The New Green Economy

Obama brought his beloved BlackBerry to the White House. Queen Elizabeth II created a MySpace page. The Pope has a YouTube channel. Across the globe, we're a-Twitter with thoughts, ideas, wisdom and jokes to share.

At its best, technology is a universal connector and translator, helping us come home to ourselves in the deepest sense. Never before have we approached such a leveling of levels, an alliance of adopters across age, social, cultural and religious spectra.

As the world again becomes flat, we're creating ever-expanding arcs of connectivity. And connection equals energy.

We can literally power the planet with the energy of pure love, which enables us to reimagine the obvious. For example: hydrogen, a gas that's plentiful and perennial, can be used to fuel our future with zero pollution, zero cost, and zero depletion of finite resources.

Energy and environmental analyst Harry Braun lucidly explains in this Science for Life interview how the world can make the shift to a highly renewable, fossil fuel-free future of sustainable solar hydrogen power.

Then there's alcohol. David Blume, Executive Director of the International Institute of Ecological Agriculture and a globally recognized expert on Ethanol and biofuels, invites us to drive it rather than drink it: Alcohol Can be A Gas.

When I recently listened to him cavorting with astrologer Caroline Casey on her weekly Visionary Activist radio show, I was galvanized by possibility.

Caroline introduced the show by saying, "We are convening the Ouija Board of Directors," where curiosity and generosity open the path to ingenuity. Caroline and David are masters of non-linear, alchemical thinking; in fact, both spoke to the "alchemy of reversal" that only awaits human receptivity to manifest.

What David shared set my mind whirling. Ethylene (the key ingredient in crude oil) is what Pythia, the Delphic Oracle, would inhale to inspire prophecy! It's the same smell that fermenting fruit gives off. Ethylene is also a precursor to ether (anesthetic).

I immediately understood: We can remain anesthetized (deadened, living as sheep, ruled by the Dominator virus), or alive and undrugged, seeking to collaborate with rather than conquer Nature.

Caroline invoked, "Let us all be Pythias: how do we come into accord with the larger, mythic design of our lives?"

She opined that the "new Pythic car" might be one where we "drive and prophesy." She's not far off: just a week prior, I found the site of a Japanese scientist who has discovered how to turn plastic back into oil. And there's inherent humor: while the word may mean something entirely different in Japanese, his company is "Blest."

David helps create sustainable energy solutions for urban and rural communities worldwide, such as Project Gaia, a global initiative to develop clean cooking fuels. How do we produce non-wood fuel in indigenous cultures? Easy: Ethanol. It's a clean, non-toxic fuel source that saves both trees and people's health (because they're not breathing in the smoke from cooking daily over an open fire.)

He proposed a solution for the Gulf oil spill as well: bioremediation with kelp. Once again, it's about using what Nature has provided. He explained how Gulf fishermen could toss kelp nets over the ocean and use defunct refineries for harvest, yielding re-oxygenated water, fertilizer and fuel. David asserts that this method can easily power the entire U.S.!

What these mentally elastic pioneers are doing might be termed shapeshifting. In his riveting book Shape Shifting: Techniques for Global and Personal Transformation, former management consultant John Perkins, once an expert witness for nuclear power who awakened to become a proponent of clean energy, describes his life-altering encounters with master shamans worldwide.

The indigenous prescription for planetary salvation: "change the dream" of conspicuous, Earth-decimating consumption to an Earth-honoring, balanced vision that serves both ancient and modern cultures. To serve this new dream, Perkins founded DreamChange.org, a global grass roots movement of people from diverse cultures and backgrounds dedicated to shifting consciousness and promoting sustainable lifestyles.

Clearly, the possibilities for fueling our future in every sense are limitless, if each of us is willing to be the change, to affirm, "The buck stops here." This is also the key to wealth creation: claiming responsibility (the ability to respond) in every area of our lives. By stepping fully into our power, by refusing to point the finger or pass the buck, by being willing to leave herd consciousness for conscious co-creation, we accrue true wealth, which means well being and wisdom.

It's a subtle shift: from passivity to passion, collusion to collaboration, independence to interdependence. If we've been accustomed to canon firings to get our attention, now the caress of a feather will suffice. Noise and commotion jar the senses and sensibilities; it's only in repose that we can hear the beckoning wonder, calling us to release our sticky, oil-soaked cravings and glide with grace into our heart's desire.

