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Site Revival and Revisions
Welcome back to those of you who visited this site in recent months and wondered why the web pages were not displaying properly. Sadly, the site had been hacked and progressively disabled. Ouch. Perhaps someone did not like the ideas and ideals voiced here. Regardless, the site has now been totally cleansed, secured in multiple layers, and wholly redesigned graphically from one end to the other. The site is now poised for growth!
With all the added security, comments on past blog posts have been re-opened, so I hope you will get active and get vocal as a reader. Please subscribe to the revamped newsletter, too.
And if you have ideas for improving the website, if you wish to communicate with me about the book, Global Sense, of if you need a book coach, please click the contact link in the menu bar.
Thanks and blessings!
Judah
Clean Water
30 tips in 30 days: #30.
As the world’s population tripled in the 20th century, the global demand for renewable water resources increased six times. The trend is unsustainable. Desalinization of ocean water, I believe, may be our best hope to offset depleted aquifers. Until then, water purification, conservation and reclamation means life or death for a growing number of us.
In industrialized nations, local water mostly comes from a water utility, which runs a treatment plant to ensure the purity of potable water. Local water quality varies widely because the acceptable levels of heavy metals and chemical contaminants varies widely. In the U.S., water fluoridation is common, for example, but in Europe fluoride is widely shunned as a toxin proven to be as noxious as lead and arsenic.
Therefore, if you want drinkable water in industrialized nations, your choices may be lobbying the local utility for high water quality standards, drilling a well and having it tested periodically for safety, installing a good water filtration system, or else buying bottled water, which varies in quality as widely as utility water supplies. Some bottled water actually is just local tap water.
In the developing world, safe drinking water is hard to find. One billion people lack access to safe water. UN health officials attribute more than 80 percent of all illness globally to unclean water, causing a child’s death every eight seconds. Non-governmental organizations like Rotary International install solar water pumps in remote villages. Australian Edward Linacre developed an “Airdrop” irrigation system that collects water from the air. These barely begin to address global water shortages, as Vandana Shiva says in Water Wars.
Meanwhile, we continue to use water for drinking, cooking and washing along with producing food, clothing, paper, and most of our manufactured products. To measure your own water consumption, use the calculator at CSGnetwork.com/waterusagecalc.html. Please also visit the helpful website, WaterFootprint.org.
For 100+ tips on water conservation, see WaterUseItWisely.com. Options include turning off the faucet when washing your hands or brushing your teeth, taking shorter showers and shallower baths, installing efficient showerheads and toilets, fixing faucets that drip, and xeriscaping your yard instead of planting a lawn. Conserving water today makes a global difference tomorrow.
If you have more ideas or information about clean water options as we advance toward personal democracy, please suggest them here through the contact form at GlobalSense.com.
If you wish to help create a quantum shift into global consciousness on our planet, please share with others this excerpt from my book: GLOBAL SENSE: A spiritual handbook on the nature of society and how to change the world by changing ourselves
If you wish to read Global Sense, please visit Amazon.
Green Food Choices
30 tips in 30 days: #29.
Eating organic and naturally grown foods makes global sense. If you cannot find these in your local food stores, or if the choices are too limited, lobby store owners to carry more or better natural foods. Grow organic veggies and herbs, if you can, even if you do so in clay pots on the balcony or roof of an apartment building.
If you cannot afford to eat natural and organic foods, if you lack the time or energy to grow your own food, if conventional foods are all you can find or afford, at least buy fresh food rather than processed foods. Be a “locavore,” eating foods produced as locally as possible.
If you buy processed foods, please read the food labels. If you can’t pronounce the chemical names of artificial ingredients, such as preservatives, do you really want them in your body? And when you read labels, bear in mind that 90 percent of the non-organic soy and corn grown in the USA has been genetically modified, which includes virtually all high fructose corn syrup used in processed foods.
You may not choose to be a vegetarian or vegan, but eat as low on the food chain as possible. A diet rich in vegetables, fruits and whole grains boosts our health. If you need or want to eat meat, before you bite into that burger, at least know the quality of the meat you eat and its source. Are you eating feedlot beef or cattle raised where a rain forest once stood?
