Namaste insights, the coming interspiritual age special winter 2014 issue

Namaste Insights Brought to you by Namaste Publishing

A celebration of the 10th anniversary of the transition of

Bro. Wayne Teasdale

From the Publisher...

This is the second ezine from Namaste Publishing to focus entirely on interspirituality, the first being in 2013. As President and Publisher, I wish to thank all who contributed to this edition, providing us with such a diverse and comprehensive summary of the current state of this exciting global movement. In particular, special thanks to Dr. Kurt Johnson for all he did to bring the many contributing authors together.

Links in the ezine are active, so we invite you to visit the websites of our contributors, as well as our own Namaste Publishing website where you can find many books, downloads, CDs, and DVDs that speak of our ultimate oneness—not least of which is, of course, The Coming Interspiritual Age by Dr. Kurt Johnson and Namaste Publishing’s editorial director, David Robert Ord. This edition of Namaste Insights contains not only news of the interspiritual movement, but also especially rich teaching content with the power to change many lives. It’s for this reason we ask you to use your mailing lists, websites, and any other means to let the world know about this ezine.

May you have a blessed holiday season, and may 2015 see the message of interspirituality continue to spread around the globe until our entire world is transformed by the love that flows from oneness.

Constance Kellough

In This Edition of Namaste Insights Introduction to this special edition of Namaste Insights Dr. Kurt Johnson and David Robert Ord Russill Paul’s 10th Anniversary Remembrance of Br. Wayne Teasdale at Facebook on October 20, 2014 A Remembrance of Fr. Thomas Berry Carolyn W. Toben Forum 21 Institute Rick Clugston and Ken Kitatani Ethics & Spirituality Initiative for Sustainable Development Kurt Johnson The Birth of Interspiritual Meditation Ed Bastian Second Axial Awakening Matthew Wright The Contemplative Alliance Dena Merriam The Interspirituality of Yogi Bhajan Kurt Johnson and Karuna Meditation, Kundalini, and the Interspiritual Moment Gurucharan Singh Khalsa Mahan Rishi on the Kundalini Yoga of Yogi Bhajan A Spiritual Summit for Social Change Caps 2014 Events The Board of Directors, Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (FIONS) Love Language: The Interspiritual Heart of the Mystics Mirabai Starr The Globalism Challenge: Prepackaged Pain or Planetary Patriotism?

Doug King and Mike Morrell

How Foreign Policy Leaders Can Generate, Replicate, and Propagate Evolving Interpretations of Islam Dustin DiPerna Tony Hawk, Public Enemy, and The Universe Inside Chris Grosso Creating the Ecclesiastical Body to Support Interspirituality Rev. Tim Miner OUnl Spirituality Outside of Traditions T. S. Pennington All Religions, All the Singing, One Song Isabella Price Rooted in Peace: About the Film Greg Reitman Grounding Ourselves in Sacred Practice Diane Berke Interfaith and Interspiritual Clergy and Their Training Rev. Philip Waldrop Interspiritual: The Silence Behind the Word Roger Housden Waking Up and Growing Up: Religion’s Potential Contributions to Sustainable Development Goals Ken Wilber Gandhi Earth Keepers International George Payne Sacred Earth: Our Call to Service J. J. Hurtak and Desiree Hurtak Interspirituality: A Vision of Wholeness Beverly J. Lanzetta Imagining the Future of the Interfaith and Interspiritual Movements Ruth Broyde Sharone Eco-Spirituality and Eco-Ministry in an Ecological Age Rev. Mac Legerton A Never-Ending Thank You to Fr. Thomas Keating It Starts with a Circle Dorothy Cunha

The Bellwethers Are Gathering Kate Sheehan Roach The Interspiritual Age: Looking in the right place David Ellzey Interspirituality and Gender Reconciliation William Keepin and Rev. Cynthia Brix The Interspirituality of Kotama Okada, Founder of Sukyo Mahikari Kurt Johnson and David Robert Ord A Thumbnail Sketch of the History and Future of Interspiritual Dialogue in a Fragmented Era Lama Surya Das The New Monasticism Rory McEntee and Adam Bucko The Institute of Noetic Sciences Science and Faith: Entangled States The Rt. Rev W. Nicholas Knisely Back to the Garden: Introducing the Garden of Light Rev. Deborah Moldow News Around the Networks: Additonal News, Organizations and Events from across the Interspiritual – Ecological Landscape Science and Nonduality Conference (SAND) United Nations NGO Community The Interfaith Observer Kosmos Journal Omega Institute and Blue Spirit Costa Rica Theatre Group Dzieci Astral Dance with Amanda Turner Tools for Evolving Consciousness The Aspen Chapel and Interspiritual Association Bella Gaia Community of the Mystic Heart (CMH) and Sannyas Pir Zia Inayat Khan, Seven Pillars, and a New Book The National Ethical Service We.net, Vistar, New Realities, and A Better World Ashok Gangadean—The Declaration of Interdependence Greenworld Campaign Sets Attention on Sacred Forests A Message from the Editorial Director of Namaste Publishing Kurt’s Coauthor of The Coming Interspiritual Age

The Growth of

INTERSPIRITUALITY in an ECOLOGICAL AGE Namaste Publishing tracks the growth of the globe’s interspiritual, integral, ecological, and sustainability movements Based on Namaste’s 2013 Award-winning Book

The Coming Interspiritual Age

by Dr. Kurt Johnson and David Robert Ord

Attendees at the 2013 Dawn of Interspirituality Conference

Introduction to this Special Issue of

NAMASTE INSIGHTS

by Dr. Kurt Johnson and David Robert Ord Namaste Publishing is proud to bring you this virtual e-magazine (ezine) on the occasion of the 10th Anniversary of the transition of Bro. Wayne Teasdale.

Teasdale, in his now classic book The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituaity in the World’s Religions, coined the term ‘Interspirituality”. In the ensuing

decade, this understanding of the underlying unity of all the world’s spiritual traditions and their ethics, values, and ideals has engendered a turn in our globe’s interfaith understanding to this deeper calling that’s fundamental to the eventual peace and flourishing of our planet.

In 2013, we were privileged to respond to Namaste Publishing’s call to create a book, The Coming Interspiritual Age, which would trace the origins and development of this universal paradigm. We were pleased with the enthusiastic response to this book and its influence on the global discussion of our planet’s future.

As Brother Wayne predicted, since the time of his publication of The Mystic Heart in 1999 right on the cusp of our Third Millennium, the message of interspirituality has become inextricably connected to the world’s integral, ecological, sustainability, sacred activism, contemplative voice, evolutionary consciousness, spiritual but not religious, and peace and happiness movements. The diverse contributors to this ezine describe this development and these profound mutual interconnections.

In this compilation, we are especially delighted to join many old and many new voices.

We hope you will be inspired by these pages and respond to the invitations herein to become involved yourself and in your communities.

What has become known as the global interspiritual movement continues to grow and grow. As mandated by the 2013 international “Dawn of Interspirituality Conference”, beginning in 2015 the diverse groups, organizations, associations, and networks leading the expanding interspirituality phenomenon will join at a common web platform:

The Interspiritual Network

www.interspirituality.com Please visit the site and learn more and more as it unfolds. Further, our diverse partners—particularly those in the ecological and sustainability movements represented herein, like Forum 21 Institute (celebrating the heritage of pioneer eco-theologian Fr. Thomas Berry and other environmental pioneers)—will also provide information in these pages about how you can get involved. Please look at those pages as well.

We hope you will respond with equal enthusiasm to these calls from our mutual understandings that join consciousness and spirituality with our sense of sacred Earth.

This is the second edition of the Namaste Insights ezine to be dedicated entirely to the global interspirituality movement. The first was launched to coincide with the publication

by Namaste Publishing of the book The Coming Interspiritual Age. Both ezines are excellent ways to let your constituencies know a great deal more about the interspiritual movement.

You can access the original ezine, with its huge range of articles by luminaries in the interspiritual movement across the globe, at www.issuu.com.

Finally, we want to thank the busy leaders, authors, and teachers in our Table of Contents who have taken time to contribute their hearts, perspective, and vision to this celebration of the growth of the interspiritual movement.

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waynedali.jpg

Br. Wayne Teasdale and

H. H. the 14th Dalai Lama

“We must understand, at the most elemental level, that the definitive revolution is the awakening of our species.”

“Every form of mystical spirituality makes a distinction between the contemplative or inner experience, and the outer realm of active life, of service to others, of compassionate witness and merciful deeds. Yet the spiritual journey, when it has reached its fullness, unites these two realms of experience. The active and the contemplative are integrated within each person’s consciousness; they converge, and are understood to be one.

When we have cultivated a subtle spiritual awareness, no separation between inner and outer exists. The quality of our consciousness permeates everything we do because that awareness is who we really are…. When we are learning how things are put together, we often take them apart to see how they are made. When we are beginning the spiritual journey, it is useful to see contemplation and action as separate ideas. As St. Thomas Aquinas says, we distinguish in order to understand their unity. And, in the end, we understand that they are one.”

Wayne Teasdale, The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions.

Russill Paul’s 10th Anniversary Remembrance of Br. Wayne Teasdale at Facebook on October 20, 2014

Ten years ago, we lost our best friend on this day. It was because of Wayne that we came to the US, and because of him that we (Asha and I) could weather so many storms in our lives here in the west. He was our support in so many ways, spiritual and other.

There is one quality of his we would like to remember today: Wayne was always available to the homeless, the poor, the suffering. Even if it meant being late for a meeting with a dignitary of state (many who he knew on a first name basis), or delivering an important keynote address to a thousand strong audience, he would stop to make contact, comfort, and offer some concrete sign of his love, either in the form of food, money or his phone number, so he could help later.

Fr. Bede Griffiths, the iconic Christian monastic and Advaitic sage who pioneered much of interspiritual thought, hosted in his sangha at Shantivanam, India, such eventual “lights” as Russill Paul, Wayne Teasdale, Andrew Harvey and Rupert Sheldrake. Here is an early Shantivanam photo of Fr. Bede and Brother Wayne.

Wayne was an influential voice in the spiritual world. He was a mover and shaker in the 1993 parliament of world religions in Chicago that picked up on the 100th anniversary of the momentous event which officially launched the influence of eastern thought upon the western world through Swami Vivekananda’s famous address. And his book, “The Mystic Heart”, fueled a worldwide movement that now functions out of New York City: www.isdna.org.

Additional Resources Russill Paul’s Eulogy in 2004: http://www.isdna.org/eulogy.php Russill Paul’s author page at Amazon: http:// www.amazon.com/s/ ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=searchalias%3Dstripbooks&fieldkeywords=Russill+Paul Br. Wayne’s definitive book on the Interspiritual Thought of Fr. Bede Griffiths at the Wayne Teasdale author page at Amazon: http:// www.amazon.com/s/ ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=searchalias%3Dstripbooks&fieldkeywords=Wayne+Teasdale&rh=n %3A283155%2Ck%3AWayne +Teasdale

We will always love you and hold you dear in our minds and hearts, Wayne! We know you rest restless in your peace, until all humans find the one love in each other that makes all creation purposeful.

Russill Paul recently provided this happy photo of Bro. Wayne with his dear friend, H. H. the 14th Dalai Lama, who wrote the Foreword to The Mystic Heart.

Fr. Thomas Berry the world’s seminal Eco-theologian

“So we must pass on to the next age that is dawning before us, the fourth age of man, The Ecological Age. I use the term “Ecological” in its primary meaning as the relation of an organism to its environment but also in its metaphorical sense as the inter-communion of all living and non-living systems of the universe. This vision of an integral world system into which we are emerging is of primary importance if mankind is to have the psychic power to undergo the mental and emotional, the individual and social, the economic and political, the ethical, religious and aesthetic transformations that re being demanded of us. We must not mistake the order of magnitude in this challenge that we face. It is not simply adaptation to a reduced supply of fuels, or to some modification of our system of social or economic controls, nor is it a slight change in our educational system. What is happening is something of far greater magnitude than all these. It is a radical change in our mode consciousness. Our challenge is to create a new language, even a new sense of what it is to be human. It is to transcend national limitations to achieve a sense of the human community. It is to alter many of our basic values. A new sense of the directions that human existence should take is involved.”

Thomas Berry, The Ecological Age.

A Remembrance of

Fr. Thomas Berry

by Carolyn W. Toben

We started slowly and silently down the Creeping Cedar Trail, which encircles one of the ponds. I was aware of the stillness of pine trees all around us, birdsong, and sun sparkles on the water as we made our way into the woods. As we reached a large sprawling area of ground cover called creeping cedar, I stopped Thomas and playfully suggested that he close his eyes and open his hands. I picked up a small sprig of the spiraling plant and placed it on his outstretched palms.

Thomas opened his eyes slowly and beheld the tiny plant in his hands, and in that moment, with the sun shining through the pinewoods on that clear autumn day, I can only say that it seemed that ordinary time stood still, and I felt an enlarged moment in which I could actually feel Thomas Berry’s oneness with the earth, the universe, and the Divine.

Thomas whispered to the little plant, “You are so beautiful,” and a circuit of love seemed to pass between them that was palpable to witness.

That fused moment was to live deeply in my memory as a new way of seeing the earth as Thomas Berry saw it, as a “communion of subjects” with everything connected through his vision. It was an opening into a deeper reality in which he and the creeping cedar and the sun and the woods and the universe and the Divine were one.

From that moment on, a sense of the unity of all things began a shift in consciousness within me that would evolve through the rest of my life and lead to the birth of a work for children and teachers on the land.

Before our walk was over, I asked Thomas to speak about that special moment of communion. “The human-earth relationship is the primary experience of the Divine,” he said slowly. “We are touched by what we touch, we are shaped by what we shape, we are enhanced by what we enhance. The sense of the sacred is at the heart of it all.”

From Recovering A Sense of the Sacred: Conversations with Thomas Berry, by Carolyn W. Toben.

Additional Resources Recovering A Sense of the Sacred: Conversations with Thomas Berry Amazon page: http://www.amazon.com/Recovering-Sense-Sacred-Conversations-Thomas/dp/ 0988392801

About Carolyn Toben Carolyn is an educator, counselor and creator of new social forms with a spiritual dimension.

With extensive background in spirituality, world religions, and depth psychology Carolyn founded the Center for Education, Imagination and the Natural World (2000), inspired by ecotheologian Fr. Thomas Berry. Carolyn spent many hours with Thomas Berry engaged in deep discussions about his foundational thinking on the human-earth-Divine relationship. Recovering A Sense of the Sacred: Conversations with Thomas Berry is based on her personal notes, practices and reflections from these conversations.

A major partner in the global interspiritual community is the Forum 21 Institute (www.forum-21.org). Forum 21 seeks to catalyze transformative change in lifestyles, organizations, and policies to support spiritually centered ecological civilizations.

Convening scholars and activists from diverse religious and scientific fields, Forum 21 advances integrated solutions to our social, environmental and economic challenges.

Working through the non-governmental organizations and committee structure at the United Nations, we are clarifying values, goals, and action steps to deal effectively with these challenges.

The primary focus of Forum 21 is sustainable development grounded in ethics and spiritual values with emphasis on policy and education. Partnering with leaders, authors, and teachers from the interspiritual community over the last two years, Forum 21 Institute has joined in events, speaking tours, hosting seminars, think-tank discussions, and developing educational materials. In 2013 these included major gatherings in New York, Vermont, Colorado, and Georgia, among others, and coordinating a new book on the United Nations development vision: Ethics, Spiritual Values and the New UN Development Agenda (R. Clugston and M. Vilela Eds.; New World Frontiers 2015).

In this ezine you will see much more information about Forum 21 in articles by Ken Wilber, Rick Clugston, Ken Kitatani, Kurt Johnson, Tim Miner, Mac Legerton, Doug King and Mike Morrell, among others. A particular partner in this important work is the EcoMinistry Initiative of the Order of Universal Interfaith (http://www.ouni.org/community/ eco-ministry-eco-chaplaincy/).

How You Can Get Involved Forum 21 invites you to join with it to advance a new UN development agenda, to encourage meaningful action on climate change, and to shape the education we need for spiritual growth and sustainable living. The Institute is planning a series of workshops and conferences in 2015 to effect transformative change in policies (and politics), organizational practices, and lifestyles.

The first event will be in New York on January 22, 2015, immediately following the UN deliberations on the sustainable development goals (SDGs). It will focus on how we can

best weigh in on shaping the SDGs, as well as plan an action agenda for 2015. Next will be a meeting in San Francisco on February 6, 2015 (see articles by Tim Miner and Mac Legerton herein) to focus on eco-spirituality and eco-ministry in an ecological age.

Contact Forum 21 Institute If you want to join the mailing list of Forum 21 Institute and/or know more about it’s work and partnerships, contact Dr. Rick Clugston at rmclugstonjr@gmail.com.

Contact the Interspiritual Movement Use the contact links at www.interspirituality.com. For more urgent needs or queries, especially regarding this ezine, contact kurtjohnsonisd@yahoo.com.

United Nations non-governmental organization representatives debate global issues at the annual conference for NGOs hosted by the UN Department of Information. How to “language” global statements of goals and methods is challenging in a world formed by so many differing cultures.

Forum 21 Institute

by Rick Clugston and Ken Kitatani

Forum 21 seeks to catalyze transformative change in lifestyles, organizations and policies to support spiritually centered ecological civilizations. Convening scholars and activists from diverse religious and scientific fields, Forum 21 advances integrated solutions to our social, environmental and economic challenges. Working through the non-governmental organizations and committee structure at the United Nations, we are clarifying values, goals and action steps to deal effectively with these challenges.

In 2015, Forum 21 seeks to advance a new UN development agenda, to encourage meaningful action on climate change, and to shape the education we need for full human development in a flourishing Earth community. The UN processes to develop a Post 2015 UN Development Agenda and to secure an effective climate change treaty provide a fertile arena for shaping a new framework for the continuing processes of globalization. Globalization has focused primarily on expanding economic growth within a materialistic neo liberal market paradigm. The debates over the UN Post 2015

development agenda and climate treaty give us a chance to help reorient globalization toward spiritual growth and sustainable living.

These debates also provide an opportunity for us to reflect on how (and how effectively) our organizations and communities are promoting spiritually centered sustainable development in our own and our members lifestyle choices; in the functioning of our communities and organizations; and in our engagement in building

social movements for policy and institutional change.

Forum 21 is planning a series of workshops and conferences in 2015 to effect such transformative change in our policies (and politics). We are also developing ecospirituality and eco-ministry educational programs for leadership in transformative change.

Transformative change means making our lives our message by living our spirituality, our values fully in our daily lives. It also means being effective change agents in refocusing policy priorities and institutional structures to support spiritual growth and sustainable living.

All compassionately spiritual traditions affirm that there is an ultimate goodness that we are here to help make fully present in the world, and that we can develop an identity more consciously informed by a deeper source, a higher power, a greater self.

The major task in life is to awaken to this deeper reality and live in accordance with it.

This requires a major effort to bring our awareness out of preoccupation with petty and self-centered concerns into a compassionate connection with all life, living in ways that all can live. Most of the time our attention is absorbed in superficial things, shut up in a construction build of habits, desires, fears and our cultural conditioning. Each spiritual tradition has developed a set of transformative practices to enable one to focus attention, desire and action to move beyond one’s small self into an identity more informed by this deeper self/ source.

If we were to fully embrace our traditions’s ethical and spiritual teachings, this would induce a radical shift in perception and action focused on the following.

FIRST: Make lifestyle choices to: 1. Engage in contemplative practices (e.g., prayer, meditation, worship).

2.

Experience one’s interconnectedness and interdependence with the whole living world (e.g., animals, the wilderness, the cycles of life, the seasons, the unfolding cosmos).

3.

Feel, and act from, compassionate concern for others, doing no harm, reaching out to assist all beings.

4.

Live in ways that all can live, consuming no more than one’s fair share of Earth’s bounty-choosing products and services (e.g., food, energy, transportation, housing) that are ecologically sound, socially just and economically viable (e.g, local, fair trade, organic, carbon and pollution neutral, humane).

SECOND: Build communities and organizations centered on sustainable living and spiritual growth. Working together in our families, neighborhoods, congregations and academic institutions, we can create resilient and anticipatory communities which give a taste of living in a way that all can live. Our work and home would emphasize the above four practices. Our processes of community and institutional decision making and conflict resolution would be open, enabling all to participate and clarify their preferences and grievances, and arrive at structures and solutions that further everyone’s full human development in a flourishing Earth community. Our process capacities -to be humble, honest and respectful; to not blame and to forgive; and to compromise for the good of all -are foundational.

THIRD: Shift policy frameworks to support a compassionate and sustainable future.

Through voting, lobbying, and participating in political decision making at all levels we can shift development policies to support the future we want. Such policies include, for example, creating alternatives to GDP, internalizing social and environmental costs in pricing goods and services, eliminating perverse subsidies, and creating ethical assessment and trusteeship structures at all governmental levels to better care for future generations and the whole community of life.

FOURTH: Participate in a truly collaborative, effective social movement for ecojustice.

Not only does our materialist, ego-gratification-oriented consumer culture condition us to focus on owning and consuming more, it conditions us to operate as isolated, competitive egos focused on short term personal and organizational profit and fame.

We are at a social evolutionary moment analogous to when single-celled organisms in the primordial sea joined together in multicellular organisms with specialized functions in a new integrated whole. Then separate, individual cells developed fundamentally different modes of working together. Now we and our organizations must synergize our efforts to build the social movement to make those shifts in lifestyle, community and professional practices, and social policies necessary to create a just and sustainable future.

Additional Resources Forum 21 Institute Website: www.forum-21.org Forthcoming book: Ethics, Spiritual Values and the New UN Development Agenda (R. Clugston and M. Vilela Eds.; New World Frontiers 2015).

Videos of Ken Kitatani and other ezine authors speaking about Interspirituality and Sustainability at YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/ UCv1rOchwi6HWJm9kgNPkYeg The Interspiritual Declaration: http://multiplex.isdna.org/declaration.htm

Rick Clugston, Ph.D. is the Co-Director of the Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future (ULSF) and directs the Sustainable Development Programs of Forum 21. From 2009 to 2012, Rick directed the Earth Charter Scholarship Project at the Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education (CESE) at Florida Gulf Coast University. From 1989 to 2009, Rick served as Executive Director of the Center for Respect of Life and Environment (CRLE) in Washington, DC, where he assisted religious and academic institutions in transforming their teaching and practices to support strong sustainability. Rick was Publisher and Editor of Earth Ethics: Evolving Values for an Earth Community, the Deputy Editor of The International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education (MCB University Publications) and served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Education for Sustainable Development (Sage Publications).

Rev. Ken Kitatani is Executive Director of Forum 21 Institute and also serves on the Executive Committee of the UN NGO Committee on Spiritual Values and Global Concerns. Since1995, Ken has served as an ordained minister for Sukyo Mahikari Centers for Spiritual Development (www.centersforspiritualdevelopment.org) and currently serves representative to the United Nations for Sukyo Mahikari as well as USA representative of Women In Need International (an NGO that advocates for gender equality and sustainability).

Ken also serves on the Board of “What Shape is Green?” a program of peace and environment and is an advisor to the Happiness Initiative (www.happycounts.org).

United Nations committees: 2014 Commemorative Card for the Ethics and Spirituality Initiative for Sustainable Development (Kurt back row, left of center).

by Kurt Johnson, PhD This concerns the relationship of consciousness, the rich millennial history of the Great Wisdom Traditions of which we are all a part, and the crucial juncture we are at today in history with regard to global political and economic policy.

The landscape of the “blood and guts” reality of today’s global politics of power is entangled at a time when what is emerging, just in its infancy, worldwide is a universal and global spirituality. This new spirituality, if it is going to succeed at all, will have to be

one that can eventually bring all of the world’s religions into a global spirituality based on some universal sense of the heart and unity consciousness.

Just look around at the news today and it’s easy to see the predicament the world is in. Religion will either become part of the solution or it will be doomed to remain part of the problem.

The “Twin Pillars” for Creating a Healthy Global Multiculturalism If we are to be able to create a healthy multicultural civilization we are going to need to recognize the “twin pillars’ of what that process will take. These twin pillars are as fundamental in reality as masculine and feminine, Shiva and Shakti, wisdom and

skillful means, God the Father and God the Son—or whatever other religious language we may want to adopt from across our traditions.

The twin pillars comprise:

Interspiritual and Sustainability Leaders panel at the United Nations in New York City. Kurt Johnson, Rick Clugston, Ken Kitatani and Doug King (all contributors to this Ezine ) speak at the annual meeting of UN NGO’s.

First, the deep inner spiritual work that we all know must be done worldwide, and to which we are committed as spiritual practitioners, teachers, and leaders; and Second, the necessarily complex work in the manifest world—intellectual and technological—that actually must be done to build a world that will reflect the values and ideals to which we aspire.

As you know, the classic Heart Sutra is divided into two sections that echo these twin pillars. The first section is a statement about non-dual or awakened truth; the

second is about the perfection of this wisdom through skillful means. Integral Theory and Spiral Dynamics call these twin pillars Zone 1 and Zone 2. In the Lord’s Prayer they are echoed in Jesus’ words, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.

Today’s Predicament Today, however, there is a functional problem—although luckily it is an evolutionary one that can hopefully be solved. In our day to day reality at this point in our evolution, the elements of these two twin pillars often do not naturally see or recognize each other. As Ken Wilber says, if I may use some jargon from the Integral community (which everyone seems to “get” at least at a basic level), “Zone 1 and Zone 2 don’t always naturally see each other”, “States and Structures don’t naturally often see each other”. There is an evolutionary process by which they need to find out about each other and come to the recognition of their mutual importance. In other words, some conscious efforting is often needed to join these essential complementarities because we tend to overlook their connection.

In fact our world is desperately trying to evolve to a juncture where these two aspects will be able to recognize each other—and just in the nick of time.

Too often in the world’s spiritual communities—which often have the so-called more magic-mythic view of reality—we not only see the emphasis on just the internal work, but sometimes even distain for the external work, either thinking the internal work will automatically solve the external work or that the external work isn’t necessary at all.

Meantime at the UN, in the secular world that operates solely by rational and standards, we see just the opposite. The materialist, atheist, and reductionist cultures are desperately working 24/7 to stamp out any role for spirituality in the future of the planet because they honestly consider it to represent purely non-rational and prerational superstition. Or we see radically fundamentalist religious cultures insisting that only their religious creeds or dogmas are true, and consequently serving up cultures of violence that are willing to literally lop off heads to move in the directions they want.

So, what has emerged at the United Nations regarding all these dynamics is the mantra, “We have to do it all”—both the deep inner work and the necessarily complex, highly nuanced external work. This is perhaps the most important mantra globally today: ” We have to do it all”.

The Arising Universal Spirituality In the midst of this, a universal spirituality is arising. If you “google” “inter-spirituality” or “interspiritual,” you will see nearly 300,000 entries about it. You can also consult thecominginterspiritualage.com and the The Coming Interspiritual Age Facebook page.

And soon, at www.interspirituality.com, there will be a new website joining over 100 organizations internationally. This is the global movement to begin to bring to the table, together to serve all humankind, all the wisdom resources that our world’s history has evolved Fortunately, in the realm of skillful means, which will also require the merging of spirit and science, we have this ever expanding and maturing Science and Nonduality

Conference along with organizations like the Institute of Noetic Sciences, The Teilhard Society, the Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (which I am currently privileged to serve as president), and many other venues working to link the best of science and the best of Dr. Kurt Johnson speaking at New spirituality.

York City’s National Ethical Service, So, we see today not the NGO he represents at the UN. only the global interspiritual movement but also the burgeoning phenomenon known as About Kurt Johnson, PhD “spiritual but not religious”, the sacred activism Kurt Johnson’s work at the UN, where he serves on movement, the evolutionary several committees, combines his extensive experience consciousness movement, in evolutionary science and spirituality. In 2015 he is a the Integral movement, and contributor to a new compilation on the United Nations many others that clearly, in new development agenda. A monastic for 14 years, he the evolutionary context, are received his doctorate in evolution, ecology, and the inherent evolutionary comparative biology. In 2002, with Wayne Teasdale, he response of the world’s formed Interspiritual Dialogue, a network for wisdom traditions to the contemplative sharing across religious traditions that inevitability of globalization, now hosts the extensive Interspiritual Multiplex website. the inevitability of multiA teacher in the Advaita Vedanta tradition of Ramana culturalism, and the hope Maharshi and an adept in Kundalini Yoga, Kurt is also that there can be a soft co-founder of NYC’s Coalition for One Voice, a member landing in this irreversible of One Spirit Interfaith Seminary’s Faculty and Board of global future and not a hard Directors, and President of the Friends of the Institute landing, or worse, a of Noetic Sciences. He is the author of the science/ catastrophe. literature bestselling Nabokov’s Blues: The Scientific The coiner of the word Odyssey of a Literary Genius, co-author (with David interspirituality, Brother Robert Ord) of The Coming Interspiritual Age and coWayne Teasdale, in his editor of the forthcoming book from Yale University seminal book The Mystic Press, Fine Lines: Nabokov’s Scientific Art. Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions (to which our book The Coming Interspiritual Age is a sequel), said it emphatically: "We must understand, at the most elemental level, that the definitive revolution is the awakening of our species" (Mystic Heart, p. 12).

To move in this direction, the world’s religions are truly going to need to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. If they remain part of the problem, as we see in the Middle East today, they will be a big part of the problem.

So, in this context, what’s going on at the United Nations is often referred to as the “battle over the twin pillars”—at the global level whether there will be an appreciation that both spirituality and skills are needed in our future world.

The above article is drawn from Dr. Kurt Johnson’s speech at SAND’s 2014 Conference on “Entanglement”, based on the interspiritual work going on within the United Nations community.

Kurt concluded with an explanation and discussion of the structure of the United Nations Secretariat and UN NGO and Agency communities, the committees and institutes he serves there and the future dynamics of this struggle between spiritual and non-spiritual cultures today on the world stage.

Additional Resources Videos of Interspiritual Leaders Discussing the Emerging Paradigm: https://www.youtube.com/ channel/ UCv1rOchwi6HWJm9kgNPkYeg Videos/ Audios of Kurt Johnson’s other presentations at The Science and Nonduality Conference: http:// www.thecominginterspiritualage. com/media

The Birth of Interspiritual

Meditation

by Dr. Ed Bastian Back in 1997, I was invited to be a part of Father Thomas Keating’s groundbreaking Snowmass Conference. In the early 1980s, Father Thomas, one of the founders of the Centering Prayer movement and a former Cistercian abbot, began inviting spiritual leaders from many different religious traditions to a private retreat at St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado (described in the book, The Common Heart: An Experience of Interreligious Dialogue, 2006). Over the course of four days, representatives of different religious traditions would sit together in meditation and then dialogue about their respective spiritual practices and experiences, often finding common ground, and more often, forming intimate and lasting friendships. That year, Father Thomas invited me to join them, to “be the Buddhist,” as one of the founding

members couldn’t make it. I didn’t feel particularly qualified, but after a few deep discussions with him about my growing interest in inter-faith work, he convinced me that it would be useful for me to attend and see how it worked in the Snowmass Conference.

I felt incredibly honored. I had heard so much about the Snowmass Conference over the years. It had a reputation for doing the kind of deep contemplative work that was not to be found in other interfaith groups, and I was not to be disappointed. Both the meditation and the dialogue were profound experiences for me. Although I had been interested in inter-faith work for a while, I really had no idea that there existed such extraordinary commonalities between the great contemplative traditions, especially among their mature practitioners. It also became clear—much to my surprise —that all of the religions represented had deep and profound practices of meditation, all aimed at developing inner peace, wisdom, and compassion.

On the morning of the second day of the retreat, we convened for a meditation before breakfast, then another meditation before beginning our morning conversation. It was during that second meditation session and the ensuing dialogue that something quite spectacular happened within me, a profound awakening that changed the course of my life. Through these meditation sessions —even though it was only the second day—I was gradually becoming aware of a kind of ‘InterSpiritual Consciousness’ emerging in shared time, space, and silence. And by experiencing and dialoguing about one another’s distinctive practices, I found that each of us was helped to discover new depths in our own individual spiritual practices. Moreover, I began to see that the religions of the world were not isolated institutions, but interdependent phenomena within a vast spiritual ecosystem. This revelation led me to envision the Spiritual Paths Foundation and the Spiritual Paths Institute as vehicles of InterSpiritual education and understanding.

