Jump Time: Shaping Your Future in a World of Radical Change

I've never felt more urgently the need to understand what is happening in this upside down world, and no book I've found addresses that need more profoundly than JUMP TIME.Recognizing the perils of the day while emphasizing the possibilities, JUMP TIME is engaging from cover to cover, with a wonderful blend of the humorous, poignant, and inspiring. Mostly, it is brilliant. I kept thinking, "Why don't today's world leaders know this stuff!" Actually, I've heard that Dr. Houston is now regularly called in to work with the U.N., so that is heartening. This is a book to read if you want to understand what is unfolding in this amazing time in human history. I'll close with a passage from the book:"The electronic nervous system of the global village has resulted in a spreading and sharing of the images and archetypes of societies radically different from each other in geography, history, and ethnicity. Myths and stories cooked in climates vastly different from ours are becoming the materials of our everyday consciousness. The rebirth of images and their cross-fertilization through media and travel spurs us to rethink the archetypal possibilities of our human selves, now expanded to include all present knowledge and all previous visions of tribe, race, and social class."

I floated an experiment with this book. You know the sort of assay: let the book fall open and follow your gaze to a line, any line. As a personal venture, such experiment, homely and amateur, has, over time, yielded me an efficient, effective test of a writing's worth. In the present case, the line from Jump Time that caught my gaze referenced the Iroquois "Ceremony of Condolence." The ceremony is, at once, a mystical practice and a practical device which affords immediate succor and, in the long-term, transforms grief into life-affirming perspective.Any book worth your time will afford such affirmation. It will transport you even as it grounds you, affirms the richness of the "every day." As with the single line from the "Ceremony of Condolence," the whole of Houston's Jump Time achieves a delicate balance between the transcendent and the quotidien. The book rewards the investment of your time. Why? On any page, you will find Houston's signature blend of the numinous and the no-nonsense: blueprints for education (with real-time examples); "a harvest of spiritual practices" (leave the paltry single crop to Fundamentalists); a model for international peace-making (underscored by the author's solid diplomatic work) which is downright prescient in its aptness for our era; finally, a privileged glimpse into our own interior riches, our "entelechy." Ultimately, then, the signature blend is the keenest of provocations. Houston's anecdotes and antidotes provoke because the blend is packed into the loaded stuff of Jump Time.Houston takes care not to restrict the definition of Jump Time. With mastery, she draws with a broad metaphysical brush. She variously defines the phenomenon as "radical change" and the "time of the parenthesis" (whet your appetite?) Nevertheless, she astutely avoids force-feeding her reader with a facile, definitive take. Ultimately, we all know, instinctively, what Jump Time is (if you don't, turn on CNN), and Houston knows, respects that fact --in spades. She is here, at our private altar of the arm chair, to evoke and provoke -- to enrich the intimations we already possess deep in our psyches --collective and singular.Among the many joys peppering Jump Time, the reader will experience Jean Houston as an exuberant, proximate, compassionate narrator. Forget disaffected cynicism. This book is Jean Houston, plain and not-so-simple; not so simple because Houston has a preternatural knack for gifting us with the complex while sheltering us from the dogmatic.In the final analysis, Jump Time were better dubbed Jump Timely. Prescient and topical, the tome is a lifeline in a world where all bets are off. In this new world, this post-September 11 realm, we are, as nations and individuals, struggling to quell our fears, define our next steps. Our spirits falter under the weight of our leaders' well-intentioned but wan rhetoric -- rhetoric that, with another major wave of terrorism, may go the way of bankrupt metaphor.In t

Dr. Jean Houston foresaw the great challenges that America and the world faces today. In light of the tragic events of September 11th, the lessons of Jump Time are more important than ever. If you only read one book this year, read Jump Time.You may know Jean Houston as the best-selling author of such books as The Possible Human, A Passion for the Possible, and A Mythic Life. You may have heard of her association with Joseph Campbell, or her work with Margaret Mead. Jean Houston is a world-renowned scholar, philosopher, and teacher. She has been a consultant to UNICEF, and her forward-thinking concepts often takes her to the United Nations. There is no greater mind in the human potentials arena today than Dr. Houston who continues her rich work in developing the possible human, who will then create the possible society and the possible world.What is Jump Time? Well, we're living in it; a time of whole system transition in which nothing is as it was in the past. It is the end of the world as we know it, and the beginning of something entirely new. What that world will be is up to all of us. In Jump Time we are given tools to uncover human potentials for this brave new world. You learn to access your essential self; self orchestrate across states of consciousness; turn on your polyphrenic self; become a cultural fusinary; travel your greater mythic path, and emerge as the new man or woman, "cooking on more burners," as Jean Houston says.The book offers great insights into social change and social artistry. Chapter Three on new systems of education alone is worth the price of admission. In Seattle, where I live, there are amazing new schools which are growing out of Jean's inspiring view of what is possible for today's children, their parents and community. This is a book that makes change happen! Much of Jump Time is also taken from depth soundings in Jean Houston's Mystery School offering glimpses into deep wells of sacred psychology where one is given the tools to be more than they ever imagined.Whoever you are when you begin reading Jump Time, you will find an entirely new person looking back at you in the mirror by the time you finish reading the book; an expanded you that is ready for the challenges we face together in this new millennium of incredible possibilities. Make the jump to Jump Time... together we can make miracles happen!

Every now and then a book comes along that changes the way I see the world. When I first read Joseph Campbell's "The Power of Myth," it had an enormous effect upon me. When I read Jean Houston's "Jump Time" I felt like all things are possible and I could be a participant, a co-creator in shaping our future. It energized me to continue to do good in the world and to work towards creating a better planet. As an teacher, I found her chapter on education profound and insightful. It's a blueprint for the kind of education I have been working to create all of my life. Compassionate, intelligent, and sparkling with great clarity, "Jump Time" is a MUST read.

One of the most provocative, profound and powerful books I have ever read. Houston puts us right in the center of "the biggest change in human history". I have never been so exhilerated by a book before. It makes you want to go out and be part of the change that is happening.