Presented here are recommendations to assist you in beginning to prepare for the Great Waves of change. Since each person’s life, circumstances and higher purpose are unique, there is no set of recommendations that can speak to every circumstance and need. Yet these recommendations will be important in helping you to focus your activities and in supporting you on your path of preparation. Please note that these are recommendations, not rules. Use them and adapt them to your circumstances. They are given here to assist you in bringing balance, strength and direction to your life.

Preparing Your Outer Life:

~ Conserve energy as much as possible. Reduce your energy consumption by 25–50% or more to help save your community and the world from depletion and ruin.

~ Maintain a supply of food, water and medicine to prepare for difficulties ahead—at least a supply for 90 days. If your living space is limited, store whatever amount of supplies that you can.

~ Build an emergency cash fund, if possible, to sustain you during economic disruptions or job loss. In light of the Great Waves, take a more active role in managing, directing and building your financial resources.

~ Consider the availability of medical services in your area and how they may or may not function in a disaster or in a prolonged emergency. For those with chronic medical conditions, keep an adequate supply of prescription medicine on hand.

~ Consider learning how to grow some of your own food. You can do this on your own or together with others.

~ Own fewer things. Make sure that everything you own really serves you. Travel light and create time for more important things.

~ Consider where you live in light of the Great Waves of change. In your current location, are you able and willing to travel without the use of an automobile? Will you be able to assist others given your current location and circumstances? Will you be ready to help others in times of need, or will you yourself be in jeopardy?

~ Consider your profession, and ask yourself these important questions: Will my line of work be sustainable in the years ahead given the constraints on energy, food and other resources? Is my profession or line of work involved with providing essential goods or servicing real needs, or does it involve products or services that are non-essential and that may not be sustained in the difficult times ahead?

~ Educate others, including your friends, family, neighbors and coworkers, about the Great Waves of change. The more people around you who are aware, the better prepared your community will be.

~ Consider the frail, the elderly and the vulnerable in your local community or neighborhood. Think ahead of how you might be able to help them if that becomes necessary.

~ Support your local merchants, farmers and producers, for they will be significant resources in the future when the ability to transport goods and services will be far more limited than it is today.

~ Learn where your essential resources come from, how you might be able to acquire them if there were interruptions in supply and what you would do if for any reason they became unavailable.

~ Be sensitive and aware of the possibility of natural disasters in your area that could pose hazards to your safety. Have a contingency plan of what you would do in such an extreme event.

~ Inquire into your local town, city or regional government’s plans and preparations, if any, regarding Great Waves scenarios that are likely to emerge in your area. Provide feedback to your representatives and other local officials.

~ Build strong personal relationships that can help you in your preparation. Are those close to you responding to the Great Waves of change, or do you find yourself having to persuade and convince them, often without success?

~ Continue to educate yourself about the Great Waves of change as they unfold in the world. Use caution and discernment when considering the opinions of others and the commentary of experts.

Preparing Your Inner Life:

~ Take quiet time each day to consider the wisdom of your thoughts and actions and to become aware of any insights you have had. Keep a journal of these insights and review them frequently.

~ Adopt a simple meditation practice to relieve stress and to connect to Knowledge, the deeper intelligence within you. The study in Steps to Knowledge provides a pathway for doing this.

~ Have few opinions. Make no opinions about any problem unless you have spent considerable time studying the problem and its many conceived interpretations and solutions. Ask yourself if you are really certain about something or are only guessing.

~ Stop complaining. Do not waste your precious time and energy complaining about something if you are not prepared to take action regarding it. Instead use your time and energy, your thoughts and resources, to prepare yourself, to prepare others and to strengthen your connection to Knowledge.

~ Reassess your goals and plans to see if these are really going to be possible in a radically changing world. Ask yourself, “In a world of diminishing resources, environmental degradation and economic hardship, are my plans and goals practical and viable, given these circumstances?” You will begin to feel the truth about this.

~ Forgive others. Forgive those who seem to err against you and the world. Ask yourself what genuine need they are attempting to express and fulfill by their behavior. Practicing forgiveness will save your emotional energy and keep your mind clear.

~ Honor your parents, and try to understand the circumstances of their lives that determined their decisions and behavior.

~ Forgive yourself. Learn from your own errors, and recognize and use the wisdom that they have provided to you. Knowing your past mistakes and learning from them will help you in facing and navigating the Great Waves of change. If you don’t forgive yourself, you lose self- trust, which you will need to rely upon increasingly in the future. You build self-trust most powerfully by following Knowledge within you.

~ Build and maintain the Four Pillars of your life. Consider that you have Four Pillars that, like the four legs of a table, are upholding your life:

~ The Pillar of Relationships
~ The Pillar of Health
~ The Pillar of Work and Providership
~ The Pillar of Spiritual Development

To be happy, stable and successful, you will need to build and maintain each of these Pillars and not sacrifice one for the others.

~ Do not succumb to fear or believe that you have no power in the face of these great changes, for you have the power of Knowledge within you to guide and protect you if you can follow it. Your experience of Knowledge, or inner knowing, will enable you to set a new direction, evaluate problems clearly and make wise decisions, even if no one else around you is doing this.

~ Build self-confidence. You gain confidence by seeing what is necessary and taking action. You begin by doing small things, everything you can see to do, step by step, to prepare yourself, to prepare your mind, to prepare your circumstances, to prepare your home and to prepare your relationships.

~ Be a catalyst for change, and do not rely upon consensus or agreement from others. Learn to honor the importance of your decisions and how to make these decisions based upon the deeper Knowledge within you. This self-reliance and the strength of Knowledge may well save your life.

~ Assess your relationships. Who has a real destiny with you? Are these the people who are with you now?

~ Learn to follow Knowledge, the deeper spiritual intelligence within you, and to recognize the Great Waves of change that are coming so that you can become informed and prepared in a timely manner. The experience of Knowledge may take the form of an image, a powerful insight or a persistent feeling that does not go away.

~ Have great faith in Knowledge within yourself and within humanity as a whole. Otherwise, the Great Waves will seem overwhelming—too great to consider, too great to prepare for, too great to navigate. And you will simply give up and feel defeated before the real trials begin.

~ Recognize that you are entering a time of great challenge and change in the world and that this challenge and change will make you strong and will call out of you the greater gifts that you have been sent into the world to give. For you have come into the world on a mission, and the reality of that mission is contained within Knowledge, the deeper intelligence within you, waiting to be discovered.

In conclusion, as has been stated many times, the solution to the unfolding planetary issues is, at its core, a spiritual one. Interested readers are encouraged to explore the other books written by MV Summers and published by New Knowledge Library at www.newknowledgelibrary.org.