The gifts, messages, and sacred stories are flowing with abundance. If you chose, you could listen in and connect with thought leaders in your niche every single day, multiple times a day. You can follow the teleseminars, webinars, tweets, blog posts of Cultural Creatives on many different parts of the same or similar paths. You can try to comment on everyone who resonates, and so many people do. Their messages are potent for you.

For those of us charged over the years as “Living Libraries of Light,” the ocean waves of messages from thought leaders threaten to swamp us. Information overload is very real. We inhale to take it all  in — and choke. We open our arms to embrace all that seems good and true and beautiful — and we are carried into the undertow because we cannot embrace it all.

The great shift and turning is upon us, the turning of an age. You can read about networks, circles, communities, tribes of people dancing at the edge of transformation, opening the doors, windows, and portals, ushering in new ways of being that are freeing and liberating and connecting us with our true selves, our deepest and  Divine Essence. The forward motion and momentum, unfolding us into our future selves, continue unabated.

Even so, others steadfastly yank on chains of the past that hold us fast in old models and paradigms that are breaking down.  The powerful in the world clamp down on anything that empowers greater numbers of us. That is the old story that the powerful are trying desperately to hold onto. And in this time of disparate and desperate polarities, we are tacking, our small ocean-going canoes heaved first one way, then another.

Discernment is key. How do you discern who to follow, who to listen to, who to invite into your own inner sacred space? I’m not saying I have all the answers, but perhaps together we can access and share some useful questions.

The following article first appeared in March 2001, published by Chicago’s Conscious Choice magazine. In sharing this perspective about Cultural Creatives, (a name bestowed on us by sociologist/researcher Paul Ray)  I am reminded how very important this cohort of world-changers really is. We’ve lost a decade to the forces of the status quo, to those determined to move the clock backwards.  So now — more than ever — it is our time.

It is so crucial that everyone WAKE UP!  The awakening and mindful action for the good of all and the healing of planet Gaia, Mother Earth, is long overdue. This is a clarion call to of those in the Cultural Creative Cohort.   It is more important than ever, and well past time, to get out of our own way.

[I've made some minor edits in the following piece so that it makes sense for 2010.]

How 50 Million Cultural Creatives Can Change the World: A Review and Consideration of The Cultural Creatives by Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson

Do you ever feel like you just don’t fit in? Do you feel that people around you have a whole different set of values and beliefs? Do you find things important that aren’t on their radar screens, and vice versa? Are “getting ahead” and “looking out for number one” nowhere on your list, despite the best efforts of the media and consumer culture to persuade you otherwise?

When you speak of your dream — what you hope to accomplish — do you include relationships, concern for the planet and the next generations, social justice, sustainability, and your spiritual development? Do your dreams not look like what “everybody else” wants? Perhaps the mirror that will reflect you and your values back to you just isn’t in place — Yet.

It certainly isn’t available in the established big media companies, most corporate, education, and government institutions, or politics, where there is little or no support for people who dare to express such values. Surprisingly, despite your feelings of isolation, you are far from alone.

In fact, you may be part of a just-now-becoming-visible groundswell of cultural change. You may be a Cultural Creative. With the book, The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World, Paul Ray and his wife and co-author Sherry Ruth Anderson are trying to hold up a mirror big enough to reflect this population back on itself.

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