Living Dialogues Podcast
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This weekly program features pioneers in new paradigm thinking in a broad variety of fields. Each show provides a different fact of the vision emerging from the work of many to transform our individual lives -- and our planet...It is a fire-keeping space where together, we can ignite each other's unique creative spark to bring forth both our individual transformation and the evolution of our global community.
If you love exploring the realm of consciousness and transformational thought, this show goes beyond typical interview formats to a deeply analytical, sophisticated dialog of issues ranging from the bio-dynamics of longevity to past-life regression to the origins of belief structures that define our culture. These dialogs function as a kind of “Cliff Notes” for the consciousness revolution.
Duncan Campbell possesses the unique gift of tying world views, insights and philosophies together to deliver transformative revelations to the active and culturally creative listener, thereby evolving consciousness. With such guests as Andrew Weil, Deepak Chopra, Joan Borysenko, Judy Collins and many more, Duncan engages in mutually participatory and co-creative dialogue evoking a flow of meaning and understanding beyond what any of these individuals can present themselves. Subscribe to this podcast now and join us, as together with you, the active deep listener, we engage in 'Living Dialogues.'
What are the benefits of subscribing to Living Dialogues?
"One of the most important things we can do for our health is to cultivate a community of rich social connections. Living Dialogues with Duncan Campbell is one of the best ways I know to cultivate community without leaving your home. Risk taking; getting out of ruts and routines and habits; Experiencing new things, are also valuable. That's what Living Dialogues is all about. Get healthier. Join in Living Dialogues with Duncan Campbell." -- Larry Dossey, M.D., Leading physician and visionary
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 Write a Review of Living Dialogues Podcast
Living Dialogues are transformative! The very best "interviews" you will ever hear, May 12, 2008
Reviewer: Sunshiny
from Clarksville, Arkansas
Duncan Campbell, a world-class 'interviewer,' is sufficiently fascinating and well educated himself that he would make a good subject for an interview. His talent is to first, choose the great thinkers with whom to dialogue. He is then able to somehow not only 'see' the brilliance in each one, but to bring that out in his fantastic dialogues, which are more like a cosmic dance than an interview.
Blessings are the result of experiencing the Living Dialogues. I highly recommend them.
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Podcast Website:
http://www.personallifemedia.com
LD 098: Christine Page guest ? 7 of 7 On the Road of ?2012 NOW ? Empowering the Transformation?
Author: Duncan Campbell
Wed, May 27, 2009
Episode Description: ?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret Mead This is the seventh and last in a seven-part series of ?Pilgrimage Dialogues? forming part of and leading up to a Conference Gathering in Fort Collins, Colorado on May 29-30, 2009, entitled ?2012 NOW ? Empowering the Transformation?, for which I am serving as the Master of Ceremonies and opening presenter. Past Living Dialogues in this series have included dialogues with myself and Robert Sitler, John Major Jenkins, Stanislav Grof, Richard Tarnas (parts 1 and 2), and with Sobonfu Some?. Details and registration information available at www.unveiling2012.org. Duncan Campbell: 2012 Now: Empowering The Transformation, a uniquely innovative, interactive and affordable gathering in this time of global uncertainty, will take place Friday night and all day Saturday May 29 and 30 at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in Fort Collins, Colorado. Beyond just information, to practical tools for change and direct experience of participating in the ongoing transformation of our times. Now is the time and the opportunity to synchronize consciousness with the evolutionary pulse of the cosmos. Join participants bringing stories from around the planet as we explore, co-create, and experience together the transformative dynamics necessary for a successful transit from now through the year 2012 and beyond. More information available on the Conference website, www.unveiling2012.org. See you there.The meaning of the Greek word ?Apocalypse? is ?lifting the veil? or ?revelation?. These seven ?pilgrimage dialogues? in advance of the Gathering ? contemporary 21st century versions of the medieval Canterbury Tales ? are examples of such revelatory ?shared stories? on this Road of 2012 NOW.Here is a summary dialogue excerpt describing the Conference between myself and Sobonfu Some?, who will conduct the concluding ritual of celebration:Sobonfu Some?: Well I really believe that initiation is a necessity, you know, much like, you know, 2012 is saying ?here is a big initiation?. It, initiation, is a necessity because we have to initiate in order to be able to move forward, to be able to tap into our essence, into our gift and so on. And, you know, in my African tradition the first initiation that we all go through is that of being born, because we are coming from being full of spirit to taking on this human tool that we call the body. And, you know, also, we?ll go through many, many initiations. And I think what we?re talking about in the Conference is that we?re going to get to the place where we are basically going to celebrate being able to give birth to our self and to whatever new vision is going to come out of this Conference Gathering -- so that we can together welcome each other and celebrate together. And I think that is the icing on the cake, you know, that is awaiting us.Duncan Campbell: I think absolutely that?s the case, and myself as Master of Ceremonies and yourself as the person who will be leading us in the concluding celebratory ritual are both involved in helping the entire gathering to activate, all of us together, a kind of transformational space -- including not only the presenters who will be articulating on the stage, but all of the participants with their deep listening who are evoking the insights that are articulated coming out of the group energy field. And this opportunity for expression will also be something we can all look forward to at the extended lunch time on Saturday, when there?s going to be a large and deliberate space for people in very small groups to share stories, deep stories, with each other and evoke and integrate their experience. This is very essential to a true initiation -- that is not just a one way transmission of information, but is actually a transformative initiation -- where together we can evoke an experience that is both intimate and personal in our sense of shift, as well as a kind of collective amplification that allows all of us to celebrate, as Barack Obama suggested in his Inaugural Address, ?our common humanity?. And that experience has a great carry over effect into our everyday lives and relationships.Sobonfu Some?: Now how amazing is that, because, you know, a lot of people go into conferences and never really get to put in their voice; and, you know, in my Dagara people?s African tradition, when you go anywhere we are always trying to get our voice in, you know, to express yourself with and to others, because it?s like we are all making this huge cauldron and the stories that we bring, everything we share of our self, is part of what is going to make whatever we?re cooking really delicious. And for people to be able to have this opportunity as a gift, not only to themselves but a gift to the community, I really believe is amazing.Duncan Campbell: That?s beautifully put. I love the image that you give here of together we?re collectively creating a crucible or a great cauldron, not only a crucible for the water of life, but a great cauldron in which to cook and use the fire of life to transform our experience, because these are transformative elements, all of the elements are: Earth is nurturing, Wind is empowering, a Fire literally is transforming, and Water is liquid and fluid and moves between the solid state of ice to the evaporated state of the clouds. And so every one of the elements will be involved here. We will be having time outdoors; we will be celebrating the natural world in a beautiful natural environment in Fort Collins, Colorado. And I think that these ?pilgrimage dialogues? are pointing to that transformation as they are evolving here. In my first dialogue, with Robert Sitler, he emphasized the joy and the wisdom that is accessible in everyday life that he himself has experienced in the Mayan culture and which he shares so beautifully. Next has been John Major Jenkins, whose great research into the galactic alignment and embedding it and situating it in connection to the primordial tradition, sometimes called the perennial philosophy, has shown how we can bring all of this that 2012 is pointing to into the Now; that this ?2012 phenomenon? is not an event that we?re waiting for, that we?re going to have to be acted upon at some time in the future, but it is an atmosphere of opportunity that is present right here, right now?And that energy field is present right now in helping germinate and evoke from you and I what we?re saying and inviting people to; so that in a sense you and I are acting here as inviters and embodiments of the kind of dialogue and transformation that we can anticipate will be happening among us all and amplified at that particular moment on May 29 and May 30 of the Gathering. But that?s only a moment in a continuum of many moments before and after, that we?re all already uncovering and witnessing being unveiled in people all over the world.Sobonfu Some?: Yes, and, you know, as you speak and you share that it makes me think about today being this energy that renews itself time and again, which gets stronger every time, as the energy is being shared every time. So as people today listen to this dialogue, and share it with other people, it is renewed and it gets stronger and so on. That?s the image that came to me.Duncan Campbell: Well, I have to say, Sobonfu, it?s been just a wonderful opportunity here for myself and our other deep listeners, and yourself for that matter, for us to have this chance and opportunity to engage in this dialogue together, and I have always so appreciated the great joy and cheerfulness that you embody and bring to any time that I?ve ever had the pleasure and privilege to encounter you. And so I?m very much looking forward to this conference, even as I?m deeply appreciating the present moment here, because the gift I think of this very dialogue is not only to inspire that more such moments can happen between us, but in one?s own life everyday, today for instance, and the moments that follow.Sobonfu Some?: Yes, and I?m very grateful for you, for the gift of yourself to the world really and for having such a strong and powerful vision that you can not only share with the world, but that you can get other people be a part of the dance of that vision as well. And I think that is, that is a gift that not everybody has, and I thank you for holding that for all of us.Duncan Campbell: Well thank you very much Sobonfu, and I want to thank our co-producers Larraine Tennison and John Major Jenkins and everyone involved with this project, all the presenters that are part of this pilgrimage series that is now leading us, as it were, like milestones toward the Conference Gathering on May 29 and 30. If people are wanting further information, they can go to www.unveiling2012.org. And we really extend an extraordinarily warm and intimate invitation for your continued participation. If you cannot physically put yourself in that Fort Collins environment, you?re very much invited to participate through your deep listening to not only these dialogues, but to the continuation of Living Dialogues after that, and also to honor the fact that really it is true -- and we?re experiencing it with great gratitude for our listenership and their Website Contact emails from around the world -- that as the world becomes smaller, ?yes, we can? and do experience in greater depth and greater joy our own common humanity. We invite you and look forward to seeing you at the conference on May 29 and 30, 2009 in the natural beauty of Fort Collins, Colorado, entitled ?2012 NOW - Empowering the Transformation?. For further information and registration you can go to www.unveiling2012.org.?We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth?. and we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it?why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration?" -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009 And as we say on Living Dialogues: ?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)
Among other heartful visionary conversations you will find of particular interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Robert Sitler, John Major Jenkins, Sobonfu Some, Stanislav Grof, Richard Tarnas, John O?Donohue, Michael Meade, Eckhart Tolle, Ted Sorensen, Frances Moore Lappe, Angeles Arrien, Matthew Fox, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, Gangaji, Michael Dowd, Duane Elgin, and Joseph Ellis, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
 Download File - 22.3 MB
 Listen To This Podcast (Streaming Audio)
LD 097: Richard Tarnas guest (Part 2) ? 6 of 7 On the Road of ?2012 NOW ? Empowering the Transformation?
Author: Duncan Campbell
Wed, May 27, 2009
Episode Description:?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret Mead This is the sixth in a seven-part series of ?Pilgrimage Dialogues? forming part of and leading up to a Conference Gathering in Fort Collins, Colorado on May 29-30, 2009, entitled ?2012 NOW ? Empowering the Transformation?, for which I am serving as the Master of Ceremonies and opening presenter. Past Living Dialogues in this series have included dialogues with myself and Robert Sitler, John Major Jenkins, Stanislav Grof, Richard Tarnas, and with Sobonfu Some?. The final Living Dialogue in the series will be with Christine Page. Details and registration information available at www.unveiling2012.org. Duncan Campbell: 2012 Now: Empowering The Transformation, a uniquely innovative, interactive and affordable gathering in this time of global uncertainty, will take place Friday night and all day Saturday May 29 and 30 at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in Fort Collins, Colorado. Beyond just information, to practical tools for change and direct experience of participating in the ongoing transformation of our times. Now is the time and the opportunity to synchronize consciousness with the evolutionary pulse of the cosmos. Join participants bringing stories from around the planet as we explore, co-create, and experience together the tranformative dynamics necessary for a successful transit from now through the year 2012 and beyond. More information available on the Conference website, www.unveiling2012.org. See you there.The meaning of the Greek word ?Apocalypse? is ?lifting the veil? or ?revelation?. These seven ?pilgrimage dialogues? in advance of the Gathering ? contemporary 21st century versions of the medieval Canterbury Tales ? are examples of such revelatory ?shared stories? on this Road of 2012 NOW.Here is a summary dialogue excerpt describing the Conference between myself and Sobonfu Some?, who will conduct the concluding ritual of celebration:Sobonfu Some?: Well I really believe that initiation is a necessity, you know, much like, you know, 2012 is saying ?here is a big initiation?. It, initiation, is a necessity because we have to initiate in order to be able to move forward, to be able to tap into our essence, into our gift and so on. And, you know, in my African tradition the first initiation that we all go through is that of being born, because we are coming from being full of spirit to taking on this human tool that we call the body. And, you know, also, we?ll go through many, many initiations. And I think what we?re talking about in the Conference is that we?re going to get to the place where we are basically going to celebrate being able to give birth to our self and to whatever new vision is going to come out of this Conference Gathering -- so that we can together welcome each other and celebrate together. And I think that is the icing on the cake, you know, that is awaiting us.Duncan Campbell: I think absolutely that?s the case, and myself as Master of Ceremonies and yourself as the person who will be leading us in the concluding celebratory ritual are both involved in helping the entire gathering to activate, all of us together, a kind of transformational space -- including not only the presenters who will be articulating on the stage, but all of the participants with their deep listening who are evoking the insights that are articulated coming out of the group energy field. And this opportunity for expression will also be something we can all look forward to at the extended lunch time on Saturday, when there?s going to be a large and deliberate space for people in very small groups to share stories, deep stories, with each other and evoke and integrate their experience. This is very essential to a true initiation -- that is not just a one way transmission of information, but is actually a transformative initiation -- where together we can evoke an experience that is both intimate and personal in our sense of shift, as well as a kind of collective amplification that allows all of us to celebrate, as Barack Obama suggested in his Inaugural Address, ?our common humanity?. And that experience has a great carry over effect into our everyday lives and relationships.Sobonfu Some?: Now how amazing is that, because, you know, a lot of people go into conferences and never really get to put in their voice; and, you know, in my Dagara people?s African tradition, when you go anywhere we are always trying to get our voice in, you know, to express yourself with and to others, because it?s like we are all making this huge cauldron and the stories that we bring, everything we share of our self, is part of what is going to make whatever we?re cooking really delicious. And for people to be able to have this opportunity as a gift, not only to themselves but a gift to the community, I really believe is amazing.Duncan Campbell: That?s beautifully put. I love the image that you give here of together we?re collectively creating a crucible or a great cauldron, not only a crucible for the water of life, but a great cauldron in which to cook and use the fire of life to transform our experience, because these are transformative elements, all of the elements are: Eaarth is nurturing, Wind is empowering, a Fire literally is transforming, and Water is liquid and fluid and moves between the solid state of ice to the evaporated state of the clouds. And so every one of the elements will be involved here. We will be having time outdoors; we will be celebrating the natural world in a beautiful natural environment in Fort Collins, Colorado. And I think that these ?pilgrimage dialogues? are pointing to that transformation as they are evolving here. In my first dialogue, with Robert Sitler, he emphasized the joy and the wisdom that is accessible in everyday life that he himself has experienced in the Mayan culture and which he shares so beautifully. Next has been John Major Jenkins, whose great research into the galactic alignment and embedding it and situating it in connection to the primordial tradition, sometimes called the perennial philosophy, has shown how we can bring all of this that 2012 is pointing to into the Now; that this ?2012 phenomenon? is not an event that we?re waiting for, that we?re going to have to be acted upon at some time in the future, but it is an atmosphere of opportunity that is present right here, right now?And that energy field is present right now in helping germinate and evoke from you and I what we?re saying and inviting people to; so that in a sense you and I are acting here as inviters and embodiments of the kind of dialogue and transformation that we can anticipate will be happening among us all and amplified at that particular moment on May 29 and May 30 of the Gathering. But that?s only a moment in a continuum of many moments before and after, that we?re all already uncovering and witnessing being unveiled in people all over the world.Sobonfu Some?: Yes, and, you know, as you speak and you share that it makes me think about today being this energy that renews itself time and again, which gets stronger every time, as the energy is being shared every time. So as people today listen to this dialogue, and share it with other people, it is renewed and it gets stronger and so on. That?s the image that came to me.Duncan Campbell: Well, I have to say, Sobonfu, it?s been just a wonderful opportunity here for myself and our other deep listeners, and yourself for that matter, for us to have this chance and opportunity to engage in this dialogue together, and I have always so appreciated the great joy and cheerfulness that you embody and bring to any time that I?ve ever had the pleasure and privilege to encounter you. And so I?m very much looking forward to this conference, even as I?m deeply appreciating the present moment here, because the gift I think of this very dialogue is not only to inspire that more such moments can happen between us, but in one?s own life everyday, today for instance, and the moments that follow.Sobonfu Some?: Yes, and I?m very grateful for you, for the gift of yourself to the world really and for having such a strong and powerful vision that you can not only share with the world, but that you can get other people be a part of the dance of that vision as well. And I think that is, that is a gift that not everybody has, and I thank you for holding that for all of us.Duncan Campbell: Well thank you very much Sobonfu, and I want to thank our co-producers Larraine Tennison and John Major Jenkins and everyone involved with this project, all the presenters that are part of this pilgrimage series that is now leading us, as it were, like milestones toward the Conference Gathering on May 29 and 30. If people are wanting further information, they can go to www.unveiling2012.org. And we really extend an extraordinarily warm and intimate invitation for your continued participation. If you cannot physically put yourself in that Fort Collins environment, you?re very much invited to participate through your deep listening to not only these dialogues, but to the continuation of Living Dialogues after that, and also to honor the fact that really it is true -- and we?re experiencing it with great gratitude for our listenership and their Website Contact emails from around the world -- that as the world becomes smaller, ?yes, we can? and do experience in greater depth and greater joy our own common humanity. We invite you and look forward to seeing you at the conference on May 29 and 30, 2009 in the natural beauty of Fort Collins, Colorado, entitled ?2012 NOW - Empowering the Transformation?. For further information and registration you can go to www.unveiling2012.org.?We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth?. and we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it?why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration?" -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009 And as we say on Living Dialogues: ?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)
Among other heartful visionary conversations you will find of particular interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Robert Sitler, John Major Jenkins, Sobonfu Some, Stanislav Grof, John O?Donohue, Michael Meade, Eckhart Tolle, Ted Sorensen, Frances Moore Lappe, Angeles Arrien, Matthew Fox, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, Gangaji, Michael Dowd, Duane Elgin, and Joseph Ellis, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
Download File - 12.1 MB
Listen To This Podcast (Streaming Audio)
LD 096: Richard Tarnas guest (Part 1) ? 5 of 7 On the Road of ?2012 NOW ? Empowering the Transformation?
