Subtle Activism Summit

Go to http://summerofpeace.net/program   and scroll down on the left hand side to dates and programs. Recordings are free there for each program.

Here are most of the sessions, with their introductory paragraphs that may help you decide which ones you wish to listen to more of. At each page, there is a biography and contact info that I did not include here.

 I did NOT attend the first two sessions on Wed the 9th…

TUESDAY Sept 8 2015

 Subtle Activism: Spiritual Responsibility at this time of Global Crisis and Transformation
With Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee: Sufi Teacher and Author 
Hosted by David Thomas Nicol 
In this session, Llewellyn will share what our role is as spiritual activists at this present time of crisis and transformation and what is needed for us to participate as fully as possible.

The cry of the earth, as well as the cry of the poor…  Encyclical

Why have we FORGOTTEN this. Shamans are those who deal with the tears that we make in the web of life.
First we receive the light, then impart the light, thus we heal the world…

Service is an essential part of spiritual practice. We have forgotten this aspect that is grounded in all spiritual practice. Spirituality has been subverted by the ego, that it is all about us.

At the very beginning, take one step back from yourself and reclaim the whole..

Joanna Macy – love for the world is essential  for healing the planet. It is a critical piece in the environmental crisis.

The environmental crisis is more than just a scientific/political/spiritual issue. This is in Spiritual Ecology. We would not treat a living being as we treat the planet.

Pope’s encyclical also speaks to this, brings it into the fore. Need to frame the environmental crisis as a spiritual issue.

Native American teaching with  “original instructions” given to humanity
“we have to get along together” – applies to all of Creation.

Also, the subtle realms, that we as a culture have dismissed, forgotten, rejected. They belong to all spiritual traditions…. Deva’s , Deities, prayers to angels and saints,  We all have to get along together, because that is how the world is made…

Anima Mundi, the world has a soul, ancient relationship of macrocosm to microcosm. As we are, so is the world a spiritual being. Need to reclaim this deep understanding of the world and of creation.
This understanding of how the worlds work together.

When there is an issue, you return to the root of it. What is at the root of the environmental crisis? Not just a Newtonian shift that we can treat the world as an object, which is at root of economic attitude towards the world
Also, turned away from revering the Earth as something sacred, sustainer, family, kin…

To reclaim that relationship with the Sacred.  We are all in it together…

There are ways to work with the world as a spiritual being…

It is a taboo to talk about these other realms socially. There are certain things that spiritual teachers have a hard time talking about..

Spirituality got hijacked by the self-development folks, who are about my journey and my destiny.
There are also the subtle realms, the connected realms…

Also, a taboo is that we are allowed to say that the world is being ecologically devastated.

[Joanna Macy  – we need a spiritual practice to be able to contain the grief of the devastation]

Also, being forced to see what is happening to the inner worlds, as a result of what is happening outwardly. The devastation happening on the inner planes of the soul and of the world soul.

“it is ok to talk about the outer devastation, the throwaway culture, that is painful. But, there is an inner wasteland that belongs to the soul and the World Soul, and this is vastly underreporting.”
A vast act of censorship over 200 years.

FlatEarth Society, that only the physical world exists. Unthinkable to ancestors, who lived partly in spiritual world.  This is the big taboo, to point this out.
Doing this, we have created devastation in the Anima Mundi…   “the cry of the Earth”

What can we do?  The first thing we need to do is to listen to the sound of the Earth crying…

To talk about spiritual darkening is a complete taboo in American spiritual culture, that the inner world can be affected by our outer actions….  There are toxic wastelands in the inner worlds that are as vast as the ones in the outer world.

Often, the spirit world beings are confused. They feel that we are supposed to be working together. The Nature Devas understand Nature. But if we are not working with them, they want us to, and this is very important work..

Some believe that the inner worlds can’t be violated, or spirituality that the inner world is all of the light and all of the love.
But, we work in both worlds. One of the names of the Sufis is Sweepers. Sweeping up the debris of the Sacred, that forgets, brings the sacred back.
We need to clean up the mess that we made. The spiritual work of service, and we have forgotten that.

After the state of oneness, comes the  state of servanthood. Reclaming that work…

Those of us who have been given a glimpse of the Light of the Self can learn how to use that spark that we have been given access to in service to Life.

Drawn in prayer, by suffering.  We offer our own, and others’ suffering, in prayer

Putting the Earth as a living being in our heart, and give it to God. We cry out, and Grace comes…

Stepping into a we, that includes all of creation. We are part of a living breathing spiritual being that we call the Earth. We all have a part in this world that is being born…

How to help this world to be re-born. What we see this as a human crisis, is part of the Earth itself being reborn, in a new way, as a spiritual being. It is going through its own transformation. 

Originally, were talking about sustainability OF THE WHOLE
By Copenhagen, the conversation had changed to “how can the world sustain our business as usual?”
This is a huge turning away from our responsibility, from the recognition of the Sacred.

If we look at our civilization, it is pathological, makes no sense, and is unsustainable.

Darkening of the Light is worst selling book – talks about something that nobody wants to hear. Talks that the world won’t be what it was before.  That we have to witness what is happening. In the outer, and in the inner world.
 Can’t avoid it in gated communities, spiritual practice, and, we are part of a world that is not sustainable….

What can we do? Is witnessing enough?
For the Love of the Real – we can do more… Through our spiritual practice, we can connect to something True, Real,…we can find something not contaminated in us… then to bring that connection to what is real, bring it into our life, practice, community, way of being.   Then make a real contribution to the world that can be born.

10000 ways to be true to our innermost nature
Kabbalah – first we receive the light, then we impart the light, then we bring this light into the world, into the community, hearts, service… thus, we repair the world.

More than just witnessing, the spiritual action…   

A form of spiritual empowerment. If we trust the light to show us, we may discover new practices… As we tap into our collective spiritual intelligence, we can co-create new forms..  A spiritual adventure..

Polishing the mirror of the heart, working with the shadow of the rejected darkness inside. Then, on praying, the heart can use the mirror of the heart to reflect that onto the world.
Sufi practice. Reflecting light into the world, offering it to where it is needed. Brotherhood of migrants who keep watch on the world and for the world.

Tonglen – Tibetan . Where they actually take the suffering in, to transform it…

Can use this light to co-create.
It is no longer fringe to talk about unity, interrelationship, interdependence, anymore…

Integral ecology that works with human suffering, divisiveness, world ecology.. that has been getting worse since globalization. When we do this, how can we create the world that the heart knows is possible?

You pray, then you act from a place of prayer.
Hands to work, and hearts to God…

Some people’s work is in the inner worlds,
Some in the  in-between worlds, the archetypes, artists, symbols, dreamwork
And some drawn to the outer worlds

All different ways to be of service… How to all work together?

Include the Earth in one’s spiritual practice. It needs to be remembered as a sacred being
[“you don’t deserve this”]
We know how to pray for others when they are sick.

The Earth needs us more than we understand…
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Subtle Activism: Mutual Awakening Practice: How Your Higher Relatedness Can Evoke Global Shifts
With Patricia Albere: Founder of Evolutionary Collective 
Hosted by David Thomas Nicol 
Patricia Albere of the Evolutionary Collective will describe how the Mutual Awakening Practice uniquely creates Unity consciousness that activates the evolutionary force of love, your unique potential and a dynamic creativity. She will describe how the inter-related awakening of MAP elicits an awareness of not only your unique potential or essence, but also that of an “inter-being” between us. This profound potentiation of commonly-focused souls, generated through the Evolutionary Collective, creates the possibility for more “real world” shifts in consciousness, culture, and human evolution.

www.evolutionarycollective.com    
maybe there is a way to awaken together. The space between us.
Rather than two separatenesses, trying to get along ( she calls this  “high duality”), they entered into a shared consciousness where we were one, rather than so separate

Created a practice, called mutual awakening. How to potentially bring others into this consciousness. Done for 8 yrs. A simple process. When people are oriented correctly, they begin to enter into a shared consciousness that has deeper and deeper mystical dimensions.   You are both there, and also a non-dual experience. 

It is a meditation for the shared awakening that can also expand to groups.
The experiences that you are having are arising in that collective space. Not so much your own..

This is not about comparing, or instead of, personal work.

A sort of hyperdrive. 100 people in a very committed setting. Have some experiences with this, over up to 7 years.
It is showing us together, not just through Patricia… Because others are inside of this all of the time, “this is not a course.”
Almost like people who have decided to live in a new inner world together.  You start to occupy a different space, more of the time.

Like being with a lover, you are always with them… 

What is different with individual work, to some degree, there is a certain kind of striving that occurs, learning how to let go…
In this, when the alignment is correct, when people listen (the only people getting interested in this have already done a lot of development work) turn towards each other and open up the possibility, it is as if the consciousness is SO delighted and so wanting to play, like a dog waiting at the door.
It is so desirous of entering into the consciousness of those waiting to enter those interested/willing.

