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Alberto Villoldo, PhD
- the founder of The Four Winds Society,
trained as a psychologist and medical anthropologist and has investigated the
traditions of the Andes and the Amazon for more than 25 years. He has developed
a body of shamanic knowledge that is readily accessible to the West, and
provides us with a scientific framework through which we can learn the ancient
healing practices which can be “known but not told.” His newest book, Shaman, Healer, Sage, was selected as
book of the month by the One Spirit Book Club. He lectures and trains widely, as
well as seeing private clients.
Arthur Hull
is recognized as the father of the community drum circle movement.
He is a motivational speaker, keynote presenter and an
internationally acclaimed master at facilitating groups of people
through a common experience using music and rhythm. Since 1985,
Arthur has used the Village Music Circles™ metaphor to build team
spirit and promote unity in corporations, schools and communities
worldwide. As a performing musician for 30 years Arthur has studied
and worked with many renowned percussionists including Babatunde
Olatunji, Hamza El Din, and Mickey Hart of The
Grateful Dead. Arthur is a Signature Series Endorsee for REMO,
Inc., and has designed many REMO World Percussion Drums and
facilitates national and international REMO sponsored events.
Barbara Marx Hubbard
is a noted futurist, author, and public speaker who shows that while the
multiple, converging crises our planet is going through may appear meaningless,
painful and confusing, they are simply birth pains. A new state of
consciousness is being born, re-ordering the future of our species and the very
cells of our bodies. She is president of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution
and one of the co-founding board members of the World Future Society.
“There is no doubt in my mind that
Barbara Marx Hubbard…is the best
informed human now alive regarding
futurism and the foresights it has produced.”
R. Buckminster Fuller
Recommended reading:
Brooke
Medicine Eagle
is an American native Earthkeeper, teacher, ceremonial leader,
sacred ecologist, songwriter, Feng Shui practitioner and catalyst for wholeness,
whose dedication is to bring forward the ancient truths concerning how to live a
fully human life in sustaining harmony with All Our Relations. She is a member
of Sacred Ground International, an educational foundation based in sustainable
living and buffalo ranching on her home Crow Reservation. She is the author of a
spiritual autobiography, Buffalo Woman Comes Singing; and her new book on
the transformational practices of Earth magic and ascending into our greater
humanity, The Last Ghost Dance.
Recommended reading:
Carlos
Castaneda † and his
party have had a significant impact in bringing an awareness of shamanism and
other realities to many in western culture. Time Magazine
describes Castaneda as an "enigmatic personality who was either an
unfairly vilified anthropologist or a wildly inventive novelist." Either way, he
opened the doors of perception for many.
Recommended reading:
Chamalú, a
Quechua Indian trained in traditional Andean Shamanism, was born in Bolivia and
is Founder of the growing Pachamama Movement in South America and
Europe. He founded the Janajpacha (meaning Paradise) Community in a
purpose-built traditional mountain village in his native Bolivia. This
remarkable international center of healing therapy, initiation and ecological
education attracts people from all over the world.
Chamalú's writings incorporate the lyrical use of verse-like prose and
have been compared to The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. They
are a celebration of that magic communion. It is the true shaman's insight into
what humanity has lost and must rediscover if it is to survive. His
teachings provide an exciting introduction to the indigenous wisdom of the
Andes, about being closer to nature, healing the earth and venerating its sacred
places.
Recommended reading:
Christina Grof, Ph.D.
is an author, teacher, artist, founder of the Spiritual Emergence
Network, and co-creator of Holotropic Breathwork™. She is president of Grof
Transpersonal Training, Inc., vice-president emeritus of the International
Transpersonal Association, and an advisor to the board of the Spiritual
Emergence Network.
Recommended reading:
Coleman Barks
is the author of numerous
Rumi translations and he has been a student of Sufism since 1977.
His work with Rumi was the subject of an hour-long segment in Bill Moyer’s
Language of Life series on PBS (1995).