Author: Duncan Campbell
Tue, May 26, 2009
Episode Description: ?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret Mead This is the fifth in a seven-part series of ?Pilgrimage Dialogues? forming part of and leading up to a Conference Gathering in Fort Collins, Colorado on May 29-30, 2009, entitled ?2012 NOW ? Empowering the Transformation?, for which I am serving as the Master of Ceremonies and opening presenter. Past Living Dialogues in this series have included dialogues with myself and Robert Sitler, John Major Jenkins, Stanislav Grof, and with Sobonfu Some?. Future Living Dialogues in the series will include my dialogues with Richard Tarnas (Part 2) and with Christine Page. Details and registration information available at www.unveiling2012.org. Duncan Campbell: 2012 Now: Empowering The Transformation, a uniquely innovative, interactive and affordable gathering in this time of global uncertainty, will take place Friday night and all day Saturday May 29 and 30 at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in Fort Collins, Colorado. Beyond just information, to practical tools for change and direct experience of participating in the ongoing transformation of our times. Now is the time and the opportunity to synchronize consciousness with the evolutionary pulse of the cosmos. Join participants bringing stories from around the planet as we explore, co-create, and experience together the tranformative dynamics necessary for a successful transit from now through the year 2012 and beyond. More information available on the Conference website, www.unveiling2012.org. See you there.The meaning of the Greek word ?Apocalypse? is ?lifting the veil? or ?revelation?. These seven ?pilgrimage dialogues? in advance of the Gathering ? contemporary 21st century versions of the medieval Canterbury Tales ? are examples of such revelatory ?shared stories? on this Road of 2012 NOW.Here is a summary dialogue excerpt describing the Conference between myself and Sobonfu Some?, who will conduct the concluding ritual of celebration:Sobonfu Some?: Well I really believe that initiation is a necessity, you know, much like, you know, 2012 is saying ?here is a big initiation?. It, initiation, is a necessity because we have to initiate in order to be able to move forward, to be able to tap into our essence, into our gift and so on. And, you know, in my African tradition the first initiation that we all go through is that of being born, because we are coming from being full of spirit to taking on this human tool that we call the body. And, you know, also, we?ll go through many, many initiations. And I think what we?re talking about in the Conference is that we?re going to get to the place where we are basically going to celebrate being able to give birth to our self and to whatever new vision is going to come out of this Conference Gathering -- so that we can together welcome each other and celebrate together. And I think that is the icing on the cake, you know, that is awaiting us.Duncan Campbell: I think absolutely that?s the case, and myself as Master of Ceremonies and yourself as the person who will be leading us in the concluding celebratory ritual are both involved in helping the entire gathering to activate, all of us together, a kind of transformational space -- including not only the presenters who will be articulating on the stage, but all of the participants with their deep listening who are evoking the insights that are articulated coming out of the group energy field. And this opportunity for expression will also be something we can all look forward to at the extended lunch time on Saturday, when there?s going to be a large and deliberate space for people in very small groups to share stories, deep stories, with each other and evoke and integrate their experience. This is very essential to a true initiation -- that is not just a one way transmission of information, but is actually a transformative initiation -- where together we can evoke an experience that is both intimate and personal in our sense of shift, as well as a kind of collective amplification that allows all of us to celebrate, as Barack Obama suggested in his Inaugural Address, ?our common humanity?. And that experience has a great carry over effect into our everyday lives and relationships.Sobonfu Some?: Now how amazing is that, because, you know, a lot of people go into conferences and never really get to put in their voice; and, you know, in my Dagara people?s African tradition, when you go anywhere we are always trying to get our voice in, you know, to express yourself with and to others, because it?s like we are all making this huge cauldron and the stories that we bring, everything we share of our self, is part of what is going to make whatever we?re cooking really delicious. And for people to be able to have this opportunity as a gift, not only to themselves but a gift to the community, I really believe is amazing.Duncan Campbell: That?s beautifully put. I love the image that you give here of together we?re collectively creating a crucible or a great cauldron, not only a crucible for the water of life, but a great cauldron in which to cook and use the fire of life to transform our experience, because these are transformative elements, all of the elements are: Eaarth is nurturing, Wind is empowering, a Fire literally is transforming, and Water is liquid and fluid and moves between the solid state of ice to the evaporated state of the clouds. And so every one of the elements will be involved here. We will be having time outdoors; we will be celebrating the natural world in a beautiful natural environment in Fort Collins, Colorado. And I think that these ?pilgrimage dialogues? are pointing to that transformation as they are evolving here. In my first dialogue, with Robert Sitler, he emphasized the joy and the wisdom that is accessible in everyday life that he himself has experienced in the Mayan culture and which he shares so beautifully. Next has been John Major Jenkins, whose great research into the galactic alignment and embedding it and situating it in connection to the primordial tradition, sometimes called the perennial philosophy, has shown how we can bring all of this that 2012 is pointing to into the Now; that this ?2012 phenomenon? is not an event that we?re waiting for, that we?re going to have to be acted upon at some time in the future, but it is an atmosphere of opportunity that is present right here, right now?And that energy field is present right now in helping germinate and evoke from you and I what we?re saying and inviting people to; so that in a sense you and I are acting here as inviters and embodiments of the kind of dialogue and transformation that we can anticipate will be happening among us all and amplified at that particular moment on May 29 and May 30 of the Gathering. But that?s only a moment in a continuum of many moments before and after, that we?re all already uncovering and witnessing being unveiled in people all over the world.Sobonfu Some?: Yes, and, you know, as you speak and you share that it makes me think about today being this energy that renews itself time and again, which gets stronger every time, as the energy is being shared every time. So as people today listen to this dialogue, and share it with other people, it is renewed and it gets stronger and so on. That?s the image that came to me.Duncan Campbell: Well, I have to say, Sobonfu, it?s been just a wonderful opportunity here for myself and our other deep listeners, and yourself for that matter, for us to have this chance and opportunity to engage in this dialogue together, and I have always so appreciated the great joy and cheerfulness that you embody and bring to any time that I?ve ever had the pleasure and privilege to encounter you. And so I?m very much looking forward to this conference, even as I?m deeply appreciating the present moment here, because the gift I think of this very dialogue is not only to inspire that more such moments can happen between us, but in one?s own life everyday, today for instance, and the moments that follow.Sobonfu Some?: Yes, and I?m very grateful for you, for the gift of yourself to the world really and for having such a strong and powerful vision that you can not only share with the world, but that you can get other people be a part of the dance of that vision as well. And I think that is, that is a gift that not everybody has, and I thank you for holding that for all of us.Duncan Campbell: Well thank you very much Sobonfu, and I want to thank our co-producers Larraine Tennison and John Major Jenkins and everyone involved with this project, all the presenters that are part of this pilgrimage series that is now leading us, as it were, like milestones toward the Conference Gathering on May 29 and 30. If people are wanting further information, they can go to www.unveiling2012.org. And we really extend an extraordinarily warm and intimate invitation for your continued participation. If you cannot physically put yourself in that Fort Collins environment, you?re very much invited to participate through your deep listening to not only these dialogues, but to the continuation of Living Dialogues after that, and also to honor the fact that really it is true -- and we?re experiencing it with great gratitude for our listenership and their Website Contact emails from around the world -- that as the world becomes smaller, ?yes, we can? and do experience in greater depth and greater joy our own common humanity. We invite you and look forward to seeing you at the conference on May 29 and 30, 2009 in the natural beauty of Fort Collins, Colorado, entitled ?2012 NOW - Empowering the Transformation?. For further information and registration you can go to www.unveiling2012.org.?We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth?. and we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it?why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration?" -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009 And as we say on Living Dialogues: ?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)
Among other heartful visionary conversations you will find of particular interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Robert Sitler, John Major Jenkins, Sobonfu Some, Stanislav Grof, John O?Donohue, Michael Meade, Eckhart Tolle, Ted Sorensen, Frances Moore Lappe, Angeles Arrien, Matthew Fox, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, Gangaji, Michael Dowd, Duane Elgin, and Joseph Ellis, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
Download File - 22.6 MB
Listen To This Podcast (Streaming Audio)
LD 095: Stanislav Grof guest ? 4 of 7 On the Road of ?2012 NOW ? Empowering the Transformation?
Author: Duncan Campbell
Wed, May 20, 2009
Episode Description:?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret Mead
This is the fourth in a seven-part series of ?Pilgrimage Dialogues? forming part of and leading up to a Conference Gathering in Fort Collins, Colorado on May 29-30, 2009, entitled ?2012 NOW ? Empowering the Transformation?, for which I am serving as the Master of Ceremonies and opening presenter. Past Living Dialogues in this series have included dialogues with myself and Robert Sitler, John Major Jenkins, and with Sobonfu Some?. Future Living Dialogues in the series will include other Conference presenters Richard Tarnas and Christine Page. Details and registration information available at www.unveiling2012.org. Duncan Campbell: 2012 Now: Empowering The Transformation, a uniquely innovative, interactive and affordable gathering in this time of global uncertainty, will take place Friday night and all day Saturday May 29 and 30 at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in Fort Collins, Colorado. Beyond just information, to practical tools for change and direct experience of participating in the ongoing transformation of our times. Now is the time and the opportunity to synchronize consciousness with the evolutionary pulse of the cosmos. Join participants bringing stories from around the planet as we explore, co-create, and experience together the tranformative dynamics necessary for a successful transit from now through the year 2012 and beyond. More information available on the Conference website, www.unveiling2012.org. See you there.The meaning of the Greek word ?Apocalypse? is ?lifting the veil? or ?revelation?. These ?pilgrimage dialogues? in advance of the Gathering ? contemporary 21st century versions of the medieval Canterbury Tales ? are examples of such revelatory ?shared stories? on this Road of 2012 NOW.Here is a summary excerpt describing the Conference between myself and Sobonfu Some?, who will conduct the concluding ritual of celebration:Sobonfu Some?: Well I really believe that initiation is a necessity, you know, much like, you know, 2012 is saying ?here is a big initiation?. It, initiation, is a necessity because we have to initiate in order to be able to move forward, to be able to tap into our essence, into our gift and so on. And, you know, in my African tradition the first initiation that we all go through is that of being born, because we are coming from being full of spirit to taking on this human tool that we call the body. And, you know, also, we?ll go through many, many initiations. And I think what we?re talking about in the Conference is that we?re going to get to the place where we are basically going to celebrate being able to give birth to our self and to whatever new vision is going to come out of this Conference Gathering -- so that we can together welcome each other and celebrate together. And I think that is the icing on the cake, you know, that is awaiting us.Duncan Campbell: I think absolutely that?s the case, and myself as Master of Ceremonies and yourself as the person who will be leading us in the concluding celebratory ritual are both involved in helping the entire gathering to activate, all of us together, a kind of transformational space -- including not only the presenters who will be articulating on the stage, but all of the participants with their deep listening who are evoking the insights that are articulated coming out of the group energy field. And this opportunity for expression will also be something we can all look forward to at the extended lunch time on Saturday, when there?s going to be a large and deliberate space for people in very small groups to share stories, deep stories, with each other and evoke and integrate their experience. This is very essential to a true initiation -- that is not just a one way transmission of information, but is actually a transformative initiation -- where together we can evoke an experience that is both intimate and personal in our sense of shift, as well as a kind of collective amplification that allows all of us to celebrate, as Barack Obama suggested in his Inaugural Address, ?our common humanity?. And that experience has a great carry over effect into our everyday lives and relationships.Sobonfu Some?: Now how amazing is that, because, you know, a lot of people go into conferences and never really get to put in their voice; and, you know, in my Dagara people?s African tradition, when you go anywhere we are always trying to get our voice in, you know, to express yourself with and to others, because it?s like we are all making this huge cauldron and the stories that we bring, everything we share of our self, is part of what is going to make whatever we?re cooking really delicious. And for people to be able to have this opportunity as a gift, not only to themselves but a gift to the community, I really believe is amazing.Duncan Campbell: That?s beautifully put. I love the image that you give here of together we?re collectively creating a crucible or a great cauldron, not only a crucible for the water of life, but a great cauldron in which to cook and use the fire of life to transform our experience, because these are transformative elements, all of the elements are: Eaarth is nurturing, Wind is empowering, a Fire literally is transforming, and Water is liquid and fluid and moves between the solid state of ice to the evaporated state of the clouds. And so every one of the elements will be involved here. We will be having time outdoors; we will be celebrating the natural world in a beautiful natural environment in Fort Collins, Colorado. And I think that these ?pilgrimage dialogues? are pointing to that transformation as they are evolving here. In my first dialogue, with Robert Sitler, he emphasized the joy and the wisdom that is accessible in everyday life that he himself has experienced in the Mayan culture and which he shares so beautifully. Next has been John Major Jenkins, whose great research into the galactic alignment and embedding it and situating it in connection to the primordial tradition, sometimes called the perennial philosophy, has shown how we can bring all of this that 2012 is pointing to into the Now; that this ?2012 phenomenon? is not an event that we?re waiting for, that we?re going to have to be acted upon at some time in the future, but it is an atmosphere of opportunity that is present right here, right now?And that energy field is present right now in helping germinate and evoke from you and I what we?re saying and inviting people to; so that in a sense you and I are acting here as inviters and embodiments of the kind of dialogue and transformation that we can anticipate will be happening among us all and amplified at that particular moment on May 29 and May 30 of the Gathering. But that?s only a moment in a continuum of many moments before and after, that we?re all already uncovering and witnessing being unveiled in people all over the world.Sobonfu Some?: Yes, and, you know, as you speak and you share that it makes me think about today being this energy that renews itself time and again, which gets stronger every time, as the energy is being shared every time. So as people today listen to this dialogue, and share it with other people, it is renewed and it gets stronger and so on. That?s the image that came to me.Duncan Campbell: Well, I have to say, Sobonfu, it?s been just a wonderful opportunity here for myself and our other deep listeners, and yourself for that matter, for us to have this chance and opportunity to engage in this dialogue together, and I have always so appreciated the great joy and cheerfulness that you embody and bring to any time that I?ve ever had the pleasure and privilege to encounter you. And so I?m very much looking forward to this conference, even as I?m deeply appreciating the present moment here, because the gift I think of this very dialogue is not only to inspire that more such moments can happen between us, but in one?s own life everyday, today for instance, and the moments that follow.Sobonfu Some?: Yes, and I?m very grateful for you, for the gift of yourself to the world really and for having such a strong and powerful vision that you can not only share with the world, but that you can get other people be a part of the dance of that vision as well. And I think that is, that is a gift that not everybody has, and I thank you for holding that for all of us.Duncan Campbell: Well thank you very much Sobonfu, and I want to thank our co-producers Larraine Tennison and John Major Jenkins and everyone involved with this project, all the presenters that are part of this pilgrimage series that is now leading us, as it were, like milestones toward the Conference Gathering on May 29 and 30. If people are wanting further information, they can go to www.unveiling2012.org. And we really extend an extraordinarily warm and intimate invitation for your continued participation. If you cannot physically put yourself in that Fort Collins environment, you?re very much invited to participate through your deep listening to not only these dialogues, but to the continuation of Living Dialogues after that, and also to honor the fact that really it is true -- and we?re experiencing it with great gratitude for our listenership and their Website Contact emails from around the world -- that as the world becomes smaller, ?yes, we can? and do experience in greater depth and greater joy our own common humanity. We invite you and look forward to seeing you at the conference on May 29 and 30, 2009 in the natural beauty of Fort Collins, Colorado, entitled ?2012 NOW - Empowering the Transformation?. For further information and registration you can go to www.unveiling2012.org.?We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth?. and we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it?why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration?" -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009 And as we say on Living Dialogues:?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)
Among other heartful visionary conversations you will find of particular interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Robert Sitler, John Major Jenkins, Sobonfu Some, Richard Tarnas, John O?Donohue, Michael Meade, Eckhart Tolle, Ted Sorensen, Frances Moore Lappe, Angeles Arrien, Matthew Fox, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, Gangaji, Michael Dowd, Duane Elgin, and Joseph Ellis, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
Download File - 28.6 MB
Listen To This Podcast (Streaming Audio)
LD 094: Sobonfu Some? guest ? 3 of 7 On the Road of ?2012 NOW ? Empowering the Transformation?
Author: Duncan Campbell
Mon, May 11, 2009
Episode Description:?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret MeadThis is the third in a seven-part series of ?Pilgrimage Dialogues? forming part of and leading up to a Conference Gathering in Fort Collins, Colorado on May 29-30, 2009, entitled ?2012 NOW ? Empowering the Transformation?, for which I am serving as the Master of Ceremonies and opening presenter. Past Living Dialogues in this series have included dialogues with myself and Robert Sitler and with John Major Jenkins. Future Living Dialogues in the series will include other Conference presenters Stansilav Grof, Richard Tarnas, and Christine Page.
Details and registration information available at www.unveiling2012.org. Duncan Campbell: 2012 Now: Empowering The Transformation, a uniquely innovative, interactive and affordable gathering in this time of global uncertainty, will take place Friday night and all day Saturday May 29 and 30 at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in Fort Collins, Colorado. Beyond just information, to practical tools for change and direct experience of participating in the ongoing transformation of our times. Now is the time and the opportunity to synchronize consciousness with the evolutionary pulse of the cosmos. Join world-renowned speakers in as we explore, co-create, and experience together the tranformative dynamics necessary for a successful transit from now through the year 2012 and beyond. More information available on the Conference website, www.unveiling2012.org. See you there.The meaning of the Greek word ?Apocalypse? is ?lifting the veil? or ?revelation?. Here are excerpts from this set of revelatory ?shared stories? ? contemporary 21st century versions of the medieval Canterbury Tales -- on this pilgrimage Road to 2012 NOW.Sobonfu Some?: Well I really believe that initiation is a necessity, you know, much like, you know, 2012 is saying ?here is a big initiation?. It, initiation, is a necessity because we have to initiate in order to be able to move forward, to be able to tap into our essence, into our gift and so on. And, you know, in my African tradition the first initiation that we all go through is that of being born, because we are coming from being full of spirit to taking on this human tool that we call the body. And, you know, also, we?ll go through many, many initiations. And I think what we?re talking about in the Conference is that we?re going to get to the place where we are basically going to celebrate being able to give birth to our self and to whatever new vision is going to come out of this Conference Gathering -- so that we can together welcome each other and celebrate together. And I think that is the icing on the cake, you know, that is awaiting us.Duncan Campbell: I think absolutely that?s the case, and myself as Master of Ceremonies and yourself as the person who will be leading us in the concluding celebratory ritual are both involved in helping the entire gathering to activate, all of us together, a kind of transformational space -- including not only the presenters who will be articulating on the stage, but all of the participants with their deep listening who are evoking the insights that are articulated coming out of the group energy field. And this opportunity for expression will also be something we can all look forward to at the extended lunch time on Saturday, when there?s going to be a large and deliberate space for people in very small groups to share stories, deep stories, with each other and evoke and integrate their experience. This is very essential to a true initiation -- that is not just a one way transmission of information, but is actually a transformative initiation -- where together we can evoke an experience that is both intimate and personal in our sense of shift, as well as a kind of collective amplification that allows all of us to celebrate, as Barack Obama suggested in his Inaugural Address, ?our common humanity?. And that experience has a great carry over effect into our everyday lives and relationships.Sobonfu Some?: Now how amazing is that, because, you know, a lot of people go into conferences and never really get to put in their voice; and, you know, in my Dagara people?s African tradition, when you go anywhere we are always trying to get our voice in, you know, to express yourself with and to others, because it?s like we are all making this huge cauldron and the stories that we bring, everything we share of our self, is part of what is going to make whatever we?re cooking really delicious. And for people to be able to have this opportunity as a gift, not only to themselves but a gift to the community, I really believe is amazing.Duncan Campbell: That?s beautifully put. I love the image that you give here of together we?re collectively creating a crucible or a great cauldron, not only a crucible for the water of life, but a great cauldron in which to cook and use the fire of life to transform our experience, because these are transformative elements, all of the elements are: Eaarth is nurturing, Wind is empowering, a Fire literally is transforming, and Water is liquid and fluid and moves between the solid state of ice to the evaporated state of the clouds. And so every one of the elements will be involved here. We will be having time outdoors; we will be celebrating the natural world in a beautiful natural environment in Fort Collins, Colorado. And I think that these ?pilgrimage dialogues? are pointing to that transformation as they are evolving here. In my first dialogue, with Robert Sitler, he emphasized the joy and the wisdom that is accessible in everyday life that he himself has experienced in the Mayan culture and which he shares so beautifully. Next has been John Major Jenkins, whose great research into the galactic alignment and embedding it and situating it in connection to the primordial tradition, sometimes called the perennial philosophy, has shown how we can bring all of this that 2012 is pointing to into the Now; that this ?2012 phenomenon? is not an event that we?re waiting for, that we?re going to have to be acted upon at some time in the future, but it is an atmosphere of opportunity that is present right here, right now?And that energy field is present right now in helping germinate and evoke from you and I what we?re saying and inviting people to; so that in a sense you and I are acting here as inviters and embodiments of the kind of dialogue and transformation that we can anticipate will be happening among us all and amplified at that particular moment on May 29 and May 30 of the Gathering. But that?s only a moment in a continuum of many moments before and after, that we?re all already uncovering and witnessing being unveiled in people all over the world.Sobonfu Some?: Yes, and, you know, as you speak and you share that it makes me think about today being this energy that renews itself time and again, which gets stronger every time, as the energy is being shared every time. So as people today listen to this dialogue, and share it with other people, it is renewed and it gets stronger and so on. That?s the image that came to me.Duncan Campbell: Well, I have to say, Sobonfu, it?s been just a wonderful opportunity here for myself and our other deep listeners, and yourself for that matter, for us to have this chance and opportunity to engage in this dialogue together, and I have always so appreciated the great joy and cheerfulness that you embody and bring to any time that I?ve ever had the pleasure and privilege to encounter you. And so I?m very much looking forward to this conference, even as I?m deeply appreciating the present moment here, because the gift I think of this very dialogue is not only to inspire that more such moments can happen between us, but in one?s own life everyday, today for instance, and the moments that follow.Sobonfu Some?: Yes, and I?m very grateful for you, for the gift of yourself to the world really and for having such a strong and powerful vision that you can not only share with the world, but that you can get other people be a part of the dance of that vision as well. And I think that is, that is a gift that not everybody has, and I thank you for holding that for all of us.Duncan Campbell: Well thank you very much Sobonfu, and I want to thank our co-producers Larraine Tennison and John Major Jenkins and everyone involved with this project, all the presenters that are part of this pilgrimage series that is now leading us, as it were, like milestones toward the Conference Gathering on May 29 and 30. If people are wanting further information, they can go to www.unveiling2012.org. And we really extend an extraordinarily warm and intimate invitation for your continued participation. If you cannot physically put yourself in that Fort Collins environment, you?re very much invited to participate through your deep listening to not only these dialogues, but to the continuation of Living Dialogues after that, and also to honor the fact that really it is true -- and we?re experiencing it with great gratitude for our listenership and their Website Contact emails from around the world -- that as the world becomes smaller, ?yes, we can? and do experience in greater depth and greater joy our own common humanity. We invite you and look forward to seeing you at the conference on May 29 and 30, 2009 in the natural beauty of Fort Collins, Colorado, entitled ?2012 NOW - Empowering the Transformation?. For further information and registration you can go to www.unveiling2012.org.?We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth?. and we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it?why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration?" -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009 And as we say on Living Dialogues: ?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)
Among other heartful visionary conversations you will find of particular interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Robert Sitler, John Major Jenkins, Richard Tarnas, John O?Donohue, Michael Meade, Eckhart Tolle, Ted Sorensen, Frances Moore Lappe, Stanislav Grof, Angeles Arrien, Sobonfu Some, Matthew Fox, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, Gangaji, Michael Dowd, Duane Elgin, and Joseph Ellis, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
Download File - 26.4 MB
Listen To This Podcast (Streaming Audio)
LD 093: John Major Jenkins guest ? 2 of 7 On the Road of ?2012 NOW ? Empowering the Transformation?
