July/August 2004 Editor's Viewpoint
"Expand and Evolve!"

Miriam Knight
What an intearesting time we live in when a 12 year-old like Preston Swanson can draw an overflow audience for a 3rd Wednesday to hear messages from his "angels". I had been hearing about these Indigo, and now Crystal Children for years, but this was the first time I’d heard one speak. What seems to characterize them is a knowing – they remember where they came from, and have not lost their connection to God/All That Is. I don’t think it was just curiosity that drew so many people together on that warm June evening. I believe it was a yearning to reconnect with innocence; with that place of oneness whose memory still resonates in our hearts.

Young/old Preston Swanson’s message was a fascinating combination of profound wisdom, simplicity and refreshing directness couched in childhood slang and syntax. This was his "debut" speaking entirely on his own, with only his "angels" for help. But he quickly overcame his initial hesitation and was soon in the flow like a veteran evangelist.

Preston spoke of many things, but one of the most amusing and original was his take on food and overweight: "Well, you know…being, uh… fat…. Well, it’s not really fat, it’s stored negative energy!" "There is no bad food," Preston asserted. It is what we think and feel when we eat something that makes it bad for us. If we know inside that we shouldn’t be eating something, and eat it anyway, or eat it for the wrong reasons, it will get stored as negative energy in fat. If we enjoy the food and eat it for good reasons like health and energy, then it won’t go to fat. Well, I can report that a lot of people resonated with that one!

Preston fielded questions like a pro, and then his "angels" had a final message that they wanted him to convey. It was a simple exhortation: "Expand and Evolve!" I have been contemplating these words ever since the talk, and keep on seeing deeper and deeper meaning in them.

Expansion can have positive or negative connotations, depending on the spirit behind it. If motivated by love and joy, it connotes growth, vitality, optimism, inclusiveness. If motivated by fear, it leads to aggression, pre-emptive power plays, putting one’s own needs/desires first regardless of the consequences to others.

Considering the source, I would guess the angels meant positive expansion. What if we were to expand our spirits across the globe and feel the pulse of our common humanity beating in every being? What if we were to throw away the fears and prejudices that have been pumped into us along the way in order to divide and conquer and control us?

We cannot affect the world stage overnight, but we could change ourselves in an instant. By consciously flipping the switch of our perceptions, and expanding our view of who is "us", we could affect our reality and bring in the light. This, I believe, is the next step in our evolution, and the Crystal Children like Preston are here to show us the way.

---Miriam Knight