You run into a lot of despair in this line of work.The more you learn about the mechanisms of power,the more hopeless things seem at first glance.
干这一行你会感到很绝望。你对权力的机制了解得越多，乍一看就越让人绝望。
The political system is totally locked down,with anyone who tries to upend the status quo being aggressively sabotaged by the mass media and their own political party.
政治体制完全被封锁了，任何试图颠覆现状的人都会被大众媒体和他们自己的政党蓄意破坏。
Technology,which futurists have long heralded as the deus ex machina which will liberate humanity from its self-destructive ways,is owned by plutocrats with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo,and is pervasively infiltrated by murderous intelligence agencies from top to bottom.
长期以来，未来主义者一直将技术称为解放人类、使人类摆脱自我毁灭方式的救世主。技术为财阀所有，他们有维持现状的既得利益，而且普遍被凶残的情报机构从上到下渗透。
Even attempts to circulate information about the dangers of war,ecocide and oligarchy are consistently sabotaged by internet censorship,blanket de-platforming and mass media propaganda,and even imprisonment if one's truth-telling becomes too successful.
即使是试图传播关于战争、生态灭绝和寡头政治危险的信息，也一直遭到互联网审查、全面去平衡化和大众媒体宣传的破坏，甚至在讲述真相太成功的情况下遭到监禁。
Still,I remain unwaveringly hopeful.Not because I foresee any of those massive obstacles vanishing at any time in the near future,but because I see an escape route that none of them are blocking.
尽管如此，我仍然坚定地抱有希望。并不是因为我预见到那些巨大的障碍会在不久的将来消失，而是因为我看到了一条没有障碍的逃生路线。
I have had a great many bizarre and utterly unanticipated experiences,some of them ongoing,which assure me beyond a shadow of a doubt that humanity is capable of far,far more than our consensus worldview about ourselves accounts for.
我有过许多奇怪的、完全出乎意料的经历，其中一些还在继续，这让我毫无疑问地确信，人类的能力远远超过我们对自己的共识世界观所能解释的。
Most of those experiences I will probably never share publicly,because,while I often venture well off the beaten path in my commentary,if I discussed those experiences people will think I'm way more insane than they already believe me to be.
大多数这些经历我可能永远不会公开分享，因为，虽然我经常在我的评论中冒险走一条不走寻常路，但如果我讨论这些经历，人们会认为我比他们已经相信的要疯狂得多。
But I don't mind sharing here that I know from my own experience that humans are capable of radically and permanently shifting into a much healthier and efficacious relationship with mental narrative,which happens to be the mechanism by which existing power structures keep us locked down.
但我不介意在这里分享，我从自己的经验知道，人类能够从根本上和永久地转变到一个更健康和有效的心理叙事的关系，这恰好是现有的权力结构使我们被锁定的机制。
But so what,right?Just because an individual is capable of exiting the fearful egoic state of consciousness which propagandists and social engineers exploit to manipulate us into consenting to the status quo doesn't mean that everybody is.
但那又怎样，对吧？仅仅因为一个人能够摆脱被宣传者和社会工程师利用来操纵我们接受现状的可怕的自我意识状态，并不意味着每个人都是如此。
People have been writing about spiritual enlightenment for millennia,and still we remain collectively asleep.Believing that such a shift is possible on a mass scale is childish and absurd.Right?
几千年来，人们一直在写有关精神启蒙的文章，而我们仍然全体沉睡着。相信这种转变在大规模上是可能的，是幼稚和荒谬的。对吧？
Well,maybe.That objection certainly makes sense from the perspective of our consensus worldview about what humans are capable of.Except people who've been coaching others into this shift for a long time say in no uncertain terms that it's becoming more and more common.
也许吧。从我们对人类能力的共识世界观的角度来看，这种反对当然是有道理的。除了那些长期指导他人进行这种转变的人，他们毫不含糊地说，这种转变正变得越来越普遍。
"For the first time there is a large scale awakening on our planet,"spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle said in an interview last year.
精神导师埃克哈特·托勒在去年的一次采访中说:"我们的星球上第一次出现了大规模的觉醒。
"Why now?Because if there is no change in human consciousness now,we will destroy ourselves and perhaps the planet.The insanity of the collective egoic mind,amplified by science and technology,is rapidly taking our species to the brink of disaster.
