The coupling of electricity with our nervous system over a century and a half ago started the process of what the prescient media sage Marshall LcLuhan called 'the outering of our nervous system.' From the one-to-one communications technologies of the telegraph and telephone, to the one-to-many forms of broadcast radio and television, and the all-to-all global grids of the Internet and social media, we continue to grow more connected, more accessible and more stimulated.

It’s 2013. You have probably noticed. We survived the end of days, so what now? What is humanity’s future?

In the first two articles in this series, we introduced collective presencing as a new human capacity emerging at this time. The first article described a journey of individual and collective deepening and widening through a set of practices that can, over time, allow us first to achieve collective wisdom and later to become generative of more life. The second article took a more detailed look at the first phase in the process: what it takes to become a Circle of Presence. We promised that the next article would treat the next phase, the Circle of Creation. On deeper reflection we came to see that the transition to the Circle of Creation represents such a paradigm shift that some wider context is needed before we broach that subject. This article offers that.

The general public embraces two extreme notions of globalization. One, that right now it is an inevitable phenomenon - an uncontrolled process that no one can influence, the other that we indeed can change the direction of globalization. There are many possibilities in between.

Religious globalization, new religious movements, transnational religions, global proselytism, multiple religious identities, ecumenical services, religious syncretism, secular and postsecular spiritualities—all these are among the many remarkable trends that shape the religious landscape of the beginning of the twenty-first century.