Using the 12 Steps for Global Recovery

The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous have been used by millions of people for addressing a variety of harmful addictions, not only with alcohol and other drugs, but gambling, sex, food, and the enabling behavior of those who deal with addicts, called co-dependents. The phenomena of addiction – using a substance or a process to the degree that it threatens the functionality and stability of your life – is widespread.

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Waking the Global Heart:
The Curtain Rises

Download the first chapter of Waking the Global Heart for Free!

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Global Heart Study Guide

STUDY GUIDE NOW COMPLETE!!

Ever since the book Waking the Global Heart came out (2006!) people have been asking me for a study guide to go with it. Many have chosen it for a book club selection or small group discussion, and want a way to sort out its complexities in a discussion forum. It took a long time for me to get to this project, but at last it is done.

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Culture on the Couch

A Case Study of Western Civilization

For better or worse, the values of Western Civilization set trends for much of the world. Witness the ubiquitous suit and tie, the emulation of corporate capitalism, and the universality of the English language, to say nothing of the endless gadgets, innovations, and media images that flow into the planetary nervous system. With such a powerful influence, we have the potential to lead the emerging global civilization toward endless consumption and destruction of the biosphere or to an exciting and sustainable future. Which do we choose? This may be a no-brainer question, but today’s events tell us the reality is more complex. Just as it is for individuals, the collective gestalt can be led astray of its nobler goals when its health is out of balance.

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Mystery of 2012

The Authoritative Guide to 2012: Experts Illuminated the Mayan Prophecy

Sounds True recently asked a number of their authors two questions about the phenomena of 2012:

• What is your view of the year 2012 being identified as a time of unprecedented collective change and transformation?

• In your view, what is the best way to respond to these challenging times? What can we do to align with the shift in a way that is most supportive of personal and collective transformation?

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Let the Giants Fall

$700 billion bail out? More like bailing out the Titanic as it crashes into the iceberg. But like all icebergs, the deeper issues are hidden from view. So hidden, in fact, that nobody’s even talking about them, not Obama, certainly not McCain, and Palin looks like a kid on Christmas, dazzled by the lights and still believing in Santa Claus.

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Greasing our way to the Future

Humanity is in its cultural adolescence. Birthed from the primal world of nature, billions of years in gestation, we have risen out of Stone Age infancy, crawled across the land in teeming toddlerhood, and labored through five thousand years of sibling rivalry, to emerge in the present time as teenagers undergoing the difficult process of becoming adults.

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Antidote to Catastrophe

I just finished Lester Brown’s newest iteration of the world situation: Plan B 3.0, and one word stands out: WOW. Lester Brown, of the World Watch Institute, is author of over a decade of annual “State of the World” reports, which I’ve been perusing over the years, including Plan B 2.0, his previous work of this magnitude. He is quite arguably, the best informed citizen on the planet about the statistics of world hunger, overpopulation, global warming, water scarcity, crop failure, air pollution, as well as renewable energy, reforestation, and every known aspect, both positive and negative, or our global challenges and their solutions.

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From the Cradle to the Grave

A Long Term Perspective on the Middle East

Once upon a time, the Middle East was the Cradle of Civilization, the birthplace of the ancient world. Here the famed Tigris and Euphrates Rivers ran unencumbered to the sea, flooding the land with fertile beauty, abundance, and grace. Here were the first large scale irrigation projects that made possible a new complexity among humans, the first cities, the first writing and mathematics.

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Living Gently on the Earth

an interview with Anodea Judith

Artwork by Will Zero

We are entering a time when every environmental system on the planet is stressed. Some people fear that we won’t make it as a species. Others are in denial about the gravity of our situation. How do you see our species and its relationship to the Earth?

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The Grand Synthesis

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. It’s an old story, espoused by philosophers since the beginning of reflective thinking. From Socrates to Jesus, Goethe, and Hegel, from Karl Marx to the integral world of Ken Wilber, the song of synthesis has been sung again and again. This dialectic is one of the basic rhythms of cultural evolution.

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Rite of Passage

Artwork by Will Zero

As the curtain rises on the next act of the human drama, we see an adolescent culture undergoing a rite of passage to adulthood. The challenges that face us as a species are the initiating factors of our rite: global warming, environmental destruction, government corruption, escalating warfare, peak oil, potential epidemics, social injustice, economic instability – we know the litany. The message of initiation is written on our many walls: transform or die.

For the first time in history, we are being asked to become adults.

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Call to Action

Artwork by Will Zero

Work on yourself.

The more you heal your own wounds, the more potential you have to open your heart and serve others. To“unhurt your heart” is to follow the meaning of the name of the heart chakra “anahata” which literally means unstruck or unhurt.

Follow your heart.
As the heart awakens it feels a higher calling. Andrew Harvey advises us to look at what is breaking our hearts (rainforest, animals, ecocide, genocide) and let that pain guide us to our service. It is also important to listen to our hearts that often have a deeper wisdom than the mind.

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The Gaia Conspiracy:
Convergence of a Planetary Paradigm

Conspire: (from spiritus, or spirit) to concur or work to one end; act in harmony; co-operate; to plot together; breathe together.
Gaea Earth Mother Goddess of pre-classical Greece, creator of the Heavens.

Gaean Conspiracy: a movement to connect the subsystems of Gaea into harmonious cooperation through mutual recognition of their identity as part of an evolving planetary deity.

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Bridge to the Future – 7 keys

I’m going to get right to the point.

The world is in our hands. This complex jewel of a planet, through billions of years of evolution, has created a species whose influence is global, rather than local, a species equally capable of monumental creation or devastating destruction. As we gather in this Garden of Healing here today, we find ourselves stretched between the anchors of the past and the promise of the future, entering into that liminal space of in-between that tends to create such confusion. Herein lies a great awakening, but also a great sorting.

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