"为什么是现在？因为如果现在人类的意识没有改变，我们将毁灭我们自己，甚至毁灭这个星球。集体利己主义思想的疯狂，被科学和技术放大，正迅速将我们人类带到灾难的边缘。
"Evolve or die:that is our only choice now.Without considering the Eastern world,my estimate is that at this time about ten percent of people in North America are already awakening.That makes thirty million Americans alone,and in addition to those people in other North American countries,about ten percent of the population of Western European countries are also awakening.
"要么进化，要么死亡:这是我们现在唯一的选择。如果不考虑东方世界，我估计此时北美大约百分之十的人已经觉醒了。这使得仅美国就有3000万人，除了其他北美国家的人口，大约10%的西欧国家的人口也正在觉醒。
"This is probably enough of a critical mass to bring about a new earth.So the transformation of consciousness is truly happening even though they won't be reporting it on tonight's news.Is it happening fast enough?I am hopeful about humanity's future,much more so now than when I wrote The Power of Now.In fact that is why I wrote that book.I really wasn't sure that humanity was going to survive.Now I feel differently.I see many reasons to be hopeful."
"这可能足以形成一个新的地球。所以意识的转变是真实发生的，即使他们不会在今晚的新闻中报道。这一切发生得够快吗？我对人类的未来充满希望，比我写《当下的力量》时更加充满希望。事实上，这就是我写这本书的原因。我真的不确定人类能否生存下去。现在我感觉不一样了。我有很多理由抱有希望。"
Tolle is easily the best-known teacher on the subject of enlightenment in the western world,and he's been doing it for decades.There's not much research available on this topic,but if anyone in the west has interacted with enough people and gathered enough experience to make such a declaration,it would be him.
托尔无疑是西方世界在启蒙主题上最著名的老师，而且他已经从事这项工作几十年了。关于这个话题的研究并不多，但如果西方有人与足够多的人进行过交流并积累了足够的经验来做出这样的宣言，那么这个人就是他。
But what if he's wrong?Well again,maybe.But he's not alone in this perspective.
但如果他错了呢？再说一次，也许吧。但他并不是唯一一个这样认为的人。
"There's a phenomenon happening in the world today.More and more people are waking up—having real,authentic glimpses of reality,"writes Adyashanti,another longtime popular awakening coach.
"当今世界正在发生一种现象。越来越多的人正在醒来ー拥有真实的、真实的现实的一瞥，"另一位长期受欢迎的觉醒教练阿德亚山蒂写道。
"In the beginning of my teaching work,most of the people who came to me were seeking these deeper realizations of spirituality.They were seeking to wake up from the limiting and isolated senses of self they had imagined themselves to be.
"在我教学工作的开始，大多数来找我的人都在寻求更深层次的灵性实现。他们试图从他们想象中的自我的限制和孤立感觉中醒来。
"It's this yearning that underpins all spiritual seeking:to discover for ourselves what we already intuit to be true—that there is more to life than we are currently perceiving.But as time has passed,more and more people are coming to me who have already had glimpses of this greater reality."
"正是这种渴望支撑着所有的精神追求:为自己发现我们已经凭直觉认为是真实的东西ーー生命中有比我们现在感知到的更多的东西。但随着时间的推移，越来越多的人来找我，他们已经瞥见了这个更大的现实。"
Adyashanti gets a bit more specific than Tolle,saying that it's non-abiding"glimpse"-type awakenings in particular that are growing more common,which often happen spontaneously without having been sought out.
Adyashanti比Tolle说得更具体一些，他说这是一种非持久的"瞥见"式的觉醒，特别是越来越常见的觉醒，这种觉醒经常是自发发生的，没有人去寻找。
"This glimpse of awakening,which I call non-abiding awakening,is becoming more and more common,"he writes.
他写道:"这种我称之为非持久性觉醒的惊鸿一瞥，正变得越来越普遍。"。
"It happens for a moment,an afternoon,a day,a week—maybe as long as a month or two.Awareness opens up,the sense of the separate self falls away—and then,like the aperture on a camera lens,awareness closes back down."
"它发生在一瞬间，一个下午，一天，一个星期——也许长达一两个月。意识打开了，分离自我的感觉消失了ーー然后，就像镜头上的光圈一样，意识又关闭了。"
Jac O'Keeffe,another awakening coach who's been teaching for some time,has more to add on the subject.She said in a 2015 interview that the awakening process,which used to be a difficult and much more physiologically grueling ordeal for humans,is coming to us more easily not just as a process,but in terms of how physically taxing it is as well.
