Discovering My Purpose

November 5, 2009
My professional life has been guided by an experience that I had in about 1986. I was an undergraduate student at Iowa State University in the Leisure Studies program. I had a wonderful advisor Steve Simpson, who assisted me in refining my curriculum to focus towards outdoor recreation with an emphasis on protecting the environment.

Leisure Studies was a program of study that I stumbled upon as I was trying to figure out what I was going to do when I grew up (I was 26). I had been floating between a variety of disciplines including business, biology and hadn’t found a niche. In order to fill up a semester course schedule I took an introductory Leisure Studies course. It fit perfectly. I thought ¨what better kind of work than to help people enjoy their leisure – isn’t that why we all work so hard?¨

Steve’s emphasis and teaching methods were very effective and influential. It took us to a place where we studied people like John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Ralph Waldo Emerson and other great thinkers including, still living, Fritoj Capra (Center for Ecoliteracy). Our classes consisted of readings from all of these authors and many more, combined with Steve’s true passion “experiential education”. We did classes where we participated and lead activities like biking, rock climbing, kayaking, windsurfing, and also participated on outdoor excursions.

Even though I was very enthusiastic about outdoor recreation, I was still not clear what exactly I was supposed to do with my career. I had an idea to be a naturalist videographer, but I don’t think I had the patience for that profession. My answer to my “mission” conundrum came to me on canoe trip on the St. Croix river between Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Now, as a little preparatory statement, I have discovered that many of my greatest personal discoveries occurred as a result of personal crises – times of great sorrow, struggle, or even at a juncture where I have had a choice, usually not conscious, between life or death. Those points where I was confronted with opportunities or challenges that relate to my character, or growth as a person. In many respects this relates to spiritual growth from my life experiences.

What I relate next could be easily avoided, and part of me would rather not reveal the “true story”. However, I believe it is possibly the most important fact, because if it weren’t for the circumstances to be exactly as they were, I likely would have not had the experience that I did.

One of my personal challenges in my life has been my relations to women. I have had struggles, and it likely goes all the way back to my relationship with my own mother. My woman “chooser” usually ends up getting me with women whom I, unconsciously, wanted to save. I have a sort of “hero complex”. So back to the story, in our Leisure Studies courses there was a woman whom I had a crush on. The problem was, I was married.

We were having a wonderful experience canoeing on the St. Croix to natural areas that were only accessible from the river. The day before I had my epiphany for what my “mission” was, we had taken a hike in a pine forest. It was incredible. Quiet, the tall, straight trees, and the whispering breeze as we entered, and then the silence of the forest was so memorable. I don’t know why it had such an impact on me this time, but I remember it to set the stage for the events that would follow the next morning. We finished the hike in the forest and returned to camp. We spent some time “processing” the experience and then were prepared to go to sleep in our tents. I don’t remember the details, but I remember I wanted to get into the tent with
this lady I had a crush on. But she wouldn’t let me. And the greater part of me knew that I didn’t want to anyway. It was a struggle between my lower and higher nature.
It was going to get cold that night, but I had a good sleeping bag. And maybe I was pouting, or maybe I wanted to punish myself, it could have been any number of reasons. So, I decided to sleep next to the tributary, Bear Creek, of the main branch of the St. Croix. It did get quite cold.

In fact, when I awoke at daybreak there was snow on the ground.

When I awoke, I just woke up and for some reason I had this realization about what I was supposed to do in this world – what my mission was. I don’t recall the details of thoughts, or anything. But to this day that experience marks the juncture in my life where I had a clear sense of how I could make a difference. I was supposed to work to help people experience the out-of-doors. To facilitate experiences, like we were having in this class, to where people, especially young people, could have an experience that might re-connect their spirit to the spirit abundant in the natural world. I don’t know exactly how this knowing came to me, but it is as clear today as it must have been then.

Now, this mission, this purpose, or responsibility has taken me on a very winding path in my life. Sometimes my work, or experiences have seemed to be a detour, or dead-end. But I now understand, at this point, that these experiences were part of a twenty year training program.