It was not that I suddenly realized that all religions are the same; they’re not, but there is something in the human spiritual consciousness that is shared by people of all traditions. This realization hit me so powerfully that I began to think: If I could just bring together great teachers—following the example of the Snowmass Conference—to dialogue and meditate together before a public program, the shared feeling would be palpable, and would surely have a profound impact on the program and all those in attendance. This would then become the true basis of an InterSpiritual understanding and peace—not just the words, the tolerance, and the commonalities, but a common experience of sharing at depth. Once people share at this level, they can no longer treat each other inhumanely on the basis of differences in religion. This was really a breakthrough for me and catalyzed me to move forward in creating the Spiritual Paths Foundation and its first InterSpiritual seminars.

Not long after, I sold my business and began devoting all my time, energy, and resources to the founding of this new organization.

This gave me the space to reexamine a process of spiritual education and practice I had begun developing ten years earlier (while I was still working at the Smithsonian). In this, I proposed that all of us have predominate spiritual learning styles and fundamental spiritual questions, and that our unique spiritual paths are conditioned by these styles and Fr. Thomas Keating whose questions. I hoped that the Spiritual Paths Spiritual Paths and Snowmass Foundation might develop programs and learning Interreligious Dialogue initiatives materials to help each person discern and piece served as an initial launching pad together their own unique path. for the Interspiritual Meditation In 2000, I began to seek the advice and wisdom enterprise. of spiritual elders like Father Thomas, Geshe Sopa, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and numerous other colleagues and friends. I also set about building a unique internetbased resource to facilitate the seeker’s inquiry, and created the first offerings of the Spiritual Paths Institute, a series of InterSpiritual seminars for the public. These were to be modeled on the kind of dialogue I had witnessed as a member of Father Thomas’ Snowmass Conference.

To each seminar, I invited ‘exemplars’ from the world’s great spiritual traditions to spend several days together. In the course of these days, we meditated together, shared meals, formed friendships, and began a private dialogue that culminated in a public seminar. At the seminar, each teacher gave their own perspective on the particular spiritual theme (i.e., spiritual style or question) and later participated in a focused InterSpiritual dialogue before an audience. After the audience had heard all the speakers, they were given the opportunity to ask their specific questions of the speaker who had touched them most in a smaller group setting. In this way, we could explore themes and questions from many different spiritual perspectives and in a very personal way.

To date, over fifty profound spiritual teachers representing the world’s major contemplative traditions have meditated and taught together before thousands of students in Spiritual Paths programs and seminars. But even as the topics of our discussions changed from seminar to seminar, my primary interest in meditation remained. At every opportunity, I queried these teachers about the unique meditative practices of their traditions, taking notes and comparing their processes and experiences with those of the Buddhist tradition. Immediately, I was struck by remarkable similarities and began to discern a common structure or process, one that I

already knew from Buddhism. Only now, I could see Students and teachers of a that it was not Buddhist at all, but a kind of universal Spiritual Paths wisdom course structure of spiritual development, one that might be gathered together with Father used to allow people of different religious Thomas Keating at St. Benedicts commitments to share the same meditative process Monastery in Colorado. in a group setting.

Teachers included Shaikh Kabir This, I felt, was a real breakthrough. For during and Shaika Camille Helminski, the Snowmass Conference, when I first became Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Swami aware of the possibility of an interspiritual Atmarunpananda, Rev. Cynthia consciousness, it was not immediately clear how Bourgeault and Dr. Ed Bastian. this profound experience could be transmitted to others. After all, the that was a small retreat for spiritual professionals, deeply grounded in their individual religious and contemplative traditions, often longtime meditators who could easily sit down in silence together and attune to the shared consciousness created by the group. The half hour or hour that we spent in meditation together was not formal; we simply sat in silence and meditated or prayed according to the ways in which we had been taught in our traditions. With such an experienced group, it was easy to enter into the silence with the expectation of reaching similar depths, or to share a practice, knowing that the structure would be noted by each person according to its function within their own tradition.

But how was this to be done with a group that might be as diverse in experience and ability as they were in cultural backgrounds and religious commitments? The seven-part process that evolved from my dialogue with the Spiritual Paths teachers and my own meditative experiments provided the answer. Because it is a process with discernable steps and functions common to all contemplative traditions, it can be taught to a diverse group of people without interfering with individual beliefs. As everyone follows the same steps, practitioners with varying levels of experience can at

least be assured that they are sharing the same ride.

Moreover, even the individual without a clearly defined spiritual path can participate with little disadvantage. For the process only asks one to appeal within for the accoutrements most suitable to their own journey. Thus, I had stumbled upon a direct and practical means of creating true InterSpiritual understanding, a means of sharing spiritual experience that was not dependent upon (or in conflict with) religious dogmas or specific techniques evolved within different religious traditions. It was something new, and yet, something that had been there all along—an InterSpiritual Meditation process.

Excerpted from: InterSpiritual Meditation: A Seven-Step Process from the World’s Spiritual Traditions.

About Dr. Ed Bastian Ed is founding President of the Spiritual Paths Foundation that convenes a distinguished faculty to teach the transformative principles and theories of the worlds spiritual traditions, to train students the practices of meditation and contemplation, and to translate contemplate practice into positive social change and environmental sustainability. He is the award winning author of Living Fully Dying Well, as well as Mandala: Creating An Authentic Spiritual Path, InterSpiritual Meditation: A Seven-Step Process from the Worlds Spiritual Traditions, and contributor to and publisher of Meditations for InterSpirituial Wisdom. He is an Adjunct Professor at Antioch University in Santa Barbara (where he teaches courses on Buddhism, meditation and religion), an Adjunct Professor at Fielding Graduate University, and frequent visiting teacher at the One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in New York City. Previously he had an extensive career in biodiversity at the Smithsonian Institution and in the making of award-winning documentary films.

Additional Resources Spiritual Paths website: www.spiritualpaths.net Ed Bastian’s page at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Edward-W-Bastian/e/ B00IWVQCFQ/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1417478302&sr=8-1

Second Axial

AWAKENING

by Matthew Wright

Running through the history of our planet is a current of spiritual awakening. Beginning as a trickle, it flows through the cracks of history, touching at first individuals, now washing out, over and through interconnected circles, building in force, moving to gather up all things in its embrace.

The current flowed in the first great Axial Age, awakening us to a new depth. Abraham and Sarah left tribe and tribal gods to seek after the One. The Indian rishis retired to their caves in search of the Self. The Buddha left wife and child in the palace and set off on his quest for enlightenment. Ties with family, tribe, and Earth were broken and a new possibility emerged.

We climbed ladders of ascent and journeyed into subtle realms of Spirit. We touched the Transcendent. And often we imagined that we had discovered the purpose of our existence: escape from this world, a flight to the Beyond. We struggled to break the cycle of suffering and rebirth and to attain to the heavenly prize.

All the while the water continued to quietly flow, its force increased through the door that was opened. Not at all what we had imagined—an escape route—this channel instead allowed the qualities of Spirit to flow more fully into this world, guiding the evolution of our planet toward its fullness as an ever-deepening revelation of the Divine Heart.

This is the story I imagine as I ponder the subtle shift being felt around our planet today. For the longest swath of our history, we’ve imagined the spiritual journey as an individual quest for salvation or enlightenment, with the ultimate goal of escape, or liberation, from the world of matter. Whether we’ve seen the problem as samsara and suffering or falleness and sin, something is wrong with this place—and we want out!

Images of separation and exile have long dominated our spiritual consciousness.

But slowly over the past century, and now with increasing speed, a sense of oneness is emerging in the consciousness of our planetary body. We are realizing instead that we belong. Multiple strands of knowledge point us to this truth: from environmentalists, recognizing that we are part of a global ecosystem; to quantum physicists, uncovering the deep interconnection at the most subtle levels of matter; to evolutionary biologists, revealing life’s unfolding as a vast, single process. Slowly we are beginning to discover that there is ultimately no separation within the field of existence—only one seamless dance. We belong deeply to this world, interwoven fully into its fabric.

This realization is forming the headwaters of a Second Axial Age2, another great shift in consciousness equal in weight to that which gave rise (roughly between 800 and 200 BCE3) to the impulse that eventually manifested as our existing great religious structures. With that first great turn of the wheel, we opened to the beauty of the individual and the possibility of the Transcendent, and a new human journey began.

But in the process we lost much of an earlier, collective sense of belonging rooted in tribe, and a deep, felt sense of connection to earth.

In this next great turn in the spiral dance, we are picking up what was lost—no longer at the tribal, but at the global level. We are entering a period of deep integration, weaving together the primal, collective, and cosmic with the rational, individual, and transcendent—binding together Heaven and Earth. The Divine Heart is moving towards the fullness of its expression in form. With this new turn of the wheel, we release our sense of exile and settle in for the work at hand. Our Second Axial awareness begins from a new starting place: union. We have never been separate: not from one another, not from the Earth that holds us, not from the Infinite we long for.

Instead, we discover that our longing is itself the longing of the Divine Heart, struggling to come to birth in the world of form; it is the very current of awakening that drives the planet toward its fullness. We have misunderstood this longing as a defect— a symptom of our exile. It is instead the deepest sign of our belonging to the work of this world. It is the driveshaft of the entire evolutionary process as we move towards our awakening as a single planetary body.

We have not been left unprepared for this work. While the Second Axial impulse is only now gaining global traction, it has been subtly shaping the spiritual currents of our planet for the last two thousand years. We see it forcefully in the rise of the Bodhisattva vow within Mahayana Buddhism: a shift away from individual enlightenment and escape into Nirvana, toward a pledge to remain in the phenomenal world for the service of collective awakening.

We see it in the birth of Christianity, directly in the life of Jesus, who rejected a First Axial ascetic path in favor of one that fully embraced the world—he feasted, danced, and wept, all the while associating with those designated outcasts and sinners. He refused to recognize the expected divisions between sacred and profane. This full on embrace of phenomenal existence was enshrined in Christianity’s core doctrine of the Incarnation—that “the Word became flesh” in the world “God so loved”—but the Second Axial impulse of its founder was repeatedly roped back into the existing First Axial road maps.

Most clearly, perhaps, we see the Second Axial emergence in Islam and its mystical tradition, Sufism. The Islamic world took the rhythm of monastic prayer and offered it in the marketplace. Like Christianity, it broke out of the ethnic and tribal identity of its parent religion, Judaism (which itself never completely lost touch with its pre-Axial

earthiness and embrace of the world). Islam’s mystical path, based on the life of a prophet who was husband, lover, parent, warrior, and statesman, found it practically impossible to give way to the First Axial impulse toward asceticism and monasticism.

Sufism pledged to keep the contemplative life fully integrated into the life of the world.

It was in many ways the first wave of what many today are calling “the new monasticism.”

Today we can claim these streams for what they are: the early in-breaking of Second Axial consciousness, a dramatic shift away from the dualistic separation of “Spirit” from “world.” Channels for these waters are the ones we must dig and deepen.

As this Second Axial Awakening takes hold on the global scale, we must begin the work of reimagining and realigning our First Axial religions. What will change when we see these great traditions as so many currents within a vast planetary movement of awakening and integration? How will we carry their wisdom forward in an age characterized by a primary consciousness of union, belonging, and interconnection?

I believe that our hope still lies in our religions, and that we abandon them at a great loss. They hold much of the wisdom we will need in this next great transformation. But the invitation now is to a dance, not a lecture. The traditions will no longer be only the teachers, but the students as well. As they teach us, we will teach them. The evolution, like all such dances, will be mutual. The wheel will turn once more and the waters will flow powerful and strong, the Divine Heartbeat loud and full.

The Rev. Matthew Wright is one of the dynamic young voices in the interspiritual movement. Having written his divinity thesis on “Multiple Belonging.” he works now as an Episcopal priest promoting renewal of the Christian Wisdom tradition within a wider interspiritual framework. Alongside his practice of Christianity, he draws deeply from the sacred worlds of Islamic Sufism and Vedanta. Along with being a columnist for Contemplative Journal, currently Matthew serves as priest-in-charge at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Woodstock, NY and lives with his wife, Yanick, alongside the brothers of Holy Cross Monastery. He also travels widely speaking on interspiritual themes and the future of Christianity, most recently at the 2014 Science and Nonduality Conference.

Additional Resources Matthew Wright’s column at Contemplative Journal: www.contemplativejournal.com Matthew Wright speaking at Dawn of Interspirituality Conference: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKcWzIOpnJ8

Dena Merriam at an international interfaith gathering at the Ganga Aarti in India

The Contemplative Alliance

by Dena Merriam The idea to form a Contemplative Alliance, bringing together deeply committed meditation practitioners from across the religious traditions, emerged from the recognition that a new spiritual voice is needed, one that reflects the changing spiritual landscape of America. It was also felt that as a collective we need to tap the wisdom and understanding that comes from deep contemplative practice to guide us through the challenges we now face.

It’s clear to many of us that we are at a crossroads and are being called to make significant shifts in thinking and behavior. There have often been no strong voices to articulate what these shifts entail, and thus there is no model, no clear vision of where we need to go or how we are to get there. Contemplative practice can contribute to this process of creating and clarifying a collective vision in numerous ways.

Those who work in the spiritual field know that changes take place first at the level of thought and then manifest as behavior change. Thoughts have force and the power to manifest—and so it is said, as we think, so we are. Collective fear, pain, or anger manifest in a particular manner and shape an external reality. Similarly, changing the way we regard and interact with nature would manifest certain outcomes.

Key Questions As a contemplative community seeking to be of service at this time, what role can we play in bringing forth the ideas and concepts that will help transform the way we live

and function as a society? This has been the role or our inquiry, and we ask that you reflect on these questions: 1) What is the single most important change in thinking that can help move our society toward greater wellbeing?

2) To create this change in thinking, a few key messages must penetrate the collective —what would these messages be?

3) How can we best work to foster new thought patterns that can then manifest as changes in our society?

4) What would prosperity look like in a more balanced society where material and spiritual development go hand-in-hand?

5) As we seek to envision a more sustainable society, what would it look like?

There is no greater need now than cultivating a global understanding of human

Dena Merriam, Sufi leader Pir Zia Inayat Khan (left) convene a circle of Alliance attendees.

unity. Faith communities should lead this effort as our spiritual values, such as compassion, love, and peace, are universal and can bring us together as a human community.

Why then is this so problematic for many religious leaders today? Why is religious identity more important than human identity at a time when the problems we face, such as climate change and growing economic inequity, are global and can only be solved through collective efforts? Although many religious leaders give lip service to the concept of human unity, resistance to actual integration remains.

In reality many see the strengthening of human unity as a threat to their religious identity. If we connect equally with those of another religion, does our commitment to our own religious community weaken? This fear inhibits the deepening of inter-religious ties—and it’s a challenge the interfaith community must work to overcome by demonstrating that religions are in fact complementary, not competitive.

Dena Merriam, Founder of the Global Peace Initiative of Women, convener of the Contemplative Alliance and recipient of the Niwano Peace Prize.

About Dena Merriam

Dena is the founder the Global Peace Initiative of Women (GPIW, 2002), an organization chaired by a multi-faith group of women spiritual leaders. The mission is to enable women to facilitate healing and reconciliation in areas of History and Future of the Alliance conflict and post-conflict, and to bring spiritual resources to help address critical The Contemplative Alliance highlights the global problems. GPIW is also the unifying contemplative practices shared by founder/sponsor of the Contemplative the major religions. It was first launched in Alliance. In 2014, Ms. Merriam received 2008 at the Aspen Institute in Colorado, and st since then we have organized nearly a dozen the 31 Niwano Peace Prize for her conferences and dialogues around the United leadership of the Global Peace Initiative for Women. With this award, the Niwano States. Building on common ground Peace Foundation recognised Dena regarding spiritual, ethical, political, social Merriam's determined and creative work and environmental themes, the Alliance has for peace. For over 35 years, Dena held programs in Maryland, California, Iowa, Michigan, Washington, D.C., South Carolina, Merriam has been a student of Paramahansa Yogananda, a practitioner and two in New York. It has also gathered in of Kriya Yoga meditation, and a long time Europe, Asia, and the Middle East to share student of the great texts of the Vedic thoughts and disseminate information on tradition. She serves on committees and how, as a contemplative body of concerned boards for a number of prominent peace global citizens, it can more effectively draw upon and bring forth the spiritual resources of and interfaith organizations.

our collective practices toward effective social transformation.

Currently the Contemplative Alliance continues to be organized under the auspices of The Global Peace Initiative of Women (www.gpiw.org). It seeks an expression of love— for the earth and the human community—that can enable the Awakening Heart narrative to unfold—a new holistic approach that moves beyond the paradigm based on competition, separateness, and polarization that has dominated global society.

The Contemplative Alliance is mobilizing civil society across the nation around the creation of a new story for the human community. This narrative is informed by the interweaving of the many worship and sacred traditions practiced here that have been integral in raising our collective consciousness as a nation. The result is an ever growing awareness that the nature of our existence is interconnection—a unity underlying our diversity. In 2014 and beyond, our goal has been to encourage a national conversation around heart-centered practices, rooted in deep inner wisdom, that are necessary to engender the outer shifts we want to see.

In the past, religious institutions focused on their differences. This served to separate and polarize people. If we are to solve global problems as a global family we must shift from a paradigm of separateness to one of unity by evolving from an emphasis on doctrines that separate to values that unite. “The truth is one but the wise know it by many names,” say the Vedas. Decades of interfaith work have produced fruit. It is now time to openly acknowledge that there is no loss, only gain, when the religions come to truly know and love one another.

Video of Dena Merriam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeEvCxxxpuA Editorial Note: with permission of Dena Merriam, who was traveling internationally, this article was fashioned from a number of her published statements about the Contemplative Alliance.

Dena Merriam with Sr. Joan Chittester, Swami Veda and other attendees of the Contemplative Alliance, Monterey, California gathering.

The Interspirituality of

Yogi Bhajan

by Kurt Johnson and Karuna Yogi Bhajan’s rich working relationship with H. H. the 14th Dalai Lama linked him closely to the generation of the Interspiritual Age.

Yogi Bhajan’s motto:

If you can't see God in all, you can't see God at all.

— September 21, 1991

The literature of the growing global interspiritual movement points to over fifty historical interspiritual pioneers from across the last two centuries—from virtually all the worlds spiritual traditions (see http://www.thecominginterspiritualage.com/ interspiritual-pioneers). All of these leaders called primary attention to the shared heritage and universal senses of cosmology, ethics, values and ideals held in common by our planet’s diverse, yet mutually rooted, spiritual traditions. Although the pioneer chroniclers of interspirituality worked hard to recognize the planet’s seminal leaders of the emerging universal spiritual paradigm, it was inevitable they might overlook a few.

One major oversight by interspiritual historians to date involves Yogi Bhajan— Harbhajan Singh Yogi (born as Harbhajan Singh Puri on August 26, 1929, transitioned on October 6, 2004). Also known as Siri Singh Sahib, and considered the spiritual leader who introduced Kundalini Yoga to the West, he built a prominent international community associated with the Sikh dharma, founding 3HO Foundation (Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization) today with over 300 centers in 35 countries.

This oversight is even more puzzling since Yogi Bhajan was deeply involved in the early stages of the global interfaith movement of the 1970s and 80s, working closely with many of the world’s most prominent spiritual leaders. It appears that Yogi Bhajan escaped the attention of early interspiritual writers perhaps because his work was so culturally diverse and unboundaried.

Like the 14th Dalai Lama, with whom Yogi Bhajan was a good friend, he exemplified a diaspora phenomena—having left India to emigrate to Canada in 1968 and, beginning just as a solo practitioner, worked with the disenfranchised and culturally unidentified to found what became a global community associated with the historical Sikh dharma. Yogi Bhajan spoked of this unboundaried state himself: “Aquarian is a conscious value. It has no boundary, only Infinity as a boundary”("Aquarian Values", lecture April 17, 2002).

Yogi Bhajan’s Early Interfaith Activities Working from his roots and connections in the 1970s American counter-culture and popular entertainment community (one of his early devotees, music producer Johnny Rivers, produced the pop music associated with “The Aquarian Age”), Yogi Bhajan joined other spiritual Attending and presenting at the 2014 Science and Nonduality Conference, Karuna and Gurucharan were interviewed by Rick Archer of Buddha at the Gas Pump.

Video link: http://batgap.com/ gurucharan-singh-khalsakaruna/

leaders, like Swami Satchidananda to host gatherings and festivals that garnered hundreds of thousands of attendees. He also sponsored and attended interfaith discussions at prominent American universities like Harvard, Cornell, MIT and Boston University.

These early events awakened interest in the global interfaith discussion. In 1972 he was invited to visited Pope Paul VI, where he urged the Pope to convene a gathering of all the world’s religions. In his audience with the Pope he emphasized that “catholic” meant "universal" and suggested that Pope Paul take the lead in promoting an historical rapprochement across the world’s religions. Furthering this prominence in world interfaith affairs, Yogi Bhajan was also active in the settling of the “Golden Temple” incident in India when, tragically, the Indian Army and Sikh pilgrims became engaged in a violent confrontation.

Working with the United Nations Year of Peace in 1986, Yogi Bhajan promoted the annual Peace Prayer Day for all peoples. Indeed, in that same year, Pope John Paul II hosted a gathering of religious representatives of the world, which Yogi Bhajan has suggested fourteen years earlier. He continued to attend major world interfaith gathering up through the 1999 Parliament of the World's Religions in Cape Town, South Africa.

Yogi Bhajan is also know for his intimate relationships with America’s indigenous communities, his association with the Hopi tradition, and their recognition of him as the fulfillment of their prophecy of “the Great White Warrior” being the most well known.

Interspiritual Age and “Aquarian Age” In spring of 1969, soon after Yogi Bhajan began teaching in Los Angeles, a hit medley "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" was on the top of America’s music charts. It made perfect sense for him to incorporate this popular message in his teaching about the Dawn of the Aquarian Age. Indeed, the characteristics of Yogi’s Bhajan’s “Aquarian Age” parallel those widely cited in now more well known literature of interspirituality regarding the inevitable arising of a global universal Yogi Bhajan shared with other global spiritual spirituality. Similar early leaders of the 70s and 80s the arising of what attributions were made by he called “the Aquarian Age”. Satchidananda The Mother (Sri Aurobindo’s co-founded (with Rabbi Joseph Gelberman companion), British pioneer and others) much of what are today’s writer and spiritual teacher flourishing interfaith seminaries.

Co-author Karuna teaching a specialized course in Kundalini Yoga for young models and actors.

Fr. Bede Griffiths, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, the seminal books of philosopher Ken Wilber, the early East-West cross-over work of Thomas Merton, and many others. Yogi Bhajan’s message was similar: it would be an age in which people would experience God (or divinity) and then believe, rather than the old way of believing and then being liberated by their faith.

Much like the timing of Br. Wayne Teasdale’s own book, The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Univeral Spirituality in the World’s Religions, which named “interspirituality” in 1999, Yogi Bhajan’s timeline for his Aquarian Age arose in the late second millennium and then moved squarely into fruition in the third.

Yogi Bhajan’s Interspiritual Message Yogi Bhajan brought a diverse combination of knowledge and skills to his work.

Having studied world religions and Vedic philosophy during his undergraduate years, and further developing this expertise in his global work, he was generally regarded by the international interfaith community as an expert in world religions. While Yoga practice and philosophy had been generally considered a part of Hindu culture, Yogi Bhajan was instrumental in linking historical Kundalini Yoga practice to the cosmology of the Sikh tradition. Historians from his tradition state it this way: “[He] decided to teach Kundalini Yoga on the principle of Sikh Dharma, adhering to the three pillars of Patanjali's traditional yoga system … but opening it to ‘anyone who wanted to commit to the discipline’”. It thus, from the beginning, became a cross-cultural, interspiritual phenomenon.

In this spirit, he announced “today, we shall move into the Age of Aquarius. The Age of Aquarius is a mega-faceted existence. Multi-tributaries will nurse the pond. Multiexistences will exist for the individual's coordination. All senses and sensitivity will lead to this age. …The Age of Aquarius, in the essence of prosperity, has a very absolutely

open consciousness.” ("What is the Age of Aquarius?", excerpts from a lecture by Yogi Bhajan, April 7, 1993); and: "In this time Piscean values are giving way to Aquarian values. The difference between the two is very simple. Piscean values work from the ego, creating boundaries. Aquarian values have no boundaries; they are Infinite. Aquarian consciousness takes you inside your soul, so that you can relate to the soul in all." (Yogi Bhajan from Aquarian Times, Spring 2003).

Yogi Bhajan promoted eight characteristics of this unfolding Age: 1. The other person is you.

2. We are made of the same stuff of the Universe.

3. We struggle the same.

4. We love the same.

5. We fear the same.

6. We start the same.

7. We end the same.

8. We are the same. (from "Pioneers in the Age of Aquarius", lecture at Summer Solstice 1993).

The entire body of his work centers on these universal, interspiritual values.

On The Interspiritual Age “(Piscean) religion was, "I want to know. Take me there." Aquarius religion is, "I know, give me the experience" ("Reach, Touch and Heal the Psyche", lecture April 3, 1997).

“The difference between Aquarian values and Piscean values is very simple.

Piscean values work from ego, conception, control, penetration—in all spheres to which create boundaries. Aquarian is a conscious value. It has no boundary, only Infinity as a boundary. I myself could have been scared. Why not? God knows whether you can match up or not. [As for me], I never needed anything other than collective consciousness.”("Aquarian Values", lecture April 17, 2002).

“It is the Aquarian Age. It is the age of peace, tranquility, well-being, and wishing goodness to one another. This is the age of smiles and hugging each other” ("You are Now a Parliament", lecture, April 18, 2003).

On Kundalini Yoga “Kundalini Yoga is not a religion. When we apply the technology of Kundalini Yoga to our bodies and minds, it has the effect of uplifting the spirit. It is for everyone. It is universal and nondenominational“ (Quotations, 3HO.org).

"Kundalini Yoga is not a religion. Religions come out of it. Kundalini Yoga is not a fad, and it's not a cult. It's a practice of experience of a person's own excellence, which

Joining the Br. Wayne Teasdale anniversary, 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the pioneering interspiritual work of Thomas Merton, joining East and West, as did Yogi Bhajan.

is dormant and which is awakened" (Yogi Bhajan lecture, July 26, 1996).

“Kundalini Yoga was kept very secret until 1969 when Yogi Bhajan taught it openly in order to prepare humanity for the major changes that this planet is going through as we cross from the Piscean to the Aquarian Age.” (Statements, 3HO.org.)

“Yoga has never been truly described for what it is. It is an art and a science with which you can leap over the pitfalls of life. It is a science, and knowledge, and art, where mind and body can work in union and spirit will back it up.” (Yogi Bhajan, lecture February 11, 1992).

On The World Religions "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others...It is not the property of any one group or any one individual, but can be followed by any and all, in any corner of the globe, regardless of class, creed or religion .... I believe all religions pursue the same goals, that of cultivating human ... Though the means might appear different the ends are the same." ("Gurdwara: The Basic Realities of Religions", lecture October 15, 1989).

"The Lotus [Statue] is a ‘Statue of Spirituality’ equal to the Statue of Liberty. It unites spirituality into the reality of the Oneness of God and Light and gives everybody unity in diversity" (Yogi Bhajan, at the 1986 dedication of Swami Satchidananda’s Lotus Interfaith Center in Virginia).

Summary How interspiritual historians temporarily missed one of the most important pillars of the unfolding global interspirituality is a curiosity for sure. Certainly, it appears that because Yogi Bhajan’s transition occurred directly on the cusp of the interfaith movement’s Third Millennial leap into “interspirituality” it has taken about a decade since Br. Wayne Teasdale’s seminal writings on interspirituality and the interspiritual movement for the movement to catch up with him. Undoubtedly, in those ensuing years, Yogi Bhajan’s own community has had to make its own transition into operating on the global stage without his embodied physical presence and leadership.

But the two confluences have finally linked, as we reported in a recent contribution at www.contempliatvejournal.com, “The Intersection of ‘Direct Paths’ in Interspirituality”. As we stated there, it is apparent that the Kundalini Yoga technology brought to the world by Yogi Bhajan can make a unique contribution to the world’s transformative process, independent of what an individual practitioner might bring to it. One could bring a cosmology from Zen, from Advaita, from Dzogchen, or any other tradition, and find in the Kundalini Yoga of Yogi Bhajan an intimate and rich spiritual resource for one’s own personal and collective development (www.3ho.org; www.kundaliniresearchinstitute.org). And certainly, when studied in their intricate detail, the cosmologies of Patangali and the Sikh dharma brought to his Kundalini and White Tantric Yoga teachings by Yogi Bhajan are supremely elegant in themselves.

So, this is a tremendous resource.

Whatever the reasons for the decade it has taken for the Interspiritual literature to start writing about Yogi Bhajan, certainly the world has not been unaware of the universal nature of his message. The popular website “Quotes to Live By” features a phrase of Yogi Bhajan on its banner page. The quotation is about as universal as one can get and perhaps frames a good ending for this contribution om Yogi Bhajan’s legacy at the time of the 10th Anniversary of Br. Wayne Teasdale’s interspiritual work:

“Love is my religion” —Yogi Bhajan

Kurt Johnson, Ph.D. (longer bio at his other ezine article herein), is co-author (with David Robert Ord) of The Coming Interspiritual Age and co-founder with Br. Wayne Teasdale of

Interspiritual Dialogue, a network for contemplative sharing across religious traditions that now hosts the extensive Interspiritual Multiplex website. A noted evolutionary biologist as well, and author of several books across both science and religion, Kurt is also teacher in the Advaita Vedanta tradition of Ramana Maharshi, In 2014 Kurt also begin Teacher Training in Kundalini Yoga with Karuna, Gurucharan and other Kundalini Yoga teachers.

Karuna is an Associate Level Trainer in the Aquarian Trainer Academy. Residing in Boulder, Colorado, she collaborates with Lead Teachers to bring Level One teacher training programs and Level Two teacher training modules. Karuna is also certified to teach yoga to children, teenagers & prenatal moms. As founder of the website LightOnKundalini.com, Karuna strives to share the treasured teachings of Yogi Bhajan with the world. Since 2014 Karuna has aso been traveling internationally sharing in lifestyle, happiness and well-being related programs associated with the global Happiness Initiative, the UN NGO Forum 21 Institute, and the emerging interspiritual movement.

Karuna and Kurt Johnson will be hosting in Costa Rica (see http:// www.lightonkundalini.com/events/costa-rica-retreat-2014/ December 13-20 and in New York City January 10 (see http://onespiritinterfaith.org/yogic-path-modern-life/). For Karuna’s special Jan. 9 New York program on Kundalini Yoga for models, actors, and entertainers see http://www.lightonkundalini.com/events/a-workshop-for-models-and-actors/

Meditation, Kundalini, and the

Interspiritual Moment

by Gurucharan Singh Khalsa

“Kundalini� means awareness; the awareness of who we are as human beings and as free agents of spirit.

When our Kundalini awakens, awareness expands, and we open our heart. We live from our heart.

This inner awakening of our heart, of our profound interiority, of our infinite connectedness is a normal human experience. And it is just such experience that helps us know ourselves as a part of the whole of What Is. This gives rise to spirituality. It precedes all religions. It transcends all ideologies. It is the place of stillness in us where we listen to and act from our true self.

The techniques of meditation that root us deeply into this experience give us the capacity to be authentic. We can then bridge to the authentic self in others and recognize the mutuality at the core of all traditions.

In a complex world where every culture and ideology are one click away; where we are neighbors with every neighborhood, we can no longer define ourselves by lineage alone. All the wonderful products of culture, history and village must incorporate through each individual the experience of being fully human; of being transcendent and embodied. Then we can act on and share our legacy of cosmic destiny lived with free will, compassion, courage, kindness and creativity.

Never before in history have we had such a critical moment dense with choices. A moment that calls us to consciousness and to act from the deep legacy we share from being human. A moment in which our choices are crucial for our self, each other, and the planet. The experiences and tools in the tradition of Kundalini meditation are part of the universal grammar of the contemporary Interspiritual conversation.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa PhD, LPC has a broad clinical counseling and consulting practice for individuals and organizations. Recognized as a leader in conversations that bridge the sciences, human nature and spirituality, he is Research Professor of Contemplative Studies and Transdisciplinary Dialogue at Chapman University. He designed the contemplative curricula for and is a premier teacher of Kundalini meditation and yoga for the Kundalini Research Institute. He has specialized in the applications of meditation to psychology and well-being for over 40 years. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife beside the never ending flow of the Willamette River.

