Awaken 101 Book Proposal

Christopher Uhl

814-863-3893

Synopsis

This book is emergency treatment for the wound of being born into a culture that too often undermines self-discovery. It’s the Manual for Growing Up that most of us never received.

The book is organized as 32 stepping stonestoward self-discover that together act as a rite of passage,challengingyoung people—especially college students—to experience their lives, not as spectators, but, as enlivened participants.

The gestation process for this book began a half century ago in my own teen years when I began to wrestle with questions like: What’s the meaning of life? Who am I? What is my purpose? Many of the adults around me frowned on this sort of introspection, warning that there were no answers to these sorts of existential questions and that entertaining them would just make me unhappy. Meanwhile, I was told that to be successful in life I needed to be practical. This meant going to college and picking a major that would guarantee me a secure job.But I was bored with school and suspected that “being practical” was overrated.

Seeking guidance, I turned to classic coming-of-age books such asSiddhartha, The Fountainhead, On the Road, The Catcher in the Rye and Be Here Now. Reading these books, I was reassured that my search for meaning wasn’t crazy; instead, it was a part of growing up—a natural and necessary catalyst for self-discovery.

It was during this same period that I was informed that I must register for the military draft. This meant that my government could now command me to go to a foreign country to kill young men who, simultaneously, were being ordered by their government to kill me in order to protect their country. Facing this crossroads my childhood dissolved, and I considered that perhaps it wasn’t me who was crazy, it was the culture that I was living within! Specifically, it was my culture’s teachings, beliefs and values that seemed to be crazy-making and life-denying.

Might this be as true today as when I was growing up? Indeed, we need only look around to realize that we live in a culture that is increasingly marked by shallowness, separation, speed, stress and fear, at the expense of greater depth, connection, balance, trust and love.

Indeed, in my role as a professor at Penn State I witness, on a daily basis, theanxiety, confusion and heartbreak of young people as they attempt to make sense of their lives. Indeed, when I sit with students in conversation, their emotional charge is transmitted through their eyes: bright eyes, frightened eyes, anxious eyes, expectant eyes, tear-filled eyes,despondent eyes, tired eyes. Eyes that plead: “Just tell me that I am OK… that I am enough. Just tell me what I need to know, what I need to do, what I need to be… so that I might be truly successful… so that I might discover my purpose... Guide me toward what truly matters. Give me a handhold!” This book offers that “handhold.”

Possible Titles:

-Awaken 101: Finding Meaning and Purpose in College and Beyond -Awaken 101: A New Paradigm for College
-Awaken 101: A College Course to Foment Personal and Cultural Transformation
-Awaken 101: Daring to Live Life on Your Own Terms
-Awaken 101: Beyond the Prescribed Life -Awaken 101: Making College Meaningful in Stress-filled Times
-Awaken 101: Stepping Stones for Charting Your Life Path in College & Beyond

-Awaken 101: Because The World Needs More Young People Who Have Come Alive

A Taste

Imagine that it’s 10:10 AM, Monday morning and you’ve just stepped into a giant lecture hall on the Penn State University campus. The course is Awaken 101. The room is filled to capacity. It’s the first class of the semester. I begin by welcoming everyone and then explaining that:

This course isdesigned to awaken all of usto the wonders and mysteries of life, as well as to the pain and suffering that plague our world in these times. But we won’t stop there becausethe larger goalhere is to awakento the true meaning and purpose of our lives so that we might discover together what it means to be fully human.

Hearing this preamble,I anticipate that some students might begin to worry about how they will be graded and so I add:

There are no tests in Awaken 101. This meansthat there is not reason to worry aboutright versus wrong answers. Instead, this course is about you, your questions, your reflections, your explorations, your insights, your realizations, your awakening.”

As a means of illustrating the theme of “self-discovery”, I askeveryone totake a moment to come up withoneexample of a thoughtthat frequently creates stress in theirlife. In response to my prompt, a woman in the frontsays she is always thinking abouther GPA and this makes her anxious;someone elsenearbyvolunteersthat she worries a lot about money and her debt load; a guy a couple of rows back says he’sbeen stressinga lot lately about choosing the “right”major; this leads another man toconfessthat he constantlyworriesabouthis future and whether he will get a good job.

Following each of these disclosures, I ask everyonewho identify with what has just been spoken to raise their hands. In the case of GPA-related anxiety—half the hands in the roomgo up; for money worries—three-quarters of the hands; choosing the “right”a major—half the hands; anxiety about the future—almost every hand.

This simple exercise demonstrates how many students today areplaguedbythe same boatload ofstressful thoughts. Indeed, the number-one mental health diagnosis on college campuses today is anxiety[1], with roughly one in four students addled by a diagnosable anxiety-related illness.[2]

But perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us. After all,it may be that never before in the history of humankind has a culture said to its young, as we now so often do: “Study hard in school so that you can out-compete those around you, because the main goal of life is to come out on top; and the way to do this is to trade your life energy for money, security, status, and control.” By almost any measure, this is a self-alienating and soulless message insofar as it violates the human spirit, undermining our shared humanity. Indeed, what we all share in common is that we are each a part of the human family—here, alive today, by virtue of actions taken by our ancestors, going back to the dawn of humankind. And now, it is our turn to ensure that human cultural evolution continues and deepens.