另一位觉醒教练杰克·欧基夫已经教授了一段时间，他对这个主题有更多的补充。她在2015年的一次采访中说，对于人类来说，觉醒过程曾经是一个困难的、生理上更折磨人的严酷考验，现在对我们来说，觉醒过程不仅仅是一个过程，而且更容易体力消耗。
"We live in an interesting time,and whether it's a leap in the evolution of consciousness,or whether it's because of the industrial age and the quickening that has come about in how we function as human beings;whether it's unusual,or whether it's a part of the pattern,I'm not sure,"O'Keeffe said.
"我们生活在一个有趣的时代，这是意识进化的一次飞跃，还是因为工业时代和我们作为人类行为方式的加速;这是否不同寻常，或者这是否是模式的一部分，我不确定，"欧基夫说。
"However,what's happening right now is that there's a mutation happening because we're not changing fast enough for the changing mechanisms that we have created in the world.And so the shift in consciousness that's happening now,it's phenomenally more rapid than how it used to be.Things are not as concrete and as solid,not as difficult to shift in folk's perception as it used to be.That's for sure,for sure."
"然而，现在正在发生的是一种突变正在发生，因为我们的变化速度不够快，无法适应我们在世界上创造的变化机制。所以现在正在发生的意识转变，比过去更加迅速。事物不再像过去那样具体和坚实，不再像过去那样难以改变人们对事物的看法。这是肯定的，肯定的。"
"The mechanism of which through this is seen also,there seems to be less of a trauma or a dramatic shift,"O'Keeffe added.
O'keeffe补充说:"通过这种机制也可以看出，似乎没有什么创伤或戏剧性的转变。"。
"Spiritual shifts used to be really difficult on the body,really difficult on every level—they're not now.And what is that?How come?It's like our whole cellular structures are more susceptible to transformation,to the embodiment of a higher frequency,a higher vibration.
"过去，精神上的转变对身体来说非常困难，在每个层面上都非常困难ーー现在不是了。那是什么？为什么？就好像我们的整个细胞结构更容易被转化，成为一个更高频率，更高振动的化身。
"And you know,while we have more toxicity,we also have more availability of hearing what's beyond all of it,of information,of new influences,of education,you know?We're learning how to use the mind at last.And so this is bringing about a quickening in the evolution of consciousness."
"你知道，虽然我们有更多的毒性，但我们也有更多的机会听到超越一切的东西，信息，新的影响，教育，你知道吗？我们终于学会了如何运用头脑。这就导致了意识进化的加速。"
Dr Jeffery A Martin,who has been gathering data on awakened individuals for the Center for the Study of Non-Symbolic Consciousness,told me via email that:
杰弗里·a·马丁博士一直在为非象征意识研究中心收集觉醒者的数据，他通过电子邮件告诉我:
"We see an uptick in our data that starts about 1996.By this I mean the number of people saying they transitioned after that time versus before.However it is important to note that we have a snowball sample,not a full population sample,so that could be a bias in our data,"Martin added.
"从1996年开始，我们的数据呈上升趋势。我说的这个数字是指那个时间之后和之前的人数。然而，值得注意的是，我们有一个雪球样本，而不是一个完整的人口样本，所以这可能是我们的数据中的一个偏差，"马丁补充说。
"If it is not,the only correlate we've been able to think of is that the Internet was reaching a level of connectivity and information sharing maturity starting about this time.So practices that were formerly secret or soloed were starting to become more available,and one of our key findings is that the best way to make progress is to find your fit from a practice standpoint."
"如果不是，那么我们能想到的唯一相关因素就是互联网从这个时候开始达到了连接和信息共享的成熟水平。因此，以前秘密或独奏的练习开始变得更加可行，我们的一个关键发现是，取得进展的最佳方式是从练习的角度找到你的适合。"
"I'm reasonably confident that significantly more people are coming to see True Nature than any other time in human history,"said awakening coach Fred Davis when I asked him for comment on the subject via email,adding,"I do think there are more clear beings on the planet than there were even ten years ago."
"我有理由相信，比起人类历史上的任何时期，来看《真实自然》的人要多得多，"觉醒教练弗雷德·戴维斯(FredDavis)在我通过电子邮件询问他对这个话题的看法时说。他还说，"我确实认为，这个星球上的清晰生命比十年前还要多。"
Now obviously awakenings becoming more common than they used to be wouldn't by itself mean much;humanity overall remains deeply unconscious and we appear to be bound for either extinction or Orwellian dystopia if we continue on our current trajectory at its current rate.