Email him at: Khalsa@Chapman.edu.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa’s most recent publication:

http://www.amazon.com/21STAGES-MEDITATIONKundalini-Taught/dp/ 1934532770/ref=sr_1_1?

16425403&sr=1-1&keyword s=21+stages+of+meditation

S. S. Mahan Rishi Singh Khalsa, D.C. visiting the Pyramids in Egypt.

Mahan Rishi on

The Kundalini Yoga of Yogi Bhajan

Kundalini, as defined by Yogi Bhajan, "the coil of the curl of the hair of the Beloved", expresses the inherent embodiment of the divine in each of us.

As this subtle and profound life current is awakened, we experience a sense of universality and presence of being that connects us with all of creation. Within both the meaning and the experience of the kundalini rising is our relationship with the feminine life force that sources creation and catalyzes manifestation....arising from Nirnkaar, the formless state, this celestial current unleashes an awareness of our myriad of forms and infinite realm of being.

As we catalyze this innate life stream, we bring forth an edgeless and boundaryless state of consciousness that is all encompassing and all inclusive. Our beliefs and notions of how things should be are effortlessly released into a vast ocean of acceptance and all pervading love. A wave of kindness and compassion ripples into a harmonious wave of neutrality, benevolence and grace ~ breathless, desireless, and free, we embrace the understanding of our Oneness as a creation and humanity.

About Mahan Rishi Singh...

Currently residing in Princeton, NJ, Mahan Rishi Singh is a leader and teacher in the Kundalini Yoga community founded by Yogi Bhajan. Medically, he is a chiropractor, polarity therapist, and reiki and subtle energy practitioner, who founded several of the healing centers of the Kundalini Yoga community. Having studied with Yogi Bhajan, he now travels and teaches Kundalini technologies nationally and internationally. With a global background in world religions he frequently leads international yatras (spiritual pilgrimages) to India, Nepal and Tibet. Over the last 25 years he has dedicated his life to guiding people toward optimum health and wellbeing and awakening in each their individual their journey toward wholeness and liberation. He has studied with healing masters from around the world, including some of the oldest known yogi’s and dharma teachers-- Swami Bua who still lives today at 119 in New York and the world renowned Green Monk Bhante Dharmawara Mahatera who lived to 110. After thirty years of dedication Mahan Rishi was given the minister’s title of Singh Sahib by Yoga Bhajan to serve as a spiritual minister of Sikh Dharma. His email is events@khalsahealingarts.com.

A Spiritual Summit for SOCIAL CHANGE Caps 2014 Events

Signal for the Future?

Contrasting the hustle and bustle of New York City’s September Spiritual Summit, a rainbow caps the spire of the Aspen Chapel in Colorado.

Summit leaders joined the Aspen Chapel and Carbondale’s DaviNikent Center summer programs on Interspirituality and the emerging Ecological Age after meeting with Ken Wilber and integral leaders in Denver.

by the Board of Directors Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (FIONS)

The new Board of FIONS, left to right, top to bottom: Desiree Hurtak, J. J. Hurtak, Kurt Johnson, Ron Friedman, Jodi Serota, Dorothy Cunha, Weston Pew, Rick Ulfik, Alan Steinfeld, Mitchell Rabin, Robert Levine, Kristin Hoffmann, Victoria Friedman, Kay Dundorf, Ann Hughes Ryan, Michele LaGamba-Himmel, Craig Sciglimpaglia, Troy Stallman, William Rojas, Corin Lee Girard. Not pictured: Victoria Boyt, Debbie Lawrence, Richard Schiffman.

A September 13th Spiritual Summit for Social Change in New York City joined remembrance of September 11 with a summer of national events and New York City’s People’s Climate March on September 21. A conference on Religions for the Earth at Union Theological Seminary also highlighted the month.

Nearly 400,000 turned out for the march! The Summit was part of the 11 Days of Global Unity (www.we.net) activities leading up to the United Nations International Day of Peace on September 21. The Summit joined telesummit conferences of the Shift Network, which hosted more than 10,000 listeners over the 11 Days of Unity.

The Interspiritual Network (www.interspirituality.com), Forum 21 Institute (www.forum-21.org), Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (www.fions.org) and The Guild for Spiritual Guidance (www.spiritualguidance.org) sponsored the event hosted by New York’s 2nd Presbyterian Church (Rev. Leslie Merlin, Pastor) and the Alexander Robertson School at 6 W. 96th at Central Park West.

Prior to September, leaders from the sponsoring groups had also travelled to the National Happiness Conference in Vermont and to Denver, Boulder, Aspen, Carbondale and Crestone, Colorado, presenting programs on the Interspiritual and Integral Movements and the unfolding Ecological Age. The Summit in New York brought together leaders of prominent advocacy and activist groups to further discuss and plan regarding a plethora of themes: Eco-

Spirituality — Eco-Ministry — Global Climate Issues — Upcoming Peoples Climate March — Contemplative Voice and Sacred Activism — Integral Vision and Future of Religion — Future of Religions — New Community/ New Monasticism — Youth — Interspiritual Education for Children — The Arts and Transformation — Future Scientific Thresholds — Collective Consciousness — Global Meta-Networks, and also the Internet, for World Transformation — Indigenous Traditions, Shamanism, Ceremony, Ritual and Its Global Importance — Healthy Relationships — Healing and Energy — Alternative Energy — and more!

The Summit aimed at giving the chance for local and regional leadership groups to gather with fellow travelers who share their areas of passion and “have the discussion you’ve been wanting to have”. It was a major opportunity for all these groups to strategize and plan for the future. FIONS will be circulating a newsletter at year-end summarizing all the spin-offs of the September Summit.

For more information within the Namaste Insights ezine, see the articles by UN NGO Forum 21 Institute as well.

Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1462123247371311/ Global Interspirituality Network Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/groups/ 1448926938710221/ The Aspen Chapel, Aspen Spiritual Center and Center for Spiritual Living: http://aspenchapel.org; www.aspenspiritualcenter.org The DaviNikent Center, Carbondale: www.davinikent.com

The interconnection of the Interspiritiual and Integral movements begin with the close friendship of Bro. Wayne Teasale and Ken Wilber. Their discussions on YouTube continue to inspire today.

LOVE LANGUAGE The Interspiritual Heart of the Mystics

by Mirabai Starr

Icon collage of the Christian mystics, the subject of many of Mirabai Starr’s books.

Mira has offered herself to her Lord.

The single lotus will swallow you whole.

- from “Mira the Bee”

For decades I was conditioned to believe that to engage a mature spiritual life I needed to “pick one tradition and go deep,” which implied that my attraction to the teachings and practices at the heart of all religions was superficial and indolent. Also, that the path of non-dualism—with its affirmation of undifferentiated consciousness— was superior to my devotional disposition. And, too, that my experience of longing for God was an illusion—some kind of unconscious blend of unresolved childhood abandonment and magical thinking. In other words, the energy that fueled my journey was predicated on a perfect storm of delusional inclinations.

It was only when the fire of loss swept into my life and burned the scaffolding to the ground that all conceptual constructs came tumbling down and these insidious messages revealed themselves as 1) unkind, and 2) untrue. From the ashes of grief a transfigured, more authentic self began to rise, and she felt no obligation to choose sides. She was a Jew and a Sufi, a believer and an agnostic. She practiced Vipassana and Centering Prayer, observed Shabbat and received communion. She rested in blessed moments of unitive consciousness and sang the praises of Lord Krishna.

I am not alone. A tribe of people is coalescing around the world to celebrate a reorientation from religious separation to interspiritual connection. While many of us

have been pilgrims on this path for decades—sometimes feeling alone in the wilderness, sometimes gathering with other seekers who are similarly drawn to worshipping the sacred in every single holy house we encounter—now, at last, our numbers seem to be reaching a tipping point, and what was a fringe phenomenon is becoming a global movement.

The interspiritual path is characterized as much by what it is not as what it is. It is not a new religion; in fact, many of its most enthusiastic adherents consider themselves “spiritual but not religious.” It has no creed or dogma, no tenets or prohibitions. No special attire sets it apart and no single symbol represents its core philosophy. Its membership is as diverse as the full spectrum of humanity. It is not about belief, but action. And the only action required is love.

The mystics of every tradition—and those whose hearts thrum with yearning for God but do not have any religious affiliation—embody this Way of Love. The language the mystics speak is the Language of Love. Drenched in love-longing, the mystic dissolves into the ocean of the One. Mystical poetry transcends theological distinctions and neutralizes ideological ultimatums. These love poems to God do not describe Ultimate Reality: they evoke it.

The poems of the mystics slip past the thought-guardians and batter down the gates of the heart. In crying out to the Holy One, the ecstatic poets offer us a direct connection with the object of their souls’ deepest desire—and ours. Mystical poetry generates a sacred field and invites us to step in.

See if these snippets knock on your heart-door: This longing is dear to me.

This longing makes every place sacred.

This longing, Too large for heaven and earth, Fits inside my heart, Smaller than the eye of a needle.

(Rumi)1 When he spoke my soul vanished.

I look for him and can’t find him.

I call, he doesn’t answer…

I beg you, daughters of Jerusalem, If you find my love You will say that I am sick with love.

(Song of Songs)2 All night I could not sleep Because of the moonlight on my bed.

I kept on hearing a voice calling: Out of Nowhere, Nothing answered “yes.”

(Zi Ye)3

Oh, living flame of love, how tenderly you penetrate the deepest core of my being!

Finish what you began.

Tear the veil from this sweet encounter.

(John of the Cross)4 Listen, my friend, This road is the heart opening, Kissing his feet, Resistance broken, tears all night.

(Mirabai)5 … and finally, insane for the light, you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you have not experienced this: To die and so to grow, You are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.

(Goethe)6 The highest calling of the mystic is not to become enlightened, but rather to become nothing, to utterly disappear into the One. What madness! And yet the mystical path is all about paradox.

When lover merges with Beloved, all separation melts and only love remains; there is no one left to long, nor any object of longing—and this, to the mystic, is good news.

Mystics claim their experience of union is ineffable, and yet they cannot resist expressing their encounter in lush poetic language. Mysticism is characterized by annihilation: the soul is the moth inexorably drawn to the flame. In burning to death, lover is transformed in Beloved, individual self yields to its oneness with the divine, the dream of exile ends and the spirit comes home to its source.

It is here, in the center of the perennial paradox, that it becomes obvious all spiritual paths emanate from and return to the same universal heart.

This is where the only possible response to the quiet blessing of union with the One is the passionate outpouring of love-language. Here, longing for God is not a malady to be cured or a broken thing that needs repairing, but a shattering of the cup of the heart so that, within the vast spaciousness that opens, the mystery may come pouring in and lift us into the arms of love itself.

1 Rumi’s

Little Book of Life, Trans. Maryam Mafi & Azima Melita Kolin of Songs, Trans. Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch 3 The Shambhala Anthology of Women’s Spiritual Poetry, Ed. Alaki Barnstone 4 “Living Flame of Love,” trans. Mirabai Starr, in Be Love Now, Ram Dass & Rameshwar Das 5 Mirabai, trans. Robert Bly and Jane Hirshfield 2 Song

6 Johann

Wolfgang von Goethe, trans. Robert Bly

Mirabai Starr is the author of critically acclaimed translations of the mystics and pioneering books on the interspiritual paradigm. Born in New York to secular Jewish parents, she is well known for the breadth of her involvement in all aspects of the 60s counterculture phenomenon, from traveling internationally during the seminal period of East-West spiritual convergence, involvement in the protests of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights eras, residence at the historic Lama Foundation, to her close life-long friendship with counterculture icon Ram Das. Today she is a professor of philosophy and world religions at the University of New Mexico, Taos, and speaks and teaches nationally and internationally on the teachings of the mystics and contemplative practice. She is also a certified bereavement counselor and conducts contemplative retreats and spiritual events throughout the world. She has been associated with the interspiritual movement since its early years.

Mirabai Starr with her old friend and mentor Ram Das.

Recent Books by Mirabai Starr God of Love: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity & Islam http://www.amazon.com/God-Love-Guide-Judaism-Christianity/dp/0983358923/ref=sr_1_3? s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416621186&sr=1-3&keywords=Mirabai+Starr

Saint Teresa of Avila: The Passionate Mystic (Contemplations & Living Wisdom) http://www.amazon.com/Saint-Teresa-Avila-Passionate-Contemplations/dp/1622030702/ref=sr_1_1? s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416621334&sr=1-1&keywords=Mirabai+Starr

www.mirabaistarr.com

The Globalism Challenge Prepackaged Pain or Planetary Patriotism?

by Doug King and Mike Morrell Another midterm election season has come and gone. Stirring up anger against the incumbent party, the challenging party has once again regained a majority of seats in Congress. A sense of relief sweeps over the challenger party, while frustration spikes for the incumbent party. On the national scene, the political dance continues—but who’s still dancing?

For increasing numbers of us, a palpable sense of despair seeps in like a slow frost.

National politics feel increasingly like a pay-to-play venture where only the rich can run for office, and precious little seems to change.

Doug King, Director of Presence, with international delegates at the 2014 United Nations NGO annual meetings in New York City.

Locally Rooted I contrast this with my lived experience locally in my home city of Raleigh, North Carolina.

It’s Wednesday, and my Community Supported Agriculture subscription box just arrived at my doorstep from Papa Spuds, delivering seasonal greens and meat from six local farms. Tonight I’ll drink a bottle of Harvest Time Ale, brewed by Big Boss Brewery precisely four miles from my home. Next week, I’ll be meeting with a small leadership circle of friends at Videri, a chocolate factory twelve minutes away downtown. Believe it or not, it’s one of three competing chocolatiers making local chocolate increasingly enjoyed throughout the city.

Five years ago, a Starbucks went out of business downtown as they weren’t able to compete with the growing, innovative local coffee shop scene downtown. Raleigh restaurant designer Ashley Christensen is about to open her sixth successful concept restaurant downtown, which will doubtless host creatives for First Friday, our monthly all-pervasive street festival where local storefront businesses support local visual arts, performance, music and even fashion.

Politically, we experience many of the same tensions we feel faint echoes of on the national scene, but are mobilizing into the statewide Moral Monday movement, giving voice to woman, sexual minorities, people of color, working-classes, teachers, health providers, spiritual leaders and other change agents working on the ground for more responsive, proactive statewide governance. We’re drawing crowds of 10,000+ for weekly teach-in pro-testifyings during legislative season, and drew over 100,000 for our most recent awareness-raising march.

Local consciousness is alive and well in Raleigh, North Carolina – just like it is in cities around the country as millennials (the generation following the boomers and Generation X) come of age and increasingly want to create culture rather than merely consume it.

Planet-Wide Pride This proaction is showing up on a global level too. Crowd-sourced nonprofits, microfinance, ethical tourism, and sustainable entrepreneurship are giving birth to a grassroots global outlook where people around the world are developing increasingly organic ties with others around the world.

The celebrity-driven approach of big business and big philanthropy is beginning to give way to a more distributed, decentralized approach to global engagement.

This isn’t to say that the road to rooted localism and globalization is all sunshine and roses. Local politics are often as fraught as national politics, if not more so, riddled with cronyism and back-room deals. And “globalization” these days is virtually a synonym for the encroachment of the many-headed hydra of oligarchy fueling Big Finance, Big Pharma, Big Agribusiness, and the Military-Industrial Complex. All of this “Big” is crushing the “little people,” widening the wealth gap between the 1% and everyone else.

As we reach the midpoint of the 21st century’s second decade, the promise and perils of globalism stand in ever-sharper relief. As futurist Jeremy Rifkin observes, we are in a race between two opposing forces—entropy and empathy. New technologies fuel greater connection, but also drain more resources. Which will reach the finish line of human potential as we close out this decade – and this century? The exhilarating and sober truth is, we get to decide.

Two Kinds of Power Globalism as a powerful force for our planet’s future is a given; the question is, will be it power-over or power-through?

Power-over is power exercised by the elite few, allegedly “in the interests of” the masses. It’s the conventional form of power we’ve witnessed from the ruling classes since the advent of complex agriculture and empire some Max King, theologian and founder6,000-8,000 years ago. inspirer of Presence.

Power-through is distributed power, built by consensus and wielded by skilled, community-chosen leaders for the common good. Powerthrough is the source that energizes all true community, belonging, and social change.

At Presence, we believe that powerthrough is the practical fruit of authentic spirituality, Spirit being the source of all genuine power, working through ourselves, each other, and our environment to create beauty, truth, and goodness

for us all. As we join the circle of what ecologist and alternative economist Paul Hawken names as today’s most vast and powerful movement, the “movement of movements,” we believe we can encourage power-through by working for change on three levels: 1.) Narrative 2.) Direct Action 3.) Policy.

There is a growing coalition of nonprofits and NGOs creating powerful alliances in these three areas. It’s the first that we see as the key to fueling the latter two, for the stories we tell determine the actions we take and the policies we create. Historically, our culture’s narrative understandings were determined by nation-states and world religions. In the 21st century, both of these forces are weakening and new storytellers are vying for the privilege of telling a great narrative to capture our imaginations and fuel social transformation.

At Presence, we are looking to address the void being left by the growing dissolution of conventional religion. We are handling, with respect, the sacred stories contained in what’s often named the Judeo-Christian scriptures. We’re reading its teachings, experience, genealogies and history—its understanding of the divine in poetry and prophecy—as symbolic language revealing the spiritual meaning of temporal events, on our planet and in our history. As we let go of culture-war, binary, either/or thinking, we’re discovering that sacred Scripture speaks powerfully through a developmental lens, showing us a powerful picture of how our forbearers experienced the divine. In stories of Eve and Adam, Miriam and Moses, and Mary and Jesus, we’re discovering developmental seeds of an open-ended human future—where conventional religion is transcended and reality is co-created with God. Through our involvement with the UN NGO Forum 21, we’re witnessing more and more people opt out of the pre-packaged pain that identification with role-based religious, corporate, and nationalistic identities can bring. In its place, we’re seeing planetary patriots rise up—those with empathetic concern for the whole joyfully inhabiting their particular place. “Think local, act globally” is taking on rebooted meaning through the stirrings of Spirit—in a neighborhood and cosmos near you.

How are you ready to manifest planetary change?

For more in-depth resources exploring narrative change and personal and social transformation, please visit http://presence.tv

Mike Morrell is the Communications Director for Presence (http://presence.tv), hosting a global conversation for a new earth. Mike arrives here with a background as an author coach, publishing consultant, and founding organizer of the justice, arts, and spirituality Wild Goose Festival. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his family.

Doug King was born in Charleston W. Va. and grew up in NE Ohio. (Go Buckeyes!) He graduated with a dual degree in Theology and Biblical Languages in 1973. He worked with his father Max King (author) over the years to eventually form Presence (http://presence.tv).

Doug has a background in business, being founder and CEO of a technology company in Atlanta, GA, for 20 years.

Since 2010, Doug has been the president of Presence, leading this growing network to engage emergent, integral, and interspiritual organizations and idea leaders in shared goals for the common good. Doug also serves on the Advisory Board for Forum 21, a United Nations NGO working to develop and support the spirituality of the United Nations Sustainable Development goals.

Waves of the future? Are the interspiritual, integral, and ecological ages actually dawning?

Dustin DiPerna

How Foreign Policy Leaders Can Generate, Replicate, and Propagate

Evolving Interpretations of

ISLAM Challenging the claims of secularization theorists who contend that modernization and religiosity are antithetical to one-another, I’ve spent the past decade researching a positive and constructive role for religion and spirituality in our world.

Building upon the work of scholars like Peter Berger, Noah Feldman, Timothy Shah, Jeffery Haynes, Scott Thomas, and Monica Toft, I’ve examined how foreign policy makers can strategically engage religion as a permanent fixture in the global landscape. (See my newly released book Streams of Wisdom to learn more.)

Historically, we’ve been limited by categories that divide religious practitioners into two camps: extremists vs. moderates. Within this dichotomy there is a general sense that extremists are “bad” and moderates are “good.” This black/white, overly simplistic

categorization is outdated.

When we analyze religion and religious interpretation through the lens of adult psychological development, breakthroughs emerge. It has become clear that there is not a bi-polar set of interpretations in each religious tradition, but rather a whole sequence of interpretation and expression that can be directly linked to the stages of adult development.

As a base line, I like to use at least four stages of growth: traditional (stage 1), modern (stage 2), post-modern (stage 3) and integral (stage 4). Now, the amazing thing about development is that it is predictable. This means that we know that in normal circumstances, we are much more likely see someone move from a modern (Stage 2) to a post-modern (stage 3), than we are to see the person regress from postmodern (Stage 3) to modern (Stage 2).

For the purposes of this short article, I turn the lens to Islam. Although the theories underlying this piece apply to all religious traditions, I narrow my focus here to Islam due to both its prominent place in the government of several strategically relevant countries (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria) and the fact that intolerant interpretations of Islam (often extremist versions of Stage 1) currently serve as one of the greatest barriers to more open and democratic societies.

Utilizing systematized evidence and examples to connect a metric of religious interpretation to the stages of adult development provides policy makers with several critical advantages.

First, when examining the effect such an approach would have with regard to Islam, we immediately see that applying this new methodology would help decision-makers craft foreign policy that empowers religious leaders to promote evolving expressions of their faith. Because the stages of growth are fairly predictable, policy religious leaders could design pathways for adherents to grow through the spectrum. Among these other positive benefits, acknowledging the role of psychological development in interpretation would help to validate the fact that expressions of Islam are constantly changing to accommodate historical, cultural, and technological changes. With the gates of ijtihad (Islamic interpretation) open and as more fluid expressions of Islam increase, such an approach would create what Council on Foreign Relations president, Richard Haass, calls a “gradual opening� in traditional societies.

Furthermore, not only will more evolved expressions of Islam include modern and postmodern values

such as tolerance, cooperation, and cross-cultural dialogue but because worldviews are so strongly influenced by religion, evolving interpretations will also help to shift societies away from the tendency to forcibly limit women’s rights, promote blind obedience, and perpetuate intolerance, to views that are more likely to encourage gender parity, human rights, critical thinking, and democracy.

Second, viewing religious interpretation through the lens of adult psychological development would have immediate implications for both counter-terrorism efforts and the promotion of religious freedom. When a developmental psychological lens of interpretation is applied to religious analysis, it helps to clarify why such diversity exits within each religious tradition. With this clearer perspective, policy makers can use evidence and examples to work directly with Islamic leaders worldwide to establish a more substantial foundation for religious freedom, as articulated in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

A concrete example helps to ground some of these ideas. The practical experience of pioneers like Ambassador Robert Seiple, Douglas Johnston, Thomas Farr, and Marc Gopin, demonstrates that the sheer potency of religious belief is often dramatically underestimated. Failure to recognize and utilize Islamic strength may be directly linked to why the strategies implemented in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria have been only partially effective.

Using a developmental lens to view the current situation in these countries, one notices that when Islam is interpreted though an ethno-centric, intolerant, and exclusivist perspective (all characteristics of lower stages of adult development) it serves as an invisible blockade to progress. Modern structures like democracy will continue to be unstable unless the internal beliefs of Islamic populations are also reinterpreted through a modern lens (Stage 2) or higher.

If there is to be true social progress in countries that align with traditional forms of Islam (e.g. Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, etc.) or in territorial conflicts that, at least in part, involve dispute over holy land (e.g. Israel and Palestine), policy makers must engage pragmatically with Islamic leaders to shift religious interpretation up the developmental spectrum. In short, we do not need to force Islamic countries to secularize, ridding them of religion. Rather, we need to help set the conditions for more evolved forms of religion to organically emerge.

About Dustin DiPerna Dustin is founder of Bright Alliance and Co-Founder of Synergy Forum. He is an author, group facilitator, and meditation instructor. Dustin received a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University and a Master of Liberal Arts degree in Religion from Harvard University. He is author of two books: The Coming Waves - Streams of Wisdom In addition to being an internationally recognized expert in the field of Integral Theory, Dustin practices in the spiritual lineages of Mahamudra and Dzogchen. He lives in California with his wife Amanda and daughter Jaya.

From Chris Grosso: two pieces of art from Cameron Gray (parablevision); all illustration credits to Breeze Floyd.

Tony Hawk, Public Enemy, and

The Universe Inside

by Chris Grosso

Sometimes I find myself feeling trapped—bound to this physical body and material universe. It’s an intimate—and at times horribly claustrophobic—feeling, this trappedness. I spent many years somewhat baffled by these experiences because I’m fine in tight situations like a crammed elevator, filled to capacity with people. Hell, I’m even good to go in show and concert environments. From small punk clubs filled with sweaty adrenalized people going nuts to larger hip hop festivals; I don’t feel the slightest tinge of anxiety or claustrophobia. Still, on occasion, and in times of quieter solitude, I feel as though I’m being held captive by my own skin, bones, muscle and tissue.

Throughout the years, however, these self-contracting and chest-tightening experiences—besides being a serious pain in my ass—have become a blessing in disguise. I say that because they inspired me to deepen my meditation practice, which time and again has left me with the experience and awareness that I am much more than just this physical body which I sometimes feel bound by.

Before we go any further however, I believe it’s important to note that shunning our physical bodies (including our ego nature) as burdens on our spiritual journey is not only futile, but a great waste of time as well. Christ, just look at the Buddha who spent all those years as an aesthetic, trying all sorts of practices that brought him to the brink of death, only to inevitably find liberation in the middle path, which is to say, cultivating a practice between indulgence in pleasures and indulgence in pain.

With time spent sincerely in meditation and other practices, people often experience the transcendence of their thoughts, emotions and physical bodies, though in most cases, this is very short lived. Still, these experiences give us a glimpse into our non-conceptual, Witnessing Awareness of all that is arising. And an interesting point worth mentioning is that this Witnessing Awareness is actually right here, right now, always already coexisting with our normal, waking consciousness.

So then, what’s stopping us from experiencing this Witness on a regular and consistent basis? Well, it’s fairly obvious to say that we’re conscious beings who for the most part experience said consciousness smack dab in the middle of our heads. It’s as if there’s a small being navigating our lives from a captain’s chair in the middle of our skull—which results in the experience of us identifying with our physical bodies, thoughts, emotions and so on as the ultimate truth of who we are.

For example, right now from my ego’s perspective, I, Chris Grosso, am experiencing my physical body sitting in a slightly chilly while room listening to Deafheaven and trying to think of some witty and accessible ways to explain this otherwise daunting topic. The room I’m sitting in is in a house, which is surrounded by grass, trees, birds and all sorts of other nature-y goodness, and all of that is surrounded by the sky—a sky that extends out into the farthest reaches of the universe.

So again, coming from my ego’s perspective (which is a limited perspective based only on relative reality), this is a completely accurate view and experience of what is happening in my immediate reality. Most of the great wisdom traditions however assert that while yes, our physical bodies are of course a part of the equation, they’re not the be-all and end-all things we think they are. There is another truth to our existence, which resides in the unmanifest dimension of life and this is where names and concepts such as Dharmakaya, Spirit, God, and Brahman come in.

Now this Spirit (or whatever you choose to call it) is a pretty amazing thing. So amazing in fact that Zen masters have said it can swallow the entire Pacific Ocean in one gulp…one gulp! Okay, so at face value this whole “one gulp” thing might sound a bit ridiculous to some of you, and that’s fair. However, as we explore these implications (through things like meditation, contemplation, mantra, and yoga) of who we are beyond just our finite physical selves, if we stick with it long enough, we’re inevitably going to start having some experiences which result in that “one gulp” statement making perfectly clear sense. However, it’s important to remember that it’s only through personal experience that things like this go from sounding completely batshit crazy to making the most perfect and natural sense possible.

That said, and in the spirit of not leaving anyone hanging, the reason we, as Spirit (or Dharmakaya, God, etc.), can drink the entire Pacific Ocean in one gulp is because when the strict identification with ourselves as bodies and senses is laid aside, no matter how temporarily, we come to see—no, better yet, we come to know—that we are the entire Pacific Ocean. More specifically, in this place we embody the pure emptiness, which underlies our entire physical and manifest experience.

Returning to my initial example of the whole room/house/nature and listening to Deafheaven thing, let’s approach this from another vantage point than that of the ego and instead look at it from witnessing awareness.

So as the witness, I gaze across this room and still “see” everything as I normally would—noticing things like various musical instruments scattered here and there, a wall decorated with prints from Public Enemy and Ram Dass, some Star Wars action figures on a shelf, and my very first Tony Hawk skateboard just below. And as I rest in this witnessing awareness (rather than my egoic self), I experience, in crystal clarity, that neither my body, nor any of these things, are actually out there, or even in the universe at all. Instead, this body, and these things (which even includes the universe itself) are all within me—within the witnessing awareness that is much closer to the truth of who we truly are.

And so it is in this recognition that there is no room left for any of the claustrophobic feelings of trappedness I’d previously felt to remain, because I’m no longer strictly identified with my body. In fact, I’m now free to experience this body as being housed within this witnessing awareness. And it’s in this place of witnessing awareness that swallowing the entire Pacific Ocean in a single gulp makes more sense than literally anything in this life that I could possibly know.

Indie Spiritualist: A No Bullshit Exploration of Spirituality: http:// www.amazon.com/Indie-Spiritualist-Bullshit-Exploration-Spirituality/dp/ 1582704627/ref=sr_1_1? s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416629826&sr=1-1&keywords=Chris+Grosso

About Chris Grosso Chris is an independent culturist, professor with en*theos Academy, author of Indie Spiritualist: A No Bullshit Exploration of Spirituality (Simon & Schuster, 2014) and Everything Mind: What I’ve Learned About Hard Knocks, Spiritual Awakening and the MindBlowing Truth of it All (Sounds True, 2015). He writes for ORIGIN Magazine, Mantra Yoga + Health Magazine, Huffington Post, Rebelle Society and Elephant Journal. For more, visit TheIndieSpiritualist.com.

Chris Grosso seamlessly blends the ideas of individuality and spirituality in a way that is selfless, easy to read, and inspiring. He can help you find a purpose and be proud of yourself" - Tony Hawk, Skateboarding Icon.

Creating the Ecclesiastical Body to Support Interspirituality

by Rev. Tim Miner OUnl

On a January 2009 morning in New York City, three graduates of the first interfaith seminary in the world met to execute the organizing documents that would create the first universal ecclesiastic body with the vision of being a legally-recognized spiritual body for all people of all faiths and those with no faith path. Joining me were the Reverend Jeane A. Leone and Reverend Thomas Downes of ISDnA. Our goal was to

Seventy clergy and lay leaders were co-ordained into the Order of Universal Interfaith and made the first members of the Universal Order of Sannyasa in January 2010 in Washington,

finally provide interfaith ministers with the legal credibility that would allow them to serve anywhere any other clergy could serve. It would be a single religious order that accepted all forms of clergy representing all the world’s belief systems through coordination. That new order was called the Order of Universal Interfaith. Rev. Leone became the first Secretary General of the Order.

In October, as we planned for the first national ordination, Dr. Kurt Johnson, associated with ISDnA, contacted me to introduce us to the meme of interspirituality and the vision written ten years prior by Brother Dr. Wayne Teasdale, to create a “Universal Order of Sannyasa” or UoS. Interspirituality became the missing piece to help us identify and include those living in a multiple faith context and those whose mysticism was so broad as to be without religious label.

Within thirty days of the creation of OUnI, a call went out to all the graduates from six major interfaith seminaries who had organized interfaith groups and congregations to join with OUnI in a bigger ecclesiastic umbrella that joined the laity with the clergy.

What we created was a structure that validated the spiritual leadership of the interfaith-interspiritual clergy stature by community building.

Rev. Tim Miner That umbrella was the Council OUnI, M.Div. is an of Interfaith Congregations ordained interfaithwhich quickly became the interspiritual cleric Council of Interfaith and minister who Communities of the United is a cofounder of States (CIC-USA). For the first the Order of time the impact of interfaithUniversal Interfaith interspiritual ministry could be and Council of enumerated. Rev. Dr. Bob Salt Interfaith from Wisconsin became the first Communities of board chair of that body. the United States In December 2009, I had the (where he is currently the Executive Director). OUnI was founded privilege to represent this new emerging movement and the by a circle of interfaith leaders, many of whom were new ecclesiastic bodies of OUnI also long term associates of Br. Wayne Teasdale.

