What is "The Great Turning?"

....or the Great Work, The Shift, Conscious Evolution, Transition....I decided to post a few quotes to try to convey the essence of these concepts. I hope you will take it upon yourself to dig deeper. This is the essential spiritual path of our times:

David Korten: The term “The Great Turning” has come into widespread use to describe the awakening of a higher level of human consciousness and a human turn from an era of violence against people and nature to a new era of peace, justice and environmental restoration. Most people are not aware that this awakening is underway, because positive change rarely reaches the level of front page - or even back-page - news!

Joanna Macy: The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world-we've actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other.

Bill Plotkin Will the twenty-first century turn out to be the Great Ending or the Great Turning? It’s up to us…you and me and all others who are waking up to the extraordinary challenge, opportunity, and imperative before us.

Thomas Berry: We might summarize our present human situation by the simple statement: that in the 20th century, the glory of the human has become the desolation of the Earth and now the desolation of the Earth is becoming the destiny of the human. From here on, the primary judgment of all human institutions, professions, programs and activities will be determined by the extent to which they inhibit, ignore, or foster a mutually enhancing human – Earth relationship.

Barbara Marx Hubbard: Those of us alive today are the first generation born with the choice of learning conscious, ethical evolution, or suffering devolution and the destruction of our life-support systems with unimaginably more tragedy than the world has yet experienced. We are the generation of the gap between “here”—a highly technological, over-populating, polluting, brilliant species on the brink of social and environmental chaos, and “there”—a compassionate, spiritually awakened humanity, capable of transcending the limits of our past human existence and moving toward the unknown. We do not have much time. Within the next 30 to 50 years, we must change our fundamental behavior to be more in alignment with our natural systems and our visions of a positive future. Never before has the human species had to change this quickly in order to survive.

Duane Elgin: The world is moving into a new era where the human community must work together if we are to realize a future of sustainable prosperity. This transition represents both a great challenge and an extraordinary opportunity. We are being called to make a shift toward green lifestyles, supported by a mature democracy, and guided by the collective wisdom of science and spirituality.