As is described in Appendix B with my Ecotourism Consulting International term paper, my path started with an idea to assist in developing businesses that would assist people’s in developing countries to create alternative economic strategies that would help protect the rainforests.

Here is a short summary of just a few of my more pertinent jobs and schooling which will provide a summary of this winding career path. To improve my credibility, and train me in natural resource management I got a masters degree in Forestry, with a focus on agroforestry and alternative energy systems. After that I spent five years with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, first developing the first “nature tourism” program called Texas Adventures, and then running a mail-order catalog (the TPWD Collection) within the same agency. Following that took me to back to school to become the Assistant Director of the Center for Nature and Heritage Tourism, where I learned the geographical perspective, and became knowledgeable about the Internet and geographic information systems (GIS). My PhD Dissertation is entitled “Nature Tourism in Cyberspace: An Examination of it’s Geography and Character in the
Network”.

Finally, I ended up being a professor and research scientist at Texas A&M University where my first responsibilities were to teach farmers and ranchers how to start a nature tourism business, to work with communities interested in nature tourism, to create a Internet based tourism information system (TexBox), to be the founder of a tourism and technology business out of the university (AdventGX) and finally to become an assistant to the Vice President for Research in the areas of new environmental technologies (hyperspectral sensors) and commercialization strategies.

After all of this, and my mentor and boss Dr. Ewing passing, I took another huge risk to get back to my original dream and left academia to come to South America to develop, real, on-the -ground strategies for rural sustainable revitalization and empowerment. Over the years, my perspectives have greatly expanded based on my understanding of political, economic, social, business and bureaucratic realities, while at the same time increasing my passion for the need to stimulate spiritual awakenings in people.

I have experienced vast and numerous experiences with people and places, but one truth that rises up from it all, that we have to help people, and protect the planet. I have also found that almost all people are inherently good, and they just need some help to understand how to better live and relate to each other and Gaia. The means to accomplish this is through a principle I call “people helping people” and through education.

In any case, the core of my ideas in this regard, related to rural revitalization and
empowerment, are presented in the “Vision to Transform the World”. This story, of realizing “my mission” is the final contribution to this book “I Am Sharing” – although it very likely is just the beginning of a series of books that will go into detail about the various components and requirements of rural, regional development strategies. I feel I have been honored more than any other person with my experiences in this world. And I will continue on this meandering path, with the hopes to achieve some level of success to make my contribution to helping people to be happy and to have more fun – which is why I think that we came to the beautiful
place we call Earth!

Peace Making

How YOU can make a difference and Be the Peace You Want to See in the World
Dr. Andrew Skadberg

What Can You Do – How to Get Started

I suspect you may be wondering how you may get started for transforming your way of Being. If you are wondering this, that is a good thing. I often find myself agreeing with so much of these materials for “self-help”, work on making our lives better but the question always arises “so what, now what?” All of this is excellent information, but I want to know what I can do to get started: are there certain types of activities, or practices that I can do to begin this process. In other words, what actions can I take?

There are so many wonderful programs out there. So many resources, experts, workshops, programs, courses, etc. etc. And I am very glad to see these kind of developments. However, sometimes I feel there might be so much information and options as to be overwhelming. I believe that the K.I.S.S. (keep it simple sweetheart) principle applies in so many things, and in this case especially so. So what I am providing here is one of the most simple, straightforward and powerful programs that I am aware of currently - “The Practice”. I very much believe also in not “re-inventing the wheel”. If there is something that works, use that as a starting point and then as you go along you can continually “add-value” or features to what you use for your own personal development.



































The Practice – A Summary
By Desmond Donald Green -
Available for free, The Global Citizenship Passport that includes

The Practice
The Practice defines a body and process of core principles that when applied set the stage for life affirming demonstrations. The value of these core principles have all been well documented. For the most part the principles are presented with focus on their applications scripting new behavior patterns for productive living..
























































































































































































Gaia´s Message to Me

This was a message I shared with two friends who saw my blog "Love is the Motivator".

