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COMMUNICATING THE WISDOM THAT'S CHANGING THE WORLD
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 New Dimensions in Practice Community (NDiP)Is Now Available Engage with New Dimensions Listeners Go to: New Dimensions in Practice Community (NDiP) Editor's Desk: As I drove through the pre-dawn darkness I listened to Eckhart Tolle reading from his book The New Earth. I parked my car and walked to the terminal feeling good about how well everything was going. But when I entered the terminal I noticed there was no one behind the counter. "Hmm," I thought, "maybe I get my boarding pass at security." I took my place in line, removed my jacket and shoes, piled my purse and briefcase into the bins, then noticed that other travelers had boarding passes in hand. At the front of the line I showed the attendant my receipt for payment for my ticket. He was very nice, but said the receipt was not sufficient. I needed a boarding pass—no exceptions. I was stunned as I began to realize that I was not going to be able to board this flight. The next flight was in the afternoon and even if I were able to board that flight, it would arrive too late for me to attend the workshop. My emotions began to swirl, and my mind was racing. I wish I had printed out my boarding pass at home. I'm really stupid. How embarrassing. What will I say to Michael and the New Dimensions staff? On and on my thoughts spun out of control as I returned to my car. As I pulled out of the parking lot the CD player droned on, and Tolle was talking about being conscious of the space between thoughts, reminding me to bring myself into deep presence through deep breathing. I felt miles away from anything resembling "deep presence", but I knew I had nothing to lose. And there was a chance it would keep me from spiraling down into a boiling cauldron of negativity. I turned off the CD player and tried the breathing practice he had suggested. I soon realized that deep breathing alone wouldn't be enough to stop the emotional plunge, so I started chanting a Tibetan mantra out loud. "Om, Ah, Hung, Vajra, Guru, Pema, Siddhi, Hung." In a few minutes I tapped into a morphic field of the millions of people who have been chanting the mantra for thousands of years. The spinning spiral in my mind and in my heart began to slow down. I remembered hearing Tolle talk about a man who had something wonderful happen to him, and all his friends said, "Oh you are so fortunate." He said, "Maybe." Then something bad happened and his friends exclaimed, "Oh, how unfortunate for you." And he said, "Maybe." This goes on back and forth—good things, bad things, good things, bad things. Tolle uses this story to demonstrate the point of living in nonjudgment. An event is neither good nor bad; it just is what it is. I stopped the car and pulled out my notebook to look up a phrase I'd written down just the day before while listening to Tolle. There it was: "I'm never upset for the reason I think." Taking these words to heart, I urged myself to go beneath my distress to a deeper place, and into the source of the pain. As I travelled north on Highway 101, with a tinge of light brightening the landscape, I began to feel a deep, deep sadness. I allowed myself to experience the emotion, and to notice it in every part of my body. It was as if I was a little girl once more, and feelings of abandonment and vulnerability washed over me. I was forlorn and forgotten. Tears were running down my cheeks as I felt those ancient and deeply buried emotions come to the surface. As my life was swinging back and forth between good fortune and not so good fortune, I was, for a moment, able to just be in the present and feel it fully. A deep tenderness swept over me, and for the first time in many months I was connected with Spirit, a beingness alive in my body, in my solar plexus and in my heart center. I felt the love that never abandons, that is with me always, even when I am too much in my "monkey mind" to feel it. As the sun rose over the ridge and the beautiful Ukiah valley spread out before me, I was grateful for that moment that connected me with Source even as I guided my car up the freeway. As the light washed over the hills and the trees, I knew my connection had been there all along, but my consciousness had been asleep to it. It took this sudden and unexpected reversal of plans to wake me up, and to remind me that divine presence is always walking with me. Excerpted from the forthcoming book by Justine Willis Toms |
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June 2008 Broadcast Schedule
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| The Broadcast Week Beginning Wednesday, June 4-10, 2008
Deep into his career as a psychotherapist and research psychologist, Bill Plotkin recognized that as we surround ourselves with the trappings of our culture, and distance ourselves from nature, a host of emotional and spiritual troubles emerge. He placed himself in nature's guiding hands and found his true calling in helping others find theirs. He now leads vision quests, in which individuals engage the natural world as both the medium and the context for a passage to adulthood, and a maturity that too often is beyond reach in our urban society. He explains, "A true adult is someone who has recognized consciously what their mystical relationship is to the natural world, which comes into our consciousness as a calling to bring a particular gift to the world." The rewards include a richer life, of course, but they go much further, as our individual sacred callings become the seeds that lift our world to a brighter, more loving place. Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., holds a doctorate in psychology from the University of Colorado. His research has included the study of dreams and non-ordinary states of consciousness. He is an ecotherapist, depth psychologist, and wilderness guide. As founder and president of Animas Valley Institute, he leads a variety of experiential nature-based individuation programs. Dr. Plotkin is the author of Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (New World Library 2003) and author of Nature and the Human Soul: Creating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (New World Library 2008). To learn more about the work of Bill Plotkin go to www.animas.org or www.natureandthehumansoul.com Topics Explored in this Dialogue:
