A Letter to My South African Friends

Leslie Temple-Thurston, March 2008

While this time of great global and human transformation promises humanity many opportunities to ascend, it also invites the option of another fall—a descent. For those less conscious, and less than honest and impeccable, a fall can be very tempting right now. What I mean here is that people are being offered many opportunities to be corrupt and are taking them. While it may appear to them that this is a time when one can get away with corruption, the energy of the times has a hidden component. For those with eyes to see, this hidden component shows us that humanity is being rigorously tested, and by falling for temptation, there are immediate karmic consequences, which are those of a fall from grace.

What exactly do I mean by a fall? I mean that being out of alignment with honesty and integrity leads to an absolute, immediate drop in one’s vibration, a painful fall into a state of a kind of darkness, a negativity that has the power of limiting awareness and creating a greater separation from Spirit —a gross loss of consciousness. People may appear to be getting away with corruption, but as more and more individual people indulge in it, the collective consciousness gets darker, increasingly dense and thus even more prone to “act out”.

I think it is clear to sensitive people that we are now in what some would call “the end times,” or what I would call a cycle of transition between evolutionary epochs. The energy acceleration is evident, and it will continue to increase incrementally each year leading up to 2012.[1] Ironically this acceleration is assisting people of integrity in ascending even as it lowers the attention field of those who are out of integrity.

These times have been shown, through various means such as the Mayan Calendar and other prophesies[2], to be a time of humanity’s cleansing. This bold new time in our evolution began around September 11, 2001. Actually, to be precise it began on September 17th, a few days after the World Trade Towers fell.[3] Since that time several energetic shifts and major accelerations have taken place, and people are now either ascending or descending, based on their karmic choices. Prior to September 17, 2001, they could and did, defer their bad karmic comeback to another, future lifetime. The long time lapse between creating the karma and having to heal it created the appearance of greater stability in people’s lives.

However, we have now entered the era that can only be described as presenting us almost instantly with our karma. And each year we move closer towards living in the experience of the immediate consequences of our actions, as we come into the zone of completely instant karma. As we approach 2011 and 2012, we will face our karma immediately, because of the year-by-year acceleration of the evolutionary energies to which we are now subjected.[4] In the past it was the deferred karma that kept the populations of the world on a more even keel and evolving slowly, and those days are now over forever.

All of what is taking place now spells out very clearly that humanity could be facing a difficult time, and the extent of it is a big and somewhat scary unknown. It is not clear how much humanity’s difficulties will continue to escalate. People just generally tend to be afraid of the unknown, for the very reason that we cannot see or gauge just how difficult our future is going to be, and thus we cannot control its outcome.

In light of all this it seems obvious to me that South Africa is going to need some help. With the issue of instant karma on our doorstep, there is and will always be the possibility of upheavals and suffering happening in many places around the world, certainly including South Africa, which is after all, an African country, despite 300 odd years of white dominance and rule.

In times of upheaval during the past few hundred years, Africa has a default that it tends to fall back on, that of anarchy. Adding to this mix the fact that the population is passing through a huge transition, as it adjusts to democracy and a more Western lifestyle, makes it even more vulnerable. Democracy is new to the African psyche—there is not a tradition of respecting democracy. Plus, there is yet another issue, and that is the way that the country has first-, second- and third-world lifestyles, which naturally complicates the demographics of change.

I cannot help but see that the energy shifts of these end times are an especially crucial moment in the evolution of South Africa, and that South Africa holds something so powerful and important for the rest of Africa, as well as the rest of the world.

In a sense South Africa needs to experience another miracle. Fourteen years ago our first miracle happened in the form of a powerful leap forward when we elected a fully democratic government–-and against all the odds, it happened peacefully. Here is an interesting question: Has the country sufficiently stabilized its gains? The answer would be a resounding “yes” if the world energy was not changing so rapidly and exponentially, but since it is, I think we can all see that South Africa faces some fairly extreme risks right now. Humanity in general has entered an incredibly challenging and important time, and so have we, here in South Africa.

