Awakening

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Kosmos  — perhaps one of the loveliest journals that exists — features an article by Anne Hillman on Personal and Global Transformation in their Summer ‘09 issue. Kosmos takes no advertising and has spared nothing to make it a feast for the eye, hand, and mind. The  art and photography are spectacular and I love the feel and look of the print version. This particular issue is the first  to go online and you can read the digital version of Personal and Global Transformation here. Unfortunately, the online version doesn’t separate an article’s headers from the text as clearly as they are in print.  However, you can also get a back copy of  any issue of Kosmos from their “subscribe” page. I guarantee you: to read each issue is an amazing experience! And I am still surprised and very grateful to be included in their immensely creative adventure.  

More on RECENT ARTICLES IN WISE AND BEAUTIFUL JOURNALS

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 In these early days of December, as a soft rain falls in California, I remember the first snowfall in New England; how it blanketed the earth and muffled sound—and silence became a spacious and holy presence. As the winters progressed, however, and we shoveled snow and pulled soggy socks from our children’s feet, that dark stillness often brought depression. We forgot that it held promise, hid something deeper: new life gathering itself to be born. We live in a dark time. Many of us have sought to help solve some of the immense difficulties confronting us, to learn the truth of each situation, and to grow in understanding. We’ve taken stands on countless issues and made the best decisions we knew how. But we are beginning to see that the kinds of solutions our cultures have to offer are blunt instruments—and we begin to realize we need more refined means of resolving our dilemmas.

More on Hope in the Darkness

Filed under Awakening, Balance, Change, Creativity, Nature of Change, overcoming fear by Anne Hillman #

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Jay Matternes, whose painting of “Homo Habilis Woman” is the frontispiece for Awakening the Energies of Love: Discovering Fire for the Second Time, wrote this week to say that his scientific reconstruction of the 4.4 million year old fossil, ‘Ardi’, could be seen on “Discovering Ardi” a documentary on the Discovery Channel. Last night we watched this extraordinary story of the painstaking excavation of our human progenitor—a million years older that ‘Lucy.’ It is now available on DVD. The animation based on Jay’s exacting anatomical drawings brought an ancient grandmother to life, and I was vividly reminded that several thousand years of religious development had gradually anesthetized the deep human, bodily experience of the Mystery and replaced it with abstractions like ‘consciousness’ or a disembodied, transcendent God. 

When you awaken, you re-experience the profound connection to life that Ardi knew in her cells—and which still remains in our own. This is no aerie-faerie consciousness. It is a physical, whole-bodied awareness: dynamic, earthy, and grounded in Life. All of us are a continuum, a living family past and present. In this unbroken lineage, we are modern/primeval human beings. And like Ardi, Lucy, and every single newborn baby, we stream with the powers of the universe. In the startling moment of a spiritual awakening, we become conscious of the dynamic unity of Life. It is visceral, palpable, primal. We need to integrate this more-than-mental understanding. That conscious integration restores us to the fullness of our humanity and provides the necessary fuel for transforming our relationships within our extended family around the world.
 
The Dancing Animal Woman: A Celebration of Life demonstrates how our own quest for greater meaning and purpose can contribute to the evolution of humanity’s intimacy with all of life.Last weekend, my publisher informed me that it is almost out of print after a print run of almost 10,000 copies. It is described here. Please write me directly if you’d like an autographed copy for yourself or for a gift. I have only 33 left.

More on WHAT DOES THE PRIMAL HAVE TO DO WITH SPIRITUALITY?

Filed under Awakening, Love, Transformation by Anne Hillman #