A warning, as this consciousness starts to rise, takes apart layers of separation.
Because the consciousness is less of a witnessing conciousness, and more of an immersion, more like the universe is blinking on and off. A real sense of the ability to exist in a discontinuity.

Not from the past that we are deriving clarity, but more present-future, as if it is pulling us. It begins to take apart our sense of how we find security.

Not focusing as much on past, issues, pain. We are leaning into the field between us.

Several practices have arisen out of this work.
If two of us are leaning into what is present, and there is pain. If people lean into what is true, that maximizes the Optimizing Force (Almaas).
Not about lift one’s consciousness or shift it through mantras and visualizations.

This is leaning into the precision of what is there.
Of what contraction is there.

Instead of me being the only one whose consciousness is touching what is there, the other person is also inside my consciousness with me.  “the ultimate expression of compassion”, not being separate from it.
When your consciousness is with mine there, it starts to unravel and unfold.
Who knows what patterns happen from that?

Do things with several people tuned in, inside of one person’s experience. How profoundly things can unravel, without even trying…

What if people only did this once, moved their consciousness around, so that it is not just in them, could direct that towards a particular issue.

If you have a large group of people who are deeply inside of this developed consciousness together, so that they have almost formed a nervous system of something larger, then even more capacity if they focus on something together.

They have NOT experimented so much with the subtle activist part of this.

Ebola – holding it in the center, and speaking from it, being with it, getting a sense of its significance…
We saw that it was a unifying force, of something that is contagious.. That is one thing that came up.

If we could get a positive version of Ebola, that could infect everyone (by touching and holding, which is how Ebola spreads!), how wonderful.

Groups developing their skills and capacities to turn their attention to these issues…

Helps if they are committed
People find that they are lifted, as they are connected, reaching towards Truth, Beauty, and Good ness.
To actually inspire each other, is one part of the course.
They challenge each other with that.

There are numbers, and there is also depth. What is the effect of a few communities that are going really deep in an ongoing way, even if quite small.

Started with EST, Landmark, THP… a world that works for everyone

What about the activists who say that all is one, obscures separation.

We have a lot of leaders who are interested in other ways of doing things, in many professions. Figuring that she does a pure form, and they make translations, in their own work…. We are including that dimension through the people who are in it…

The square root of 1% - emerging from TM research, that , if you get that amount of a population engaged in TM meditation, you begin to see positive effects in the entire population with regard to 

8000 is enough to do that in the world…

Only takes about 10% of cultural change to be leading edge, and others tend to adopt it and follow…

The whole world is now connected in outer way, through technology. This was not the case 20 years ago. How quickly news and innovation can spread.

If you and I focus on each other, or on the same thing, there is a unification that occurs, less separateness.

“Self-reflective consciousness, the sense that we are separate, can’t be the end to evolution. The awakening to a collective consciousness in which we also have our self-reflecting consciousness is a step forward”

Love is love, is eternal	
And there is something new, emerging, hasn’t been there before
Something happens when people are leaning into those emergent truths, emergent qualities

Does feel like a different exploration. Unity consciousness, Absolute. And, you are experiencing it alone, not with the person next to you.
Different from ‘something wanting to happen’
There is also a oneness separately together.
Beyond post-modern are  we start to wake up intersubjectively, we are in the same reality together
Still both there, but both touching the same reality, which is vivid and exciting.

As if Unity is waking up to Itself. No good language here.
As if we were cells,  and the cells are starting to become a human. Then a sense that something larger, the human, is waking up.

The more we practice, the more access we have to that…
How do we individually (we become more distinct and clear, not as egos, but as beings) and collectively surrender to being orchestrated. How does a collective surrender to greater orchestration?

An experience, where something in him was called forth, and not going anywhere…

Has a quality of incarnation, bringing it to this earth, and also a galactic quality. It is not an earthy groundedness, but a different kind of grounded…

Experienced like a sense of being in a new place, a “poof!”, and are somewhere completely different. Feels literally discontinuous.  Things disappear, and then you are somewhere else.
There is depth, but not a sense of dragging history with you. a multi-dimensionality.

There is a karma-free quality to it, no residue to it…

Potential for healing and creativity at the collective level, are truly exciting..

Deepest prayer for how your work could unfold for the world at large, what would you say?

Would love to gather the 8000 people whose main focus is beyond themselves, in a good selfless, in a way of building this consciousness and seeing what is possible together. Making the translations into all of the different dimensions of life.  The intersubjective meditation, which is quite simple.

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Subtle Activism: Transforming Self and World – An Exploration of Subtle Activism
With David Spangler: Co-Founder of Lorian Association, Teacher of Incarnational Spirituality 
Hosted by David Thomas Nicol 
In this session, David Nicol of the Gaiafield Project and David Spangler of the Lorian Association, two organizations active in the use of subtle activism for personal and planetary transformation, explore the meaning and promise of this approach. The aim is to clarify the role it plays not only as a form of social action but also as part of a holistic paradigm that broadens and redefines the nature of who we are, of our innate spiritual capacities, and of the world in which we live.
Consciously uses the term Subtle Activism.
Uses this term because it opens our awareness to the idea that there are both physical and nonphysical aspects of living.  Just because it is not so available to 5 primary senses, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
Part of the web that lets planet attempt to function as a whole system.

Works to help people become aware of wholeness of the planet, and themselves. Their physical nature, and their non physical nature.

Speaks to a way of working with attention and intention and practice, that helps them engage in subtle dimensions of the world. No way to help directly with bomb blast in Bangkok, but there are subtle ways to do this…
Gives us a way to provide service that we would not directly perceive.

Relation between personal development and Subtle activism work. Does one precede the other, or ??

The tricky thing about subtle energies is that we are generating them all the time. Important to be aware of any turbulence that we might be feeling, and keeping it away from that situation.

Important to find the inner places where we feel connected to love and compassion, and do subtle activist work from there. Otherwise, we may complicate things.

Teaches Subtle Activism to be in the presence of Gaia, or Gaia-consciousness as central to this approach.

If a hurricane happened and I wanted to help, rather than I just show up, important to not just show up, but to be prepared, to have training, etc… to be an adequate participant in being of service.

With regard to Gaia, the term ‘subtle energies’ is a tricky phrase. Mind often goes to familiar ideas such as electromagnetic. But they may better by seen as waves in a sea of Life. They are alive, they have sentience.
All of the energies that we have access to in this world, are elements of Gaia’s own being. So, it is important to learn how to treat these energies with loving respect.
In effect, are entering into a relationship with the planetary spirit.

It is a moral undertaking, a relational task. Not just a psychic adventure or an occult activity. We are not just manipulating blind energies in a physical way
When we do this, we are engaging with life energies, the field of Life that we all share. It requires a different approach, one of partnership, where we bring love, respect, and  a sense that we are engaging with consciousnesses other than our own, to achieve this

For 200 years, we have an image of individual able to exert mastery over their environment.
The person who can exert their will or imagination to control non-physical energies. 
But, this is with an emphasis on control.

“Let’s go help out, but I am your boss and you must obey me” Very diff from mutual support and partnership. A consciousness of partnership to the enterprise.

A Gaia-worldview. What if seeing things ecologically rather than seeing them categorically, in isolated bits…
“We need to learn to think like a planet, in a way that supports the well-being of all life on the planet”

When we read the news, we do not see a lot of ‘thinking like a planet’. We do see some pressure to think in that way.  Need systems thinking, ecological thinking, life-embracing thinking, Gaian thinking…

Subtle Activism comes from that, and a new way of doing business in the world.
Incarnational Spirituality…

Has always connected with subtle realms, often give advice or comment, even since little.
About 17 years ago “the problem with humanity is not that you are too incarnated, but that you are not incarnated enough”
We think we are part of the world, but we are not well-enough grounded in the world.	

“Apprentice to Spirit”  one of his books.
Focuses on the sacredness of the embodied state.
The personal and transpersonal are partners, both important.
Focuses on aspects of the incarnational process that gives us spiritual resources

-	Each of us is a radiant source of spiritual energy, that is a direct byproduct of source
If we work outside, we generate heat. Inside, the process of incarnation is a kind of radiance, a self-light

It may be clear, may be obstructed, but it is there. Each of us is a source of spiritual energy to a certain degree. Incarnational Spirituality is about how this can be enhanced, enter into a place of greater con recognition of this.
In partnership with the light of the world, and the light of the sacred. 
Part of Incarnational Spirituality, is about the individual, and some of it is about the incarnation of Gaia. Has a planetary dimension, to see what we can do with the rest of life to enhance the flow of life, the wholeness of being on this planet…

Assisting the incarnation of Gaia, available on www.lorian.org 

Some people have experiences of experiencing subtle forces, energies…

How do I engage my wholeness to engage with the wholeness of the world? Scientific revolution has put emphasis on the rational intellect and mental ways of processing things. Reason is seen as highest achievement of the person. Emotions and body are seen as less.
But body, feelings, etc, are part of a whole system.
More than heart, spirit, body, mind, but how the 4 work together as part of an interactive system.