Rev. Miner has also been a key planner and host of and CIC at the Parliament of the World Religions in the annual “Big I” (interfaith, interspiritual, integral, Melbourne, Australia. That independent) conferences sponsored by OUnI. Rev. presentation, which carried Miner, formerly a faculty member at the Air Force forward ISDnA’s message, was Academy also continues to serve in several United considered a continuation of the States federal and local chaplaincies. Working from interspiritual vision shared at his home town as well, he is founder of Interspiritual previous Parliaments.

LIFE Fellowships of Virginia.

Reverend Tim Miner OUnI is a federal chaplain for three branches of the Federal government. He is a co-founder of OUnI and is the founding executive director of the CIC-USA. He leads the "Spirituality and the Atmospheric Sciences" Townhalls for the American Meteorological Society.

In January 2010, in Washington, DC, over seventy clergy and lay leaders from many different spiritual paths with a wide variety of practices met to coordain and ordain the first class of interfaith-interspiritual ministers in the world and consecrate the creation of the UOS. The Order ordained clergy to validate the stature of the individual as a spiritual leader. It also ordained Wisdom Keepers in various paths to validate the path itself as a viable and recognized form of spirituality. We also recognized the first Sages or vision givers.

These individuals included Father Bede Griffith and Brother Dr. Wayne Teasdale for Interspirituality, along with Father Thomas Keating and interfaith scholar, Dr. Huston Smith.

Since those humble beginnings, the OUnI has grown to over 700 individuals on five continents and throughout the United States. There have been ordination ceremonies in seven countries around the world. Many of the authors in this publication have taken the vow to the “path of sacred service� of ordination into the Order, or taken the nine vows as a member of the UOS which was renamed the Community of The Mystic Heart in honor of the book by Br Teasdale. CMH is now one of ten communities in OUnI. Several of those communities identify with the interspirituality and are creating local community around it. Rev. Dr. Joyce Liechenstein is now the Secretary General.

As the Order was growing, numerous organizations joined CIC. Reverend JoAnn Barrett, minister of the Gathering of Light Interspiritual Community now is the chair of the board of directors. The Interspiritual LIFE Fellowships of Virginia are local communities throughout that state. From the original seven congregations and two interfaith seminaries (OneSpirit Interfaith Seminary and the Chaplaincy Institute), the community now includes the educational foundation of six additional seminaries. They are The New Seminary, Chaplaincy Institute of Maine, International Academy of Interfaith Studies, American Institute of Holistic Theology, New Vision Interspiritual Seminary and All-Paths Divinity School. The greater body of CIC with the support of OUnI has endorsed its clergy to Federal chaplaincy in three branches of the US government and the Association of Professional Chaplains. The greater community

now meets every test of being a viable path for spirituality and religious expression. It is there to support new evolving and emerging spiritual communities.

As part of the movement’s identity development, OUnI board member Rabbi Rami Shapiro OUnI joined with me to create the annual “BIG I Conference of Inclusive Theology, Spirituality and Consciousness” to present and document the newest ideas and best practices in interfaith, interspiritual, integral spirituality and for the spiritually independent. Held in mid-winter, the conference moves each year. The 2015 conference will be in the San Francisco Bay area on February 6-8. This year, for the first time the conference focuses on an emerging spirituality that connects the sciences to spiritual matters and the sacredness of the earth. Rev. Claire Frances (Goodman) is cohost.

In 2012, Dr. Johnson and I discussed the possibility of ordination for eco-ministry. We both proceeded in different ways. He took the path of spiritual people manifesting change in the world and has created a palette of spiritual leaders in environmental justice. I took the path of finding men and women of science with a spiritual calling and led them to be a prophetic voice for change. At the 2013 BIG I Conference we shared a short presentation. At the 2014 BIG I Conference we were joined by 8 other leaders to be co-ordained as the first eco-ministers in the world. Reverend Mac Legerton now coordinates these OUnI efforts.

Since 2009, there has been a steady push to create the ecclesiastic body that would hope the vast vision of Interspirituality. OUnI and CIC are meeting that need today.

The Gathering of Light Interspiritual Fellowship is one of the dynamic communities of interspiritual people located around the United States associated with the Council of Interfaith Communities of the US. Rev. JoAnn Barrett, chair of the CIC-USA board is the senior minister of this community.

S p i r i t u a l i t y

Outside of Traditions

by T. S. Pennington Are you like me? Do you identify with the label “spiritual, but not religious” (SBNR)?

Or perhaps, you prefer calling yourself spiritually independent. Maybe you are uncomfortable with any form of the word ‘spirit” and refer to you being a humanist. If this is not your identity, then you probably know someone who fits with one of these descriptors; especially if they are under the age of thirty.

In a report generated in October of 2012, the Pew Research Center found that one in five adults has no religious affiliation and in the age group of 18 to 29, it is thirty-two percent. (www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise) As pointed out in this report, the term “nones”--for selecting none of the religious traditions--has been used since the 1960’s. But as stated in its preface “absence of religious affiliation does not necessarily indicate an absence of religious belief or practices.” However, eighty-eight perfect of the unaffiliated indicated that they were not looking for a religion to join.

“Overwhelmingly, they think that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics.” (page 10) In her book Christianity After Religion, The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening, Diana Butler Bass describes that people’s options, especially youth, are typically opposed to the conservative, church teachings in regards to GBLT rights, same-sex marriage, abortion, sex outside marriage and evolution versus T. S. Pennington is a retired community college professor. He has journeyed to “Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR)” from a path of ordained interspiritual ministry, graduating from One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in New York City. An early collaborator with the Interspiritual Movement, he is pursuing his doctorate in studies of the vision of Br. Wayne Teasdale and the phenomenon of SBNR. He currently lives in North Carolina where he is a member of the Mountain Area Interfaith Forum and participates widely in national interfaith and interspiritual activities, including UN Forum 21 Institute and the annual “Big I” Conferences.

creationism. The sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church disillusioned many people.

Bass quotes Robert Fuller, religious historian, that in the twenty-first century there is a distinction made between the words ‘spiritual” and ‘religious’, unlike sixty years ago.

She then goes on to give two list of adjectives that are associated with the words ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’. (p 69) Under spirituality such words as experience, intuition, nature, energy, open, inclusive and doubt are given. Then under religion the words are institution, rules, dogma, buildings, hierarchy and certainty.

There are many publications addressing the decline of religion and the rise of spirituality, coming from a wide array of viewpoints. Many fine articles are found at in

the Religion section of The Huffington Post. I totally agree with some of the authors and find strong exception to others.

I feel the article by Philip Goldberg titled Spiritual But Not Religious: Misunderstood and Here to Stay of 2/13/2013 actually describes people who are SBNR. He states “If a traditional religion gave them the inner experience they yearn for; if it answered the big existential questions in a satisfying way; if it truly nourished their desire for spiritual growth, they’d stay instead of stray.” He is willing to wager that the many of the SBNR individuals spend far more time than some who are ‘conventionally religious’.

I have some disagreement with Netanel Miles-Yepez in his article Spiritual and Religious dated 3/3/2014 when he states “The problem is being ‘spiritual, but not

religious’ is that it is a dead-end for the spiritual seeker.” He does go on to write “Anyone who feels compelled to choose spirituality over religion has, in my opinion, ‘chosen the better part’...” But for me, the overall tone of this series of articles is instructing everyone to return to a religion because without its techniques, rituals, teachings and insights there is little hope for true transformation.

I have identified myself outside of any religious tradition for over forty years. My experience with other people who identify with the being SBNR is that they are as diverse in their dedication to a spiritual path as those who claim a tradition and they come to this understanding for different reasons.

Many people have been rejected and wounded by the tradition of their childhood because of their sexuality, liberal political beliefs or disagreement with the tradition’s dogma. I read Teilhard de Chardin’s books The Phenomenon of Man and The Divine Milieu when I was nineteen and found great truth is his belief that evolution was God’s method of creation; but I was told that I had to stop reading him and forget everything that I had read. I refused.

In the post-modern world, it has become very easy to have access to books, articles and websites that inform the reader about most of the world’s religious traditions. I was fortunate to discover the Theosophical Society and Quest Books when I was twenty. I devoured books on Buddhism and Hinduism because I found great wisdom in these traditions. I know many people in the Interspiritual movement who claim insights and practices from multiple faiths; this is because they are seeking the experience of the profound and not a list of belief statements.

Also within the Interspiritual movement, I am encountering people who see their spiritual journey as staying within a particular tradition, only to emerge in a space which appears to beyond their previous understanding of only being ‘the one true path’. I am reminded of the Rumi poem “Out beyond the ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there…” At the Spiritual Summit that has held in New York City as part of the United Nations 11 Days of Global Unity, there was

www.sbnr.org SBNR-Related Sites at FACEBOOK

The Coming Interspiritual Age: https://www.facebook.com/TheComingInterspiritualAge

Spiritual But Not Religious https://www.facebook.com/groups/182777648445376/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/345793645533908/

When Spiritual But Not Religious is Not Enough https://www.facebook.com/WhenSpiritualButNotReligiousIsNotEnough

Spiritual But Not Religious Just for Fun https://www.facebook.com/pages/Spiritual-but-not-Religious/ 1580431098846742

Nones (the “Non-­‐af?iliated”)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/nonesblog/

a presentation from Doug King of Presence TV and Nomi Naeem, showing how they were able to understand each other from a viewpoint which was both within and beyond their different traditions.

Each person who identify as SBNR will have to decide what their relationship is to the various traditions of the world. I encourage the reader to understand that although people such as Brother Wayne Teasdale and Father Thomas Berry choose to stay identified with a particular faith, their insights are deeply spiritual and transcend the more conventional understanding of their tradition.

Illustrations in the above article are from Social Media’s “Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR)” sites. URLs of these sites are listed at the end. Readers may enjoy exploring the landscape of the rich SBNR phenomenon.

Six months before 9/11, I moved from Switzerland to the United States. Like everyone else, the magnitude and horror of this event shook me to the core. In the years after the attacks, sharp divisions became apparent in the political arena and in the rise of ideologues representing a more fundamentalist bent within the religious traditions, thus reinforcing a sense of alienation between cultures and countries. At times it seemed as if those voices calling for mutual respect and interreligious dialogue were drowned out.

I felt deeply disheartened by the (seemingly) unstoppable course of events. The tragedy of 9/11 and its aftermath made brutally clear once more the truth that religions harbor the potential for hatred and violence. Yet they also contain the seeds of compassion and peace. I believe that the events of 9/11 ultimately prompted me to write “One Truth, Many Paths” (OTMP) – a book series on the world’s wisdom tradition informed by a cross-cultural comparative perspective. OTMP acknowledges that truth is equally found in all religions, for each path points ultimately to the one Truth known by many names: Spirit, God, Goddess, Brahman, YHVH, Allah, Wakan Tanka, Ein Sof, Pure Emptiness, or the Tao, to mention a few. Yet in essence this Truth is one. And it is

All Religions, All the Singing, One Song

by Isabella Price

to be found at the very core of our being. OTMP is hence based on the vision that what unites us in our basic humanness is ultimately infinitely greater than what divides us. In Rumi’s timeless words of wisdom: “All religions, all the singing, one song. The differences are just illusion and vanity. Sunlight looks slightly different on this wall than it does on that wall… but it is still one light.”

OTMP focuses on three overarching “pillars” of commonality: esoteric-mystical core, ethical precepts, and universal symbols (e.g. World Tree) and mythic-archetypal

narratives (e.g. savior-hero) that have shaped how we relate to the ultimate truth.

However, OTMP is based on a “unity-in-diversity” approach that acknowledges distinctive and unique features in each tradition, for religions are clearly not the same.

Yet beneath the diversity of theological belief systems, scripture, cultural context, rituals, and observances lies a deeper unity of experiences that is our shared spiritual heritage.

In The Mystic Heart, Br. Wayne Teasdale points to the fact that mystical spirituality lies at the origin of all the world religions. Indeed, time and again, mystics across the traditions have entered into ecstatic and intimate communion with the ineffable mystery and have testified to a sense of awe and wonderment at the depth and intensity of the experience.

Teasdale talked about a universal mysticism grounded in the practice of interspirituality, which he defined as the “sharing of ultimate experiences across traditions” based on the premise of the essential spiritual interdependence of the religions. Interspirituality is an attempt to celebrate and to make available to everyone the rich variety of spiritual expressions that the ultimate truth assumes. Indeed, for the first time in history, the most profound teachings from all the wisdom traditions are now

readily available to all those who wish to study and practice them with an open-hearted attitude coupled with a determination and commitment to engage in this inner quest for Spirit across the traditions. In fact, there is a growing critical mass of tens of millions of well-educated people, who are yearning for a universal set of spiritual principles by which they can live a meaningful life that they cannot find within the confines of conventional religious institutions.

In addition to the gathering of shared truths held by various religions, I believe the next evolutionary leap will be the collective recognition that the leading edge of all religions is evolving from an ethnocentric to a higher worldcentric and, ultimately, a cosmocentric awareness. This leap is absolutely essential if we are to effectively address the global crises and daunting challenges we currently face.

The next Buddha or Christ may well be the sangha of dedicated spiritual practitioners who are awakening to their true nature. Yet the journey to the core of our being is often arduous as it demands that we let go of our limited, separate self-identity.

Mystics talk about the necessity “to die before we die” – a process also known as “dark night journey of the soul.”

To light a candle is to cast a shadow. Yet the freedom and spaciousness that comes with profound mystical awakenings allows us to see ourselves as part of a larger interrelated whole. Indeed, the mystic heart connects us to the heart of the cosmos, enabling us to see ourselves as the product of 13.5 billion years of evolution and to embrace all life forms with unconditional love and compassion.

In her address “Understanding and Collaboration between Religions” (2006), renowned humanitarian and spiritual leader Ammachi also reminds us that “the unity of hearts is what brings about religious unity…but if we fail to absorb the spiritual core principles, religion will be nothing more than blind faith, shackling us.”

Throughout the ages, mystics have talked about love as the dynamic ground of reality and the actual force that drives evolution. The universality of ethical precepts—compassion being a core value—is exemplified in the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” All religions value, for example, selfless service to the community as an act of love and generosity that confers spiritual benefits.

Yet ethical values are not static; they evolve as human consciousness evolves. The adoption of the Declaration of Human Rights, the Earth Charter, and the gradual extension of compassionate concern to other-than-human life forms as exemplified by California’s Proposition 2, the “Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act,” all suggest that our values are evolving as well, representing ever more inclusive and complex stagestructures of consciousness.

Change is happening on all levels; it is the only constant. Change is also spirit-inaction. As the manifest world of form is changing, so are we humans. Today we know that even our genetic makeup is not fixed; we are not set at birth. Our times are calling us to move beyond divisive and static belief systems, allowing for more inclusive expressions of spirituality to arise if we are to catalyze a mature and truly viable vision for the future.

About Isabella Price Isabella is an international speaker, educator, and the author of One Truth, Many Paths —a leading-edge book series on unitive spirituality. For almost 25 years, she has been successfully teaching classes and workshops on comparative religion and global history at universities, colleges, and various religious venues and other organizations.

Isabella holds an MA in the humanities from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. She is also a certified SQ21 Spiritual Intelligence coach and teaches meditation to veterans suffering from PTSD and other community members. For more information, please visit www.onetruth-manypaths.com.

ROOTED IN PEACE About the Film

by Greg Reitman

Greg Reitman, a long-term friend of the interspiritual movement, is a rare independent filmmaker in having scored hits in both the environmental and spirituality and peace arenas. His film FUEL was a Sundance Film Festival winner in 2008 and became a cult classic.

He has now followed with an inspiring film on spirituality, environment and peace, using the metaphor of the tree to bring together a powerful narrative on the interspiritual and ecological ages.

Greg is the founder of Blue Water Entertainment, Inc., an independent production company based in Santa Monica, that produces feature films and documentaries. Reitman lives in Los Angeles with his wife Britta. He is a practitioner of transcendental meditation.

Greg Reitman in Times Square carrying the tree whose story traces the unfolding message of his film Rooted in Peace.

ROOTED in PEACE challenges viewers to examine their values as Americans and human beings. Today we are at war within ourselves, with our environment, and with the world.

Director and award-winning filmmaker Greg Reitman invites viewers on a film journey to take notice of the world we live in, proactively seek ways to find personal and ecological peace, and stop the cycle of violence.

The film relies not only on memoir, but also interviews with such luminaries and activists as Deepak Chopra, music legends Donovan, Mike Love, and Pete Seeger, film director David Lynch, Noble Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire, media mogul Ted Turner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, green architect William McDonough, neuroscientist Dan Siegel and many others. Reitman learns from all of them, and heeds Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s words, that if the forest is to be green, every tree must be green; if there’s going to be peace on earth, then everybody needs to experience that quality of peace within themselves.

And so in asking viewers to do the same, Reitman poses the basic question: How do we want to live? Reitman’s journey is an example of transformation—how one person can learn to make the necessary changes to enjoy a better life—and in so doing inspire others to want to improve their own lives, and society as a whole.

Additional Resources www.bluewatercompany.com greg@bluewatercompany.com Rooted In Peace Running time: educational version 60 minutes, full length 97 minutes

One Spirit in Action association assembling for the People’s Climate March in New York City on the International Day of Peace, September 21, 2014.

GROUNDING OURSELVES

in Sacred Practice

by Diane Berke “True understanding in a person has two attributes: awareness and action. …

Who can enjoy enlightenment and remain indifferent to suffering in the world?

This is not in keeping with the Way. Only those who increase their service along with their understanding can be called men and women of Tao.” — Lao Tzu, Hua Hu Ching Through serendipity, I met author and mystic Andrew Harvey on Easter Sunday 2005. A few days later, over a gettingacquainted lunch, I asked Andrew what he was focusing on in his teaching and writing. His answer—“sacred activism”— evoked in me a clear and resounding “Yes!”

Andrew points out: “A

spirituality that is merely private and self-absorbed will do little to address the accelerating and devastating crises facing our world. An activism that is not deeply rooted in compassion, informed by the mystic vision of the unity of all life, and purified by profound spiritual and psychological self-awareness will only perpetuate the problems it is trying to solve. When the deepest, clearest spiritual vision and love is married to a grounded and practical drive to transform existing structures and institutions in the service of compassion and justice, a new and profoundly powerful force is born: the force of Sacred Activism, the power of wisdom and love in action.”

It is increasingly clear that for our engagement in the world to be transformative, it must grow out of and express a consciousness of the fundamental interconnectedness and unity of life that deep practice makes possible. For this reason, Kurt Johnson and David Robert Ord point out in The Coming Interspiritual Age that teaching sacred activism is an essential part of interspiritual education.

As sacred activists, if we are to cultivate and sustain the peace, passion, energy, strength, courage, compassion, clarity and wisdom necessary to be agents of transformation, we need to ground ourselves in a daily sacred practice. Such practice is not a luxury; it is our lifeblood, the daily nourishment and grounding we need to engage in the work that gives meaning to our lives. Rather than taking us away from the world and its needs and cries, sacred practice prepares us to serve the world more powerfully and effectively. It is, in the words of Quaker educator and author Parker Palmer, “the work before the work.”

The Five Types of Practice In his work, Andrew has identified five kinds of sacred practice that are essential to sustain us as sacred activists: cool practices, warm practices, prayer, body practices, and shadow work. Cool practices, such as mindfulness meditation or centering prayer, are those help us to be calm, centered, and peaceful even in the midst of storms in our lives and world. The cool practices support us in accessing the peace and perspective of the transcendent, which allow us to engage the world with greater clarity and skillfulness. As we more and more embody a depth of peace, we are increasingly able to extend peace to all those we encounter simply through our own presence.

Warm practices, like the fervent practice of gratitude, the Buddhist practice of tonglen, and the Sufi zikr, are those that keep the heart open and the energy of passionate compassion alive and flowing in us and from us. They enable us to access the joyful energy of Divine Love, to keep us vibrant and passionately alive through times of disappointment, frustration and discouragement that are inevitably part of this work.

Together, warm practices and cool practices allow us to stay in balance: to marry, in Rumi’s words, “the power of passion that comes from heartbreak and the peace of serenity that comes from surrender.”

In The Hope, Andrew points out that there will be times, for every sacred activist, when there is too much anguish, fear, outrage, or despair to be able to meditate or do the warm practices in more than a perfunctory way. At such times, the most powerful practice we can call upon is the practice of prayer. At all times, prayer can support in us the essential quality of humility. As Ed Bastian writes in his book InterSpiritual Meditation, “… prayer almost always carries with it the recognition that we as individuals do not have the power to single-handedly control our destinies, to manipulate the circumstances of our lives, or achieve our deepest aspirations. Prayer entails a confidence that there are spiritual realities that can help us forge our paths through life …”

Prayer practice can take myriad forms. Celeste Yacoboni’s How Do You Pray? is a wonderful anthology of responses to that question from teachers and practitioners from across many traditions that can serve as a resource for exploring and expanding our own practice of prayer.

Body practices are the fourth type of sacred practice essential for sacred activists.

The spirituality required in our time is an embodied spirituality. Mystical vision recognizes the sacredness of embodiment as the expression of the Divine in and through matter, as Teresa of Avila noted when she wrote that Christ [the Divine] “has no body on earth but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours, yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world, yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.” Body practices such as yoga, tai chi, body prayer, or walking in nature strengthen our bodies

to receive and express higher energies and awaken us to sacred immanence not only in ourselves but throughout the whole of creation.

The fifth type of sacred practice, shadow work, has been called western psychology’s great contribution to the spiritual life. If as sacred activists we are truly to act in the world with clarity and effectiveness, we must engage in the difficult and, at times, painful work of recognizing and reclaiming the rejected, despised and exiled parts of ourselves that we have denied and projected out onto the world. This is the work Jesus called us to when he told us to first remove the log in our own eye so that we can see clearly how to best remove the speck from our brother’s.

Carl Jung wrote, “If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. … he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against. … Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day. These problems are mostly so difficult because they are poisoned by mutual projections. How can anyone see straight when he does not even see himself and the darkness he unconsciously carries with him into all dealings?”2 While the deepest and most difficult shadow work may be best done with the guidance of a skilled counselor, we can begin to explore shadow work on our own through resources like David Richo’s book Shadow Dance or the Integral 3-2-1 Shadow Process.

Conclusion The purpose of all sacred practice is to gradually transform us into people who deeply know and trust the grandeur and joy of our true nature; who passionately love the divine and life and the whole of creation; who naturally extend friendship and compassion to all living beings; who see with clarity and act with wisdom; and who by our very presence offer others the gift of peace.

Additional Resources One Spirit Interfaith website: www.onespiritinterfaith.org Video: Andrew Harvey on The Hope: http:// www.hhemarketing.com/author/harvey/ booklaunches/harvey_hope_2009sep22.htm Andrew Harvey and The Institute for Sacred Activism: www.andrewharvey.net 1 C.G. Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 11: Psychology and

Religion.

Rev. Diane Berke is the Founder and Spiritual Director of One Spirit Learning Alliance and One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in New York City.

She is on the core faculty of The Institute for Sacred Activism, a founding member of The Contemplative Alliance of the Global Peace Initiative of Women, and a founding board member of the Council of Interfaith Communities USA. Diane was the recipient of the 2012 Huston Smith Interfaith Educator Award.

Interfaith and Interspiritual Clergy and Their Training

by Rev. Philip Waldrop

After World War II there was a desire for peace through understanding and dialog, as one way to heal the rifts from the war. The aspirations expressed in the United Nations charter were challenged by the Cold War, but hope for a better world did not die. The subsequent growth of interfaith dialog, and movements for civil rights, peace, women’s rights, the environment and LGBT rights reflected these hopes and aspirations.

A Brief History of the Interfaith-Interspiritual Seminary Phenomenon The Initial Interfaith Seminary. Duringthe mid 1970s, Rabbi Joseph Gelberman, a Holocaust survivor, Rev. John Mundy, then a Methodist minister, Rev. Giles Spoonhour, an Orthodox Catholic priest, and Swami Satchidinanda, founder of the Integral Yoga Institute, conducted interfaith prayer services and discussions in New York City; in time, these led to the idea of training a new kind of clergy, an “interfaith minister”. So in 1979, The New Seminary was formed, which continues to train and ordain ministers annually.

Migration to “Interspiritual”. Reflecting an evolution in spiritual practice and outlook, Brother Wayne Teasdale coined the word “interspiritual” in his writings (first read widely in The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions,1999). This has gained recognition in the interfaith ministry movement, so that now this new type of clergy is often called “interspiritual minister”.

Description of Interfaith/Interspiritual Ministers.

Interfaith/interspiritual ministers respect and honor the world’s religions and belief systems, celebrate diversity, and draw insights and practices from across the spectrum, as they conduct their ministry work while adhering to the highest ethical standards. They emphasize commonalities that arise from an experiential, mystical

core as we humans approach the Mystery, the Divine, the Spirit, God, the Al-That-Is, the Universe, or its many other names.

Minister Training Approach. Interfaith/interspiritual minister training is holistic, combining in most cases experiential, academic, and community service components, with the candidate also doing or having done deep personal inner work.

The academic portions study the world’s religions, and texts that expound an interspiritual approach. Experiential components include visits to religious services and sites, as well as training in and practice of a variety of ceremonies. This holistic clergy training paradigm has its roots in curriculum development at The New Seminary in the 1980s and 1990s, led by Rev. Dr. Diane Berke, Rev. Dr. Joyce Liechenstein, and Rev. Deborah Steen Ross. Of course, specific curriculum content evolves over time, but the holistic approach remains.

Groupings of institutions Gelberman Group. The current four New York City-area interfaith/interspiritual seminaries have roots in the vision of Rabbi Joseph Gelberman: The New Seminary

Rev. Philip Waldrop

(1979), All Faiths Interfaith Seminary (1996), OneSpirit Interfaith Seminary (2001), and New Visions Interfaith Seminary (2011). Two others also have Gelberman roots: OneSpirit Interfaith Foundation in the UK (1996) and Tree of Life Interfaith Seminary (2006), Milford, New Hampshire.

Independently Developed Institutions. Additional interfaith / interspiritual clergy training institutions include: The Chaplaincy Institute in Berkeley, California (1999) founded by Rev. Gina Rose Halpern; the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine (2002), founded by Chaplaincy Institute grad, Rev. Jacob Watson; Rev. Dr. Katherine O’Connells’s East-West Seminary (circa 2004); and the Seminary at HaShem’s House (circa 2009) founded by Rev. Rabbi Dr. Raine Teller. Also, Rev. Dr. Barry King and Rev. Dr. Sandi King founded the iNtuitive Times Institute (2006) in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, to serve the interfaith movement in Canada they helped pioneer. Similarly, Doylestown, Pennsylvania’s interfaith Pebble Hill Church founded the School for Sacred Ministry (1999) for clergy development for itself, and similar other or new congregations.

Two institutions follow mainly a distance-learning approach: American Institute of Holistic Theology (1992) founded by Michael Parker, which has offered ordination since 2011, and International Academy of Interfaith Studies,(2011), founded by Rev. Dr. Thomas Lynch and Rev. Dr. Cynthia Lynch.

Profiles of Interfaith and Interspiritual Ministers.

Collectively, about 200 interspiritual/interfaith ministers are ordained annually. Who are these people that pursue this? The details vary quite widely, but candidates often mention their heart and vision for spiritual service did not fit into a standard world religion. Also common is for candidates to have had a number of spiritual experiences/ backgrounds, who then find that cross-traditional spiritual paths are not welcomed elsewhere. Sometimes gender or sexual orientation matters come into play. Typically these are people in mid- or late-career who come to their ministry training with significant life and spiritual experience. Candidates often find this path via internet searches, or via an existing interfaith/interspiritual minister.

Types of Ministries. Interfaith /interspiritual ministers pursue a wide range of activities. Forming / leading an interspiritual congregation, with regular worship services and community gatherings, is a minority choice among graduates. Other common ministry tracks include: ceremony- presiders (especially weddings); spiritual counselors (needs additional training)); ministry with alternative healing arts

modalities; hospital or military chaplaincy (again, requiring additional training); and social activist ministries, e.g. prison ministry, eco-ministry, women’s shelters, homeless shelters. Typically, interfaith/interspiritual ministers are freelance and conduct ministry part-time alongside other careers.

Organizations Serving Interspiritual Ministers and the Interspiritual Movement.

AWAIC : A World Alliance of Interspiritual Clergy (2004), the professional association and home for interfaith/interspiritual clergy.

CIC-USA: The Council of Interfaith Communities– USA (2008), an association-home for interspiritual/interfaith communities and many of the seminaries mentioned in this article.

OUnI: The Order of Universal Interfaith (2008), an ecclesiastic body that ordains and co-ordains. Its pledgors pledge to a life of sacred service, and may be ordained interfaith/ interspiritual clergy, or lay people pursuing an interspiritual path.

Conclusion This relatively new category, the interfaith/interspiritual minister, and the institutions that train and ordain them, are a response to a calling and heart for spiritual service that bridges previously separated and perceived antagonistic spiritual world views.

They look for a common core, and build new paradigms of peace and understanding.

Founding pioneers of minister training institutions, as well as spiritual luminaries such as Brother Wayne Teasdale, have been key players to shape this movement and respond to spiritual developments in our modern globally interconnected society. See websites of the organizations mentioned for more information, or contact the author at philipwaldrop529@gmail.com.

Additional Resources See the list of Interfaith Seminary websites from The Interfaith Observer’s September 2012 article by Kurt Johnson and Diane Berke “Interfaith Seminaries Chart New Territory”: http://theinterfaithobserver.org/journal-articles/2012/9/15/interfaithseminaries-chart-new-territory.html An additional major international association will now emerge as the global Interspiritual Network at www.interspiriituality.com as mandated by the well-attended international Dawn of Interspirituality Conference in 2013. It is expected to eventually function as a membership organization.

Logos of Major

Interferfaith-Interspiritual and

Interfaith-Interspiritual Seminary Associations

CIC-USA, OUnI, and AWAIC

Rev. Philip Waldrop OUnI is the Board Chair Emeritus and External Liaison of A World Alliance of Interspiritual Clergy. He has served on the staff of the Interfaith Temple of New York City, as publisher of the on-line magazine INTERFAITH Today, Dean of first year students at The New Seminary in New York City and on the leadership team of the NY-NJ-CT Tri-State Council of Men as Learners and Elders. In 2007, he was ordained an Interfaith Minister. Rev. Phil is a frequent speaker and facilitator on a variety of spiritual topics, a spiritual counselor, and a healing practitioner specializing in Reiki and PranicHealing techniques.

Interspiritual:

The SILENCE Behind the Word

Thematic illustrations drawn from Roger Housden’s newsletter.

by Roger Housden What would Rumi or Hafiz say? What would John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart say? Eckhart Tolle and Adya Shanti—what would they say?

I will hazard a guess: that the interspiritual points to the deep heart of silence. Not any kind of silence, but the knowing silence that breathes its vivid awareness through all traditions, whatever name they go by. And I think they would also say that in any attempt to name it the prosaic will need to give way to the poetic—poetic not as in a poem so much as in a lilt on the term of speech that lifts the sayer as she says the word into some felt apprehension of the reality behind it.

The term interspiritual is a clumsy duckling of a word; a placeholder for the term that is waiting to emerge. For now it will have to do.

Over the last few decades the reality it points to has been steadily divesting itself of its various guises and stepping fully embodied out into the light of day in the form of an increasing number of teachers and guides who represent, not any particular religion necessarily, but the fragrance of a ripened human heart. Rather than an intellectual appreciation of other religions than one’s own, or even a willing participation in their rituals and practices(though it may include that) interspiritual to my mind points beyond belief, beyond any religion in particular, to the awakening of gnosis in the individual human being.

A ripened heart may or may not emerge through a dedication to religious practices.

For Wordsworth it grew in the presence of nature; for Eckhart Tolle, on a park bench.

Currently, it seems to be evident in the form of more and more people who feel the inner life of spirit, undefined by any specific belief, dogma or ritual, to be the pole star of their life; an internal magnetic pull that exerts an influence on what they say, what they do, and what they think. The effect of that pull is to draw us down into interior silence and stillness, equanimity, generosity of spirit, loving compassion for self, others, and the world.

