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SPIRITUAL ADVENTURES,
A TRAVELER'S GUIDE TO EXTRAORDINARY VACATIONS. Step out of your life,
open your heart,
and
explore
brave
new ways of thinking and feeling.
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Man in a Labyrinth. Native American. (Photo © Roger Archibald.
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Snow Leopard. (Photo © Roger Archibald)
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A Jordanian tourist places his
candle with a prayer at Mt. Nebo, Jordan.
(Photo:
© Roger Archibald) |
REACH
OUT
Snow Leopards are not the only ones to benefit from your gift purchase: entire villages
are engaged in cottage industries in the mountains of Tibet. See: www.snowleopard.org/shop/. The African Wildlife Foundation offers symbolic adoptions of animals, but take a look at
their adopt-an-African-acre program. It guarantees protected habitat for animals and gives the buyer a sense of connection
to another continent. In return for your donation, they will send a recycled paper African designed tote bag. See:
shop.awf.org/acre/.
World Wildlife Fund offers a variety of threatened or endangered animals to adopt, symbolically, from polar bears to vampire
bats. See: secure.worldwildlife.org/ogc/. Gorillas need all the help they can get. Adopt the one of your choice from the Diane
Fossey Gorilla Fund, which maintains a presence in Virunga National Park, where mountain gorillas have recently been caught
in the crossfire. See: gorillafund.org/campaigns/adopt_q4_07.php Adopt a wild cat with Big Cat Rescue, which provides home and care for abandoned cats from
lions to ocelots, and you can actually go to Tampa, Florida and visit it. See: www.bigcatrescue.org/adopt_a_cat.htm ♣ WHAT HAVE YOU DONE
FOR TREES LATELY?
Climate change is working its miracles as we watch: already parts
of the usually infertile African Sahel region are now green. But aerial photos of the biggest rainforest on earth in South
America show too many bald spots.
UNEP, the United Nations
Environmental Program, has launched a Seven Billion Tree Campaign to plant trees around the world.
So far, it's working really well. Please see: www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign/
To find urban forest tree-planting resources in your own state,
please see www.treelink.org/
For a list of threatened trees around the planet, see www.globaltrees.org/
The GREENBELT MOVEMENT, a grassroots NGO begun by 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Wangari Maathai
of Kenya, is dedicated to improving the natural and human environment. The organization sponsors 5- to 7-day "Green Belt
Safaris," a cultural exchange program of homestays and tours. Please see www.greenbeltmovement.org.
♦
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DIP INTO YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS
THE INSTITUTE OF NOETIC SCIENCES (www.ions.org) is located in Petaluma, California, and if you live within striking distance
of their campus, you can participate in any of the many workshops, lectures, and get-togethers IONS sponsors. Occasionally
they hold conferences in other parts of the country, bringing together some of the most interesting thinkers who deal with
what makes us human and what unites us psychically or chemically with what earlier philosophers have called the
divine, giving us access to genius insight.
Lacking a national conference, you can tune into your own spirituality by testing your psychic abilities online. Register
(with your chosen name) and they will keep score everytime you try their psychic tests. Compare it with a list of all
players and find out how psychic you are.
The Boundary Institute in San Jose California is a scientific research nonprofit that gathers
data on psychic abilities, such as remote viewing. To take part in their online psychic tests you must create a user-
and pass word and self-assess your psychic talents. All results of the numerous tests go into a databank from
which you can see how you rank.
♦♦♦♦ MEDIA CLEARANCE SALE THE
MESSAGE COMPANY, which has brought numerous successful conferences to Santa Fe, has undergone a transformation and will be
offering something new at their old quarters in Pennsylvania. Until then, you can enjoy the best of their previous speakers and musicians on DVD, CD, video, even cassette tape.
Express your interest by emailing marcia@bizspirit.com, and she will send you an Excel file from which you can choose. Also up for sale are some lovely works of art, as well as
hard-to-find shamanic tools. These are very scarce; many are single items. For more information, please call 505-795-7029.
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ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD:
$200 buys
a wind-up, wi-fi portable laptop which you donate to a deserving schoolkid where it will make a world of difference.
Buy one, two, four, ten; give them all away or have one sent to you for a young friend who can really use it. See the
new designs: laptopgiving.org/en/index.php.
Photo © www.lifelineenergy.org
LISTEN UP!
If
you live in a place where you can't plug anything into a socket because
there aren't any sockets, or replace batteries as soon as they die, how do you manage
the radio?
LIFELINE RADIOS, an ingenious wind-up and solar-powered radio,
is the product of Lifeline Energy, formerly Freeplay Foundation,(www.lifelineenergy.org), an organization that makes possible access to information and education in areas formerly out of reach.
◊
INVESTING IN A BOGOLIGHT is a good way to bring light - literally
- to places where darkness rules. BOGO is short for Buy One, Give One; the light is
a solar-powered flashlight.
For every $25
flashlight you buy, BOGO sends one to the developing world. The light charges by day, produces enough energy to provide
6 hours of light at night. In a hut formerly lit by a kerosene
lamp, this makes a big difference! For more information, see www.bogolight.com
◊ TEST YOUR VOCAB AND DONATE RICE
This is not your average site: Take
a vocabulary quiz; for each correct definition, you donate 20
grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. (More than 55 billion grains
so far!) www.freerice.com.
◊ VIRUNGA ARTISANS
Take a look at some of the fine Ugandan and Rwandan baskets, wood carvings, coffee, and tea; and bathsoaps made of coconut, palm,
calendula, and lemongrass, and imprinted with gorillas (3 for $15.)
Sponsored by the International
Gorilla Conservation Program, Virunga Artisans is a program designed to create
small businesses to elevate the lives of villagers who live in an area where raising
consciousness about their neighbors, the gorillas, might inspire a sense of protection.
Respecting and protecting gorilla territory can eliminate illegal mining and logging in the area by providing
a viable income from handicrafts.
Shipping is $5.95, payment through PayPal. See: www.virungaart.com/
♥
BEAD FOR LIFE
Many
women fled after the Hutu/Tutsi slaughter in Rwanda. Now crowded into slums in the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda, they don't
have much of a life. Many are HIV positive; few can afford decent housing; most are hungry.
But
all are willing to work. When three visitors from Colorado noticed
the beautiful beads one woman was making out of an old magazine, they helped the women form a nonprofit.
Gradually, more women began making beads out of magazine paper that they rolled into
beads, waterproofed, and painted. BeadforLife was so successful, they bought several acres and, with members of Habitat for Humanity, have built 37 houses so far,
with more planned. The women, now for the first
time wage-earners, are able to buy healthcare and exercise a sense of self-worth. Please see:
www.beadforlife.org.
♣
CLEAN DRINKING WATER
is not generally available in many parts of the world. The National Academy of Sciences has established
an initiative called Safe Drinking Water Is Essential.
Check out some interesting appropriate technologies
already in place, designed to purify and transport water in developing
countries, where a woman travels an average of 4 miles a day to the well and
back. Please see: www.drinking-water.org.
♥
MEDITATION allows you to be
you.
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