The body is one of the best ways to connect subtly. It has not lost its awareness of the subtle realms. Some of our feelings are connected (and some of mental, too, such as intuition, imagination)
For many, the heart is a way in, through love…

We all occupy the same space, on the subtle level. Distance is not an issue. 
 
When a bomb goes off, for example (or a positive gathering), the local subtle environment becomes turbulent.
All of us are engaging with the physical environment, and its immediate subtle environment. If walked into a room right after a big fight, can feel the tension…

What would we do if we were there? Provide care to people
 Before going into that, be sure that our own energy field can hold in mind, body, emotions, attunement spiritually, how we would want to be there.  Peace, spirit of healing, of people feeling loved and valued and held on inner plane. An energy field that will bring calm to that situation, mitigate the turbulence and not be out of balance.

Center self, then once feel peace, radiate it out to immediate local environment. Helps to ground the energy. Creating a field made up of self, and of local environment.
Then, use imagination. Might use pics from TV or memory, or imagine what that scene may be like..

Imagine self there, the Gaian spirit is quite aware of me making a mental hookup. It knows what to do. Not an out of body connection, but the planetary spirit knows what to do, and how to have that happen…

There I am, as a small fractal of the world. Want the local environment in Bangkok to resonate with that, as well.. Makes it easier for local aid workers. Helps them be open to flow of love and life available..

A specific experience, Japanese tsunami…
Wanted to do something
Got guidance that suggested to NOT do anything, that situation was SO turbulent, that bringing ANY energy in, it added more energy to an already turbulent system.  So wait a few hrs or a day… Let things settle down a bit..
Sometimes it is better to not rush in, let things settle, to not get in the way of the forces that really know what they are doing.

If it is truly chaotic, don’t want people running around in there…

It is important to realize that I am partnering with other beings and the life of the world. NOT have an image of a fixer, charging in like a knight. Willing to hold back if that is needed, to offer what one can when needed.

Has COURSES in Subtle Activism online..
There are many ways to do Subtle Activism, a person’s loving unique relationship with the world. DS does work mostly with individuals, what one person can do. Appreciates the large groups together, that is very powerful. 

The Gaiafield work is part of the puzzle as well…
Like in the Armed Services, there are a few in the Special Forces units, highly trained, and then those less deeply trained, more of them…

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Shamanism and Subtle Activism
With Sandra Ingerman: Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Author, Teacher 
Hosted by David Thomas Nicol 
There is important action we have to take to create positive change on the planet. How can shamanic practices be applied in a modern context to help bring our world into balance? Can shamanic practices be used to support positive change not only in individuals but also in cities and nations--or even the whole planet? And how might shamanic practices help us to work for change in our world from a place of inner harmony and strength, rather than despair and overwhelm? In this one hour presentation, Sandra Ingerman will share with us her experience of applying shamanic practices to collective healing and how the approach of shamanism can empower the work we do on behalf of the planet and all of life.

A group of monks who flew into LA. You don’t free a troubled area. You gather there in community and prayer to add strength to the area and try to influence the outcome.

People in shamanic cultures lived and worked in community. See exponential change in the healing work.

Working with rivers and pollution, in a shamanic way…

Michael Harner, working with spirits and helping to heal the planet.

Shamans also worked with growing healthy crops, and keeping environments in balance.
So, pulled together basic principles of ways to work environmentally…

Inubis – dream  “the missing piece in your environmental work is transfiguration”
Definition in Webster’s was “shapeshifting”

Next door neighbor was dying of cancer, came to Sandra for help. The woman told about Jesus’s transfiguration.
Sandra began reading about the spiritual dismemberment experience taken down to bone or to Earth, and how they returned with a light…

Brought back their healing powers..  This also applied to alchemy, Buddhism, Vedas…

When we experience our own radiant light, that is transformative. And, everything in our environment reflects that back to us.

A group of 5 met, went to water company in Santa Fe, about transmuting polluted water.
The whole company came. They suggested test boxes, putting gasoline in water.

One person had a physicist, who suggested ammonium hydroxide in deionized water, which is a common contaminant. It very caustic. 

They ended up working with gasoline in water..
And, deionized water with ammonium hydroxide.

Two nights of ceremony, calling in every helping spirit of every tradition  “here is this water, go fix it”
pH went from 12 to 9, in 20 minutes.

Second night, asked spirits to witness, and group did shamanic journey to radiate their light, like a star in the night sky that radiates effortlessly. Didn’t try to change the water or send the light, but just it radiates and it moves. Not intentionally sending it somewhere.
Same results.

The principle here, it is who we become that changes the world. 
Yes, there are needed actions to improve the planet.
But blending in the feminine principle, that radiating our light is one way to transmute the toxins in our environment.

Did a few experiments with this. 

People went to ponds and lakes and tried it.

Bought a gas discharge visualization camera, doesn’t just photograph aura, but captures physical, emotional, mental energy emanating from a plant, person, object…. Gives a picture of it, for cancer diagnosis.  Can also test soil…

Tested soil that car drove over it.  When millions of trees lost in Santa Fe, could see the trees on the property in their divine light. Seeing them as spiritual beings who had divine light and could make it through this.

Huge different between 1, and 60, people working on the peach tree. The power of community..

Someone in Findhorn set up this transfiguration work remotely. Had a picture of his philodendron on his altar. He developed equipment for measuring the activity of the plant. He did not know when the ceremony would happen. The activity of the plant was markedly increased after the ceremony, and began growing new leaves…

We do NOT send healing to anything, any person, any substance
We radiate our light like a sun or star, we don’t try to send it
We don’t see the subject as suffering or polluted; we see them in their spiritual light

Consciously directing attention towards seeing their light, or wholeness…

What ARE our collective capacities, come together in large numbers?

Radiating light, and seeing everyone in their divine light.
A little girl who could not hear what was happening. “I feel cold. I feel warm… there are all these colorful butterflies flying around me…”

Some basic principles that need to be added

Reciprocity – honoring life, giving thanks. Honoring earth, air, water that give us life, not taking this for granted. Beginning by honoring and respecting that which gives us life
Adding to ceremonial work just by honoring that which gives us life, and plants, trees, all of Nature

Then, nature cooperates in moving back to a place of harmony.

Would never do a Soul Retrieval on a person without having absolute permission
When doing it for land, or a city, through meditative work, travel to the spirit of the land, or the city, and ask permission to do healing work.

Cities, nations, your place – all have spirits. Can work in partnership with. Always ask permission to do any kind of healing work on a place.

Opening up portals so we are more open to spirit worlds again…

Has changed her teaching to honor this. Because we are so caught up in the tangible in our culture, and all else is discounted, often people more do their journey or spiritual work as if watching TV. They are disconnected from it.

Shamans fully went into these realms, and opened up their senses. They would see/ feel/ taste/ smell while in these realms
Opening up doorway, through the realms, and see/smell/taste/feel just as you do in this world.
With this, the healings are much more powerful, because they are going into the spirit worlds embodied. Helping the bridging the worlds, the veils between the worlds.

Teaching people how to create bridges by becoming more embodied, asking ancestors for advice… more of a coming back and forth…
Veils thinning so that we can go there, as well…

Effect of this work on people post coronary surgery, and depression…
UMichigan integrative medicine
One group learned about stress management
One with regular cardiologist
One was her Shamanic “Medicine for the Earth.”  98% of those who attended were fundamentalist Christians!

She was able to teach them, if you don’t get caught up in the language. Taught the principles of “align thoughts and words to create a vision of what we want in the world”
How to acknowledge the self-defeated ways, and then transmute them
Did fire ceremonies to release limiting attitudes
Worked with wonder, gratitude, blessing
Aligning thoughts and words..

Did a lot of ceremony. Half of the group in the middle, half on the outside holding a circle, seeing the other in their divine light.
Had a few miraculous cures in the group…

Taught about the power of daydreaming. They lead us to what is happening in the world. Shamans teach how to control and focus daydreams so they are aligned with what is being manifested in the community at large.
The group moved into an incredible state of hope.
It kept increasing, for 6 months after it was over…

Thoughts, words, daydreams, attitudes, supporting the community in their healing, being the light, seeing everyone in the community in their light.
Heals individuals, community at large, environment and planet…

She had a vision at age 7 of what this world would be….

It is important to realize that the spiritual work that we do DOES make a difference…

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Subtle Activism: Subtle Energy Competency
With Thomas Huebl: Spiritual Teacher and Founder of the Academy of Inner Science
Hosted by David Thomas Nicol

Large groups of healing of Germans and Jews post WWII, large ritual healing events

Saw a similar process in the group, a strong discharge of collective traumatization, like collective unconscious material that surfaced within a minute in 40-50 people in a room.
Happened again with a group again…

What about upgrading this, doing healing events – last one 1000 people.
To design events, work with a collective container, where people who are willing to engage with a specific topic, to contribute as a collective service, their time, energy , presence…

This was not an easy event, and, seemed to have a powerful outcome, some insights from the event…

What happens when working in these large groups?
Need much grounded building of the container, so those present can follow the process and contain the process in selves. Touching deep material.
If there are more experienced people in the room, it is a powerful process, because we become conductors, to bring up stuff from the collective unconscious.