John of the Cross speaks of it as “the fire that burned inside my chest.�

Rumi speaks of it this way: This longing you express Is the return message.

There are rituals in every religion that have always served in part to ignite the fire in the chest and to draw us into communion with the ineffable core of our own being. Any form, however, becomes more rigid and literal with time, and it is not difficult after a few centuries or millennia for the forms to obscure the very ineffability they are pointing toward.

It has always been difficult, too, for religious hierarchies to be able to consider the notion that what their rituals and practices really point to is not some divine being or heroic Jesus or Buddha out there so much as the divine being that each and every one of us already is. Of course, this is entirely understandable, since the hierarchical power structure would crumble if there weren’t a division between those who knew and those who didn’t; between those who could dispense wisdom and knowledge from some higher source to those who are not privy either to secret (esoteric) teachings or more prosaically, are not hooked up to the power lines running from the head of religious state on down.

This is precisely what has begun to change so dramatically in the last few decades.

People everywhere are becoming more and more inclined to take up Walt Whitman’s affirmation that everyone should be their own priest. If all religions were banished, the religious sensibility would still exist. Life’s beauty and mystery naturally inspire in us reverence and wonder, and we can intuit that nothing, but nothing, including ourselves and our own little life, is outside of or exempt from an inherently intelligent, perpetual unfolding in the present moment. We can recognize that despite our loneliness and feelings of separateness, all of us are intimately joined in one great unity of life, seen and unseen.

A sensibility like this makes us prone to wonder, to pondering questions rather than wanting comforting answers. It makes us prone to beauty, to experiences of being lifted beyond our sense of who we are into a larger, more inclusive life, which leads to love.

It makes us prone to stillness and clarity; to joy, and to feeling deep compassion for the tribulations of others and the suffering inherent in living. All of these responses to life are inherent in any religious tradition, for they are all expressions of transcendence; and yet they themselves are not dependent on religion. The experience of transcendence is intrinsic to being human.

In recognition of the spirit of the times we live in, interspirituality must surely also include and affirm a secular spirituality, one that brings heaven down to earth in our everyday lives; that is practiced by individuals according to the promptings of their own ripening heart, drawing on the resources of any religion or none.

There are as many pitfalls in this development—narcissism, self-absorption, the illusion, without any authoritative oversight, that one is in a more knowing condition than is actually so—as there are in religion itself. But an emergent spirituality requires us to be willing to take the risks along with its blessings. Ultimately, I believe that interspirituality calls us to recognize the extraordinary mystery that we are living in this very moment, without wrapping it up in a neat bow of explanation. In a gesture of wonder and awe, it invites us to bow, not necessarily to any god or deity, but as W.S.Merwin writes in his poem For The Anniversary of My Death, “bowing not knowing to what.”

Additional Resources Roger Housden’s website: www.rogerhousden.com Roger Housden’s page at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&fieldkeywords=Roger+Housden

About Roger Housden Roger grew up England and spent decades traveling, exploring spiritual teachings, and learning from masters both East and West, including the nondual teachers HWL Poonja, Chandraswami, and Nanagaru in India, the Mevlevi Sufis in Turkey, and the Orthodox Christian communities on Mount Athos in Greece.

Roger has published over twenty books including Chasing Love and Revelation, and the best-selling Ten Poems series (which began in 2001 with Ten Poems to Change Your Life and ended with the publication in 2012 of Ten Poems to Say Goodbye).

His work has been featured in The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times.

Ken Wilber is variously regarded as the most translated philosopher in the world, and the world's most influential Integral thinker. The author of over 20 books, and with works translated into over 30 languages, he is seen as an important historical figure in transpersonal psychology which concerns itself explicitly with spirituality. He is the first psychologist-philosopher in history to have Collected Works published during his lifetime. He works through his Integral Institute and host of other organizations, networks and associations that his work has founded and inspired. www.kenwilber.com

Waking Up and Growing Up: Religion’s Potential Contributions to

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS Global sustainability across all arenas of ongoing human endeavor, and as headlined for example by the new United Nations Development Agenda, needs a “conveyor belt” understanding. It needs a clear developmental goal—which must be actual sustainable development itself. That is what the emerging global culture most desperately needs, and very fast. This is precisely the new role that spirituality and religion can legitimately claim for itself.

By adopting the stages of both Waking Up and Growing Up, religion could become a pacer of transformation for the modern and postmodern world. As it is now, too often

coming from a mythicliteral stage, it is ridiculed and laughed at by the modern world; and the “new atheists” (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, etc.) have found a large and willing audience for listening to the catastrophic, dangerous, and damaging role that mythic religion is having on the world. But religion actually has adherents at every major level/stage of Growing Up (in the line of spiritual intelligence), and it alone of all the human disciplines possesses Paths of Waking Up. Who better could assume a major position of guiding and steering humanity’s own basic growth and development? From one of the most ridiculed of human disciplines—charged with everything from preaching love while practicing war (which its mythic ethnocentric versions certainly do) to being based on childish and infantile modes of thinking (which its magic and mythic forms demonstrably

As Wilber points out, stages of development apply to all “lines”, that is, diverse kinds of types of behavior or development. As he says herein of the “line” (or trait) “spiritual intelligence”: “One of the things that the discovery of the 6-8 major stages of spiritual intelligence alerted us to is the fact that there are various individuals at virtually every single stage of spiritual development that there is (and this is true in every major religious Tradition). We have people, for example, at magic Christianity, mythicliteral Christianity, rational Christianity, pluralistic Christianity, and beginning integral Christianity”, and, overall of “Religion as conveyor belt”: “[Religion] is virtually the only human discipline where there are adult humans at all 68 major levels of development (in at least some lines)”.

The editors elected to provide illustrations from Ken Wilber’s original works that reflect specific statements in his article. Wilber and Comb’s “Lattice” is the classic integral demonstration as, Wilber says, that whereas “the ‘new atheists’…. have found a large and willing audience for listening to the catastrophic, dangerous, and damaging role that mythic religion is having on the world”… “religion actually has adherents at every major level/stage of Growing Up (in the line of spiritual intelligence)…” As interspiritual and integral savvy thinkers well know, much of the treatment of religion and spirituality in both the general media and critical atheistic or reductionist texts often grossly oversimplifies the phenomenon of spirituality and then treats it in extremely unsophisticated and inaccurate ways.

are)—it would become one of the leading and most respected voices in the modern and postmodern world, pointing the way to humanity’s own deepest, widest, highest potentials, the very furthest of human possibilities as they become themselves divine. Religion, instead of looking predominantly to the past, would become the brightest beacon of a humanity’s most inspired future.

In today’s modern world in the West, around 40-50% are at traditional mythic, 50% at modern rational, 20% at postmodern pluralistic, and only 5% at integral (that adds up to more than 100% because of much overlap). One of the things that the discovery of the 6-8 major stages of spiritual intelligence alerted us to is the fact that there are various A more complex diagram from Wilber’s work showing the relationship of stages, lines, and levels as historically demonstrated by a number of academicians.

individuals at virtually every single stage of spiritual development that there is (and this is true in every major religious Tradition). We have people, for example, at magic Christianity, mythic-literal Christianity, rational Christianity, pluralistic Christianity, and beginning integral Christianity.

Religion, in its fully mature potential, is in a position to act as a “conveyor belt” of transformation for humanity on the whole. It is virtually the only human discipline where there are adult humans at all 68 major levels of development (in at least some lines). In the natural sciences, for example, virtually all of them are pure rational stage productions. Science can’t pick people up at magic and help them transform to mythic and then to rational and then to higher stages—it itself doesn’t cover that ground at all.

But religion does. And you can find exponents of every single one of those major levels in every great religious Tradition anywhere in the world. (Christianity, for example: its magic and mythic elements are well known, and its fundamentalist branches believe that the myths are absolutely and unerringly true, the literal word of God. During the rational Enlightenment, the great pioneering scientists were almost all rational Christians, or Deists.

Thus, what does research into these two basic forms of spiritual involvement that humans have available to them—states of consciousness in Waking Up and structures of consciousness in Growing Up—have to tell us when all is said and done? With regard to Spiritual Developmental Goals, there are at least two major points, if we want anything near an inclusive stance.

One, every Tradition, if it hasn’t already, should introduce practices—or at least make them available—from their own branches of Waking Up. Virtually all Traditions have some of these “esoteric” or “inner” teaching schools, which use meditation or contemplation to move an individual into a deeper and deeper connection with the Divine, resulting in virtually all cases in some version of the Supreme Identity—a direct realization and experience, by the individual, of the ultimate Ground of all Being, leading to his or her own Great Liberation. This is the whole point of a spirituality—a direct introduction to the living, vital, conscious, groundless Ground of Being and True Nature and Real Self of every sentient being, a Supreme Identity that is taken as the sumum bonum of the human condition by every major great Tradition worldwide.

But wait. There is a magic Enlightenment, a mythic Enlightenment, a rational Enlightenment, and so on. And if we use, as an example, the typical definition of Enlightenment given by the Eastern traditions—“the realization of the union of Emptiness and Form (or Godhead and individual)”—it turns out that the Enlightenment experienced at each of the 6-8 stages of spiritual Growing Up will indeed be a union of Emptiness and Form, and although the “Emptiness” component (being totally “formless” and “unqualifiable”) will be essentially the same at each stage, the “Form” component—which undergoes development and evolution—will be quite different. At mythic, for example, the individual would discover a union or oneness with the entire world of Form as it exists for that person. But that person’s world only includes Form up to the mythic level. There are, over his or her head, the entire levels of the rational world, the pluralistic world, and the integral world—real worlds, with real structures, and real phenomena, that the mythic individual is not—and cannot be—one with, because they don’t even exist in his or her awareness—and you can’t be one with that which doesn’t exist for you in any way. So the “unity consciousness” of the mythic individual is indeed a “unity,” but it is not a complete, full unity. It is partial, limited, incomplete, fractional.

Thus the second major point. Make sure each tradition is fully on board with the “conveyor belt” for its own teachings, helping individuals to Grow Up all the way to integral levels of their spirituality, so that their Awakening to unity consciousness, when and if it occurs, will be a real, true, full unity, including all the worlds—i.e., all the stages of Form—that have emerged and evolved to date. And this also applies directly to the creation and existence of societies that are truly—actually—inclusive, not just as a stated ideal, but as a direct and real human actuality. As developmental research demonstrates virtually conclusively, any 1st tier stage is, by its very nature, incapable of a true inclusiveness—it simply cannot cognize the requisite complexity or its unification. But the integral or 2nd tier stages—for the first time in history—bring a real possibility of a real inclusiveness, and the mental capacity and fullness to actually put it into practice. Educational and political systems should at least take this real developmental fact into consideration. If it’s developmental goals you want, how about starting with development itself as a goal?

(Adapted by the editors, with some inserted bridge language, from a chapter of this title in Ethics, Spiritual Values and the New UN Development Agenda, R, Clugston and M. Vilela Eds. New World Frontiers; forthcoming, spring 2014.)

Additional Resources Ken Wilber’s author page at Amazon: http:// www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1? url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&fieldkeywords=Ken+Wilber Websites: www.kenwilber.com; www.integrallife.com; www.integralinstitute.org Ken Wilber and Kurt Johnson discussing The Coming Interspiritual Age: http:// www.thecominginterspiritualage.com/media Doug King of Presence discussing an Integral view of Christianity: www.presence.tv Ken Wilber’s Integral Spirituality (2006) presents one of today’s most sophisticated understandings of religion and spirituality in a global context.

Because it was developed significantly in tandem with Wayne Teasdale’s vision of Interspirituality, integral principles formed much of the basis of views in The Coming Interspiritual Age.

by George Payne Based in Rochester, NY, yet engaged virtually anywhere in the world through social media, Gandhi Earth Keepers International is a grassroots, environmental justice organization devoted to the practices of active nonviolence and the principles of deep ecology.

Born from the universal principles of religious diversity demonstrated by Mahatma Gandhi, everyday we work to create a world where persons are treated as a child of God, where no one and no thing is devalued because of species, age, race, gender, religion, nationality, class, education, or physical ability, and the power of courageous love (i.e., ahimsa) is the highest pursuit of society.

In addition to these goals, it is our conviction that all animals deserve to be treated with reverence; that the magic of the natural world should be appreciated as a thing of wondrous beauty; and that all beings possess an inalienable right to inner peace.

At our best, our programs and projects provide citizens with the skills needed to evade the seduction of violence as a source of personal entertainment, political expedience, or religious justification.

Our structural purpose as an organization is to offer peace and justice education, nonviolent direct action, and uncensored photojournalism. Our director and trainers think and act critically with compassionate hearts and open minds.

Whenever we engage with nonviolent direct action, our methods are grounded in the principles of respect, religious diversity, peacemaking, alternative energy development, traditional agriculture, the fight for a livable wage, truth and reconciliation, and animal welfare and defense. The human mind cannot be divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. As Gandhi so eloquently demonstrated throughout his life, “all act and react upon one another.”

That being said, since our founding in July of 2014, we have been involved in a number of nonviolent movements, campaigns, and actions including the People’s Climate March in New York City, Ferguson October, the Syracuse University Student Sit-in, the homeless encampment called Sanctuary Village in Rochester, NY, and the Keystone XL Pipeline.

The People’s Climate March was a historic opportunity to make global warming a priority during the UN Climate Summit. The civil disobedience campaign known as Ferguson October raised the issue of racial injustice between communities of color and law enforcement. The Syracuse University “General Body” Sit-in represents the fight for safer and more diverse campuses. Sanctuary Village addresses the social and moral problem of homelessness through strategic nonviolence. And the Keystone Pipeline symbolizes the need to protect our wildernesses from corporate exploitation. (cont’d)

Mahatma Gandhi’s haunting warning of nearly a half century ago was part of a larger commentary attributed to him by his personal secretary Pyarelai Nayyar and translated from Hindi into English. The whole attribution says: “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed. In addition to the economic and the biological, there is another aspect of man’s being that enters into [human] relationships with nature, namely the spiritual. When the balance between the spiritual and the material is disturbed, sickness results. So long as we cooperate with the cycle of life, the soil renews its fertility indefinitely and provides health, recreation, sustenance and peace to those who depend on it. But when the ‘predatory’ attitude prevails, nature’s balance is upset and there is an all-round biological deterioration.

All of these movements and events contribute significantly to the overall fight for a more humane and spiritually enlightened world. With this as our first and last goal, the purpose of our organization is to report on events not as spectators but as trainers, activists, journalists and informed educators. As Gandhi said: “To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.”

Our signature program is No More Animal Massacres and Stop Testing Everything (NAMASTE). NAMASTE is a wildlife defense initiative that speaks out against animal abuse of all kinds, including laboratory testing, industrial farming, forced confinement, poaching, and the fur trade.

If the greatness of a nation can be judged by how well it treats its animals, then the United States is a very weak country indeed.

In order to salvage our integrity as a nation, we must restore threatened species, liberate factory-farmed animals, abandon abusive research programs in laboratories, and criminalize all forms of animal cruelty.

Compassion begins with justice, and justice ends with power: the two must be brought together. Whatever is powerful must be just, and whatever is just must be powerful. These words by Pascal are as poignant today as they were more than 300 years ago. It is a mantra that animates our relentlessly persistent vision of a nonviolent future that serves all life forms. www.gandhiearthkeepers.org https://www.facebook.com/GandhiEarthKeepers

About George Payne George is founder of Gandhi Earth Keepers International, a grassroots, environmental justice organization devoted to active nonviolence and deep ecology. George has published articles Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, among other journals, newspapers, and blogs.

He serves on the boards of the Rochester People’s Climate Coalition and the Interfaith Alliance of Rochester.

NY Council for the Human-ities grant recipient, he is an Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Finger Lakes Community College he has philosophy and theology degrees from St. John Fisher College, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, and Emory University (Candler School of Theology).

Sacred Earth: Our Call to Service

by J. J. Hurtak and Desiree Hurtak In the face of the climate change crisis, we need not only affirm the essentials of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of the UN, but to look ahead to the post-2015 UN -Development Agenda and the creation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which should succeed them. Accelerated climate change is a salient sign of the times.

We need to develop a greater acknowledgment of the inherent worth of the natural world, independent of its “commercial value� as a resource to meet our needs and desires. How can we begin? We must work with the understanding of humanity on the edge of survival using the blueprints of compassionate philosophy and ecology.

Thomas Berry, for example, recognized “Earth Jurisprudence” or “Earth law”[1] and affirmed the Earth is the source of laws that govern life and not the laws of humankind.

In the testaments of the many ecological prophets and wayshowers of renewal, comfortable people are being called to transform their complicity into a caring, nonexploitive lifestyle that continually respects nature, and does not require them to lose their equitable enjoyment of the good life. However, we have to add that the quality of life should no longer be measured by the quantity of our possessions, but by the quality of earth-human, human-human (e.g., gender and ethnic equalities) and humanSpirit relationships.

In the immediate phase of adaptation, we must seek to create small and appropriate ‘ecological communities’—both rural and urban—managed by catalysts for social and consciousness change. These communities should be encouraged to assist local families and communicate their knowledge of ecology and education as an integrative basis for redefining development and influencing positive policies in neighborhoods and local regions. Each group should help in shelters, meal centers, cultivating food (e.g., urban gardens on rooftops or open spaces), and other positive community projects. The challenge of climate change calls us to a radically new pluralism—a new way of looking at and relating to this bountiful but fragile planet, a new way of living, working, and governing ourselves. It calls for a Pax et Concordia (Peace and Harmony) that will draw on nature’s sustenance carefully and share it equitably.

We are, thus, being called to acknowledge our responsibility, to reorient our lives in this most difficult period of human history, and to be co-workers with humanity in the tasks of protecting and restoring creation with a unity of values. This can be done in cooperation between a future science guided by consciousness and spiritual dialogue that leads to renewal.

Survivability in the Developing Nations also means balancing the inner and outer needs of natives, social scientists, policy-makers, and educators committed to habitat sustainability. However, stake-holders need to be those who see the Earth as ‘Sacred’ and who are honest in transparency and economic accountability. The Academy for Future Science as an UN NGO is working with the indigenous elders in Brazil and Africa who are the ‘gate-keepers’ of small environmental habitats. Many of these habitats are in the remaining forest regions of the Amazon Basin and encompass a vast flora and fauna that could well be the basis for sixty percent of the world’s future medicines according to the late Jose A. Lutzenberger[2] of the Brazilian Environmental Ministry under President Fernando Collor de Mello.

The Academy has been working with the Xavante people (see pictures) and other tribes in the Brazilian rural interior of Mato Grosso. We also established a new ecological center called ‘Seeds of Light’ by providing medical care, teaching the engineering of new foods and computer skills, and sharing music as an inter-spiritual voice of ‘higher’ unity. Our plan for developing rural economics via small footprint ‘aquaculture’ is a blueprint that we have followed in helping villages become more sustainable, while providing more diverse, nourishing foods. A detailed pilot plan for agricultural development was approved by local Brazilian authorities for higher education and habitat survival. The urgent issues as voiced by the indigenous leaders working with us can be seen in a recent documentary entitled, Voice of the Amazon

and Beyond by documentarian Antara Brandner[3].

In short, the Divine call to survival does not call us to a lifestyle of deprivation, discomfort, and misery, but to a simpler lifestyle, which would have fewer material trappings, while being richer in terms of relationships and spiritual health. There would be less of the stress that accompanies the pressure to work harder, in order to afford what we have been conditioned to think we need. Although everyone would still need to do their share in order to be financially responsible, with greater awareness, there should be more time for building relationships within family and community, with nature, super-nature, and, most importantly, with the Supreme One. More importantly, there are consciousness approaches to the environment that need to be emphasized. The Masai tribe from Africa tells us that if there is drought or too much rain, it isn’t from Mother Nature alone, but is a reflection of those living in the region. Many have taken this to mean that we are causing the problems on an unconscious level that are reflected on the planet. We may not need to go that far, but in quantum physics, consciousness does not display complete autonomy from the environment. It also tells us that, for whatever reason these problems exist, we still have the ability to find solutions since we are part of the global consciousness.

Photos show work with the Xavante Indians, Mato Grosso, Brazil.

Courtesy of The Academy For Future Science.

Humanizing technology, as well as using the power of ‘renewable technology’ is also a key answer that can bring us through both the environmental crisis and our global challenges. The big debate should be: Are we to be passive onlookers on Mother Earth that seems to be a dynamo spinning out of control, or can we contribute something to help mitigate environmental change? Those who side with Descartes, who told us that man is outside of this environment, will not have the willpower to make the change.

Nevertheless, for those who understand the science of quantum physics which conceives of humanity as part of the whole, we will find ourselves interconnected and entangled, but also able to assist in creating solutions.

Conversations with God, if you truly listen, will tell you to get up and go out and work with others as well. This starts, as The End of Suffering[4] tells us, by finding our Sanga, our spiritual family in action. How else do we find our way in all of this? We have to reach down into our inner nature and find that quiet space where we can resonate with the Infinite. This usually comes through times of prayer, meditation, and sharing with others in song, vibration of affirmations, which we recommend be done daily by everyone.

The present world is only now beginning to hear the ‘Cry of Mother Earth’, while we

have continued to hear her cry! Life forms that took millions of years to evolve are disappearing in what is a speck on the geological timeline. Every human being is a coparticipant in the process of planetary transition, in which cause and effect are transcended in a larger self-fulfilling creation—a point where ancient prophecies and living consciousness are seen as merging into one. It is our mission statement and priority to keep our creative energy and vision flowing clearly and to keep the pathway of trans-human existence open.

As people of the consciousness awakening, we need to incorporate the demands of sustainable activities now. In short, we disparately need a planetary ethic that includes an expanded consciousness that sees the integration of human values while respecting all life forms and especially that of Mother Earth herself.[5] Now is the time for the Green Phoenix to rise! Namaste.

Copyright 2014: J. J. Hurtak and Desiree Hurtak

Notes: 1. Thomas Berry (2002), “Rights of the Earth: Recognising the Rights of All Living Things” Resurgence, No. 214, September/October 2002.

2. J.A. Lutzenberger. (2000) Conversations in his Brasilia office, Brazil.

3. Antara Brandner, (2012) film: Voices beyond the Amazon. Columbia: Limitless Light Productions.

4. Russell Targ and J.J. Hurtak (2006) The End of Suffering. Charlottesville, Va: Hampton House.

5. J.J. Hurtak and Desiree Hurtak, (2012) Rio plus 20. Panel on the UN Summit on Environment & Youth, a film report with Christina Stevens.

Desiree Hurtak, Ph.D., MS. Sc. Founder of Academy for Future Science (www.futurescience.org), an United Nations NGO and Co-founder of the UN Committee on Spirituality, Values and Global Concerns.

Member of the Board of FIONS, NYC and member of The Evolutionary Leaders.

Translator and co-author with Dr. J.J. Hurtak of commentaries on the The Pistis Sophia, The Gospel of Mary, and Thunder Perfect Mind.

J.J. Hurtak, Ph.D., Ph.D. Founder of Academy for Future Science, an United Nations NGO. Social scientist, futurist and remote sensing specialist. Author of The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of Enoch (www.keysofenoch.org) and books on theology and science. He is currently director of ongoing archaeological expeditions to Africa, the Middle East, and Brazil and is a member of The Contemplative Society.

Interspirituality

A Vision of Wholeness

by Beverly J. Lanzetta Interspirituality is a vision of wholeness on the other side of all that is partial and fragmented, and a promise of a unified creation exalted as the highest form of communion in the world’s sacred texts. It rests on a contemplative foundation, on the wayless way where name and attachment are given away in order to seek the holy and to be holy. As it exhausts all theories and views, interspirituality does not bring together diverse traditions and spiritual practices to forge a common religion. Rather, it is a quality of heart that honors the multiple ways in which mystery presents itself, without demanding a final truth or an ultimate name.

A global interspiritual contemplative path is not defined as over against or a revision of any other religious or spiritual heritage. It is not initiated to justify new insight against current theology; test its mettle against virtues and commandments; or measure its truth with reference to scriptures of ancient and modern civilizations. While verification and comparison have a vital role, they do not come first. The cry of passion never tilts in the direction of the past; the awe that overwhelms us suffers no compari-son with neighboring religions or truths; the impossible moment, when we are flooded with a reality beyond our understanding, does not succumb to testing or repetition. Now, more than ever, we need to trust those times.

As a practice of spiritual nonviolence, this journey of openness to other religions or to a spiritual life without religion arises from a wounding felt deep within the self that calls into question and suffers over the exclusion, indifference, superiority, injustice, and oppression that inhabits religions and turns the heart against itself. It is God’s dark night in us, an impasse between spiritual paradigms that is leading us to a new and deeper understanding of the sacred and of our part in the transformation of the world.

Together we are birthing an interspiritual path that requires a commitment perhaps unprecedented in history. While religions speak of a transcendent god beyond us, a savior who rescues us, or an absolute toward which we must strive, the mystical path of the heart begins from the process of birth, recognizing that within our beings, spirit is aflame, and new revelation is gestating. We may not yet be able to speak, we may be lost or afraid, but this new revelation is the sacred sound of our souls. For this, we are forging an interspiritual language that respects and honors the universal, sacred message found in the wisdom of the cosmos, the life forms of the earth, and humanity’s shared religious inheritance. It is a pure gift, this discovery of a new spiritual path within the depth of consciousness.

Learning to be silent before awe, we practice a faith that is not over against or privileged toward any named faith. Rather, we are champions of faith itself, of the mysterious challenge we humans face to trust in the unseen in order to make visible the Spirit on earth and to follow the unnamed, who calls us by many names. We come together as pilgrims, as apostles, to share our journey toward a global spiritual perspective, and to open our hearts in solidarity with each other and with the steady force of life itself that draws us toward a common destiny.

We are not here for ourselves alone. It is incumbent upon us to realize how our actions or inactions profoundly affect our soul health, relationship with all beings, and the diverse and complex biosphere of the earth. We need a voice and a vision from which to awaken the heart of the world and to rescue ourselves from endangering the spirit of life.

Injustice and war strike more deeply into the sacred web of creation, generating a hopelessness and despair that wound all our souls. The integrity of our planet and the fate of ecosystems are dependent on an excavation of our hearts and minds—and our souls and spirits—to discover a more generous benevolence and a sturdier vow of humility.

At the core of our collective journey is a vow. If we place divine mystery at the center of our hearts, then we truly are living a religious consciousness, whether or not we belong to a named religion. If we place the earthly realm and its entire human and more-than-human inhabitants on an altar of devotion and consecrate our lives each day to their benefit, we are living a spiritual path—a personal, organic spiritual path.

When our daily life becomes a prayer, then we are a prayer of love and healing for the world.

Three of Beverly’s books are found on her page at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Beverly+J.+Lanzetta Beverly Lanzetta is a theologian, spiritual teacher, and the author of seven books on global spirituality and new monasticism that have won praise for their wisdom, eloquence, and mystical insight.

Dedicated to a vision of theological openness and spiritual nonviolence, Beverly is the founder of Schola Divina and the Community of a New Monastic Way. She has been guiding others in the universal call to contemplation for almost forty years.

Long associated with the Parliament of the World’s Religions and their “Partner Cities” program, Ruth Broyde Sharone is an interfaith leader, documentary filmmaker, journalist, and author, honored internationally for her contributions to cultural education, peace and justice. Her recent interfaith memoir, Minefields and Miracles: Why God and Allah Need to Talk is a well-known survey of the history and personalities of the interfaith movement. Her equally well-known documentary film work has taken her around the globe and appeared through CNN and other international media venues.

Ruth Broyde Sharone with Rabbi Zalman SchachterShalomi, previewing her book Minefields and Miracles: Why God and Allah Need to Talk.

Imagining the Future of the Interfaith and Interspiritual Movements

by Ruth Broyde Sharone The ink is not yet dry on the page of interfaith evolution. As the Pew Research Foundation has documented, religious affiliation has declined substantially among adults, and notably among youth. Some 40% of those surveyed on college campuses did not identify with their parents’ religion or any other religion, causing them to check the “none of the above” box, and earning them at first the ironic title of “nones” when in fact they might have been dubbed the “alls.”

When interviewed, they said they considered themselves spiritual seekers or spiritual independents.They made it clear their relationship to structured religious practice and one-and-only-one religious affiliation was no longer relevant. It just didn’t turn them on. Their search for spiritual meaning, however, had increased, but they were no longer looking to their parents for answers to the most profound questions of their lives: Why am I here? What is my connection to the rest of the people on the planet and to the planet itself? How should I live my life?

This development of less religiosity and more spirituality has also been reflected in the interfaith movement itself, but in a distinctive incarnation. What began more than a century ago as an exploration between Christians and Jews, or Christians and Muslims, next morphed into the Abrahamic encounters with all three monotheistic religions becoming full partners in dialogue.

The first Parliament of the World's Religions, held at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, was also a significant watershed event, bringing together for the first time religious leaders from the East and the West. Since then, more and more communities have been included in our gatherings and deliberations . . . Unitarians, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Bahai’s, Zoroastrians, and Indigenous representatives.

Then came the next wave: Pagans, Wiccans, Scientologists, members of Global New Thought, and most recently the Atheists, Secular Humanists, etc. It seems everyone has been invited to the table at last.

Eboo Patel, founder and executive director of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) underscores this idea. “Religious diversity today . . . also has to include the various ways people affiliate vis-a-vis religion, meaning including secular humanist, agnostic, and spiritual seekers. It has to include . . Sunni and Shia, Catholic and Evangelical, Theravada and Mahayana. And finally, it has to take into account intersecting identities, how religion intersects with other identities like race, class, sex, and gender. This is all to say that an interfaith leader’s radar screen for religious diversity has to register far more than just Muslim, Christian, and Jewish.

Paul Chaffee, editor of The Interfaith Observer, which did an extensive overview of The Coming Interspiritual Age, wrote in the October 2014 issue: “Today, an unparalleled racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity, ignited by immigration policy reform in the 1960s and empowered by the globe-shrinking

influence of high tech, is making ‘dual identity’ something new and vital. Myriad possibilities emerge. Rather than repeating the predictable patterns of new immigrants, young second and third-gens can draw from a variety of ‘identities,’ values, shared traditions, and interfaith relationships. . . They have come through a cultural furnace, learning how to live well in the midst of conflicting cultural norms, expectations, and habits, a skill-set the whole human family needs to learn if we’re to last.”

At the most recent AAR (American Academy of Religion) Conference in San Diego, one of the workshops was devoted to exploring and analyzing the new phenomenon of one person having dual loyalties such as Hinduism and Christianity, or Judaism and Buddhism. Those studying the issue appeared to be experiencing more difficulty than the practitioners themselves. How does an individual with dual religious identities

Meeting at the Parliament of the World’s Religions of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and H. H. the 14th Dalai Lama.

simultaneously carry out the practices and rituals from both faiths, the religious scholars wanted to know.

As we interfaith activists have watched the interfaith community expand to contain all of the faiths and reflect our enormous diversity, we have simultaneously witnessed an internal, unstoppable movement towards greater spirituality as adherents move away from dogma and religious teachings to embrace a wider spirituality—a development which brings its own set of challenges. Many religiously identified interfaith activists view this current movement towards spirituality with great suspicion and trepidation, often referring to interspiritual seekers as “dabblers in woo-woo.”

Similarly, people in the spiritual movement are often a bit too eager to bury religion, as did a friend of mine recently who was keynoting at an interspiritual conference in New York. “Religion is dead,” was his opening statement. Perhaps the only interfaith representative in the audience, I objected publicly. “Your opening pronouncement is not an ideal ice-breaker to initiate a dialogue between the interfaith community and the interspiritual community", I remonstrated. "There are bridges that still need to be built between the two communities, and effective communication skills and language will be required to achieve that”.

As I observe the trending currents in both the interfaith and interspiritual communities, and the intertwining relationship developing between the two especially in the ecological sphere, I am convinced that what will eventually emerge is something new we have not yet imagined. The could be something unique, something that will demonstrate our creativity and flexibility, something that will affirm our humanity and connection to the Earth and secure our commitment to be conscientious custodians of our planet. What that is may be reflected in these recent comments by H. H. the 14th Dalai Lama: “I believe there is an important distinction to be made between religion and spirituality.