Remember how Doc Brown stuffed banana peels into his car's gas tank in Back to the Future, when he returned from a brief trip ahead? That 1985 film was prescient. A quarter century hence, we're nearly there.

The call to claim our purpose usually sounds at a somewhat inconvenient moment. Sometimes we hear whispers years before we're ready to acknowledge them, let alone begin taking the steps necessary to create a new reality. And while the call can come at any life stage, there's something special about the thirties, when our inner voice tends to start asking, "Is this all there is?"

Recently I've been privileged to meet two vibrant, self-aware women, both 35, who have started heart-centered, Earth-based, health-conscious businesses. In each instance, a health crossroads precipitated the call (as is true in my own life).

Erinn Williams, founder of RawEnergyandLife Foods, which manufactures a scrumptious "Rawkin Raw" chocolate packed with superfoods and antioxidants, from Goji berries to Maca to spirulina, read John Robbins' landmark book, Diet for a New America in her early twenties, and was galvanized to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle. She says, "That's when I first really became aware of how the world today is locked into a vicious cycle of unhealthy foods, preservatives, chemicals, high stress jobs and drugs taken to 'cover up' the symptoms. I decided to start looking for the true path to health, compassion, and care for the earth."

Eight years later she met a raw foodist, read another book (this time on the raw food diet), underwent a fast, and has been "100 percent raw vegan ever since."

"Once I began taking my own health seriously, I become committed to helping others understand their own true path to health. I started Raw Energy and Life because I wanted to bring people more healthy options, and I am passionate about the healing properties of vegan raw foods. My vision is to help people prevent and combat disease, to live in health and wellness, and to help preserve the Earth's resources by teaching people about how their food choices affect the environment."

Gaia Earthworks creator Ericka Lundberg shares a similarly life-altering experience. A few years before launching her handcrafted line of pure personal care products for body, pets and home, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. After an initial bout with traditional treatment accomplished little more than making her seriously ill and helping to "defeat her attitude," Ericka looked inward and made a decision that propelled her life forward with fresh perspective. She chose to look to the Earth for what she put in and on her body. Today she is well, and well on her way.

From that healing effort sprang her company motto, "Free Yourself" and the philosophy behind Gaia Earthworks, which is dedicated to helping people create "chemical independence." Committed to social and environmental responsibility, the company uses recycled products in everything from paper to packaging, and is designated by PETA as cruelty-free.

"We're dedicated to a natural lifestyle through how we live, how we run our organization and through helping others empower themselves to realize the feeling of freedom and wellness involved in breaking free of a chemically dependent lifestyle," says Ericka.

While illness is not a prerequisite for discovering your mission, here in the West it's often the catalyst for many people, who would otherwise continue on autopilot until the pain of remaining where they are finally overpowered inertia — and the fear of change. Now that we've entered the birth canal of the most immense shift in consciousness humanity has ever known, it's more important than ever that each of us step up to the plate in our own lives, because no one else can provide exactly what you offer, in the way you offer it.

Modern dance pioneer Martha Graham expresses it best: "There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. The world will not have it.

"It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. There is only a divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."

Just as Erinn and Ericka found their healing métier in what we place in and on our bodies, how we express ourselves is the foundation stone of culture. The same energy that finds a sad substitute in gang membership and nuclear bravado, when given a voice and nourished into true power, can e/merge (energy/emotion merge) into breathtaking murals, collaborative vision, and the infectious sense of fun that arises from spending your days doing what feeds your soul.

All forms of the arts are key now: whether you sing, paint, dance, play an instrument, write poetry or music, act on stage or screen, create spoken-word performances, conduct Earth-based ceremony, mime, sculpt in wood or clay or metal or sand … whatever your art form, you can become an integral contributor to profound planetary healing.

As poet David Whyte (who has bridged boundaries by introducing poetry into corporate boardrooms) says, "The rest of creation is waiting, breathless, for you to take your place."

We all need your unique gifts. Will you say yes?

