AWAKENING
THE ENERGIES OF LOVE
DISCOVERING FIRE FOR THE SECOND TIME

By Anne Hillman

SYNOPSIS

We stand at an evolutionary juncture, called to awaken to a new kind of love. This love is not a feeling; it is a great power. Awakening to this radically different love may be gradual or it may come in a flash—either way, it initiates a fundamental transformation that Teilhard de Chardin calls Fire for the second time.

Transformation is born at the great hinges of time—one like ours in which everything about us is fundamentally changing. Times like these are filled with conflict: between countries, between religions, between people with countless different opinions and with conflicting solutions to problems. If we are to embrace our differences, our spiritual journeys need to show us how to hold them in ways that unify, rather than separate; ways that free us from judgment, fear and prejudice—and the suffering and violence that grow out of them.

Those who carried the first fire home in their hands lived at a time in the great cosmic unfolding when the combined forces of nature and psyche invited them to act in a new way. Propelled by a yearning that ran counter to their bodies’ counsel and to the wisdom of their tribe, they took an enormous risk: Instead of running from fire, they engaged it. Our ancient progenitors were following something that led them to step off the threshold of the known and out into the unknown. What this handful of people did changed the way that human life evolved; when they harnessed fire, language blossomed. Out of language came thought, reflection, story, and an ongoing search for meaning. It was a radical transformation of the human mind.

We, too, are haunted by an unspoken yearning we’ve felt in our bones since childhood: a longing to be somehow more than we are. This deep human desire—whether to love more completely, to be more whole, to live in peace, or to come face to face with the divine—propels us on an inward search for another kind of unknown. Long proclaimed by philosophers and religious traditions of east and west, this unknown marks the conscious emergence of a love that is qualitatively different from the one we think we know. Such a love conflicts with old structures of mind, old beliefs, and old behaviors; it entails a new orientation, new ways of seeing and hearing, and supports an entirely different way of relating to life.

Awakening the Energies of Love describes that transformation: what it is, how it happens, and why it is so important now. It is addressed to the scientifically-minded as well as to those who may or may not be members of our various religious or spiritual communities, and offers the experience of a common denominator that can heal the divisions we have created.

FROM THE FOREWORD BY RICHARD MOSS
Few of us know what it is to be claimed by Love, not as an obsession with another, but taken hold of, shaken, brought to our knees in awe and gratitude, and eventually strengthened. This is love as Fire, and the core of what this book is about.

ENDORSEMENTS

Anne Hillman completes Teilhard de Chardin’s work by providing the next step—a pathway into the most significant transformation humanity has ever undergone. She shows how what he called the energies of Love can ignite us and, once we have caught fire, how to embody its “200,000 volts” in our lives.

BRIAN SWIMME, PhD
The Universe Story with Thomas Berry and
The Powers of the Universe

Anne Hillman puts flesh on the larger view—that we live immersed in a sea of energy beyond all comprehension, and that it is ours, not by domination, but by invocation.

THOMAS BERRY, CS, PhD
Evening Thoughts, The Great Work and
The Universe Story

Masterful! Reading this inspiring book is like breathing a fully conscious breath that invites deep attention and radical aliveness.

The Rev ELLEN GRACE O’BRIAN
Living the Eternal Way and A Single Blade of Grass

In a simple and direct way, Anne articulates the core hunger to be awakened in us by the mystery of love, and her own journey becomes a model of fidelity to the process. I will recommend this book to all my directees!

DON BISSON, FMS
Marist brother. Jungian Psychology and Spiritual Direction

ISBN: 978-1-883647-16-2
List Price: $24.95
378 Pages, 6x9

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anne Hillman mentors groups and individuals who seek a mature spirituality. An author and educator, her writing and experiential learning groups are an invitation to step into a creative framework larger than those our cultures tend to offer. Educated at Smith College, she was originally a classical musician, singer and choral conductor. After her husband’s death in 1968, she was offered one of 17 national fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study—the first opportunity for women to do graduate work part-time. She received a Masters degree from Boston University in Adult Learning and Organization Development and became a consultant, and for twenty years, she helped a broad spectrum of organizations tap new levels of group functioning and creativity in times of rapid change. Since 1978, Anne has explored the internal aspects of social change—an inquiry into the kinds of interior development that can contribute to fundamental changes in a culture. She is the author of Awakening the Energies of Love: Discovering Fire for the Second Time, and The Dancing Animal Woman—A Celebration of Life. Her articles have appeared in national journals and in newspapers and her poetry in several anthologies. She is certified by the graduate Institute in Creation Spirituality founded by Matthew Fox, and in Ontological Studies by Richard Moss, MD. Anne lives in Northern California with her husband.

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR
ANNE HILLMAN
E-MAIL: anne@annehillman.net
www.AnneHillman.net