The Edge - Spring 2012
Spiritual Solutions from Deepak Chopra
Life is full of challenges, both big and small. Spirituality is here to offer solutions.
In his groundbreaking new book, Deepak Chopra shows you how to expand your awareness, which is the key to the confusion and conflict we all face. "The secret is that the level of the problem is never the level of the solution," he writes. By rising to the level of the solution in your own awareness, you can transform obstacles into opportunities. In Spiritual Solutions, you will learn how to discover your true self, where peace, clarity, and wisdom serve as guides in times of crisis.
GO DEEP WITH DEEPAK!
Watch this 30-minute interview with
Alan Steinfeld on New Realities
Feminine Power: How to Break Through Your Own Glass Ceiling
Two of the world's leading experts in women's personal and spiritual evolution, Claire Zammit and Katherine Woodward Thomas, have cracked the code for women everywhere.
In spite of all the personal growth and spiritual work that women have accomplished, many feel their life does not reflect the deeper potentials they sense for their relationships, their higher creative self-expression, and their contribution to the world.
Learn how to leap forward into true love, connection and higher creativity from a Feminine Power source in a FREE GLOBAL EVENT FOR WOMEN ONLY on Sunday, May 6th.
Generation Waking Up: The Story of Our Generation
Did you know that more the half of the world's population is under the age of 25?
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Check out this exciting new video featuring the Millennial Generation - the largest, most diverse, well educated, technologically savvy, globally connected generation our world has ever seen.
Generation Waking Up, coordinated by Evolutionary Leader Joshua Gorman, is a global campaign to ignite a generation of young people to bring forth a thriving, just, sustainable world.
This video is part of the Generation Waking Up Experience - called a 'WakeUp' for short - a multimedia educational workshop that inspires young people to transform their lives and communities.
Watch the new GenUp Video Here!
The WakeUp is an adaptation of the Awakening The Dreamer, Changing The Dream Symposium created by The Pachamama Alliance.
Learn more at http://generationwakingup.org
Birth 2012 and Beyond
A New Book by Barbara Marx Hubbard
Can humanity act in time to tip the scales in favor of a sustainable planetary civilization, given the rapid escalation of crises that threaten our survival?
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In her newest book, Birth 2012 and Beyond: Humanity’s Great Shift To the Age of Conscious Evolution, beloved visionary Barbara Marx Hubbard answers this critical, timely question by describing her personal quest to solve the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced: our choice to either evolve to a more sustainable and compassionate world, or face the possibility of devolution and destruction of our life support systems.
Birth 2012 and Beyond includes essays by members of the Evolutionary Leaders circle in various fields who serve on the “Welcoming Committee” for the birth: Jean Houston, Lynne Twist, Jack Canfield, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Ervin Laszlo, Lynne McTaggart, James O'Dea, Rinaldo Brutoco, and Ashok Gangadean. It was published by Shift Books, a new imprint of The Shift Network, founded by Evolutionary Leader Stephen Dinan.
Barbara shares her lifelong journey to discover how we can “cross the gap” from our current systemic breakdowns to a more hopeful and evolved future,
sharing her many innovations along the way, including:
- the need for a symbolic planetary “Birth Day”
- that our many crises have a positive aspect: they are “evolutionary drivers”
- how we apply the concept of “conscious evolution” now
- the imminent appearance of the “Universal Human
- her concept of “vocational arousal” and “supra-sex”— joining together to cocreate
- that we are at a “chaos point” when a creative minority can positively tip the scales
During her Birth 2012 Campaign, Hubbard aims to realize her ultimate goal: to connect the innovations and innovators contributing toward a more synergistic and functioning society, or as she describes it in the book: “A convergence powerful enough that our crises-ridden social system can cooperate in its own self-transcendence. This would be social synergy at its best—the exponential interaction and communication of that which is already working to heal and evolve our world.”
The Ultimate Weekend Retreat for your mind, body, and soul!
Featured Quote
From American Citizen, Global Citizen by Mark Gerzon:
"If we focus on the 'sacred in one another,' we discover that we are all connected not only by our genes, but by our souls. When we filter out the narrow, manmade, 'tribal' elements of the various faiths, we are left standing in awe at the shared spiritual heritage of humankind. All the faiths have a golden rule, and following this golden thread will more deeply connect our global intelligence to our souls."
Mark Gerzon, president of Mediators Foundation, is a leadership consultant to the United Nations Development Program, as well as an internationally known mediator in the United States, Africa and Asia.
Link to inspiring quotes from Evolutionary Leaders HERE.
Join the Evolution!
