To Whom It May Concern:

This is a recommendation for Kerry Brady’s Ecology of Awakening.

The fundamental news of our time is the cessation of the Cenozoic, the 65 million year geological era during which the Earth’s plates achieved their present structures and the mammals replaced the dinosaurs on each of the continents. This cessation is the result of Homo sapiens achieving a technological power over the planet but without the wisdom and the consciousness necessary to effectively manage this power. The great challenge of our time is to reinvent humanity so that its presence to the planet becomes a blessing rather than a destructive force for all life. This re-invention will include new economic systems, new agricultural processes, new technological structures, and it will be rooted in a new form of consciousness that can be called integral if by integral we mean a consciousness rooted in the ecological interdependence of humanity with the other Earth systems of water, soil, life, atmosphere, and energy. This reinvention is the great work of our time and is being carried out by many thousands of groups at work on its various dimensions. 

Ecology of Awakening focuses on the challenge of evoking this integral form of consciousness. Her educational processes are fully grounded in contemporary science and include science’s focus on the empirical discoveries of the rational mind, but they also include in a fundamental manner the sensorial, the intuitive, the mythic, the poetic, and the nonrational dimensions of human consciousness. Participants in her programs speak of being reborn, of entering a new and more exciting form of consciousness. It is not too much to assert that they are entering a new era of human history.

Kerry Brady is a leader in this planetary work of evoking integral consciousness. It is this form of mind that will enable humanity to become a mutually enhancing presence in the Earth Community. I know of no other person who is a more effective midwife for this profound transformation than Kerry Brady. I say this with confidence as Kerry and I have co-taught Nature and Eros to graduate students at the California Institute of Integral Studies for 17 consecutive years! Ecology of Awakening should be considered a national treasure.

Brian Thomas Swimme
California Institute of Integral Studies