Also use transpersonal energies to help us transform it, so we don’t stay stuck with that material, Find a way how the future is engaging in the past.
There is a kind of transformation unit within us…

To connect with the future, the spiritual intelligence of humanity as a resource to bring into the field.
Reminded of shamanic perspectives…

The importance of drawing in energies from the future to help deal with this.
In mystical knowledge, the future has the ability to rewrite the blueprint of who I am today.
Like a new upgrade rewrites the old operating system and expands it. 

Consciousness evolution, rewrites itself. We have a resource, how we can engage with the past, with a power in our back, so that, with our human fear, we connect to deep collective material. Then we use the higher conscious of the future to help transform it.

In the collective field, it is a powerful process, to wash the consciousness field with this higher light.
Need a great deal of energetic understanding to be able to do this. Some basic knowledge and abilities…

After a war, there is a collective scar in the field.
Whenever we move from one place to another, more sensitive people can feel different compositions of the subtle field
This is a collective perception body.
When people travel to Berlin, they may merge into that field, and get the sensations of it.
There is a lot of storage in that field.

A 5 minutes a day practice - to include some worldly issue, and hold it in a non-reactive way for 5 minutes.
We as humanity have an exterior and interior world. may be able to have the two aligned…

When look into the world, and Middle East, who is the interior that gives the conscious awareness to many of the events that are happening in the world?
Can I read news as a holistic person?  Most people get too overwhelmed by the amount of info from the news that we dissociate inside to process it

We have a higher capacity. We incarnated in a time when the internet is here…. The virtual world does not have to be cold. It can be filled with compassion, presence…   by living in this time, we have a responsibility …

Dedicate last 5 minutes of your practice to some world event. May be difficult, and that may be evolutionary pressure to grow new abilities…

Sangha was a group that studied, practiced together, amplified field.
Easier to generate fields of healing in groups… 

We tend to avoid discomfort.
But love expands particularly, in uncomfortable situations…
Love is active in the area of the pilot in Syria being burned… that is where it makes a difference…
This is where the light needs to come.   En-light-enment needs to also come there…

Emergence of new forms of spirituality that can be integrated into the more positive dimensions of modern culture and evolution….

Too many things in contemporary culture are being sold as new, that are not.
Traditions have a tendency to get too tight, and not address contemporary issues.
This is the religion, and not the mystical flame.
Not the cable, but the electricity in the cable…

Seeing that as the source of life in the contemporary. From that flame, we will find answers to our burning questions. We might miss that wisdom and intelligence and innovation.

There is a wisdom aspect to the deep societal problems now.

Sit in path of awakening and have a seat for relationship, everything else. Rather than it being a separate thing…

How to artfully deal with healing racism, sexism, in your community?

More radical transparency needed…  where we invite the issues into a dialogue, into a sharing, a bigger collective perspective. If we can participate in each others’ issues, the perspective is larger.
We create open fields and learn to stay mindful and attuned…

Every moment is an encoded information that potentially holds an insight. Learn to track and follow symptoms into their essence. How to get to the root of what is being expressed?

Then the energy is not privatized, but radiates back into the collective intelligence…

In the festival events, this year topic around individual healing, and some around collective healing…
How does the field create a new future, to come out as something new

How to be more aware of the dissociation? Leads to indifference… not looking at what is happening.

Mindfulness and openhearted presence…

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Wednesday Sept 9

Subtle Activism: Supernormal – On Yoga, the Siddhis (Extraordinary Powers), and Science
With Dean Radin: Chief Scientist at IONS (Institute of Noetic Sciences), Author, Speaker 
Hosted by David Thomas Nicol 
"Supernormal" asks a simple question: Was Buddha just a nice guy? Did Buddha’s teachings thrive because he was more attractive or charismatic than the average guy, or because of his legendary supernormal abilities? What does science have to offer in addressing these questions, and what do the answers tell us about our own potentials?

Dean Radin, on supernormal powers.  He works at Institute for Noetic Sciences

Empirical evidence that we have not wrapped up our understanding of the mind, brain or consciousness by biology.

Science showing how interconnection is so fundamental to reality.

There is little scientific consensus about which interpretations people prefer. Quantum physics has the quantum measurement problem – that measurement makes a difference.

The movie and the book The Secret, where consciousness becomes a huge force in changing the potentials. This is similar to an Eastern perspective, or Idealism, where everything is consciousness…

Quanta – is about quantum measurement problem
Qualia – is about internal experience
Both are well-understood problems that have no solution in the physicial and psychological worlds.
Both have to do with subjectivity.

Because these are important in academics now, it is why consciousness is considered safe to talk about.

The study of psychic phenomena began before there was science. Stuff was reported. There were regularities in what was described, and so a taxonomy of this was found.

Telepathy – thought transference, was found to happen at times, 
Clairvoyance – a visual impression at a distance of seeing. Remote Viewing is another name for this.
Precognition – dream that came to be true
Psychokinesis – a strong intention has some effect on the world
Survival after bodily death – near-death experiences, spirits

How to explain these kinds of experiences?

Spiritualism became popular in US, England, then became entertainment, parlor games. As entertainment, there was a lot of fraud.

There were enough mediums who seemed to be able to produce this in a genuine way – this was the beginning of behavioral science, to separate frauds from real..

ESP research with Rhine… ESP cards, dice…  This was not the way the phenomenon usually manifests
Then it began to decline

Then newer studies that work with how people express these abilities – often related to meaning.
Because there are 40-50 years of repeated experiments with newer methods, can assess this with meta-analyses.
Based on many repetitions by many labs, double-blind, etc..  the basic four kinds of psychic effects are 
Confirmed with extremely high confidence that these are real.
These seem to be weak in lab, because they are artificial constructs, and because they test college students, most of whom do not report psychic abilities.

High confidence that, even in general populations who do NOT REPORT that they are psychic, there are still quite significant demonstration of capacity.
High level talent has much stronger evidence. These ar e like Olympic athletes…
 All of these are telling us something about the nature of consciousness…

Nearly all medical and scientific research, rely on statistical effects. In behavioral effects and life sciences, the effects are extremely variable, and often small. People change, and people are different from each other. There is high variability between people and times. And, then we are checking something that people are not too skilled at, to boot.

If we wanted to study high jumping, and picked 100 college sophomores, would show that 4.5 feet is the highest a person can jump.
But, if you took Olympic atheletes, they can jump 8’. They have a special talent and practice regularly. Others might not believe this, based on the initial research.
Even WITH Olympic athletes, often can’t tell who will win. It is very rare for people so at the top of their game that they always win…   

Patanjali wrote the yoga sutras, with an entire chapter on psychic abilities that can be attained as a result of dedicated practice. A dissertation. Even adept yogis say that only a few of them can access these.

If practiced for many hours daily, with few distractions…
Take people with natural talents that do a great deal of work.
The sutras say that they will eventually bump up in to psychic phenomena. 

Levitation, manifesting diamonds….  We can find/get these people to be tested.

They also teach how to get telepathy, and clairvoyance. These are easier to teach to regular people. Answer is probably yes, these can be taught…

Telepathy. Don’t want to have the sender just pick something. Better to set up a series of target pools, with 4 different pictures in it.  Randomly pick one of the pools, then randomly pick  one of the targets

Then, put in relaxed state, to rest in that for a half hour, in a sensory deprivation situation.

Then the receiver is given the page with the 4 pics, to pick one.
Statistically, should get about 25%, by chance…

On average, people guess 32%.   The odds of this being chance, is 10 to -30th power. This can’t be chance. It is not fraud, randomization problem, collusion…
Only explanation that we have is that the minds are connected.

“Sending and receiving” are NOT a good description. They have never found anything like that…
Better is quantum entanglement effect – that something arises in the two minds.

The only studies with mediation, have been with precognition. Tibetan monks and yogis in Northern India, monks tested on a standard precognition test. Which picture will come up from a pool. 
Some correlation between years of practice, and proficiency…

Those with talent and keep practicing do better than those who don’t…

What about relationship to subtle activism, transmitting a healing from one person to another?

From telepathy perspective, a large part of our mind is not completely in your head. Your thoughts are not completely your own.  Your random thoughts in a room, are influenced by someone else at a distance. 
If one person is around others agitated, like a mental infection,  their thoughts are contagious.

Both intention and attention push around aspects of the physical world. Entropy, the amount of randomness, seems to be susceptible to intention in the lab, and attention outside of the lab.

Mind and matter, are some kind of relationship, such as matter and energy are.
If a lot of minds go into an unusual state of coherence at the same time, should be a corresponding correlation in matter, that would look more coherent.
The Global Consciousness Project.

