The Shift is Happening Now by Wynn Free & Gregg BradenThere are many quantifiable scientific indicators proving that the Earth and the Solar System are going through changes which have never previously occurred in recorded human history. Many psychics and channelers say that we have entered the beginning of a dimensional shift which is already deeply affecting all of our lives. And some predict that within the next decade we will enter into an Ascension process fulfilling the prophecies of Jesus.Gregg Braden is probably the most recognized person who is evaluating and revealing the scientific phenomena pointing to this shift. He became intrigued with all this when he was working for Phillips Petroleum in the late 1970s and noticed that the magnetics of the earth were at their lowest point in 2000 years and decreasing at a rapid rate.Eventually, Braden wrote a book � Awakening to Zero Point � that documented this and other indicators of our rapidly changing planet.Wynn: Is it true that the magnetic poles of the earth are in the process of shifting right now?Gregg: In May-June-July of 2002, it was very well acknowledged and esteemed scientific journals actually were saying for the first time that we are in the process of a polar reversal.Back in the 1960s, geologists were certain that the earth periodically went through a reversal. They could tell from core samples, ice samples, and fossils, as well as magnetized particles that were locked into certain positions in the rock of the earth. Geologists were so certain about this phenomenon that they actually mapped out the last four-and-a-half-million years, and the resulting records suggested that the earth has gone through fourteen of these polar reversals.At that time, back in 1961 and 1962, scientists felt that the last pole reversal occurred at about the time of the last Ice Age, ten to twelve thousand years ago. And they were certain it would happen again, but not for thousands of years, so it was nothing to worry about.But through the 1990s, geologists continued to refine this kind of information. They had been saying it took thousands of years for this to happen. Then they began to say, "Well, it can happen in hundreds of years." But now, recent evidence from some of the ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica say that it could happen in as little as a decade.But now, we know that the poles are actually moving. We're living it right now. We don't know exactly what that means, because even though it's happened fourteen times in the last four and a half million years, it's never happened with six billion people on the earth.Wynn: Are you saying that it's common knowledge?Gregg: It's common knowledge to people that need to know these things. For example, FAA regulations say that when the poles move beyond five or eight degrees, the runways at the airports have to be renumbered to correlate with the magnetic headings that the pilots are seeing. The first airport in the United States to comply with this mandate was Minneapolis/St. Paul, where they spent something on the order of eighty-five thousand dollars to go through and renumber the runway headings.But what happened in the May-June-July time frame of 2002 is that journals such as Nature, Science, Scientific American, and New Scientist released reports saying that we are definitely in the process of a magnetic reversal, and the AP wires picked it up.Scientists have no idea what the impact is going to be to electronic and electromagnetic power grids. But even more, they don't know what it means to human immune systems. Alternative healing modalities have shown a connection between magnetics and the immune system, which also would imply that our immune systems could very well be keyed into the magnetic fields of the earth.We know that birds and animals migrate along the lines of these magnetic fields. So there is speculation that the changes taking place in the magnetic field are responsible for the changing migratory patterns in birds that have been recorded in Asia and North America.The change in the fields also may explain why whales are beaching themselves. The lines of navigation that the whales have always followed have shifted and now lead them onto a beach. When we take them back out into the water and set them free, they continue to align themselves with the same magnetic lines, and in following them, they end up on the beach again.So, yes, it's common knowledge now. The most respected scientific journals say that we're in this shift. And even though we don't know precisely what that means, it's significant that it is being acknowledged in peer-review kinds of literature, and not just in speculative or pseudo-scientific magazines.Wynn: When was this magnetic shift first acknowledged?Gregg: It would have been in the June/July time frame of 2002. People were sending me emails that they had seen it, and giving me references. I also found references in the magazines myself.Wynn: Would we survive a complete pole shift?Gregg: Any answer to that question must of necessity lie within the realm of speculation, because in traditional recorded human history it's never happened. On the other hand, there are Native traditions and ancient Hebrew biblical traditions suggesting that a magnetic shift may have happened even more recently than the last Ice Age. That was 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, but these traditions suggest that the last shift may have happened as recently as 3,600 years ago.Native legends speak of a day 3,600 years ago when the sun rose from the west as it had always done, hovered in the sky for more than a full day, and set in the east � but the next day, it rose in the east and set in the west, as it does today. Hebrew traditions speak of this event, also, saying that it happened during a battle. The ancient Hebrews took it as a sign that one side was receiving celestial assistance, because it stayed light long enough for the battle to complete in their favor.We can't verify this