Here is the message I shared with them about my VERY CLEAR AND PROFOUND KNOWING as I woke up this morning. You must understand, that this realization has come as part of a long and arduous time of introspection, self seeking, prayer and hardship, but Self understanding, answers to the BIG questions, consciousness and true freedom have been just part of the fruits. Here is the first of what will be many messages along these lines.

Dear Friends,

I am still plugging away, and will be until my last breath. Today I want to share what I know to be the key, and I will be sharing this same message everywhere I go because I have known it since Gaia planted in me 23 years ago.

We have to wake people up to our relationship to Gaia. I suspect you really know this, but I woke up so clear TODAY that we have gotten caught up in the details, what with "global warming", pesticides, etc., etc., etc., etc. The key relationship that we must mend, to demonstrate our readiness to go through ascension, (if that is what is happening) is how we relate to our Spiritual Source.

Gaia is the primary link in our chain to Source, the One. My dear friend Desmond Green has been bringing home to me that "we are PHYSICAL SPIRIT and now just becoming conscious of it". This is consistent with all great historical messages.

But the converter of Spirit, or Star Stuff, in the form that we get this fabulous sense experience as "human-beings" is the Earth, Gaia!!!! It is the water plant, the rock factory, the aluminum factory, the air plant, the sun converter, the flower supplier, the bird and butterfly manufacturer, the light converter to physical matter that we can have deep and profound sense experiences and be conscious and "feeling" of the fact "plant"!!! Likely the first time in the history of the universe, based on my research to date. This is the half-truth that we have been sold that we are the only life in the Universe.

But at this point, being an ex-academic, we are not passing the course. We can do better. But time is really running out. That message came home emphatically in Osho´s video that I first posted in my blog Waking Up the World - Osho.

And I believe the test for us is to do our damndest in these last days to try to wake people up to this important relationship. I got the assignment 23 years ago, through Gaia´s Spirit I guess, while I was on a canoe trip in Minnesota. At that time it was my job to "try to create opportunities for people to experience the outdoors so their spirit wakes up". I have been following the path, but in not very effective strategies (at least that I can tell).

But this morning the urgency is upon me. We have to share this with our kids, and their kids, and our grandparents and our uncles and aunts. If we do our utmost we might be able to help more people go on the ride to 5D, but if even if the ascension doesn´t happen like we are dreaming of, we will have a different experience here too. Because I think inherently, if we become conscious of this one single relationship, I think our relationship with ourselves and with our God will change too.

I have come to the conclusion that if the church was really teaching the word of God, they would have been preaching about this.

I don´t mean to be ranting here, I just have been given a new assignment, after likely 50 years of floundering. Now it is time to become the clanging symbol, or the light on the hill, or whatever method it takes to plant a seed in each persons heart that I can.

We are all in this together we have to save ourSelves, and each other.

Ignorance is Not Bliss

July 25, 2010

Bliss is a state of alignment with the Divine. We are at a place where ignoring for the convenience of keeping the status quo is not acceptable. If all on the world were in harmony, all people fed, clothed, housed, no wars, and no destruction of the environment was taking place we might excuse resting on our laurels. But we are not there. As the light of the truth shines upon our being the creators and maintaners of conditions which are not in alignment with Reverence for Life we discover we have responsibility. As we discover our minds have greater capacity for understanding, we can apply that knowledge to develop ways to Be which are in alignment with Spirit. Spirit rewards alignment with true bliss, peace, tranquility, appreciation, expanding life. This is expressed on an individual level as feelings of ease and comfort, also less conflict. The collective experience of humanity is a mirror for our individual expressions and will result in the same rewards, inner contentment with an unfolding, expanding of horizons of what life is really about.