Religion I take to be concerned with belief in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition or another---an aspect of which is acceptance of some form of meta-physical or philosophical reality, including perhaps an idea of heaven or hell. Connected with this are religious teachings or dogma, ritual, prayers and so on. Spirituality I take to be concerned with those [qualities] of the human spirit---such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony, which bring happiness to both self and others.”

Additional Resources Ruth Broyde Sharone page at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Ruth-BroydeSharone/e/B0083J979U/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0 Ruth Broyde Sharone remembrance of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi inThe Interfaith Observer: http://theinterfaithobserver.org/journal-articles/2014/9/15/apersonal-reminiscence-of-rabbi-zalman-schachter-shalomi.html

Eco-Spirituality and Eco-Ministry in an Ecological Age

by Rev. Mac Legerton

Upcoming International Conference In February 2015, a international conference will be held in San Francisco on EcoSpirituality and Eco-Ministry. The Big I Conference (www.bigiconference.org), sponsored by the Order of Universal Interfaith, will be held on Friday, February 6th – Sunday, February 8th at the Mercy Center of Burlingame, CA.

The theme of the 2015 Big I Conference is “Ministering for the Earth…Tending the Heart of the Planet.” A Pre-Conference will also be held from 9:00 AM – 2:00 PM on Friday, Feb. 6th for leaders in Eco-Spirituality and Eco-Ministry in the California and West Coast area in partnership with National leaders in these fields that will attend the entire conference.

The Pre-Conference will focus on strengthening communication and connections between the leaders of organizational and institutional eco-ministry initiatives and to strategize on how to advance the institutionalization of eco-ministry on all levels within our diverse religious and spiritual organizations. The full conference will blend contemplative practice with deep conversation related to the great awakening and transformation of “Ministering for the Earth” and ushering in the Ecological Age from a common grounding in eco-spirituality and eco-ministry.

Eco-Spirituality and Eco-Ministry In every age, it is the responsibility of the religious pursuit and spiritual quest to cultivate and shape forms of devotion and service that meet the challenges of the era.

In this age, there is a powerful shift occurring in our human relationship with the earth and all life forms that, by necessity, will transform religious understanding, ethical principles, spiritual vision and practice, and social action. There is a broad and budding upwelling of spiritual consciousness and social action across the planet related to the human and earth relationship. This transformation is occurring on every continent and is being conceived in various ways. “Eco-spirituality” and “Eco-Ministry” are leading phrases that have been created to depict this new connection and expression between humanity and its care by, of, for, and with the earth.

In his essay entitled “The Ecological Age”, Fr. Thomas Berry described four ages in human history and how we now need to enter a fourth Ecological Age. Berry eloquently describes how our human family has moved through a primary tribal age to a second age of great traditional civilizations to a third Technological Age in Western culture that gave “men power formerly attributed only to the natural or the divine” (p.

7). Berry states that humanity now “has the power of life and death not only over human life but over the earth itself in its higher forms of life” (p. 9). Berry goes on to profoundly describe and assert the necessity to move to an age when “nations must learn a primary allegiance to this larger life system….Planetary welfare is now the welfare of each nation and each individual” (p. 11).

Fr. Berry’s account of the necessity of our transformation to the Ecological Age is both eloquent and impassioned. He declares: “Only such an Ecological Age can produce the understanding and the corresponding commitment required to stop the world of exploitation, of manipulation, of illusory money values, of mutual human abuse, of destructive violence so intense that it threatens to put the torch not only to the human city but to the planet itself. We have now acquired the power to turn the earth itself into a vast conflagration. But while we stop one world situation we must create another. Thus the need to awaken the energies needed to create a new world, to

evoke a universal communion of all living and nonliving systems of the universe….What is clear is that the earth is mandating that the human community assume a responsibility never assigned to any previous generation.” (The Ecological Age, pp. 16-17).

Ecological Roots of Interspirituality For Thomas Berry, the sacred solution is the promotion and discipline of an ecospirituality. Brother Wayne Teasdale, author of The Mystic Heart (MH) describes ecospirituality in this way: “A creation-centered spirituality, or an eco-spirituality, is a contemporary form of natural mysticism that combines the moral issue of the environment with the traditional emphasis of the nature mystic” (MH: 194). Ecospirituality is earth spirituality: the consciousness, experience, and practice of the earth as sacred and as a sacred being to which we belong and are a part. The Hebrew language explicitly recognizes this union: Adam (i.e. humanity) is a part, rooted in, and identified by Adamah (i.e. earth).

As Fr. Berry names this transformation to the Ecological Age and the practice of ecospirituality, Br. Wayne Teasdale describes the new dawning of ecological consciousness as the birth of the “Interspiritual Age” as a “radically fresh approach to our life as the human family in a fragile world” (MH: 4). Teasdale identifies seven shifts in our understanding that appear in the Interspiritual Age, of which five involve our relationship to Sacred Earth.

While Teasdale focuses his use of the “inter” portion of interspirituality as the interdependence between our world’s spiritual traditions, it is noteworthy that the term “inter” also means “earthen” which depicts ecological interdependence and ecospirituality. This broadening of our understanding of the root meaning of Interspirituality deepens its grounding in the natural world and in the earth’s spiritual power and revelation. Teasdale’s The Mystic Heart and more recently, Kurt Johnson and David Robert Ord’s The Coming Interspiritual Age (TCIA) provide guidance for our direction forward, joining the world religions’ millennial heritage of contemplative experience with today’s growing awareness of interspiritual experience, practice, education, and organization (TCIA: 346-361).

Indigenous, Integral, Inherent, Inevitable The worldview and practice of eco-spirituality is recognized and grounded within the lifeways of indigenous cultures and their wisdom traditions across the planet. Ecospirituality is also found within all major religious and spiritual traditions but its

emphasis and/or neglect within different systems is based on the particular assumptions and biases of diverse traditions and cultures. Eco-spirituality includes a focus on both individual and social engagement with all life forms and the relationship The Breadth of Emerging Interspiritual EcoMinistry: The kinds and varieties of ecoministry that are emerging, based on qualifications that various persons “bring to the table”: Violet— professional clergy who also have scientific credentials; Aquamarine— professional scientists who also have clergy credentials or activist religious affiliations; Magenta—social activists of all kinds (including journalists) whose passion is environment; Green—indigenous leaders and others from native traditions and communities; Yellow—professional environmentalists interested in partnering with spiritually based groups and institutions; Blue—general aficianados of environment and spirituality wishing to enhance their knowledge, skills and engagement; Indigo—Politicians who are both spiritual- and environmental- friendly. Source: Research on Eco-Ministry by The Order of Universal Interfaith (www.ouni.org). with Spirit as source, sustainer, and part of all life. Eco-spirituality also includes active engagement in the protection and promotion of the earth and all life forms. Ecospirituality is integral to both individual and social values, principles, practices and responsibilities. The field and practice of eco-spirituality is both diverse and highly developed and is rising within every religion and spiritual tradition.

With its integral vision in which contemplation is regarded as a part and activity of action, eco-spirituality is manifest in and through social responsibility. “Eco-ministry” has become a common phrase used to describe and incarnate eco-spirituality in action. It is the agency and vessel of eco-spirituality made manifest in the world.

Simply speaking, eco-ministry is two forms of service and practice: (1) caring for the earth and the fullness of all life; and (2) being cared for by the earth and the fullness of life. It is service by, with, and for the earth and all life forms. As Fr. Berry explains:

“There is no such thing as ‘human community’ without the earth and the soil and the air and the water and all the living forms. Without these, humans do not exist. In my view, the human community and the natural world will go into the future as a single sacred community or we both will perish in the desert.”

Today’s Emerging Eco-Ministry Presently, the upwelling of spiritual consciousness and social action has led to major new initiatives in eco-spirituality, eco-ministry, and eco-justice on the local, state, regional, national, and international levels of our earth community. Eco-ministry contains diverse experiences from those that draw us closer to the natural world and its sacredness to those that lead us to political action and policy leverage to protect and promote the health and well-being of the earth and all life. This surge of activities and significant action is occurring within every sector of human culture from religion and spirituality, to the physical and social sciences, to the profit and nonprofit sectors.

Major eco-issues and subjects include climate change, the over-exploitation of natural resources, pollution, urban sprawl, corporate agriculture, habitat loss, family farm loss, overconsumption of processed and fast foods, cultural dissolution, rising poverty, poor health outcomes, and indigenous and rural colonization.

Models and approaches to eco-ministry and eco-advocacy are surfacing within diverse religious and spiritual organizations and institutions. What is now needed is: (1) more communication, coordination, and consolidation of the power of these diverse approaches and models of “holarchy”; (2) the advancement and institutionalization of eco-ministry as an authentic and necessary form of ministry within our diverse religious and spiritual traditions and movements; (3) increased experiences, education, training, and immersion in eco-spirituality and eco-ministry that broaden the base of engagement and support for eco-ministry and eco-justice at all levels.

Additional Resources Web Resource on OUnI Eco-Ministry: http://www.ouni.org/community/eco-ministry-eco-chaplaincy/ For more information on the Big I Pre-Conference on the theme of this article, contact Rev. Legerton: mac_cca@bellsouth.net – 910-736-5573.

Rev. Mac Legerton is an ordained minister in the Southern Conference of the United Church of Christ and co-ordained as an eco-minister through the Order of Universal Interfaith. On the local level, he serves as Executive Director of the Center for Community Action in Robeson County, N.C. On the national level, he serves as Coordinator of the EcoMinistry Initiative of the Order of Universal Interfaith and a member of the 2015 Big I Pre-Conference Team. He is also a leader in the Guild of Spiritual Guidance, a 35-year-old national organization that combines a triple focus on interspiritual mysticism, depth psychology, and evolutionary cosmology. Mac is presently writing a book entitled: Spirit Sense and Sensibilities: Awakening and Living in the Fullness… of God. This article is excerpted from the manuscript chapter on “Eco-Spirituality and Eco-Ministry in an Ecological Age.”

2014 Ordination of Eco-Ministers at the "Big I" Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, all bringing diverse experience and credentials to their Sacred Earth ministries. Five Ezine authors are included (Mac Legerton, Eco-Ministry Coordinator for the Order of Universal Interfaith and Forum 21 Institute, back row, third from left).

Fr. Thomas Keating and planners of the Dawn of Interspirituality Conference meeting for a week of planning at “the Schoolhouse” near St. Benedict’s Abbey, Snowmass, Colorado, summer 2013. Left to right: Cynthia Brix, Rory McEntee, Fr. Keating, Janet Quinn, Kurt Johnson, Will Keepin, Fr. Matthew Wright.

A Never-Ending

THANK YOU to Fr. Thomas Keating

Fr. Thomas Keating (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Keating), named

by Br. Wayne Teasdale as one of his “Spiritual Fathers” (along with Fr. Bede Griffiths (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede_Griffiths), has consistently nurtured the growth of the interspiritual movement.

Frs. Keating, Bede Griffiths, Thomas Merton, Raimon Panikkar and Br. Wayne Teasdale are often referred to as “the Big Five” among Western monastics who were instrumental in bringing the spiritualities of East and West (and more recently North and South) together.

Since the transition of four of the “Big Five”, Fr. Keating assumed the responsibility for calling together members of the “spiritual families” of all the above to consistently plan and move the paradigm of interspirituality forward. After the Dawn of Interspirituality Conference in 2013, another big step was the framing of the Interspiritual Declaration: http://multiplex.isdna.org/declaration.htm.

The Declaration joins the “Nine Points of Agreement” from Fr. Keating’s 30year Snowmass Inter-religious Dialogue process with Br. Wayne Teasdale’s “Nine Elements of a Universal Spirituality” and other basis consensus statements from across the interspiritual experience. This Declaration has since been widely used in the international community by many United Nations NGO’s and Committees and other global interfaith networks. Fr. Keating met with the leadership of UN NGO Forum 21 in 2014. Once again, we all thank and honor Fr. Thomas Keating for his ongoing dedication to the Interfaith and Interspiritual movements.

Additional Resources See Janet Quinn’s Tribute to Fr. Keating in the Archive Edition of The Coming Interspiritual Age Ezine of 2013: http://issuu.com/yorkmin/docs/ the_coming_interspiritual_age_archive_edition Follow the genesis of “The Nine Points of Agreement” in the book recording the work of the Snowmass Inter-religious Dialogue The Common Heart: http://www.amazon.com/ Common-Heart-Experience-Interreligious-Dialogue/dp/159056099X/ref=sr_1_1? ie=UTF8&qid=1417297134&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Common+Heart

It Starts with a Circle

by Dorothy Cunha Sometime in 2001, I met Kurt Johnson. We were about eight people sitting in a circle sharing our spiritual interests and loves. Kurt talked of Brother Wayne Teasdale and Brother Wayne’s vision of interspirituality. From this first gathering, the Interspiritual Dialogue group (ISD) was born as the first of many communities exploring interspirituality—a movement (my word) where people of different spiritual paths come together and share their spiritual insights in heart-centered dialogue, creating a deeper consciousness bigger than the sum of its parts. A movement that views each “belief system” as having a valuable piece to contribute to the larger whole and the greater good. We’re all exploring just one part of the proverbial elephant. Together, with open

hearts and open minds, we can find a deeper exploration of those beliefs enhancing them beyond what we could do staying within the boundaries of a single vision of the divine and all the questions that go with it. Interspirituality does not ask you to change your beliefs, only to share in heart-centered dialogue.

My contribution to the conversation is the Shamanic arts. Shaman see their place as another manifestation of nature, like trees, mountains, and stars. Shaman open to dialogue with these relations.

In current times, our survival needs are met through a give-and-take relationship with manmade power structures like corporations and governments. That primary relationship supports and informs all other relationships—that to self, to others, and to nature. Before these structures evolved, our give-and-take relationship was with the natural world. It was the natural world that satisfied our needs for food, shelter, and clothing. Our world consisted of this planet, along with the sun, the moon, and the stars. These were living entities like the cashier at the A&P or the corporation you work for. Similarly, it was that primary relationship that supported and informed our relationship to self, community, and nature. This was the way for all of our ancestors.

The shamanic path is unique in that its practice requires a mind shift to the heart, a change in how we see ourselves and our relations. Physically and metaphorically, our ancestors saw differently; they looked out at the world differently. Their vision was long-sighted, seeing miles of open terrain and water; far off vistas of mountains and plains, sky, and stars allowing them to see cycles of 26,000 years. Today we typically

look a short distance in front of us to the car ahead, the buildings on the block we’re walking on, the subway station that takes us downtown, or the living room where the TV is. We rarely take note of the position of the sun in the sky, in favor of the movement of the clock on our wrist. These physical changes in how we see things translate to metaphorical, psychological, and spiritual shifts in our consciousness. The shamanic path encourages us to remember that this was not always how we lived and how we saw.

In 1993, my journey of self-exploration and evolution led me to study the shamanic arts. In 1999 I met don Oscar Miro-Quesada, originator of the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition (PMT), who has been my teacher since. Working single-handedly, don Oscar has been steadfast and devout in sharing what he was taught by elders carrying the ancient wisdom of the native peoples of Peru—the Chavin, Aymara, Lambayeque, and Chimu, to name a few. His commitment to reminding us of our ancient roots has been an act of love and compassion for our earth and our place in the universe (PMT; see heartofthehealer.org). Pachakuti is Quechua (the language of the ancient Peruvian cultures) for world reversal—a time of a great shift, the great turning.Don Oscar’s teachings remind us of this. He would more appropriately say that the Mesa and the Pachakuti Mesa practices help us re-member our Self, and in doing so, reconnect/ rewire our relationship to the world beyond what we in our near-sightedness focus on.

The PMT reminds us of the importance of community and ceremony from the heart.

In this excerpt from the five-part Pachakuti Mesa Tradition apprenticeship we contrast the cultural mindset of original peoples and where the human journey has taken it.

Original Cultures

Hybrid / Majority Cultures

• Educated “to be” • Alliance through interdependent relationships with nature and cosmos (Coherent Pragmatism) • Practice Spirituality • Community as life focus

• Educated “to have/possess” • Followers of the ideals of one or more individuals upon which they become independent (Dogmatists) • Devoted to a Religion • Self as life focus

Accepted Values Happiness Sharing Discretion Communal narrative/Myth Work as purposeful

Success Ownership Publicity/Fame Individual biography Work as definitive

Looking at these different perspectives, as world consciousness evolves to Oneness, you may feel an affinity for the perspective and values of the original cultures.

When the world’s religions sit around the table, it’s called interfaith. Add shamanic arts, nature-based cultures and other paths coloring outside the lines, and we have

interspiritual dialogue—the vision of Brother Wayne Teasdale. ISDNA.Org is a beautiful website with more information on interspiritiuality as envisioned by Brother Wayne.

The five directions of the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition offer a very rich, deep and multifaceted organizing principle for life. In one of these interpretations of the spiral intrinsic to the Mesa is: the South—industriousness or right action, the West— compassionate feeling, the North—great Spirit, the East—higher mind, the Center— unity. Put together, the Pachakuti Mesa contributes a teaching that can help where interspiritual dialogue and action meet: Right action born of compassionate spiritual wisdom unites.

Thank you Brother Wayne for bringing interspirituality to our consciousness and for bringing our consciousness to interspirituality. The circle continues.

Don Oscar and his Mesa at Mt Shasta

About Dorothy Cunha Dorothy (D’oro) is ceremonialist and sanctioned teacher of the five-part Pachakuti Mesa Tradition apprenticeship in the tradition of the Pachakuti Mesa—a wisdom path based in Peruvian curanderismo, originated and shared by don Oscar Miro-Quesada. She is co-founder of multiple organizations based on the principles of interspirituality as voiced by Brother Wayne Teasdale including Interspiritual Dialogue Group and Community of the Mystic Heart. D’oro is an ordained minister in Order of Universal Interfaith. Her email address is ShamanicArts@hotmail.com.

The Bellwethers Are Gathering

by Kate Sheehan Roach Kate Sheehan Roach worked in the academic and publishing fields before serving as founding editor of Contemplative Journal, a new online magazine for spiritual pilgrims of all faiths. She’s excited to see the mystical branches of all religions coming together in the name of unity, peace, and love. kate@contemplativejournal.com

In the preface of Brother Wayne Teasdale’s The Mystic Heart; Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions, Dr. Beatrice Bruteau describes in very practical terms what must take place in order for the spiritual unity of the world’s religions to evolve into a tangible unity of all peoples: “Mutual respect is the only

possible foundation for a free, just, equal, and responsible society, and mystical experience is the ultimate ground for that respect.”1 She further explains how the mystics’ united insight replaces the need to dominate or devalue others, freeing up a great release of energy that can instead be applied toward caring for and rejoicing in others. As a result, she says, “The bellwethers—the mystics—are gathering and uniting.”2 I’m delighted to report that I witness this phenomenon unfolding with increasing pace and power each day as I sit at the editorial desk of Contemplative Journal, an online magazine that is both part of and a product of this rise of mystical unity in our day.

Beatrice Bruteau described The Mystic Heart as “a kind of interim report” on the world’s journey toward unity. With her recent passing, I like to imagine her having a cup of tea with Brother Wayne in the great beyond, engaging in a long-awaited debriefing on the progress we’re making on this earthly plane. I wish I could report to them what I’ve been experiencing in my work with Contemplative Journal, but I’m happy to share my experience with you, Namaste readers.

Jim Graven founded Contemplative Journal to serve the growing population of contemplatives and others for whom spiritual practice is central. He recognized the need for an online gathering place for people of all faiths to come together to discuss Contemplative Journal chose the Magpie as its icon. As a indigenous animal totem, it symbolizes communication and the ability to “gather”.

and explore the tremendous wealth of contemplative teaching emerging in our day.

When he invited me to co-create this magazine about three years ago, neither of us knew exactly how the journal would unfold. We simply reached out to a broad range of contemplative teachers and writers whom we found inspired and inspiring and began

exploring the possibilities. The response was overwhelming. Indeed, the bellwethers were gathering and were very eager to contribute to this new venue.

Contemplative Journal was founded upon a key tenet found in both Teasdale and Bruteau’s teachings: if the bellwethers are the mystics, then we’re all potential mystics.

Brother Wayne says “Every one of us is a mystic. We may not realize it; we may not even like it. But whether we know it or not, whether we accept it or not, mystical experience is always there, inviting us on a journey of ultimate discovery.”3 So, the unifying feature of all contributions to the magazine (including advertisements) is a

connection to the many types of spiritual practice that cultivate mystical perspective.

Otherwise, our contributors are nothing if not diverse—including Buddhist (Zen, Tibetan, and others), Hindu (representing at least four different schools of yoga), Christian (Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Evangelical, Mormon, and various combinations thereof), Jewish, Baha’i, Sufi, Perennialist, Pagan, Sikh, Shaman, and the ever-growing body of people who identify as “spiritual but not religious”, “spiritually independent,” or “nones.” In the eighteen months since Contemplative Journal launched, these vastly different, dare I say divergent, faiths have more than coexisted on our pages. They’ve exhibited loving harmony based precisely upon the mutual respect Beatrice Bruteau alluded to in the preface of The Mystic Heart. And mystical experience has certainly served as the ultimate ground for this respect.

At a recent conference called The Spiritual Summit for Social Change, which took place in New York City last September, about 200 people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives came together to share and celebrate the great work being done in various interspiritual circles. When I was invited to speak on technology and spirituality, I turned to two others who have harnessed the Internet as a tool for spiritual development: Mary Ann Brussat (co-founder of Spirituality&Practice.com) and Michael

Wayne (founder of QuantumRevolution.net) and we formed a panel. We each spoke briefly about our own experiences and then opened up the floor for discussion. What came forth was a powerful awareness of how technology is moving us into a new realm of unity—in spite of our love/hate relationship with the machines and applications we’ve come to depend upon. But even more important was the understanding that technology is merely a conduit for the powerful spirituality emerging today. The metaphor of interconnectivity was not lost on this interspiritual audience!

Even the secular techies know it, evidenced in the Clay Shirky quote Michael shared from Wired magazine: “The Internet runs on love.” Indeed, the networks of reciprocity and unbridled generosity we see among bloggers and social media mavens are unprecedented in the commercial world. But the convergence we’re experiencing at Contemplative Journal is beyond our wildest expectations.

The best part is the community forming around Contemplative Journal. People of all walks feel at home in a forum that’s truly welcoming to all paths. When we draw from the well of mysticism, we find we’re not as different as our theologies try to make us.

But even differences are not a problem. Just as biodiversity enriches the ecosystems of our planet, we’re experiencing great benefit by virtue of our willingness to hold our arms open wide to embrace the full spectrum of mystical tradition and experience.

Brother Wayne attributes this unity to the preparation and deepening that comes with mature spiritual practice: “Every form of spirituality or the mysticism that reaches that height of maturity does so precisely because it is contemplative.”4 So while there is no contemplative Kool-Aid we’re all drinking, the deeper we Dr. Beactice Bruteau, draw from the well of mysticism the closer we come to the scholar of Teilhard de Pure Love that unites us.

Chardin, theologian, and Without the foundation of mutual respect Beatrice early writer on evolutionary Bruteau called for and the commitment to mature approaches to awakening. contemplative awareness Brother Wayne called for, She wrote the Prefece to Contemplative Journal would not exist. The big-hearted Teasdale’s classic The harmony, generosity of spirit, deeply thoughtful Mystic Heart. intellectualism, and humble wisdom we witness at Contemplative Journal create an atmosphere where the bellwethers can gather. It’s a beautiful sight to behold and a harbinger of great things to come.

1Wayne Teasdale, The Mystic Heart:

Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions (Novato, California: New World Library, 1999), xix.

2Teasdale, Wayne, The Mystic Heart, xix.

3Teasdale, Wayne, The Mystic Heart, 3.

4Teasdale, Wayne, The Mystic Heart, 238.

THE INTERSPIRITUAL AGE: Looking in the right place

by David Ellzey

“The quality of our consciousness permeates everything we do because that awareness is who we really are” (Wayne Teasdale, The Mystic Heart, pp. 96-97).

She sobbed on the phone with long pauses between her attempts to breath, and yet amidst the tumult she could calmly respond to my questions, thus proving our ability to directly experience emotions, and yet be untouched and reflective upon them simultaneously. How is this possible and what does it have to do with the growth of the Interspiritual age? Everything.

As a coach and teacher for the last thirty years witnessing the journey of healing and awakening to aware presence, I’ve seen the gamut of emotions and the natural tendency to identify with them as the totality of who we are. This is the essential component of our perceived separation: how we define the self, normally using experiences, history, beliefs, and perceptions. Yet, as said eloquently by Br. Teasdale, “… awareness is who we really are.”

This awareness is unconditioned by the limits of mind and beliefs, whether religious, cultural, political, or moral. This truth is the portal to the Interspiritual era transmuting from an intellectual conversation into our sense of daily experience and into our relationships. This realization of ourselves as essentially awareness is intimately personal and must be experienced by each of us, potentially even as these words enter those eyes.

This pure unconditioned awareness with many names can be found to be the unifying principle for declaring Interspirituality as a truth. But there’s a problem. This often remains in the realm of an intellectual, often heated and emotional, debate. It remains in the head, debating ideas and beliefs and at times, defending them to the death. And it misses the greater transformational possibility.

Awareness is universal, yes. All humans are aware. Of course, we can debate what they are aware “of”, or what level of awareness, but without question, awareness itself is a mutual component of everyday life for all humanity. But can this realization alone alter the consciousness of the species to directly experience its oneness?

Although the spiritual approach is an essential and clear potential pathway to recognizing our connectedness, I have an additional proposal. Perhaps we should also Additional Resources consider how it is actually in our humanness that we find our greatest and experientially undeniable David’s website: www.davidellzey.com commonality. The tears of a mother at the loss of a child to war or violence are the same tears David’s page at Science and across all boundaries of religion, race, tribe, and Nondualty, with videos: http:// culture. Our humanness is our unbreakable tie www.scienceandnonduality.com/ that binds us together. And unfortunately this most contributors/david-ellzey/ essential truth is mostly unseen.

With our oneness unseen, these human tears can and do tear us apart, family against family, religion against religion, and nation against nation. However, they can also be the evolutionary meeting place.

In the 80s I traveled to the then Soviet Union with performing artists, teachers, mothers, and war veterans on a mission to meet our counterparts there. From the first meeting with our “enemy”, eye to eye, the heart cried out to know itself as each of us, to see behind the veil of them as the “evil empire” and us as the “evil Americans”. Deeply we knew this was a lie. During our meetings or a bit of vodka late at night, tears of this truth of oneness often escaped our eyes. These tears tasted of salt and the heart regardless of the language we spoke.

The one place where our common ground is undeniable is in our frail, naked, vulnerable, powerful, essentially divine humanness. Our pain, our ecstasy, and yes our love. Although love may be experienced differently across cultures, there is a yearning within the human heart to feel and express this unconditioned feeling with safety in a world filled with danger built on lies of our separation.

The beautiful irony is that in this human meeting place, we find the common spirit of being, the home of unconditioned awareness. It is here we know the spirit that transcends all religions and yet is at the core of each of them. Thus, in the end, it is through accepting our humanness together that we once more uncover the spiritual depth that transcends it. Although it has many names and traditions we finally reveal this transformational reality as the very heart of Interspirituality. It is here that our humanity and spiritual nature merge. It is here that Interspirituality can penetrate the veil of separation and integrate into a life of connectedness on this spinning garden in space. “ … the spiritual journey, when it has reached its fullness, unites these two realms of experience” (Wayne Teasdale, The Mystic Heart, pp. 96-97).

About David Ellzey David is well known as both a spiritual teacher-author and transformative entertainer. Author of The Ocean of Now, and a pioneer teacher of the Sedona Method of spiritual inquiry, he has inspired thousands worldwide, from the United Nations’ Society of Enlightenment and Transformation to children at Mother Theresa’s Orphanage. David’s teaching and entertainment careers are grounded in years of spiritual exploration across all the world’s traditions, a wide array of experience which has placed him demand as a motivational speaker, trainer, entertainer, and lifecoach. David heads his own company, David Ellzey Enterprises, and is also a consultant at Focus Consulting Group, coaching conscious leadership in the corporate community.

William Keepin and Rev. Cynthia Brix

Interspirituality and

Gender Reconciliation

“I am a Muslim, and a Hindu, and a Christian, and a Jew—and so are all of you!” Thus exclaimed Mahatma Gandhi in a moment of inspired exasperation, responding to his advisors who were pressuring him to forego meetings with Muslim leaders during the struggle for India’s independence. Gandhi was illuminating the universal truth of the human spirit, and highlighting the reality that all religions are currents in one vast river that flows through every human heart, carrying it back to the infinite ocean called God (or Source or dharmakaya or any number of other names).

A thousand years from now, historians will look back on this period in human history as the pivotal period when this crucial inspiration from Gandhi and various pioneers of “interspirituality” such as Raimundo Panikkar, Swami Abhishiktananda, Beatrice Bruteau and others finally began to take root on a broad scale. Never before in human history has it been more important—nor more possible—to bridge the world’s religious and spiritual traditions than it is today. Barriers between religions are shifting and breaking down as never before—forging new spiritual pathways in the broad wake of the emerging Second-Axial consciousness that is now widely recognized.

This spiritual evolution is fueled by the human heart crying out for new bridges of love, healing, and reconciliation across differences—not only religious differences, but also racial, gender, caste, social, and class disparities. “The stakes are higher than ever,” says the Dalai Lama, “not only for the survival of our species but also for the very planet itself and the myriad other creatures who share our home.”

In answer to this call, the world religions are slowly beginning to come together in new ways, despite their vast and rich differences.

Teachings of compassion and deep respect for others is universal in all religions, and the ‘golden rule’ is found in every tradition. In the end, the only realistic path forward is for the entire human community to live as one family and one species in harmony with millions of other species on this planet. This calls each of us to a deep intentional lived practice, and a commitment to understand the other.

Cultivating Women’s Spiritual Mastery conference, Turin, Italy, June 2009.

In the rightful enthusiasm about interspirituality, certain key concerns are looming, such as: Will this new interspirituality perpetuate, or dissolve, the patriarchal oppression and domination that have characterized every major religion East and West? Although spiritual consciousness ultimately transcends gender altogether, women still face unique challenges and obstacles in all of the world’s religions. For women in particular, therefore, participation in the current conversation and the emerging larger movement of interspirituality poses a particular challenge. The question that rests on most women’s hearts and minds is “Will the patterns of patriarchal behavior and practice that

afflict virtually every sector of life—from the bedroom to the boardroom to the church, temple, and mosque—continue to be perpetuated within the interspiritual community?

The jury is still out on this question, but there are some encouraging signs. Five years ago in Turin, Italy, we organized an interspiritual women’s conference entitled Cultivating Women’s Spiritual Mastery. The intention of this gathering, which drew 75 women from 15 countries, was to bring women together from diverse spiritual paths to explore avenues for mutual support, mentoring, blessing, and empowerment.

The conference included three prominent presenters, who we deem to be contemporary women spiritual masters in their own right: Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Tibetan Buddhist), Sr. Lucy Kurien (Catholic) , and Swami Ambikananda (Hindu Shaivite). Each of these three has forged a unique spiritual path, true to her heart's calling, against formidable odds within her respective faith tradition. All three directly confronted patriarchal injustice within their traditions, and overcame it with love and truth—thereby surmounting major obstacles to achieve their profound missions, which would otherwise never have manifested had they merely followed traditional religious and spiritual protocols for women.

During the course of the conference certain patterns of gender and sexual discrimination emerged that were common across all the women’s experience in religious and spiritual life in all the traditions represented. While this common ground was not surprising, it gave new impetus for us to continue developing programs in Gender Reconciliation specifically designed for religious and interfaith gatherings.

Since then we have offered Gender Reconciliation programs to various interfaith groups, including the South African Council of Churches and the Cape Town Interfaith Initiative. Rev. Mpho Tutu, daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, invited us to conduct an intensive program on Gender Reconciliation for an invited group of religious leaders convened by the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation. The results of these programs have been deeply moving and inspiring. Poignant stories have emerged Healing moment in Gender relating to experiences of Reconciliation with Rev. Mpho clerical abuse, including Tutu, daughter of Archbishop sexual misconduct, and Desmond Tutu and Director of the anecdotal accounts of Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, South Africa.

patriarchal imbalances in church hierarchy and leadership. Participating women and men moved through these challenges to establish a new trust and faith in one another, and create powerful ceremonies to honor and bless one another. One of the priests exclaimed afterward, “This was more than a workshop; it is a whole new tradition!” This priest and several other participating clergy affirmed their intention to attend our professional training program in Gender Reconciliation. We are preparing a proposal to offer a similar program at Dawn of InterSpirituality conference near Seattle, the upcoming 2015 October, 2013.