Author: Duncan Campbell
Sun, May 10, 2009
Episode Description:?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret Mead This is the second in a seven-part series of ?Pilgrimage Dialogues? forming part of and leading up to a Conference Gathering in Fort Collins, Colorado on May 29-30, 2009, entitled ?2012 NOW ? Empowering the Transformation?, for which I am serving as the Master of Ceremonies and opening presenter. Future Living Dialogues in this series will include other Conference presenters Sobonfu Some?, Stansilav Grof, Richard Tarnas, and Christine Page.Details and registration information available at www.unveiling2012.org.
Duncan Campbell: 2012 Now: Empowering The Transformation, a uniquely innovative, interactive and affordable gathering in this time of global uncertainty, will take place Friday night and all day Saturday May 29 and 30 at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in Fort Collins, Colorado. Beyond just information, to practical tools for change and direct experience of participating in the ongoing transformation of our times. Now is the time and the opportunity to synchronize consciousness with the evolutionary pulse of the cosmos. Join world-renowned speakers in as we explore, co-create, and experience together the tranformative dynamics necessary for a successful transit from now through the year 2012 and beyond. More information available on the website, www.unveiling2012.org. See you there.The meaning of the Greek word ?Apocalypse? is ?lifting the veil? or ?revelation?. Here are excerpts from this set of revelatory ?shared stories? ? contemporary 21st century versions of the medieval Canterbury Tales -- on this pilgrimage Road to 2012 NOW:John Major Jenkins: Well in a word I guess I?d say it?s been transformational, which I suppose is to be expected when you?re engaged with this kind of material. Transformation is not an easy thing necessarily, there?s been lots of challenges. But I think that if you?re not constantly challenging yourself, then you?re going to all back into the muck, as you said. So one thing that I want to point out that I, I think my continuing role as a 2012-ologist is to offer clarity and discernment. One thing that constantly is getting my attention is the, the amount of disinformation and misconception that is thrown at this 2012 topic, and I think that it?s important for people to understand that anything that?s coming out has to be treated with a skeptical eye, you might say, and one has to have an eye towards sensing whether it?s reinforcing ego or it?s reinforcing a large perspective, a selfless perspective. And since you?ve brought up the Barack Obama election, I thought that it?d be appropriate to mention that, without wanting to sound trite, that the, the election process between Obama and McCain was archetypal, absolutely. I mean it was in a sense the fulfillment of the Maya prophecy because these two people represented perfectly ego consciousness, self-interest, the old Vanguard that must pass and be transformed, moved into the next year, and then Obama who represented the more selfless, taking the large unity position. So this is actually what the Maya creation mythology in its own archetypal content was, illustrates for what is to happen, you might say, at the end of the cycle. So it?s really fascinating then to consider how we?re living in an era in which these things are taking place, and I?m just grateful to be here.Duncan Campbell: I think that?s a beautiful way to put it. When one can say that with real heartfelt sincerity and authenticity, ?I?m just grateful to be here?, that?s a tremendous statement, and it?s a statement that indigenous peoples have made from time in memorial, that I wake up and I see beauty before me, beauty behind me, beauty all around me. Today is a good day to die, and that really means today is a good day to live, because the death and rebirth process is happening at every moment, and so today is a good day for me to let go of preconceptions, today is a good day for me to be grateful for that which is before me, today is a good day for me to be grateful for how I can serve others. And you?ve said it beautifully John, that the litmus test for any coming together, any gathering, whether we do it one on one as we?re doing here or around the dinner table or in a meeting or in an election or in a conference like the gathering coming up in Fort Collins, Colorado May 29 and 30, is does the energy exchange that happens there promote a deeper heartfelt appreciation than gratitude, or does it constrict us into some kind of fear-based or maybe even arrogant separation from others or from the rest of the planet? And that I think really is the free-will aspect that you?re talking about, that we can choose a perspective, choose our higher perspective at every moment in our own lives and to come together with that perspective is what we intend to create as a fertile womb so that all the seeds that can be brought together in this conference can bloom. So for all of your lifelong work John, and it?s been such a great pleasure to do these dialogues over the years and watch the evolution of your work, of my work, of our fellows over the last decade, its been a real deep pleasure.John Major Jenkins: Well thank you Duncan. Thank you for everything that you?re doing. I?ve found our conversations over the years to be scintillating and stimulating, and you?re a person who I immediately thought of to bring on board as our speaker and master of ceremonies, because you have a special way of contextualizing and framing and facilitating a process, it?s a process oriented thing. And our Conference is really about an invitation for people to participate in a transformation. So, there are no guarantees of course. This is something that everybody brings their own energy to it. And it?s our hope that we can model and illustrate, what you might call an ?awakening into?. I think, you know, evolutionary terminology I think works well enough for, you know, certain things, but I really like the term ?awakening?. ?Awakening??Duncan Campbell: I do too.John Major Jenkins: The awakening of this larger perspective that?s already there. It?s kind of like the unveiling thing. I don?t know how much we?re really trying to create or generate or build something new, I think we?re trying to unveil or awaken something that?s always been there, but that we?ve forgot. And that?s kind of a key thing, and so coming together and discovering that together with other people can just be a glimpse of a higher potential that we all have.Duncan Campbell: Beautifully put, and I think that?s exactly the etymology of the word ?enthusiasm?, it means literally to be engodded, but not God as some separate entity, but that sense of the divinity that?s innate within each of us, and when we tap into that we do feel a clarity, we feel a generosity of spirit and we feel an energy that we can bring to our own daily activities, to our families, to our communities, to our participation in the national and international task ahead of us now, to actually take seriously the fact that certain old economic and political forms, and forms of transportation and uses of energy from the fossil fuel economy, they need to end, they have to end because they are not sustainable, and each one of us will be encountering that falling apart in whatever way we do. It could mean loss of income, it could mean loss of many things in our lives, but if we keep our eyes on this particular perspective we?ll have the inner trust and energy and enthusiasm to carry this larger vision forward, so in no way is this 2012 conference meant to be an escapism from everything that?s happening. Quite the contrary. It?s meant to be perhaps one of the most practical things we can do to contribute to and serve our larger communal and planetary societies. John Major Jenkins: I think Colorado is really ahead of the curve when it comes to innovative community-based experiments in alternate fuel and energy and community-based farming. I?m so glad this is happening here in Colorado, my home state, and bringing people together along the Front Range in springtime, it?s going to be a beautiful time. And, you know, I think that there?s a real chance for lasting connections being built between participants, as we all try to take responsibility for transforming the world into a sustainable place.Duncan Campbell: Well the time has come where we must close this particular dialogue, and I?ll have to say in once again honoring you and your stories John, that in doing so we?re honoring the stories of all those that are listening to this, and this great invitation is going out here to participate in this pilgrimage, this moving toward a particular gathering. So that next week we?ll be talking with Sobonfu Some?. And as we?re sharing these stories with all the presenters in advance, it?s acknowledging that whatever?s being called forth, once again is being called forth from the people who will be participating in the gathering, and all those that are listening to these dialogues. And so I see it in a sense as a contribution also from the energy field of Colorado. It?s a way that we can share what we experience with people who will be coming -- we know from the ticket sales --literally from all over the world?John Major Jenkins: Yes.Duncan Campbell: They will each be coming with their stories to contribute ? and time scheduled at the Conference Gathering to share them -- and so I?m very much looking forward, and at the same time staying right here in the present moment., So that?s our invitation to each of you. I?m Duncan Campbell, your host. I?ve been really delighted to have John Major Jenkins with me in this dialogue, and we both extend to you a very warm invitation to join us and all of the other participants at ?2012 Now - Empowering The Transformation?, May 29 and 30 in Fort Collins, Colorado. For more information, to register you can go to www.unveiling2012.org. Be with us again next time as we continue on Living Dialogues. We invite you and look forward to seeing you at the conference on May 29 and 30, 2009 in the natural beauty of Fort Collins, Colorado, entitled ?2012 NOW - Empowering the Transformation?. For further information and registration you can go to www.unveiling2012.org.?We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth?. and we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it?why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration?" -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009 And as we say on Living Dialogues: ?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)
Among other heartful visionary conversations you will find of particular interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Robert Sitler, Richard Tarnas, John O?Donohue, Michael Meade, Eckhart Tolle, Ted Sorensen, Frances Moore Lappe, Stanislav Grof, Angeles Arrien, Sobonfu Some, Matthew Fox, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, Gangaji, Michael Dowd, Duane Elgin, and Joseph Ellis, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
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LD 092: Robert Sitler guest ? 1 of 7 On the Road of ?2012 NOW ? Empowering the Transformation?
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Apr 23, 2009
Episode Description:?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret Mead This is the first in a seven-part series of dialogues forming part of and leading up to a Conference Gathering in Fort Collins, Colorado on May 29-30, 2009, entitled ?2012 NOW ? Empowering the Transformation?, for which I am serving as the Master of Ceremonies and opening presenter. Future Living Dialogues in this series will include other Conference presenters John Major Jenkins, Sobonfu Some, William Henry, Stansilav Grof, Christine Page, and Richard Tarnas. Details and registration information available at www.unveiling2012.org. The meaning of the Greek word ?Apocalypse? is ?lifting the veil? or ?revelation?. Here are excerpts from the first ?shared stories? on this pilgrimage Road to 2012 NOW.Robert Sitler: ?I?m Robert Sitler and in the conversation that I just shared with Duncan, I really sense the listeners who will be participating potentially in this conference and who will be listening to the dialogues that you?ll be hearing in the coming weeks, and I feel that they have been charged through Duncan?s work with the potential to bring about inner transformation and I look forward to participating in the process with you.?Duncan Campbell: We really have an auspicious moment here, Robert, because you and I are inaugurating in this dialogue, the first of the series of seven dialogues that will be consciously leading up to an event on May 29 and 30 in Fort Collins, Colorado, a gathering entitled ?2012 Now, Empowering the Transformation.? And so as we go forward, we have really consciously understood that these series of seven dialogues between myself, who will also be serving as the opening presenter and Master of Ceremonies, and yourself is the inauguration in a sense of a kind of pilgrimage -- that these seven dialogues are milestones as we are preparing ourselves and our consciousness to gradually focus in on this event at the end of May, which will be not just simply a transmission of information from various sources but an integral initiation and experiential transformation very much in the Initiatic Tradition of the Mayan people themselves and of all cultures throughout history in their embodiment of the Perennial Philosophy, sometimes also called the Primordial Tradition. This is part of our changing world. And as the world changes so to -- we must change. So there is that immediacy of transformation happening and the growing sense of a planetary culture that is not limited by either time -- in terms of bringing indigenous and modern cultures together and mutual gifting -- and it?s not limited in terms of space. We have a common humanity that we?re feeling. We?re seeing and feeling the possibility of transcending old tribalisms, old conflicts, old religious warfare, and at the same time beautifully fully appreciating our own person, our own family, our own geographical location and that is I think the true ?unveiling? (or apocalypse) --Robert Sitler: Um-hmm.Duncan Campbell: --- that we are looking forward to amplifying together as we come together at the end of May. And I want to thank you Robert for all of your lifelong work, your thirty years of regular visits to the Maya world, your teaching, your articles and your upcoming manuscript in which you so brilliantly share your experience of grounding the entire fascination of the modern world with 2012 in the depth and wonder and mystery of daily life as experienced by the Maya people over the generations. You are another wonderful bridge person connecting our indigenous and modern minds and I very much look forward to continuing to travel this path, this Road, together as we all move forward in this great evolutionary moment that we?re sharing as a species on the planet.Robert Sitler: It?s exciting.Duncan Campbell: Well, Robert, it is very exciting and it?s been just great having this conversation with you.Robert Sitler: Likewise it?s a pleasure for me, you know, a real treat for me to speak to the listeners of Living Dialogues and I look forward first of all to meeting many of you but also to this conference, which I think has the possibility of producing genuine change in our heart and truly preparing us for a future in which we all feel more integrated with Mother Earth.Duncan Campbell: Well, at this point, we?re about to take the next step on our journey together. This week we?ve talked with Robert Sitler, one of the presenters at our conference coming up on May 29 and 30, whose deep experience and knowledge of the Mayan culture will be one of the gifts he will be sharing with us. And next week, I?ll be dialoguing with John Major Jenkins, who will share his decades of research into the Mayan culture and how it fits into the larger perennial wisdom, sometimes called the Primordial Tradition.And we invite you and look forward to seeing you at the conference on May 29 and 30, 2009 in the natural beauty of Fort Collins, Colorado, entitled ?2012 NOW - Empowering the Transformation?. For further information and registration you can go to www.unveiling2012.org.?We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth?. and we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it?why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration?" -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009 And as we say on Living Dialogues: ?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)
Among other heartful visionary conversations you will find of particular interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Richard Tarnas, John O?Donohue, Michael Meade, Eckhart Tolle, Ted Sorensen, Frances Moore Lappe, Stanislav Grof, Angeles Arrien, Sobonfu Some, Matthew Fox, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, Gangaji, Michael Dowd, Duane Elgin, and Joseph Ellis, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
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LD 091: Michael Beckwith guest - The Evolutionary Impulse, Spiritual Liberation, and Our Changing World
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Apr 16, 2009
Episode Description:?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret Mead?I am Michael Beckwith, and it?s been my joy to be a part of Living Dialogues with my brother Duncan. Beautiful, and I appreciate the format and I appreciate your consciousness. I found it to not only be inspiring, but a continued regeneration of the soul. It is what?s happening now.? ? Michael Beckwith, founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center and author of Spiritual Liberation: Fulfilling Your Soul?s Potential (with an Afterword by Robert Thurman ? see Dialogue 59). From the beginning of Living Dialogues I have observed that we are all called to awaken to the creative potential and celebratory power of our true nature. We are meant to generate evolutionary change so as to keep pace with our continuously evolving universe. Another way I have expressed this is that our conscious, alive universe is permeated throughout with a self-revealing impulse that wants to express itself through us. This applies in all realms of inner and outer life, in our heartfelt dialogues within ourself and with the many realms, political, cultural, family, economic, and so on within which we live.In encountering each other, Michael Beckwith and I experienced ourselves from the beginning as brothers, whose similar views of life, arrived at independently, were those of ?soul friends? (anam caras in John O?Donohue?s phrase ? see Dialogues 87 and 88 and definition at the end of this description*). In the opening of our dialogue, I welcomed Michael as a powerful force for change, who combines ? as we do in Living Dialogues -- spiritual, educational, scientific, governmental, economic, social, and political elements. He responded: ?Duncan it is my joy to be with you to weigh in one the issues of the day, and to just speak from the heart with you?, and I continued in saying: ?Beautiful, because that?s actually what we do here on Living Dialogues is speak from the heart, we weigh in on issues of the day, and we also talk about our deep consciousness and the importance of dialogue, both inner and outer?.And that is exactly what we did, allowing the dialogue to flow freely from the evocation of our own open, deep listening and that of yourselves. Whatever your background, you will find much of interest here on many topics, and enjoy the flow.*The Meaning of Anam Cara: Anam Cara refers to the Celtic spiritual belief of souls connecting and bonding. In Celtic spiritual tradition, it is believed that the soul radiates all about the physical body, what some refer to as an aura. When you connect with another person and become completely open and trusting with that individual, your two souls begin to flow together. Should such a deep bond be formed, it is said you have found an anam cara or ?soul friend?.Your anam cara always accepts you as you truly are, holding you in beauty and light. In order to appreciate this relationship, you must first recognize your own inner light and beauty. This is not always easy to do. The Celts believed that forming an anam cara friendship would help you to awaken your awareness of your own nature and experience the joys of others.According to John O?Donohue, Irish poet, philosopher, and spiritual writer and author of Anam Cara ? A Book of Celtic Wisdom: ?We are joined in an ancient and eternal union with humanity that cuts across all barriers of time, convention, philosophy and definition. When you are blessed with an anam cara, the Irish believe, you have arrived at that most sacred place: home.?We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth?. and we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it?This is the source of our confidence ? the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny. This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed ? why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration?" -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009And as we say on Living Dialogues:?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)
Among other heartful visionary conversations you will find of particular interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with John O?Donohue, Robert Thurman, Eckhart Tolle, Ted Sorensen, Stanislav Grof, Angeles Arrien, Sobonfu Some, Matthew Fox, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, Gangaji, Caroline Myss, Michael Dowd, Duane Elgin, George Lakoff, and Joseph Ellis, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
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LD 090: Brant Secunda (Huichol Shaman and Healer) and Mark Allen (Six-Time Ironman Triathlon Champion) guests: Part 1 Fit Soul - Fit Body: 9 Keys to a Healthier, Happier You
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Apr 02, 2009
See Description and introduction for Episode 89 (Part 1 of this 2-part Dialogue).