Our food choices affect public health. The “obscenity of obesity” in the U.S. and other industrial countries costs us billions to treat diet-based diseases like diabetes and heart disease. If we’d eat right and exercise regularly, the money spent on surgeries and drugs could instead support holistic health research, including cancer treatment, so we all could enjoy longer and more active lives.
Eating natural or organic food, furthermore, raises our spiritual energy vibrations, so we magnetically attract more positive life experiences.
We are what we eat, literally and figuratively. Our food choices each day have a real and lasting impact on our lives and the lives of our families, communities, nations, and the planet itself. Eating with a global consciousness is more than a matter of good taste.
If you have more ideas or information about green food choices as we advance toward personal democracy, please suggest them here through the contact form at GlobalSense.com.
If you wish to read Global Sense, please visit Amazon.
Green Recreation
30 tips in 30 days: #27.
“Men tire themselves in pursuit of rest,” wrote Laurence Sterne. My gut says what we need from play is relaxation and self renewal. Recreation is re-creation with our co-Creator. When I commune with nature, like going for a hike, my goal is inner peace.
We need sustainable vacations. I mourn for the pristine Colorado mountain meadows forever rutted by sports utility vehicles. There’s no point in going sightseeing if we’re destroying the very sites we’ve come to see. Instead, a growing number of people are enjoying “stay-cations.” They stay at home for a week or three, doing whatever they most love to do but have had no time to do — true leisure.
An emerging alternative is ecotourism. You pay to visit threatened places like the Costa Rican rain forest, which is preserved by visitors hiring local guides and outfitters rather than the forest being clearcut by these locals for subsistence farming or timber exports. For details, visit the International Ecotourism Society at Ecotourism.org.
Another option is voluntourism. You pay to do service projects in remote villages, like helping to build a school. These are great multi-cultural awakeners — if the project is really sustainable. Be wary of your free labor taking away paid work from local residents. Also be wary of commercial tie-ins that may ethically or actually undermine the good work you do. For assistance, visit Voluntourism.org.
If you have more ideas or information about green recreation as we advance toward personal democracy, please suggest them here through the contact form at GlobalSense.com.
If you wish to read Global Sense, please visit Amazon.
Green Vehicles
30 tips in 30 days: #26.
Do you drive an earth-friendly vehicle? How much do you reduce global climate change with your transportation choices?
Sale prices continue coming down for hybrid gas-electric vehicles. Plug-in versions of these hybrids are now or soon will be available. Totally electric vehicle (EVs) are already on the market in the U.S., Europe and all other continents. If you don’t want a recharging cord, a wireless EV charging system is being tested in the UK.
Meanwhile, we’re all still waiting for a compact, lightweight. and cost-effective battery solution. We’re still waiting for a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle to become commercially viable.
In essence, given all the proven electrified vehicles already on the market, why buy a vehicle with an internal combustion engine? Why indeed? Maybe you just don’t really have a choice.
When I moved to Hawaii, I wanted to buy an electric vehicle, but if I wanted anything beyond a glorified electric golf cart, I could not buy one here on Kauai at the time. I tested hybrids, but I did not like their drivability. Against my conscience, I bought a fuel-efficient gas vehicle, but every time I refuel at Kauai gas prices, the highest in the U.S., I vow to get an EV as soon as I can.
Perhaps you are in my situation, or other factors keep you in a gas car or truck. Your can reduce your carbon footprint by consolidating errands, checking the tire pressure, and doing oil changes regularly. Use carpooling and mass transit for commuting if feasible.
Could you convert your vehicle for flex-fuel or natural gas? What about converting a diesel engine to run on salad oil? If total non-pollution matters to you, then walk, ride a bicycle, or else travel on a skateboard, rollerskates or rollerblades. Electric scooters are risky in traffic yet pollution-free. If you dream of owning a Segway, you may need to lobby for laws allowing it on streets or bike paths.
To be informed about EV developments in your part of the world, visit these EV trade organizations and news sites:
- World Electric Vehicle Association (wevaonline.net)
- Electric Drive Transportation Association (electricdrive.org)
- U.S. Electric Auto Association (electricauto.org)
- European Electric Auto Association (eaaeurope.org)
- European Electric Road Vehicle Association (avere.org)
- Electric Vehicle Association of Asia Pacific (evaap.org)
- Australian Electric Vehicle Association (aeva.asn.au)
- Electric Car News Today (electriccars.einnews.com)
- EV World (evworld.com)
If you wish to help popularize electric vehicles, lobby your local, state, provincial, and national governments to provide tax credits for purchasing EVs and investing in EV ventures. Further, lobby local government to lower registration fess for EVs. Lobby to allow single drivers of full-power EVs to use the high-occupancy vehicle (HOV)?lanes on highways, especially during the “rush hour.”