A Call to Conscious Evolution: At this juncture in human history, urgent global crises challenge us to learn to live sustainably, in harmony and gratitude with one another and with the living universe. The changes required of humanity are broad, deep, and far reaching. Only by acting swiftly and creatively can we birth a planetary culture that will bring well-being to every form of life in the Earth community.
www.evolutionaryleaders.net/acalltoconsciousevolution
Voyage of Aloha Conference in Hawaii, May 25-28
The World Business Academy is pleased to be celebrating its 25th Anniversary in Hawaii May 25-28 in conjunction with the 20th Anniversary of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, which is headquartered there. It’s an opportunity to co-create new mythologies through an incredible conference named “Voyage of Aloha–a Journey from Separateness to Connectedness.”
Join me and presenters including Academy Fellow Elisabet Sahtouris and Hawaiian spiritual leaders who will help us each formulate our own plan to truly live our lives from the awareness of our connectedness.
We look forward to seeing you live at the celebration in Hawaii if you can make it, or to experiencing your presence through through the live streaming.
With aloha,
Rinaldo S. Brutoco, Founding President and CEO
World Business Academy
Israel-Palestine: The Heart of Global Emergence
By Dr. Don Beck
As our planet undergoes rapid transformation politicians, geo-political strategists and think tank wizards are growing increasingly frustrated. Their problem is this: the old ways of thinking that served them well in the past are incapable of addressing the complex challenges of today's world. As a result the best laid out plans backfire and contingencies compound errors beyond sustainable thresholds. This phenomenon is flagged by nightly news anchors reporting on the down-spiraling Middle East.
The Middle East stands at the focal point of world affairs and the long ranging animosity between Israel and Palestine sits at the center of the storm. Interested parties from all sides understand that until this conflict is resolved regional turbulence and global tensions are likely to increase. As a result, extreme efforts are being made to find a magic formula that can lead to peace.
The Center for Human Emergence, under the guidance of Dr. Don Beck considers that push for peace part of the old thinking patterns that are aggravating the status quo. A premature quest for peace is a futile pursuit at best and possibly a dangerously destabilizing adventure. Dr. Beck bases this notion on empirical data that was accumulated over four decades and his experience helping leaders in South Africa map an effective course in its transition from apartheid.
Before there can be peace in the Middle East there must be regional transformation. Real peace between Israel and Palestine will arise naturally only when life conditions on both sides are right. Currently they are not. Profound social changes must occur before that moment arrives.
Dr. Beck is coordinating an effort between CHE teams working in Israel, Palestine, America and Europe to develop projects that promote large scale whole system change at the level of nation states. This vision requires audacious thinking and bold action. Nations are mutable entities and as key decision makers and stakeholders from various sectors of society band together they can create synergies that privilege success.
When businessmen, politicians, civil servants, educators, academics, police, healthcare officials and NGOs cooperate under the banner of a superordinate goal they can engineer profound social change. And as life conditions improve people's values change, new perspectives arise and social transformation occurs. This is human emergence.
Israeli emergence and Palestinian emergence are distinct processes. The worldviews in both societies are as different as their life conditions. Under Dr. Beck's leadership the Center for Human Emergence with its Middle East node www.CHE-mideast.org is seeding innovative projects in Palestine and Israel designed to transform life conditions in both societies to the level where mutually beneficial peace between them can develop organically.
From The Center for Human Emergence
Is Scientific Evidence Modern-Day Scripture?
By Rev. Michael Dowd
We are in the early stages of what I think historians will one day call religion's Evidential Reformation. Increasingly, most of us (the devout included) relate to scientific, historic and cross-cultural evidence as more authoritative than the dictates of an all-male ecclesiastical body or a literalist reading of Scripture.
A good example of this is a recent Christianity Today cover story: "The Search for the Historical Adam," which noted that a growing number of evangelical leaders are shedding a traditional reading of Genesis because of what's been revealed through genetic evidence. In the words of Francis Collins and Karl Giberson, "Literalist readings of Genesis imply that God specifically created Adam and Eve, and that all humans are descended from these original parents. Such readings, unfortunately, do not fit the evidence."
Just as Augustine reinterpreted Christianity in light of Plato in the fourth century, and Aquinas integrated Aristotle in the 13th, today there are dozens of theologians across the spectrum re-envisioning the Christian faith. Whose ideas are they integrating now? Darwin, Einstein, Hubble, Wilson and all who have contributed to an evidence-based understanding of physical, biological and cultural evolution.
What many find most inspiring is also the least disputable: what we now know (not merely believe) about big history, human nature and the vital, creative role of death at all levels of the cosmos.
