The Map of Our Future

To overcome the existing world we must first have power within it.

May 25, 2025

A Question For Everyone

I’ve been asking a question lately that no one seems to have a good answer for:

Which groups or subcultures are currently excited about our future?

I don’t mean specific thought leaders or politicians or business moguls. It’s easy to be upbeat when you can make a living from telling that story. I’m asking about population groups of relatively significant size that are optimistic about where the world will be in the next five or ten years.

Are the Southern Baptists or the Australians or the Craft Beer enthusiasts looking ahead to 2035 with anticipation and glee?

That’s what I’m asking. Who’s pumped about our potential life experiences over the next decade?

One of the big reasons I’m asking the question is because ever since I’ve fallen into mysticism I’m largely unable to access the mindset of the old world excitement about Mars1 and politics and 401ks.

It turns out most of the mystically-minded folks I know are generally optimistic. They’re either 1) very excited about the future or 2) they sorta feel like things will all fall apart first before getting better.

In both cases the thing they’re generally most excited about is the ongoing shift towards higher consciousness and the societal results we’ll see because of this.

And while I’m not sure we can quite envision what that looks like, it still seems far more appealing than enjoying a better iPhone on Mars.

Oh…and I did just think of a couple of groups who are optimistic about the coming decade…the psychedelic enthusiasts and the folks who want to fix our food,2 who almost certainly overlap to some degree.

Based upon my own health journey I’d wholeheartedly agree that it’s nearly impossible to raise society’s consciousness levels when everyone is metabolically ill. This is why we often see a spiritual awakening follow someone’s triumphant return to a healthier lifestyle, rather than vice-versa.

And thank God for these people who have not only the level of awareness but also the level of agency to work towards getting these things done at a societal level. Many of the folks involved in these initiatives are on a path towards higher consciousness, so this just reinforces my point that true spirituality is the only way out of our current dilemma.

And when I say spirituality I’m not referring to obedience-level church congregations, disempowered cult members, or mountain-top escapists3.

The Perfect Combo

I’ve now decided that Tara Springett is my favorite recommended teacher for anyone seeking a path to higher consciousness. Her blue book changed my life and as I’ve revisited her many other books I’ve come to conclude she has simultaneously provided both 1) the most comprehensive teachings and 2) the most practical applications of anyone I’ve encountered. Yes, there are other mystics with far greater abilities or more captivating stories, but no one makes it as consistently accessible and practical as Tara.

Tara helps us identify where we’re at on the map of consciousness and then helps guide us into the next level; again and again.

I may have remained stuck for another decade had I not discovered her sending love practice. I was never very good at forgiveness before that. And I was way too judgemental.

But combine the sending love practice with the mystical framework that we’re all beautiful souls stuck in these present-day personalities at various levels of separation from the Divine source, and suddenly our perspective evolves quite rapidly.

Love Power

Recently I pulled out one of Tara’s books to revisit a topic and came across this passage:

Love versus power is the most important of all pairs of opposites because the perfect balance of the strongest power and highest love represents the highest potential of a person.
Power without love is pure selfishness and love without power is useless because it cannot be used to influence the world for the better.
The perfect union of love and power, however, leads to ‘powerful love’ or ‘loving power’, which can be used to exert the strongest and simultaneously most loving influence in ourselves and other beings.
If we use these two forces in complete harmony and at the same time to the highest extent, we will realise what is called enlightenment or the union with God.

I remember the first time I encountered this insight that it sorta blew my mind.

Who did I know that was able to merge love and power? I knew some loving people, but they were relatively weak in the world. I knew some powerful people, but they were mostly self-absorbed and guarded.

But who did I know that was both open-hearted and able to get big stuff done?

And “getting stuff done” is how we’re defining power. Power isn’t an old guy on a throne or in the corner office. It’s one’s ability to enact change in the world.

It’s agency.

So I began to look around. To notice. Because now I knew who to look for. At first there was almost no one. It’s a tricky thing to learn how to become comfortable with both power and love.

But with this new framework I could suddenly begin to identify those who were further along on the path. And I mean deep along the path. Past the shadow-traps of idealism and victimhood that snag people at the Sharing level.4

I now knew who and what I was looking for. Not by what they said, but by who they were.

As Tara said, loving power and powerful love.

Badass Jesus

I recall the first time I ever saw Jesus for who he really was. Not as some nice guy teaching about how everyone else should be nice too; but as someone who was max-power fused with max-love.

Jesus didn’t reject the world systems of his day as we may have heard in church; he transcended them. And not out of piety or weakness. It’s easy for the weak to renounce the world. Easy to reject the game when we lack the skills to win it.

To truly renounce the world you must first have power within it.

