Waking the Global Heart: Humanity's Rite of Passage from the Love of Power to the Power of Love

I began reading this book expecting to find another goddess spirituality book telling us about how we need to go back to the "good old days" when women ruled the world, when we were one with nature in idyllic Roussean bliss, and how the presence of male energy on the planet should be eradicated so that women can create a perfect paradise - just like they once used to. What I found was something else altogether - a detailed and balanced account of the historical, cultural and philosophical development leading to our current culture. While she uses the metaphor of the chakra system to trace this development, it is perfectly syncronous with Spiral Dynamics and other sophisticated models of human development. In other words, there is a total absence of magical, New Age superstition and a great presence of balance, perspective and wisdom. The book is a clarion call to action, to understand the context of our emergence, appreciate the gravity of our current situation and take total responsibility for it on the level of our personal lives. This is all done without guilt tripping or demonizing any aspect of our development, while not denying much of its brutality. Having studied both Ken Wilber's and Don Beck's work, I find this book in perfect alignment and the author another in a growing chorus of voices urging us to evolve at the level of consciousness in service of the entire race. Elegantly written, full of heart and perspective, this book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand why we're where we're at and what the next step must be.

Waking the Global Heart creates an understandable picture of cultural evolution. More importantly it creates a hope for what humanity can yet become, if we can begin to awaken to what is possible instead of living with what we have come to accept. As a United Methodist pastor, I found Judith's anaylsis of Christian history to be especially helpful for revealing the process of adjusting Christianity to fit political purposes of the Roman Empire. While Judith's summary of this history could not possibly cover all the nuances of that history, her approach reminds us that the heart message Jesus proclaimed and lived was co-opted by the love of power that dominated that time and this. From the perspective of Jesus message of the heart (the power of love), I have long struggled with the use of the word "kingdom"of God to describe Jesus' goal. While Jesus' call is clearly to create a world based on God's love, "kingdom" carries too much of the "love of power" model. I especially appreciated Judith's coining of the word, "kindom" to describe the goal of social evolution. Waking the Global Heart gives us an excellent model as to what the world can be, if we can move past doctrine to discover unity of spirit in the image of the heart chakra. Dana Wimmer

WAKING THE GLOBAL HEART, will be kept were I can refer to it often. Anodea Judith has touched all the right nerves to awaken humanity's sleeping giant. As J. Krishnamurti put it, to produce "A radical mutation of the mind." She describes the human condition as an adolescent emerging with the crushing awareness of adult choices. Like a teen age girl staring in disbelief at the drug store pregnancy test that signals a personal Tsunami, a 9/11 and a New Orleans, humanity stands in the postmodern era with no MAPS and no consensus. Like a deer frozen in the headlights, we trouble in disbelief at the chaos we see rushing at us with hurricane speed. Anodea's book is a welcome new MAP, and her words ring true as I recognize the truth of her message: "Humanity's Rite of Passage from THE LOVE OF POWER to the POWER OF LOVE." At first glance her three-part index seems to over simplify the world problematique, but the depth of this luminary volume soon changes everything. One realizes, even in the preface, when she describes her love of untangling strings in her mother's kitchen drawer, that Anodea manifested early the tenacity and the patience needed to create this master work. Thank God she had the perseverance and the chutzpah to write this book! It is a handbook for navigating the transformations urgently needed to heal a world in crisis. Anodea draws frequently from some of my favorite visionaries, Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Dr. Fritjof Capra, and Ken Wilber. Her depth of understanding spans the ancient wisdom, years of experience as a therapist soothing pains of the soul, and the history of humanity's rise to walk on the moon where we saw island earth as the only home we have. Read it once, read it twice, and then take my advice and simplify your Christmas shopping. Keep it close at hand as you struggle to come of age in the generation needed to save the world from ourselves. Anodea's book reminds me of the famous line from Walt Kelly's cartoon character POGO, "we have met the enemy and he is us." She makes it clear in her passionate hope, "Someday we will be the ancestors that I pray will be remembered with gratitude rather than resentment." and "...the current crisis will call forth global cooperation like nothing ever has before." I pray she is right! If she is it will be because she and thousands like her with compassion, love, and a noble spirit inspired us all to create the world our children's children can love in peace and joy.

This phenomenal book is subtitled "Humanity's Rite of Passage from the Love of Power to the Power of Love." This is an apt synopsis of its central theme, which takes us from humanity's infancy in the early Paleolithic era through successive stages of cultural evolution, to our present age of cultural adolescence, and the threshold of maturity upon which we stand--a great Global Awakening. Following the metaphorical construct of the Chakra system which the author has established and explicated so well in her previous books, she maps these socio-cultural eras upon the template of the seven classic chakras: The Paleolithic Era was that of the 1st chakra, a time of human infancy in which our primal religious archetype was that of the Great Mother, ruled by the values of the Static Feminine--cyclic and stable. Society was oriented towards survival, based upon hunting and gathering. The end of the Ice Age around 10,500 years ago was a rite of passage into the 2nd Chakra Age, the Neolithic Era, oriented around sexuality and procreation. Society was based upon agriculture and the domestication of herd animals. This was our "toddlerhood." The overthrow of the Mother in the Bronze and Iron Ages was a rite of passage into the 3rd chakra--the rise of empires and the ascendance of an era dominated by the Dynamic Masculine. In this stage of early childhood, society was organized around elite power. The 4th Chakra Age was the Christian Era, initiated by Jesus. This would be the age of the Heart, with love the avowed goal of human society. This phase, our middle childhood, was represented by the ascendance of the Static Masculine. The Renaissance which began 600 years ago inaugurated the 5th Chakra Age of pre-adolescence, based upon communication and knowledge. The dawn of the 20th century was our rite of passage into cultural adolescence, ushering in the 6th Chakra Age, ruled by the imagination and information, and introducing the archetype of the Dynamic Feminine. The 7th and final Chakra Age of realization and maturity began in the psychedelic `60s, with the Mystic Marriage of Heaven and Earth, and the emergence of a new generation of "Cultural Creatives." Unfortunately, Christ's 4th chakra message of universal love got coopted by the Roman Empire--which was steeped in a 3rd chakra mentality--and became used as a means of control rather than liberation. Therefore humanity has been arrested in our development and our collective Heart has not yet been fully awakened. That's why we need to do it now. For now begins the time of a Global Awakening of planetary consciousness, as prophesied by Teilhard de Chardin and many other visionaries. We have completed a vast sequence of cosmic cycles, and it is now time, as Joseph Campbell said, for a New Myth to carry us onward--to the stars and beyond! Rich and brilliant chapters of sweeping and insightful historical analysis and deep vision are accompanied by detailed historical charts compiled by Richard Ely,

In a time of great upheaval in politics, environmental crises, famine, war and violence, it was refreshing and uplifting to read this book. Judith has provided a powerful new way to reframe human history, what is happening in the world today and what it portends for our future. I finished the book feeling quite hopeful about the world.