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LD 089: Brant Secunda (Huichol Shaman and Healer) and Mark Allen (Six-Time Ironman Triathlon Champion) guests: Part 1 Fit Soul - Fit Body: 9 Keys to a Healthier, Happier You
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Mar 26, 2009
Episode Description: ?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret Mead Brant Secunda: ?Hi! I?m Brant Secunda, and I?m really happy to be here with Living Dialogues. I think that it?s so valuable for us to come together in dialogue and to speak together and to communicate about these things, which are so important. We think that the book Fit Soul, Fit Body helps to bring alive these valuable ideas that are important for us all. By being here with Living Dialogues I feel it?s really helpful, also, for myself. So thank you.?Mark Allen: ?I?m Mark Allen, co-author of Fit Soul, Fit Body with Brant Secunda. Living Dialogues with Duncan is a true, beautiful experience to be with somebody who talks from the heart and gets people to talk from their heart as well. Through that we?re all touched deep in the soul. Not just in our minds, but deep in our soul, deep in our bodies. It touches the genetics of who we are as human beings, as two-leggeds on this planet. This is a rare opportunity to have a dialogue with another human being on that level.? In the description of my prior dialogue with Stanislav Grof in Episodes 83-84, which I entitled: ?Barack Obama and Our 21st Century Collective Heroes? Journey?, I observed: ?This new template [the ?third consciousness? arising from the Sacred Marriage of our primal indigenous and adolescent modern mind heritages] contains all the elements of the traditional Hero's Journey archetype across cultures so well described by Joseph Campbell in mid-20th century in his classic "The Hero With a Thousand Faces" -- but goes further in uniting the best of the indigenous rites of passage and the modern mind's conceptual breakthroughs into a new collaborative midwifing I sometimes describe as ?our 21st century Collective Heroes' Journey?. While remaining responsible and accountable to show up on our own horse, we effectively ?ride into the dark part of the forest? together on our now larger Grail quest.? In Dialogues 85 and 86 with Lakota historian Joseph M. Marshall III on the Contemporary Relevance of Leadership Lessons from the Hero?s Journey of Crazy Horse, we revealed the how the modern ?conquering? Euroamerican culture in North America has ignored the traits of integrity, accountability, generosity, and attention to the welfare of the collective cultivated in traditional tribal, village life, as quaintly irrelevant in this Second Gilded Age to the culture of de facto unregulated corporate and personal greed (warned about by Abraham Lincoln prior to the First Gilded Age at the end of the nineteenth century ), commercialization, militarization, and endemic political lying and self-seeking that have now come ? until just these past few months ? to be accepted as necessary evils characterizing our modern anonymous urban industrial culture. The time is now upon us to share the best of our indigenous and modern mind gifts, teaching and learning from the best of both traditions and from each other all over the planet. The latest excellent example of this Sacred Marriage?s ability to bear healthy fruit and happy mind-body-soul union is the recently published best-seller Fit Soul, Fit Body. In this 2-part Dialogue (Episodes 89 and 90) American-born Huichol shaman and healer, Brant Secunda, and his twenty-year friend, student, and collaborator, American Mark Allen ? six-time Ironman Triathlon champion ? join with me in a trialogue journey of shared exploration, with intimate stories from our own experiences illustrating the profound relevance and potential applicability in our modern lives of ancient, timeless daily honorings of the naturally alive universe in which we all live. These daily honorings and celebrations, often punctuated with the transformative power of good-hearted teasing laughter, still occur in the human-nature landscape of intact indigenous cultures such as that of the Huichol Indians in the High Sierra Madre in Mexico. It was there that as a young man Brant Secunda encountered his teacher the 100 year old Don Jose. It was the image of these two shamans, Don Jose and his adopted grandson Brant Secunda, seen in a magazine, that came into the mind of Mark Allen at a critical point near the final end game of the 1989 Ironman Triathlon race in Hawaii ? still regarded by many as the greatest Ironman race of all time ? resulting in an unprecedented surge which enabled Mark, after six previous losses, to defeat the reigning multi-year champion and win the first of what would become his epic six straight victories in the annual Ironman competition. Mark had always been intimidated by the sheer power of the surrounding volcanic landscape in Hawaii, but from that first victory forward he resolved to work with Brant and has done so in beautiful collaboration since then, learning the ways and power and ability to dialogue with our fully alive conscious universe which is our home. And to be joyfully and comfortably at home in that home. So when at age 37, the oldest person to attempt to win a 6th straight Ironman Triathlon, Mark felt near the end that he had given his all and needed more energy to continue and keep up, he asked the land around him he had come to relate to as a brother for help, and once again was able to surge seemingly miraculously to the front and finished first ahead of a much younger and able competitor. In our ?trialogue?, I observed that while other runners trained in terms of measured ?times? and ?splits?, Mark had learned to enter the timeless realm of appreciative soul and celebrating body, joyful together in their unity and sense of well-being even before the race ever began, as he described his later experiences. This is the relaxed sense of our common humanity that we can all share even as we race and compete, free of attachment to the outcome. The many life lessons that Brant and Mark have learned apart and then together over the last decades have been organized and communicated in this, their first book together, in a very accessible and informed manner. In my view, this book heralds a paradigm shift in the genre of self-help and self-empowerment teachings and books, by bringing together in story, in exercises, in instructions (including diet), the fruits of this archetypal collaboration of our time ? that we are called to awaken to the creative potential of both our indigenous heritage and DNA and our modern mind, in the celebratory power of their shared union, so as to generate evolutionary change to keep pace with our continuously evolving universe. "We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth?.and as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it." -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009 And as I often say on Living Dialogues: ?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)
Among others, programs you will find of particular interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Vine DeLoria, Jr., Michael Meade, Angeles Arrien, Sobonfu Some, Andrew Weil, Larry Dossey, Ted Sorensen, Marc Bekoff, John Gray, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, Michael Dowd, Duane Elgin, and Joseph M. Marshall III, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
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LD 088: John O'Donohue - Part 2 - Eternal Echoes: The Yearning to Belong and 21st Century Initiation Crises
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Mar 19, 2009
See Description and introduction for Episode 87 (Part 1 of this 2-Part Dialogue)
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LD 087: John O'Donohue guest - Part 1 - Eternal Echoes: the Yearning to Belong and 21st Century Initiation Crises
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Mar 12, 2009
Episode Description: ?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret Mead?My fears were always internal: the old fears of not belonging.? ? Barack Obama reflecting in the midst of his life?s journey, from a passage in his 1995 autobiography ?Dreams From My Father?
"As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings, may your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills. When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance, may your imagination continue to evoke horizons." ? John O?Donohue?s blessing ?For One Who Holds Power? from his collection ?To Bless the Space Between Us? ? offered by Maryland?s Governor Martin O?Malley on January 17, 2009 to Barack Obama when he stopped in Baltimore to greet a crowd of well-wishers as he made his way to Washington, D.C. for his inauguration. __________________ John O'Donohue, the Irish poet, philosopher and spiritual writer, passed away in his sleep at the age of 52 on the cusp of January 3-4, 2008 (following the close of the historic Iowa caucuses in the U.S. presidential primary). John was one of the great voices of our time, in many ways. His spirit and energy, his easy laughter, endure, touching and reminding me of Rumi?s phrase ?we all know the taste of pure water.? On this the 10th anniversary of our dialogues, the timeless relevance of what was evoked in and between us and the virtual deep listeners can now be heard in an immediate reference and amplitude greater than at the time of the recording. At the time John and I did these dialogues together in March 1999, there were a number of crises already brewing in the global petri dish of our end of the millennium consumerist market and political culture, characterized by socially widely-accepted greed, lying, manipulation, and reliance on force in the public sphere, and thus inevitably in the private sphere. This was a time that literally prepared the ground for the dying embers of the last millennium to flare into a perfect storm of armed conflict and economic destruction in the next ten years, which has in turn prepared the way for the coming into being of a possible regeneration beginning now as we enter a new political and market era in 2009. In this two-part dialogue, a prophetic Voice is heard called forth in many areas, which are now being seen by many as they were seen by few at the time. As John said to the audience in the evening on that day in 1999 in his rich Irish brogue: ?Ah, this afternoon, Duncan and I had the faather and mother of all conversations!?Listening to it again now after 10 years, this exclamation ? at once light-hearted and serious, as John could be so well ? has also proven uncannily prophetic, as can be seen even from the following brief collage of excerpts from our dialogues: __________________ Duncan Campbell: Reading your most recent book, ?Eternal Echoes?, John, I tell you was like balm for the soul?.It is one of the most beautiful poetic prose books I?ve ever read. I felt a sense of belonging and longing to renew our communication from when we first met two years ago, in anticipation of this dialogue, and I think that kind of appreciation of the mystery illuminated by inner and outer dialogue really is at the heart of your book?.In our ?post modern era? [at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century, the end of the adolescent ?modern? mind era, what some have called an ?era between eras before a Second Renaissance?] many of us find ourselves often with this deep feeling of alienation of not belonging, of somehow not being embraced or understood by the culture around us, not finding a shelter that can take us in -- whether it be a relationship or a book by Meister Eckhart or Saint John of the Cross -- a place where we can be understood and deeply seen by another. And what we are looking for is a sense of dialogue, of responsive relationship, to feel not a lonely isolated echo coming back to us but something deeper from the mystery of our interconnectedness that confirms and reaffirms the reality of our experience. This desire for authentic dialogue is the same concept of echo that informs the title of your book. John O?Donohue. That?s very well articulated and described. Post-modern culture is kind of arrested. And there are hugely vital conversations that are just not taking place, ands one of them is a conversation that should be taking place between the custodians of the Christian tradition, and those who are seeking nakedly and desperately [and being repulsed or refused by those traditions]. Another conversation that?s not taking place, and the absence of this event really frightens and troubles me deeply because I think it?s going to have amazingly dangerous repercussions for us if we don?t begin it -- and that?s a conversation that?s not taking place between Christianity and Islam. When we think of Islam, we think fundamentalists. When they think of us, they think Western capitalists. And, I think there could be an immensely exciting conversation there between the beautiful symbolic mysticism and depth of theology in Islamic tradition and culture and our own kind of culture?. Duncan Campbell: We can see the coldness and mutual isolation as we look across the cultural landscape. Not only in America. But also Ireland, in India, in South America, in Asia, around the world. Our global landscape is now become littered with the lifeless souls, the ?dead souls? of Gogol?s great phrase, of people who have become products themselves, in the thrall of unregulated transnational corporations. Who have been turned into targets for producers. Targets of consumerism...We had a man come through Boulder on book tour not long ago who specializes in childhood education, who told us about a young girl, nine years old, in the Mid-West, who answered his question at a previous stop on his tour: ?What would you like to be when you grow up??. And her answer was, ?a consumer?.John O?Donohue: My goodness!Duncan Campbell: And so we really are in that mode. For instance, just this month (March 1999), Harvey Cox of the Harvard Divinity School wrote a brilliant article for the ?Atlantic Monthly? about the Market, with a capital ?M?, as ?the new religion?. Many people don?t recognize it, but this is seen in the whole sense of the commodification of human experience, creating a certain kind of end of innocence that is taking the life from people rather than opening up deeper vistas?.Instead of awakening people to the mystery, this ?new religion of the Market? actually closes us down. It makes people more alienated. It makes them feel even more the hole in their soul, but not in an inspirational way. Instead of that yearning being directed to what you call ?the sense of the great belonging?, the all embracing divinity that is ever present, it gets directed through the daily barrage of all-embracing advertising towards the market for Gap uniform-like clothing or to the local supermarket. It keeps our society functioning in a way, but it never ever gets satisfied, the desire for ?more? continues, to try to fill that hole in the soul?.John O?Donohue: And, I also think there?s a crisis of politics that has now become synonymous with economics and the crudest forms of strategy and one up-manship and ?pragmatism?, and.. (Duncan interjects: ?vulgarism?.) ?Vulgarism?, yes. And I think this leaves us, you know? Leaves us with a flat landscape -- with no mountains in sight, and a total distrust of ideals. Because those who are supposed to be presenting those ideals have either betrayed them through their ?pragmatism? -- and I?m not even talking about morality here -- or else, those who present the ideas are right-wing fundamentalists who seem singularly unburdened by any sense of complexity or uncertainty. And who present a cold exclusivist view which is inherently callous and naively nostalgic and very dangerous and destructive. And what?s missing is someone who can call us and invite us to ideals that call our deepest potential alive. Confront the negativity and the selfishness of our egoism. And somehow addresses what is gracious and elegant within us. So that we can inhabit the planet together in a way that is creative and good?I think everybody needs that and that happens naturally all the time, in friendship, and in partnerships between people that have not compromised and are still willing to grow. And that people actually come down below their own image into a depth with each other?where big thresholds can be crossed together.?__________________And so that ?someone? who is missing turns out to be ourselves. To paraphrase Pogo: ?We have met the redeemer and s/he is us.? We are the hero each of us of our own life?s adventure -- called to ?engage our own kind of latent complexity and diversity, our own hidden divinity? -- and together we are the heroes of our ?21st century collective heroes? journey?. ?We are the change we have been waiting for? ? a phrase with many layers, much-maligned and mocked by those who do not hear that call.These dialogues with John call us over the span of a decade to the very contemporary experience and challenges of today as described in my Introduction to previous Dialogues 83 and 84 reprised below: After reading Barack Obama's two intimate autobiographies, ?Dreams From My Father? and ?The Audacity of Hope?, it came to me that our new President's personal life story telling his inner quest and outer challenges in his own voice so revealingly is itself a prototypical example of a new, 21st century, collaborative inner and outer initiation into a planetary consciousness beyond tribe and nation. This new larger self awareness goes further than the cultural comfort zone of our modern mind's historical individualistic, adolescent self-empowerment into the emerging mature co-creative and dialogue-based consciousness foreseen and portrayed in Living Dialogues since its inception.The combative stance of the argument culture (see Program 72 with Deborah Tannen) gives way to a dialogue consciousness opening to expanded possibilities of harmony and enrichment in facing the accelerating diversity, uncertainty, and changes of our life experience.
This new template contains all the elements of the traditional Hero's Journey archetype across cultures so well described by Joseph Campbell in mid-20th century in his classic "Hero With a Thousand Faces" -- but goes further in uniting the best of the indigenous rites of passage and the modern mind's conceptual breakthroughs into a new collaborative midwifing I describe as our 21st century collective Heroes' Journey. While remaining responsible to show up on our own horse, we effectively ?ride into the dark part of the forest? together on our larger Grail quest."We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth?.and we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it." -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009__________________ See also my prior Program 82 with Angeles Arrien where she quotes John O?Donohue?s poem Fluent in the context of the open and confidently courageous spirit of dialogue in these times of uncertainty and widespread anxiety and fear: ?I would love to live / Like a river / Carried by the surprise / Of its own unfolding?.
?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation?? - Duncan CampbellContact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)
Among others, programs you will find of interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Stanislav Grof, Angeles Arrien, Coleman Barks, Michael Meade, Sobonfu Some, Ted Sorensen, David Boren, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, and Joseph Ellis, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
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LD 086: Joseph M. Marshall III guest - Part 2 - Contemporary Leadership Lessons from Crazy Horse Hero's Journey
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Mar 05, 2009
See overall Description and introduction accompanying Episode 85 (Part 1 of this 2-Part Dialogue).
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LD 085: Joseph M. Marshall III guest - Part 1 - Contemporary Leadership Lessons from Crazy Horse Hero's Journey
Author: Duncan Campbell
Fri, Feb 27, 2009
Episode Description: ?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret MeadJoseph Campbell on the contemporary relevance to each of us anywhere on the planet of knowing and appreciating Heroes? Journeys from different cultures (all of which are part of our human heritage), from the Introduction to the third edition of his ?The Hero With a Thousand Faces?: ?There are of course differences between the numerous mythologies and religions of mankind, but this is a book about similarities. And once these mythologies of human and collective development, focused on the hero, are understood, the differences will be found to be much less great than is popularly and politically supposed.My hope is that a comparative elucidation of these mythological stories, some of which have endured for thousands of years, may contribute to those forces that are working in the present world for unification, not in the name of some Ecclesiastical or political empire, but in the sense of human mutual understanding. As we are told in the ancient Vedas from India: Truth is one; the sages speak of it by many names.??My name is Joseph Marshall, and I'm the author of ?The Lakota Way?, and most recently ?The Power of Four: Leadership Lessons of Crazy Horse?, and I've enjoyed this session with Duncan Campbell because it's more than an interview show; it's an opportunity to share insights with someone else who has views of the world, views of our culture and to examine more deeply the common things that bind us together, no matter who we are, and share insights from the past as well as the present, I appreciate that.And it all reminds me of Crazy Horse being in dialogue with his own community, with his own family, with his own people. No matter whatever the opportunity, or the time was good or bad, he was always talking with people one on one, sharing his insights and listening to other people, to their insights. Because he was a young man and he listened to his Elders and so he was having those dialogues all of his life, and all these dialogues that he had were really part of who he was as a leader. He was embodying the values that he had, certainly as a Lakota person. But he had the traits of humility and generosity as a leader as well. And dialogues are important, and that was important to him and it's absolutely important to all of us who want to be or have an opinion about leaders and being a leader; having a dialogue is critically necessary to all of us.? ? Joseph M. Marshall IIIAs I said in the description of my prior dialogue with Stanislav Grof in Episode 83-84, which I entitled: Barack Obama and Our 21st Century Collective Heroes? Journey: ?This new template contains all the elements of the traditional Hero's Journey archetype across cultures so well described by Joseph Campbell in mid-20th century in his classic "The Hero With a Thousand Faces" -- but goes further in uniting the best of the indigenous rites of passage and the modern mind's conceptual breakthroughs into a new collaborative midwifing I describe as our 21st century collective Heroes' Journey. While remaining responsible to show up on our own horse, we effectively ?ride into the dark part of the forest? together on our larger Grail quest.? "We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth?.and we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it." -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009 In this 2-part Dialogue with Lakota historian, storyteller, craftsman, and educator Joseph M. Marshall III, we explore the universal heritage of the Hero?s Journey of Crazy Horse as an exemplary indigenous leader in the bridge period in mid-nineteenth century America when the Euroamerican culture battled the Native American culture. Our contemporary culture contains both influences as part of the American heritage ? but the modern culture has until recently told this history from the distorted point of view of the ?victor?, ignoring the traits of integrity, accountability, and generosity cultivated in tribal, village life as quaintly irrelevant to the culture of transnational corporate greed, commercialization, militarization, and endemic political lying and self-seeking that have come ? until just these past few months ? to be accepted as givens of our contemporary anonymous urban industrial culture. This dialogue is in some ways reminiscent of the early work of unification by writers such as Native American Ohiyesa (Charles Alexander Eastman) in ?The Soul of an Indian?, and shows in this huge moment of 21st century transition how the very indigenous values that characterized Crazy Horse have relevance and can be reflected in our modern contemporary political transformations. As Joseph Marshall says in his introductory comments above ? consonant with Barack Obama?s Inaugural Address -- dialogue plays a central role in this new ?third consciousness? of unification going beyond prior polarizations and cultural limitations. And as I say continuously on Living Dialogues: ?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)
Among others, programs you will find of interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Vine DeLoria, Jr., Michael Meade, Sobonfu Some, Ted Sorensen, David Boren, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, Angeles Arrien, and Joseph Ellis, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
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LD 084: Stanslav Grof guest - Part 2 - Barack Obama and Our 21st Century Collective Heroes Journey
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Feb 12, 2009
See the Description and Introduction to program 83 (Part 1 of this two Part Program).