We have an experience of going into a ceremony, theatre, chorus, where we are all invited to pay attention to the same time. And we can feel that, something gels.
This can be objectively measured.

What is your latest research?
Working with intuitive healers, and energy medicine healers, and can do something that helps others get better. It doesn’t happen always, but it happens often enough.
Studying people with exceptional healing abilities…  Building a new type of instrument to measure that…

Psychic abilities book. And, not just CAN you do it, but SHOULD you do this? About ¾ of the inquiries that they get, are people who are disturbed by it. Can lose capacity to tell difference between self and others. Puts you at risk of psychosis.
If you want to survive as an organism, you want to be good at paying attention to here-and-now, and not so much there-and-then.  Many psychic phenomena are non local, NOT here and now…

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Subtle Activism: The Global Coherence Initiative
With Claudia Welss: IONS Steering Committee, Global Coherence Initiative, Co-founder of Invest in Yourself 
& Rollin McCraty: Director of Research of the HeartMath Research Center 
Hosted by David Thomas Nicol 
Fascinating material here about Earth’s magnetic field, and how the heart receives intuitive information before the brain does!

Rollin – electrical engineer, worked for Motorola, got a degree in consciousness studies, things that electrical engineering could not answer.
Worked with spirulina, trying to feed the world, growing it in the middle of the desert.
That project went nowhere…
This is where idealism bubble was popped.

It was not about technology. Nothing would solve the deeper world problem, the problem is in consciousness.
Could feed the world and solve the water problem for 10% of the world’s military budget.

HeartMath was one way to do this, so he went onboard with it…

Overcare – problems with unmanaged empathy for others, and also for Earth. Saw people as part of the problem that harmed Earth.
Business for Social Responsibility – but all of their solutions stayed within those who already believed in them.  Went to business school, very slow progress.

Willis Harman, told Claudia, but “you are addressing symptoms, not cause”. Lightbulb went on..
Connected with HeartMath around that time…

Helping people better self-regulate, better get in touch with their heart’s intuitive guidance. Heart as primary access point to connect with Higher Self. 

The magnetic field, measurable around the heart, relates to emotional state, can be measured and does radiate. Led to the GCN

The heart in animals, produces the largest rhythmic magnetic field in the body, similar to how cell phones transmit information to towers. 
Can measure brain waves about an inch off the body
Can measure heart field about 3’ from the body.
Also, it carries information, particularly about one’s emotional state.   “feels good to be around someone”

The field does benefit others around them, physiologically.

In a group, 40 people, 4 at a time, found some synchrony, a literal group field being produced. When people work together, there is an energy, a group battery or energy reserve – gives each other something to draw on.

We are all responsible for maintaining the charge and coherence in the group field.

Indirectly, can measure group. But it does correlate with the EKG, and heart rate variability. So, measure HRV, to get correlation with group field.

20 people in each group in 5 countries.  Research on this…

As people understand cell phone transmission, they can understand vibes and vibes transmission.

Nonlocal intuition 
3 types of intuition

Intuition is flow of info from our ‘undivided wholeness’. Research based on Dean Radin’s protocol.

Looking at the physiologic flow of information. They found that, long before one saw the picture, negative or positive, the heart would respond first, send a different neuro signal to brain, then the brain responded, and then the body responded with a feeling response.

So, gut feelings, but actually it seems to be heart, brain, then to gut…

The brain is in charge of things. And, that is TRUE. We don’t have the wisdom of the soul integrated into our brain. So, when it is not connected with the deeper part of who we are, we run into problems.

[20 minutes in  ]
Heart has its own neurons, often easier to regulate nervous system that way, than through brain.

One of the frequencies of the Earth, is exactly the resonant of a coherent heart field
When we are in synchrony, there is a transfer back and forth, a communication, globally.

Coherence organizes noise. 
For a cell phone to work, need to create a standing wave, 

Installing different kinds of magnetometers. Designed to measure the time varying magnetic fields, the ones that moves

There are rhythms in Earth’s fields that are the same as in animals, and humans. Some same as brain wave frequencies, some with heart rhythms.
Finding great amounts of connection between Earth and …

Global Coherence Initiatives, a community of people who contribute coherence TO the field environment. We are feeding the field 24/7.
Can ask “What am I feeding the field right now?”

Don’t want to wait until we have proven something to do it, then science just becomes another religion.
Trusting in our intuition at times, before proof

The 5 core aspects of this
A common agenda
Mutually reinforcing activities
Continual communications	
A supportive backbone
Measuring

GCI holds the promise of providing shared measurements also on collective healing and field interactions.

We are affecting the Earth’s field environment all the time, even when not consciously doing it.
Be cautious about what kind of vibes one puts out, when doing activism.

There are studies that show that emotionality is primary. If people are emotionally bonded, like each other, that is a definite amplification effect… Caring is a big one. This is why they have the Global Care Room.
Studies show that those high in compassion and love had more effect on random number generators that incoherence, fear, terrorism

“love is stronger than fear”.  Love is psychophysiologic manifestation of coherence.

We use term coherence,  for a radio wave to penetrate, they need to be coherent, like standing waves. Emotionally aligned and bonded have much more influence…

Global Care Room is a place to have a synchronized experience of offering care. Get to see the globe, and where we and others are. It lets you see how many others are there, know how many of us there are. Feels very supportive

Used to bring HeartMath into corporations training executives when in Berkeley. But she was not doing the practice herself. And, she felt too stressed out to do it…

“those with the privilege to know, have the responsibility to act”
The science of interconnectivity helps people not feel that they have to choose between self, others, and planet. The ‘choice’ is a false choice….

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Subtle Activism: Healing the Collective Psyche in Psychedelic States
With Chris M Bache: Professor Emeritus at Youngstown State University, Author, Speaker 
Hosted by David Thomas Nicol 
Chris Bache will discuss the dynamics of subtle activism as experience in two contexts. He will talk about LSD psychotherapy ("Dark Night, Early Dawn") and the university classroom ("The Living Classroom.").
Chris Bache  - transformative fields in classrooms, psychedelic, Buddhist practitioner

The link between individual transformation and collective change
How inner work may have impact on collective psyche and world at large

Dark Night, Early Dawn – went into experiences with psychedelic work, 
At a certain point in the process, the scope of the work was so deep, that it was not possible to interpret them through the lens of the individual psyche.  Seemed that an entity bigger than you that was having the experiences, and was having the healing that was being experienced

Chose to work with high levels of psychedelics for about 15 years.
Ego shattered, and entered a domain of collective suffering that kept deepening over 2 years. Ocean of suffering, vast numbers of people, over long amounts of time

The previous ways of working with psychedelics were focused on the individual. What happened during the experience was brought into the story line of individual transformation.
But this happened so long, that it did not seem to be serving personal transformation. But his personal transformation had opened up into a more collective transformation. Healing the collective psyche of humanity

In reincarnation, believe that we carry the lessons into the Bardo, carried in individual spiritual lives into the Bardo. Where they keep transforming.
But a second story began to open, separate from spiritual individuality.  This is as if all the beings in the Bardo were a neuron in a collective mind. As if there were fields of memory.
A species-con that was carrying the pains of history

By applying Sheldrake’s insights into morphogenetic fields, sometimes during deep 
The meta-matricies, the COEX systems of the collective psyche.
The coll psyche takes advantage of this to bring them to, into, the individual, If we embrace them, they may serve.

Letting go of a person-centered story of transformation, and letting go into a larger story of transformation.

At some level, we can’t separate the line between individual and collective. Sometimes, it is so obvious that it is unmistakable, but it is always there, whether we are conscious of it or not… always radiates out into collective psyche
We are a fractal embodiment of this larger field.

As we become conscious of the aspects of our inner work that is related to the collective, we can augment, intensify this. Can choose to direct our personal practice beyond personal transformation, and direct it towards collective transformation.

Begin with bodhicitta, kindness to all sentient beings
And ending it with distribution of merit to all sentient beings

It is myopic, and shows a failure of understanding, to attempt personal spiritual transformation.
The natural being is the being of nature.

This has been there all along in spirituality. The aberration is how spirituality has been siphoned off into the personal world.
We are liberating our understanding of spirituality so that it can serve the whole…

The underlying motif of all these traditions is that our natural being is the being of the universe.
There are many intermediate levels between that and our individual life.
One of those is the collective mind of our species. 
Our mind includes all of the species, may want to focus on human psyche, because we are the problem…

Initially, overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of people and suffering. Was hard to sustain the magnitude and duration. Became unconscious initially..
With repetition, learned how to stay conscious in this strange medium. As he did, the experiences expanded.
Culminated in a session when realized too many historical periods, too many people, too much pain. Was too much for any series of one person’s lives. Could not just be karmic.

Was wrestling with this, because it felt arrogant to feel like it was working on such a huge level. Felt like ego run amok.

A session with deep peace – breast, womb, before incarnation.
Then, in that context, pain began to arise.
It was not discrete historical periods, but was a memory aggregate, a dimensional reality that was removed from time and space.
A collective memory, a meta-matrix, an amalgam of suffering that lives in the collective unconscious.