If I may, I would like to share with you what I see in 2008 and onwards, as an underlying energy dynamic affecting our country, its people and their future. And I would like to examine what it would take to assist in creating the transformation that is needed now, as this South African change would be taking place within the context of the global changes, as all of humanity moves deeper into the energetic acceleration, along the lighted pathway towards 2012.

First, let’s outline a bit of what I see as South Africa’s global role right now, because it is connected to the whole world, and change must be considered in that light. People everywhere were so inspired and uplifted by what happened in and around 1994. They saw what was possible with courage and faith, and how the willingness of a divided nation to find its way towards a peaceful and unified future could succeed. There is a way that South Africa has now become a role model for changes happening elsewhere in the world. An unconscious and almost unexplainable understanding now exists in the global psyche to the effect that what happens next in South Africa, will also affect the world—perhaps because it did in 1994.

South Africa was, as far as I know, the first Western country to make the first of two expected dimensional shifts that the whole world will make in the coming times. The first is into the 4th dimension and the second into the 5th. South Africa shifted into the 4th dimension, which is the beginning of a consciousness of heart-centered Oneness, at that fateful time right after the election, 14 years ago. And now she needs to, and is preparing to shift into the 5th.

As a result of the peacefulness of the transition in 1994, there was a countrywide ascension, a re-calibrating of the whole country’s collective consciousness to a higher vibration—the 4th dimension with some 5th dimensional “overtones”. I actually “saw” it happen as I sat in meditation at midnight, the night the old flag was lowered and the new one was raised. The energetic shift was shown clearly to me, on the inner planes, and my guides made sure that I understood what it meant.

To my utter amazement, I realized that I had witnessed something unprecedented. The entire population of a country was ascending in vibration, within a tiny moment of time. Seeing is believing, and integrating the implications of that seeing, has led me to a profound awareness of some of what the end times are offering all nations and all people on this earth. Knowing now that mass ascension is possible has changed my view of what humanity can and needs to experience, as we approach 2011 and 2012.

While this shift was happening as the election completed, the country also received the gift of a rather large allocation of Grace, from Spirit. This was the result of the fact that by voting as they did, the people agreed to live in equality and unity—both inherently spiritual states,[5] which were chosen by the people to replace the old separations held by Apartheid.

As it turns out, this was to be an eleven-year gift, like a wedding present to help the newly minted, fledgling country get started on its journey towards statehood. Then, at exactly the eleven-year mark, to my concern, I saw the gift begin to fade. What had happened? Was the gift only meant to last eleven years, or did the old divisions begin to creep back into the collective and cause the loss of the gift of Grace? Or perhaps the old beliefs crept back because the gift of the higher vibration began to fade? Did too many people become disillusioned and lose their way? Who knows! No matter what the answer is, this disillusioned state has happened to a considerable extent, and that bit of fallen vibration needs to be restored—and hopefully, even raised higher than it was before.

People do create their own reality, and since most people don’t understand that or know how they are doing it, or how to monitor and change it, they end up creating it unconsciously from the “default” states that exists in their unconscious ego programming.
Therefore, for peaceful growth to take place in someone’s life, individuals must learn how to keep their unconscious, default programming aligned into a higher vibration or dissolve it altogether. This is certainly a possibility for everyone, but not too many people know how it is done. There are many options here, one being the choice to make the spiritual journey into Oneness or enlightenment, but essentially, even the choice to truly live in peace, honesty and integrity will pretty much take care of most of the problems.

But then, what happens when a huge percentage of a country’s population is on a “grab what you can, in whatever way you can” roll? This appears to be happening all over the world, as well as in South Africa. The so-called world leader, “America as Empire”, is certainly setting a poor example, but then so are many other countries—corruption is rampant almost everywhere.