If you have more insights or information related to green transportation as we advance toward personal democracy, please suggest them here through the contact form at GlobalSense.com.
If you wish to read Global Sense, please visit Amazon.
Cultivating Intuition
30 tips in 30 days: #25.
Maybe the only thing I can say for sure about intuition, based on personal experience, is that we can develop our intuitive capabilities through diverse mental and spiritual practices. Here are some useful tools that have worked for me over the years. Read the rest of this page »
Intuitive Knowing
30 tips in 30 days: #24.
If logic is the left-brain path to knowledge for making decisions and solving problems, intuition is the right-brain path. Logic can be tested as valid and sound. Intuition is harder to prove as reliable. At best, we can trust our intuition and see what happens.
Men’s Support Groups
30 tips in 30 days: #23.
I want to talk specifically about men’s support groups. Since I first heard about “male liberation” and men’s consciousness raising in the 1970s, I’ve participated in lots of men’s support groups. I’ve seen the best and the worst.
Emotional Healing
30 tips in 30 days: #22.
If you are like me, one of your biggest life lessons is learning how to respond instead of react emotionally. How often have you flashed into anger and later had to apologize after you saw that an old neural script dictated your reaction? What have you done to help yourself? Below are some of the emotional growth methods that work for me. Please experiment to learn what works best for you.
Read the rest of this page »
Sad, Mad, Glad, Afraid, Ashamed
30 tips in 30 days: #21.
The ManKind Project says that we can distill emotions into five groups — happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and shame, what they refer to as “glad, sad, mad, afraid, ashamed.” Each feeling is really a cluster of emotions, like frustration, resentment, bitterness, rage, and hate being part of the anger group. Love, joy, pleasure, and bliss are forms of happiness. Identifying an emotion by type helps me choose how I want to feel. I use my head to support my heart. If I am sad or mad, I can choose to keep feeling that way, or I can shift into feeling glad. I can indulge a feeling or choose to shift my emotional state.
Choosing my emotions requires being alert enough to my feelings to command my emotions instead of my emotions commanding me. One of the reasons I’ve returned to stage acting, in fact, is to improve my ability to genuinely feel any emotion at will.
I monitor my emotional patterns, especially all of my compulsive reactions — even if after-the-fact. Unless I learn how I tend to react emotionally in stressful situations, how can I unhook my emotions from past pain? How else can I be free to choose what I feel?
Our challenge is liberating ourselves from those protein peptides triggering unwanted emotional reactions. We can say that we do not wish to “promiscuously worship” alpha males any longer, for example, but when life feels insecure, our authority addiction still kicks into gear, doesn’t it? We may go through the motions of self control , but are we in control of our emotions or are they in control of us? Does our mature inner adult govern our lives or does our wounded inner child? Only you know what’s true for you.
If you wish to read Global Sense, please visit Amazon.
Choosing our Feelings
30 tips in 30 days: #20.
We can choose how we feel. If I feel grumpy, I can walk outside and absorb the natural beauty around me in this Hawaiian paradise. Within minutes, I feel happy — or at least happier.
Gratitude: The Miracle Feeling
30 tips in 30 days: #19.
The most magical emotion in my life is gratitude, what I call “the miracle feeling.” New Thought teaches a five-step affirmative prayer. First, in my own words, I?affirm the oneness of the cosmos. Second, I affirm my unity with the cosmos. Third, I declare what I want to manifest, visualizing this as a reality in my life. Fourth, I feel grateful my prayer is being and has been fulfilled. Fifth, I let go with faith. This prayer is empowered by heartfelt emotions.
Emotional Vibrations
30 tips in 30 days: #18.
Love and all other emotions live within us. We store emotions in our physical bodies as well as our energetic emotional bodies, mental bodies, and spiritual bodies. Picture these bodies as interconnected, emanating from within us while surrounding us like shells or layers. Our physical and etheric bodies vibrate at different frequencies. If we feel happy, electrochemical signals pulse through our neural network while the emotional vibrations penetrate us on every energetic level, so our physical and etheric bodies glow with happiness.