As I’ve written before we might admire many spiritual teachers, but how many of them passed up the First Century equivalent of Goldman Sachs or the White House to get there?

Not many.

Can you see Jesus as smart and disciplined enough to become a wealthy merchant? Or clever enough to achieve a place of governance? Was Jesus versed enough in the scriptures to secure a role as an expert on religious law?

Of course. He could do all of the above, and with relative ease.

Why? Because he had the worldly power to do so.

He understood how to motivate and guide people. He understood how to build and coordinate teams. He was a tremendous teacher and storyteller. He had endurance and discipline and physical strength. He could delegate, set boundaries, and recognize talent. He engaged everyone, even those whose behaviors he may have had strong negative feelings towards. He was incredible.

And all of this before we even factor in the many mystical abilities he had, which were mighty.

Because he also radiated endless love.

What an awesome combination of deep love and deep power. Yeah, but he was a Divine figure and all that…

Yes, and he was also clearly serving as a guide and a model for humanity, telling us “you will do all of this, and even greater things.”5

So how do we get started?

A High Consciousness Response

I was always sort of frustrated in my spiritual wandering that no one could make it clear. No one had a map to share. There was all this hinting and musing and indirect referencing, but no one seemed to be willing to reveal a path in plain, simple language.

In fact, I had actually given up on my hope for clarity, resigning myself to a vague comfort that yes, there was some larger driver to the Universe, and there was no longer anything to fear in death, but the specifics beyond that would forever be a mystery.

And then it began.

I was in Northern California in late summer 2023 when I received a blow to my ego that left me first angry, but then mostly just sad and confused. I was with my wife and best friends, so that was good, but it was also not good because I was on an amazing vacation and riding an emotional rollercoaster.

Now historically my go to method for solving this type of problem would’ve been to transfer all of this difficult emotion onto the person I saw as the source of its creation, which would make me feel better in the moment but would likely have other consequences soon afterward.

But I didn’t do that this time. Instead I just sat with the discomfort and asked a question: How do I have a high consciousness response to this?

I asked that question over and over that week in California, to myself mostly, but also to my wife. There was no answer other than to do nothing until some sort of clarity arose. So I sat in the discomfort.

When I returned home from vacation I was still really sad and so I went to my bookshelves looking for answers. I found a book I’d purchased eight months earlier on the recommendation of Scott Britton called Higher-Consciousness Healing by Tara Springett.

I began reading the book that night and found some immediate comfort.

In fact I enjoyed Tara’s work so much that I soon ordered all of her books, but there was one particular title that stood out…

Mediocre Title, Life-changing Material

The Stairway to Heaven: Nine Steps of Consciousness from Unawareness to Full Enlightenment.

I recall the first night I began reading the book. Almost immediately I knew that my life was about to open up to entirely new realms, even though I had no idea the power and insight that would be revealed in the coming months.

I’d been searching for a resource like this for over five years.

What is Consciousness and Why Does It Matter?

In 2018 I had first learned about consciousness as defined as a scale or framework of human spiritual development. The word “consciousness” had been pretty nebulous to me up until that point, with varying meanings depending on context. I understood the basic definition of the word to mean “awake.”

But awake from what?

I intuitively understood that greater consciousness meant greater love, and that this was somehow the key to meaning. The key to understanding what our lives are about.

There were various scales of consciousness I’d encountered previously such as Spiral Dynamics and the Integral work by Ken Wilber, but I’d always found those frameworks to be a bit too academic. I could never quite access them in a way to determine exactly where I was or what I should be doing in my day-to-day life to move to the next level.

Tara’s book was immediately different.

She begins by defining the nine stages of consciousness. Then she helps the reader identify where they are along the spectrum of stages, explaining that we may have some variance and movement between stages depending on context.²

From there Tara helps us see what actions and behaviors will lead us through the stages as we progress to our highest self possible. She also gives examples of what each level of consciousness looks like in others, in the world, in religious and spiritual systems, in relationships, at work, and even with kids and parenting.

Tara is a Buddhist but she approaches the topic in a style that is inclusive of all belief-systems, even if you’re in the “I don’t know” camp.

So what are the levels?

