A New Age for Humanity: Lessons From Two Decades of Contemplative Practice

We are living through a rare and remarkable moment – one that many sense as a civilisational turning.  Some call it the Age of Aquarius; others speak of Integral Stage.

Twenty years of contemplative practice have shaped how I see what’s unfolding.  These paragraphs share what that practice has revealed about purpose, love, and the possibility of collective transformation.

I began my working life as an immigrant – worse, a refugee – and worse still, an Asian refugee on Wall Street, which in the 1970s was the global capital of White Anglo Saxon Protestant capitalism.  To rise in that world, a person of colour had to be sharper, work harder, and – most crushing of all – dismantle their own cultural identity simply to belong.  By the early 2000s, I found myself in a life that outwardly suggested ‘success’.  The global private equity business that I co-founded and co-headed was large and growing.  Even though work kept me away too often, my family life remained stable.  Yet, beneath it all, I felt empty.  Thirty years in banking and finance had left their marks: stress, anger, arrogance and insatiable desire.  I told myself, “this life does not feel alive!”

In my youth, I was a rebel who challenged the status quo and wrote three volumes of poetry dedicated to love and humanity.  I have always been a seeker for meaning and purpose.  Yet, somewhere between Saigon and Wall Street, the poet within me went into exile.  It is time to find him again.

I went on a Vipassana retreat that cracked open a direct experience of my True Self –  dissolving habitual thoughts and reactions, and sparking a spiritual quest that continues to this day.  Since then, I have meditated every day and gone on retreats at least once a year.  I only read spiritual or spirituality-oriented scientific books.  From someone who once longed to be a monk, I have become a person of all faiths and no organised religion – having come to see how institutions bend wisdom into power.  As a philanthropist, I came to see the quiet hypocrisy at the heart of modern giving: a word that once meant love of humanity had drifted into fear and hierarchy.  And from inside the market economy – as someone who once helped run it –  I have come to question its very foundations.  What remains is harder to name:  an ‘agent of change’, a ‘human bridge’ –  propelled by a hunger for truth.

A second awakening happened nearly three years ago, at a gathering in India.  Vulnerable encounter with people living from Love made me understand that love held in the mind is not love, and without love, I am nothing.  Surprisingly, twenty years of inner work had moved little, and the reason was devastating: it was the ego doing all of it – sitting on the meditation cushion, performing ‘philanthropic’ deeds, fluent in the language of awakening while serving itself throughout.  True love doesn’t live in understanding.  It arises in action – in generosity that costs something, in kindness that asks nothing back.  True love requires the ego to fall silent so that something larger than ourselves can finally move through us.

However, this moment of sudden realisation could not have arrived without twenty years of inner preparation – another word for which is purification.  What became clear was that the purification was far from complete.  The reason it lingers is that three decades spent struggling within one of the most toxic industries in our materialistic civilisation leaves deep samskaras – ingrained scars and bad habits – that are slow to dissolve.  It is far easier to learn a good habit than to unlearn a bad one.  So, remember – the sooner you set out on the journey, the better.

Within 24 hours, a second realisation followed: together with kindred spirits in pursuit of Truth, we become everything!  1 + 1 + 1 equals not 3, but infinity when united in love.  Through this unity, we unleash the power of the Soul, both within us and in the universe. 

Our world is unravelling at an accelerating rate.  Humanity faces a triple fracture, with issues reaching alarming  conditions:

The spiritual fracture within the self: We have forgotten our true nature and become disconnected from our Source, leading to stress, isolation and mental health challenges.  Suicide is the leading cause of unnatural death worldwide – about 720,000 annually.  

The societal fracture: Obscene inequity, social fragmentation, and brutal confrontation between groups threaten the fabric of societies.

The ecological fracture: The destruction of the natural world and the climate crisis worsen daily.

Selfishness and greed have reached staggering levels, fueling wars – civil or international – waged for personal gain and breeding indifference to mass suffering.  What was unimaginable a year ago is now routine.  The most widespread mental illness of our time is CDD – Compassion Deficit Disorder.

Yet, I have moved from sorrow and anger to hope – not because the world improved, but because I did.  I am optimistic about humanity’s future for two reasons:  A rise in collective consciousness and the insights of science and technology – astrology, psychology, quantum physics, and AI.