Forms of Love
30 tips in 30 days: #17.
Every faith tradition on earth talks about the human heart as the primary pathway to spiritual communion with the divine. Many say the heart is a door and love is the key. The language differs, but the teaching is basically the same in every culture.
Problem-Solution Model
30 tips in 30 days: #16.
Global Sense uses a problem-solution model. I defined the world’s core problem as humanity’s lack of global consciousness. I identified the cause as our authority addiction and alpha male rule. I explored consequences of not dealing with the problem. Now I’m exploring the solutions of mindful self rule and personal democracy as our means of living in ways that make global sense.
Making Decisions
30 tips in 30 days: #15.
Making decisions in our daily lives is an excellent opportunity for practicing mindful self rule rooted in global consciousness.
Academic researchers have developed diverse detailed models for decision-making. However, few of us in youth are taught the most elementary methods for using our minds to make life choices.
Creative Blocks
30 tips in 30 days: #14.
The more we think creatively, the easier it becomes. Brian Clark at Copyblogger.com warns us against the mental blocks that prevent creative thinking. He lists 10 ways we suppress our creativity along with ways to counter each mental block; here is my distillation: Read the rest of this page »
Creative Thinking
30 tips in 30 days: #13.
Thinking with a global sensibility means transcending traditional ideas of yourself and the world as being separate. It means thinking of yourself and the world as being interconnected. In your mind’s eye, you can imagine the global consequences of your life choices.
Scientific Method
30 tips in 30 days: #12.
Testing for doubt is the basis of the scientific method. The process involves forming a hypothesis and then devising a test that accounts for all variables but the one being tested. I can meditate and then test if I can remotely read the symbols on Zenner cards, like the tests at Duke University. The tests will indicate if my theory is valid.
Elementary Logic
30 tips in 30 days: #11.
Were you taught in school what to think and not how to think? Perhaps the most useful intellectual tool ever developed by and for the human mind is logic. The foundation of logic is the syllogism:
If A equals B, and if B equals C, then A equals C.
Integration of new learning
30 tips in 30 days: #10.
Integration of new learning often requires time to reflect on what we’ve learned. However, sometimes we integrate a lesson seamlessly. We are shown how to do something better, like adding pure vanilla to French toast batter, and we adopt it without a second thought.
Read the rest of this page »
Learning to learn
30 tips in 30 days: #9.
As I continue to work on learning how to think in a healthy way, a valuable tool for me has been learning how I learn.
A Chinese proverb says, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” The developer of reality therapy, Dr. William Glasser, says we learn 10 percent of what we read, 20 percent of what we hear, 30 percent of what we see, 50 percent of what we hear and see, 70 percent of what we discuss with others, 80 percent of what we experience, and 95 percent of what we teach others.
Read the rest of this page »
Thoughts, people, places, things
30 tips in 30 days: #8.
Because all life is interconnected at the vibrational level, how we think about the people, places, things, and situations in our lives has an energetic influence on these people, places, things, and situations. Thoughts are things, and things affect other things.
Read the rest of this page »
Brainwaves
30 tips in 30 days: #7.
If we always create a negative emotional and mental reaction to everything in life, says Dr. Cherie Carter-Scott, we are a Negaholic. “Negaholism is a syndrome,” she writes, “in which people uncon-sciously limit their own innate abilities, convince themselves that they cannot have what they want, and sabotage their wishes, desires and dreams.” Guess I qualify as a “recovering negaholic.”
Read the rest of this page »
Thoughts Are Things
30 tips in 30 days: #6.
Our beliefs about the nature of reality express the worldview or the mindmap we use to navigate our lives. Our beliefs shape our thoughts about the people, places, things, and situations in our daily lives. Our thoughts shape our physical, emotional, and spiritual feelings about these people, places, things, and situations. All our feelings shape our behavior, which produces or manifests the reality of our lives.
Read the rest of this page »
Wellness Principles
30 tips in 30 days: #5.
Wellness means more than physical health. Wellness is all about the well being of both the physical and energetic bodies.
Western “allopathic” medicine is based on an Industrial Age view of people as machines with broken parts that doctors can fix using surgery or pharmaceuticals. Western health care is about diagnosing and curing symptoms more than causes. Evidence-based treatments might represent Western medicine at its best.