The more could take in personally, the more could benefit the collective psyche. It amplified, until it became like a feeding frenzy, like a being feeding on the collective pain of the planet.

Then it climaxed, shot into a level of reality beyond time and space, beyond collective psyche, into archetypal reality…  into a death-rebirth process, then into a large transpersonal ecstatic domain.

Before, they were personal experiences. Not personal death, but collective.. 
That began to deepen, beyond these ordeals into other territory…

Experienced his being as a network of threads. When light flowed through blockages, through meta-meridians of the collective psyche…  thinking of how many people he has collectively experienced himself to be. Still such a small percentage of all who have suffered…

While doing this, was also teaching at the university. Never spoke about it. And, even though that was the case, found that his students were being influenced by his own personal work. Breakthroughs personally, and the students feeling moved. Happened so much, that he had to work with the collective tissues of consciousness.
Was lecturing on religious studies. When he would reach for an example that popped into his mind, students would come up privately after class.
“strange you used that example, because that just happened to me (or my mother) last week”

Their souls were slipping messages to his soul, that slipped them to his mind. There was a porosity between minds that was being tapped and brought forward, in ways that were very deep for the students.
Over time, was touching very sensitive area for the students. Pain, in deep need of healing, with decisive consequences.   The Living Classroom described this process. Also for those who work with group. 
Gives them a methodology for working with it.

The synchronicities always matter. But when we make it conscious, more powerful.

There were too many people being activated to explain it by synchronous resonance.
Was a whole FIELD in the classroom, a field energy generated…  a Class Mind, and a Course Mind. The latter includes all who have ever taken this course with a particular professor. The latter was growing semester by semester.
The students were going through jumps of capacity. Almost as if teaching this course repeatedly, almost as if they were beginning where the others had left off last semester.

Then began to feel the living history, living momentum, of fields. Can participate in this living experiences..

Most of the students had an intellectual experience.
There were a subset of students who were being activated on this deeper level. Would take all of his courses. They were there to consciously participate in this spiritual activation process.

Can be tricky to balance the traditional student with the transformationally oriented student. Both of their needs have to be honored and tended to.

In some upper development courses, he did make this conscious, they did visualizations.

It is important to CLOSE the field at the end of the semester, or they show up weeks after the semester was over. They were connected to the field, but did not have any place to take their connection.
Helped them open, use, and close the connection.

People are getting more and more agitated, the life they assumed falling apart for their children. This registers on the collective psyche. The ideas of interconnectivity is being driven into a state of collective arousal, by the situation we are living in

We float within fields. The fields of human species is in collective arousal.
The culture we have now had self-awareness, but not sufficient understanding of our connectivity.

The some win, some don’t, is a ego-based model.   This model will not allow us to survive. We need to reconnect with our inner connectivity, and work with it, in all of our institutions, political, educational, etc.

Not about squashing individuality/ego. Nature took a million years to develop this exquisite form. But to recontextualize it. Otherwise, we will become extinct, and another species will emerge.

If we can transform, it will be a fundamental evolutionary pivot, and can be magnificent.

Often need to go near-death experience. Often a large segment of humanity was lost, and much survived. After that, baseline consciousness had changed. A synchronous coming together, and a generation of new social forms.

Felt like was taken to a future time, to the future human that seems to be pushing forward into creation. 

The dynamics of the past are shifting, and we are witnessing a coming together of a fusion point of all that has come before, a synthesis taking place inside the soul, as the world comes together.
Birth of the Diamond Soul

As the world births a Global Citizen, the soul is birthing a diamond soul, that carries all that has come, and lets it connect with each other, and with the creative intelligence of the universe.  A different connection with the individual and collective.

It helps us to understand what is being born….

Before we are born, every one of us knew what we were getting into, being born in this time. We made choices as to what we would do – we were born with the tools we needed.
If they look deeply into their life, and what they are passionately committed to, they will find the work closely at hand.  If we each do our work we are here to do, collectively, we will make it through this…

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THURSDAY Sept 10

Subtle Activism, the Great Turning, and the Work that Reconnects
With Joanna Macy: Root teacher, Work That Reconnects 
& Sean Kelly: Professor of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies 
Hosted by David Thomas Nicol 

Joanny Macy – a theoretical framework for a new paradigm of social change, and some practices.
Nuclear age, environmental resonance..

Active Hope
And Coming Back to Life

www.joannamacy.net

Shawn Kelly   CIIstudies   Coming Home, the Birth and Transformation of the Planetary Age
Ken Wilber in Dialogue.
Homeland Earth, a manifesto for the new creative
A more integral understanding of Gaia Theory
Tai Chi teacher.

Overview on Joanna’s work
The Great Turning – from industrial to life-sustaining, a calling to participate in that….

Holding actions
Developing new structures
Shifting consciousness

Many people have found that conceptualization to be helpful. To see that we have a choice in how we look at what is happening in our world today.
Can choose the story of buz as usual, we are having a few difficulties, but all we really need to do is to grow our economy. This is mainstream media, military, corporate.

Can choose to see it as progressive disintegration of biological and ecological systems. The Great Unravelling.  

Can choose to see it as transition, as incredible revolution.  As great as the Agricultural Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution.

A basic reorientation, transition, revolution (Turning), to uproot and replace the suicidal assumptions that have taken root and are bearing fruit.
When in this, like fish in water, don’t realize how mammoth this is…

The epocal adventure of our times. A spiritual adventure, as well as a political/economic one.

The Work that Reconnects  is her name for it.

This is not about blind optimism. It involves true uncertainty about outcome. Willingness to see the uncertainty of the conditions confronting us, that brings forth certain qualities, including courage and creativity.

We need to go forward, without certainty of the outcome. As the Gita says, acting without being attached to the outcome of our actions.  Being frank about the uncertainty, keeps us in that tradition of acting out of deepest conditions in the sanctity of life and the gift of existence.

Three arenas of activity
-all that go to slowing down the destruction of life being lost by the society. Holding actions. These are very important, they manage to save some lives, species, ecosystems. Essential, but not enough. We need different assumptions.

-Need new ways to resolve conflict, to manage prosperity, to hold land. Alternatives to property being owned by individuals and corporations. Many new structures coming alive now. Great Turning invites us to see them. This is morally very strengthening, and conducive to collaboration…
We are invited to take seriously our capacity to collaborate

-And, all these need to be deeply rooted in our values, in what we feel to be true. A shift in consciousness, “living parts of a living planet”.

Each needs to be reinforced by the other two. Subtle Activism is a companion piece, not a substitute for traditional hard work.  A deeper ground of moral and spiritual support..

When we get through the denial and fear, there is an aliveness. A falling away of the deadening, feels very alive to be here now…
We find ourselves more present than we had been. Unafraid to let our hearts break, ….
Feeling grateful for the chance to be alive at this time
This sense of presence is the greatest gift we can give to our world, right now.

The Council of All Beings process, speaking for other species..
Walking out of the prison cell that has come from being in a highly individualized culture. That has led us to narrow our own interest and small self…
To harvest our birthright of connectedness with all that is…

Our planet is alive – indigenous voices, systems theory, Deep Ecology, Gaia Theory, Science, spiritual practices.

To reclaim our birthright to feel our interconnectedness in the web of Life.

To speak not only for themselves, but for the wider web of life as it speaks through them. Not just their personal fears, but also asking permission to speak for another species, life form…

Speaking on behalf of future generations. Using our natural moral imagination, to speak on behalf of other beings, those not born yet. Or the ancestors…

Late capitalism has stultified our moral imagination. Becomes “every person for themselves”.
It is wonderful to watch how people find some freedom, Good News, as they put themselves in another person’s shoes, or another species’ shoes.  We speak Life, that is possible to do.

I am me, and my take on Gaia, as well…
This brings us into dimensions of humor and creativity…

In this time, the role of the activist has enlarged. The pickle we are in requires changing how we see, think. It is a perceptual revolution, as well. Can’t separate them…

If you already feel that you are home in the living body of Earth, you are already ready to do anything for the sake of the life forms. 

Chris – Philosophy, Consciousness program
Values and worldviews have transformed the planet.
Someone needs to be carrying this work on the level of ideas.

To cultivate a form of consciousness that is aware of, skilled at perceiving root assumptions, the paradigmatic level.
This is where our culture is largely unconscious

Root assumptions in our culture
Only thing real is matter than can be bought, sold, manipulated..

These assumptions go unchallenged by politicians, economists. And then we internalize them
Leads to hopelessness and despair – if you believe that you are an object among a collection of objects. Don’ t have much meaning if you believe this…

If one is committed to seeing paradigmatic assumptions that are in service of death, violence, compassion, and towards cultivating life…  very important

In some practices, an immediate felt experience that we are participating in a non-local field of awareness. that it is not just mine, but it is a collective event. Carrying this within us, we are changed in some ways…   we carry ourselves a little differently.