What will the consequences of this be to the world in the next few years, given the ramping up of the instant karma thing?

The world will be moving into the 5th dimension eventually, so the prophecies tell us, although they also tell us that there will be a bit of chaos before we get there. It certainly appears as though that will be an inevitable consequence of everyone being subjected to instant karma. Instant karma teaches us that we cannot be corrupt and get away with it, and this is a good thing, it helps facilitate ascension. Instant karma will clearly demonstrate to people, the law of cause and effect. But this will take time and there could be huge upheavals in the interim.

Now, what we must face is this: the reality of this fading gift means the people of South Africa must uplift themselves once again, into a higher vibration, if the country is to avoid a further fall. It will be harder this time since they will need to do this independently, without Nelson Mandela’s charismatic help, and create, in some way, the next miracle by themselves. Is this possible?

I don’t know the answer, but I do know that by understanding the energy dynamics and the issues that are affecting people, one awake person or several awake people have a chance of shifting the consciousness.

What I am going to say next is my own opinion as an observer of the energies involved in birthing our new nation, and it is this: there were many people who realized the miracle and felt the speeded-up vibration and understood what the gift of Grace meant. They were the ones who took the opportunity to use the gift wisely, understanding that they needed to make a contribution towards the new country, thus making the gift last, so that the effects of it would be sustainable. It is because of them that the country did not drop a whole lot more. Yet there were also very many, of all races, who took the gift for granted and rode it, using its benefits selfishly, for their own personal advantage.

This latter approach is obviously not sustainable. So when the gift of the good karma wound down after 11 years, it became clear that the country began a subtle new struggle.

So far, as a country, South Africa is really just getting going, and yet now it must face some really serious tests at a time when it is most vulnerable. Major issues such as corruption are causing it to fall into a lower vibration. A great deal of fear is running in people, and fear lowers the overall vibration of a country. Fear all too often creates what it fears. It could have the effect of pulling the country back downhill towards everyone’s worst fears.

My own inner question to myself is whether people of higher consciousness can do something to change this.

Personally, I believe that this is very possible. In fact I feel that it is the destiny of those who can see deeply into these kinds of situations to do something to change it. It is do-able: you just have to know how—and be able to see the steps that need to be taken.

Everything I have said here is self-evident for anyone who can see the internal dynamics of our country at work. Not that what happened was not to be expected; it was. What happened after the eleven-year mark was a pretty predictable expression of the current form of human nature and should not be judged as a mistake. That would serve no purpose at all. Recrimination is simply a waste of time other than to lead someone towards an understanding of what needs to change. It is just that now there is a need to correct our mistakes, to make a course correction. From my perspective I see that while this may be difficult, it is not an impossible thing to do. And so it now appears that we are actually needing somehow, to create another miracle—a second shift in the consciousness of the masses.

Of course there will be divine help, those that live in the light of Spirit always rely on it and involve Spirit. Yet, I feel the help will come in direct proportion to people’s efforts. Amazingly it appears that Mandela could still be alive at the time of the next election, lending his consciousness as a stabilizing factor. But the transformation work is going to need to take a more grassroots approach this time. At least this is what I see.

I feel I should present some credentials here. I have been monitoring the ups and downs of this country all my life—and if you are reading this, most likely so have you. It appears, as the global changes happen on the road to 2012, that helping South Africa at this crucial time may be the main purpose for which those with a spiritual inclination incarnated in South Africa in the first place. While my spiritual guides have shown me many things about the significance of South Africa in relation to the world during these current times, they have also shown me that interestingly there were/are an unusually large number of highly evolved people who incarnated here during the last century, relative to the size of the population.

This was to help stabilize the country, since stability in South Africa seems to have been, and still is, an issue not only for the country itself but also for the world. Its special significance for the world appears to me to be in its passage through the next 30 or so years. That does sound surprising I guess; so, what exactly does it mean?

