Alex Grey: The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors

Beyond Awakening: A Free Teleseries on the Future of Spiritual Practice

Beyond Awakening is an incredible series of talks with the most important spiritual leaders of today. This could be the most important component of the world meta-Sangha that is happening now. Terry Patten is the best host you could ever hope for. It is free and you can listen to the full library of past events. Highly recommended. 

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About Our Host:

Terry Patten co-developed Integral Life Practice with Ken Wilber and a core team at Integral Institute. He hosts the acclaimed online teleseminar series Beyond Awakening: The Future of Spiritual Practice. He speaks and consults internationally--inspiring, challenging, and connecting leaders and institutions worldwide. In his cutting-edge writings, talks and teaching, he not only inspires transcendental awakening, love and freedom, but calls us to accept and incarnate our full humanity. He was the senior writer and co-author, with Ken Wilber, of Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening. His 8-session course, Integral Spiritual Practice guides students step-by-step in establishing a heart-centered do-able daily integral practice. His personal web site is  http://integralspiritualpractice.com

Beyond Awakening: A Free Teleseries on the Future of Spiritual Practice

Chief Seattle, Speech January 1854

Chief Seattle

Listen to Chief Seattle's name spoken in Lushootseed

Placing one hand on the governor's head, and slowly pointing heavenward with the index finger of the other, 

he commenced his memorable address in solemn and impressive tones.

Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion on our fathers for centuries untold, and which, to us, appears changeless and eternal, may change. Today it is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the stars that never set. What Seattle says, the great chief, Washington (The Indians in early times thought that Washington was still alive. They knew the name to be that of a president, and when they heard of the president at Washington they mistook the name of the city for the name of the reigning chief. They thought. also, that King George was still England's monarch, because the Hudson Bay traders called themselves "King George men." This innocent deception the company was shrewd enough not to explain away for the Indians had more respect for them than they would have had, had they known England was ruled by a woman. Some of us have learned better.) can rely upon, with as much certainty as our pale-face brothers can rely upon the return of the seasons.

The son of the white chief says his father sends us greetings of friendship and good will. This is kind, for we know he has little need of our friendship in return, because his people are many. They are like the grass that covers vast prairies, while my people are few, and they resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain.

The great, and, I presume also good, white chief sends us word that he wants to buy our lands but is willing to allow us enough to live on comfortably. This indeed appears generous, for the red man no longer has rights that he need respect, and the offer may be wise, also, for we are no longer in need of a great country.

There was a time when our people covered the whole land, as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor. But that time has long since passed away with the greatness of tribes now almost forgotten. I will not mourn over our untimely decay, nor reproach my pale face brothers with hastening it, for we, too, may have been somewhat to blame.

When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, their hearts, also, are disfigured and turn black, and then their cruelty is relentless and knows no bounds, and our old men are not able to restrain them.

But let us hope that the hostilities between the red-man and his pale-face brothers may never return. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain.

True it is; that revenge, with our young braves, is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and old women, who have sons to lose, know better.

Our great father at Washington, for I presume he is now our father as well as yours, since George has moved his boundaries to the north; our great and good father, I say, sends us word by his son, who, no doubt is a great chief among his people, that if we do as he desires, he will protect us. His brave armies will be to us a bristling wall of strength, and his great ships of war will fill our harbors so that our ancient enemies far to the northward, the Simsians and Hydas, will no longer frighten our women and old men. Then he will be our father and we will be his children.

But can this ever be? Your God loves your people and hates mine; he folds his strong arms lovingly around the white man and leads him as a father leads his infant son, but he has forsaken his red children; he makes your people wax strong every day, and soon they will fill the land; while my people are ebbing away like a fast-receding tide, that will never flow again. The white man's God cannot love his red children or he would protect them. They seem to be orphans and can look nowhere for help. How then can we become brothers? How can your father become our father and bring us prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness?

Your God seems to us to be partial. He came to the white man. We never saw Him; never even heard His voice; He gave the white man laws but had no word for His red children whose teeming millions filled this vast continent as the stars fill the firmament. No, we are two distinct races and must ever remain so. There is little in common between us. The ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their final resting place is hallowed ground, while you wander away from the tombs of your fathers seemingly without regret.