With the technosphere, we can have an experience of non-local connectedness through media, internet. So, this helps move us towards this kind of realization…

Sarvodaya large group peace meditations – one had over 600,000 people in it.
Took place during a civil war that was tearing Sri Lanka apart.
This was the only organization active between the two religious factions. At an ancient city, they gathered. Trains and buses began doing more to move people in…

You could not tell whose side people were on. As they all poured into the precincts and old ruins, they looked the same… And, they all wore white…  that people could come together out of something deeper than their hatred together.
Wondered what music would be playing, that doesn’t have sides to it…   They were playing Silk Road by Kitaro, the age old sense of pilgrimages to holy places, to come together… 
Then, practiced metta meditation.

It touched some core inside of a person, that was the core inside of every human’s heart… a sense of that.

The founder of this felt that it was no different from teaching people how to dig latrines – just something that you do to keep people healthy. Meditating together is the same part of waking up, making life better, along with those concrete things…

Humans did NOT always realize that we lived on a planet. That awareness only began about 500 years ago…
Over time, people began carrying in their individual awareness that we are on a planet, suspended in the cosmos.

Human beings are not other than the planet. We are not separate from it. What human beings seem to be, relative to other species, are those beings that have emerged in and thru Gaia, whose special role is to carry the consciousness of Gaia.
So, through humans, Gaia is awakening to herself, composed of a collection of interdependent beings.

This is happening just as the civilization itself is unravelling.

The forces that are threatening the biosphere, are the very forces that allowed this kind of awareness to emerge and take form in the first place….

So, it is a sort of gift-curse

We can choose to be awake, or we can dissociate and let roots of violence determine how the future will be for us..

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Subtle Activism: The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible
With Charles Eisenstein: Author, Speaker 
Hosted by David Thomas Nicol 
Many activists sooner or later come to face frustration, cynicism, or despair. Far from being obstacles to overcome, these feelings are invitations into a deeper level of activism that includes the personal and relational. On their other side lies optimism, confidence, and vastly greater effectiveness as agents of change, as we come to realize that our dashed hopes and betrayed idealism were showing us a real possibility.

Charles Eisenstein
“the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible”
“sacred economics”

Providing a bigger picture context for our activism. Asking people, “what it is that we really want? “ not any specific issue, but a more fundamental shift.
What we really want, is the more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible.

How this framework changes our activism…

Much activism is about stopping terrible things from happening. Which is completely understandable and necessary.
In 19th century, there was Utopianism, where people DID envision a beautiful future. There was some disillusionment that humanity was ascending through technology and science, from rational planning.
The wars, etc, was betrayed by ..

Some activists don’t know what they want to change the world into – arguing re anarchism, socialism.
What are we fighting for?
Can’t really do that. Fighting requires an opponent.

What are we trying to build?
Something to inspire us beyond the wearying campaign and the crap that happens.
Also need to be putting out a positive vision that can align people.

We need a story, to help unify us, and to help generate the roles that make sense, within that story…

From separation, toward interbeing…

The concept of story as a way that we give shape and meaning to the world. Story creates the world.
The present story is that who we are are separate beings in a world of ‘other’.
That humans are separate from nature, and trying to overcome nature
That we live in a universe devoid of qualities of self.

A new story
We are not separate from nature
We are not that separate from each other, including other countries. That it will somehow come back to us, regardless of how high a wall, survellaince system… even if better drone systems of protection – the violence will come back to us.
Leads to a very different way of understanding violence and our choices…

Erases the divide between altruism and self-interest.  Opens door to co-creative and non-violent strategies.
It is no longer about overcoming the hostile other, which has been the program  for centuries, where well-being comes through domination…

This is a much bigger change than shifting the identity of the ‘other’ to Koch brothers, corporations, etc…

If we are truly not separate from this universe, then any action is significant, whether or not it goes viral and has a big platform…

Within the conventional notions of causality and separation, there does not seem to be much that an individual can do about the crisis.
Most of us may be carrying this idea unconsciously, as it is overwhelming. It doesn’t seem that what I can do that can make a practical difference.  There is a lot of futility underlying this, based on this theory of change, what is real, how the world works…  if you believe that you are an individual, laws of physics are the operational ones…  according to the laws of logic, it doesn’t matter.

If we are to encourage people to embrace the notion that they can make a difference, it is about embracing a whole new story…   
What does causality mean in an interconnected world?

So, doing things that are consistent with the world I want to live in. can’t map it out causally. But when understand reality in a different way, a change that happens in one place creates a field that makes that kind of change to happen more easily. Sheldrake..

Subtle activism is a complement and a support to other kinds of activism.
It is a preparation to respond with creativity and courage when something needs to be done.

A Japanese activist who was militant, in solitary. Became a pacifist. He saw that all of the violence he was visiting on the police was a reflection of his own violence and wounding.
He stayed being an activist, and was more effective. Began hugging police officers. Destroying the story that they were carrying that was enabling them to beat up protestors.
A radiant old man like their grandfather, hugging police officers, was much more effective than what he had been doing before.
Letting go of the psychological frame that holds the police as the bad guys to be overcome.

Everyone seen as ‘bad guys’ has way more force, and will only be overcome by a change of heart…
If we have inner peace and joy when we confront difficult situation, we have options.

If we are angry, fearful, pain, judgments, we will use the tools that replicate that.
We need a larger repertoire of tools…

Gendi park uprising in Istanbul. A man began playing a grand piano in the middle of the square. That stopped the police invasion for a few days. Gave us a glimpse of what was possible.

And, how much more compelling they are about their message, pure effectiveness…  Become more morally compelling…

The whole framing of “do you support it or condemn it?” is part of the old frame. It is about understanding where things come from.  About understanding “What is it like to be you?”

Same with police, who occupy the role of bad guy in the liberal press.
What does it take to turn a beautiful baby into someone who perpetrates violence and horror, cut off from their sense of mission or purpose?

And, how to change these conditions. The psychic substrate from which these things arise, also needs to be changed. Or we will be in endless war against one outrage after another.

“In what way am I addicted to fighting this war? How does it serve me?”
What does this mirror inside myself?  What healing can happen inside of me that will then make me a more effective agent for change?

How DO we decide to embrace this possibility, that you will place your faith in this approach.
Empirical evidence will never be enough, that is not how the decision is made. That process itself is part of the old story about how to make decisions….
It is beyond a rational choice…

Empirical arguments can disarm the mental gatekeeper. Helps to let one step into nonviolence, generosity…  help with the what-ifs… 

Acknowledging that we need more institutions that reflect back that way of interbeing, to help support the new story and awareness.
Asking “what kinds of supports could be put in place that help us hold that worldview of interbeing in a more solid way?”

As we immerse ourselves in the structures of society – economic world beckons us into separation, what about me, maximizing resources under my control, scarcity …

An image of a swimmer trying to keep his head above water. Sees something beautiful when head is up, then gets sucked under again…  can’t stay up very long.
But now, others are coming up for air at the same time, and can hold each other and sustain each other more…

Form a welcoming committee, hold each other in the new consciousness.
You are not alone, I see it too, you are not crazy….we can help keep each other there.

Some of this is standing on the backs of our ancestors….

More of us putting our heads above the water line, seeing that vision, and staying there, supporting each other to stay there, more and more….

SA is NOT about ignoring uncomfortable truths, oppression.
What is it actually that DOES enable someone to face/confront a hard truth, and not flinch? Maybe that is something that we have to practice more.

Holding a non-reactive space does NOT mean that you do nothing about the issue. It means that you don’t bring the reactivity into the space…
Not about withdrawing from, or transcending, the world…

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Subtle Activism: Transformative Change from the Inside Out
With Angel Kyodo Williams: Founder of Transformative Change, Spiritual Teacher, Author, Activist and Trainer 
Hosted by David Thomas Nicol 

During this session angel will discuss a practical understanding of how inner work translates to transforming society, the common misunderstandings such as "the other", how to know if you're bypassing and what the radical path to transformation requires.

Great stuff on racism and privilege issues and their intersection with spirituality.

Angel Kyodo Williams	
Working with justice   Being Black….
www.Angelkyodowilliams.com

Love and justice are not two
without inner change, there can be no outer change
without outer change, nothing matters

makes a distinction between inner and outer change is about purpose
We do inner change for the benefit of all

We are driven to belong. The work we do on ourselves has a lot to do with what reflection we receive from the world.
That may be that there is great suffering…

Love meaning expressing the universal vibration, in a felt way, or connecting
Of our fundamental connection to each other…

Justice, is how that fundamental connection to each other is put forth in the structures of society in which we live, the structures in which we inhabit.

Having a spiritual realization does not seem to be enough to deeply transform certain patterns.

Meditation is not enough. Most spiritual communities are overwhelmingly burdened by this. Especially those who have taken over Eastern practices.
They have sometimes allowed their practices/structures to further these injustices and imbed them more deeply.
Because of their practice, they may be less likely to own their shadow.
They are happening in places where people are fairly convinced that we are above them

“We are all one, so race doesn’t matter. That is only for those who are on the overtly suffering level”

Racism affects all, more insidiously the oppressing ones.