South Africa has a big destiny, which I think some sense, and yet which others are surprised by hearing. I certainly was, a couple of decades ago when I was shown this truth by my inner spiritual guides. Perhaps that is because we always seemed for so long to be the pariah of the planet and not a nation to be proud of, and the Southern tip of Africa seemed like the end of the world. Not that we were not all fanatically in love with its unique qualities; we were and still are. However, watching people go from being the pariah to the shining example in just a few decades, makes me feel and see that we are swinging between polarities—something like shame then, and now pride.

I feel that there is a significant worthlessness buried in the unconscious ego of the people, and because of this, they are vulnerable. The population of South Africa is still somewhat locked into polarization, not as bad as before the fall of Apartheid, but it is still there. There are just too many different ethnic groups to avoid this. Because of this, they are forced by natural law into being susceptible to the law of opposites, which says that “everything within time, will turn into its opposite.”

Thus there could be further swings from one side to another in time, and given the state of world energies, maybe not so peacefully. This polarization precludes stability or makes it difficult to maintain. And instability blocks ascension, at least for the masses, unless……. Unless what? We are looking at what to insert here. Could this be our task? We must investigate the potentials for creating greater balance in the consciousness of the people.

I was born a year before Apartheid, so Apartheid and I are very familiar with one another. The fact that I live part of the year in the United States is no indicator of the level of my involvement with South Africa; it just means that my work involves both countries. My work has always been of an energetic and transformational nature, and as I have evolved, the energetic potentials have simply increased in scope. My heart is certainly with continued progress in South Africa. If I had to say I was identified with any country in particular, I would say that I feel the deepest kinship with being an African, a South African. Yet the scope of my work is now more global.

All spiritual beings on a path to enlightenment have a role to play in the kind of drama that the world faces currently, and certainly in one’s own country’s evolution. There is no exclusivity. At the point of enlightenment, one’s vision always includes the global community as well because at that stage of one’s growth, everything is perceived as being connected and interrelated. And so people of a spiritual bent, people of developed caliber, do have a role to play in this changing world.

I am reminded of a very popular bumper sticker that I saw on many, many cars in the U.S., especially in California during the 90s. It said, “Think globally, act locally.” This is what Spirit is asking of us all now. As spiritual beings we have abilities. We have the insight. We can act collaboratively and effectively.

Because of the nature of our spiritual work, of seeking to live in the state of Oneness, of Enlightenment, we are the ones who are able to learn about the Middle Way[6] and who are choosing to hold the Middle Way—the Divine Way, the way of balance, neutrality and unity. And there is a direct ratio between how many of us there are holding this state and what we can do for our own country, but also for the entire dualistic, global population. You probably know this, and excuse me if you do, but for those who have not heard it before, it is really important information to hold in your awareness.

Here it is in a different way: It takes a relatively small group of souls holding Unity Consciousness to have a major balancing and stabilizing effect on several million people. In essence this is the 100th monkey effect.

Why is stabilizing the key here? Well, with the volatility of the energies that are continuously accelerating now and the tendency of people to behave out of integrity, there is an explosive quality to daily life. Less educated and less developed people tend to “act out” what is passing through their emotional bodies, and if it feels like violence, then that’s what they do.

By way of an example, here is a story. I was living in Los Angeles during the early nineties. A man called Rodney King, an African-American, was arrested in a ghetto part of L.A. late one night. I do not recall if he had even done anything. Someone captured a video of the police, who were all White men, pulling him out of his car and severely beating him with their batons. The footage was played on TV over and over as the talking heads debated the situation of racism.

There was a huge, polarized outcry nationwide, lasting days and weeks. And soon rioting broke out in the streets of certain areas of Los Angeles. People came from everywhere, especially the ghettos, and began looting shops. Many buildings were on fire; it was a major drama. A friend of mine who lived in a fairly upscale, middle-class neighborhood, said that he witnessed his neighbors roaring away in their cars and returning with TV sets, radios, refrigerators, sewing machines, clothes etc. You get the picture, I’m sure. It brings up the question of just how upscale and educated do you have to be to choose not to indulge in making a statement!