in the rock or fossil records, because 3,600 years is too short a period of time for such an event to be reflected there. All we have to go by are traditions, legends, and myths preserved in oral and written documents.What the trandition tells us, however, is that if something like this were to happen, the people of the earth would live through it. It would have to be a really strange day to live through, but if the ancient legends are true, it happened and the people apparently survived. However, we don't know how it affected their lives.Wynn: Do you have any idea how this magnetic shift might change consciousness?Gregg: The speculation is that there is a correlation between consciousness and magnetics. In order to understand how this connection might work, it is useful to compare it to a computor's memory. The magnetic fields in the memory are held in place through an electrical charge � a trickle charge � within the computer itself. When the batteries in the computer die, the charge is gone, and the memory is lost. We have to reload the operating system.Similarly, by researchers and descendents of indigenous peoples believe that when the earth goes through what science sees as a magnetic reversal, it also will be a great shift and cleansing of the earth's consciousness. There will be nothing holding all the magnetic patterns that have been put in place. So when we awaken from this shift, what becomes consciousness will be our truest nature, our truest essence. And the memory of all of the evil or all the bad things or all of the grudges or the ego and we've held against one another as individuals and nations will not be part of that new consciousness, that new grid.From that perspective, many traditions predict, sense, or speculate that we are nearing a time of what they call the Great Cleansing, and that this cleansing is happening at a level of core memory of consciousness.Wynn: So is it possible to assume that in some way, our memory is connected to this magnetic field?Gregg: I think so. I think that because of the strange accounts of the astronauts who left earth and went into space during the Apollo Program. In leaving the earth's atmosphere and circling the planet many miles above the surface, the affects of earth's magnetics were negligible. And the astronauts began to have experiences that they were not prepared or trained for, that were totally unanticipated.When they were in space and looked back to earth, they began having insights and feelings, awakenings and awarenesses that they had never had when they were on the earth. It meant something different to each one of them.In much the same way, friends of mine who went to Viet Nam were all changed when they came home. It changed everyone. For some, the change was so painful that they could never speak about it, and for others, the change was a catalyst in their lives and they spoke of it incessantly.And I believe there was actually a PBS special that documented this same phenomenon with the astronauts, that they were never the same afterward. When they came back, there were some who didn't know what to do with their outer space experience. Some turned to drugs and alcohol. Others channeled the change that occurred within them in very positive, life-affirming projects.One of this latter group was Dr. Edgar Mitchell, who founded the Noetic Sciences Organization in an effort to validate the phenomenon of human consciousness. Another astronaut undertook the search for Noah's Ark, and actually found it embedded in the ice on Mt. Ararat, right where the Bible said it would be.[1]Wynn: So the implication here is that these astronauts, because they left the magnetic field of the earth, had some kind of spiritual awakening?Gregg: They certainly went through a catharsis when they were no longer in the influence of the earth's magnetic field.We also see something similar happening when we look at the magnetic fields of the earth. They are not constant over the surface of the earth, and contour maps, available through United States Geologic Survey, show the varying intensities of magnetic fields over the surface of the earth � where magnetic fields have a very high intensity and where the intensity if very low.Those fields have shifted over time, and may actually account for why populations of humans have migrated to the places they've migrated to. They might have been following these magnetic contours.What happens is that in the places where the magnetics are very low, where their effects are negligible, tremendous change and innovation appear to occur. Where the magnetics are traditionally high, those are the places of stagnation where changes, although they do happen, take a long time and change is very slow in coming.If I were coming here from another world and didn't know anything about the people of the earth, and if I were looking for a place where the opportunity of change was the greatest, I would look for the zero contour lines. And if you look at a map of the magnetics on earth today, what you find is that there is a zero contour line that runs along the West Coast of North America � along the California coast and on up off the coast of Alaska. In other words, the magnetics along the West Coast are almost nil!When we think of the West Coast, we think about wacky California. Well, the truth is California is a seed, one of several, and it's traditionally been very innovative in technology, science, fashion, finance, and the arts, because there is an opportunity for tremendous change there.Within North American, the flip side of that would be an area of highest magnetics, where the magnetic fields are the most dense. And you find this down through some of the Southeastern states � the very states that are traditionally viewed as being conservative. This doesn't mean that change can't happen there. What is says, however, is that change takes a long time there, and people have to see a really good reason before they are going to budge from what they've always done.Wynn: So