But to achieve this new freedom, happiness and expanded life we must look to the shadows of our lives, and our minds, and discover whether how we are living and doing align with Reverence for Life. At first this might seem difficult. Fear tends to dog our efforts as if what we find will be something terrible, something we cannot face. But there is nothing in creation that is not good. And it is also the case with these areas that we have been ignoring within ourselves and in the greater humanity. We will discover great wisdoms and treasures from whence we can grow our new life and re-create the world. The metaphorical ashes from whence the Phoenix rises. Or another analogy is that from these remnants of a conveniently ignored way of thinking and being, we discover these frailties to be fertilizer for our new garden. The garden of a new life and world. It is apparent that our ways of many things are not in alignment with Spirit - polluted water, air, diminished soil, etc., etc. And the solutions are really elementary. These are well within our collective grasp and of course as individuals. In fact most of the solutions already exist.

We must ask ourselves why are we unwilling to implement these ways of being? What are we afraid of? It is apparent to me that these situations are about looking in our own closets, so to speak, to examine what skeletons are there. In truth we cannot hide from ourselves. We really know everything, whether we currently understand how this could be true. We cannot look to anyone but ourselves for the solutions. And we all have to take responsibility. There is no one who is going to clean up our mess for us. The next question is "What am I going to do?" Am I willing to let go of my "conveniences", my fears, in order to change? Am I willing to let go of all of my habits, at least those that do not align with Spirit (measured by Reverence for Life)?

I am positive that on the other side of this "letting go" is a whole new array of "conveniences", blessings, adventures that are so far beyond our imagined possibilities, at least, and especially, measured against this reality of collective mediocrity that we find ourselves immersed in. In fact, our track record in regards to our environmental position is a failure. On our current course as a species we will not survive. If you want a test, go consume five of the new cleaning products, or chemicals that are being put out into our environment for a couple of weeks and see how long you survive.

A few weeks back a very simple idea came to me for how we should decide whether or not a new chemical should be unleashed into the environment. It would be "can you drink it"? Radical? Of course based upon our current paradigm. But in Spirit, in Reverence for Life, I think we would discover it to be the only practical solution. In order for us to survive we need to be able to drink from the rivers again, to breathe the air.

I suspect, or at some level know, that once we start acting with this level of commitment to Reverence for Life (or honoring God´s creation) that a whole new spectrum of possibilities will open up to us. Things beyond those proposed by science fiction, or in our dreams. This is because this will allow us to tap into the powers of Creation, of Life, of Love. Instead of going against the flows of life, which is apparent from the resistance and destructiveness of our current methods, we will tap into the force and power that created All That Is. If it can do this, like create the entire Cosmos and all life (not even considering the infinite), what possibilities exist if we work in cooperation with it? Try to imagine the possibilities.

And this is not about getting angry or blaming anyone, especially ourselves. That is another trap of the old consciousness, guilt, blame, etc. And we did it this way for a reason. We may not see why with clarity for awhile, but eventually we will.

The key is to take responsibility, change our behaviors, and act from an ethic of Reverence for Life, or the Golden Law. But this is not just about people, it must be for all of life. Because all of life, physical, material expression is an expression of Spirit.

42 more things to do for Gaia

1. Take a college course in environment or science
2. Meditate on Gaia
3. Make a list of reasons to be grateful to Gaia
4. Organize an event to educate people about nature
5. Organize a trash pick up event
6. Stand up and yell "I Love Gaia!"
7. Think "I Love Gaia"
8. Whisper "I Love Gaia", even if you don´t believe it
9. Convince yourself to believe "I Love Gaia"
10. Convince yourself that Gaia Love´s you, because it is true.
11. Help me Share this message with the world
12. Contact me so I can Serve you
13. Writer a nature story about an animal
14. Contemplate deeply on aspects of this message
15. Try to feel in your heart the import of this message
16. Organize and take a trip in nature
17. Study advanced sciences for how to help solve environmental problems
18. Support political candidates who work for the environment
19. Buy an energy efficient car
20. Push for an energy policy and support for new alternative energy
21. Find out about Free Energy
22. Study Nikola Tesla´s work
23. Read the book "The Great Work" by Thomas Berry
24. Look into sustainable development and communities
25. Support an organic farmer
26. Help promote less use of chemicals in our food production
27. Sing a song for nature
28. Smile at someone and think that "Gaia Loves Them"
30. Organize a conversation with friends about what we can all do to protect nature
31. Learn how a "hyperspectral sensor" can help with solving environmental issues
32. Study a science topic to work to protect the environment
33. Read "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
34. Learn about the environmental movement
35. Go to your priest and minister and tell them this is an important message for them to Share
36. Write a single blog about some topic of nature or Gaia
37. Become a member of the Gaia Writer´s Guild
38. Support an organization that works to protect the environment
39. Support the Plant a Tree Today Foundation
40. Volunteer for an organization that works for Gaia, or nature
41. Contemplate on where we would be without Gaia
42. Thank yourself for Reading the Blog, because you are doing something for Gaia already!