In this context, might it be that the central question for those coming of age today is not: “How am I going to accumulate money, status, and security for myself?” but: “How can I create the conditions whereby each and every one of us alive today might awaken?” Yes, how can we all live with deep meaning and purpose, in peace and harmony, as one human family? And, beyond this: How might we join together to create a world where all our relations—all sentient beings!—also thrive? In sum, how might we honor our birthright by becoming fully andaudaciously human? Theseare the seed questions lying at the heart of this book.

A Book in Five Parts

This book is divided into five parts, arranged in a sequence of “stepping stones” that guide readers—primarily college students—to explore, both cognitively and experientially, what it means to assume the rightful authorship of one’s life.

Part 1—Born Human: This opening section is premised on the assumption that we are all, to varying degrees, asleep. Yes all of us! This is true for me, for you, for the star college athlete star, the big-shot CEO, the brilliant mathematician, the gifted singer. Even the Dalai Lama, by his own admission, is still in the process of waking up because there is always room for greater awareness, greater compassion, greater humility, greater love. Waking up is our job, our shared calling. But how are we to wake up if we don’t even know that we are asleep? And why would we even want to rouse ourselves from the comfort of sleep? And what does it even mean to wake up, anyway? The chapters in Part 1 provide stepping stones for considering and then beginning to live these essential questions.

Part 2— Breakdown: The Call to Wake Up Breakdown is what we experience when our life is no longer working—e.g., when we become mired in life-sapping routines andconfused about our life’s purpose. This can be scary in so far asBreakdownheralds a crisis of identity. At the same time, Breakdown, provided we acknowledge it, can set the stage for self-discovery. So it is that in the “six stepping stones” in Part 2we provide stories, exercises and case studies as catalysts for exploring thekey role that Breakdowncan play in personal awakening.

Part 3— A Curriculum for Waking Up: The socialization and cultural conditioning that most of ushave been subjected to fails to offer us the dispositions, understandings, skills and sensitivitynecessary for becoming fully self-actualized adults. But it is not too late. In Part 3, we offer a curriculum for waking up that most of us have been denied in our families, formal schooling and communities.

Part 4— Self-Actualization Day-by-Day: Becoming a self-actualized human being is a call to live a lifegrounded in relationship. Indeed, modern science confirms that there is no such thing as Independence. Instead, Interdependence is the one essential truth of existence. And yet our culture often tends to foster separation rather than connection. So it is that in Part 4 we explore both how separation shows up in our daily lives, and the challenges and opportunities that this realization presents for those seekingto craft lives grounded in connection, wholeness and healing.

Part 5—Cultural Transformation: Like it or not, we have all been born into a cultural story that often engenders shallowness, selfishness and separation. So it is that those choosing the path of awakening are called to act as midwives in giving birth to a new story of what it means to be in full-fledged relationship with Self, Other and World—i.e., what it means to be a generative and nurturing human being. Such living is why we are here and this is the vision and challenge that we present in the final section of this book.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Born Human

Introduction

1-Asleep

2-What we Believe we Become

3-Questions Rather than Answers

4- Education for What?