Possession wears many faces. Meanings can range from falling under a temporary spell: "Whatever possessed you to buy that?!" to outright seizure: "We're taking possession of the property." The essence is a sense of ownership — and often what we "own," owns us. Lately, large numbers of people have been releasing years of accumulated baggage in preparation to relocate, travel, or simply feel freer.

If purging your possessions feels overwhelming, consider this experience from a man who lived through the Indonesian tsunami in 2004: one moment, he and his wife were relaxing after breakfast at their beautiful beach house. The next, they were engulfed, swimming for their lives, and nothing mattered except that they survive. (Both did.) In the vortex and afterwards, he described what millions around the world expressed: the magnificent outpouring of love, the great leveler, that flooded our land like manna.

Granted, no one would choose to lose everything in a cataclysm. But it sure prioritizes life.

Another poignant (and amusing) example of being "possessed" comes from Peace Pilgrim, describing her encounter with an older woman who still worked long hours to afford her 5-room house. Peace asked her, "Couldn't you live contentedly in one room?" She responded, "Yes, but I have furniture for a 5-room house." Peace exclaimed to the audience, "Imagine that poor woman, working her fingers to the bone to make a home for that furniture!"

We can experience the joys of having life's toys  — and learn to let them go without regret. Peace Pilgrim was a master at paring down possessions to what she referred to as "need level." Few of us could manage with just the clothes on our back, a toothbrush and a comb for 28 years. And while I know from direct experience that living as a nomad does confer a certain ineffable freedom, it also activates a primal generosity in others, as the tsunami survivors discovered.

We're living a tsunami in consciousness. A breakthrough book, The Tent of Abraham, co-authored by a rabbi, a Benedictine sister and a Sufi scholar, dissects the metaphor of possession in ancient sacred texts and modern life, examining the ways it cripples our attempts at cross-cultural unity and understanding. Each writer describes how in cultivating community, we have lost the pre-literate, nomadic hospitality for the stranger, which was "as good as a peace treaty (and in some cases probably better).

"If we give up our attachment to the rigidity of acquiring, we can sit calmly to drink at the flowing wells of vision … Of course, we cannot do without land altogether. We are physical creatures who at out healthiest must have a land to 'sit' in, a well to drink from, a brother or sister to see us. How can this be done without 'acquiring' the land?

"By sojourning and sitting. How do we 'sit'? By treating the land with loving respect, living not on its back but beside its well of life, encouraging its flow instead of draining its wetlands, or pouring poison into its rivers, or … using scarce water for swimming pools instead of letting it flow …

"For exile, alienation, estrangement, cannot be solved by acquiring, possessing, owning — by rigidity. It can only be eased by acknowledging that possessiveness is itself a form of exile. By letting the water trickle through our fingers.

"And by letting the water trickle through our eyes. Through grief."

Speaking of water: we're also possessed by outmoded ideas, such as eternal economic growth and consumerism. I got a vivid example of the latter the other day, when I was refilling my 3-gallon water jug at Whole Foods. A man entered the aisle and lifted two cases of individual plastic water bottles into his shopping cart. I indicated the water machine and suggested, "Why not simply buy a large jug and refill it?"

He responded, "I have an umbrella outside next to a small refrigerator, and I like to reach in and grab a bottle." Oblivious to his carbon footprint, he was focused only on convenience and personal pleasure.

This individual exemplifies what Visionary Activist Astrologer Caroline Casey calls "the dominator virus": our patriarchal proclivity to "trap it, kill it, eat it." Yet in a sense, what we're "dominating" is a divorced part of ourselves.

In a world that has long embraced the masculine principle of dominion and is now moving toward wholeness, we may try to "possess" our softness, our emotions, our intuition, by keeping them enslaved rather than surrendering to balance.

In this sense, the Abrahamic story recounts the evolutionary journey common to cultures throughout the world. "Something is going to die: the distracting habits of a lifetime that keep us from being … compassionate, creative human beings. Something new is going to be born: a child from the union of the two greatest opposites in the self — our deepest purpose in life (the male self) and our deepest sense of relationship (the female self)."

Our challenge now is to transcend the sacred cow of possession for the sacred, shared reality of planetary stewardship. Choose what you use; learn to discern. Reach out across boundaries and borders and beliefs to co-create the new.