One Reason and 42 things to do for Gaia

Here is one of my primary reasons to improve our relationship with the planet.

His name is Benjamin Mark

There are billions of other reasons too - I suspect everyone has a few that really are important. Let´s get together on this PLEASE!!!!

1. Use natural cleaning products
2. Tell a friend about Gaia
3. Share a story with a child about Gaia
4. Pick up some trash
5. Don´t drop the trash
6. Support recycling
7. Work to reduce consumerism
8. Work to reduce packaging
9. Promote bio-degradable packaging
10. Spend time in nature
11. Say a prayer for Gaia
12. Feel happy when in nature
13. Thank God for Gaia
14. Do a talk on something related to the environment or Gaia
15. Tell your parents about Gaia being a living being
15. Tell your children about our dependence on a healthy planet
16. Eat natural or organic foods
17. Plant a tree
18. Plant a flower
19. Plant a garden
20. Share your love with a bird, or an animal
21. Paint a picture of nature
22. Write a poem about nature
23. Read the story "The Lorax" to your children
24. Read the story "The Lorax" to a class of students
25. Do a presentation about the environment with college students
26. Share this blog with a friend
27. Tell everyone you know that you love Gaia
28. Think about your relationship with Gaia
29. Try to imagine where we would all be if it were´t for Gaia
30. Imagine how patient and loving Gaia has been all these years
31. Consider ways that you can help the Earth, and, or make a list like this!
32. Dedicate your life to protecting nature
33. Take a picture of nature
34. Share the picture with someone
35. Share the picture with many people
36. Ask them to really look at it
37. Go to the river and really look at the water
38. Try to imagine where the water comes from and where we would be without it
39. Take a breath
40. Say "hi" to a plant
41. Watch an ant hill
42. Watch a fly

I could add to this list, and I will. So can you! Will you help me share this message? Please? It´s really important that we do something NOW!

To see the first blog about this topic see "Gaia´s Message to Me"

With Love to You and Gaia,
Andy

Gaia´s Message to Me

Dear Friends,

This was a message I shared with two friends who saw my blog "Love is the Motivator".

Here is the message I shared with them about my VERY CLEAR AND PROFOUND KNOWING as I woke up this morning. You must understand, that this realization has come as part of a long and arduous time of introspection, self seeking, prayer and hardship, but Self understanding, answers to the BIG questions, consciousness and true freedom have been just part of the fruits. Here is the first of what will be many messages along these lines.

Dear Friends,

I am still plugging away, and will be until my last breath. Today I want to share what I know to be the key, and I will be sharing this same message everywhere I go because I have known it since Gaia planted in me 23 years ago.

We have to wake people up to our relationship to Gaia. I suspect you really know this, but I woke up so clear TODAY that we have gotten caught up in the details, what with "global warming", pesticides, etc., etc., etc., etc. The key relationship that we must mend, to demonstrate our readiness to go through ascension, (if that is what is happening) is how we relate to our Spiritual Source.

Gaia is the primary link in our chain to Source, the One. My dear friend Desmond Green has been bringing home to me that "we are PHYSICAL SPIRIT and now just becoming conscious of it". This is consistent with all great historical messages.

But the converter of Spirit, or Star Stuff, in the form that we get this fabulous sense experience as "human-beings" is the Earth, Gaia!!!! It is the water plant, the rock factory, the aluminum factory, the air plant, the sun converter, the flower supplier, the bird and butterfly manufacturer, the light converter to physical matter that we can have deep and profound sense experiences and be conscious and "feeling" of the fact "plant"!!! Likely the first time in the history of the universe, based on my research to date. This is the half-truth that we have been sold that we are the only life in the Universe.

