Energetic | Optimistic | Time Traveler | Spoon Bender |
Zenka Caro
ZENKA CARO is a futurist, software architect and founder of LightNet – a collective intelligence think tank centered around consciousness. A pioneer in mind-over-matter consciousness research, she is passionate about blending science and spirituality and creating an open data commons to spread our biggest evolutionary insights freely. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science from Northwestern University and is an expert in spoon-bending and electromagnetic radio ham contact with ET’s and past
loved ones. An early pioneer in augmented reality technology and is an expert in NFT’s, wearables, blockchain, decentralized tech and crypto, she has been working in frontier technology for over 20 years running software development companies. Caro loves global strategic planning and whole systems thinking and is an inspirational speaker on the TEDx stage and beyond.
https://lightnet.org
My 10 Best
(In no particular order)
Future Shock
Once when I was visiting my father in Ohio, he left Future Shock and Power Shift on my bed. I can credit him with changing my life in that moment, and I often tell him so. The concepts of these books spoke to my soul and have driven my life’s mission ever since. Alvin & Hedi Toffler wrote three major books in their lifetime. Each book took them 10 years of traveling the world to talk to world leaders and everyday people, to synthesize the single most important concepts of the decade and to predict what is to come in the future. Future Shock, published before I was born, in 1970, altered the world to the fact that we were entering a mind-boggling time of runaway change. I ended up giving my TEDX talk about this idea of mass exponential change, hoping to urge people to be more optimistic (and strategically prepared) for the coming decades. This pursuit of stepping back to look at the data of our society from a distance, so we can steer our evolution – is part and parcel of everything I do. Power Shift the follow up book, states that the power in the world no longer rests with military might and it no longer rests with money. They argue that the coming age would be about who has access to knowledge and information. If knowledge is the new “oil” we must do everything we can now to democratize knowledge. Spreading out power amongst all of us creates the makings of an evolved world. Because of this book, I dedicated my life to building an open-data commons for the most important evolutionary data in the world.
Abundance
This has to be one of my favorite books of all time because it helped me substantiate and legitimize my unrelenting optimism and hope for the world. The main premise of the book is that the world is actually getting better instead of getting worse. It backs up this bold ethos with grounded data, charts and real-world studies. Despite our perception and inclinations toward gloom and doom, we have a lot of momentum to be grateful for already. Even if you just take the topic of women – you can see our lives are certainly improving around the world very rapidly. Their follow up book Bold, talks about the 6 D’s (Digitization, Deception (of exponential growth), Disruption (of old business models), Demonetization, Dematerialization (of physical items) and Democratization (for making things more affordable for all)) taught me that the entire paradigm and outcome of the world can shift quickly using innovation and exponential tech. The authors, Peter Diamandis (founder of the XPrize and Singularity University) and Steven Kotler (founder of the Flow Genome Project) have been eternal idols for me. They make optimizing evolution real through their powerful books – and work in the world.
Healing Prayer Commands
I always say that Rachel Farabaugh is the next Joe Dispenza. If Joe Dispenza taught us that our subconscious mind rules our reality, the next step is to take stock of that black box which is our mind. This book teaches you how to categorize and muscle test your entire belief system. Then it teaches you how to lovingly reprogram your mind using prayer, and theta commands. I am a huge believer that we need to better understand brain waves and our mind in order to master consciousness and this book shows how easy it is for everyone to create a dream life.
The Light Shall Set You Free
This book absolutely blew my mind. It is a condensed version of the most sacred knowledge captured in many of the most important ancient mystery schools around the world – in a SINGLE book. It also shows you how to apply these teachings to your life. I had just had my spiritual awakening and this book was the clarity and grounding education I was seeking. It was a catch-up, cliff notes education on the Emerald Tablets, the universal laws, karma, ascended masters, dimensions and more.
Before I Die
Before I Die is a book about how a single piece of artwork by Candy Chang spread around the world. In New Orleans, after losing a friend, she painted an abandoned building with black chalk paint and stenciled the words “Before I Die” over and over, allowing people to grab a piece of chalk and write, the thing that they were most passionate about experiencing. Not only do I love the idea of helping the world find their passion and purpose. I also love the idea that art can move way beyond the locked stifled cage of a museum setting (where you can hear high heels cross the cold empty rooms). Similar to the artist Ai Weiwie, she shows us that art can be interactive and engaging and can hit a chord within all people of all ages, races and economic backgrounds. During my art career, I also loved the idea of the artist being an instigator, not the guru. When I found out that Candy Chang was allowing people to replicate one of my favorite pieces of artwork of all time, I was so thrilled. This was fractal participatory, street art. I replicated her wall in Cordoba, Argentina. To my utter amazement, it was filled within only 2 hours. We washed it off and over and over again it was filled up with the dreams of our city. If we don’t dream our future, we have a harder time creating it.
A New Kind of Science
This book is a 1200-page tome. The whole concept that simple (math) algorithms underpin the fundamental laws of nature fascinates me to no end. When reading this I was touched by how passionate and driven Wolfram was as a true pioneer. Maybe he knew, at the end of the day, even the genre of the book will give way to something more alive and dynamic. His project, “Mathematica” – is a computational software program used in science, mathematics, and engineering to visualize the math and patterns of the universe. This could be a new framework for understanding the universe. On my deathbed, I hope my life’s work culminates to produce one thing – an elegant and simple algorithm (or sentence) about the nature of reality. My non-profit, LightNet.org looks for patterns by studying how we do impossible things. Once we understand the nuts and bolts of belief, consciousness and creation, we will enter a new golden age because we can solve many problems across the board with a single answer set.
We, the Arcturians
This book is so charming. I was just starting to understand galactic narratives and this anthropological book was utterly delightful. It is about two women who had an exchange with some Arcturians over many sessions spread over many months. The interviews talk about how Arcturians view school, evolution, and the nature of reality.
The Ancient Secrets of a Master Healer
One Ted Talk and 30 days of Mung bean soup later, I had completely fallen in love with Dr. Clint G. Rogers. He was a skeptic and data scientist who had studied with a famous master healer from India in the hope that he could miraculously cure his father. The healer, Dr. Naram, was part of Buddha’s healer’s lineage and he used Ayurvedic pulse diagnosis, food, and belief to cure those that modern medicine had given up on. The fact that he called his real-world project “The Miracle Experiment Game,” to accompany the book, struck a deep soul chord with me. With my life’s work’s focus on studying miracles and how they happen, this book and this project is deeply close to my heart.
The Women of Robertson Place
This is a book that my mother wrote about my entire family back seven generations. When I was sixteen, I found a trunk that we didn’t know about in an old out-shed and it contained everything from journals to wedding dresses. My mother and I began to piece together a deep history of our entire family that her mother had never told her. I ended up doing my thesis film about it at Northwestern and learning about my family’s role in the underground railroad, and what it meant to be a woman–and how that evolved over the last seven generations. We now know from studying earthworms that seven generations of epigenetic and emotions translate into our lives. Having a book that my mom spent ten years writing has been beautiful to my own evolution and historical understanding of my place in time.
Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science
I am a huge fan of Dean Radin. As you can see from my list, I love bringing spirituality and science together for a date! Dean Radin is a very hard-core, meticulous, legitimate scientist who has dedicated his life to studying mind-matter interaction. In this book, he talks about over 3000 different studies that have joined together to create a very fascinating truth about reality, which is that consciousness is more fundamental than matter! This is something so mind-bending that I’ve spent a good deal of my life working on understanding and teaching (!) spoon bending, seed sprouting, and synchronicity manifestation.