The nine stages of consciousness are ordered like a stairway with two flights of steps and one interconnecting step in the middle. It is possible to recognise these nine stages in every person, in every culture throughout history, in every organisation and even in every moment of one’s inner experience. Here is a first short overview of the stairway of consciousness:
Step 0 – Innocence: Passivity; little motivation; lack of awareness; sense of relative harmony; pleasure and trust; the individual says, ‘I belong to my group’.
Step 1 – Dominance: Wish to dominate others if necessary in a ruthless way; anger; greed; the individual says, ‘I want it and I want it now!’
Step 2 – Obedience: Submission and adherence to moral and social rules for the greater good of all; hierarchical structures in groups of people; self-denial and judging of others; the individual says, ‘I do what is expected of me.’
Step 3 – Ambition: Rational world-view; creating a successful self-image; materialism; competitiveness; the individual says, ‘I want to achieve more than anyone else.’
Step 4 – Sharing: Search for compassionate relationships; exploration of one’s emotions; egalitarianism; living in harmony with nature; the individual says, ‘I am close to others and to nature.’
Step 5 – Responsibility: Taking full responsibility for every single problem in one’s life; keen interest in personal development and following one’s vocation, the individual says, ‘I realise my dreams for the best of humankind.’
Step 6 – Love: Making altruistic love and spiritual development the most important aims in life; the individual says, ‘I send love to heal the world.’
Step 7 – Bliss: Realisation that one’s true nature is blissful loving space; development of supernatural powers; withdrawal into spiritual retreats; the individual says, ‘My true nature is spiritual bliss.’
Step 8 – Enlightenment: Infinite love, bliss and wisdom; seeing oneself as divine and the world as a paradise; the individual says, ‘I am love’.

The Nine Stages of Consciousness by Tara Springett

We all must go through each of these steps, in this exact order, and there’s no skipping a step, no exceptions.

All of us (unless you’re a self-realized being) start at zero. Most of us enter the dominance stage around ages 2-3, and then enter the obedience stage around age 4. (Some people never leave the dominance stage and many of these folks end up in prison or politics.)

My thinking on the model has shifted a bit as I’ve learned (and experienced!) more about past lives and gained a greater understanding of what we might call older souls and younger souls, and so I feel I now have a better understanding of why some people move through the scale at quicker rates than others.

An Expansion, Not a Hierarchy

One common source of feedback regarding the levels is many people don’t like to think of them as a staircase or a hierarchy. Perhaps because so much of our lives are viewed as a competition or a performance measurement.

This is understandable. As much as I try to explain that it’s not a hierarchy, but it is a progression, it seems the visual layout of the levels turns some people off.

Then

Tom Morgan

shared the idea that maybe we should be thinking of consciousness as levels of expansion rather than levels of advancement; and that having a better way of visualizing this could be powerful. So we created this:

Tara Springett’s Levels of Consciousness visualized as an Expansion

As we expand into each new level our awareness and our capacity to love often expands, especially at the further levels; but so does our power.

As children when we move from Innocence to Dominance around ages 2-3 we gain power. This power is then checked by our move into Obedience around age 4. Some people remain in Obedience their entire lives, but for those who power through they end up in the Ambition stage, where tremendous power can be gained. Eventually Ambition loses it’s sheen for some and they move into the Sharing stage where the heart begins to open up.

Now it’s this Sharing stage that’s both beautiful and dangerous for many. This is because each stage has a shadow side. A sort of ditch that individuals can get stuck in because they disown the previous levels. So the way this plays out in the Sharing stage is that people will disown the power they’ve acquired at previous levels. They might get stuck in shame about who they used to be and often become judgemental of the rest of the world who isn’t as loving and compassionate at they are.

Sadly folks stuck in the shadow ditch of the Sharing level can become so idealistic and judgemental they limit their ability to love or sometimes can cut themselves off from it altogether, sliding back into an almost Dominance sort of worldview.

If someone feels they’re a loving person, yet they find it difficult to send love to their least favorite politician (of any party) then this could be an area worth exploring when they’re ready.

And in fact much of politics is currently stalled out at the shadow sides of either the Ambition or the Sharing levels.

The negative or shadow side of the Ambition stage is that everyone is in it for themselves. Get rich, grab what you can, and pretend you’re doing it for the people. Lots of power without too much love.

Not great.

But then the negative or shadow side of the next stage, the Sharing level, is a certain combination of judgmentalism and naivety that views much of the world through the lens of victimhood. And compassion without wisdom is often a disaster.

Remember, for the purposes of this article, when we use the word power we mean agency. So the Sharing level often results in lots of open-hearted love without the proper agency to execute in a wise manner, creating a well-intentioned mess.

It’s only when we arrive at the Responsibility level, a stage not represented publicly at the moment, that we have the ability to integrate each of the previous levels and we can begin to get comfortable with the proper fusion of power and love.

And how do we get to the Responsibility stage? It’s all in Tara’s book.

True Magic

I remain grateful for Tara’s book coming into my life and I believe wholeheartedly that it was my earnest question of “How do I have a high conscious response?” fused with my deep sadness that led to the magic of me finding the answer.

Or you could say it was just luck or coincidence, but the cascade effect of the next 21 months has been impossible to discount.