Big history, also known as the epic of evolution or Great Story, is the 13.7 billion year science-based tale of cosmic genesis -- from the formation of galaxies and the origin of life, to the development of consciousness and culture, and onward to the emergence of ever-widening circles of care and concern. It is the first origin story in the history of humanity that is globally produced and derived entirely from evidence. Thanks to Bill Gates and David Christian's Big History Project, it will soon be taught in high schools around the world.
Through big history we discover that we are made of stardust and that we're related to everything. Indeed, we can think of our own species as the way the universe itself is awakening to the magnificence of its epic journey -- a tale of increasing complexity and interdependence. Big history helps us appreciate the role of science in eliciting global wisdom and the role of religion in fostering cooperation at scales larger than our biological instincts could bring about.
Moving from our outer to inner world, science offers a no less remarkable insight. Within us are instincts shaped by millions of years of evolution. Alas, those deep-rooted, compelling drives are now dangerously out of sync with modern times.
To be blunt, the very same instincts that enabled our ancestors to survive and reproduce now make many of us fat, some addicted and most of us frivolous in how we use our downtime.
Instincts can hardly be faulted, however. We are surrounded by "supernormal stimuli": processed foods, feel-good drugs and alcohol, Internet porn, romance novels, mind-numbing television, addictive gaming -- none of which our ancestors ever had to face.
What this means is that without an evolutionary grasp of why our instincts and emotions are the way they are, it isn't just difficult to wisely choose and live our priorities. It's practically impossible.
Finally, all religious traditions have offered beliefs that helped their adherents face the inevitability of death -- face it with trust. Thanks to science, we now have knowledge that does the same (and more!), while inviting the religious traditions to evolve.
Fundamentally, we learn (via many converging lines of evidence) that death is natural and generative at all levels of reality. Consider: without the death of ancient stars (which are cauldrons of chemical creation), the universe would support nothing more complex than the simplest gases: hydrogen and helium. Without the death of generation upon generation of simple forms of life, no descendants could have evolved eyes to see, colors to attract, emotions to feel. Without the death of fetal cells during the early stages of development, we would all be spheres. And of course, this: In a finite world, without the death of elders there would be no room for children.
Until we grasp that death is no less sacred than life, and that it plays a necessary role in an evolving cosmos, Christianity will be shackled by otherworldly notions of "the gospel," medical technologies will prolong physical and emotional suffering, and the medical industry will inadvertently underwrite the widening gap between rich and poor.
Few things are more important than transforming how we think about our inner and outer nature, and our mortality. Thus far, the Evidential Reformation has been centered in science. We desperately need our faith traditions to celebrate this momentous time. We need all the experience that the traditions can muster to guide us today. For in truth, evidence is modern-day scripture.
Evolutionary Leaders: In Service to Conscious Evolution
The purpose of Evolutionary Leaders: In Service to Conscious Evolution is to collectively inspire and serve conscious evolution. Together we explore ideas, perspectives and modalities that foster an evolutionary worldview. We seek to make insights that emerge from our exploration accessible to the public through diverse media, educational, and other relevant platforms. Our engagement with one another creates cooperative partnerships within the EL Circle and also enhances and amplifies the work we are already doing in our various fields of endeavor. Our intention is to inspire and support evolutionary leadership and visionary action throughout the world, by giving voice to conscious, transformational and evolutionary ideas that meet the challenges of our time.
Don Beck, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Joan Borysenko, Gregg Braden, Patrick Brauckmann, Rinaldo Brutoco, Jack Canfield, Scott Carlin, Deepak Chopra, Andrew Cohen, Oran Cohen, Dale Colton, Wendy Craig-Purcell, Stephen Dinan, Michael Dowd, Gordon Dveirin, Duane Elgin, Barbara Fields, Ashok Gangadean, Kathleen Gardarian, Tom Gegax, David Gershon, Mark Gerzon, Charles Gibbs, Joshua Gorman, Craig Hamilton, Kathy Hearn, Jean Houston, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Ervin Laszlo, Bruce Lipton, Lynnaea Lumbard, Elza Maalouf, Howard Martin, Fred Matser, Rod McGrew, Steve McIntosh, Lynne McTaggart, Nipun Mehta, Nina Meyerhof, Deborah Moldow, James O'Dea, Terry Patten, Carter Phipps, Carolyn Rangel, Ocean Robbins, Peter Russell, Elisabet Sahtouris, Yuka Saionji, Gerard Senehi, Christian Sorensen, Emily Squires, Daniel Stone, Lynne Twist, Diane Williams, Katherine Woodward Thomas, Claire Zammit, Tom Zender
Join the Community