For years, I avoided the Museum of Genocide in Phnom Penh.  When I finally visited last year, I stood face to face with the darkest possibilities of human nature, and felt the old question rise up: how could any benevolent God permit this?  Yet on that same trip, I met young Cambodians who carried a light that most of us spend our whole lives searching for.  And then, I understood – through their suffering, they had found their way to wholeness, and that is the only thing that matters.

The world has grown nastier, yet the past three years have been the happiest of my life.  No month passes without my meeting people who choose light in spite of the dark.  I sense a quiet revolution taking hold – especially among the young – a collective yearning for coherence and a life answerable to something larger than the self.  In finding each other, we become more whole.  In that encounter, the fractured pieces of our world begin to mend.

What many long suspected is now more widely felt: today’s fractures are not accidents – they are the consequence of centuries built on materialism and the lie of separateness.  This recognition brings grief, but also relief.

We are not in decline –  we are in labour.  We are living the pain of a civilisational rebirth.  The speed of the breakdown mirrors the urgency of the call: to grow into our true nature, and toward one another.

Astrology speaks of a coming Age of Aquarius, heralding major shifts: renewed community values alongside greater recognition of diversity and personal freedom, and rapid technological advancement.  Each astrological age lasts about 2,100 years, and the start date of Aquarius is uncertain; some astrologers say it has already begun, while others believe it’s still centuries away.

Developmental psychologists have spent decades mapping the stages of human spiritual growth.  From this work, Ken Wilber observed a striking pattern: Whenever the leading edge of spiritual evolution reaches a critical mass – roughly 10% of the population –  civilisation pivots.  In the late 18th century, the shift from mythical to rational consciousness unleashed universal human rights, representative democracy, the abolition of slavery, and modern science.  In the 1960s, the pluralistic stage arrived, bringing the civil rights movement, second-wave feminism, environmentalism, and the counterculture’s belief that individuals transcend their social roles.  Many serious thinkers now believe the next tipping point – the Integral stage – could arrive by the 2030s.  The signals are already visible: rapid growth in civil society, a growing appreciation for contemplative practice, greater attention to the impact economy, and a global push toward holistic education. 

And then comes AI!  

The Industrial Revolution amplified human muscle – lifting billions of people out of poverty, but also entrenching capitalism and colonialism, and seeding today’s metacrisis.  

The AI Revolution amplifies the human mind.  Soon, AI will outperform humans at most jobs.  For the first time in history, survival will be decoupled from paid employment.  This forces a civilisational choice: maintain the status quo and worsen the polycrisis, or  rewrite the Source Code of society in favour of Life.  We must build economic systems that reward what only humans offer –  creativity, compassion, connectedness, and conductivity (the ability to let the energy of the Universe flow between us).   Otherwise known as love. 

Fortunately, ‘alternative’ communities rooted in compassion – the gift economy, the sacred economy, and their kin – are already taking shape, offering prototypes for a more humane future.  In the short term, AI will deepen inequality and disorder.  But ultimately, it will free us for what matters most – community, care, art, wonder, and spiritual growth.  In that future, abundance replaces scarcity, and wholeness heals fragmentation.

So, how do we prepare ourselves for the new golden age?  How do we come into harmony with the Universe?  As anthroposophist Orland Bishop asks, “Who do I need to be, so you can be what you’re meant to be?” 

The spiritual journey is a descent into the depths of the self – discovering, through direct experience, who we truly are.  From that natural state, we become a living invitation for others to return to theirs – our shared Home.

Sustainable service begins not with fixing the world, but with transforming ourselves.

Transformed people transform people. By raising our consciousness, we uplift ourselves and others.

Whether we see ourselves as human beings on a spiritual journey, or as spiritual beings learning to live as humans, depends on our level of consciousness. Quantum science arrives at the same realisation: waves or particles — how nature reveals itself depends on how we interact with it.

Consciousness research points to something we keep overlooking: scale from the inside out.   Sustainable impact is rooted in inner transformation – the deeper the work, the greater the reach.  Stop chasing breadth. Depth is a dimension of scale.

When we give ourselves to change without reservation, the Universe responds.  Like a murmuration – ten thousand starlings becoming one living sky – genuine community among noble friends brings about a beauty that none could imagine, and none could create alone.

Namaste. “I honour the place in you which is of love, of truth, of light and of peace.  When you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, we are One.”