Think of where our world societies would be without all the debilitating skepticism many people currently suffer from. In a world where people not only accepted intuition as a wonderful reality, but also strove to find and trust their own inner voices, here are just a few possible scenarios?

- People wouldn't need to run to the doctor and be pumped full of chemicals every time they suspected a problem. Instead, they would learn to sense the nature of their personal disturbances and take right action to correct them before physical issues manifested.

- Outrageously dishonest politics would come to an end because people would simply stop listening to garbage and refuse to vote for candidates who insult their intelligence.

- Mistrust and paranoia would vanish as people learn to see the true nature of others and discover that humanity is not, after all, a seething den of liars and brutes.

This is only a partial list, and of course it is a bit ideal in nature. But the point I'm making is simple:

The human race could be better off if more people would stop rejecting their inner voices and learn to trust the intuition they were born with. And the good news is we are heading (I believe) toward the kind of critical mass needed to shift the overall consciousness into this direction.

In his wonderful book The Future Is yours, author Raymon Grace suggested that just over 1 percent of the earth's population would be needed for a major shift in the planet's consciousness. After a number of experiments and some informal research, Grace and his associates concluded that by 2003 over 9 percent of the earth's population was receptive to the kind of idealism required for just such a paradigm shift.

For whatever reason, the veil seems to be falling away, and the people or this planet are opening their minds once more to the probability of a greater, deeper reality than that which is promoted on network sitcoms, in Sunday school, and by the ?leaders? who would have us believe there is nothing more to this life than what we can see and touch.

In fact, thanks to the Gallup organization, we now know that in the U.S. alone, an impressive number of people are open to the existence of psychic awareness.

Their 2005 survey results indicate the following:

-41% of participants believe in ESP

-26% believe in clairvoyance (remote viewing)

-31% believe in telepathy or psychic communication

To be quite honest these numbers pleasantly surprised me. Certainly most of the people I meet and talk to reflect an open-minded perspective, but we tend to attract those who compliment us and I had always assumed the population at large to be more closed to these issues.

What will the same survey tell use ten years from now? I believe more than double the numbers of people will affirm their beliefs in human psychic ability.

As the older, more rigid generation fades away in our society, younger people who are tired of being told what to think are filling positions of power and influence. We could very well be on the verge of a new golden age of open thought and expansive thinking.