THIS year featured a rare convergence of Rosh Hashonah, the beginning of Ramadan and the Vernal Equinox on the same day of the new moon. Whether you are Jewish, Moslem, Wiccan, or any other spiritual persuasion, this was a day for introspection and life changes.

I personally felt a profound sense of rebirth from celebrating the start of the new year (5767) with the Nevei Kodesh Jewish Renewal community in Boulder, Colorado.

Unlike the staid and generally boring rote recitations of the High Holy Days worship services from my youth in a Reform congregation, the services this weekend led by Rabbi Tizrah Firestone with assistance by Rabbi Zalman Schachter filled the sanctuary with joyful song and deep prayer. I truly felt my connection to Spirit.

As the services began, I felt tears well up inside from the power of the music and feeling of being in a community of kindred souls, who like me have explored many different spiritual paths, eastern and western.

During the evening and day of services, I made that wondrous, powerful journey of 18 inches that every man must make from his head to his heart. My biggest take-away from the services this year was a renewal of my commitment to inner peace.

In recent months, I’ve been so fixated on the many details of launching my book, Global Sense, that I’ve not sustained the daily personal growth practice at the root of everything I say in the book, especially the idea that world peace starts with inner peace. I’ve not been walking my talk. I’ve not been feeling the peace that passes all understanding, the source of the abiding faith that empowers my hope for humanity.

So, in this new year, I’m humbly owning that my life is a work in progress. I’m owning that I still have much to learn and far to grow. I’m owning that all of the turbulence, urgency and worry in my life springs from the illusion of scarcity. I’m accepting the reality that there really is more than enough abundance and love in the universe to meet all of my needs (and your needs, too, for that matter).

I now affirm that I am one with the Source of Life. And from this global sense of being connected with the whole world, I breathe a sigh of sublime surrender. Here and now, in this day and hour of new beginnings, I breathe peace.

Tomorrow, I begin the process of renewal all over again.

Shalom. Salaam. Peace.

The discipline of desire is
the background of character.
– John Locke

FEAR, rage and grief consumed me when two hijacked airplanes slashed into the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001. Standing dumbstruck before my television screen at home in Denver, I watched the live news feed from New York at 9:03 AM as United Flight 175 banked gracefully into the south tower and burst into a ball of flame. When the twin towers collapsed that morning, the debris cascading down looked like two inverted mushroom clouds.

As the day wore on, TV news began to echo the drumbeat of war emanating from the White House. Because I’ve worked for years as a journalist reporting on media and politics, because I’ve studied and taught the tools of public relations and propaganda, I saw an ominous trend. With Americans feeling terrified, the president was pledging an “endless war on terrorism” while implying the air attack justified a crackdown on U.S. society—for our own safety, of course.

I picked up my phone and called my representatives in Congress. I left messages urging them not to sacrifice our civil liberties on the alter of homeland security. They did not call back.

In the weeks that followed, I began drafting an essay on the future of democracy in America and the world. I wrote that most of us are ripe for plucking by tyrants because we feel afraid and insecure. As I wrote, I confronted my own dark shame and pain, the hidden shadow of self doubt that for years has kept me small and weak.

In late September, I recalled using Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in 1997 as the framework for an essay at my new website on the need for democratic governance of the Internet. In a flash of insight, I saw that Paine’s classic work was a perfect vehicle for talking about how global thinking empowers us for freedom. Inspired by Paine as if he was leaning over my shoulder, whispering in my ear, I started writing the book, Global Sense, voicing my soul while praying to touch your heart.

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Had the spirit of prophecy directed the birth
of this production, it could not have brought it forth
at a more seasonable juncture, or a more necessary time.
– Thomas Paine (2nd edition of Common Sense)

“PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor,” wrote Thomas Paine to begin his introduction to Common Sense. “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”

Thomas Paine in Common Sense voiced the vision of the Enlightenment movement in the 18th century. His radiant reasoning fits the Global Enlightenment movement of the 21st century. I’ve updated his essay to help us define a new vision of democracy that puts our highest ideals into practice today.

Back in 1776, a dark time for the friends of freedom, Paine’s essay revived hope and inspired action. For all progressives and libertarians today who mourn the loss of freedom, who want to restore democracy by uniting personal growth and politics, this update of Common Sense likewise can renew hope and inspire action.

Common Sense persuaded colonial Americans in 1776 to fight for independence. Without Paine’s essay, historians agree, the American Revolution would have failed for lack of public support. Kings and other masters, Paine argued, unduly claim for themselves the right to decide our future for us. He believed that an abuse of power calls into question the right of the abuser to hold power. Those suffering abuses have a natural right and a moral duty to reject their abusers.

Similarly, we have a right and duty to examine our personal habits and look into why we worship our rulers. Do we create governments to rule us so we can avoid responsibility for ruling ourselves? In this book we’ll expose what I call authority addiction. We’ll see how our hidden fears drive us to sacrifice liberty for security.

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