But recall what I shared recently about bringing miracles into the world: miracles are often made manifest through the mixing of powerful imagination, deep belief, and intent. I had been experiencing a deep emotion, which I then fused with a question (which was really a request) and a deep belief that I would receive an answer, if there was one to be had.

I now see grief as a portal into the Divine. This will mean different things for each of us at different times but I feel wholeheartedly that the times we’re able to sit in the weight of sadness can have not only deep meaning, but they can also enable big shifts within our external world.

Not that it’s ever easy, and I can write that paragraph only after arriving on the other side of certain things in life that once felt unbearable, when it seemed I could barely make it through another day.

The Map of Our Future

When we talk about the future it’s usually about technology or the economy or our environmental concerns. But we almost never consider that people are changing too.

Maybe it’s because historically, or at least for the last couple millenia, people mostly haven’t changed. They’ve been asleep at the earlier levels of consciousness.

And this isn’t a judgement. As someone who believes in reincarnation and past lives I understand and accept that those people—they were us.

We’ve been asleep.

But I’m confident this is changing. And it’s happening right now.

One of the greatest benefits of this journey into the mystical is that I’m suddenly surrounded by dozens and dozens of individuals at the Responsibility level or beyond.

People who are wide-open-hearted and also have massive agency.

Just being in their presence can be overwhelming at first because most of us haven’t encountered many Responsibility-level individuals.

Perhaps when you were younger you or a friend had a wise grandparent or some other elder who may have possessed this unique combination, but it’s rare. And a bit of a mystery as to how they got there.

But to sit with a dozen or more people in their 40’s or 50’s at these levels is in itself a mystical experience. And once you meet someone like this there’s no going back.

They’re irresistible.

And it doesn’t have to be accidental. We have the map to get there. To identify where we are today and then use the simple practices and tools to move to the next stage.

And then we do it again.

And again.

This isn’t spiritual materialism—an accumulation of spiritual experiences or achievements.

No. This is simply an expansion of love and agency. Powerful love. Love power.

The ancients had a word for this: Praeis. It means power held in check. And in fact Jesus even used this word to describe those who would one day be trusted to guide humanity.

Of course this message has been hidden from us; the original meaning of the word praeis literally lost in translation.

It’s a powerful scene, Jesus literally on a mountain, surrounded by those who wanted to learn, those who sought relief from their present-day struggles.

Blessed are the praeis, for they shall inherit the earth.6

But of course the original meaning of praeis has been robbed from us. It’s been replaced with words like meek or gentle, implying a sort of weakness or passivity.

We’ve never known what to do with this verse because we’ve never seen it modeled. We’ve never seen a politician or a business leader who fit this description. And so when we think about the future we imagine we’ll be stuck with the same sorts of leadership we’ve had our entire lives.

But these Responsibility-level individuals are emerging. And once you know where to look you begin seeing them everywhere.

Loving power.

Powerful love.

As Neil Douglas-Klotz retranslates the verse:

Aligned with the One are those whose lives radiate from a core of love; they shall see God everywhere.

Indeed.

This is For You

I don’t know how far you’ll be able to go in your own quest for higher consciousness, your own work towards powerful love, in this lifetime.

But there is a map for those of you who want to make the most of it. Those of you who want to move beyond diagnosis and into action. And I urge you to take an active role. It’s yours if you are willing.

If you’ve been reading this substack with any interest and find resonance with these topics then you’re likely already doing the hard work to expand your consciousness.

If you haven’t yet actively begun that work but you still feel the resonance then my question would be what are you waiting on?

Mars?

It’s time for all of us to get moving on this stuff. It’s why we’re here.

Suddenly, Everywhere, All at Once

The near term future might get weird. It might get ugly.

But there’s a swell of consciousness rising within the Earth right now that can’t fully be quantified. We can’t yet fully imagine how this expansion will influence our future.

This expansion has been happening quietly; beyond the awareness of the general public. But there are hints, harbingers, and green shoots. And it will continue to accelerate to a point where it seems to emerge suddenly, everywhere, all at once.

History is not events, but rather Humanity’s response to events.7

And Humanity is preparing for a high consciousness response.

"Who then am I? A consciousness without origin, Not born in time, nor begotten here below. I am that which was, is and ever shall be, a jewel in the crown of the Divine Self, a star in the firmament of the luminous One."

-Rumi

Wishing you all a wonderful week ahead, friends. And thank you for reading. This substack currently has a small audience of only a few hundred readers. If you enjoyed this perspective please share with any friends or family members who might share these interests.

Also please be sure to ❤️ and 🔄 it so others can find it too. What is your relationship to love and power? Please let us know in the comment section…

Reorder: Higher-Consciousness Christianity

Discussion about this post