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The Broadcast Week Beginning Wednesday, June 11-17, 2008
Charles Halpern is a pioneer of public interest law. It is on his broad shoulders other fine public servants stand. He is an inspiration as he reveals his path of navigating the lessons of personal integrity, mindfulness, and balance while contributing wisely and compassionately in our social institutions. How do we bring our inner strengths to life and work? How may we be better leaders in our own communities of influence? Halpern answers these and many other questions as he describes a life that has been dedicated to positive, social change, while bringing together the spiritual with practical daily life. He says, "To bring the contemplative dimension into mainstream institutions whether it is the law, medicine, academia, business, or journalism is an extremely important task. I think we have to hold-up the contemplative part of life and show that it is relevant not only for monks and contemplatives, but that it is an important part of each person's life in general. It certainly has been in mine." Discover a living example of a life lived in balance, clarity, and compassion while making enormous contributions to society. Charles Halpern has been a public interest entrepreneur since the late sixties an honors graduate of Harvard Collage and Yale Law, he left a promising career in a corporate law firm to establish the first public interest law firm, the Center for Law and Social Policy, in Washington D.C., and to launch the public interest law movement. He leads meditation retreats for lawyers, serves as the chair of The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, and consults to nonprofit groups and foundations. He's the author of Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom (Berrett-Koehler Publishers 2008). To learn more about the work of Charles Halpern go to www.charliehalpern.com or www.contemplativemind.org
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| The Broadcast Week Beginning Wednesday, June 18-24, 2008
Why can't we have a nation—why can't we have a world we're proud of? Why can't we stop wringing our hands over poverty, hunger, species domination, genocide, and death from curable disease that we know is all needless? These are some of the questions posed by Frances Moore Lappé. She says, "How do we stop being part of creating a world that we don't want and realize our power to create the world we do want?" She furthers describes what she calls "Living democracy." Lappé says, "[My] idea of democracy is that it is a living entity that is never-ending. It is a social analog to ecology. It is all about relationship and differentiation and complexity and beauty. And it is away from thinking about democracy as something that is finished... [We must] move away from democracy as something done for us or to us to democracy of what we create." She outlines for us how democracy must be taught as an art. Frances Moore Lappé co-founded the Institute for Food and Development Policy also known as Food First, now in its 32nd year, as well as the American News Service. With her daughter, Anne Lappé, she leads the Cambridge—based Small Planet Institute and the affiliated Small Planet Fund. She is founding councilor of the World Future Council and recipient of 17 honorary doctorates as well as the Right Livelihood Award, known as the "Alternative Nobel." Frances Moore Lappé is the author of 16 books, including the 3 million copy bestseller Diet for a Small Planet (Ballantine 1991) and Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad (Small Planet Media, 2007). To learn more about the work of Frances Moore Lappé go to www.smallplanet.org Topics Explored in this Dialogue:
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The Broadcast Week Beginning Wednesday, June 25-July 1, 2008
Today, we hear about the 'ends of time' not only from religious quarters but from the scientific community with its reports of vanishing species, forests, languages, etc. Could these many endings carry a different meaning without fear and an opportunity for deeper understanding? Michael Meade believes that the ancient role of storytelling holds mythic truths and taps into imagination that reveals the beginnings amongst the endings. "I'm trying to remind people that this 'knock-on-wood' hard as nails, in your face world is only the front of the worlds. That behind it is the world of imagination and the world of nuance, the world of spirit... When it seems that the world is gonna end, what we're missing is the touch of eternity... At the ends of time are the roots of eternity, and we need to get back to the poetry and the imagination in order to tune in both to the eternal and also to nature." Michael Meade is a renowned storyteller, drummer, scholar of mythology and student of ritual in traditional cultures. He has a gifted capacity to weave this material into a persuasive and compelling presentation, tapping ancestral sources of wisdom and bridging them to the stories we are living today. He has led retreats for more than two decades and brings a wealth of strength, humor, compassion and fearlessness to this work. He is the author of The Water of Life, co-editor of The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, and author of The World Behind the World: Living at the Ends of Time. To learn more about the work of Michael Meade go to www.mosaicvoices.org Topics Explored in this Dialogue:
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 Parties with a Purpose; Celebrating what's working in our communities, for people, for business and for the environment Nov 8 & 9 in Washington, D.C. and Nov 14 & 15 in San Francisco www.greenfestivals.com |
 Expand Your Consciousness in Optimal Learning Environments www.conferenceworks.com |
 Books for the Evolving Human Spirit www.hamptonroadspub.com |
 Transform the Way You Live and Lead with Purpose, Passion, Energy, and Joy www.getclarity.com |
 Publisher of Oprah's Book Club selection A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. Register for ten weekly webcasts at www.oprah.com |
 To Help Individuals Realize Their True Relationship with Life Through Higher Self-Studies Guy Finley, Director www.guyfinley.org |