Those who ARE aware of these issues, where IS the love, the unity, that can be present?

Our country was based on a foundation of racism, and on some economic oppression. These are intertwined with each other. It is problematic for those who have benefited from that structure, who want to bypass the necessary probing of how those influences have showed up and impacted over centuries, affected how they think about themselves.

Part of the healing is to allow self to take that in, to allow that truth to be heard and witnessed. That we HAVE been treated differently, and situated in society differently. It is important to honor the impact of me here in this life, and all of family….   

That is a tricky area, that creates more rifts, when people are not more willing to look at their structurally unearned benefits, under guise of “we are all one”
Yes, and, we are having VERY different experiences…
If you want to honor our fundamental connection, you will want to also honor the ways that my experience has been different from yours. Then we can have a conversation…

“There is this AMAZING practice called listening!”
Listening with one’s ears
The willingness to understand the real historical context.

We understand that the past is the present. It tends to be “that was bad, and in the past, and that is over”. That hyperindividualism, that does not acknowledge lineage, ancestral and generational trauma and habit patterns…    does not ack how baked into things, patterns of oppression like racism are in our culture.

The challenges we have are predominantly because those who brought the spiritual practices, located the practices INSIDE THE SOCIETY, rather than as a lens to view the society.

They took things about the society for granted, as givens. The way our economy works, how our society works. 
The deep value of these processes that illuminate consciousness is to take the insight into deep connection…
Have to move the location of our spiritual viewpoint, to be outside of the culture

We have one great religion, capitalism, that all other religions are subjugated to…
We can’t take the commodification of things as a given. We can draw the lens further back, and look at all of this….

Radical politics – no. I have a radical spiritual view. Allow the lens of my practice to be thorough, rather than only having it shine on areas convenient to me… 

It may seem counter intuitive to move into stillness when it seems that the house is burning…

Advice for one may not apply for another. 
For someone who likes to do quickly, the doing may be the way that we avoid the experience of feeling. We may be trying to discharge the discomfort…  can be very impactful to experience the truth of things as they are, where it lands, what it touches, how it feels…. Lets us be in relationship to the experience.

Our doing culture, has us in relationship. It has us putting our thing on top of it.
Important to be with the truth of things, or else all of our filters are in play.

Through stillness and bearing witness to our own feeling, how painful these realities are, some of the more filtered experiences can become more clear, and wisdom can arise
“what is the thing I can do that is most suitable to this situation?”

For those who have disconnected self from activity. Doing stillness, yoga, deep practice. And, in a deep disconnect from the society around us. We call being engaged as “political” as non-spiritual, and we will not get involved in that.

Depending on one’s own orientation to respond to the stress of overwhelm and suffering, some turn inward, and some turn outward. 
They also are not feeling, not willing to experience the suffering.

In Buddhist path, truth of suffering, is not something to be learned about, but something to sit with and be with, to be learned THROUGH…

We are in a time where there are people in monasteries, they have chosen that path. Their path of practice is to raise the energy, to contribute through the energetic field.
I think it is too perilous in a society that has not navigated the shadow field of privilege,,,

People who think that ‘their choice’ is actually shaped by social neuroses. But they may be exercising a neurotic pattern of withdrawing. When you couple that possibility of a path with a system and society that is so profoundly oriented towards being able to check out if you don’t feel the impact directly, it is far too dangerous

We need people to really work through those forms of social and systemic neuroses before they say that they are making that choice consciously.
The screen is so powerful, that some of those oppressed by it, are also contributing to this…

People of color are also contributing to racist patterns, which are so baked into the system.

This is so powerful, that not explicitly intervening…  and even then, we still carry some stuff..

Location – our practice is SO deeply located within economic and systemic oppressions, that I feel that we are not yet entitled to make that decision.
Transformative Social Change – came from working on different forms of inner meets outer change.
Many different names.  So, was just called “this work”. But that term didn’t help anyone. Wrote a series of essays about the name.

The point was NOT about whether we are spiritual or not. It is whether we are engaging a practice of personal transformation, in ways that have the impact of transforming the society, the people around you, and how you are viewing society.
You are being changed, and the people you meet, you are being changed as well.

All spiritual practices don’t necessarily fulfill that.
My meditation may invoke a response that connects with the suffering of those in Gaza, for example.

What we are after, not people to be spiritual, but to be in the lived process of transformation, headed towards….

27 days of change ONLINE program
Usually attracts people from ends of spectrum. 
-those who want to think about getting more engaged
-those doing some social intervention, and want to think about how they work with the material of their own lives.

There is a third way, that is needed hyper inner, nor hyper outer focus.

Uses a combination of talks, community.., guidance and a structure.

Helps people take on the stuff of their lives that inhibits them from taking on their lives
“what is going on for you? Where are you broke in relationships?”

The transcendent virtues that need to be effective Bodhisattva

-spirit of generosity
-ethic 
-patience
-effort
-dynamic stillness, meditation
-wisdom. That it can’t be practiced, it simply arises
The 6 Paramitas…

40 minutes – are you doing yoga because      … your radiant expression is a mirroring of…

Creating conditions to experience oneself, to feel, the world. From that, you can’t not respond to the world….

The lens  - what is the lens you are looking at with your life
And, what have you assumed to be OUTSIDE of that lens?
How have I come to have access to what I have now
What is being conferred to me?

Include all of that in our lens. Don’t take those aspects of our self as a given 

Having privilege in and of itself is not a bad thing. Unexamined privilege is a terrible thing. Because then you can’t wield it well.
It is important to locate the lens of our spiritual practice so we can examine these things…

The view and intentionality to address forms of oppression HAVE NOTHING TO DO with fixing it for the oppressed. It has to do with your own liberation.
The oppressed KNOW that they are being oppressed.

The problem for those with skin color, gender privilege, is that we don’t know the degree to which we are held in and bound by these systems of oppression that we are complicit in. We are keeping ourselves from being awake.

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Subtle Activism: Healing Hearts at Wounded Knee 
With  Saniel Bonder: Founder of WakingDown®, Author, Tantric, Shaman
 &  Jean Fleury: Peace Ambassador, Crow Creek Sioux Tribe. Co-Founder of Healing Hearts at Wounded Knee 
Hosted by David Thomas Nicol

Jean Fleury – Healing Hearts at Wounded Knee – multi-generational effects of war, holocaust, on people and the environment
www.healingheartsatwoundedknee.org

Samuel Bonder   - embodiment work. Democratizing this nirvanic aliveness.  Waking Down  movement.

They have a vision for healing around Wounded Knee event…
He wrote a chapter in a book of his about Wounded Knee…  The … Yoga of the Heart

Trying to democratize and embodiment of Nirvana through our  bodies. The promise of America that needs to be fulfilled through deep spirituality.
“The Democratic Promise of America
“come with me to wounded knee”

“until something heals that was slashed open in the American heart at Wounded Knee…”
Sacred penance for the natural world, by the hypermasculine, dissociated
Chronic debts that must be paid…

Guiding dreams, sense of Black Elk, …

A process of listening for the signs, paying attention to dreams and synchronicities. Taking seriously this information from subtle realms…

“emblematic for massacre” – has a certain notoriety worldwide.

A great deal of anecdotal material about how this happened…  plans for something in December.

There is an evolutionary impulse in us to both heal, and to transform…
Importance of opening up to the tremendous emotions, and possibilities

A possibility of an emerging planetary culture arising… the work of healing the collective wounds and healing from the past, feels like a necessary step in this…
Feeling the continuing pressure of the multi-generational wounds… they are still having effects now – suicides of 8 year old, etc recently in that area…

When they did the Horse Dance there for first time in 75 years, there was a kind of resuscitating going on….

… to inspire the imagination to what might be possible with regard to healing individual past.
To apply our intelligence to how do we heal our collective wounds?

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Subtle Activism: Gaiafield Attunement
 With  David Thomas Nicol, PhD. Director and Co-Founder of Gaiafield Project, Co-Founder of BeThePeace

We will conclude the Summit with the profound Gaiafield Attunement practice, developed over years by the Gaiafield Wisdom Council. Summit host David Thomas Nicol will be your guide. This call will also feature a beautiful Prayer for the Earth by Sufi mystic Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. We highly encourage you to join this call as a way to integrate the learnings from the entire Summit and to take a deeper dive into the practice of subtle activism.

Start with a prayer Llewelyn Vaughn Lee, for the earth… then a meditation…

Some notes before the meditation

From story of separation, to the story of interbeing.
The set of assumptions that go with the story of separation is getting old, and not fitting so well. But it is still dominant.

The phase change can happen from more and more having reference and support points for each other.

Nesting paradigm, takes the form of special relativity and general relativity
There are more expansive perspectives, and they don’t exclude the previous views. 

Online course that will start in early October.