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LD 083: Stanislav Grof guest ? Part 1 ? Barack Obama and Our 21st Century Collective Heroes? Journey
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Feb 05, 2009
Episode Description: ?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret Mead After reading Barack Obama's two intimate autobiographies, ?Dreams From My Father? and ?The Audacity of Hope?, it came to me that our new President's personal life story telling his inner quest and outer challenges in his own voice so revealingly is itself a prototypical example of a new, 21st century, collaborative inner and outer initiation into a planetary consciousness beyond tribe and nation. This new larger self awareness goes further than the cultural comfort zone of our modern mind's historical individualistic, adolescent self-empowerment into the emerging mature co-creative and dialogue-based consciousness foreseen and portrayed in Living Dialogues since its inception. The combative stance of the argument culture (see Program 72 with Deborah Tannen) gives way to a dialogue consciousness opening to expanded possibilities of harmony and enrichment in facing the accelerating diversity, uncertainty, and changes of our life experience. This new template contains all the elements of the traditional Hero's Journey archetype across cultures so well described by Joseph Campbell in mid-20th century in his classic "Hero of a Thousand Faces" -- but goes further in uniting the best of the indigenous rites of passage and the modern mind's conceptual breakthroughs into a new collaborative midwifing I describe as our 21st century collective Heroes' Journey. While remaining responsible to show up on our own horse, we effectively ?ride into the dark part of the forest? together on our larger Grail quest. From that perspective of what we can see reflected in Barack's life story, I invited my friend and consciousness work colleague Dr. Stanslav Grof (see also Program 30 on this site) to join me in a dialogic exploration of this idea, to contextualize and encourage you to read Barack's two autobiographies from this understanding as a contemporary exemplar of each of our journeys in this transformational time. "Together we can do anything." Yes We Can. In Part 1 (Program 83) of this Dialogue, I largely set out this template and perspective, with examples from Joseph Campbell's work and the self-described experiences of our fellow sojourner and planetary citizen named Barack ("blessed one") Obama. Stan and I dialogue together, elaborating this context, from Stan?s experience of transpersonal psychology and mine that "Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation". In Part 2 (Program 84) we go further in delving into the role of ritual and initiation, including vision quest in various forms of personal inner journey beyond our accustomed comfort zone and back into service to the larger community, local and global. We conclude by reprising the theme of my Dialogue 81 with Angeles Arrien on how we can go beyond our polarizing and depressing modern tendency to resist, pathologize, and dismiss our often emotionally intense experience of mystical belonging as something wrong and abnormal ? to having ?the audacity of hope?, able to recognize with gratitude such experience as having a profound, healing, reality and mythological resonance, connecting us to our ancestors and an alive and beneficent universe, in which we are all "blessed ones". (See, as an illustration, the last few paragraphs at the end of Part Two of ?Dreams From My Father?.) "We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth?.and we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it." -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009 See also my prior Program 30 with Stanislav Grof exploring in dialogue a selection of his own autobiographical experiences of transformations told in his book ?When the Impossible Happens?.
?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)
Among others, programs you will find of interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Ted Sorensen, David Boren, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, Angeles Arrien, and Joseph Ellis, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
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LD 082: Joseph Ellis : Obama Inauguration - Transformational Moment in Historical Perspective
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Jan 29, 2009
Episode Description: ?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret MeadIn my prior Dialogue 81 with my friend Angeles Arrien, leading cross-cultural anthropologist of our time, we gave examples of our collective ability to ignite and energize liberating transformational shifts ? co-creating mutually empowering and sustaining event stories and planetary understandings through dialogue and cultivating an open-minded appreciation, curiosity, respect, and practicality. These examples of transformational ?miracles? that have occurred in our time included the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the freeing of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid in South Africa, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the elimination of other barriers that were assumed to be permanent polarizing aspects of our world.In this dialogue with Joseph Ellis, the ?Founders? historian?, I add the example of the evolutionary shift in planetary consciousness that has occurred in many aspects with the campaign of Barack Obama, and his election and Inauguration as President of the United States ? an event celebrated throughout the world. Joe and I describe the ?electro-magnetic field? that manifested and resulted in the unprecedented and miraculous gathering of over 2 million people (myself among them) on the Mall in Washington, D.C., without a single arrest or act of violence. We also put President Obama?s Inaugural Address in historical perspective, illuminating the links to ancestral heritage and present healings and inspiration, expressing the foundation for a realistic and practical hope for our future. In his own words: ?What the cynics fail to understand it that the ground has shifted beneath them ? that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply?.We cannot help but believe that the old hatreds will someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that, as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself.?See also my prior Programs 38 and 39 on this site with Joseph Ellis -- in which our dialogue reveals new historical insights and perspective of Barack?s role during the campaign exemplifying the lineage of Washington, Lincoln, FDR, and JFK, in whose presidencies ?out of the many we are one? was paramount.?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)Among others, programs you will find of interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Ted Sorensen, David Boren, David Mendell, and Angeles Arrien, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site]. After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
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LD 081: Angeles Arrien Part 3 ? Co-Creating Planetary Myths for the 21st Century
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Jan 22, 2009
Episode Description: ?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret MeadIn this intriguing 3-part dialogue with my deep friend Angeles Arrien, leading cross-cultural anthropologist of our time, we engage in one of the key 21st century projects ? the co-creation of new planetary scale teaching, healing, and unifying myths.We use the term ?myth? here in the manner defined by Joseph Campbell -- as a great cultural story that reveals to people how to connect with their individual life purpose and be part of and in service to the larger community. Such stories created in all cultures have a healing function, enabling an individual to understand his or her unique life history and how it is part of an interconnected Larger Story.C.G. Jung observed with reference to our human species that our capacity for psycho-mythologizing is much greater than our tendency to pscho-pathologize our experience (e.g., acculturated and media-induced perspectives of cynicism, carping criticism, apathy, depression, polarization, lack of a feeling of well-being and of hopefulness, etc.). And I and Angeles say that we are now in a great New Era of transformation, with a basis for deep hope and inspiration amidst the falling apart of the old era.Central to our ability to co-create mutually empowering and sustaining deep planetary myths and understandings in our time is understanding the nature of dialogue and cultivating a perspective of paradox -- capable of holding the infinitely expanding diversity of creation in a wholistic, open consciousness of appreciation, curiosity, wonder, and practicality.These are the themes of this dialogue as we conclude our 3-part series with a number of inspirational real life examples, including the Velvet Revolution, Desmond Tutu in South Africa, and other miracles that have occurred in our time, showing that the future is literally ours to choose.See also my prior Dialogue 52 on this site with Angeles regarding the stages of a new synthesizing wisdom culture as well as elderhood for our time.?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)Among others, programs you will find of interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Joseph Chilton Pearce and Deborah Tannen specifically mentioned in this dialogue ? as well as generally those with Duane Elgin, Paul Ray, Michael Meade, Coleman Barks, Sobonfu Some,Vine DeLoria Jr., Barbara Marx Hubbard, and Michael Dowd, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site]. After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
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LD 080: Angeles Arrien Part 2 ? Co-Creating Planetary Myths for the 21st Century
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Jan 15, 2009
Episode Description: ?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret MeadIn this intriguing 3-part dialogue with my deep friend Angeles Arrien, leading cross-cultural anthropologist of our time, we engage in one of the key 21st century projects ? the co-creation of new planetary scale teaching, healing, and unifying myths.We use the term ?myth? here in the manner defined by Joseph Campbell -- as a great cultural story that reveals to people how to connect with their individual life purpose and be part of and in service to the larger community. Such stories in all cultures have a healing function, enabling an individual to understand his or her unique life history and how it is part of an interconnected Larger Story.Specifically in this dialogue, Angeles tells the story about her calling to be a cross-cultural anthropologist, and I describe the revelation that led me to create the Living Dialogues programs, why ?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??, and how we are all called in our time to collaborate in creating new mutually empowering and planetary scale narratives.In the global commons of 21st century communications, we are invited to weave a new set of myths without borders, as we are all doing together in these Living Dialogues, host, guest, and deep listening audience, and in each of our lives, through our various mutually inpsired dialogues and storytelling, co-creating the Great Myth of the future.See also my prior Dialogue 52 on this site with Angeles regarding the stages of a new synthesizing elderhood and wisdom culture for our time.?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)Among others, programs you will find of interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Duane Elgin, Paul Ray, Michael Meade, Coleman Barks, Sobonfu Some, Vine DeLoria Jr., Barbara Marx Hubbard, and Michael Dowd, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site]. After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
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LD 079: Angeles Arrien Part 1 ? Co-Creating Planetary Myths for the 21st Century
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Jan 08, 2009
Episode Description: ?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret MeadIn this intriguing 3-part dialogue with my deep friend Angeles Arrien, the leading cross-cultural anthropologist of our time, we engage in one of the key 21st century projects ? the co-creation of new planetary scale inspirational, normative, and unifying myths. Of the many compelling and informative perspectives emerging as this new world view takes shape is the report by Angeles of the results of an indigenous wisdom consensus prophecy for our time: the braiding of the sky wisdom and the earth wisdom together through the human heart. See also my prior Dialogue 52 on this site with Angeles regarding the stages and role of an emerging new synthesizing elderhood and wisdom culture for our time.?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)Among others, programs you will find of interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Duane Elgin, Paul Ray, Michael Meade, Coleman Barks, Sobonfu Some, Vine DeLoria Jr., Barbara Marx Hubbard, and Michael Dowd, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site]. After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
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LD 078: Susan Jacoby ? Going Beyond the Age of American Unreason
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Jan 01, 2009
Episode Description: ?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret MeadIn this dialogue with Susan Jacoby, we dialogue (rather than argue) about the pressing need to reclaim a love of reading and genuine truth (rather than ?truthiness?, in Stephen Colbert?s felicitous turn of phrase, which has been the coin of the realm of media and politicians of the last decades). The first step in the direction of a genuinely new empowerment of general citizen awareness and fulfillment must be in self-education and education of the youngest among us as they grow. That involves going beyond the ?bubba? manipulation mentality that has sanctioned ignorance as a badge of pretend patriotism.In view of the New Era of potential global political change many feel has dawned in the early winter of 2008, this dialogue is particularly interesting in its reference to the historical changes in the family and social mores in the Western world and America over the centuries and recent decades with regard to respect for education, including reference to Ralph Waldo Emerson?s seminal lecture on the thinking person as a foundational necessity of true freedom and evolving rather than devolving.?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to the Transcript section.) (Among others, programs you will find of interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Deborah Tannen, David Boren, Ted Sorensen, George Lakoff, Andrew Weil, Paul Ray, Steve McIntosh, and Michael Dowd, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site]. After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
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LD 077: Ari Berk Part 2 ? Mythic Origins of the Christmas Mystery and Other Age-Old Celebrations of the Winter Solstice and New Dawn
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Dec 25, 2008
Episode Description: ?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret MeadIn this intriguing 2-part dialogue with my friend Professor Ari Berk, acclaimed mythologist and storyteller, we share back and forth a wealth of information illuminating the deep sources of the mystery of life and death enacted each year in the cosmos at the time of the Winter Solstice. Their hold on the spirit and imagination of peoples of all ages everywhere ?leaning into, wanting to participate in, the cosmic mysteries? has generated throughout the ages numerous stories, songs, ceremonies and celebrations to honor and evoke our shared divinity and the joy of creation. In view of the New Era of potential global political change many feel has dawned in the early winter of 2008, this Part 2 dialogue is particularly interesting in its understanding of how the celebration of the evergreen, renewing energies evoked at Christmastime and the Winter Solstice can lift the spirits and create a foundation for bringing the light and warmth of our inner sun alive, and into all our relations throughout the year and our shared journeys on the planet.
?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)Among others, programs you will find of interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Michael Meade, Angeles Arrien, Coleman Barks, Sobonfu Some, Vine DeLoria Jr., and Michael Dowd. After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
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LD 076: Ari Berk Part 1 ? Mythic Origins of the Christmas Mystery and Other Age-Old Celebrations of the Winter Solstice and New Dawn
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Dec 18, 2008
Episode Description: ?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret MeadIn this intriguing 2-part dialogue with my friend Professor Ari Berk, acclaimed mythologist and storyteller, we share back and forth a wealth of information illuminating the deep sources of the mystery of life and death enacted each year in the cosmos at the time of the Winter Solstice. Their hold on the spirit and imagination of peoples of all ages everywhere ?leaning into, wanting to participate in, the cosmic mysteries? has generated throughout the ages numerous stories, songs, ceremonies and celebrations to honor and evoke our shared divinity and the joy of creation. In view of the New Era of potential global political change many feel has dawned in the early winter of 2008, this Part 1 dialogue is particularly interesting in its reference to the historical changes in the family and social mores in the Western world and America over the centuries -- and the restrictive or transformative role played by the different ways in which the secular and religious holiday of Christmas has been celebrated over time.?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)Among others, programs you will find of interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Michael Meade, Angeles Arrien, Coleman Barks, Sobonfu Some, Vine DeLoria Jr., and Michael Dowd. After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
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LD 075: John Gray Part 2 ? Consciously Evolving our Relationships: Understanding How the Sexes? Biological, Chemical, and Social Patterns Illuminate ?Why Mars and Venus Collide?
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Dec 11, 2008
Episode Description:??this is a fantastic interview. Like you said , this would be an exploration, a discovery process, and through this interview I?ve been challenged to expand my awareness and think in a more enriched way. And, one, I?m appreciative that you?ve created a platform for me to share many of the ideas. Two, is you really do your homework, and I appreciate that. And, three, you enrich the whole interview by bringing forth your wealth of knowledge as a sharing together. So thank you very much.? ? John Gray, author of ?Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus?, one of the best-selling books of the past decade, and now the follow-up New York Times Best-seller ?Why Mars and Venus Collide??For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret MeadIn this highly engaging 2-part dialogue with internationally-acclaimed John Gray, the best-selling relationship author of all time and 30-year marriage counselor, we go considerably deeper into the differences and creative possibilities between men and women (Vive La Difference!), exploring much further the themes first described by John in his mega-bestselling book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (over 40 million sold in over 45 languages throughout the world).In his new bestseller, Why Mars and Venus Collide, these themes are now updated and considerably expanded, and entirely new ones are introduced, in the light also of the latest relevant scientific research. Our dialogue is full of fascinating insights, often very funny moments of self-recognition, and spontaneous back and forth mutual observations and stories beyond what?s in either of the two books -- showing with specific examples that, indeed, ?old dogs can learn new tricks? of real transformative relational value in this arena at any age and whatever your gender. Great whether you?re single, married, in or out of relationship.Go to Dialogue Episode 75 for Part 1. ?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)Other programs you will find of interest on these themes are Dialogues 72 and 73 with Deborah Tannen, Dialogue 52 with Angeles Arrien, Dialogues 53 and 54 with Coleman Barks, Dialogues 55-57 with Sobonfu Some, Dialogue 28 with Michael Dowd, and Dialogue 69 with Barbara Marx Hubbard. After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
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LD 074: John Gray Part 1 ? Consciously Evolving our Relationships: Understanding How the Sexes? Biological, Chemical, and Social Patterns Illuminate ?Why Mars and Venus Collide?
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Dec 04, 2008
Episode Description:?I?m Dr. John Gray, author of Why Mars and Venus Collide. You?re listening to Living Dialogues with Duncan Campbell ? which is a real dialogue, not just an interview, but rather something which inspires more information than I would normally share in an interview. He participates, I participate, and the result is something greater than whatever I thought was possible.? ? John Gray, author of ?Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus?, one of the best-selling books of the past decade, and now the follow-up New York Times Best-seller ?Why Mars and Venus Collide??For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret MeadIn this highly engaging 2-part dialogue with internationally-acclaimed John Gray, the best-selling relationship author of all time and 30-year marriage counselor, we go considerably deeper into the differences and creative possibilities between men and women (Vive La Difference!), exploring much further the themes first described by John in his mega-bestselling book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (over 40 million sold in over 45 languages throughout the world).In his new bestseller, Why Mars and Venus Collide, these themes are now updated and considerably expanded, and entirely new ones are introduced, in the light also of the latest relevant scientific research. Our dialogue is full of fascinating insights, often very funny moments of self-recognition, and spontaneous back and forth mutual observations and stories beyond what?s in either of the two books -- showing with specific examples that, indeed, ?old dogs can learn new tricks? of real transformative relational value in this arena at any age and whatever your gender. Great whether you?re single, married, in or out of relationship.?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)Other programs you will find of interest on these themes are Dialogues 72 and 73 with Deborah Tannen, Dialogue 52 with Angeles Arrien, Dialogues 53 and 54 with Coleman Barks, Dialogues 55-57 with Sobonfu Some, Dialogue 28 with Michael Dowd, and Dialogue 69 with Barbara Marx Hubbard. After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.
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LD 073: Deborah Tannen ? Shifting to Deeper Dialogue and Understanding Between the Sexes
Author: Duncan Campbell
Tue, Nov 25, 2008
Episode Description:?Duncan Campbell has just been a terrific conversationalist and I?ve been so grateful for the opportunity to enjoy Living Dialogues. It?s a privilege. I can?t thank you enough. I?ve had a lot of interviews, but this one has been very special.? ? Deborah Tannen, author of New York Times best-seller You Just Don?t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation?For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.? ? Margaret MeadIn this dialogue with internationally-acclaimed scholar and author Deborah Tannen, we converse about the kind of fresh dialogue we can generate between the sexes as we all learn to more deeply observe and bring together ?masculine speak? and ?feminine speak?. As we understand and appreciate our different communication styles and influences, we have in essence the experience of learning another language to enter together the mystery of our otherness and celebrate Vive La Difference!With the 2008 U.S. elections over we can turn our attention to the various personal dialogues we can cultivate ?in building bridges of understanding and wisdom in the reaching out and cooperative spirit required by our 21st century realities, and the essential roles that we all are called to play in our evolution for it to take place?. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)?Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation??.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com.After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey.
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LD 072: Deborah Tannen ? Beyond the Argument Culture to Evolutionary Dialogue
Author: Duncan Campbell
Fri, Nov 14, 2008
Episode Description:
“Duncan Campbell has just been a terrific conversationalist and I’ve been so grateful for the opportunity to enjoy Living Dialogues. It’s a privilege. I can’t thank you enough. I’ve had a lot of interviews, but this one has been very special.” – Deborah Tannen, author of New York Times best-seller The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words
In this dialogue with internationally-acclaimed scholar and author Deborah Tannen (click on ”Episode Detail” to the left here and then “Bio” on her photo there), we talk about the origins and history of confrontational, adversarial debate in our Western modern mind culture, and how it has degenerated and been corrupted to the point that its present form has poisoned our educational and legal systems, as well as our media and politics; and how we can go beyond that now into co-creating a renewed culture that is vital and wise, one that chooses and embodies truth-seeking and truth-telling in generative dialogue and respectful truth-seeking debate, and which values and honors genuine integrity and authenticity (much as Socrates did in response to the corruption of Sophist philosophy and the ensuing decline of Periclean Age democracy in Greece).
As I say in this Dialogue, we are in the midst of an evolutionary crisis, in which we need as a species to find a way to go beyond the adolescent “you’re either for us or against us” mentality into a co-creative discerning dialogue with mature voices. We need to come to cultural consensus that knowing the truth is healthy and knowing what is real and deceptive is an important survival trait for the species. We cannot continue, in our media and elsewhere, to allow deliberate deceit to be accepted and purveyed manipulatively as “negative ads” and other public pronouncements which are “just part of the ‘game’ of politics or advertising”.
In this 2008 election, as supported by the global psyche and celebrated all around the world in a way not seen since V-E Day and V-J Day ending World War II, our entire species, including America, has survived this test of initiation into maturity. More intiatic tests await us in the years to come until the Tipping Point is no longer in doubt. Regressive and static forces are still in resistance, and so as I say in the Introduction to the Transcript section of the Episode Detail to this Dialogue:
This is the time for renewed dialogue, for visionary and inspiring discourse producing practical and innovative solutions together, to engage our own elder wisdom and youthful inspiration, and in so doing to experience and exemplify that “Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation”™.