But at this point, being an ex-academic, we are not passing the course. We can do better. But time is really running out. That message came home emphatically in Osho´s video that I first posted in my blog Waking Up the World - Osho.

And I believe the test for us is to do our damndest in these last days to try to wake people up to this important relationship. I got the assignment 23 years ago, through Gaia´s Spirit I guess, while I was on a canoe trip in Minnesota. At that time it was my job to "try to create opportunities for people to experience the outdoors so their spirit wakes up". I have been following the path, but in not very effective strategies (at least that I can tell).

But this morning the urgency is upon me. We have to share this with our kids, and their kids, and our grandparents and our uncles and aunts. If we do our utmost we might be able to help more people go on the ride to 5D, but if even if the ascension doesn´t happen like we are dreaming of, we will have a different experience here too. Because I think inherently, if we become conscious of this one single relationship, I think our relationship with ourselves and with our God will change too.

I have come to the conclusion that if the church was really teaching the word of God, they would have been preaching about this.

I don´t mean to be ranting here, I just have been given a new assignment, after likely 50 years of floundering. Now it is time to become the clanging symbol, or the light on the hill, or whatever method it takes to plant a seed in each persons heart that I can.

With Great Love My Brothers, We are all in this together we have to save ourSelves, and each other.

Andy

Discovering My Purpose

Discovering My Purpose
November 5, 2009

My professional life has been guided by an experience that I had in about 1986. I was an undergraduate student at Iowa State University in the Leisure Studies program. I had a wonderful advisor Steve Simpson, who assisted me in refining my curriculum to focus towards outdoor recreation with an emphasis on protecting the environment.

Leisure Studies was a program of study that I stumbled upon as I was trying to figure out what I was going to do when I grew up (I was 26). I had been floating between a variety of disciplines including business, biology and hadn’t found a niche. In order to fill up a semester course schedule I took an introductory Leisure Studies course. It fit perfectly. I thought ¨what better kind of work than to help people enjoy their leisure – isn’t that why we all work so hard?¨
Steve’s emphasis and teaching methods were very effective and influential. It took us to a place where we studied people like John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Ralph Waldo Emerson and other great thinkers including, still living, Fritoj Capra (Center for Ecoliteracy). Our classes consisted of readings from all of these authors and many more, combined with Steve’s true passion “experiential education”. We did classes where we participated and lead activities like biking, rock climbing, kayaking, windsurfing, and also participated on outdoor excursions.

Even though I was very enthusiastic about outdoor recreation, I was still not clear what exactly I was supposed to do with my career. I had an idea to be a naturalist videographer, but I don’t think I had the patience for that profession. My answer to my “mission” conundrum came to me on canoe trip on the St. Croix river between Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Now, as a little preparatory statement, I have discovered that many of my greatest personal discoveries occurred as a result of personal crises – times of great sorrow, struggle, or even at a juncture where I have had a choice, usually not conscious, between life or death. Those points where I was confronted with opportunities or challenges that relate to my character ,or growth as a person. In many respects this relates to spiritual growth from my life experiences.
What I relate next could be easily avoided, and part of me would rather not reveal the “true story”. However, I believe it is possibly the most important fact, because if it weren’t for the circumstances to be exactly as they were, I likely would have not had the experience that I did.
One of my personal challenges in my life has been my relations to women. I have had struggles, and it likely goes all the way back to my relationship with my own mother. My woman “chooser” usually ends up getting me with women whom I, unconsciously, wanted to save. I have a sort of “hero complex”. So back to the story, in our Leisure Studies courses there was a woman whom I had a crush on. The problem was, I was married.

