Mike Austin
It has been over two years since I began Blue Planet Almanac radio, and over a year since I started weekly environmental reports. It’s now time for an indefinite hiatus for the show and my strictly environmental reporting. (Update 6-21-11: However, I am writing a book. You can expect it to be different from most environmental offerings.)
Appreciating what’s really happening in an environmental sense is upsetting. So I’m compelled to switch gears to maintain my equanimity and make real progress. A grateful nod to Ian McHarg for the heads-up about the contextual definition of equanimity. He’d be surprised and amused that 33 years before this, someone from six degrees had noticed the observations of his 1969 book, Design With Nature, while sifting through the library of a city with the highest per capita heroin usage west of the Mississippi River.
But I also have thanks for Linda Mackenzie’s kind invitation to work with her, to express my understandings, and have also deeply appreciated the time. Linda’s sight made this possible; I was just the latent doingness awaiting a place to happen. Thanks also to the experienced, professional patience my producer, Jay Cruz provided. A special thanks to my ex officio ;) news editor who wants to remain behind the scenes, for her patient, amusing and accurate editing of the news you heard each and every week. There are no plans to delist this site, but HealthyLife.net will, of course, need to change its weekly environmental news and remove Blue Planet Almanac from its offerings.
It’s now time for my periodic leap of faith into my next projects. There are some inklings I have about what I’ll be doing, but one is never sure until the history’s on paper. Environmental concerns are mostly about attitudes and daily actions, instead of unused knowledge about conditions.
So, I’ve revisited my original inclinations as an undergraduate. I took training in environmental studies, but also loved religious studies. These days, religious studies translate into spirituality in a very broad sense. No matter what knowledge they have of their environment, people never do anything unless they want to. There’s always a choice. In turn, it’s the application of quantum mechanics and string theory to humanity’s consciousness and spirituality which I find absolutely enthralling and exciting.
If you’d enjoy a useful and maybe even exciting read about that which interests me most for our sustainability, take a look at Amit Goswami’s book, God Is Not Dead: What Quantum Physics Tells Us about Our Origins and How We Should Live. And if there was ever a time not to judge a book or its contents by its cover, this is it. You’ll be pleasantly surprised when you read it. For those who enjoy tantalizing clues, Goswami makes a case that it’s time to update Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am,” to Goswami’s timely twist, “I choose, therefore I am.”
There has never been a time like this in humanity’s history, with so many challenges and opportunities for growth. I just want to be in the long moment where the growth is occurring most quickly, to help create a nexus of positive events. Over recent months, for example, I’ve started teaching intuition and that has been a great deal of fun. The light in someone’s eyes when they sail across a new hurdle is one of the most pleasant things I’ve ever seen, because I’ve been where they are.
And now, a final bow to your listening and reading while I aired on HealthyLife.net ;)
BLUE PLANET ALMANAC™ 