About Me — Alan Lew
[Updated April 1, 2023] From an academic to a blogger/author on Medium.
Everything has purpose and value, and every moment is synchronicity
— my sankalpa
A Brief Self Introduction
In mid-2019, I retired from my university after some 40 years as a graduate student and then a professor studying, teaching, researching, and writing about human geography, urban/community planning, and tourism development.
During that time, I had written several textbooks and over 100 academic articles and book chapters, mostly on travel and tourism-related topics, and often related to East and Southeast Asia. (I am ethnically half-Chinese; born and raised in California. My old academic website is linked below.)
It took me a couple of years to decouple completely from academic things, but I am now (in early 2023) done with that period of my life story. As I approached retirement, my attention focused increasingly on my lifetime secondary interest in spirituality. I have practiced Transcendental Meditation (TM) since 1974; I called myself a Buddhist for a few years, influenced by my academic research trips to Asia; and my wife got me into yoga in 2014 (after we retired from Taekwondo).
In the year following retirement, I became a certified yoga teacher; a Reiki, gong and sound healing practitioner; and I started channeling my Energy Group / Higher Self. My wife says I am complicated, which is why my first year of retirement was a busy one!
Writing on Medium
AND I started writing about these topics on Medium.
I have always loved writing. To me, it is a form of channeling my higher intelligence. It often feels more like a collaboration. I love it even more when I do not need to worry about having my papers rejected by academic journals! So Medium seems to be a good place for me at this point in my life.
In my writings, I try to express my fundamental beliefs about reality. These may be best expressed in my sankalpa, which is a statement of intentions or goals that define me spiritually. My sankalpa includes 3 statements:
- “I will lead with my heart”
- “My knowledge will create a New Earth”
- “Every Thing has Value and Purpose, Every Moment is Synchronicity”
These are further expressed in the following actions that guide my discernment (these lists came out of my yoga teacher training course):
- to express love in every encounter that I have
- to recognize oneness and value in everything I see
- to act knowing that the present is the only time that really exists
- to help expand global awakening
New Earth Consciousness
In the last few years before I retired, I became interested in the role of travel and tourism in expanding humankind’s ‘global consciousness’. I wrote several papers and gave quite a few lectures on that topic (download via my academic link below).
The expansion and ascension of individual and global consciousness continues to be one of my major passions and is the motivation behind my starting the New Earth Consciousness publication on Medium and a recent Facebook group with the same name.
- Visit and Follow my Medium publication New Earth Consciousness (NEC) … and join our New Earth Consciousness Group on Facebook
Related
- Today (Spring 2023), I am more interested in nonduality (especially the radical version) than my sankalpa reflects, above. Here is a more recent update on my basic perspective on reality…
- This is my old academic website (no longer updated):
- For more articles About Me & My Writing, see this collection of articles:
Note that the articles in this collection are behind the Medium paywall. For paywall-free access to my articles, go to www.AlanLew.com, linked below.
Contact
- I appreciate comments, questions, and typo corrections.
— See the About link in my Medium profile for contact information and related articles.
My Medium writings are available “paywall free” at www.AlanLew.com:
