Kendrick Mercer's Whole Self tells the story of the birth, evolution, and history of human consciousness and its impact on the human psyche. This is the most powerful unfolding force on the Earth, with the potential to lead us either to annihilate ourselves by generating conflict or to work together wisely and in common purpose. The story begins with our elemental state of being, Whole Self, which is a natural, instinctive, intuitive state of being that has been refined in our biology over billions of years of evolutionary life experience as it was handed down from ancestor to ancestor, generation by generation, in an unbroken chain. Following a prehistoric disaster, our early ancestors then adapted the capacity for abstract reasoning. Unfortunately, their shift in cognitive ability had a major drawback: It introduced fear into the human minds, along with the response to fear, control. Both issues are the major sources of our suffering today.

Our generation with its advanced understanding of the brain has the great evolutionary opportunity to find ways to combine the best of our post-Shift reasoning with the capacity for spontaneous and joyful life lived in harmony with nature and all living beings on our planet that is our birthright. In reawakening to Whole Self as individuals, we gain the ability to perceive the unspun truth of each moment and the capacity to respond spontaneously and appropriately to it with minimal effort and confidence. Collectively, we gain a path to peace, prosperity, and better mental and emotional health.