现在很明显，觉醒变得比以前更加普遍，这本身并不意味着什么;人类整体上仍然处于深深的无意识状态，如果我们继续按照现在的轨道发展下去，我们似乎注定要么灭绝，要么奥威尔式的反乌托邦。
But the fact that this phenomenon seems to be getting more common and more easy in various ways indicates that something is up.Something entirely unanticipated,from way out of left field which neither the revolutionaries nor the propagandists have foreseen.
但事实上，这种现象似乎变得越来越普遍，越来越容易在各种方式表明，一些事情是向上的。一些完全出乎意料的事情，出乎革命者和宣传者的意料之外。
But why would we be experiencing a sudden shift in consciousness?Darwinian evolutiondoesn't explain it,since if this phenomenon is real it's moving far too quickly and without natural selection eliminating the unenlightened from the gene pool at any noticeable rate.
但是为什么我们会经历意识的突然转变呢？达尔文进化论并没有解释这一现象，因为如果这一现象是真实的，那么它的发展速度就太快了，而且自然选择也没有以任何显著的速度消除基因库中的落后者。
Well,maybe as O'Keeffe suggested it's got something to do with the industrial age and how it's changed the way we function as a species,or as Martin theorized is due to the increased availability of spiritual teachings online.
也许正如O'Keeffe所说，这与工业时代以及它如何改变了我们作为一个物种的行为方式有关。
We now after all have over 4.5 billion human brains connected to each other by the internet with well over half our world's population now online,which by itself is per definition a shift in human consciousness without adding any fancy stuff about spiritual enlightenment.It's hard to imagine such a drastic change not having a significant impact on the way our minds operate collectively.So that could be part of it.
毕竟，我们现在有超过45亿人的大脑通过互联网相互连接，世界上超过一半的人口现在在线，这本身就是人类意识的转变，没有添加任何关于精神启蒙的花哨的东西。很难想象如此剧烈的变化不会对我们思维的集体运作方式产生重大影响。所以这可能是其中的一部分。
It could also have something to do with the fact that,as Adyashanti once suggested in an interview,we're all aware on some level that we're at a point of crisis where we'll either change or go extinct.
这也可能与这样一个事实有关，正如Adyashanti在一次采访中提到的，我们都在某种程度上意识到我们正处于一个危机点，我们要么会改变，要么会灭绝。
"Crises are often the catalyst for change,"he said.
"危机往往是变革的催化剂，"他表示。
"And I think as humanity is in general we can all start to agree,I hope we're starting to agree,that we're coming to a place of crisis.That…we're coming into contact,not just with our own personal mortality,but our mortality as a species.That we as a species may not survive.And that can provide,just like individual mortality,[that]can lead to a change of consciousness because we realize time's run out.
"我认为，作为人类的总体，我们可以开始达成一致，我希望我们开始达成一致，我们正处于危机之中。这......我们正在接触，不仅是我们自己的死亡率，而是我们作为一个物种的死亡率。我们作为一个物种可能无法生存。这就像个体的死亡一样，可以引起意识的改变，因为我们意识到时间已经不多了。
"There is no more time.So in that'no more time'sometimes consciousness can shift.And as humanity I think we're rapidly approaching that same kind of imperative.Time is running out and so quite naturally there is tremendous pressure on humanity and on humanity's consciousness right now.
"没有时间了。因此，在"没有更多时间"的情况下，有时意识可以转变。作为人类，我认为我们正在迅速接近同样的命令。时间正在流逝，所以很自然地，现在人类和人类的意识面临着巨大的压力。
"We all feel it,right?This tremendous pressure to evolve,to awaken,because somehow intuitively everyone knows that if there's not some rather dramatic shift in consciousness then this opportunity will be missed."
"我们都能感觉到，对吧？这种进化和觉醒的巨大压力，因为不知怎么的，每个人都直觉地知道，如果意识没有一些相当戏剧性的转变，那么这个机会就会错过。"
Another potential explanation for our apparent"quickening"is the possibility that we're all a lot more interconnected than we assume we are.Some strange and unexpected anomalies in scientific studies have poked a few uncomfortable holes in the consensus worldview about organisms existing as wholly independent individuals on this earth,which opens up the possibility that one person's awakening could in some ways inform the level of consciousness of the whole of humanity.
对于我们表面上的"快速增长"，另一个潜在的解释是，我们所有人之间的联系可能比我们想象的要更加紧密。科学研究中的一些奇怪和意想不到的异常现象，在人们一致认为的世界观中戳出了一些令人不安的漏洞，这些漏洞使得一个人的觉醒有可能在某种程度上影响整个人类的意识水平。
Scientist Rupert Sheldrake has been documenting the curious way animals sometimes appear capable of picking up new skills in ways that learning and genetics don't seem to account for,like the strange case of laboratory rats around the world suddenly getting better at navigating water mazes from generation to generation following a water maze study in the 1920s by psychologist William McDougall.