Parliament of World Religions.

In 2013 we organized the Dawn of InterSpirituality conference in collaboration with the Snowmass InterSpiritual Dialogue, founded by our beloved mentor Fr. Thomas Keating. This conference brought together 175 religious leaders and seekers from 12 countries, representing all the major world religions, including those who identified as ‘spiritual but not religious.‘ The conference provided a unique forum that opened a space for deeper conversations in inter-religious dialogue and exchange, including specifically taboo issues of gender discrimination, religious intolerance, and other challenges.

A major goal of these interspiritual conferences is to facilitate potentially challenging Muslim and Catholic women conversations around delicate participating in Gender issues, with the intention to Reconciliation program. move through and beyond these conflicts to reach a place of empathy and mutual understanding. The gender dimension is central in these conversations, and we anticipate this is just the beginning.

Interspirituality offers a crucial new opportunity for immense healing of gender injustice within religion. Precisely because patriarchal imbalances have characterized every major religion, addressing this imbalance in a genuine way offers profound leverage for healing and transformation across the religions. If “God enters through a wound,� then God can enter more deeply through a deep wound. Skillful attention to the gender issue can thus serve as transformative grist for the interspiritual mill, bringing women together across the religious traditions in mutual empowerment, and drawing women and men together in a new spiritual covenant that heals past gender divisions in religious communities, and reclaims the birthright of gender harmony in the human family.

Ultimately we must go beyond gender altogether, for the soul is intrinsically beyond gender and indeed beyond dualities of any sort. Nevertheless, the new interspirituality has the potential to forge an unprecedented pathway into gender healing, and thereby facilitate a profound transformation of patriarchal injustice that has not yet been achieved within any of the established religious traditions. This could be one of the greatest gifts of interspirituality.

Additional Resources Satyana Institute website with extensive coverage of the Dawn of Interspirituality Conference, including photos and videos: www.satyana.org Dawn of Interspirituality Conference video archive at YouTube: https:// www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Dawn+of+Interspirituality+Conference William Keepin, Ph.D. and Rev. Cynthia Brix direct the Satyana Institute and are co-founders of Gender Reconciliation International, which collaborates with the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation to promote healing and reconciliation between women and men in society. Will and Cynthia have organized over 80 workshops and on six continents in Gender Reconciliation, and are conducting professional facilitator trainings in several countries. Will is a physicist and environmental scientist, former whistleblower in nuclear science policy, and has trained extensively in transpersonal psychology and spiritual traditions East and West. He is co-editor of Song of the Earth: A Synthesis of Scientific and Spiritual Worldviews (2012). Cynthia is an ordained interfaith minister, former wellness manager, gerontologist, and organizer and producer of a conference and video entitled Cultivating Women’s Spiritual Mastery. Will and Cynthia are authors of Divine Duality: The Power of Reconciliation between Women and Men, and Women Healing Women. www.satyana.org and www.GRworld.org.

Sukyo Mahikari: The World Shrine, SUZA Place, Takayama City, Japan

The Interspirituality of Kotama Okada Founder of Sukyo Mahikari

by Kurt Johnson and David Robert Ord Wayne Teasdale, in The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions, wrote that in the near future diverse leaders from many cultures would come forward proposing holistic and universal understandings of the world’s religions.

As the global interspiritual discussion has continued, we have come to realize that, similar to this ezine’s discussion of the interspirituality of India’s great spiritual teacher Yogi Bhajan, another major figure in the global evolution of a universal spirituality was Kotama Okada. Kotama Okada founded the global Sukyo Mahihari movement, which as “Sukyo Mahikari Centers for Spiritual Development” originated in Japan but has since spread expansively worldwide. Today there are over a million members and centers in 75 different countries.

Like other prophetic figures of our modern day who became pathfinders in their own unique ways, Kotama Okada’s roots are in a unique personal prophetic experience that led him to not only articulate his universal teachings but to create a global community around them. When the authors of this article first began reading literature suggested to them, they were astounded at the similarity of the language, worldview, cosmology—and yes, even the predictions for the future made by Okada and the spiritual writers and teachers the interspiritual community records as its pioneers.

Background and History Typical of how the history of religions has unfolded, and reflecting Wayne Teasdale’s now classic comments about the role of the “prophetic voice” in our modern age, on 27 February, 1959, Kotama Okada received a spiritual experience that he interpreted as revelatory. The numinous content of this experience (to use the

Sukyo Mahikari: Hikaru Museum Place, Takayama City, Japan.

classic term of theologian Rudolf Otto about the nature of such experiences and their effect on the experiencer) led Okada to conclude that a calling had been revealed to him to establish a spiritual movement that would spread a new wave of universal teachings. For Okada, these included an understanding of “the Creator’s” universal laws and future plan, one that was not only prophetic in its cosmology—looking toward the world’s globalized future—but also involved new methods of spiritual practice. The latter were akin to, though unique in their nuances, the energy-related healing practices of a number of world religions. Through Okada’s movement, they became known as “the art of True Light—the purification of spirit, mind and body with divine energy”, which achieved such results in the lives of adherents that the movement and its teachings spread quickly and widely.

Okada needed to be quite daring to set out on this journey, especially in the perilous times of post-war Japan. But the message that he had heard was equally severe:

You will be made to speak the depth of the teachings, which was not revealed before. The Spirit of Truth has entered you. You shall speak what you hear. The time of heaven has come. Rise. Your name shall be Kotama. Raise your hand.

The world shall enter severe times2.

Okada was surprised by this, and other experiences that followed, but he elected to follow such directions with a sense of mission. This devotion soon led him to discover friendships among the adherents and leadership of ancient Shinto (the ancient indigenous spiritual tradition of Japan), which, again to his surprise, revealed a deep context—within historical Shinto prophecy—by which he could further understand the potential meaning of his experiences. Some priests from a tradition of esoteric Shinto suggested he participate in a series of well-established ritual tests to determine the authenticity of his experiences. He agreed3. The Shinto priests were interested because there exists in Shinto a teaching that a person with the mission of Yo would appear on earth at about this time.

Sukyo Mahikari: Hikaru Memorial Shrine Place, Gifu Prefecture, Japan.

The Shinto tests were repeated several times, beginning in June 1960, and each time they produced similar results—not only convincing to the priests but also confirming through their own inquiries the validity of many of the things, and predictions, that Okada was making.

The Interspirituality of Okada’s Teachings Of particular interest to the interspiritual movement is that a major premise of the message welling from Okada’s teachings concerned all religions rediscovering their common origin, in their sense of God or source. Another was Okada’s insistence on emphasizing, in a much more direct manner, the teachings of our profound interconnectedness with everything; that is, emphasizing the direct experience of the contemplative or mystical dimension of human consciousness.4 For Okada, this meant truly holistic and integral approaches to all aspects of life and living. It’s this aspect of Okada’s teaching that’s so in tune also with the modern integral movement. In fact, readers of Okada’s works (and commentaries on them from across his movement) are often astounded by the similarity of his language and worldview with modern interspiritual and integral writers like Wayne Teasdale and Ken Wilber. It was this direct manner of viewing spiritual experience that also defined Okada’s other stated mission —to give people, through their connection with their experience of God or source, the opportunity to utilize the practice of “True Light”5.

Because of the consistency between ancient Shinto teachings and those that had arisen independently through Okada’s personal experiences, Okada’s movement gained respect within the historical understanding of Japan’s rich religious heritage. It’s similar to when Yogi Bhajan returned to India after the creation of his international community, which he associated with the Sikh tradition. Sikh leaders had to discern, and decide for themselves, whether (as Yogi Bhajan said) this new Sikh community was a new branch authentically connected to the millennial history of the Sikh gurus. In Kotama Okada’s case, the fact that the revelations revealed by the ritual tests were identical to those received by him was a surprise to the Shinto priests. It might seem extremely unusual for a supposed divine mission of an individual to be confirmed by an unrelated religious organization, but these are two great historical examples. On Okada’s part these independent tests later proved to be an important factor in

persuading many influential people in Japan to accept his vision and collaborate with him.

Kotama Okada’s Message According to Okada’s teachings, it is important now for society to nurture spiritcentered people who can take on the responsibility of being pioneers in the 21st century. Seeing the global landscape emerging after the world wars, Okada wanted to share a vision that transcended human-made barriers and boundaries that currently exist between ethnic groups, cultures, religions, and nationalities. He clearly perceived that such teachings could help humankind awaken to a global sense of oneness and the desire to pursue a planet-wide civilization based on such a unity consciousness.

Indeed, this is what he taught as his sense of “divine plan”.

According to these teachings, “the Creator” has a plan that spans billions of years.

The ultimate goal of the plan is that human beings, who are “the Creator’s children”, will create a “heavenly” civilization on earth, a civilization that is a physical reflection of the highest of ideals, those that have historically always been associated with the divine, where people live in accordance with perennial teachings of love and thus enjoy eternal prosperity. In this cosmology, after providing the earth with its bountiful supply of natural resources, “the Creator” intended its human inhabitants to use their diverse talents and physical skills to properly utilize and steward the earth’s resources. This is a co-creator cosmology in which humans have an important and highly responsible role to fulfill here on earth.

Because of this context, Okada’s cosmology is a developmental cosmology, much in tune with the modern views of the evolutionary consciousness, integral, and developmental movements. It takes into account that, historically, humanity would ebb and flow through different paradigms of attainment, one replacing another. There would be appropriate times for materialistic development and then appropriate times for the reintegration of spiritual and moral values into these achievements. Thus, as history has shown, people developed civilizations in many parts of the world in which the quest to produce and accumulate material things played an important role. In the process of developing these civilizations, people often became excessively materialistic and frequently exploited other people and nature. Okada said, for

instance, that by placing material values above ethical, moral, or spiritual values, people would end up polluting not only the earth, the oceans, and the atmosphere, but their very values systems—their souls. If people continued to live in ways contrary to universal principles, he said, it would become increasingly difficult for them to establish a sustainable civilization on earth. Indeed, he said, if humanity continues to ultimately travel along the purely materialistic path, one day this path might lead to the destruction of humankind.

Sukyo Mahihari: The Youth Hall Place, Gifu Prefecture, Japan.

But in turn, he said, if humanity could face the repercussions of its materialistic achievements and return to deep senses of ethics and morals—spiritual values—there could be a healthy movement on to the next stage of history. This stage of history, he said, could be one of a sustainable and healthy global civilization, one dedicated to the wellbeing of all. According to Okada’s teachings, in 1962 humankind entered a new era, a period of major transition, a time wherein spiritual wisdom and values would begin to take precedence over material values and eventually encompass them.

When he founded the Mahikari organisation in 1959, Kotama Okada’s intention was to find and nurture people who can become seed persons, or pioneers, for the new spiritual civilization that he saw “the Creator” intending for humankind. He hoped that such pioneers would elevate themselves spiritually by truly dedicating themselves to practicing divine principles in daily life. Through their efforts to work for the accomplishment of such a future for the world, seed people, he said, could help create the best possible outcome for an ethical, moral, and heart-centered global civilization at this critical stage in history. This vision is one that has helped make the modern vision of the Sukyo Mahikari movement inspiring to millions.

Day to Day Life Typifying a spiritual community for the global age, Sukyo Mahikari is an organization where people from all walks of life and different backgrounds come together to develop themselves spiritually so that they can realize their true potential as human beings. By developing themselves spiritually, people have the opportunity to improve their lives and to enjoy better health and wellbeing. In addition, they have the opportunity to find an effective way to help others and to live in greater harmony with their family, colleagues, and environment. Helping others and living in harmony with one’s surroundings are some of the best ways to achieve personal growth and real happiness. A major principle of the movement is its commitment to green living and sustainability. For instance, it’s New York Center is a model LEED certified “green” building celebrated by designers and architects worldwide for it’s pioneering approaches to buildings and building materials.

In the day to day life of its adherents, the wonderful tools that Sukyo Mahikari would like to share with everyone include its spiritual energy practices—the “art of True Light”—and its teachings concerning universal principles that could achieve the type of future world so many long for. For Sukyo Mahikari adepts, the practice of giving and receiving divine light allows people to gradually awaken to the existence of the spiritual dimension—the world of the subtle and spiritual realms and the reality of God, source, or creator. The integration of these understandings has a profound influence on human life. It leads to appreciation of the close interconnection and relationship between spirit, mind, and body, and particularly the importance of one’s inner attitude.

Regarding day to day life, a major Sukyo Mahihari principle is expressed as “the principle of spirit first, mind next, body follows”. Utilizing the teachings and practices, people can cultivate a positive and holistic attitude. As a result, they can be people of high self-esteem and confidence, who find deeper purpose and meaning in their lives.

Kotama Okada

Sukyo Mahikari in Interspiritual Perspective It’s no surprise, we think, to find yet another global movement whose principles and visions mirror the emerging sense of an arising interspiritual age. Kotama Okada’s message mirrors that of all the major interspiritual pioneers. Sukyo itself means “the universal laws established by the creator at the time of the creation so that all things in

the universe can prosper eternally”, and Mahikari means “True Light”, the light of the creator that purifies all things.

Because the objective of Sukyo Mahikari is to help people awaken to universal (or divine) principles, and to encourage them to respect and practice these principles in daily life, it is an example of today’s global trend toward expression of universal truth and the hope for a healthy global civilization. Typifying the vision of the entire pantheon of historical interspiritual pioneers, the movement built on the vision of Kotama Okada is one of holistic interspiritual principles, joining in one universal cosmology the realms of science, religion, education, history, politics, and the many other things that people pursue in order to make the world potentially a happier and better place to live.

Interestingly, though not surprisingly given the vision of an interspiritual age, Sukyo Mahikari originally sprang from the roots of one culture, indeed the ancient wisdom traditions of that culture. It’s precisely because of this ancient rooting, we think, that it simultaneously also represents something born anew—by the universal views of it’s founder. This has caused it to succeed worldwide. We hope we can look toward Sukyo Mahikari, among many other movements like it worldwide, to takes its place in the leadership toward the kind of sustainable, ethical, and moral world for which all in their heart of hearts appear to yearn.

Editor’s note: This journalistic article was prepared by Kurt Johnson and David Robert Ord based on materials provided by Sukyo Mahikari representative Rev. Ken Kitatani and from the book God’s Light and Universal Principles for All Humanity (2nd Edition), Sidney E. Chang PhD, Editor, LH Europe publishers, 2007.

Additional Resources Website: www.sukyomahikari.org (also provides directory to all Centers worldwide) Book: God’s Light and Universal Principles for All Humanity (2nd Edition), Sidney E. Chang PhD, Editor, LH Europe publishers, 2007 at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Light-Universal-Principles-Humanity/dp/ 2959971701/ref=sr_1_1? s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417555493&sr=1-1&keywords=Sidney+E.+Chang

A Thumbnail Sketch of the History and Future of INTERSPIRITUAL DIALOGUE in a Fragmented Era

by Lama Surya Das Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh says that eighty percent of everything we think is wrong. I think he’s being generous. My late great mom, Joyce Miller of Long Island, used to say: “Jeffrey, what other people think is none of your business.” Sage advice!

Once, when my parents grudgingly visited me in Japan in 1975, she said: “Jeffrey, I don’t know about God and Buddha, but I certainly believe in all that is good and true.”

Does humanity and the planetary environment as we know it have to die to be reborn? Is this our Karmageddon?

In our increasingly shrinking, interconnected world, we need to evolve from dependence to independence, and even further toward realizing genuine freedom and autonomy within interdependence.

I believe that it’s incumbent upon each of us to strive to do so and together become wise Bodhisattvas, collective leaders, and altruistic awakeners rich in both smarts and Lama Surya Das leading a heart. Indra’s gathering at Dzogchen Osel cosmic net and Ling.

Lama Surya Das with H. H. the Gyalwang Drukpa, spiritual leader of Ladakh; His Holiness is well-known for guiding Ladakh into building and environmental codes that are fully sustainable and based completely on indigenous materials and resources.

universal hologram presaged the internet in many ways, leveling the playing field and empowering each and all of us as the center of the universal mandala, far beyond ordinary solipsism. Today, we could well strive together to transform social media into spiritual media by skillful use of the bandwaves, galvanizing into action our committed grassroots networks to genuinely occupy this media spirit, over which the one per cent will not easily relinquish control.

Mahatma Gandhi said that there are seven blunders causing the violence that plagues the world: wealth without work; pleasure without conscience; knowledge without character; commerce without morality; science without humanity; worship without sacrifice; politics without principles.

The future starts now. History is composed of an infinite series of last moments.

What is the future of anything? That is partly what we ourselves manage to co-create.

Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape. The word religion stems etymologically from the Latin “religio�, to unite or bring together. Unfortunately, religion today too often seems part of the problem rather than contributing to helpful solutions. Extreme views and anachronistic forms of intolerant and dogmatic religiosity seem bent towards bringing humanity to the very brink of self-destruction. Meanwhile, blessed are the flexible, for they shall not get bent out of shape.

Interfaith dialogue has given way to interspiritual dialogue (ISD), at least on these shores, ever since Brother Wayne Teasdale raised its standard and rallied hearts and minds, bodies and souls to that prophetic vision that was to become our happy cause.

Following in the large footsteps of Father Bede Griffiths, an Indian sadhu and Christian saint, decades back he sparked a quiet renaissance in the evolution of religion and spirituality in our troubled time. This ISD movement and coalition challenges us all to develop a profound sense of universal responsibility, joyfully further common efforts to solve common problems, link heads and hands, hearts and minds, and walk our talk through collective soul power. It’s an excellent antidote to the stress and malaise, cynicism, and overwhelming Dzogchen Osel Ling (Dzogchen feelings of Lighthouse) built by Lama Surya powerlessness, Das at the direction of his lineage hopelessness through Rhenpo Jamyang Dorje. even, that enervate so many today in the face of global socioeconomic problems, environmental degradation, the gelding of institutional religion, and our political oligarchy.

I believe this essentialized global spirituality is the new frontier—inner space, deep and subtle, beyond the polarities of outer/inner, above/below, masculine/feminine, or the fractious “-isms” and schisms of world religions. If and when we plumb this evergreen mystery of our miraculous existence and true nature, we are always amazed at the marvels of spiritual rebirth and transformation.

ISD is really nothing new. Ancient and timeless spiritual traditions have coexisted and communed together for millennia, even before the Axial Age, 2500 years ago, when most of the major world religions were founded.

Good spiritual friends are the whole of the holy life. Find refuge in the Sangha, in kindred spirits, and in community.

–The Buddha And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.

–The Talmud

In this remote neck of the woods, on the western frontier of the nascent American colonies—Concord, Massachusetts—Ralph Waldo Emerson epiphanically perceived his spiritual mind as “God’s transparent eyeball.” Along with Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and utopian Bronson Alcott, he helped introduce “Hindoos” and Buddhism (the Lotus Sutra) into the American melting pot. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Alan Watts, Huston Smith, Joseph Campbell, Baba Ram Dass, Brother David SteindlRast, Allen Ginsberg, Rabbi Zalman Schacter, Father Thomas Keating, the Dalai Lama, and even more recently some notable Jewish-Buddhist-Hindu hybrids took the high road and travelled this same interspiritual peace path.

Native American shamans and indigenous wisdom traditions abounded on these shores, before John Muir took trees and waters from the Catskills to California for his boon companions. Jane Goodall says: “Out in nature you can become a whole human being with heart and brain and spirit all connected and whole.” She would know Like the harmonious, unimpeded intercourse among the earth, water, fire, air, and space elements. ISD and the creative synergy of spiritual cross-fertilization long predate the advent of humanity on this warm planet. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether the current man-made agitation displayed by the forces of nature will settle down and rebalance, or whether they’re already past the tipping point as we stagger along enjoying the dreams of our somnolence.

Timeless wisdom traditions are another natural resource that we overlook or ignore at our peril. This timely treasure has hardly been recognized as endangered, though we’d do well to research, develop, mine, explore, and even exploit our own innate, natural resources, for a change—hopefully to help tip back the imbalance in favor of sanity, sustainability, and a more equitable and peaceable future.

Our world is increasingly interconnected and interdependent. Though people generally think of Buddhism as an introspective and meditating religion, His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself often says—humbly yet with genuine authority—that we need each other to become enlightened.

For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.

–Jesus The Greek root word for communion, koinonia, may just as easily be rendered as “transformation,” “communication,” “joint participation” or “companionship”—suggesting joined spirituality and collective awakening.

My old friend Baba Ram Dass recently reminded me of our beloved late guru, Neem Karoli Baba (Maharajji), quoting the monkey-god Hanuman who personifies our own animal nature in selfless service and devotion to the divine: “When I forget who I am, Lord, I serve you. When I remember who I am, I am you.” We may feel disant from It, but it is never far from us.

I pray: Lord of peace and bliss, Show me your face, hold my hand-Let me beHold thee Meanwhile, some of us are fiddling while Rome heats up and burns. The bad news is that 80 per cent of Kansans believe in creationism rather than Darwinian evolution.

The rich continue to get richer and the poor poorer in this world, and quantity not qualities continues to rule. Although the good news includes that mindfulness stock has been rising in the West of late, and the field is well-trodden—especially by insight meditation practitioners—one wouldn’t want to reduce it to mere “mental floss” for daily hygiene, like yoga practiced merely for health and looks, or simply the Religion of Sitting. Personally, I’m far more interested in being a Buddha than a mere Buddhist or becoming solid and still as a stone Buddha statue in the garden.

We must become twenty-first-century Buddhists: compassionate and actively engaged, nonsectarian; studying modern science and democracy; appreciative of the diversity of peoples and faiths.

I believe deeply that we must find, all of us together, a new spirituality. This new concept ought to be elaborated alongside the religions like secular ethics in a way that all people of good will would adhere to it.

–Tenzin Gyatso, The Dalai Lama of Tibet Prayer is like talking to God, meditation is like listening.

–Father Thomas Merton Let me make a couple of grand and even seemingly outrageous assertions. First, we’re all Buddhas, by nature; we only have to recognize and awaken to that fact— realizing who and what we are and how we fit into the bigger picture, and how it abides in each and all of us, transcendent yet immanent. Second, nowness-awareness is the ultimate therapy. In the total and ultimate now, present and future—karma (conditioning and reactivity), memory, self-story—are not binding, and the inherent freedom and fullness of being is available.

Nowness-awareness is the ultimate one-step therapy. In the ultimate now, present and future—karma (conditioning and reactivity), memory, self-story—are not binding, and freedom is available. “Being there while getting there, every single step of the way” is one of my favorite personal expressions of what I'll call nondual wisdom or transcendental awareness—beyond subject, object, and interaction. You can’t obtain it but can be it, at home and one with yourself in your own life.

About Lama Surya Das Lama Surya Das is one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars. The Dalai Lama affectionately calls him “the American Lama”. He has spent forty five years studying Zen, Vipassana, Yoga, and Tibetan Buddhism with many of the great old masters of Asia, among them, some of the Dalai Lama’s own teachers. He is an authorized lama in the Tibetan Buddhist order, a leading spokesperson for Buddhism and contemporary spirituality, a translator, poet, meditation master, chant master, and spiritual activist. Lama Surya Das is the author of the international bestselling Awakening trilogy: Awakening the Buddha Within, Awakening to the Sacred and Awakening the Buddhist Heart, as well as the recently released Buddha Standard Time (HarperCollins), and nine other books. In 1991 he established the Dzogchen Center and Dzogchen Retreats (www.dzogchen.org). In 1993, with the Dalai Lama, he founded the Western Buddhist Teachers Network and regularly organizes its International Buddhist Teachers’ Conferences. Today, Lama Surya Das teaches and lectures around the world, conducting dozens of meditation retreats and workshops each year and is a regular contributor at The Huffington Post. His blog, Ask The Lama, can be found at http://askthelama.com. His lecture and retreat schedule are listed at www.surya.org. He can also be followed on Facebook (Lama Surya Das) and Twitter (@LamaSuryaDas).

Additional Resources Websites: www.surya.org; www.dzogchen.org Lama Surya Das’s page at Amazon: http:// www.amazon.com/Lama-SuryaDas/e/B002P4NOFW/ ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1? qid=1417560217&sr=1-1

Adam Bucko and activists campaigning with Buddhist scholar and activist Bhikkhu Bodhi, founder of Buddhist Global Relief.

The New Monasticism

by Rory McEntee and Adam Bucko

“The monk is a lay person…An order of monastics is essentially a lay order. Some monks may live in monasteries, but increasingly the majority will live in their own homes or form small communities—a monastic order in the world.”1 These words were spoken by the Catholic monk Bede Griffiths towards the end of his life. He went on to express a new vision for monastics, one in which communities and individuals live spiritual lives independent of religious organizations or institutions, independent of celibacy and overarching rules and dogmas—free to follow their own conscience and guidance of the Holy Spirit in living a sacred life, yet united in the common cause of

building a sacred world. We envision these “new monastic” lives as being fully engaged in contemporary life, involved in relationships, exploring new ways of walking the spiritual path, and committed to sacred activism. Father Bede goes on to describe these “monastic orders in the world”: Some communities may remain very loose, some may become very close.

Each one has to evolve as the Spirit moves it. … [W]e must keep that freedom of the Spirit by learning from one another, coming together day by day and discerning … all in a growth process. … It is so easy to get into rules and organization and so to narrow the freedom of the Spirit. … It is by learning really to trust the Spirit, in our prayers and meditation, and to share this trust with one another that a new language will gradually form. …

Social action should flow from our contemplation. It should not be a sideline or something inherently different, but should be integrated in our prayer and meditation … unless meditation is fed by concern with people’s problems and the world’s problems it loses its depth. There is no rivalry between contemplation and action.2 Father Bede compares these communities to those of the Sufis, practitioners of the mystical branch of Islam, who are often married, have families, and are deeply engaged in the world, organized in communities which help them to live from the depth of their commitment to contemplative life.

Our book The New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Living (forthcoming, Orbis Books, April 2015) is a rallying call for these new types of spiritual life and community, lives that are dedicated to building a sacred world through commitment to one’s spiritual maturity, the growth of community life, and to living out these values while fully engaged in the world. “In the world” can be many different things, but for us at its heart lies a passionate embrace for the transformation of our societal, political, and religious structures.

Our book helps to build a foundation for this movement, offering the beginnings of a theological, philosophical, and contemplative understanding to its underpinnings, while at the same time providing concrete methodologies and injunctions for its praxis. It also stands as an authentic expression of our own experience of

the Path, articulating a vision which cuts across humanity’s wisdom and religious traditions, bringing us into the midst of something new, a revelatory impulse of the Spirit that as of yet has no home. While embedded within our wisdom and religious traditions, it is beholden to none, encompassing modern scientific and psychological truths, sociological and cultural insights, political and economic realities.

By monastic, we denote a level of commitment to one’s spiritual life. What does it mean to be a monastic after all? It is not necessarily one’s particular beliefs that makes one a monastic, nor is it one’s lifestyle. It is a total life commitment to the development and maturation of one’s spiritual life. This is a journey which takes us into the fullness of our humanity, allowing divinity to flower within us in increasing degrees of love, compassion, joy, sorrow, and wisdom. The monastic is the one who devotes his or her life to this ideal, and allows all life decisions to flow out of this commitment. The root of the word “monk” is monachos, which means “to set oneself apart.” For us, this is not so much a physical separation as a setting oneself apart from our cultural conditioning— from an unquestioning, and un-questing, view of life. One that drives us to adulate material success, seduces us into participating in the devastation of our planet, hardens our hearts to the plight of the poor and oppressed, and divorces us from our innate capacity for spiritual growth and maturity.

By New, we refer to the phenomenon of this spiritual vocation being lived out “in the world.” This means that one’s spiritual journey is inextricably linked to the day-to-day reality of most people’s lives—and in an The authors with Fr. Thomas Keating and evolutionary sense, to Netanel Miles-Yepez, editor of the moving our human Snowmass Inter-religious Dialogue’s book family into greater The Common Heart, in which the “Nine depth and maturity. We Points of Agreement” among the world’s have found that many religions were first published. people today are feeling the same calling of the monks of old, yet do not find themselves drawn to a monastery, or to celibacy, or to disengagement and liberation from the world. They instead feel a radical urge to be embedded in the world, with the hardship of financial realities, the ups and downs of political unrest, the blessings

and difficulties of relationships—all in the midst of a contemporary society that does not support such a calling. It adds a level of complexity to the “monastic vocation,” perhaps many levels. Yet those of us who feel this calling could never do otherwise, for deep in our souls we know that our journey to wholeness lies in bringing forth the radical profundity and divine, transformative energy of our paths firmly into the world.

Raimon Panikkar, one of the greatest inter-mystical theologians of the 20th century,

Adam Bucko in panel discussion with theologian Matthew Fox (his co-author in the book Occupy Spirituality) at the Los Angeles Episcopal Cathedral. has called this a movement from simplicity through renunciation to simplicity through integration.3 Rather than renouncing the world, the new monastic wishes to transform it. The world is no longer something that can be used merely as a stepping stone to one’s own enlightenment, but rather the transformation of the world itself is given an equal ontological status to one’s own. In other words, this new way sees one’s spiritual path inextricably linked with the transformation of our global community into a connected, mature, and harmonious whole.

Perhaps even more radically, the new monastic may or may not be drawn permanently into a particular religious Matthew Fox’s Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times, Namaste Publishing. Softcover $11.95, ebook $9.95. https://www.namastepublishing.com/people/matthew-fox.

tradition. While certainly open to embracing a single religious tradition, this new way also allows for the emergence of untrodden paths, where the boundaries among the traditions become porous, yet not without meaning. Our traditions are seen as a common inheritance for humanity, each with its own integrity, yet also belonging to a universal heritage of human wisdom. They offer us guidance and skill sets with which we may look into our own interiors, and revelations as to what those interiors hold. At their best, they are a storehouse of wisdom for the human family, cartographers of the individual and collective souls of humanity. Within the fulcrum of tensions and synergies born through their mutual interaction, new movements and “complexified forms of religious consciousness” are emerging.4 Finally, a note on the word interspiritual. Interspirituality plants us firmly outside of a fundamentalist adherence to our own particular religious tradition or spiritual path, demanding that we take seriously the revelations, realizations, and contemplative gifts of all authentic wisdom and religious traditions, as well as revelations from science, ecology, art, culture, and sociology. It recognizes the potential for human spiritual growth and maturity, and allows for the diverse ways that human beings, at their best, have cultivated tools to accelerate that growth process. It acknowledges unique transmissions of wisdom and divine attributes among the traditions, and opens up the possibility for us to make use of these collective streams in new and unforeseen ways.

It puts a premium on a reciprocal sharing of these gifts in ways that change those who participate in the process. As such, it can lead to renewals and transformations of the religious traditions themselves.

Interspirituality, for us, primarily denotes an emergent attitude of presence based exploration among and between wisdom traditions and individual spiritual paths, engaged with social theory and cultural critiques, scientific insights and developmental psychology, political and economic discourse—calling us to “dialogical dialogue” with one another and potentially leading to new insights, new types of communities, and “communicative action.” This understanding of interspirituality, as a reciprocal sharing in which each person’s insights help to affirm, deepen, and direct the other’s journey— is a framework which can speak to a new generation of spiritually hungry youth, while allowing for inter-generational bridges to be built between elders, wisdom traditions, secular traditions and the younger generation. It allows for a diversity of spiritual paths and religious understandings and for intimate communities to be built within, and embodied by, that diversity. Rather than separating ourselves according to our religious beliefs, traditions or particular spiritual practices, we can build communities that center around this reciprocal sharing of gifts and support for one another’s vocations in the world—and thereby begin to build the Kingdom of Heaven “one friendship at a time.”