Next week, on Program 73, Deborah Tannen and I will converse about the kind of fresh dialogue we can generate between the sexes as we learn to more deeply observe, understand, and bring together “masculine speak” and “feminine speak” – as one of the kinds of dialogues we need to create “in building bridges of understanding and wisdom in the cooperative spirit and reaching out required by our 21st century realities, and the essential roles that we all are called to play in our evolution for it to take place”.
Ways in which we can all contribute our own new energy and ideas in this emerging paradigm shift are outlined in the dialogue with myself and Barbara Marx Hubbard re Citizen Solutions in Dialogue 69, and you can also go to the new website established by President-Elect Obama, http://Change.gov, click on "American Moment" and choose Share your Story or Share your Vision, and contact me if you live at www.livingdialogues.com.
For a summary of some of the practical proposed solutions I have made to the New Era administration in this time of required change, you can see my additional website www.newenergycentury.com or contact me at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com.
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey.
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LD 071: David Mendell ? Barack Obama: From Promise to Power ? Conscious Evolutionary Politician of Our Time
Author: Duncan Campbell
Sat, Nov 08, 2008
Episode Description:
“I can wholeheartedly say that this has been a most stimulating dialogue. Thank you so much.” – David Mendell, author and journalist with the Chicago Tribune
David Mendell is the first and premier biographer of the man newly elected President of the United States, Barack Obama. This dialogue illuminates the background of the man and his/our mission in ways that illustrate why he is the destined choice in this role of and for our global zeitgeist, the world soul consciousness, the unfolding spirit of the times. With the election of Barack Hussein Obama, we have successfully crossed an evolutionary threshold and are in position to dynamically move forward as a species.
The etymology of Barack is “blessed” and the etymology of Hussein is “beautiful” or “handsome”. By our collective choice in this instance we have become blessed to once again talk of, aspire to, and embody Beauty, Truth, and Goodness in our lives without the sophistic soul-corroding irony of the past decades, and with the confidence and wisdom of Plato, Krishna, and all such predecessors everywhere in all cultures in renewed dialogues for the 21st century.
Neither redeemer nor prophet in the adolescent paradigm of “I will fight for you”, but in deep listening eloquence an expression and reflection of “Out of the Many We Are One”.
Next week, on Program 72, my guest will be Deborah Tannen, widely-acclaimed author of the landmark New York Times bestseller You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in Conversation, in conversation with me about how we can transform our Argument Culture into one of evolutionary dialogue. “I have done many interviews, but this was very special. A privilege.” – Deborah Tannen
For a summary of the practical proposed solutions I have made in this time of required change, you can see my additional website www.newenergycentury.com or contact me at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com.
Ways in which we can all contribute our own new energy and ideas in this emerging paradigm shift are outlined in the dialogue with myself and Barbara Marx Hubbard re Citizen Solutions in Program 69.
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey.
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LD 070: Lester Brown ? Consciously Mobilizing to Save Civilization
Author: Duncan Campbell
Sat, Nov 01, 2008
Episode Description:
“This dialogue, as the title of the program – Living Dialogues – indicates, is one of the keys to advancing thinking, in helping us to better understand the challenges that we face so that we can intelligently respond to them. I’m delighted to be here.” – Lester Brown, President, the Earth Policy Institute
In this episode of our Engaged Elder series, I dialogue with globally-acclaimed author (Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization) Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and President of the Earth Policy Institute. We go into the details of why and how the New Energy Economy can and must be realized as the next major step in the conscious evolution of our species in the very near future, activated and empowered by understanding what technology and resources are already at our disposal, and the urgency of mobilizing to do so -- much as, for instance, FDR and America did in mobilizing existing resources and a determined and generous national will to emerge stable and stronger from the economic collapse of the 30s, leading the way to the beginnings of global consciousness with the creation of the United Nations after World War II.
Exciting new ideas emerge from the dialogue on the spot.
Since I began writing about my vision of an evolutionary New Energy Economy more than four years ago, I have called it New Energy for a New World, New Energy for a New Century, etc. Bracken Hendricks and Jay Inslee (Programs 67 and 68) are the co-authors of the excellent recent book Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy. Van Jones (Program 68) is the author of the just-published and highly praised The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, with a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Together with Worldwatch Institute founder and current Earth Enterprise Institute president Lester Brown’s Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (in this Program 70), Apollo’s Fire and now The Green Collar Economy constitute perhaps the best trilogy of the key truly up-to-date educational and informational resources for personal and public policy choices that meet the ineluctable evolutionary imperative for us to now consciously move from the Old Oil Elite Fossil Fuel economy to a New Energy economy for a New World. Such a New Energy economy will provide the foundation for self-reliant prosperity, real security and abundance, and generosity of collaboration for all in this New Century.
Ways in which we can all contribute our own new energy and ideas in this emerging paradigm shift are outlined in the dialogue with myself and Barbara Marx Hubbard re Citizen Solutions in Program 69.
Next week, on Program 71
For a summary of the practical proposed solutions I have made in this time of required change, you can see my additional website www.newenergycentury.com or contact me at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com.
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey.
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LD 069: Barbara Marx Hubbard ? Evolutionary Citizen Solutions in a New Energy World
Author: Duncan Campbell
Fri, Oct 24, 2008
Episode Description:
“Thank you so much, Duncan. You are definitely a co-creative partner!” – Barbara Marx Hubbard
In this episode of our Engaged Elder series, I dialogue with Barbara Marx Hubbard, President of the foundation for Conscious Evolution, who helped create the field of conscious evolution. In addition to contextualizing the current global economic crisis and tipping point U.S. election as a great evolutionary call and opportunity, we discuss the proposal of Barbara and others for a three-point “Citizen Solutions” program to be integrated into the U.S. Vice-President’s office (as Barbara initially proposed when her name was placed in nomination for Vice-President in 1984), carried on the Internet, and embodied in local and regional Citizen Solutions Councils, to which each of us can contribute.
This democratization of engendering practical transformative proposals reflects the already emerging “prophetic consciousness” present in many of us (and in potential in all of us), and evolution’s requirement for a democratization of awareness, collaboration, and benefits for necessary change to take place – as illustrated in one example by my proposal for New Energy Bonds.
Next week, on Program 70 in dialogue with globally-acclaimed author (Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization) Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and President of the Earth Policy Institute, we go into the details of why and how the New Energy Economy can and must be realized as the next major step in the conscious evolution of our species in the very near future, activated and empowered by understanding what technology and resources are already at our disposal, and the urgency of mobilizing to do so -- much as, for instance, FDR and America did in mobilizing existing resources and a determined and generous national will to emerge stable and stronger from the economic collapse of the 30s, leading the way to the beginnings of global consciousness with the creation of the United Nations after World War II. Exciting new ideas emerge from the dialogue on the spot.
For a summary of the practical proposed solutions I have made in this time of required change, you can see my additional website www.newenergycentury.com or contact me at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com.
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey.
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LD 068: Van Jones, Bob Gough, Bracken Hendricks and Jay Inslee ? The Green Collar Economy, Intertribal Coup Wind Energy, Apollo?s Fire and Duncan?s New Energy for a New World
Author: Duncan Campbell
Fri, Oct 17, 2008
Episode Description:
In this episode of our Engaged Elder series, I dialogue with widely-acclaimed activist Van Jones, author of the just-issued The Green Collar Economy, Bob Gough, international clean energy award winner and Secretary of the InterTribal COUP Wind Energy association and project, Bracken Hendricks, co-founder of the Apollo Alliance, and Jay Inslee, U.S. Congressman from Seattle, who for a number of years has been the leading voice in the U.S. Congress for what I term New Energy and a New Energy economy.
Since I began writing about my vision of an evolutionary New Energy Economy more than four years ago, I have called it New Energy for a New World, New Energy for a New Century, etc. Bracken Hendricks and Jay Inslee are the co-authors of the excellent recent book Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy. Van Jones is the author of the just-published and highly praised The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, with a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Together with Worldwatch Institute founder and current Earth Enterprise Institute president Lester Brown’s Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (see Program 70), Apollo’s Fire and now The Green Collar Economy constitute perhaps the best trilogy of the key truly up-to-date educational and informational resources for personal and public policy choices that meet the ineluctable evolutionary imperative for us to now consciously move from the Old Oil Elite Fossil Fuel economy to a New Energy economy for a New World. Such a New Energy economy will provide the foundation for self-reliant prosperity, real security and abundance, and generosity of collaboration for all in this New Century.
In addition to my previous dialogue with Jay Inslee recorded during the Democratic National Convention in Denver on August 25, 2008 (Program 67), this Program 68 dialogue highlights in wider detail the great benefits and new energy resources that are readily available in the U.S., and the reality of the technological options now available for us that we can quickly, efficiently, and economically bring to scale, capable of moving us to the kind of New Energy economy and policy proposals I first put forth in 2004 and which the times are now catching up to: to empower and reward all citizens, not just the already wealthy, and to salvage and repair our broken economy in the only sustainable ways possible. My New Energy proposals discussed include both democratizing a portion of venture capital to restructure our economy, now in global crisis, through New Energy Bonds, and the job creation and training program I have termed O.N.E. America Corps.
The O.N.E. America Corps also presents us the possibility for the U.S. to go a long way in reality and in the eyes of the world to cleanse the national psyche of what Pulitzer Prize-wining historian Joseph Ellis (see Programs 37 and 38) has called the “two original sins of America” which have contracted and held America back from realizing its full destiny: the ongoing long-term effects of slavery and our treatment of the Native Americans.
Next week, on Program 69 in dialogue with Barbara Marx Hubbard, we talk about how the evolution of consciousness can be reflected in Conscious Citizen Solutions to our current economic collapse, including as an example my proposal for New Energy Bonds, and how each of you can contribute your own new energy ideas.
For a summary of the practical proposals I have made in this time of global economic crisis and required change, you can see my additional website www.newenergycentury.com or contact me at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com.
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey.
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LD 067: Jay Inslee ? Apollo?s Fire and Duncan?s New Energy for a New World
Author: Duncan Campbell
Mon, Oct 13, 2008
Episode Description:
In this episode of our Engaged Elder series, I dialogue with Jay Inslee, U.S. Congressman from Seattle, who for a number of years has been the leading voice in the U.S. Congress for what I term New Energy and a New Energy economy. Since I began writing about my vision of it more than four years ago, I have called it New Energy for a New World, New Energy for a New Century, etc. Jay is the co-author of the excellent recent book Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy, written with Brandon Hendricks, one of the original co-founders of the Apollo Alliance. Together with Worldwatch Institute founder and current Earth Enterprise Institute president Lester Brown’s Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Apollo’s Fire is one of two of the key truly up-to-date educational and informational resources for personal and public policy choices that meet the ineluctable evolutionary imperative for us to consciously move from the Old Oil Elite Fossil Fuel economy to a New Energy economy for a New World. Such a New Energy economy will provide the foundation for self-reliant prosperity, real security and abundance, and generosity of collaboration for all in this New Century.
Recorded during the Democratic National Convention in Denver on August 25, 2008, our dialogue highlights the reality of the technological options already available for us that we can quickly, efficiently, and economically bring to scale, capable of moving us to the kind of New Energy economy and policy proposals I first put forth in 2004 and which the times are now catching up to: to empower and reward all citizens, not just the already wealthy, and to salvage and repair our broken economy in the only sustainable ways possible. And in the process our dialogue also identifies where the blockages are occurring in our political system, and which individuals and interests are opposing, stalling and undermining that necessary evolution.
Next week, on Program 68 in dialogues with Jay Inslee and co-author Bracken Hendricks, and with Bob Gough of InterTribal COUP wind energy and Van Jones, author of The Green Collar Economy, I go into detail regarding my proposals for New Energy Bonds and the establishment of a O.N.E. AMERICA Corps.
For a summary of the practical proposals I have made in this time of required change, you can see my additional website www.newenergycentury.com or contact me at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com.
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey.
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LD 066: Tom Hayden ? Part 2: The Youth-Elder Dialogue from the Sixties to the First Decade of the 21st Century
Author: Duncan Campbell
Fri, Oct 03, 2008
Episode Description:
In this episode of our Engaged Elder series, I dialogue with Tom Hayden, known to many around the world as a leading activist for progressive change for the last five decades, spanning both his “youth” and “elder” roles in the ongoing “ethical dialogue” about society’s values – from being a Freedom Rider in the Deep South of the U.S. and a founding member of the Students for a Democratic Society in 1961 and author of its visionary call, the Port Huron Statement, to nearly two decades in the Legislature of the State of California passing over one hundred critical measures, to his role in Progressives for Obama and his commentaries on The Huffington Post. As a writer, he is the author or editor of fifteen books, including the recent Voices of the Chicago Eight: A Generation on Trial and Writings for a Democratic Society.
In Part 1 (Program 65) Tom and I review the post-World War II creation of various institutions, including the United Nations, intended to secure a peaceful and cooperative world, succeeded by the transformational energies of the Sixties world-wide, led primarily by a younger generation and its vision of a coherent social movement that could energize and sustain those ideals in the face of the Cold War, widespread racial intolerance, and the Vietnam War. This review of our role in social change as youth then leads into the era of the Eighties and Nineties, and sets the stage for a compelling analysis in Part 2 of the current evolutionary challenges of our times that comes full circle.
In Part 2 (Program 66), Tom and I speak in and about the present from the engaged elder perspective of the “wisdom of learned experience”. I begin by describing the unprecedented breach of trust between the generations that occurred in our youth in the Sixties (“don’t trust anyone over 30”), fueled in large part by the U.S. government’s waging of the Vietnam War with massive deception, later revealed in the apologetic memoirs of Robert McNamara, the then Secretary of Defense, and others. Tom and I then dialogue – reviewing a number of contemporary topics -- about the nature of leadership, and how a new form of collaborative and transparent leadership and participation (“yes we can”, rather than promises of “I will fight for you”) can restore the existence and vitality of an “ethical dialogue” between the generations, a dialogue that is critically important if we are to meet the new century’s evolutionary challenges. The youthful “participatory democracy” of the Sixties can come into an evolved mature form in our time, and enable us together to reach a “tipping point” into a transformative, energizing future, rather than a “toppling” point into a great fall backward.
For practical proposals I have made in this time of required change, you can see my additional website www.newenergycentury.com or contact me at www.livingdialogues.com.
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey.
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LD 065: Tom Hayden ? The Youth-Elder Dialogue from the Sixties to the First Decade of the 21st Century
Author: Duncan Campbell
Mon, Sep 29, 2008
Episode Description:
In this episode of our Engaged Elder series, I dialogue with Tom Hayden, known to many around the world as a leading activist for progressive change for the last five decades, spanning both his “youth” and “elder” roles in the ongoing “ethical dialogue” about society’s values – from being a Freedom Rider in the Deep South of the U.S. and a founding member of the Students for a Democratic Society in 1961 and author of its visionary call, the Port Huron Statement, to nearly two decades in the Legislature of the State of California passing over one hundred critical measures, to his role in Progressives for Obama and his commentaries on The Huffington Post. As a writer, he is the author or editor of fifteen books, including the recent Voices of the Chicago Eight: A Generation on Trial and Writings for a Democratic Society.
In Part 1 Tom and I review the post-World War II creation of various institutions, including the United Nations, intended to secure a peaceful and cooperative world, succeeded by the transformational energies of the Sixties world-wide, led primarily by a younger generation and its vision of a coherent social movement that could energize and sustain those ideals in the face of the Cold War, widespread racial intolerance, and the Vietnam War. This review of our role in social change as youth then leads into the era of the Eighties and Nineties, and sets the stage for a compelling analysis in Part 2 of the current evolutionary challenges of our times that comes full circle.
For practical proposals I have made in this time of required change, you can see my additional website www.newenergycentury.com or contact me at www.livingdialogues.com.
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey.
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LD 064: George Lakoff ? Part 3: The Evolutionary Challenge of the 21st Century for the Political Mind
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Sep 18, 2008
Episode Description:
In Part 3 of the dialogue -- recorded September 12, 2008 after the Democratic and Republican Party Conventions -- George and I update and expand considerably on the “narrative” themes of the campaign, why the Republicans say that the campaign is not about “issues” but about “personalities”, and how that approach derived from a corporate marketing strategy begun by Nixon and firmly established as Republican precedent by Reagan. Understanding the modes of manipulation of these “framings” – unconscious to the ordinary voter and not illuminated by the media – is a key to understanding the election as it proceeds, including the formal debates between the candidates. The collective psyche of the U.S., like that of the planet, is at a critical evolutionary turning point. As observed by C. G. Jung, if we bring the elements at work in the unconscious to awareness, as we do in participating in these kinds of dialogues, then we open the possibility of fulfilling our higher purpose and destiny, rather than enduring an unconscious fate.
You can contact me at www.livingdialogues.com, and see also my new website www.newenergycentury.com.
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey.
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LD 063: George Lakoff ? Part 2: The Evolutionary Challenge of the 21st Century for the Political Mind
Author: Duncan Campbell
Fri, Sep 12, 2008
Episode Description:
In Part 2 of our dialogue, George and I recap how our political choices are influenced by the imprint of our early socialization in our families of origin, and the subsequent acculturation we receive in our education (or lack of it) and in our communities. As George describes it, our early neurological imprints from our family lead us to think of political parties as a “family” (an idea often reaffirmed by the language of politicians themselves). The Republican Party in the U.S. he sees as associated with the “strict father” parent and the Democratic Party associated with the “nurturing parents” archetype (belittled and caricatured by the Republicans, abetted by a compliant and somewhat cowed media, as the “Mommy” or “nanny” party, falsely represented as supposedly taxing the “hard-working” middle class and doling out monies and welfare to the undeserving poor.)
Because of these neurological imprints – manipulated by negative and misleading ads, including outright deliberate deception – many voters do not vote their economic interests based on “the issues” (as one would expect from a Maslow hierarchy of external needs psychological model, based on “kitchen table” issues of food, shelter, and jobs). Instead, many voters are emotionally triggered and duped by fabricated wedge distractions into voting based on fear, anxiety, and compliance with authority – often against their own interests and that of their children and grandchildren – in order to reaffirm their ”identity” within a group.
The final section is devoted to the dominant “narratives” that are at play between Obama and McCain, what they represent in the collective American psyche, and how they relate to the evolutionary challenge and initiation beyond adolescent group mind we are all confronted with. Will this election be a Tipping Point and a leap forward, or a Toppling Point in a great fall backward.
You can contact me at www.livingdialogues.com, and see also my new website www.newenergycentury.com.
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey.
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LD 062: George Lakoff ? The Evolutionary Challenge of the 21st Century for the Political Mind
Author: Duncan Campbell
Sat, Sep 06, 2008
Episode Description:
In this episode of our Engaged Elder series, I dialogue with George Lakoff, distinguished professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California, and known to many as the author of the previous New York Times best-sellers ‘Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think’, and ‘Don’t Think of an Elephant’, and now his latest and very timely book ‘The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st Century American Politics with an 18th Century Brain’.
The matters George and I dialogue about have universal implications to any country and political system, even though we are here focused on examples from the upcoming “tipping (or toppling) point” 2008 election in the United States. You will find it interesting no matter which country you live in because the archetypal structure of the human brain, as we know, is something we share across the globe and that really is the point of these programs.
We are all called to go beyond the initial adolescent “breaking away” from the oppressive rule of Mother Church and Father Sovereign in the 18th Century European Enlightenment through the celebration of “Reason”, using the printing press and widespread “democratized” dissemination of knowledge as a path to empowering the “middle class” and “the people”, to a more subtle leap of consciousness in the 21st Century. In our present latter stage adolescent polarization – stuck in rationalized secular and religious “identity” ideologies and estranged from our early heritage of empathy, with our over-emphasis on expressing self through exclusivism and dominance rather than cooperation and co-creative collaboration – we need to move into a nurturing, mature politics based on self-confident, not self-assertive, transpartisan dialogue.