科学家RupertSheldrake一直在记录一种奇怪的方式，动物有时似乎能够以学习和遗传学似乎无法解释的方式获得新的技能，比如世界各地的实验室小白鼠突然间在一代又一代的水迷宫中越来越好地航行，这种奇怪的情况是在20世纪20年代由心理学家威廉·麦独孤·马丁进行的水迷宫研究。
Sheldrake's theories are often rejected by mainstream scientists with an extreme emotionality which reveals an egoic fixation on dogma rather than scientific objectivity,but if you're curious about his ideas he had an interesting appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience a few years ago which outlines his thinking more clearly than any other video I've found.
舍尔爵克的理论经常被主流科学家拒绝，他的极端情绪性揭示了一种对教条的自我执着，而不是科学的客观性，但如果你对他的想法感到好奇，几年前他在乔·罗根的经历中有一次有趣的露面，比我发现的任何其他视频都更清楚地概述了他的想法。
If this is true,if humans are interconnected in such a way that one person's awakening could be informing the rest of the species,then this could indicate that we are on track for a exponential awakening event of the kind that could transform us as a species overnight.
如果这是真的，如果人类以这样一种方式相互联系，一个人的觉醒可以告知其他物种，那么这可能表明，我们正在走向一个指数式的觉醒事件，这种事件可以在一夜之间改变我们作为一个物种。
When futurist Roy Amara said"We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run,"he wasn't really making a statement about technology,he was making a statement about human cognition.
当未来学家罗伊·阿马拉说:"我们往往在短期内高估一项技术的影响，而在长期内低估它的影响。"他并不是真的在对技术发表声明，他是在对人类认知发表声明。
We're pattern-seeking creatures whose minds tend to think in linear terms within the near future,a tendency which served us well in our evolutionary history when trying to predict when it's safe to reproduce and where the mammoths will be,but which is absolutely useless in predicting large-scale movements which may be nonlinear.
我们是寻找模式的生物，我们的思维倾向于在不久的将来以线性方式思考，这种趋势在我们的进化历史中很好地服务于我们，当我们试图预测什么时候可以安全繁殖，猛犸象会在哪里，但是这在预测可能是非线性的大规模运动中是绝对无用的。
It's possible that the only reason the predictions the hippies were making about the"great awakening"that started in the sixties was solely because of this cognitive bias Amara spoke of.Perhaps we overestimated the short-term effects of that shift and underestimated its ongoing effects in the long term.
也许嬉皮士们对于60年代开始的"伟大觉醒"的预言，仅仅是因为Amara所说的认知偏见。也许我们高估了这种转变的短期影响，低估了其长期持续影响。
I personally don't know quite what to make of any of this,which could end up being a good thing.If our future depends on us finding a way out of this ecocidal,omnicidal status quo that the propagandists and manipulators can't anticipate and slam the door on,it's going to have to come from an unexpected and mysterious direction.
我个人不知道该如何理解这一切，这最终可能是一件好事。如果我们的未来取决于我们能否找到一条摆脱这种宣传者和操纵者无法预料和关上大门的生态、全方位的现状的道路，那么它将不得不来自一个意想不到和神秘的方向。
Something does appear to be stirring deep within our species,and for me that's enough reason to hold out hope and keep pushing for real change.
在我们这个物种的内心深处，确实有某种东西在激荡，对我来说，这就足以让我抱有希望，继续推动真正的改变。
Maybe this shift isn't what it appears to be from my point of view,and even if it is that doesn't mean it will necessarily start happening quickly enough,but it's enough to take a stand on.I believe we'll either transcend our old self-destructive patterns or perish,so we might as well say"Damn the torpedoes"and sprint toward that transcendence at full speed.
也许这种转变并不是我所认为的那样，即使是这样，也不意味着它必然会以足够快的速度开始发生，但它足以表明立场。我相信，我们要么会超越旧有的自我毁灭模式，要么就会灭亡，所以我们不妨说一句"去他妈的鱼雷"，然后全速冲向那种超越。
By Caitlin Johnstone,Guest writer
作者:凯特琳·约翰斯通，客座作家
来源：http://humansarefree.com/2019/09/about-10-of-westerners-are-spiritually.html
