Conscious Choice: Has It Been A Year Already?

August 2007 | From the Editor

Has It Been A Year Already?

This issue completes my first year with Conscious Choice, and just over a year since our family of magazines — which includes Common Ground, Whole Life Times, and Seattle’s Conscious Choice — underwent some serious reconstructive surgery and expanded their purview. It has been an evolving and challenging process to bring together, into one cohesive voice for conscious living, four magazines that once operated autonomously, catering to their individual markets. But we managed to bring this to you and your compadres in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles by connecting with the similarities you all share, and the collective consciousness you are all helping to unfold.

In the next year, you can expect to see Conscious Choice and its sister publications evolve our message even further. Although we built our reputation over twenty years as “a journal of ecology and natural living” to become Chicago’s foremost green authority, much has changed in recent years, and the green movement has gone mainstream. In our community, green has transcended itself into an integrated value system that is a de facto component of all the areas we cover in the magazines.

When we talk about Consciousness, we are talking about social, cultural, political, spiritual, green, health, food and art consciousness. We are talking about the conscious lifestyle, the Big Heart from which compassion flows and we evolve as individuals to find peace and radiate that peace outward. Our mission now is cultural transformation. Since our readers are already living the conscious lifestyle in varying degrees, our goal is to tell their stories as a reflection of this growing culture. In the past, we sought to advocate for causes. Today we are content to put ourselves out there as a soft power alternative to the mainstream. Using the power of attraction, we don’t need to convince you to join us; when you see what we are doing, how we are living, you’ll want to be a part of it. And when those around you see how you are living, and who you are becoming, they’ll want to be a part of it too.

This is perhaps the most wonderful side effect of consciousness-expansion. Not everyone will go there with you, but those who do become powerful forces for change. I began my tenure with this magazine bringing change, a new vision for a new generation of readers. What I never saw coming was how much this magazine, and the people I have met though it, would change me. For that, I will be forever grateful.

Though we are not perfect, and have made our fair share of mistakes this year, we at Conscious Enlightenment Media give so much of ourselves to this work because we believe in it (I mean, the mags are free). We give ourselves to you each month in these pages, and we give of ourselves in our communities, so that the words we express on the page can take on meaning in our lives as we put our values into practice.

And it is this spirit of giving that we wish to tap into this month. Our national feature on Burners Without Borders showcases next level activism and community service, based upon the gifts of time, labor, openness and creativity. Burners Without Borders, and other leaderless, decentralized movements like it, are the new models so many of us old grizzled activists tired of the not-for-profit monster have been waiting for. And talk about giving, the practitioners in our feature on bodywork are selfless to an astonishing degree, so that they are not just healing your body, they are also healing the spirit. And of course, we hear from Frances Moore Lappé, who for forty years has given so much to us all, and now bears a new message of empowerment for creating clarity, creativity and courage in a world gone mad. I hope you enjoy.

Thank you for the most wonderful year … your gift to me, and my gift to you.

— Charles Shaw

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