For practical proposals I have made in this vein, you can see my additional website www.newenergycentury.com or contact me at www.livingdialogues.com.
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey.
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LD 061: David Boren ? A Letter to America
Author: Duncan Campbell
Fri, Aug 29, 2008
Episode Description:
In this episode of our Engaged Elder series, I dialogue with David Boren, U.S. senior statesman and advisor to Barack Obama. David has been the President of the University of Oklahoma since resigning from the U.S. Senate in 1995 to take that position. He also teaches history classes to incoming freshman at the university, based on the understanding that if a people does not know how they achieved a certain greatness of contribution, they cannot remain great. During his two-terms in the U.S. Senate he was the longest serving chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and was previously Governor of Oklahoma.
Keying in on his new book, A Letter to America, we talk about the challenges of the 21st Century for the U.S. to develop a new consciousness, a much better educated citizenry, and the financial and energy independence that will be required for America to play a positive collaborative leadership role in our emerging global world. In particular we talk about the crucial importance of renewing and maintaining a financially self-reliant and educated middle class -- and I outline my original idea for New Energy Bonds as a not previously possible democratized venture vehicle to move from our traditional and no longer working “tax-and-redistribute” economic model to a new 21st century collaborative, share-the-wealth, empowering investment model.
For further detail on the proposals I have made see my website newenergycentury.com or contact me at livingdialogues.com.
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by clicking on the Episode Detail button at the top left of this program description, and by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey there (or click on the Listener Survey icon to the left of this column).
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LD 060: David Maraniss ? Rome 1960: The Olympics that Changed the World
Author: Duncan Campbell
Wed, Aug 20, 2008
Appreciations:
?Duncan Campbell, I heard about your podcast a few months ago, and have been deeply listening to all the dialogues with your fantastic friends/guests. Your words, ideas, and wisdom are truly inspirational. You have evoked a new appetite for knowledge in me that I hope to share with a starving younger generation. Thank you for doing what you do, and creating a unique space, void of boundaries and classification. A breath of fresh air! Much love and respect.? ? Amit Kapadiya
Episode Description:
In this book, Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss explores and documents the Olympics that set the tone for the second half of the 20th century, with African American stars Wilma Rudolph and flag-bearer decathlete Rafer Johnson heralding the acceleration of the civil rights movement and the arrival of the women?s rights movement in the U.S. in the sixties, and the intensification of the Cold War rivalry between the Soviet Union and the U.S. which prompted the Apollo space mission.
The era-defining 1960 Olympics give great insight into the underlying dynamics of the 2008 Bejing Olympics? setting the tone for the first half of the 21st century. In his 8-12-08 Op-Ed column in the New York Times, David Brooks described a major aspect of the new U.S.-China rivalry as ?the divide between the societies with an individualist mentality and the ones with a collectivist mentality?. As our planetary consciousness undergoes its initiation into a potential higher maturity, we see the peoples of the world bouncing back and forth between these two poles of adolescent affirmation and identity. Will China be able to move beyond its insecurity into a dialogue with the Dalai Lama (see Program 59 with Robert Thurman)? Will the U.S. be able to move beyond its oil addiction into a responsible New Energy for a New World policy as I have proposed (see my website newenergycentury.com)? We shall see. Dialogues 59 and 60 help us ?live the questions? deeply, as the poet Rilke advocates.
There is more detail about this episode in the Transcription section on the episode page. Please read further. Thank you.
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LD 059: Robert Thurman: Why the Dalai Lama Matters
Author: Duncan Campbell
Fri, Aug 08, 2008
Appreciations:
“I’m Robert Thurman, and I’m having a lovely time on Living Dialogues with my friend Duncan Campbell. I learned a lot today from Duncan about America and about the Persian poet Rumi, about many things, about even Tibet.
And I shared with Duncan the insights and inspirations in the book I have written, which is my tribute to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, called Why the Dalai Matters: His Act of Truth as the Solution for China, Tibet, and the World. And this book is to inspire us and lift us out of our depression, that “NO we can’t”, which is what we’ve been hearing much too much of, from the world and media and everything.
And luckily now we are hearing “YES we can”, and we have to even hear that and say that to ourselves all the time. We must never accept that something is impossible and is hopeless. With despair comes violence, internal violence of depression, external violence between people. But out of hope comes love, friendliness, heroism, and that’s what we need today, together today, and that’s what we can manifest. And it is what together we are manifesting in this dialogue. All the best to you.” -- Robert Thurman
“In your book you’ve collected from your 45 years of deep friendship with the Dalai Lama many stories of how the Dalai Lama is really, we might say, the great practitioner of what I call ‘the art of dialogue’, the art of communication, both inner dialogue with himself and understanding with great compassion and truthfulness, his own, we might say foibles as well as merits, and those of others…And what you brilliantly illuminate here is why the Dalia Lama matters at every level. This is not just the “nice man’ who’s talking about being spiritual and kind. He has a profound and pragmatic understanding of the nature of the planet, including our human hopes and desires, the crises we are all in, and very practical ways to deal with them.
And I will introduce this dialogue by saying that in it, Bob, you also compellingly describe your own analysis and five-part plan, from what we might call a global political perspective of how and why the Dalai Lama and China together could be a key to avoiding World War III. And so I want to honor you for your life work and for this particular work, but also say what a deep pleasure it always is when you and I come together in these dialogues, and to acknowledge the role of the deep listening audience which is virtually present here that contributes to what has been evoked here in this dialogue. As you say, “we are all one ocean of dialogue”.
And that is why we are inviting everyone into this dialogue, including the Dalai Lama’s virtual participation as well (whose name ‘dalai’ literally means ‘ocean’, while “lama” means ‘developed person’), since he does not proclaim “listen to what I say”, but rather: “if you listen to what’s in your own heart, you yourself will have this inner dialogue that will show you and energize you and inspire you to right action”. And it’s in that spirit that we celebrate this dialogue by honoring the ‘Dalai Lama’ in all of us.” – Duncan Campbell
“Duncan Campbell, I heard about your podcast a few months ago, and have been deeply listening to all the dialogues with your fantastic friends/guests. Your words, ideas, and wisdom are truly inspirational. You have evoked a new appetite for knowledge in me that I hope to share with a starving younger generation. Thank you for doing what you do, and creating a unique space, void of boundaries and classification. A breath of fresh air! Much love and respect.” – Amit Kapadiya
Episode Description:
In furtherance of creating and maintaining the planetary dialogues now required in the 21st century, I will be featuring a special series of dialogues on this site with myself and other elders in the next few weeks during and after the 2008 Olympics hosted by China and the U.S. election season. These dialogues will address various specific political aspects of our planetary crisis, with its dangers and opportunities for a visionary and evolutionary shift. (We remember that the Chinese character for “crisis” is often described as meaning both “danger” when visioned from a fear perspective, and “opportunity” when visioned from a wisdom perspective.)
Following last week’s dialogue with Ted Sorensen, counselor to John F. Kennedy, and this week’s dialogue with Robert Thurman on the Why the Dalai Lama Matters: His Act of Truth as the Solution for China, Tibet, and the World, other elders who will join me in coming weeks include Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss on Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World, former Senator David Boren on A Letter to America, George Lakoff on The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st Century Politics with an 18th Century Brain, and others.
In my preceding dialogues I have talked in various ways about the need to generate dialogues across generational, ethnic, gender, and national boundaries -- building bridges of understanding and wisdom in the cooperative spirit and reaching out required by our 21st century realities, and the essential roles that we all are called to play in our evolution for it to take place.
In this particular dialogue, Bob Thurman describes the world-affecting drama that China is currently engaged in with the Tibetan people and the associated environmental destruction imitative of our own Western past. I bring in parallels with the European settlers of Australia, and of North and South America, and the conscious and unconscious genocide of the native peoples that took place in that settlement, the karmic effects of which are still with us, partially but not entirely expunged, and the restorative efforts recently being made by Australia and Canada -- as well as the issues of New Energy and what’s at stake in the U.S. and elsewhere to make dramatic changes in our energy habits and relationship to the natural world.
Of particular interest is Bob’s metaphor of Tibet as a crucial environmental zone for a great part of Asia, the “water tower” of that part of the world, and his statement of the essential need to keep the water clean that flows down from there, what is often called the “roof of the world”, the source of so many great rivers.
In reference to this, I describe water being both external and an inner symbol, mentioning the words of the poet Rumi (honored by UNESCO in naming 2007 the “Year of Rumi”): “we all know the taste of pure water”, and going on to say: “We need to protect not only the water tower of Tibet on the high plateau in protecting the rivers and Lake Manasarovar, but also protecting what you Bob have called the “inner revolution”, what I see as that inner stream of ‘pure water’, consciousness that can literally water our psyche and cleanse us of what the historian Joseph Ellis has referred to as the ‘original sins’ of how peoples have dealt with other peoples, such as slavery and de facto genocide, of the fear-based psychic contractions we all have individually and as nations.”
On the eve of the Bejing-hosted Olympics, I mention examples from past Olympics illustrating these parallels between the history of the West and the East, and Bob describes in detail his five-part plan, inspired by the world-wide work of the Dalai Lama, for how China could accept the overtures for dialogue from the Dalai Lama and develop a multi-faceted cooperation, both political and ecological, that could be a model for the world as well, based on “treating gently those in our power” and ourselves.
Bob observes at one point: “It’s very hard for us to have faith that good things can happen, but if we’re more realistic, if we look at and follow the science as the Dalai Lama does, if we look at the reality and have faith in it, we will see that really there is only one way the planet can go and that we are rational beings and we do like our lives, and we like the lives of our children…so this approach, this kind of action, will sway realistic beings, which human beings basically are. We got our evolutionary power by adapting, by being realistic, we will adapt in this crisis moment, in the twenty-first century, and we will save the planet and ourselves. No question about it.”
Echoing that, we can conclude that kindness and altruistic outlook are not simply good things to embody, they are the truly wise and necessary practical tools of planetary co-existence – cultivating the deeper forces and energies that will lead us into a “kinder, happier twenty-first century”. As the Dalai Lama’s spoke in addressing the European parliament after 9/11: “In place of war, which is obsolete now on this planet, reconciliation has to come through dialogue.”
And there is much more in this stimulating and enriching conversation. Please join us.
This is the time for renewed dialogue, for visionary and inspiring discourse producing practical and innovative solutions together, to engage our own elder wisdom and youthful inspiration, and in so doing to experience and exemplify that “Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation”.
And that is what we all do, in our mutual roles as host, deep listeners, and guests, when we gather together here from all parts of the globe in Living Dialogues.
Other programs you will find of immediate interest on these themes are the Dialogues I have had with mythologist and keeper of world stories Michael Meade `(Programs 48-51), world-renowned cross-cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien (Program 52), poet and translator of Persian poet Rumi Coleman Barks (Programs 3, 53-54), as well as Programs 13 and 14 with Byron Katie and Stephen Mitchell (editor of The Enlightened Heart, which contains the poem The Swan by Indian poet Kabir which I mention in Part 3 of my Programs 55-57 with African teacher Sobonfu Some) and Program 58 with Ted Sorensen, counselor to John F. Kennedy. Also of directly related interest in terms of the founding and traditions of the U.S. during its tipping point 2008 election season, with its implications for global shifts, are my dialogues with historian Joseph Ellis, honored as “the Founders’ historian” by The New York Review of Books (see Programs 38 and 39).
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by clicking on the Episode Detail button at the top left of this program description, and by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey there (or click on the Listener Survey icon to the left of this column).
SUBSCRIBE HERE FOR FREE TO LIVING DIALOGUES AND IN THE COMING WEEKS HEAR DUNCAN CAMPELL’S DIALOGUES WITH OTHER GROUND-BREAKING TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKERS LISTED ON THE WEBSITE WWW.LIVINGDIALOGUES.COM. TO LISTEN TO PREVIOUS RELATED DIALOGUES ON THIS SITE, SCROLL DOWN ON THE LIVING DIALOGUES SHOW PAGE HERE -- OR CLICK ON THE NAME OF A GUEST ON THE LIST AT THE RIGHT -- TO HEAR DUNCAN’S DIALOGUES WITH DR. ANDREW WEIL, BRIAN WEISS, COLEMAN BARKS, RUPERT SHELDRAKE, LARRY DOSSEY, JUDY COLLINS, MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, MATTHEW FOX, JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE, DEEPAK CHOPRA, BYRON KATIE AND STEPHEN MITCHELL, CAROLINE MYSS, GANGAJI, VINE DELORIA, JR., MICHAEL DOWD (THE UNIVERSE STORY OF THOMAS BERRY AND BRIAN SWIMME), STEVE MCINTOSH, FRANCES MOORE LAPPE, STANISLAV GROF, RICHARD TARNAS, MARC BEKOFF AND JANE GOODALL, RICHARD MOSS, PAUL HAWKEN, PAUL RAY, JOSEPH ELLIS, DUANE ELGIN, LYNNE MCTAGGART, ECKHART TOLLE, MICHAEL MEADE, ANGELES ARRIEN, SOBONFU SOME. TED SORENSEN AND OTHER EVOLUTIONARY THINKERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.
The best way to reach me is through my website: www.livingdialogues.com. Many thanks again for your attentive deep listening in helping co-create this program. All the best, Duncan.
P.S. As a way of further acknowledging and appreciating your part in these dialogues, and since I cannot personally answer all of them, I have begun to publish from time to time in these pages some of the numerous (unsolicited) appreciations received from you.
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LD 058: Ted Sorensen: Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History
Author: Duncan Campbell
Fri, Aug 01, 2008
Appreciations:
“I’m Ted Sorensen, former counsel to John F. Kennedy and author of the new book Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History. And I have so enjoyed talking for an extended length of time with Duncan Campbell. Whoever puts him on the air deserves a Nobel, Pulitzer, or any other prize, because clearly this is a program that advances the security and best interest of all the American people, not just a few high-powered lobbyists or special interest groups. It serves the country well, and I am proud to have been a part of it. Duncan, I can’t thank you enough. I have never had a dialogue, much less an interview, anything like this. And I salute you for the path that you’re following. Thanks so much. Keep up the good work. This has been a joy.” – Ted Sorensen
“And it has been for me too, Ted. I’ve been so inspired by your example. So I want to thank you not only for my generation, but for all subsequent generations, for being there, for everything that you have done, and for giving us this latest and great gift of your book Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History. It’s been such a real deep pleasure to connect with you and to spend this time together.” – Duncan Campbell
“Duncan Campbell, I heard about your podcast a few months ago, and have been deeply listening to all the dialogues with your fantastic friends/guests. Your words, ideas, and wisdom are truly inspirational. You have evoked a new appetite for knowledge in me that I hope to share with a starving younger generation. Thank you for doing what you do, and creating a unique space, void of boundaries and classification. A breath of fresh air! Much love and respect.” – July 23, 2008 Amit Kapadiya
Episode Description:
In furtherance of creating and maintaining the planetary dialogues now required in the 21st century, I will be featuring a special series of dialogues on this site with myself and other elders in the next few weeks during the 2008 Olympics hosted by China and the U.S. election season. These dialogues will address various specific political aspects of our planetary crisis, with its dangers and opportunities for a visionary and evolutionary shift. (We remember that the Chinese character for “crisis” is often described as meaning both “danger” when visioned from a fear perspective, and “opportunity” when visioned from a wisdom perspective.)
Following this dialogue with Ted Sorensen, other elders that will join me in coming weeks include Robert Thurman on the Why the Dalai Lama Matters: His Act of Truth as the Solution for China, Tibet, and the World, Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss on Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World, former Senator David Boren on A Letter to America, George Lakoff on The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st Century Politics with an 18th Century Brain, and others.
In my preceding dialogues with African teacher Sobonfu Some and others here on Living Dialogues, I have talked about how our fragmented, specialized modern culture often lacks a rich, nourishing sense of community, and how there is a yearning for unity and peace awakening in different countries all over the world -- where elders are starting to come forward in this time of planetary crisis, and previously indifferent and discouraged youth are voicing their concerns about the future. I have talked also about the foundational role of intimacy, relationships and appreciation in sharing our stories across generational, ethnic, gender, and national boundaries -- building bridges of understanding and wisdom in the cooperative spirit and reaching out required by our 21st century realities, and the essential roles that both youth and elders must play in our evolution for it to take place.
In the early part of the 19th century, the German poet and scientist Goethe observed: “The future of any given nation at any given time depends on the thoughts of its youth under five and twenty”. In the mid-20th century, the psychological historian Erik Erikson (author of Ghandi’s Truth and Youth: Identity and Crisis) called attention to what he termed the “ethical dialogue” which must take place continuously between open-minded elders sharing their experience and responding in co-creative, mutually respectful interchange to the concerns and perspectives of the next generations, in order for a nation’s civilization to survive.
In my dialogue with Michael Meade in Program 51 and its description, I observed how “the modern mind paradigm and its ‘mid-level’ national myths (including America’s dominance in the late 20th century, sometimes dubbed “the American Century”) are losing their energy and no longer have the hold on the planetary imagination they once did”. (See also my reference in the Episode Description of Program 51 to Fareed Zakaria, international editor of Newsweek magazine, and his new book The Post-American World).
And so, we begin this special political series with my dialogue with Ted Sorensen, who was the 11 years younger “youth” to John F. Kennedy’s “elder” during their extraordinarily important and visionary collaboration at the beginnings of the nuclear age from 1952 through Kennedy’s death in 1963. Now a highly-respected elder and sought-after counselor to many worldwide, Ted has performed an invaluable service by taking the last six years to prepare his new book, despite a debilitating stroke which significantly impaired his eyesight, to review documents, and meticulously chronicle, and share with us with his great gift of eloquence, the stories of those years with JFK in a manner supremely relevant to our time.
We start with Ted Sorensen’s elder recollections and stories of John Kennedy because in my view JFK was the first “21st century president” in outlook, a prophetic and inspiring voice -- since the policies he developed, working with Ted and other key advisors, and influenced by a newly-educated (thanks to the G.I. Bill) and awakening public, remain models of the internationalist policies we most need today: honoring both diversity and planetary unity based on cooperation rather than dominance.
Among those very successful policies were the creation, over much political objection at the time, of the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress for Latin America, in addition to mobilizing America’s scientific imagination and can-do technological innovation with his call in May 1961 for the Apollo moonshot program to be completed within 8 years and a few months, facing down the Soviet Cuban missile crisis threat in October 1962 with a successful policy of “vigilance, patience, and restraint”, and opening dialogue with Nikita Kruschev by unilaterally beginning the nuclear disarmament program in his June 1963 American University speech (the same location where 45 years later, the Kennedy torch would be passed by his family to Barack Obama).
All of these programs went beyond the conventional and self-interested horizons of the petroleum-based “military-industrial complex” Eisenhower warned against, and the fear-based thinking of those who sought dominance rather than mature discourse, including hawkish and lobbyist voices in the Congress and the Pentagon. The effect of JFK’s brief presidency was prophetic in its vision as to what would be required for a sustainable world, policies we would ignore at our peril in the decades that have followed, described even by liberal historian Sean Wilsey in the title to his book as “The Reagan Era: 1974-2008”. But despite other regressive policies, Ronald Reagan was himself later inspired by the Kennedy legacy, in seeking his own legacy, to reverse course -- abandoning his neo-conservative confrontational rhetoric calling the Soviet Union “the Evil Empire” -- and opening direct talks with Gorbachev, which ultimately led to the end of the 20th Century Cold War.
Having regressed in so many ways in the last decades, we are now in what I am calling a new 21st Century Great Struggle on a planetary scale on many fronts, military, economic, social, environmental (involving proliferating human conflicts over our attachment to scarce resources and resultant health and ecological crises, the 21st century manifestation of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse), acknowledged by Richard Bramson, for instance, as “a more dangerous time than World Wars I and II put together”.
