Excerpt from "The Magical Path"

We have all the tools we need now. The process remains a mystery, but we know how to set it in motion. We’ve already seen remarkable changes in our lives; now it’s time to create some remarkable changes in our world as well. The same magical tools that work to create the life of our dreams are the tools we can use to make the world a far better place when we leave it than when we arrived here.

The process to make major changes in the world is the same process we used to make major changes in our lives: First, we dare to dream of a world that works for all, then we imagine possibilities, and then we make plans and take the first small steps. We affirm the dream with the power of the spoken word, and we realize the dream with the power of the written word and committed action.

Never doubt that a small group

of thoughtful, committed people

can change the world.

Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

— Margaret Mead

There is a rapid route — a direct path — to changing the world for the better. As more of us realize this, change can and will happen quickly.

The Dream

We have to start with a dream. Then we imagine how we can possibly achieve it. We brainstorm, make lists of What Ifs. We discuss different possibilities. Then we make clear goals and make plans to reach those goals. We take the first steps in front of us. And we change the world.

So few people dare to dream of a better world. And yet that’s exactly what is needed on a global basis now: a large number of people (even though, as Margaret Mead reminds us, it can be a remarkably small percentage of the population) who have a vision of a world that works for all, and are doing something to realize that vision.

The most important thing to keep in mind, always, is the dream, the vision:

Keep the dream, the vision, in mind:

It is possible to create a world that works for all,

where all are fed, housed, and educated.

This is the Great Work ahead of us.

The great visionary and pioneer Buckminster Fuller realized this many decades ago. He said back in the 1960s that we now have the technology, the capability, to improve the standard of living of everyone on the planet.

He said we have the tools we need to move everyone up Maslow’s pyramid of human consciousness. As we saw earlier, Maslow looked at humanity as forming a vast pyramid; at each level, we have different needs, and are at a different level of consciousness as a result.

The vast number of people on the bottom of the pyramid need food and shelter. Once these things are attained, you move up the pyramid, and your needs become security and health care and recovery. Once you’ve taken care of these needs, you move up the pyramid into the wonderful, expansive worlds of education.

This is where we learn to do our magic. When you educate people, you give them the tools to reach the top of the pyramid of human consciousness — self-actualization, to use Maslow’s term. Fulfillment of their highest potential. Self-realization. Call it what you will.

Keep this in mind, always:

We have the technology to help everyone on earth

move up the pyramid of human consciousness;

all we lack is enough people using the technology

to help themselves and others.

More and more of us are using whatever technologies and resources are available to make this world a better place. A powerful wave of change is surging over the world — and it is change for good, for the highest good of all, if we keep affirming it.

It is self-evident that a primary purpose of every government on earth is to take care of its people, so that everyone has food, housing, security, and education. It’s obvious that the only way this is achieved is for governments to work in partnership with their people. A great many successful countries know this already. Far too many countries, though, still don’t have a clue.

How do we find solutions to the world’s problems? This is a very good question to ask. Albert Einstein reminds us that the level of thinking that created the problems is incapable of realizing the solutions to the problems. The solutions have to come from a higher level of thinking.

How do we find the solutions? People are discovering solutions in a vast number of ways. For me, the writer and visionary who shows us how to find the solutions we need in the simplest, most effective way — a way I can grasp and use in my life every day — is Riane Eisler.

We looked at her work earlier, in our chapter on creating successful relationships. She sums it all up in her two great books, The Chalice and the Blade and The Power of Partnership: The essence of the problem lies in the model of domination and exploitation that is entrenched throughout the world, built on a need to control, and the solution lies in the model of partnership, built on respect for one another.

That’s the single, simple key to making the dream work:

The single key

to creating a world that works for all

is to work in partnership with everyone.

It’s that simple.

The world’s problems are caused by domination and exploitation, with their underlying fear and need to control. The solutions are to be found by working in partnership, with underlying respect for each other — working together to dream of a world that works for all, to imagine how we can possibly achieve it, how we can work together to create it, taking one small step at a time.

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Marc Allen, author of The Magical Path, is an internationally renowned seminar leader, entrepreneur, author, and composer. He co-founded New World Library (with Shakti Gawain) in 1977 and has guided the company, as president and publisher, from a small start-up to its current position as a major player in the independent publishing world.

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Excerpted from the new book The Magical Path ©2012 by Marc Allen. Published with permission of New World Library http://www.newworldlibrary.com