Have you ever driven through a narrow mountain canyon before? It can be very exhilarating. Of course, there are many ways to travel through a canyon. To travel through a canyon on horseback is also exhilarating, and so is hiking the canyon on foot.

I've been atop enough canyon rims to have witnessed hawks and eagles navigating the canyon by simply gliding over it. I have imagined being the hawk or eagle and looking down at the canyon below. The cars traveling the asphalt ribbon through the canyon look tiny. It is the river, though, that I follow as a hawk or eagle. That is where the life-force is concentrated.

And the river, of course, shows us that there is yet another way to navigate the canyon, and that is to simply go with the flow. Have you ever imagined being a drop of water dripping off a glacier atop a lofty peak? Have you followed the long trek of that drop of water as it flows into a high alpine mountain stream and then into a mountain river that, over time, has cut a mighty swath through solid rock? Have you ever imagined being that drop of water as it flows through the canyon? How would that drop of water experience the ride through the canyon? Having flowed over so many rocks on its course down the mountain how is the vibration of that drop of water affected?

Water is very powerful. It can sculpt solid rock. Consciousness is very powerful, too. It can sculpt a seemingly solid reality.

There are many ways to travel a canyon. The hawk and eagle go with the flow of the air currents. The water goes with the flow of gravity. Whether one is flowing through the canyon or gliding above it or driving through it, canyons are very conducive to flow.

Now, instead of going with the flow through the canyon, imagine being the canyon. Feel that flow flowing through you. How does that feel? Feel the water flowing through you, feel the air flowing through you, and feel the life-energy flowing through you. The flow never stops and there is no real resistance to it. The most solid of rock is reshaped by the flow, and eventually succumbs to it completely.

Canyons are great things. When you've been to enough of them you start imagining things like being the flow or being the canyon. Canyons are splendid metaphors for the duality in which we live.

I have sojourned in many worlds and the most incredible paradise I have ever found was a place called Earth. Everyone has heard of Earth. It is a universal focal point. It's the ultimate experiment. Everyone and everything gravitates to this Earth and eventually ends up there. You can call it the premier vacation destination or you can call it the place of graduation. Earth is a universal window through which all entities must pass in order to individuate and realize their divinity.

It's an incredibly beautiful place. As planets go, it is truly a paradise. The beauty is so intense as to allow its inhabitants to live in constant joy. But some of them don't. They shield themselves from the beauty and refuse to see it. They resist it.

These inhabitants tune out of the beauty by erecting ugly, square boxes in which they live. The square-ness distorts the frequency of the beauty (which is more of a round curvy frequency). By spending most of their lives in these square boxes, the inhabitants are able to tune out the beauty and experience other frequencies besides love, joy, and beauty. The thought was that once these other "lower" frequencies were experienced, then they would just turn the frequency dial back to love, joy, and beauty, but the problem was the frequency dials got stuck. The inhabitants, for the most part, remained oblivious to the incredible beauty and corresponding vibrations of love, joy, and beauty.

But deep inside the inhabitants there was a vague memory and mysterious longing for the experience of that love, joy, and beauty. They began expressing that longing through art. Some of these inhabitants tried to capture little images of the grand beauty and express it to others. Some of these inhabitants told stories of leaving the square boxes and venturing forth into the raw wilderness where beauty was so intense it could not be avoided. Some of the inhabitants began teachings to help others see the square-ness of their lives and the entrainment vibrations in which they lived. While some of the inhabitants tried to show beauty to the others, it was still up to each inhabitant to actually see the beauty.

Eventually, all those inhabitants will realize that they do not need art to see beauty. Beauty is so all-pervasive that one need not go anywhere to find it. And all those lessons were just rememberings of what the inhabitants already knew. That is what those inhabitants had planned; to forget and then remember. Perhaps beauty is better appreciated after experiencing its absence. Of course, if beauty is so all-pervasive, then there can be no absence of it. So the inhabitants had to create a psychological vibration that shielded the beauty. That psychological vibration, or veil, is disintegrating.

What does it feel like to turn a bend on your path and to suddenly come upon a panorama of such incredible beauty that it takes your breath away? When this kind of joy begins happening on a regular basis that is a sure sign that the veil is dissipating. The more joy and beauty and love we experience each day, the thinner those veils get.

We can look at the shift three ways: We can look at it as being an event in the near future. We can look at it as happening right now. Or, we can look at it as something that has already happened. (We just haven't fully realized it yet.)

All three perspectives are equally valid. The shift can easily be seen as a future event. After all, there isn't much direct evidence of it yet. Things still seem "too much the same" as before. And with the shift being in the future, we still have time to prepare ourselves.

The world does seem to be changing, however, even if only in subtle ways, so the shift may very well be going on right now. Perhaps we won't realize it until we see it from hindsight.

Or maybe it has already happened. We just haven't gotten a clear hindsight reading yet. Maybe we don't see the new reality yet because we're in such a habit of seeing the old reality every day, we're still seeing it. Perhaps we just haven't had time yet to step back and take a more focused look at things. Must we fully release the past before we can see beyond it into the already existent "new vibration?"

Shifts are about release. In a standard shift car one must release one gear before engaging another. You just can't get into that next gear until the previous gear is released. We must release everything that connects us with the past in order to embrace a new frequency. This sounds tough, for there are so many things we do not want to let go of. But we must understand that those things dearest to us will not be lost. They will be transformed. We are afraid of losing them, so we don't let go and those things can't transform because we hold them in the old thought patterns. Not until we make a full release can we surrender to the shift.

Shift happens. We can resist it, or surrender to it. When we surrender to it that is when it really happens for each of us. Although the shift is happening simultaneously to all of humankind, each of us surrender to it at our own paces, and that is why it won't seem to happen all at one time.