where the magnetic field is less dense, people are more open to the moment?Gregg: They're open to change, period. It doesn't mean that the change is good, bad, right, or wrong. It's important to be clear about this. The consciousness of the people will determine how that change comes about.I'll give an ironic example. There is a zero contour line that runs right through the Middle East. It actually runs almost directly underneath the area we call the Suez Canal, right up into Israel, right along the coast of the Red Sea. Yes, right in that area is a zero contour line. This means that area is ripe for change. But again, how that change comes about � whether it's peaceful and constructive or angry and destructive � is determined by the consciousness of the people who live there.Wynn: So it's not good or bad either way?Gregg: Precisely. It simply is an opportunity for change. At the same time, the highest magnetic contour lines noted anywhere on the planet earth have traditionally been in portions of the former Soviet Union, Russia, and Siberia. We know that in that part of the world, there was a system that was in place, and while change came about, it was slow and painful, a long time coming, with a lot of suffering. But when that change happened, there was a cascade effect, and it happened almost overnight.So the correlations are very interesting between human consciousness, the opportunities for innovation, change, doing things in a new way, and the magnetics of our world.The Earth has many areas of high and low change.Wynn: Our readers are going to want to know how they can best face the changes that are coming in our world as a whole.Gregg: I'll be as concise as I can. I think that the answer to that is perhaps encapsulated best in the words of those who have come before us, the ancient Essenes, in a text that's more than 2,500 years old. It reminds us of our relationship to the world around us, and says simply that the world around us is nothing more and nothing less than a mirror of what we have become from within.So when we see a world that appears angry, cruel, and thoughtless, that produces suffering for our brothers and sisters all over the world � from this perspective, that world is a mirror of what we have become as individuals, families, societies, and nations. It's not right, wrong, good or bad. It's simply a reflection of who we are. The condition of the planet is a feedback mechanism.So if we want to see change in our world, we must become that change in our every day lives. If we want to see peace, tolerant understanding, compassion, and forgiveness at the global level, we must become that. At the dinner table. With our families. We must become that with our schools.We must demand that we be entertained through peace, compassion, and understanding. It doesn't have to be dull and boring. It can still be very exciting, but it does not have to be ruthless, thoughtless, cruel, or heartless.So in our daily lives, every moment of every day, we make a choice that either affirms or denies life in our bodies. Because we are linked through this grid. Our individual choices all pool into the collective answer to our future.If we'd like to see a collective change, we must individually become that change.Wynn: We have this date of 2012 that many people are saying is this time of global shift or Ascension. What do you think is going to happen?Gregg The date 2012 is interesting because it comes up in Mayan traditions, Egyptian traditions, some of the Christian traditions, and even in the Bible Code � which is very controversial unto itself.My sense is this date could be any date. If we focus on a date and live our lives preparing for a change on that date, we miss life. From my perspective, if we simply live each day of our lives to its fullest, we reconcile the experiences that cross our paths each day, we reconcile the opportunity to honor life, to honor our relationships with one another.If we are honest, truthful, considerate, caring and compassionate, if we live this each day, we have already prepared for whatever could possibly come on 2012 or any other day, any other year, any time in our future.I know people who are living their lives hoarding boxcars full of food and ammunition, preparing for the day when our world changes. I understand, and I think it's good to be self sufficient. I understand what they are saying. But also what I've seen is that so much of their lives is dedicated to preparing for that day, they've missed the beauty and the mystery of life that unfolds in every day. And it's in perceiving this beauty and mystery that we prepare for the greatest challenges!Wynn: So basically, if one wants to approach this change with the maximum positive outcome for themselves, the key is to live each day with the maximum output of love, compassion, and caring?Gregg: Yes, and to do this, we have to live each day consciously. Be aware of the opportunities. Recognize the opportunities that cross our paths. Every day, we're given the opportunity to be tolerant of another belief system, to forgive someone who has hurt or angered us, to reconcile our own judgments about what should or should not be in our world.If we can reconcile these things as they cross our paths and consciously deal with them in the moment, then we know we're changing the chemistry of our bodies by changing the way we feel, and are thus preparing ourselves for whatever transitions the earth is going to go through.If that makes sense.Wynn: Yes, it does to me. Is there anything really important to close with for our readers that I might have missed?Gregg: For the first time in our history, the fate of our species, our entire species, rests upon the choices of a single generation. And what we've just done is talked about what some of those choices are all about.Footnotes:You can see photographs of a ship buried in the ice, right on top of the mountain. The government in Turkey is now refusing to let anyone excavate because of all the religious implications.