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“Three Cups of Tea. One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School At A Time,” Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (Viking, 2006, Penguin, 2007) “is one of the most remarkable adventure stores of our time,” writes Tom Brokaw. The account of one man’s awakening to his path in this life is an “astonishing tale of compassion – and of promise kept,” notes Time Magazine in awarding it Asia Book of the Year. The book has also received the Kiriyama Prize, a nonfiction award.

Mortenson, upon stumbling into an Pakistani village after failing to reach the K2 mountain peak (second highest in the world), discovered a warmth and hospitality (even with the Taliban) which is seldom recorded in the Western press. While recovering he noticed children doing their lessons by scratching words in the dirt with sticks. In exchange for their nursing him back to health, he offered to build a school in their village. The 3 cups of tea title recounts how one of Mortenson’s hosts explained that the first cup is to a stranger, the second cup to a friend, and the third cup to a part of the family.

One school led to another to another in a chronicle of obstacle after obstacle, false starts with fund-raising, personal depression, panic, and despair, mixed with courage, stubborn persistence, highly unconventional contacts and, finally, some 55 new schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Here is a story “laced with drama, danger, romance, and good deeds,” says the Christian Science Monitor.

Early in the story, Mortenson’s 580 letters to celebrities and business people had yielded only about $2,000, including a check of $100 from Tom Brokaw. The tide began to turn when a group of schoolchildren in River Falls, Wisconsin donated $623 in pennies, inspiring other donations.

Through the formation of the Central Asia Institute (CAI), Mortenson has been able to raise funds to continue building schools, especially for girls – and with the help of the Taliban A particularly dramatic account details how after shipping the lumber and supplies for the first school in a remote mountain village, the shaky bridge across a chasm proved to be too weak for the weight of supplies. Mortenson found the funding to hire Pakistani engineers to build a new bridge, which took several months, after which the supplies could be delivered and the school built.

This book, co-authored by David Relin, an award-winning journalist, will change Western views of Muslims, establish that one person CAN make a difference, and furnish hope that eventually it may be possible to “replace guns with pencils”
Source: Review summary by Doris Lora 2008-04-17
 
Al Gore, who won an Oscar for his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” is recommending what he calls a fascinating book, “Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming,” by Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn (W.W. Norton, 2008). Krupp is the longtime president of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

The book tells the story of bold innovators and investors who are on the frontlines of reinventing energy sources and how to use what is in front of us to solve the climate crisis. Readers will encounter creative solutions such as keeping an ice hotel frozen throughout the summer with energy from hot springs, algae that gobbles up a problem and becomes much-needed fuel and harnessing the fierce power of waves.

Innovators are remaking the economy with businesses, large and small, that can save the planet. These energy-shaping companies provide meaningful jobs, spawn additional industries and have the potential to reshape the global economic landscape in the 21st century.

Gore notes that the book “examines how we must reinvent everything from cars to concrete and replace our current outdated centralized electrical grid with a smart, multidirectional energy network.”

Reviewers applaud the tone of optimism and hope conveyed by Krupp and Horn. Humans do have the creative inner resources necessary to confront the current crisis. The task is to join together and reinforce an underlying spirit of cooperation which transcends short-term goals of petty competition and personal wealth at any cost.
Source: Newswise 2008-04-03
 
This six CD set,”Unlocking Your Intuitive Power” by Laura Alden-Kamm, is an excellent source for learning psychic techniques and understanding the basis of the intuitive life. It includes information on the author’s near-death experience, the nature of intuition(second sight), charkas, and vipassana meditation. The author discusses how energy moves through us and details the major components of an intuitive reading, including ethical guidelines.

Alden-Kamm stresses that the underlying goal of all these processes is to know God. As we extend our sensory perceptions, we do so with the intention of connecting to Source, and not to gain power over others. To invest in and live the intuitive life is to set the stage for and experience grace. Like many people who are profoundly psychic, the author suffered a physical malady, which in her case required brain surgery. She ended up losing much of her normal sight but gained a second sight so intense that she describes it as the ability to see into bodies with the precision of an electron microscope.