Your religion was written on tables of stone by the iron finger of an angry God, lest you might forget it. The red-man could never remember nor comprehend it.

Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors, the dreams of our old men, given them by the great Spirit, and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people.

Your dead cease to love you and the homes of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb. They wander far off beyond the stars, are soon forgotten, and never return. Our dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its winding rivers, its great mountains and its sequestered vales, and they ever yearn in tenderest affection over the lonely hearted living and often return to visit and comfort them.

Day and night cannot dwell together. The red man has ever fled the approach of the white man, as the changing mists on the mountainside flee before the blazing morning sun.

However, your proposition seems a just one, and I think that my folks will accept it and will retire to the reservation you offer them, and we will dwell apart and in peace, for the words of the great white chief seem to be the voice of nature speaking to my people out of the thick darkness that is fast gathering around them in a dense fog floating inward from a midnight sea.

It matters but little where we pass the remnant of our days.

They are not many. The Indian's night promises to be dark. No bright star hovers about the horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance. Some grim Nemesis of our race is on the red man's trail, and wherever he goes he will still hear the sure approaching footsteps of the fell destroyer and prepare to meet his doom, as does the wounded doe that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter. A few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of all the mighty hosts that once filled this broad land or that now roam in fragmentary bands through these vast solitudes will remain to weep over the tombs of a people once as powerful and hopeful as your own.

But why should we repine? Why should I murmur at the fate of my people? Tribes are made up of individuals, and are no better than they. Men come and go like the waves of the sea. A tear, a tamanamus, a dirge, and they are gone from our longing eyes forever. Even the white man, whose God walked and talked with him, as friend to friend, is not exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We shall see.

We will ponder your proposition, and when we have decided we will tell you. But should we accept it, I here and now make this the first condition: That we will not be denied the privilege, without molestation, of visiting at will the graves of our ancestors and friends. Every part of this country is sacred to my people. Every hill-side, every valley, every plain and grove has been hallowed by some fond memory or some sad experience of my tribe.

Even the rocks that seem to lie dumb as they swelter in the sun along the silent seashore in solemn grandeur thrill with memories of past events connected with the fate of my people, and the very dust under your feet responds more lovingly to our footsteps than to yours, because it is the ashes of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch, for the soil is rich with the life of our kindred.

The sable braves, and fond mothers and glad-hearted maidens, and the little children who lived and rejoiced here, and whose very names are now forgotten, still love these solitudes, and their deep fastnesses at eventide grow shadowy with the presence of dusky spirits. And when the last red man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among white men shall have become a myth, these shores shall swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children shall think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway or in the silence of the woods they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night, when the streets of your cities and villages shall be silent, and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not altogether powerless.

Consciousness Matters

Consciousness Matters:Exploring the Mysteries of Inner Space from Institute of Noetic Sciences.

This video was produced for IONS' 2011 Conference in San Francisco, CA, Noetic 2.0: Tools & Technologies for a World Transforming. It features Edgar Mitchell, Deepak Chopra, Marilyn Schlitz, Dean Radin and Cassandra Vieten in an exploration of the mysteries of inner space and the questions and values that drive the work of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. For almost 40 years the Institute of Noetic Sciences has explored the fundamental powers and potentials of consciousness using the tools of basic science.

Science of the Heart

The human heart emits the strongest electromagnetic field in our body. This electromagnetic field envelops the entire body extending out in all directions, and it can be measured up to several feet outside of the body. Research from the Institute of HeartMath shows that this emotional information is encoded in this energetic field. HeartMath researchers have also seen that as we consciously focus on feeling a positive emotion - such as care, appreciation, compassion or love - it has a beneficial effect on our own health and well-being, and can have a positive affect on those around us.

I AM, documentary

Hollywood comedy director Tom Shadyac (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective) gets contemplative in this documentary, which finds him conversing with prominent philosophers and spiritual leaders about what ails our world and how we can improve it. Traveling the globe to conduct his in-depth interviews, Shadyac finds insights and inspiration from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, historian Howard Zinn, philosopher Noam Chomsky and other luminaries.