When our bodies, minds, emotions and consciousness hold the configuration of Oneness, that of unity, peace and of not taking sides, but consistently holding a centered place, it has the effect of stabilizing large numbers of people whose consciousness is fluctuating wildly into polarized factions and threatening everyone with a fall into anarchy.

So, how do we come to this place of being the holders of the Middle Way? The highest form of spiritual practice takes us into the place of unity between all polarizations and thus into an ascended state. We become capable of holding The Middle Way as we get clearer of ego. The ego is polarized and locks us into polarized thinking so that we flip flop in a unbalanced way. And we can become clear of ego by working with our shadow issues—including those deeply buried in the subconscious and the unconscious mind.

Our work of clearing our egoic shadow issues takes our consciousness increasingly into the realm of Oneness and Unity, which in essence means that eventually we no longer live in the polarizations that are the norm for most people. Most people who have not woken up to the truth of how the 3D ego holds its energy and consciousness in polarization are stuck with the experience of fluctuating negative and positive states.

In other words, when a seeker continues to work on his or her self, towards the goal of unifying all polarizations in the mind and emotions, the result is a consciousness of unity—enlightenment.

By way of offering an example of a relevant polarity, I mentioned “anarchy” earlier. Anarchy has various important qualities or threads of awareness that, in this global, political climate, need to be looked at and dealt with, and by that I mean processed.

Essentially anarchy is a state of consciousness that inevitably appears when the rule of law breaks down in people’s minds. A deeper look reveals that historically it is part of the human shadow buried deep in the psyche.

Archaeologists and researchers have found evidence to support the fact that there was a historical period approximately 5,000 – 7,000 years ago when the Neolithic culture in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean was destroyed by rampaging invaders from the North, during a period of total anarchy and chaos. This was the beginning of Patriarchy, and it is probably no accident that the Ten Commandments were issued to Moses around that time in an attempt to stabilize human consciousness and put a stop to the anarchy that was sweeping across Europe and was destroying everything in its wake.[7]

Also, anarchy is a state of consciousness that exists within the psyche of everyone, whether it gets triggered or not. Every person holds it because of humanity’s history, and can and will at times act it out. It is also an egoic quality that we tend to associate with great, mind-numbing fear, dominance, submission, death, destruction, and all the way down the egoic spiral into insanity. These feelings around anarchy are memories, samsara from way back in our ancient history.

This fear of anarchy is one that lives in humanity’s deeper unconscious and only surfaces when the rule of law breaks down—in fact, historically, in Europe and China, laws were created to keep anarchy at bay. Yet for people who live in Africa, anarchy is held closer to the surface of the mind, because the rule of law has never properly taken hold in Africa. After colonialism destroyed the native culture, anarchy became a default that people could fall back on. As we know only too well, in Africa it can be a way of life. In South Africa it is the specter of one of our possible futures, glaringly reflected back at us from across our Northern border. If we decide to look our shadow side right in the face, Zimbabwe is most likely where we will look.

In all the 20 years that I have been teaching, I have realized that it is not possible to lift up someone’s consciousness and raise their vibration permanently without first releasing some or most of the shadow stuff that they are holding. Over time, as an individual releases all of their shadow, they will become enlightened. In other words they will become capable of holding “The Middle Way”, the way of balance between all polarities, living in a consciousness of stability, Oneness and expanded visionary capabilities—all of which currently lie dormant right now, enfolded into humanity’s future.

Now here at last is the point I have been leading up to. There is a most powerful relationship between the consciousness of those who are clear, or even somewhat clear of egoic shadow, and who are capable of holding “The Middle Way”, and those who are not: The clear people are able to affect the unclear people by helping them raise their vibration.

Knowing this divine formula for global and regional transformation, I am urging as many people as can understand this fairly simple principle, to choose to participate in making a difference to their personal future, the future of their country and the world.

This happens simply by understanding that one person can make a difference to the outcomes of difficult global situations. And a group of like-minded people who are committed to creating change and are in step with each other can affect things even more. And as these people of high caliber and social conscience choose to stand for humanity by doing some sort of processing work to clear their own shadow and ego polarization, they are making a profound contribution to peace in the world and the rekindling of the inherent goodness in the human soul.

Inevitably, there is a profound comfort in knowing that doing your own spiritual transformation work makes a difference to the level of consciousness of a whole nation and even the world. Perhaps it also points the way to others, to the fact that in time, everyone will grasp new understandings of the laws of cause and effect, eventually becoming clearer of their own shadow issues. And when this happens, humanity will move easily towards a faster and more developed evolution where they can, on their own, contribute to the level of peace in the world. This developing human maturity is our hope for this beautiful world in the not too distant future.




[1] Click here to download the Mayan Calendar Powerpoint presentation.

[2] The ancient Mayan, Egyptian and Hopi cultures have prophesies about 2012 being the end of a major cycle of humanity’s evolution. These are the ones I know of; there may be others I am not aware of.

[3] The Egyptian prophesy about September 17, 2001, is a “calendar” built into the staircase of the Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid of Giza, which was deciphered in the 1990s. Its depiction is of the current era, which, according to this calendar, ended on the 17th of September, 2001, a few days after the World Trade Towers fell. It had predicted this date as the end of the world. In a sense, the world as we have known it, did end. Nothing has been the same since that date. For more information, read Beyond Prophecies and Predictions—Everyone’s Guide to the Coming Changes by Moira Timms.

[4] Read The Mayan Code by Barbara Hand Clow, re “Mayan Calendar energy acceleration.”

[5] Equality and Unity are both inherently spiritual states. Both states equate to the Self, God, the Oneness, our Source. Unity is an attribute of that which is beyond duality and polarity; and Equality is the nature of Source, in that it is called the “one without a second.” In other words it is non-dual, and therefore it can only be equal to itself.

[6] The Middle Way, sometimes called the “razors edge”, is several different things in different dimensions. In this world it is the way of neutrality between all negative and positive polarizations. In the terminology of the Upanishads, it is the Atman, the God within us, and it is described as “Atman is Brahman,” meaning the Source within the subtle body and also its inherently divine manifestation into the form world as physical matter and life itself. In the body it correlates to the spinal cord and to the subtle manifestation of the spinal cord, which in Sanskrit is known as the shushumna. This is part of the subtle body anatomy where we experience the Oneness within ourselves, but paradoxically it is also the unity that is everywhere at once—Earth, Cosmos and the Unmanifest.

[7] The last 5,000 years is known as the Age of Patriarchy, a cycle in the ongoing spiritual evolution of humanity, which relates to the development of the solar plexus chakra. The main issue humanity has been learning about during this age is Power. Patriarchy, prophesied to end now with the ascension of human consciousness into the next chakra level, the heart, ushers in the beginning of the age of human enlightenment. The Patriarchal Age began with “the Fall” which was described allegorically in the Bible, the first book to be printed. There are various modern writers (listed below) who have written about what is believed to be the time of the fall, approximately 5,000 – 7,000 years ago, ascribing the extremely violent destruction of the existing civilization of the Neolithic people as a fall in consciousness. The Neolithic culture, flourished around the Mediterranean and through the Middle East prior to 5,000 years ago. Its demise came about through the destruction wrought by marauders from the North, who were a Patriarchal society and who slaughtered the peaceful Neolithic populations around the Mediterranean and Middle East between 9,000 and 7,000 years ago.

References (a few of many): The Chalice and the Blade by Rianne Eisler, The Fall by Steve Taylor, The Myth of the Goddess by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, The Alphabet and the Goddess by Leonard Shlain.