She defines intuition as the connection with your soul and spirit, which results in insights that come to you without reasoning or analysis. She provides exercises and suggestions which are practical, and in many cases easy to do. Her information will both educate the beginner and challenge the advanced.

Her teaching tools include a template for reading anything,including people, pets, objects, and even scanning the future. The template is: Intention, Attention, Connection, Disengagement. Since we can tune into a variety of frequencies, we first want to clarify what we’re intending. For instance, if you want to read a building you’re thinking of buying, your intention is to get information about that building. Then you put your attention onto the building by holding it in your mind’s eye with the intention of learning its history and whether it would be a good buy. As you hold your attention on the object, you do a kind of mind meld that allows you to zone into its frequency.(This is similar to the technique for spoon bending.) When finished, you disengage, either by imagining that you’re dialing down the frequency of a radio, or by breathing the energy out of your body. Then you come back to yourself. This may even involve pulling cords of energy out of your chakras as if you are pulling weeds.

Alden-Kamm portrays the psychic reader as an instrument, a receptacle for information when it’s ready to come through. As intuition and intellect connect with signals in time and space, they come back through the reader’s nervous system and into the brain. In order to hold this power and not be destroyed or misled by it, the psychic needs to remain centered, mindful, and strong.

The author reminds us that though psychic phenomena are great fun, they are still the lower world of matter, and the higher goal of this path is to experience and know God. She even believes that if we become mindful enough, we will connect with the signals of our own souls, which will allow us to live joyfully. The listener can learn much from this multi-disk set. The information is solid, well-presented, and easy to follow. It is available from Sounds True (www.soundstrue.com).

Lorrie Kazan was chosen as one of the top psychics in a worldwide audition for the Edgar Cayce Foundation. Access her free newsletters and articles at www.ilovemypsychic.com
Source: Reviewed by Lorrie Kazan 2008-03-20
 
“Living Deeply. The Art & Science of Transformation in Everyday Life” by Marilyn Mandala Schlitz, Cassandra Vieten and Tina Amorok (2007) is the second of the noetic books issued by the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, California (www.noetics.org) and Harbinger Publications. This impressive volume, with a Foreword by America’s scholarly expert on Buddhism, Robert Thurman of Columbia University, is the result of ten years of research on personal transformation conducted by scientists at the Institute where “noetics” is valued as intuitive knowing.

In this era of burgeoning spirituality, dozens of books appear every month giving at least a nod in the direction of personal growth and change along a spiritual path. What sets “Living Deeply” apart is its decision to integrate science and spirit with a topic that is not easily described, much less quantifiable. However, in the 30-year tradition of the Noetics Institute, the goal was to broaden the arbitrary limits of what is measurable by traditional tools, in order to study what is truly meaningful to human beings.

Data collection was primarily through interviews of established spiritual teachers and self-reports by average men and women intent on personal growth – or “falling” into an unexpected awakening. It’s strength lies in the personal accounts of circumstances which surrounded these transformational events and experiences, what it felt like, and how their perspectives of the world and their lives were forever changed. These data are analyzed and integrated in an effort to distill and articulate the common elements of the experience of transformation.

Noetics Board member Richard Gunther’s story (the Preface) is not unusual among the book’s participants. Standing on a balcony at Esalen Institute many years ago, looking over the dramatic Big Sur coastline, he suddenly was flooded with an overwhelming awareness that he was not a separate entity. Rather, he blissfully became connected to everything and everyone. He suddenly “knew” at an inarticulate level that all is One and that this Oneness is a different reality – the only reality. “I am not a religious person,” he says, and has no rational explanation for this jolt into an altered state. The experience has stayed with him for decades as a new appreciation for the joy of life and the importance of service to others.

The authors emphasize the idea of a “practice.” Spiritual growth is a process and requires disciplined motivation to stay on the path toward greater awareness and eventual awakening. The final chapters go from “I” to “We” and emphasize the goal of experiential connection to all others and to the highest Source of life, however defined. In that place, countless sages have noted that this unique awareness cannot be spoken – only experienced.
Source: Shift Magazine (Institute of Noetic Sciences) 2008-03-06
 

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