Cast:

Marc Ian Barasch, Coleman Barks, Noam Chomsky, Tom Shadyac, Desmond Tutu, Howard Zinn

Director:

Tom Shadyac

Genres:

Documentaries, Social & Cultural Documentaries 

2011NR77 minutes

5 Spiritual Myths that Sabotage Our Conscious Evolution, with Terry Patten

Download | Integral Spiritual Practice

Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston

Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston

 

God -- Transcendent and Immanent

Deepak talks with Jean Houston about how narrow viewpoints can restrict our understanding.

"The confirmed materilaist, captive in his own realm of "reality," is ignorante of his deluded state and therefore has no wish nor will to exchange it for the sole Reality, Spirit. He perceives the temporal world as reality, external substance--insofar as he is able to grasp the concept of eternity. He imagines the grossness of sensory experience to be the pure essence of feeling and perception. He fabricates his own standards of morality and behavior and calls them good, irrespective of their inharmory with eternal Divine Law. And he thinks that his ego, his mortal sense of being--with its inflated self-importance as the almighty doer--is the image of his soul as created by God."
 -Paramahansa Yogananda  

Scientism

Unlike the use of the scientific method as only one mode of reaching knowledge, scientism claims that science alone can render truth about the world and reality. Scientism's single-minded adherence to only the empirical, or testable, makes it a strictly scientific worldview, in much the same way that a Protestant fundamentalism that rejects science can be seen as a strictly religious worldview. Scientism sees it necessary to do away with most, if not all, metaphysical, philosophical, and religious claims, as the truths they proclaim cannot be apprehended by the scientific method. In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth. This is the essence of the Orange Stage of Consciousness. 

Taking the Orange View

Developmental psychologists have identified numerous features of an individual’s consciousness, such as cognition (what one is aware of), values (what one considers most important), and self-identity (what one identifies with). These features of consciousness develop through recognizable stages, each stage revealing a markedly different understanding of the world.

Described below are eight stages of consciousness as understood through research about the unfolding development of values and self-identity. There are other developmental lines besides the values and self-identity lines selected here; however, these are two of the most important.

Each stage of consciousness is identified with a color, for easy reference. It is important to recognize that these “stages” are not strict levels, like rungs on a ladder. They are more like loosely delineated areas along a spectrum of development. Thus, a stage is more like a probability wave than a concrete level of consciousness.

“We are not our stages; we are not the self who hangs in the balance at this moment in our evolution. We are the activity of this evolution. We compose our stages, and we experience this composing.”

-Robert Kegan, Harvard developmental psychologist

The stages below are divided into egocentric stages (Infrared, Magenta, and Red), ethnocentric (Amber), worldcentric (Orange and Green), and kosmocentric stages (Teal, Turquoise, and Indigo).

The Stages of Consciousness

The Orange Stage of Consciousness

Values: Success and autonomy. Basic theme: Act in your own self interest by playing the
game to win.
What’s important: Progress, prosperity, optimism, and self-reliance; strategy, risk-taking, and
competitiveness; goals, leverage, professional development, and mastery; rationality,
objectivism, demonstrated results, technology, and the power of science; use of the earth’s
resources to spread the abundant “good life”; advance by learning nature’s secrets and seeking
the best solutions

Where seen: The Enlightenment; Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged; Wall Street; emerging middle
classes around the world; colonialism, political gamesmanship; sales and marketing field;
fashion and cosmetics industries; Chambers of Commerce; the Cold War; materialism; Scientism; The
Riviera, Rodeo Drive

Self-Identity:
Main focus: Delivery of results, effectiveness, goals; success within the system
Qualities: Primary elements of adult “conscience” are present, including long-term goals, ability
for self-criticism, and a deeper sense of responsibility. Interested in causes, reasons,
consequences, and the effective use of time; future-oriented and proactive; initiator rather than
pawn of system; blind to subjectivity behind objectivity; feel guilt when not meeting own
standards or goals; behavioral feedback accepted.
How influences others: Provides logical argument, data, experience; makes task/goal-oriented
contractual agreements.

Marilyn Schlitz One Minute Shift | The Next Scientific Revolution

Visionary: Marilyn Mandala Schlitz, PhD

In this one-minute video, Dr. Schlitz explores the possibility that we are now going through the next scientific revolution, one every bit as profound as those created by Copernicus, Darwin, and Einstein.