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

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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.

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.

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, and a time-line of 800,000 years of chronological events. My copy is already dog-eared from all the pages whose corners I have turned down to return to for points I will want to reference in my own future writings.

Having read the author's previous books, this work is truly her Magnum Opus. I can only urge that it be read by as wide an audience as possible--though it will be especially appreciated by those who resonate with those she quotes frequently: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Riane Eisler, Fritjof Capra, Leonard Shlain, Jean Houston, Margaret Wheatley, Marija Gimbutas.

This is our wake-up call; spread the word!

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

Judith shows mastery of important ancient and modern philosophies. In plain language, she spins together many interesting and multicultural ingredients to formulate a cure for the planet. Her recipe is optimistic, but provocative - a great basis for dialogue.

Anodea Judith's voice comes across loud and clear: We are in a time of crisis - a global rite of passage - and only by studying our past - the evolution of civilization - can we know where we're headed. This is the most interesting and readable book about history - and our future - I've ever seen. In fact, I never understood the patterns of our history prior to reading this. She tells not "his-story," but OUR story. That's where we've come from. But she then turns to our future, showing us that we have a choice, right now, and that our choice will lead us either into a glorious future (if we can open our hearts to each other and to the planet), or to more death and destruction if we do not. Although it sounds alarming, alarms are good to have if you're trying to wake up in time.
In her previous works, she looked at human psychology through the lens of the Chakra system. In this book, she uses that lens again to examine the development of civilizations. Because she is a brilliant psychotherapist, it is as if she has Western Civilization on the couch, trying to understand the source of his wounds and bizarre behavior by examining his past. Once understood, she describes the rite of passage he must go through and the decisions he must make (we must make) in order to turn from a mixed-up, selfish and dangerous teenager into a whole, healed adult. Tribal cultures knew how to take children and turn them into functioning adults. We seem to have lost that knowledge, so we've remained in our teenage mania.
I couldn't recommend this book more highly. This is a book for anyone who wants to understand how we got into this mess, and how we can get out of it. It provides a hopeful look at our future, but it is clear that our time to wake up - into the heart - is now.

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.

Anodea Judith is a noted teacher and author on the subject of the ancient concept of the chakras. The chakras correspond to various energy centers of the human anatomy and map to various levels of consciousness and stages of development.

Anodea has taken the same chakra system and applied it to the history of mankind's social, political, religious, and technological development over the past 30,000 years. She has mapped this history against various chakras chronologically demonstrating man's social evolution from the lowest chakra (Earth) to the highest (Spiritual) chakra.

Ms. Judith's thesis is that humankind is in the process of an evolutionary transformation, presently in a state of adolescence and entering a challenging time - the rite of passage - moving to adulthood, where the "higher" chakras, in particular the Heart chakra, will come to dominate mankind's future evolution of political, social, economic, and spiritual systems.

Her conclusions are unapologetically optimistic in citing that there is in-fact a groundswell of individual action towards the attitudes and behaviors necessary to reverse the chaos and conflict endemic in the world today. Indeed, today's chaos is seen as symptomatic of mankind's adolescence and necessary transition to adulthood.

That the jury is still out as to whether we make this transition before we destroy ourselves and/or the planet's ecosystem is clearly acknowledged, but the conclusions overall are highly optimistic that the long-term outcome will be positive. The rite of passage may be rather unpleasant however!.

The book is eminently readable and the various mappings of the chakras to human history are helpfully summarized in numerous charts and tables.

For me, the first three chapters (part one) and the conclusions in part three were by far the most powerful portions of the text. The actual chronological mapping of human history to the chakras was intriguing and indeed the core of the thesis being advanced. However, the passion and intensity of Anodea's arguments come through loud and clear in the first and third parts.

Regardless of whether one is convinced that the mapping of the chakras to historical time periods is firm evidence of an inevitable path of human evolution or a convenient model for the purposes of advancing the conclusions is, I believe, less critical than the heartfelt plea that it is getting very, very, late in the game and that "we", the human species, have little time to clean up our act.

That a significant "transformation" is about the only thing that will save the human species seems abundantly clear to most interested observers. Whether framed in the model of the chakras and the transformation to "species adulthood" or some other form, the central thesis is really that things had better happen fast. Utilizing the chakras, and in particular the Heart chakra, provides a compelling set of guideposts with regard to the direction and types of changes that must occur.

Now from a, "glass half-full, glass half-empty", perspective one is left wondering whether this book and many others like it, are desperate attempts to see light at the end of the tunnel - where there is none - or whether humanity really has the will to manifest the enormous transformation that the author believes is essential. The analytical model used - the chakras - indicates that it is not only desirable, but an inevitable result of an evolutionary process. Let us hope she is right!

Once again, the "think globally, act locally" idea is presented. This book may greatly assist those who are concerned, but immobilized at present, find the will, energy, and determination to organize and act decisively in order to be a part of the essential transformation.

Waking the Global Heart is an extraordinary overview of the history and development of our global culture, highlighting core themes and trends that have helped shape us as a society today, charting the challenges and opportunities of our time. The book is very well written and so interesting you can't put it down. I highly recommend it.
Kimberly Weichel, co-author, Healing the Heart of the World

Anodea Judith has written a book that gives hope...it is a streamlined version of our collective history and is very well written and thought out. the ultimate how to book, our future depends on waking the global heart and initiating a new paradigm. anodea judith's outlook is so positive that it is hard to imagine a world that does not ultimately surpass our best selves.