We were having a wonderful experience canoeing on the St. Croix to natural areas that were only accessible from the river. The day before I had my epiphany for what my “mission” was, we had taken a hike in a pine forest. It was incredible. Quiet, the tall, straight trees, and the whispering breeze as we entered, and then the silence of the forest was so memorable. I don’t know why it had such an impact on me this time, but I remember it to set the stage for the events that would follow the next morning. We finished the hike in the forest and returned to camp. We spent some time “processing” the experience and then were prepared to go to sleep in our tents. I don’t remember the details, but I remember I wanted to get into the tent with this lady I had a crush on. But she wouldn’t let me. And the greater part of me knew that I didn’t want to anyway. It was a struggle between my lower and higher nature.

It was going to get cold that night, but I had a good sleeping bag. And maybe I was pouting, or maybe I wanted to punish myself, it could have been any number of reasons. So, I decided to sleep next to the tributary, Bear Creek, of the main branch of the St. Croix. It did get quite cold. In fact, when I awoke at daybreak there was snow on the ground.

When I awoke, I just woke up and for some reason I had this realization about what I was supposed to do in this world – what my mission was. I don’t recall the details of thoughts, or anything. But to this day that experience marks the juncture in my life where I had a clear sense of how I could make a difference. I was supposed to work to help people experience the out-of-doors. To facilitate experiences, like we were having in this class, to where people, especially young people, could have an experience that might re-connect their spirit to the spirit abundant in the natural world. I don’t know exactly how this knowing came to me, but it is as clear today as it must have been then.

Now, this mission, this purpose, or responsibility has taken me on a very winding path in my life. Sometimes my work, or experiences have seemed to be a detour, or dead-end. But I now understand, at this point, that these experiences were part of a twenty year training program. As is described in Appendix B with my Ecotourism Consulting International term paper, my path started with an idea to assist in developing businesses that would assist people’s in developing countries to create alternative economic strategies that would help protect the rainforests.
Here is a short summary of just a few of my more pertinent jobs and schooling which will provide a summary of this winding career path. To improve my credibility, and train me in natural resource management I got a masters degree in Forestry, with a focus on agroforestry and alternative energy systems. After that I spent five years with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, first developing the first “nature tourism” program called Texas Adventures, and then running a mail-order catalog (the TPWD Collection) within the same agency. Following that took me to back to school to become the Assistant Director of the Center for Nature and Heritage Tourism, where I learned the geographical perspective, and became knowledgeable about the Internet and geographic information systems (GIS). My PhD Dissertation is entitled “Nature Tourism in Cyberspace: An Examination of it’s Geography and Character in the Network”.
Finally, I ended up being a professor and research scientist at Texas A&M University where my first responsibilities were to teach farmers and ranchers how to start a nature tourism business, to work with communities interested in nature tourism, to create a Internet based tourism information system (TexBox), to be the founder of a tourism and technology business out of the university (AdventGX) and finally to become an assistant to the Vice President for Research in the areas of new environmental technologies (hyperspectral sensors) and commercialization strategies.

After all of this, and my mentor and boss Dr. Ewing passing, I took another huge risk to get back to my original dream and left academia to come to South America to develop, real, on-the-ground strategies for rural sustainable revitalization and empowerment. Over the years, my perspectives have greatly expanded based on my understanding of political, economic, social, business and bureaucratic realities, while at the same time increasing my passion for the need to stimulate spiritual awakenings in people.

I have experienced vast and numerous experiences with people and places, but one truth that rises up from it all, that we have to help people, and protect the planet. I have also found that almost all people are inherently good, and they just need some help to understand how to better live and relate to each other and Gaia. The means to accomplish this is through a principle I call “people helping people” and through education.

In any case, the core of my ideas in this regard, related to rural revitalization and empowerment, are presented in the “Vision to Transform the World”. This story, of realizing “my mission” is the final contribution to this book “I Am Sharing” – although it very likely is just the beginning of a series of books that will go into detail about the various components and requirements of rural, regional development strategies. I feel I have been honored more than any other person with my experiences in this world. And I will continue on this meandering path, with the hopes to achieve some level of success to make my contribution to helping people to be happy and to have more fun – which is why I think that we came to the beautiful place we call Earth!