5-Truthspeaking: A Catalyst for Awakening

6-Discovering the Story that LivesUs

Coda

Part 2: Breakdown—The Call to Wake Up

Introduction

1-Crisis as a Gift

2-Rites of Passage as Catalysts for Awakening

3-Success From the Inside Out

4-The Seed in Each of Us

5-Hearing the Call

6-From Breakdown to Breakthrough

Coda

Part 3: A Curriculum for Waking Up

Introduction

1-Transcending Dualism

2-Recovering Imagination and Play

3-Reclaiming Wildness

4-Discovering Full-Body Intelligence

5-Opening to Love

6-Living Life Now

7-Befriending our Shadow

Coda

Part 4: Taking Authorship of our Lives

Introduction

1-Each Day as a Call to Presence

2-Living your Life within the Story of Enoughness

3-Food: From Passive Consumer to Healthy Participant

4-Transportation: Travelling on our own Steam

5- Community as the Crucible for Life

6-Conversationas the Great Connector

7-Happiness from the Inside Out

Coda

Part 5: Cultural Transformation

Introduction

1-A New Story of Self

2-A New Story of the Human Other

3-A New Story of Earth

4-A New Story of the Universe

5-Healing: Breakdown Revisited

6-Choice

Coda

Introducing theAuthors

Christopher Uhl, Author: I received a BA in Asian Studies from the University of Michigan in 1971 and a PhD in Ecology from Michigan State in 1980. After a post-doc at the University of Georgia, I was hired into the Biology Department at Penn State in 1983, where I serve today as a Full Professor. Throughout my career I have repeatedly questioned the status quo. For example, I spent fifteen years researching and critiquing destructive land-use practices in the Amazon Basin and established IMAZON[3], an NGO in Belem (at the mouth of the Amazon River) that champions responsible land stewardship.[4] It was this same orientation that led me, in the 1990s, to investigate Penn State’s operations through the lens of sustainability and, in so doing, to spark an ongoing initiative that is leading lead to the “greening” of Penn State.[5] My 30-year teaching career has also been marked by experimentation and innovation as I have sought to develop pedagogies grounded in questions rather than answers, risk-taking rather than conformity, and direct rather than mediated experience. This book was incubated in the crucible of a General Education course that I have been teaching at Penn State for the pasttwenty-five years. The official name for this course is BiSci 3; my name is Awaken 101! The course invites students to experiment with new ways of seeing and thinking and being as catalysts for awakening to what it means to be a generative, nurturing human being.

Melissa DiJulio, Associate Author: Melissa received a BA in Anthropology and in Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies from the Pennsylvania State University in 2014. Her undergraduate degrees piqued her interest in comparative mythology. While at Penn State, she served as a Teaching Assistant and mentor in Chris’s Awaken 101 course, and co-taught a Freshman Seminar and series of focus groups with him. Currently, Melissa is working on an MA in Ecopsychology at Naropa University, with an expected graduation date of 2019. Her contribution to this book is that, as a Millennial and recent college graduate, and current Masters student, she is attuned to an important segment of this book’s readership, and can thus better meet them where they are.

Market Assessment

Audience

As a professor at Penn State, I know,based on three decades of teaching experience, that this book is well suited for General Education courses in the Social Sciences andthe Liberal Arts. In addition, itcould be anexcellent fit for the Freshman Seminar courses that are offered on many college campuses today, especially in so far as it is crafted to awaken and challengeyoung peopleto assume authorship of their lives.[6]

Beyond this, I see teachers, in all their manifestations, as an important audience for this book in so far as theyare well positioned tocreate the conditions for the individual and cultural transformationthat is the central focus of this book. Note: In the category of “teachers,” I include not just those working in classroom settings but also, advisors, counselors, youth leaders, spiritual guides and holistic educators of all types. I have also endeavored to write this book in such a way that it is both accessible and appealing to the general public, especially those, young and old, seeking to craft lives of meaning and purpose. This could include:

A bright teenage girl who feels called to something more than the routinized life being enacted by the adults around her.
A college student with a relentless itch to wander beyond the confines of the status quo.
A man in his thirties caught in a meaningless job, ready to re-imagine his life.
A woman in her fifties who is done with pleasing others and is now ready to come out as herself.
A man, age seventy, who has been seasoned and cured by life’s struggles and now feels called to act as an elder, guidinghis grandchildren toward life’s possibilities.[7]

Finally, I believe that this book could serve as a provocative text for study groups wishing to focus on themes relating to self-discovery, consciousness expansion, positive psychology and personal transformation.

Uhl’s Publishing Track Record

In 2004, my book, Developing Ecological Consciousness [DEC], was published byRowman and Littlefield. Owing to DEC’s success, I was asked to create a second edition in 2013. DEC has now been adopted as a classroom text at more than 25 colleges and universities. This book is also popular with local book groups. To date, over 5,000 copies have been sold and I am currently drafting a third edition of this book.

In 2011, Johns Hopkins University Press published my second book, Teaching as if Life Matters: The Promise of a New Education Culture (co-authored with Dr. Dana Stuchul). This book continues to be well received by practicing teachers. It has also been adopted as a text for education courses on more than a dozen college campuses. A distinguishing characteristic of both these earlier books, as well as my proposed book, is that they are written in a friendly, engaging style, making them accessible to a wide range of readers. Based on my experience in successfully promoting my previous books, I am committed to: 1-working with the publisher to create promotional materials; 2-arranging for colleagues to review and promote the book; 3-delivering promotional talks wherever and whenever requested; and 4-sending (with publisher’s assistance) complementary copies of this book to reporters/book critics/reviewers, as well as to organizations and associations that work to promote self-discovery, holistic education, and social change.

Other Books in this Genre

Tobin Hart, From Information to Transformation (2007, Peter Lang)
Laurent A. Daloz Parks et al, Leading Lives of Commitment in a Complex World (1996, Beacon Press)
Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (2003, New World Library)
Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself (2007, New Harbinger Publications)
Marcia Baxter Magolda, Authoring Your Life: Developing an Internal Voice to Navigate Life’s Challenges (2009, Stylus Publishing)
Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible (2013, North Atlantic Books)
Arthur Levine & Diane Dean, Generation on a Tightrope: A Portrait of Today’s College Student (2012, Jossey-Bass)

These books, like ours, are responses to today’s challenging times. However, our book differs on three counts: