The legendary Rennie Davis, one of the Chicago 7, is on a mission to save the human species from extinction. Right now, says Davis, society is heading toward a mass hysteria that could lead toward extinction. To change course, humans have to change how they think. So he has created what he calls "escape tools for a prison break from the human condition of endless war and misery."
I recently test drove some of those tools when I attended a one-day workshop at Davis' home in Longmont, his new home base in Colorado. These days, Davis is rarely at home. In workshops and webinars offered around the globe, Davis tells listeners that world is "not solid, objective or real, but a psychological construct" whose origin lies within each one of us.
Davis, calls this discovery: the science of perception. "We create our own reality, right down to the last detail," he states. "So when each of us changes our thoughts, we change the world we live in."
Although Forbes magazine, in 2006, described him as a "financial adviser to various CEOs and senior executives from major companies, including Gates Rubber Company, the Manville Corp., HBO, and IBM," Davis is actually a catalyst for change.
He has been working on his "shift of perception" project for the past 40 years. He says it had its origins in rock concerts and peace rallies he organized with John Lennon in the 1970s. Back then, they used the phrase "better than imagined," to help people focus on a world at peace, as in: "It is going to be better than anything you can imagine."
Today, Davis is hoping that at least one person who hears his message will become the Nicolaus Copernicus of our times. In 1543, Copernicus' pronouncement that the Sun, not the Earth, was at the center of the universe, created a great upheaval, and marked the starting point of the scientific revolution.
Today's Copernicus, Davis believes, will be able to learn how to take full control of each of the estimated 60,000 thoughts that pass through his or her mind each day. When each thought is focused, positive, and life affirming, he says, that person will be able to break free of the human condition and help guide humanity's evolution.
Davis says that it is time to move into a world where there is no blame and no judgment. His vision is a world where there is nothing to fix, because trying fix something (or someone) implies it is wrong, and that he reminds, is a judgment.
Sound far out? Well, in my book Rapid Evolution, I suggest to readers that we need to "rewire" ourselves ... for our rapid evolution. "When we make this choice, our brain will create the mental pathways for physical change to occur."
What Rennie Davis has created here is an evolutionary shortcut, and enough tools for someone to widen it and pave it for the rest of us to follow.
His best advice? Live life knowing that every next moment is going to be more magnificent than anything you could have possibly imagined.
Remember the chant, "The whole world is watching"? In the 1960s, Rennie Davis coordinated the largest antiwar and civil rights coalition in the U.S. and was one of the defendants in the "Chicago 7" trial.