Thank you, dear friends, for your beautiful practice. Together we are co-creating a new earth, and it has to be now or never. It has been said many times, many ways before that we are co-creating the Pure Land of the Buddha here and now, that we are co-creating the kingdom of heaven on earth here and now. There is really too much to say, so I won't really say anything. Just thank you for walking on the path of love with me.

For the last six years, I have been waiting for this week in anticipation. About six years ago, around the winter solstice, I had a sort of sudden experience of a spiritual download of something. I really don't know how to explain it, but perhaps you have had a similar experience, where you just suddenly know something with all of your heart and you don't really know why you know it, but it is right there in your consciousness, and it is very energizing.

Well, I guess I have heard a little bit about 2012 and that sort of thing, but I didn't really think much of it, you know. But in that moment, suddenly, I knew that there is something very profound and important about the date, the year of 2012, and so I meditated with that for many, many months trying to understand what does this mean? And I still may not understand much about what it means, but for me at least, I don't believe in most of the weird stuff out there on the whole thing, but what I do believe is true is that this year, especially this week and this particular date of 12/21/12 coming up in just a few days, is a call from the spiritual realms, a call from the universe, a call from the awakened ones, a call for all of us to wake up.

And I don't think of it as a cataclysmic sort of calling. It is more like the gentle dharma rain falling on our heads as we are walking the path together. This gentle rain has been coming upon us for many months and years now as a gentle call to generate the kind of energy that we need on the planet today, and because we really do need a shift in our consciousness. Otherwise, we will keep on going the same destructive path that we are going on collectively as a species, and that is not very healthy for us.

Anyway, I don't think it will have to take all the people in the world to cooperate and this shift to take place. I don't even think it has to be the majority of the people in the world. I don't even think it has to be half of the population of the world, just 1% of the world's population. That's all we need really. One percent of the world's population, which—at this time, there are how many people? Seven billion now? And just like 10 years from now, it is going to be eight billion people. So we just need 70 million people to give their whole entire hearts to the path of awakening. That is all. I think we can do it. I think that is all we need to really shift the direction that our planet is taking.

And so I appreciate all of you for walking on this path with me and walking on this path with each other. It is a little scary for me to talk about this topic because it is not something that Buddhists talk about, and I know that some of my Buddhist friends think I'm a little bit crazy for even having any kind of interest in this sort of thing, but all I know is something happened to me six years ago and I knew—even though I didn't know anything about it—I knew there was something significant about 2012, and my conviction in that has not dissipated in all these six years.

But it is not about the end of the world at all. In fact, probably nothing will happen this Friday other than the inner calling within 1% of us will start to blossom, and we will remember why we came to this planet at this time, because we are the ones who need to awaken enough to bless the rest of the world and shift from going this one direction and now going to a different direction. And it is not going to happen overnight. I already know that. It will start a process that will continue on until the year 2020 around there. And it's interesting. I like the year 2020. It is like 2020 vision, and you're getting very, very clear. It is all symbolic. It doesn't stop there either. It will continue on, but I do believe—I have this belief or this hope that by the 22nd century, things will be very different on our planet, much more different than you realize could be possible.

Recently—and this is another thing I don't like to talk about either, because it sounds so wacky, but tonight I am just going to share whatever with you, whatever is going on with me. I had a sense of how it may be possible for this great shift to happen on the planet so rapidly in just one century. How is this possible with the direction that our governments are going and all the lies that people in power are deceiving all of us with, keeping us, you know, distracted?

But there is this inner knowing in me that there are two possibilities. One is that from this point forward, there will be less and less beings being born on the planet who are of a much lower vibration, and only those of the average to higher vibration are going to start being born on the planet. Now if that were to occur within one generation, everything can change. Now I know it sounds wacky, but I am not the only one who has received this information.

And the second thing is that this is the time in human evolution that our psychic abilities will start to blossom en masse around the world. I mean, you've seen it in a few individuals here and there throughout history, but now it is like our global brain is about to go to the next level of connectivity. All of us so far have been like itty-bitty neurons floating around as individuals. Very soon, when we have enough neurons in the global human brain, they will start to synapse together and connect and create the next stage in our evolution where there is much more connectivity going on in humanity. At that point, you can't lie. You can't lie to anyone because everyone will know something is not right when you lie to them, and therefore governments and politicians and very wealthy people in power behind the scenes will no longer be able to lie to all the people of the earth and control everyone, and so that is another way that it may be possible for this spiritual revolution to take place so very rapidly in just one century.

So, 2012 is not about everything is going to be all hunky-dory and the cosmos is just going to do it for us. No. It is going to take time, and it is going to take work. It is going to take all of us walking on the path of love together, but there is dharma rain, and there is support in the cosmos, the enlightened ones. They are here to support us. And I'm realizing to myself, I do sound a little crazy, don't I? But I can't help it. This is what I know in my heart. I am maybe not saying it in the best way. I don't know how to really put it into the right words, but that is what I know in my heart. But it is not something I ask you to believe just because I said it. You don't have to agree with me to practice the dharma.

The dharma transcends all of this stuff, but dharma also calls us to be relevant for our times. We can't just ignore what is going on. We can't just be like Zen people or mindfulness people or just people or meditation practitioners who are just doing our own little thing on a mountaintop, far away from society and completely ignoring what is happening in the world. We can't do that. We have to be relevant, and so I ask you before you dismiss everything I just said, just keep an open mind and see if your individual practice can connect to the planetary practice, because we really need to be connected right now. If all you are concerned about is your own happiness and your own problems and your own suffering, your own issues, please wake up.

And this is really what 12/21/12 is about. It is to wake up from our self orientation and to remember we are part of the whole planet. And this is the awakening. It is not an individual awakening. It is a planetary awakening. So, meditate please on every day, especially on 12/21/12 and on that day, meditate on how connected you are to the planetary practice of awakening as a collective, and then you can see where you are at in your own evolution in comparison. I hope all of you in the room are part of that 1%. I hope that you are not going to retrogress into self orientation only. I hope that you will join all of us in cultivating that bodhicitta heart of compassion and solidarity with all beings on our planet, and I hope that you will help all of us make this revolution smooth and graceful. But it may be a bit of a bumpy ride for the next several years or decade, but I know that all of us will be there for each other.

And in conclusion, I would like to share that a few years ago, my father had a stroke. It was right at the time when I was going to give up on living in Dallas, Texas and go back to California, where I used to live, where I felt so safe to be with people who would not think I was crazy with all these crazy ideas. The neo-hippies in San Francisco, they think this is totally cool stuff, and in conservative Texas, it is kind of weird. I wanted to go back and just feel comfortable, but the universe had other plans for me, and because my father had a stroke, I decided to stay and take care of my father, and then my brother had a baby, and then I decided to stay because I wanted to be there for my niece, and then he had another baby.

So I guess I am staying here in Texas for now, even though part of me wishes I was elsewhere sometimes, but I am always grateful to my father for being a bodhisattva to me. I keep wondering if maybe he made a soul agreement before we were born that this is going to be his way of keeping me in Texas so that I would be here in Dallas for all of you so that the center could be created and we could walk together on the path of love and create joy in our hearts and love in our hearts and peace among many people here as the dharma rain falls upon our heads.

Amitabha.