This is the time for renewed dialogue, for visionary and inspiring discourse producing practical and innovative solutions together, to engage our own elder wisdom and youthful inspiration, and in so doing to experience and exemplify that “Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation”.
And that is what we all do, in our mutual roles as host, deep listeners, and guests, when we gather together here from all parts of the globe in Living Dialogues.
Other programs you will find of immediate interest on these themes are the Dialogues I have had with mythologist and keeper of world stories Michael Meade (Programs 48-51), world-renowned cross-cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien (Program 52), poet and translator of Persian poet Rumi Coleman Barks (Programs 3, 53-54), as well as Programs 13 and 14 with Byron Katie and Stephen Mitchell (editor of The Enlightened Heart, which contains the poem The Swan by Indian poet Kabir which I mention in Part 3 of my Programs 55-57 with African teacher Sobonfu Some). Also of directly related interest in terms of the founding and traditions of the U.S. during its tipping point 2008 election season, with its implications for global shifts, are my dialogues with historian Joseph Ellis, honored as “the Founders’ historian” by The New York Review of Books (see Programs 38 and 39).
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by clicking on the Episode Detail button at the top left of this program description, and by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey there (or click on the Listener Survey icon to the left of this column).
SUBSCRIBE HERE FOR FREE TO LIVING DIALOGUES AND IN THE COMING WEEKS HEAR DUNCAN CAMPELL’S DIALOGUES WITH OTHER GROUND-BREAKING TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKERS LISTED ON THE WEBSITE WWW.LIVINGDIALOGUES.COM. TO LISTEN TO PREVIOUS RELATED DIALOGUES ON THIS SITE, SCROLL DOWN ON THE LIVING DIALOGUES SHOW PAGE HERE -- OR CLICK ON THE NAME OF A GUEST ON THE LIST AT THE RIGHT -- TO HEAR DUNCAN’S DIALOGUES WITH DR. ANDREW WEIL, BRIAN WEISS, COLEMAN BARKS, RUPERT SHELDRAKE, LARRY DOSSEY, JUDY COLLINS, MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, MATTHEW FOX, JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE, DEEPAK CHOPRA, BYRON KATIE AND STEPHEN MITCHELL, CAROLINE MYSS, GANGAJI, VINE DELORIA, JR., MICHAEL DOWD (THE UNIVERSE STORY OF THOMAS BERRY AND BRIAN SWIMME), STEVE MCINTOSH, FRANCES MOORE LAPPE, STANISLAV GROF, RICHARD TARNAS, MARC BEKOFF AND JANE GOODALL, RICHARD MOSS, PAUL HAWKEN, PAUL RAY, JOSEPH ELLIS, DUANE ELGIN, LYNNE MCTAGGART, ECKHART TOLLE, MICHAEL MEADE, ANGELES ARRIEN, SOBONFU SOME AND OTHER EVOLUTIONARY THINKERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.
The best way to reach me is through my website: www.livingdialogues.com. Many thanks again for your attentive deep listening in helping co-create this program. All the best, Duncan.
P.S. As a way of further acknowledging and appreciating your part in these dialogues, and since I cannot personally answer all of them, I have begun to publish from time to time in these pages some of the numerous (unsolicited) appreciations received from you.
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LD 057: Sobonfu Some ? Part 3: The Essential Participation and Wisdom Gifts of Elders and Youth in Evolving Our Cultural Dialogue
Author: Duncan Campbell
Fri, Jul 25, 2008
Appreciations:
“Thank you Duncan for all the ways that you are enabling people to share their wisdom, and also for holding the torch for everybody to know how to find their way, and for just having a golden heart. I just so appreciate you. It is always so great to talk to you and to see the bright light you always shine on so many different subject matters. So thank you.” - Sobonfu Some
“For all that you’ve done Sobonfu I just want to honor you and just thank you. It’s been such a pleasure just to get to know you. And what I really appreciate about you is your ability to feel the depth of all of this range of challenges and sorrow and isolation, and as you put it loneliness and boredom, that are part of our world and yet find this beautiful sunny brilliance of spirit and humor especially to share with the world as you have.” - Duncan Campbell
“Living Dialogues are transformative! The very best "interviews" you will ever hear. Duncan Campbell, a world-class 'interviewer,' is sufficiently fascinating and well educated himself that he would make a good subject for an interview. His talent is to first, choose the great thinkers with whom to dialogue. He is then able to somehow not only 'see' the brilliance in each one, but to bring that out in his fantastic dialogues, which are more like a cosmic dance than an interview. Blessings are the result of experiencing the Living Dialogues. I highly recommend them. Five Stars!” - May 12, 2008, Sunshiny from Clarksville, Arkansas
Episode Description:
You can listen to and see the descriptions of Parts 1 and 2 of this 3-Part Dialogue on Programs 55 and 56 on this site.
The noted anthropologist Margaret Mead once observed: “For humanity to evolve, the conversation must deepen” – and, we might add, for our societies to flourish and even survive, the conversation must also broaden to include two groups often neglected and marginalized in our political culture: elders and youth.
As I said in Part 1 of my conversation with Sobonfu Some:
“We are all of us going through an initiation in the sense of being forced out of the comfort zone of whatever our particular literal, metaphorical, or mental “village” may be – just as you were Sobonfu in your life story. We are all now obliged to go out into a wider world, and learn another language or several other emotional languages, and to begin to weave a real planetary consciousness because it’s the only way we’re going to be whole. I think of dialogue as an essential element of this process. The dialogue between elders and youth in terms of age – and the dialogue between elder and younger cultures in terms of time on the planet. The dialogue between men and women, between ethnicities, between nations. Because everyone in this participation has a particular wisdom and a particular knowledge to give, including the younger cultures and the young people. Things are changing so fast on the planet that elder persons and cultures don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle, no matter how long they have been on the planet. And so they themselves need this revitalizing connection with the younger ones who carry certain knowledge within them. And the young in turn need a certain kind of mentoring and embrace and respect in being seen by the elders -- and vice-versa -- in order to realize their full potential. So it’s such a beautiful but also very challenging initiation that we are being called to.”
In this Part 3, Sobonfu and I bring the larger story full circle in seeing with further perspective the essential roles that both youth and elders must play in our evolution for it to take place.
Other programs you will find of immediate interest on these themes are the Dialogues I have had with Michael Meade (Programs 48-51), Angeles Arrien (Program 52), and Coleman Barks (Programs 53-54), as well as Programs 13 and 14 with Byron Katie and Stephen Mitchell (editor of The Enlightened Heart, which contains the Kabir poem The Swan which I mention in this Part 3 dialogue with Sobonfu).
Here are some excerpts from this Part 3:
Sobonfu: I really believe that in order to be able to change the way things are, if we want to make peace or live in peace in this world, we have to really begin with our children, our youth, and with our elders…So far I haven’t seen any culture survive without their children…and the same with the elders, because the elders are the grounding force in the community. We don’t actually ask enough of their input and yet they have much to share. We simply think of them as being old. But in our Dagara tradition, the word “old” means someone who has been cooked in the juice of life and has now this lasting effect…
So if we can begin to see in our elders someone who has wisdom, great ways to share that wisdom, then we won’t have to recreate the wheel of life all over. We can simply draw from their wisdom and continue to stand proudly on the shoulders of our ancestors in order to be able to bring our gifts in the best possible way. But until that happens, until our elders and our children, our youth, receive support and respect, we are always going to feel lost in the middle because no one is there to support us or to create a bridge for us to walk on…
Duncan: …Some of the things that have been fragmented, and “broken” in Alice Walker’s phrase, by the younger, modern culture we might see as a necessary ritualistic and initiatic breaking away from prior traditional concepts that became and have become too closed. In any kind of mystery of initiation there is a breaking away. There is a breaking down and a replacement with a new and different form. If we look at this from a planetary perspective we might say that the intensity of the individualism of theWest has itself become too closed and stuck, and so has in that very stuckness called forth teachers from the older cultures such as your own and such as yourself and others from many parts of the world, as well as new fresh perspectives from a younger generation, to come and work together in a kind of mutual weaving and mutual healing, becoming whole, and mutual co-creation of a new planetary wisdom culture…
We are working together to create a planetary culture by appreciating the history of our own and different cultures and sharing our stories. This is what I have sometimes called the “repository of lived wisdom”, the “deep memory and stories of the culture” that reside in true elders of whatever chronological age, and I have such appreciation for the gifts that you have given…I believe part of it from my own perspective is that we are all becoming planetary citizens…
It reminds me when I was traveling in the great ancient holy city of Varanasi in India, where one of the things I wanted to do was to make a personal pilgrimage to honor the connection and appreciation I felt with the great 15th century poet, Kabir, a weaver by trade who was both Hindu and Muslim and beyond both. My guide and I searched and searched until we found his effectively anonymous birthplace. It was marked by a tiny temple, next to a little “tank”, as they call it, a small pool of water constructed in the middle of an urban neighborhood with winding alleyways. There were twelve people gathered around the temple at sunset saying his poetry, and they invited me to share in our mutual appreciation of Kabir. I spoke a poem of his that had touched me deeply -- about the heart’s journey, symbolized by the flight of a swan, to its own true home (translated in its own pilgrimage from the original Hindi into English by Tagore, then into Polish by Czeslaw Milosz, then back into English by Milosz and Robert Hass). In return they said to me: “Yes, very good -- Kabir says ‘we are all pilgrims on this great earth’”. I think from any culture in any time period we are all pilgrims (the Canterbury Tales comes to mind), sharing our stories as we go along together through this heartfelt journey into and ceaselessly manifesting the beauty of the creation which is our common source.”
And that is precisely what we all do, in our mutual roles as host, deep listeners, and guests, when we gather together here from all parts of the globe in Living Dialogues.
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by clicking on the Episode Detail button at the top left of this program description, and by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey there (or click on the Listener Survey icon to the left of this column).
SUBSCRIBE HERE FOR FREE TO LIVING DIALOGUES AND IN THE COMING WEEKS HEAR DUNCAN CAMPELL’S DIALOGUES WITH OTHER GROUND-BREAKING TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKERS LISTED ON THE WEBSITE WWW.LIVINGDIALOGUES.COM. TO LISTEN TO PREVIOUS RELATED DIALOGUES ON THIS SITE, SCROLL DOWN ON THE LIVING DIALOGUES SHOW PAGE HERE -- OR CLICK ON THE NAME OF A GUEST ON THE LIST AT THE RIGHT -- TO HEAR DUNCAN’S DIALOGUES WITH DR. ANDREW WEIL, BRIAN WEISS, COLEMAN BARKS, RUPERT SHELDRAKE, LARRY DOSSEY, JUDY COLLINS, MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, MATTHEW FOX, JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE, DEEPAK CHOPRA, BYRON KATIE AND STEPHEN MITCHELL, CAROLINE MYSS, GANGAJI, VINE DELORIA, JR., MICHAEL DOWD (THE UNIVERSE STORY OF THOMAS BERRY AND BRIAN SWIMME), STEVE MCINTOSH, FRANCES MOORE LAPPE, STANISLAV GROF, RICHARD TARNAS, MARC BEKOFF AND JANE GOODALL, RICHARD MOSS, PAUL HAWKEN, PAUL RAY, JOSEPH ELLIS, DUANE ELGIN, LYNNE MCTAGGART, ECKHART TOLLE, MICHAEL MEADE, ANGELES ARRIEN AND OTHER EVOLUTIONARY THINKERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.
The best way to reach me is through my website: www.livingdialogues.com. Many thanks again for your attentive deep listening in helping co-create this program. All the best, Duncan.
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LD 056: Sobonfu Some ? Part 2: The Gifts of Intimacy, Relationship and Appreciation as Evolution?s Essence
Author: Duncan Campbell
Thu, Jul 17, 2008
Appreciations:
“Thank you Duncan for all the ways that you are enabling people to share their wisdom, and also for holding the torch for everybody to know how to find their way, and for just having a golden heart. I just so appreciate you. It is always so great to talk to you and to see the bright light you always shine on so many different subject matters. So thank you.” - Sobonfu Some
“For all that you’ve done Sobonfu I just want to honor you and just thank you. It’s been such a pleasure just to get to know you. And what I really appreciate about you is your ability to feel the depth of all of this range of challenges and sorrow and isolation, and as you put it loneliness and boredom, that are part of our world and yet find this beautiful sunny brilliance of spirit and humor especially to share with the world as you have.” - Duncan Campbell
“Living Dialogues are transformative! The very best "interviews" you will ever hear. Duncan Campbell, a world-class 'interviewer,' is sufficiently fascinating and well educated himself that he would make a good subject for an interview. His talent is to first, choose the great thinkers with whom to dialogue. He is then able to somehow not only 'see' the brilliance in each one, but to bring that out in his fantastic dialogues, which are more like a cosmic dance than an interview. Blessings are the result of experiencing the Living Dialogues. I highly recommend them. Five Stars!” - May 12, 2008, Sunshiny from Clarksville, Arkansas
Episode Description:
You can listen to and see the description of Part 1 of this 3-Part Dialogue on Program 55 on this site.
In this Part 2, Sobonfu and I dialogue about the foundational role of intimacy, relationships and appreciation in extending and bringing to fruition the initiations we spoke about in Part 1, and finding and living our purpose and how our name has a meaning. This also includes a fascinating and playful dialogue on the cross-cultural understanding of age from Sobonfu’s tradition, illuminating how to access a perception at once wise and childlike that sees and appreciates each new situation appropriately in its essence without judgmentalism. Black Elk, Brooke Medicine Eagle, Angeles Arrien, Henry Miller, Lao Tzu, and others find their way into these shared stories and perceptions.
Other programs you will find of immediate interest on these themes are the Dialogues I have had with Michael Meade (Programs 48-51), Angeles Arrien (Program 52), and Coleman Barks (Programs 53-54).
Here are some excerpts from this Part 2:
Duncan: In our prior dialogue we talked about your life and how you came here from the Dagara tribe in West Africa, landing originally in the middle of winter in Detroit, Michigan and the ways in which in that particular initiation you discovered the absence of community when you had to make a life directly here in a strange country and one really quite far removed from the intimacy of the small village life rich in ritual and wisdom of the old ways that you had come from in Africa. And since arriving here many years ago in 1991 you have not only learned English but you've shared the wisdom and beauty of your own experience and initiation and all of its challenges and ups and downs of initiation in several books, including one entitled "The Spirit of Intimacy: Ancient Teachings in the Ways of Relationships".
And in that book, given my own calling to dialogue and evolution, I was inspired by your focus on relationships. Because I think it’s a bridge to the deeper sense of community that you teach about and bring forth in your work…..the very multi-faceted deep way that you have talked about relationship as being part of a core of the human experience and one that you have found as Alice Walker put it, somewhat "broken" here in the West when you arrived.
Sobonfu: Right……Relationship really basically is something, its just like air that everybody needs. It’s just something that we all crave whether we are out in the street or somewhere in our private office or even being in the monastery. We all long to be loved, to be seen, to be valued…..acceptance is what we are looking for. When we are accepted we feel a part of something bigger. We feel doorways opening to us that we didn't know existed before. So the road to intimacy in my tradition not only include people, the environment you are in, but also Sprit, the Divine. Because no true intimacy can be without the present sense and the blessing of the Divine.
So as a result intimacy becomes like the foundation stone for each human being to step on, on which the relationship is going to be created. So for me, when I talk about intimacy, when I talk about my relationship, I am always look for what is the bigger purpose for me to encounter this person. What is Spirit wanting me to do here and so forth. However as much as the human ego would like it to be about us, it is not about us. It’s about something higher. It’s about trying to bring a gift out into the world. and that's why we encounter new people. Even if it’s a brief moment or a long-term relationship they all have their purpose. So for me, relationship, spirit, community, all go hand in hand because you cannot uphold a relationship all by yourself. You need the support of community and you need the support of Spirit and so forth.
Duncan: And one of the things I am think of as you are speaking Sobonfu is that in traditional societies all over the world from time in memorial there has been the recognition of the need for the human being to first leave the community in a kind of initiation of aloneness to see certain kinds of visions or images which reveal to the individual what their unique gift is in the world; their unique mission we might say. Before they then come back to be able to share that as a part of the piece of the larger puzzle of the community. And we think in modern times of Black Elk (as recounted in Black Elk Speaks) in his vision quest and his wonderful saying when he came back from his own alone time separated from he community and had his great vision he came back and said: "I understood more than I saw. And I saw more than I can say. And what I can say is that I saw the hoop of my people and the hoops of all peoples surrounding the central mountain, Mt. Harney” (that happens to be the sacred mountain in his particular geographic location of South Dakota in the United States). And then he said as Joseph Campbell put it the all important addendum: “but the central mountain is everywhere”.
And in that statement we see that this journey that human beings have made from time immemorial from the collective embrace of the womb of the mother, the womb of the family, the womb of the community out into a lonely journey of let us say adolescent initiation into the deeper mysteries of the world. And then the coming back into community, in maturity, and being able to embody one could say the sacred marriage of the inner masculine and the inner feminine and then to make a living marriage and to create new life so that the community of beings can continue in the great universal drama. Human and planetary evolution is something that has an inner structure that is similar everywhere in the world. And as each one of us tells his or her story about how they have gone through that great timeless initiation we add to each others storehouse of understanding and acceptance. And oddly enough it is often a gift of hearing someone else's story that allows each of us to accept ourselves more deeply than we have before.
Sobonfu: Right. Absolutely. I think those are the stories that are important because the circle is not always there for people to share their story. So in meeting somebody new and in them sharing their story, in us sharing our story, we have already created a bridge that is safe for each on of us to walk on. And also for us to be able to open and to share what is that gift is that we are bringing. That is what is so beautiful in this time when it’s possible for people to basically be able to travel everywhere, to meet new people and to share their story. And every single time that they have shared with somebody and they have also listened and received this story of the other person something new is born out of them. A new level of their gift begins to shine again. And that is that beauty that we are all searching for in sharing our own story.
Duncan: And that is precisely what we all do, in our mutual roles as host, deep listeners, and guests, when we gather together here from all parts of the globe in Living Dialogues.
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by clicking on the Episode Detail button at the top left of this program description, and by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey there (or click on the Listener Survey icon to the left of this column).
SUBSCRIBE HERE FOR FREE TO LIVING DIALOGUES AND IN THE COMING WEEKS HEAR DUNCAN CAMPELL’S DIALOGUES WITH OTHER GROUND-BREAKING TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKERS LISTED ON THE WEBSITE WWW.LIVINGDIALOGUES.COM. TO LISTEN TO PREVIOUS RELATED DIALOGUES ON THIS SITE, SCROLL DOWN ON THE LIVING DIALOGUES SHOW PAGE HERE -- OR CLICK ON THE NAME OF A GUEST ON THE LIST AT THE RIGHT -- TO HEAR DUNCAN’S DIALOGUES WITH DR. ANDREW WEIL, BRIAN WEISS, COLEMAN BARKS, RUPERT SHELDRAKE, LARRY DOSSEY, JUDY COLLINS, MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, MATTHEW FOX, JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE, DEEPAK CHOPRA, BYRON KATIE AND STEPHEN MITCHELL, CAROLINE MYSS, GANGAJI, VINE DELORIA, JR., MICHAEL DOWD (THE UNIVERSE STORY OF THOMAS BERRY AND BRIAN SWIMME), STEVE MCINTOSH, FRANCES MOORE LAPPE, STANISLAV GROF, RICHARD TARNAS, MARC BEKOFF AND JANE GOODALL, RICHARD MOSS, PAUL HAWKEN, PAUL RAY, JOSEPH ELLIS, DUANE ELGIN, LYNNE MCTAGGART, ECKHART TOLLE, MICHAEL MEADE, ANGELES ARRIEN AND OTHER EVOLUTIONARY THINKERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.
The best way to reach me is through my website: www.livingdialogues.com. Many thanks again for your attentive deep listening in helping co-create this program. All the best, Duncan.
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