The human species is threatening itself and Earth, its home, with destruction. With our sheer numbers, our garbage and our toxic way of living, and our weaponry and political instability, we have put our own survival in doubt. Our civilization is failing under the stresses we ourselves have brought to bear. It seems some kind of retrenchment must occur, some culling of our population, some retreat to a less exploitative relation with what sustains us. Whether that step back will come in climactic violence, as in nuclear war, or in the relentless grinding of environmental degradation, we cannot say.

Now is the time to plant a new civilization, one oriented not merely to survival but to a different human purpose. The acts of human beings derive from their level of consciousness. When our behavior is reflexive and unpiloted, we are functioning at a low level of conscious awareness. When our behavior is crude, selfish, merciless or unmindful, we have allowed the lower elements of our nature to usurp our better consciousness. The first principle of a new civilization must be that that which makes us more conscious is good and that which makes us less conscious is destructive.

The definitive element of our best consciousness is a high state of Presence. Presence is not in time; it is a fundamentally different phenomenon from the past and future our minds create. It is not reason or belief. It is the awareness of pure being and thus a portal out of time and mortality. To act from the Present fosters love; only in the Present is the unity of conscious awareness revealed.

We must value and build on that which engenders and sustains our highest consciousness. This collection of poems is dedicated to a new civilization of Presence.