Waking the Global Heart is a hugely powerful and hopeful book. The author’s vision is immense; readers who may be more familiar with Judith’s works on chakras will recognize that she has taken everything to a new level. This book is about humanity’s shift from “the love of power” (third chakra) to the “power of love” (fourth chakra ). As the author says, it is this love of power that has brought this world to a crisis point- and while Judith is definitely sounding the alarm, the message is not one of despair, as she offers alternatives to our destructive trajectory and a new vision for hope.

Waking the Global Heart is part history, part myth, part ecology and more. Judith explores where we’ve come from and where we are now in order to better understand where we are going. Her approach is based on Western history and values but only because as she says, those are the very values that pose the greatest threat to the world. As the author points out, we need to explore the underlying assumptions and beliefs that have led us to this critical stage.

Anodea Judith, and many of the authors and researchers that she quotes, foresee an impending and massive shift at every level of civilization. Many of us now, in varying stages of awakening, may be sensing this shift already. As the author puts it, “For the global heart is awakening, calling us out of our complacent slumber and adolescent distractions, into the possibility of a world beyond our wildest dreams.” This shift may seem alarming sometimes — the recenthurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis may be the earth’s attempts to self-correct global warming and other human destruction — but the author likens this to childbirth, messy and painful, but also joyful in the end.

Judith makes a strong case for what won’t survive the upcoming shift, and that is anything that is polarizing, egoic, controlling or static. The author does a phenomenal job of exploring religions, the feminine and the masculine, the individual versus the collective, and more, to better illustrate the forces that need to be integrated in order to build a sustainable future. The timelines, tables and illustrations deserve special mention for being so comprehensive.

Throughout Waking the Global Heart there is a profound sense that Anodea Judith is really listening to the earth, to the collective unconscious and perhaps to the archetypal forces that are shaping our past, present and future. This makes for very compelling reading and a strong sense of urgency to the message that she is conveying and that is “Wake up!” We, as a society, need to break out of our hypnotic trance of self-involvement, consumerism, media programming and advertising and start doing something to save our world. Fortunately, Waking the Global Heart is not only a good alarm clock, but a solid vision of what to do.

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