenever it suits his goals. He is establishing a permanent Russian military presence in Syria, and has thumbed his nose at the West's human-rights sentiments over bombing of aid convoys and hospitals. Then responded to US outrage and talk of cruise missile deployments with news of Russia's own missile systems in Syria. He has talked up re-establishing missile bases in Cuba and other old Soviet global locations.
Russia is conducting military exercises with Pakistan and China. The US has come through a period of global timidity following the folly of Iraq, and has been lucky that it faced no substantial rival. Obama has been an intelligent and cautious leader in a time when there has been no appetite domestically for US adventurism internationally. He was probably perfect for the times of relative peace, but that is now changing very fast. There were good reasons to vacate the field in the Middle East, especially Syria, as there was no particular reason for the US to become ensnared in another complex conflict. Unfortunately, that left a vacuum into which Putin stepped without any of the moral baggage the US carries into conflict.
This is the first and most serious challenge the West is facing - forget about ISIS or terrorism - they are pimples on the face of a complete shift of global powers endangering the peace and trade landscape we have all enjoyed since WWII. The tasks confronting the next US President are of a level not seen for many decades. If what people say, that Hillary is a Hawk, considering she is most likely to become the next US President, then perhaps that is exactly what the world requires.
But Putin is not the only dark cloud threatening world order. One of the reasons Russia has exploited the vulnerability of IT systems in the US, and passed the results onto Wikileaks, is because Trump is as stupid and manipulable as the Philippines President, Rodrigo Duterte, is for China. Trump may be a loose cannon, but he would never be capable of leading the US into a new global conflict environment. He is domestically focused, as are the US people. And they are not the only ones. All across the world, domestic preoccupation is on matters of cultural, religious and racial tensions. Only China and Russia are looking to exploit this national navel-gazing, by grabbing territory and influence while everyone else has taken their eye off the main game.
Julian Assange is worried about Hillary, because he knows she has no tolerance for his kind of open-world liberalism, and Rafael Correa, Ecuador's president, is not going to contest re-election next year. Frankly, Assange is doing himself and his organisation no service by being used as a Russian pawn. Wikileaks has lost crucial support across the liberal world though this latest one-sided interference in the US election.
But the world is ill-prepared for a new battle of the powerful, not just because its population is switched off to global reality. National leaders have become populist opportunists, completely lacking in the skills and credentials to navigate a new global instability. They are the result of a wave of idiocy that has in turn been the consequence of decades of Neo-Liberal economics and ethics. What we see in the current US elections typifies what has happened across the world. Community values have been replaced by individual values: 'greed is good'. The wealthy have ruthlessly exploited this value-shift and sucked 90% of global growth to its 1% of population. They have fostered a media that saturates the population's mind space with emotional distractions of all kinds, while they syphoned off the cash. When the population realised they had been ripped off, they were left with only confused outrage - they support Trump not because they like him, but because they are want to throw bombs. Thus Brexit in the UK, the rise of far-right politics in the EU, Duterte in the Philippines, Modi in India.
The presence of astute and equipped leaders in many countries is insufficient to navigate global peace through the treacherous waters facing us. And it's not just 'powers' that are treacherous. We are facing increasing global economic instabilities - interest rates have been held at bank-breaking low levels for such a long time, for good reason... things are not going that well. World public debt is at record levels. The China-led trade surge has serious questions constantly surfacing. But most importantly, climate change is a threat to our species survival, and attempts to respond effectively have been insufficient due to Neo-Liberal self-centredness, and political class irresponsibility.
We sit in our living rooms watching our favourite reality-escaping entertainment, reading our spiritual books and feeling a mix of anxiety and superiority, while out there, in the 'real' world, changes are about to crash upon us that will rip our comfort apart. As spiritualised beings, we have an innate obligation to act. And the first act is to become aware - to sit up from the enchantment that has descended upon our species, and look at the streams of force flowing into our collective existence.
Only then can we chart a course through this landscape which actually does reach our intended goal. We live in increasingly vulnerable times, and it is our personal task to use these times to our advantage. While everyone sleeps on social media, we must keep the lookout.
But we are not the only ones keeping the lookout, and striving for a bridge to a brighter future. There are many people in the world who have not been completely enchanted by the waves of ulterior motive that sweep across the astral landscape sucking off the solar plexus's of the multitude. There are some fantastic people who are shouldering the wheel in every conceivable level of life - whether it be researching new antibiotics, caring for the elderly, or creating images of beauty.
Alas, too many are well intentioned yet unaware of the storms and reefs ahead. As shamans, it is our duty to go beyond the closed harbour, and see into the future - be it good or bad. We have the capacity to travel up-stream of life, to see what is coming through the tubes, and thus prepare ourselves, our loved ones, and our community. Being a shaman is not just about meditation and core-realisation. We have a community role, to constantly look for danger when all around us are partying, and to constantly look for doorways into light when all around us are depressed and exhausted.
In that, we earn our awareness post-death.