It took a great leap of faith for me to move from writing books on indigenous people to exposing the shadow side of my life in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. The shamans were behind me, urging me to take this leap; they had taught me about the powers of intent, courage, and focused energy, and of how to use them to transform ourselves and our communities.

We have arrived at a time in history when we know that human societies must change. The world we have created is not sustainable. We cannot continue walking a path where so few control so much of the material wealth and so many are relegated to extreme poverty. We cannot continue to glance from side to side as we walk this path and persist in the belief that the things we see-the animals, insects, plants, and all the other nonhuman entities-are "out there," separate, apart, and independent of us. Our only hope, if we are to survive as a species, is to change. We must transform ourselves; we must change the way we look at the world and our actions. We must revise our concepts of economics, science, and ecology, and shapeshift the structures that govern us.

In order to step onto this new path, it is necessary for us to step outside the walls that have limited our ways of thinking, feeling, and living. And this transition must occur on both personal and societal levels.

Most indigenous peoples I have known prophesize that we have entered a time that offers the hope for transformation. Native cultures throughout the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia have predicted that the first years of the twenty-first century are a time of great opportunity. They tell us that the potential exists for raising human consciousness to levels never before experienced. They are very clear: higher consciousness is what is required in order for us to transform-and to survive. These prophecies, as well as the individual teachers who shared them with me, prodded me to make that leap of faith and write Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.