Additional Resources Link for McEntee and Bucko’s “New Monasticism Manifesto”: http://www.amazon.com/New-Monasticism-Manifesto-Contemplative-Living/dp/ 1626981264/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1417562046&sr=8-2&keywords=adam+bucko Bucko’s author page at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Adam-Bucko/e/ B00DDHID1K/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1417574729&sr=1-1

McEntee and Bucko discussing Interspirituality with other Interspiritual leaders at YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv1rOchwi6HWJm9kgNPkYeg

Adam Bucko is a contemplative activist, spiritual director to many of New York City’s homeless youth, and co-author of a new book called "Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation" (with Matthew Fox). In 2004, Adam co-founded The Reciprocity Foundation, an award winning nonprofit dedicated to transforming the lives of New York City's homeless youth. Adam also established HAB, an ecumenical and inter-spiritual fellowship for young people which offers formation in radical spirituality and sacred activism. He collaborates with spiritual leaders across religious traditions and mentors young people, helping them discover a spiritual life in the 21st century and how to live deeply from the heart in service of compassion and justice. His work has been featured by ABC News, CBS, NBC, New York Daily News, National Catholic Reporter, Shambala Sun, Yoga International Magazine and Sojourner Magazine. He can be reached at adam@adambucko.com

1 Griffiths,

Bede, The New Creation in Christ. Ed. by Robert Kiely and Laurence Freeman, OSB (Springfield: Templegate Publishers, 1994), 89.

2 Griffiths,

The New Creation, 91, 92, 94.

3 Raimon

Panikkar, Blessed Simplicity: The Monk as Universal Archetype (New York: Seabury, 1982).

4 Cousins,

Ewert, Christ of the 21st Century (New York: Continuum, 1998).

Rory McEntee, author, educator, and new monastic, works at an intersection of spirituality, education and culture. As a close friend and mentee of the late Brother Wayne Teasdale, he participated in the founding of the Interspiritual movement. He is currently the administrator for the Snowmass InterSpiritual Dialogue, founded in 1984

by Father Thomas Keating, and Executive Director of the Foundation for New Monasticism. Rory collaborates with spiritual leaders across the religious spectrum, helping to form young people in contemplative and prophetic depth. He has worked as a teacher and vice principal in secondary education, is coauthor of The New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Living (w/ Adam Bucko, Orbis Books, 2015), blogs for Huffington Post, and has a PhD (ABD) and M.A. in Mathematics from the University of Southern California. He can be reached at: newmonastics21@gmail.com

IONS was founded by astronaut Edgar Mitchell in 1973 after profound personal experiences during the Apollo 14 expedition to the Moon.

The Institute of Noetic Sciences The Institute of Noetic Sciences™, founded in 1973 by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit research, education, and membership organization whose mission is supporting individual and collective transformation through consciousness research, educational outreach, and engaging a global learning community in the realization of our human potential. “Noetic” comes from the Greek word nous, which means “intuitive mind” or “inner knowing.” IONS™ conducts, sponsors, and collaborates on leading-edge research into the potentials and powers of consciousness, exploring phenomena that do not necessarily fit conventional scientific models while maintaining a commitment to scientific rigor.

Programs The Institute’s primary program areas are consciousness and healing, extended human capacities, and emerging worldviews. The specific work of the Institute includes the following: • Sponsorship of and participation in original research and publication of articles in peer-reviewed journals • Application of findings into educational products and trainings • A monthly membership program that includes product and workshop discounts and regular eNews communications about our scientific research and transformative learning programs and center.

• Presentation and co-sponsorship of regional and international workshops and

conferences • The hosting of residential seminars and workshops at EarthRise, our on-campus retreat facility, located on 200 acres thirty miles north of San Francisco with facilities for up to 120 people • Supporting a global network of self-organizing community groups Informational links:

Our Vision Our Transformation Model What are the Noetic Sciences?

Illustrious History The potential for scientific understanding of our planet and beyond seemed unlimited to a pragmatic young U.S. Navy captain named Edgar Mitchell; indeed, a mission to the moon on Apollo 14 was his “dream come true.” Space exploration symbolized for Mitchell what it did for his nation: a technological triumph of historical proportions, unprecedented mastery of the world in which we live, and extraordinary potential for new discoveries. What Mitchell didn’t anticipate was a return trip that triggered something even more powerful. As he watched the Earth float freely in the vastness of space, he became engulfed by a profound sense of universal connectedness.

That moment, for Mitchell, was an epiphany, and it sowed the seeds of his next mission: “To broaden the knowledge of the nature and potentials of mind and consciousness and to apply that knowledge to the enhancement of human well-being and the quality of life on the planet.” To that end, he founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences in 1973. Noetic, from the Greek word noetikos, means “inner/intuitive knowing.”

Current Campaign Current Fundraising Campaign: find out more about IONS current fundraising campaign at: https://secure3.convio.net/ions/site/Donation2? df_id=2300&2300.donation=form1

Science and Faith

ENTANGLED STATES by the Rt. Rev. W. Nicholas Knisely When asked why I’m no longer a scientist by profession but an Episcopal bishop, my answer is that I feel I can make more of a difference in people’s lives as a priest.

Why do I feel this way?

Every four years, in the United States Presidential election, I’m struck by the way this “united” country is bitterly divided. Split into two highly polarized camps of roughly 35% apiece, plus a middle group, there’s a deep animosity between the extremes.

Throughout an election season, anxiety is rife in these two groups, since each believes that if the other gains power, it will have catastrophic consequences for western civilization. For this reason any attempt to score a point and move toward victory on the part of one camp causes the other alarm.

The existence of a middle group tends to irritate the other two camps. Their constituents see it as their duty to convince the swing voters to move to their side, since it’s clear to both these camps that their own side is right. Neither can understand why the swing voters don’t automatically affiliate with them.

This same polarization shows up in the church, which also has two distinct camps plus a middle group, again of about 30%, that no one wants to talk about. Neither the liberal nor the conservative groups like to reference this group because they are angry at its very existence, typecasting those in the middle as fence-sitters. In fact, I have heard both sides call this middle group “Vichy Christians,” seeing them as collaborationists who work with the opponents, preventing either the liberal or conservative wings from having a free field in which to maneuver and conquer in the name of all they hold true.

The core message of the Incarnation is that the divinity at the heart of the universe has manifested itself in human form. It walks around telling stories for three years, changing the course of human history. As we say in physics, there’s obviously information for us in that!

When we put the stories out there in ways people can The Rt. Rev. W. Nicholas hear, they recognize the subtle interplay of the characters Knisely, Episcopal Bishop, Jesus was sketching with such an extraordinary economy Diocese of Rhode Island. of words. This enables them to make the deeper connections that change what it is to be human. These

stories modify what it means to be alive.

The approach I’ve taken throughout my ministry, of allowing the stories to speak to us from the biblical universe in all the power of their symbolism, is related to something seen also in quantum physics, the idea that as the observer observes, the system, which includes the observer, is changed. Similarly, as we encounter the biblical stories in a deep way, we are transformed.

One of the fundamental insights in quantum physics is that our reality isn’t limited to our physical boundary. Our being extends throughout time and space. I’m not being poetic, I’m speaking strictly mathematically. It means that we are all interrelated. The things we think keep us apart are in reality illusory. Trying to make hard-and-fast boundaries between right and wrong, black and white, left and right simply doesn’t work. We are all totally entangled in each other’s lives, so that we each extend into the other’s reality.

How does reconciliation come about when people who are entangled together have diametrically opposed beliefs on certain issues? The church matures in the faith of Christ when we enter into authentic struggle with our differences but there is no clear victor, only a commitment to keep walking alongside each other—a fact that isn’t always well received in many parts of the church and is especially annoying to the press. The mature accept that life is complicated, with countless variegations of grey, and love each other unconditionally.

The gift of being human is the recognition that just out of our grasp, there is the shadow of a harmonious connectedness that says we are all somehow related to one another in a sensible way we may never be able to understand, yet is true nonetheless. Whether it’s a mystic unity, or whether it’s a sense of the interconnectedness of God, or a psychic vision of nirvana, we are all part of a piece and therefore sisters and brothers under the skin.

Available from No matter how adamantly we insist on being divided, www.nowbound.com every now and then we can’t help but catch a glimpse of the fact we are bound together. We all have moments in which we suddenly glimpse the fact we are essentially the same. Such a glimpse may come in the form of a spiritual experience, or perhaps the mystical realization that the universe is suffused with a divine Presence. Or it may occur in a laboratory, as a scientist discovers a connection no one has ever seen before and realizes there is a unity to reality that is just out of our reach.

All of this has been a part of who I am as a scientist, a priest, a thinker, a writer, and a dancer. I’ve been chasing this elusive unity all my life, and I’m willing to spend the rest of my life in the chase. I also wish to invite other people to at least open up to the possibility that this unity might really be here, and that they might be able to experience it. This is why I call my book Entangled States. For we are all entangled one in another, and the human in the divine. (Excerpted from Entangled States.)

Back to the Garden: Introducing the Garden of Light

by Rev. Deborah Moldow

We are stardust Billion year old carbon We are golden Caught in the devil's bargain And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden –– Joni Mitchell, © Siquomb Publishing Company

The 1960s—whether you remember them as sex, drugs, and rock and roll or peace, love, and granola, if you were alive then in the western world, you knew that something new was happening. There was a crack in the brittle shell of modern civilization through which a new breath of freedom passed, giving a whiff of possibilities of a different way of living. Song lyrics that had before extolled romance now sang of loving everyone and giving peace a chance. Young people tried to reach beyond the rules by growing their hair, sharing their money and experimenting with communal living. The spirit of the 60s came crashing down as the drug culture turned dark and a series of assassinations brought down leaders of hope. And yet, something had broken through. The freedom-seeking Baby Boomers took jobs, raised families and passed the once-untrustworthy age of 30, but a seed had been planted that sprouted into something truly radical emerging here on Planet Earth: a new global spirituality.

As the decades passed, Western seekers opened to Eastern spiritual teachings and indigenous wisdom amid a growing movement toward interfaith understanding.

We learned to appreciate meditation and yoga. New attitudes toward our bodies led to mainstreaming organic food, health clubs and alternative medicine. New approaches to psychology spawned a self-help movement that emphasized forgiveness, taking responsibility and cultivating trust. We began to look beyond our own religious backgrounds in search of meaning and purpose.

As our consciousness expands beyond meeting our own needs, we are increasingly aware of the plight of our sisters and brothers in less favorable circumstances, whether across town or across the globe. Our eyes are opening to the damage that our modern comforts are inflicting on the natural world that sustains us.

We are recognizing the limitations of our current systems to address the enormity of the challenges we face. We understand that the solutions that will lead us out of our alarmingly unsustainable direction will require not only new technologies but also a heart-based consciousness. A sweeping transformation of human consciousness across the globe may be the one path to a healthy future for human life on our planet.

A survey conducted by USA Today in 2010 declared that 72% of the generation known as the Millennials consider themselves “more spiritual than religious.” Yet, at the same moment, many who are deeply religious are expanding their horizons: Catholic nuns are sitting in Zen meditation, rabbis attend Native American sweat lodges, and we can all look up how to chant Om on WikiHow. There are now thousands of Interfaith Ministers ordained by at least a dozen seminaries, and the term “interspirituality,” coined by Brother Wayne Teasdale, is becoming more widely accepted since the publication of The Coming Interspiritual Age, by Kurt Johnson and David Robert Ord. Quietly, a spiritual revolution has been emerging around the world – not in in robes and sandals, but in everyday life.

What does it look like to be living the new spirituality? First of all, the overwhelming sense of breaking new ground is both exhilarating and unsettling. We seek wisdom from all sacred traditions and texts, as well as through contemporary revelation and a wide diversity of practice. We pay attention to our thoughts, our words and our actions, knowing ourselves to be holons in the great, interconnected web of life. We want our lives to make a difference, to leave our world a little brighter than we found it, to help

Deborah and colleagues at the World Peace Prayer Society are famous internationally for their ceremonial placing of “Peace Poles� around the world.

Additional Resources Deborah Moldow at World Peace Prayer Society: www.worldpeace.org Deborah Moldow at the United Nations: http:// www.revdeborah.com/unitednations.html Deborah Moldow at Evolutionary Leaders: http:// www.evolutionaryleaders.net/ leaders/dmoldow

bring in the next level of human evolution. We look for the good in everyone and the lesson in every experience. And we connect instantly with fellow travelers on the path.

There is great diversity among our backgrounds, yet we share a whole array of beliefs and attitudes.

Although the journey may sometimes feel lonely or discouraging—especially when we look at the news of the world—this spiritual community is growing daily. It has no one leader, but is instead emerging through you and me and countless others across the globe. The community remains largely unnoticed because there has not yet appeared a gathering place to explore this new sense of global spirituality together. It is out of this yearning to come together in community that the Garden of Light is being born.

The Garden of Light is an online platform open to all who feel they are part of the current spiritual emergence, from longtime mystics to those just awakening to their spiritual path. There is no dogma, no hierarchy, no structure, no holy book – just people coming together to share our experience of how the new spirituality is manifesting in our lives. It offers an opportunity for us to explore the various aspects of this spirituality by participating the Forum, posting online prayers, relaxing in the Meditation Room, and discussing the Question of the Week on Facebook. As it expands, it will include art, music, humor, healing, and even a marketplace – the many arenas in which our spirituality is flowering.

You are invited to take a stroll through the Garden of Light. If it resonates with you as a place of spiritual nourishment and community, then you are a vital part of it – so please join and help to shape it as it grows.

Perhaps we cannot go “back to the garden” while our lives spiral ever more rapidly toward the future we are co-creating. But we can go forward together, building a culture of peace where all can live in harmony with one another and our mother planet.

Welcome to the Garden! May peace prevail on earth.

Rev. Deborah Moldow has been the representative to the United Nations of the World Peace Prayer Society since 1994, promoting the prayer “May Peace Prevail on Earth” around the world. Widely involved across the UN non-governmental organization community, Deborah was chair of the Values Caucus for five years.

She is a 2009 recipient of the Spirit of the United Nations Award. She has also served as a Co-Chair of the International Day of Peace NGO Committee, as Vice President of the Committee of Religious NGOs, and as facilitator of the United Religions Initiative cooperation circle at the UN (URI-UN). She led a Young Leaders Initiative for Friends of the UN, and pioneered a project to create and network Campus Peace Centers (www.campuspeacecenters.net). Her extensive work with the United Religions Initiative has included serving as an elected Trustee and Vice Chair of the URI Global Council.

NEWS AROUND THE NETWORKS Additonal News, Organizations and Events from across the Interspiritual – Ecological Landscape

SCIENCE AND NONDUALITY CONFERENCE (SAND) SAND (www.scienceandnonduality.com) hosts annual conferences in both the United States and Europe on the convergence of Spirituality and Science. It’s mission is to forge a new paradigm in spirituality, one that is not dictated by religious dogma, but that is rather based on timeless wisdom traditions of the world, informed by cuttingedge science, and grounded in direct experience. The Interspiritual community has been a part since 2011. Kurt Johnson, Matthew Fox, Ed Bastian and Rory McEntee live-streamed a panel last year on The Emerging Universal Spirituality. Kurt Johnson this year spoke on The Emerging Universal Spiritulaity and Global Policy Making (recorded in this ezine as the Twin Pillars Speech) summarizing the work of joining spirituality, values and ethics with global policy in the United Nations community.

Ezine contributor Gurucharan (center, in turban), himself a quantum mathematician at Chapman University, gathers with other participants after a Quantum Physics and Consciousness discussion at SAND. SAND cofounder Maurizio Benazzo is on his left.

UNITED NATIONS NGO COMMUNITY Sharon Hamiton Getz, past chair of The Committee on Spirituality, Values and Global Concerns (www.csvgc-ny.org) received the Spirit of the United Nations Award. Ezine contributors Ken Kitatani and Kurt Johnson serve on the Executive Committee of this UN NGO Committee. Each year the committee sponsors the “Week of Spirituality” at the United Nations. Ezine contributor Dr. Rick Clugston, of Forum 21 Institute, was a major speaker this year. Forum 21 colleague, Dr. James Stoner, holder of the Chair in Global Sustainability at Fordham University, New York City, was a major speaker last year. James often hosts university discussion joining New York City-based NGO’s bridging the arenas of spirituality, environment and sustainability.

Dr. James A. F. Stoner of Fordham University

Sharon Hamilton-Getz

THE INTERFAITH OBSERVER An international publication, The Interfaith Observer, founded by Paul Chaffee, serves the global interfaith community with news and well-researched probing articles.

In the last years it has published features on the Interspiritual and Interfaith Seminary movements, Sacred Activism and New Community, and on The Coming Interspiritual Age. The website and archived issues are at www.theinterfaithobserver.org.

KOSMOS JOURNAL Kosmos Journal, founded by interspiritual and values pioneer Nancy Roof has maintained a long relationship with the interspiritual community ever since her friendship with Br. Wayne Teasdale. Kosmos, a premier “glossy� which has garnered a host of journalistic awards, continues to serve the international interfaith and ecology/sustainability communities with cutting edge articles and programs. These have included some half dozen articles on the interspiritual phenomenon. We encourage the interfaith and interspiritual communities to continue their support of the Kosmos community and its ongoing major global contributions.

Website: www.kosmosjournal.org

OMEGA INSTITUTE AND BLUE SPIRIT COSTA RICA Famed Omega Institute near Rhinebeck, New York and Blue Spirit Costa Rica, near Nosara in northwest Costa Rica, continue to host a plethora of trans-traditional and sacred earth programs widely serving the interspiritual community.

Checking their websites regularly Blue Spirit Costa Rica allows the global community to tune into a myriad variety of programs, and gifted teachers that both Omega and Blue Spirit regularly host. Links: www.eomega.org, www.bluespiritcostarica.com.

THEATRE GROUP DZIECI Dzieci (meaning “children” in Polish) attended Br. Wayne Teasdale and the interspiritual delegation at the 2004 Parliament of the World’s Religions and performed their signature piece.

Comments by founder Matt Mitler: Theatre Group Dzieci has always sought a commonality between religions and practices. In 1997, the newly founded company

Dzieci’s signature performance piece “The Fools Mass”, presented at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 2004.

turned towards the Catholic Mass. A question arose: What is the mass in its most essential form? We decided to explore the ritual as simpletons, as characters with the open wonder and innocence of children. This investigation led to the creation of Fools Mass, a testament to Holy Theatre, wherein a group of medieval village idiots lose their beloved pastor, just as Christmas Mass is about to begin, and must struggle to find their own way through the ceremony. Fools Mass was never intended to be

Dzieci’s signature piece. But there is a point, if one is truly interested in Art as a process rather than as a product, where the work takes on a life of its own. Fools Mass is as much a meditation on the miracle of birth (every birth), as it is about the enigma of death, and serves to assist a deeper integration of the challenging events in our lives. On a purely personal level, we’ve taken the passing of loved ones and absorbed the immediacy of the experience, allowing emotions to flow and, in ways that are beyond cognition, to settle and resolve. This same process has been born out with more worldly events. From 9/11 to Newtown, Fools Mass has continued to provide communion and catharsis, and an essential contact with something that we can only allude to as ‘The Higher’. What do we seek in the sanctity of sacred space, if not to serve such a need. Website: www.dziecitheatre.org.

ASTRAL DANCETM with Amanda Turner 2015 will mark the launch of this long awaited holistic healing dance program from this graduate of programs at the One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in New York City.

The program includes uniquely designed dance classes that embody spiritual practice. These classes are designed to be done as a daily practice and skillfully weave together ballet, modern, theater dance, ayurvedic principles, and yoga.

Classes are structured with a disciplined and creative warm-up, deep stretching, and original choreography. A complete mind body spirit class.

• • • • •

Dance, Yoga, and Ayurveda.

Embodiment dance classes Principles of Ayurveda Vedic teachings Choreography with a spiritual foundation

An Astral Dance program banner

Amanda has been a teacher and choreographer in New York for 15 years. She is a registered Ayurvedic practitioner with the National Ayurvedic Medical Association, a yoga and meditation teacher, and a trained professional Interspiritual Counselor. She is an activist and teacher for Interspiritual Dialogue through dance, ayurveda, and yogic traditions. Website www.AyuHealingArts.com; email: Amanda@AyuHealingArts.

TOOLS FOR EVOLVING CONSCIOUSNESS Crazy Wisdom: Tools for Evolving Consciousness is a new book by interspiritual community leader and integral thinker Tom Thresher. Ken Wilber provides an endorsement. We all want to change the world, or at least live happier lives. The question is how? Unfortunately, there isn’t a magic pill that will make it “all better.” We

Author Tom Thresher

have to do some work. But what kind of work will make a difference? In Crazy Wisdom: Tools for Evolving Consciousness Tom Thresher builds upon the revolutionary Immunity to Change (ITC) process developed by Harvard’s Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey to provide practical tools for daily use. By taking ITC into the faith setting, Tom grounds personal change in the practices of the world’s wisdom traditions. Believing that faith communities should lead the evolution of human consciousness, Tom offers powerful, but easily understood, tools to help us live more vital, meaningful lives. Crazy Wisdom will be available in January through Integral Publishers and amazon.com.

“A superb, fully integrally-informed guide through the tried and tested techniques developed by Robert Kegan and his associates for undermining and releasing resistance to change. Most change technologies don’t work very well because they never deal with the prior, hidden, unconscious patterns that are committed to NOT changing—yet only by dealing with those can real change occur—in any area. This is what Tom Thresher’s new book does. It is especially developed for people in faith communities, so if you are Spirit-oriented, not to worry!—(but it works in any event). If you’re serious about introducing real change in your life, this is the place to start!” Ken Wilber—The Fourth Turning and The Integral Vision.

An artistic rendering of the famous Aspen Chapel in Aspen, Colorado.

THE ASPEN CHAPEL AND INTERSPIRITUAL ASSOCIATION Five ezine contributors joined the Aspen Chapel and Davi Nikent Center in Aspen and Carbondale, Colorado, last summer for a series of programs on interspirituality and the ecological age. A new association for interspirituality in the valley was formed.

New chapel rector Nicholas Vesey (nicholas@aspenchapel.org) makes these comments: When Aspen Chapel was founded in 1968 part of the stated vision was “to remind people in Aspen that there is foremost a spiritual dimension to our existence” and…. “Here create a national-global ecumenical center for seminars and dialogues on the theological concerns of contemporary society.” Since that time this has been our purpose.

Our work focuses on the nature and experience of consciousness, using it as a gateway to enable people to access spirituality. We have created a special ‘introduction to spirituality from a mystical perspective’ – an 8 week course called “Developing Consciousness” to enable people to begin their journey on the spiritual road without having to sign up to one religion or another. As an organization we are

interested in transcending religion and developing wisdom, both on an individual and a corporate level, so as to make some contribution to the movement towards Interspirituality.

Websites: www.aspenchapel.org; www.davinikent.com.

BELLA GAIA Bella Gaia (www.bellagaia.com) founded by Kenji Williams and also featuring singercomposer Kristin Hoffmann, is probably the most well-known multi-media/music event and program touring the world with the message of sacred earth and universal spirituality. A visit to their website will give you an amazing dip into the world that they create. As it says there: “BELLA GAIA is an unprecedented audiovisual experience that combines NASA satellite imagery of Earth, time lapse nature photography, and cultural heritage footage with stirring live performances of music and dance from around the world�. Recently Kristin has also joined the activist Board of the Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (FIONS).

Kristin Hoffmann singing at a Bella Gaia event.

COMMUNITY OF THE MYSTIC HEART (CMH) and SANNYAS The Community of the Mystic Heart (www.communityofthemysticheart.org) is the original association formed with Br. Wayne Teasdale to further his vision of an International Order of Sannyasa. With the rapid growth of the interspiritual movement, and its taking root in so many different ways, contexts and cultures, it has been difficult to have a singular idea of what such a vision might look like today. As such, CMH remains the informal association of persons interested in further interpretation and advance of the vision of Br. Wayne Teasdale. To date, CMH has four “kinds” of membership, Swami Shraddananda each offering different levels of commitment to a life of (Dr. Sonyg Jones) spiritual practice and sacred activism. Recently, to serve those persons who might want to make their “Personal Covenant” (the Fourth kind of membership) into a more disciplined life of Sannyas lifestyle or vows, Swami Shraddananda (Dr. Sonya Jones) of Slate Branch Ashram (www.jonesfoundation.net) is now providing that service for CMH. She can be contacted at swshraddaji@gmail.com.

PIR ZIA INAYAT KHAN, SEVEN PILLARS, and a NEW BOOK Pir Zia, leader of the Sufi Order International, met Brother Wayne in 2003, at which time he visited Pir Zia at the Abode, and seeds were planted for what became the Seven Pillars House of Wisdom. Seven Pillar’s history page records: http:// www.sevenpillarshouse.org/pages/history/.

Seven Pillars House of Wisdom now presents the groundbreaking “Illuminated e-Manuscript” The Seven Pillars: Journey Toward Wisdom! Inspired by its global wisdom legacy, and the revolutionary illuminated manuscripts of the 5th and 6th centuries, this cuttingedge, "multi-touch" ebook combines not only text and image, but also original music, narration, video, and graphical animation. Your mind and senses will be awakened as you embark on an inspiring journey that can deepen our insight and help us address the urgent social and ecological needs of our time.

Featuring narration and video with Pir Zia Inayat-Khan,

Pir Zia Inayat Khan

original music by Yuval Ron, Bisan Toron and Kane Mathis and paintings and illustrations by artist Cecil Collins. iTunes Bookstore link:Â https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-seven-pillars/id945224155? mt=11.

Seven Pillars website: www.sevenpillarshouse.org.

THE NATIONAL ETHICAL SERVICE The National Ethical Service (www.nationalserviceaeu.org), UN NGO of Ethical Culture (www.aeu.org), is the original sponsor of interspiritual dialogue at the United Nations. Kurt Johnson serves as vice president.

Working with co-officers Martha Gallahue and Kay Dundorf, NES has co-sponsored key New York programs, including the New York-wide event on Natural Gas Fracking, discussions at the recent Spiritual Summit for Social Change and, regularly, programs and events on trans-traditional spirituality.

Kay Dundorf

Martha Gallahue

WE.NET, VISTAR, NEW REALITIES, and A BETTER WORLD East Coast and New York City-based spirituality and activism cannot be summarized

Ron and Victoria Friedman

Rick Ulfik

Alan Steinfeld Mitchell J. Rabin

without note of We.net, ViSTAR, New Realities, and A Better World. All have joined in the recent revival of the Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Rick Ulfik, founder of We.net and the 11 Days of Unity programs associated with the United Nations NGO Community joins regularly with the VISTAR Foundation, New Realities, and A Better World for major transformative programs in the New York area and around the world.

•Ron and Victoria Friedman lead VISTAR, Alan Steinfeld leads New Realities, and Mitchell J. Rabin is the founder of A Better World. In the last year, they have all joined with a plethora of our ezine contributors to revive the Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

Websites: www.we.net; www.newrealities.com; www.vistarfoundation.org; www.abetterworld.tv.

ASHOK GANGADEAN—THE DECLARATION OF INTERDEPENDENCE

The rich history of the Declaration of Interdependence is recorded below in the article from Wikipedia, the latest chapter of which has been the work of Dr. Ashok Gangadean, another old friend of Br. Wayne Teasdale, through his Awakening Mind network and his millennial campaign for the Declaration done with Barbara Marx Huibbard and many other luminaries. Below are links for the Declaration history at Wikipedia, for Ashok’s presentation re: same with Kurt Johnson, a short reading of the Declaration and Ashok’s Awakening Mind website. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Interdependence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbP_a2aiLmc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyfRxQQMeCk http://www.awakeningmind.org/#/index

GREENWORLD CAMPAIGN SETS ATTENTION ON SACRED FORESTS Green World Campaign’s website states “We started the Green World Campaign with the seed of an idea: "What can we accomplish as global citizens if we really put our minds to it?" The answer: Just about anything.

After working to restore the ecology and economy of some of the world’s poorest places in Ethiopia, Mexico, Philippines, India, and Uganda, GWC has established regional offices in Kenya, where it practices a uniquely holistic methodology that encompasses land regeneration through tree-planting and eco-agriculture; food security; poverty alleviation; and climate change resilience.

GWC’s work includes 100 Green World Schools programs in Kenya, where kids plant up to 2000 biodiverse trees per school. They are restoring the critical Pungu Watershed, and innovating small-scale technologies like “green” charcoal, made from cornstalks to people don’t cut trees for fuel. They’ve grown 50,000 superfood moringa trees, and are about to launch a community-based social enterprise based on its nutritious leaves and valuable seed-oil. They will have planted on 300,000 trees in Kenya this year with an amazing 75% survival rate. They also launched a national “Trees for Peace” campaign, and are known for their award-winning interactive media installation on twelve jumbo Times Square screens inviting the public to “Text TREE.” In a recent interview, Green World Campaign founder Marc Barasch (also author of The Compassionate Life) noted GWC’s new initiatives in Kenya to restore forest areas that, in indigenous tradition, have sacred significance. “Trees were planted in a Kaya, "sacred forest" in Kiswahili, places held in holy reverence by local people and often considered to have magical attributes. As places of ritual gathering, they have long been under a sacred protection that has also sheltered indigenous plants and animals. . As a result, these areas are often biodiversity hotspots where wildlife and diverse species thrive even as other forest areas are devastated.” Marc notes, “There is a growing body of academic study recognizing sacred sites as key sanctuaries of biodiversity as well as cultural treasures and repositories of indigenous environmental management. Turning some of our attention to nurturing this concept is already leading to effective new practices and impact for both people and planet.”

The bold long-term goal of the Green World Campaign is stated in their slogan: “ReGreen the World in One Generation— for All the Generations to Come.” You can learn more at www.greenworld.org.

Marc Barasch, founder of Green World Campaign, speaking on Earth Day.

A Message from the Editorial Director of Namaste Publishing, Kurt’s coauthor of The Coming Interspiritual Age When Constance Kellough, president and publisher of Namaste Publishing, introduced me to Dr. Kurt Johnson and suggested we work together on a book that would articulate the interspiritual message, Kurt invited me to write as freely as I wished in addition to his own work toward the book.

That never happened, and for one simple reason. When I read what Kurt had composed, I realized he had covered everything I would want to say in a book of this kind. There really was nothing to add. Except, that is, my editorial skills—which is why Constance, seeing the big picture, got me involved in the first place.

When Kurt speaks, he’s easy to hear. But in his desire to be faithful to the message, his writing can be convoluted, heavily nuanced, and float above many people’s ability to follow the written word. My task was to reword his thinking so that it would be easy for people to follow. The same is true of the articles we coauthor together today.

Out of this collaboration came a book, and succeeding articles, that can speak to people the world over—if they are exposed to it.

And that’s the big “if.”

This ezine, like its predecessor at the time of the launch of The Coming Interspiritual Age, represents a huge investment of editorial time on the part of Namaste Publishing —as did the book itself. But it will be time wasted if the ezine remains something those of you who have so generously contributed of your own time and effort keep it to yourselves.

We are therefore asking you to share this ezine with your mailing lists. We are also asking you to actually buy the book if you haven’t already. With the launch of this ezine, the book is on offer to you at a tremendous 50% discount! We are also asking you to encourage those on your lists to do the same. For those who prefer an electronic version, it’s available from the Namaste website for only $9.95.

A book of this kind isn’t something a publisher sends out into the world as a profitable venture. The investment in getting the book out—and in putting the ezines together— is far beyond anything such a project might bring in. This is a matter of believing in something and giving one’s all to make it available as widely as possible.

The special sale price of 50% off is for the sole purpose of getting the message out into the world. Because of the expense of such a venture, we have to limit the offer to two sale price copies per person. But we want to extend that offer far and wide across the planet, to people of every nation, so that interspirituality becomes a global

phenomenon in terms of how people on every continent and of every faith conduct their lives.

The simple fact is that, unless interspirituality becomes a lived reality planet-wide, we are doomed as a species —and perhaps even doomed as a planet. But with your help, the message will have a real chance of catapulting us beyond our present crisis into a global community grounded in the oneness that is our ultimate source.

So now, over to you. We’ve made it as easy as possible for you to distribute this ezine to everyone you are in touch with. It can be downloaded by anyone, and print copies can be ordered from ISSUU.com for about $15.

Appreciatively, David Robert Ord Editorial Director, Namaste Publishing

50% off for 7 days only— limit two books per person, $13.95

Ebook version for all platforms, $9.95

CLICK TO PLACE YOUR ORDER Book: http://www.namastepublishing.com/products/book/cominginterspiritual-age-book/9781897238745 Ebook: https://www.namastepublishing.com/products/ebook/cominginterspiritual-age-e-book/9781897238790 Or call toll free: (888) 557-6672

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