Thanks to the Supreme Court ruling in 2010 (in the “Citizens United” case) corporations may now pour an unlimited amount of money into elections. This, combined with high public apathy and low voter turnout, means elections can easily be bought by the highest bidder. With less than a 40% turnout, is it any wonder that in 2012 we saw a wave of ultraconservative Tea Party candidates elected who were heavily funded by billionaires? They vote for billionaire interests while speaking to the sensibilities of easily mobilized fringe groups: anti-gay, anti-brown, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, etc. Many of these candidates were voted in by as little as 18 or 19% of eligible voters.

We are surely at a cusp where the bad is getting worse while the wave to rise above it is getting stronger, and this dynamic is clearly evident in the scramble toward the 2016 Election. Perfectly representing the extreme of old-order power is Donald Trump, telling us that he will fix everything and will run the country as an effective CEO, just as he has run his companies. He claims not to be bought because he can fund himself—in other words, he is at the very top of the hierarchical power chain. Of course, a CEO is basically a dictator who requires obedience from all beneath him, and while efficiency is of the highest priority, the beneficiaries of this efficiency are the small leader class, not the large employee class.

Then there’s Ben Carson, with a quiet, hypnotic voice that make voter suppression laws sound reasonable because, as he puts it, voting should only be "done by the appropriate people." He doesn’t rouse us or promise to take care of us; he just lulls us into lethargy and sleep.

On the Democratic side, one of the two front-runners is Hillary Clinton who, though still significantly funded by old-order, big business money, is promising to fight for many populist causes. As an experienced insider, she makes an excellent case for being the one best able to do battle with the old-order powers that have created political deadlock throughout Obama’s presidency. She is the seasoned, democratic pit bull ready to fight hard within a stagnant system for realistic results.

In contrast, Bernie Sanders refuses big industry money and is funded largely by small, individual donations and labor union support. More significantly, Sanders has made it clear that the power to change doesn’t reside in him—it’s in all of us together. In the first democratic debate, he was the only candidate who never once used the word “I” in his opening introduction. Even when speaking of his own campaign, he tends to say “we.” He is calling for a movement, a “revolution,” driven by everyone stepping up together.

Bernie Sanders isn’t a brash and entertaining reality TV star like Donald Trump, nor the handsome, charismatic “rock star” that Barack Obama was eight years ago. He’s not the polished and high-powered Hillary Clinton ready to break the gender barrier as our first woman president. He’s just another old, white guy. In fact, he’s known for being rumpled, curmudgeonly and none too charming. So what does he have that’s drawing the crowds, especially younger people?

Perhaps it’s that he’s speaking to something that has already collectively shifted within us, and is asking us to tap a power source that we’ve already begun to take for granted in other contexts: the power of all of us together. Maybe it’s because he’s offering a path so simple that it requires nothing more than large numbers of us making tiny contributions; or because his message—that we can accomplish any magnitude of change together—is the purest representation among the current presidential hopefuls of the new order. And because, unlike 2008, now we’ve reached the Tipping Point.

The revolution that Sanders describes doesn’t require a pit bull, a rock star, or an authoritarian TV personality telling us what to do. Neither does it require marching in the street. It doesn’t even ask us to fundamentally change our sensibilities to embrace a radically un-American socialist agenda (Sanders’ idea of democratic socialism isn’t much different from FDR’s). What’s more, the infrastructure for this revolution is already in place—it’s voting, and not just once for a president, then tuning out for another four years. It’s time to start paying attention, not to how bad everything is but to how open the possibilities are.

Trump, Carson, Clinton, Sanders. If we take the players out of the equation, these four might well represent the bigger choices for life we have in this Tipping Point era of monumental change. Some of us will surrender our power altogether in a Stockholm syndrome kind of attachment to the very structures that keep us entrapped. Some of us will sink into apathy and sleep. Some of us will fight, even though the odds seem overwhelmingly against us, because it’s better than giving up. Others of us will step into a new paradigm where change can happen quickly and without fighting, simply by showing up together.

We’re in unprecedented times environmentally, economically, technologically and spiritually. At this Tipping Point, change will come whether we’re ready for it or not. It will come with a crash while we’re sleeping, or one hard-fought crumb at a time. It will be wrenching if we try to cling to what used to be. But, just possibly, it will come with ease and grace as we all choose it together. And you? How will you move into the new order?

Lynn Woodland is an international teacher, author of Making Miracles—Create New Realities for Your Life and Our World, and creator of the online Miracles Course. Her particular expertise is in what gives rise to miracles and in teaching ordinary people to live extraordinary lives so that miracles become, not just possible, but natural. www.lynnwoodland.com.