Read the rest of this page »
Chakra Basics
30 tips in 30 days: #4.
Interconnecting our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies are energy valves, spinning vortexes, called chakras. The seven main chakras are the tailbone (root chakra), perineum and genitals (sacral chakra), solar plexus (power chakra), chest (heart chakra), larynx (throat chakra), the forehead just above the nose (third eye), and the top of the head (crown chakra). Other chakras are the navel (birth chakra), above the head (transpersonal chakra), and at every organ.
Read the rest of this page »
Physical and Energetic Bodies
30 tips in 30 days: #3.
Like every other animal on the planet, or at least like every other mammal, our bodies have biological needs embedded in our cells as primal instincts. We must sleep, eat, defecate, urinate, reproduce, and finally die. I believe our souls survive death.
I view the body as the soil in which the soul grows. Many people say our souls live in our bodies. The idea is that we incarnate, that our eternal souls enter our bodies, perhaps at conception or in the womb, to experience the lessons only possible while inside a living body. My perception, though, is that my soul is bigger than my body. My body actually exists inside my soul, which is multidimensional. However, my body is the soil that nourishes the growth of my soul.
Read the rest of this page »
Know Thyself
30 tips in 30 days: #2.
My research has led me to study how both nature and nurture affect brain biochemistry, but how could I tell if my protein peptides were the cause or the effect of my life choices? All I could tell for sure was that I needed to be more conscious, more mindful. In short, I needed to heed the ancient wisdom inscribed in gold above the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: “Know Thyself.”
Read the rest of this page »
Mindfulness and Self Rule
30 tips in 30 days: #1.
To practice global sense and mindful self rule, I need true mindfulness, which flows from paying attention to the present moment. Rather than thinking about the past or the future, I need to live in the now. Conscious of being conscious, aware of myself being aware of myself, I sense my oneness with all life. I feel at peace. I am my true self. While I’m not mindful all the time, my spiritual consciousness guides the still, small voice of my conscience toward globally sensible choices.
Global Sense wins 2012 Nautilus Award
The 2012 edition of Global Sense has won the 2012 Silver Nautilus Award for Best Social Change Book. A previous edition won the 2007 Silver Nautilus Award for Best Social Change Book.
Global Sense has won the
Silver Nautilus Award
For 25 years, the Nautulus Awards have recognized books and audio books that promote spiritual growth, conscious living, and positive social change as they stimulate the imagination and inspire the reader to new possibilities for a better world.
The Nautilus Book Awards, founded and coordinated by Marilyn McGuire, are named for the mollusk whose beautiful, pearl-lined shell contains chambers of increasing size which the sea creature constructs for itself as it grows. The nautilus symbolizes both ancient wisdom and expanding horizons; both the elegance of nature and a continual growth of understanding and awareness.
Judah is in good company. Notable winners of prior Nautilus Awards include Deepak Chopra, Caroline Myss, Barbara Kingsolver, Frances Moore Lappe’, Marianne Williamson Thich Nhat Hanh, Jean Houston, Eckhart Tolle, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Hazel Henderson, Riane Eisler, Matthew Fox, Thom Hartmann, Amy Goodman, Andrew Weil, David Korten, Lynne McTaggart, Gary Zukav, Naomi Wolf, and others.
All of the award winners will be announced publicly in May. For more information, please visit NautilusBookAwards.com.
If you wish to read Global Sense, please visit Amazon.
World news proves need for global sense
As evidence this book is needed in the world, notice the news headlines since I began rewriting Global Sense in July 2011:
- Tornadoes and floods devastate central U.S. East Africa suffers worst drought in 60 years.
- Two terrorist attacks in one day stun Norway.
- Syrian military kills rebels.
- Rioters burn British cities after police shoot a black man.
Read the rest of this page »
Occupy Wall Street Political Cartoons
Congratulations to BuzzFeed.com for posting 15 great political cartoons about the Occupy Wall Street protests. Check these out for yourself. Below is a prime example:
Courtesy: BuzzFeed.com
Timeless truth
Given the rapid growth of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement across America and the world, these songs are as relevant today as more than 40 years ago.
The original recording of the classic Buffalo Springfield song brings it all back with vivid images.
D5 Creation