“I wait beside these poems with a
kind of heart-listening…I'm not the cook, more a strangely elated waiter
bringing out dishes. I hope I am at times to be the empty screen on which
Rumi’s joy and grief can play. These poems are beyond me. That's why
I love working on them. They draw me where I have to go.” --Coleman
Barks
“Not since the popularity of The Prophet
by Kahlil Gibran in the 1960s has a poet made such a dent in American culture.
And if any one person could be said to be responsible for the Rumi renaissance
it would have to be Coleman Barks.” --The New York Times
Recommended reading:
Colin Wilson
burst upon the literary scene with his bestseller The Outsider when he was 25.
He is an enormously
prolific writer with some 80 major
works to his credit which deal with a wide variety of subjects:
existential philosophy, religion, occult and supernatural phenomena, music, sex,
archaeology, astronomy, and cosmology. His most recent book is The
Atlantis Blueprint with Rand Flem-Ath.
Recommended reading:
Dan
Millman is a past world champion gymnast,
university coach and college professor whose disillusion with "the usual life"
sent him around the world and into the depths of his mind and heart. His
experiences generated an approach to life he calls the way of the peaceful
warrior. Dan has been trained to recognize the basic life-patterns which
lie beneath the theater of our lives. His Peaceful Warrior Program
for Transformation covers practical methods for improved mental clarity,
emotional freedom, and physical vitality in daily life.
Recommended reading:
Deepak Chopra, M.D.
has written twenty-five books, which have been translated into thirty-five
languages. He is also the
author of more than one hundred
audio- and videotape series, including five critically acclaimed programs on
public television. In 1999 Time magazine selected Dr. Chopra as one
of the Top 100 Icons and Heroes of the Century, describing him as “the
poet-prophet of alternative medicine.”
Dr. Chopra currently serves as CEO and founder of The Chopra Center
for Well Being in La Jolla, California. Dr. Chopra is acknowledged
as one of the world's greatest leaders in the field of mind body medicine,
continuing to transform our understanding of the meaning of health. His
work is changing the way the world views physical, mental, emotional, spiritual
and social wellness.
Recommended reading:
Deva Premal & Miten - Deva Premal grew up in a spiritual family where she was introduced
at an early age to chanting and meditation. Her mother is a music teacher
and her father an artist. As a child she studied the violin and later in
life found that it was her voice that was her instrument. Miten, her
partner in life and in music, established a successful career in the '70s and
'80s as a singer songwriter touring with such bands as Fleetwood Mac,
Ry Cooder, and Lou Reed. He left that life to pursue a more
spiritual path living in a commune and practicing meditation. It was here
he met Premal and found his music coming from a deeper source. These two
musicians have traveled the world for the past 10 years almost year round --
constantly singing in concert and in workshops. This life has become their
meditation, and their gift.
Doreen Virtue
is a fourth-generation metaphysician and clairvoyant spiritual healer who holds
B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in counseling psychology. She is a faculty
member of the American Institute of Hypnotherapy, and an advisory board member
of The Depossession Institute, a professional organization of
spirit-releasement therapists. Dr. Virtue's work has been featured
in McCall's, USA Today, and Woman's Day; and she has
appeared on Touched By An Angel, Oprah, Good Morning America, The View with
Barbara Walters, and many other shows. After many years of helping patients
using traditional psychotherapy, Dr. Virtue began to incorporate her
intuitive skills and angelic messages into the therapeutic process.
“As we move into the millennium,
the angels are speaking and making their presence known to more and more of us,
and we are listening.”
Dr. Virtue has shared a
timeless tool for us to use as we are called to collectively heal our planet and
ourselves. The angels are here more now than ever because of the millennium
shift. This is the time, which prophecies predicted when the heavens would open
and the angels would sing. We are in one of the most exciting times in history,
and the angels are here to help us usher in the new age of peace.
Recommended reading:
Edgar Mitchell, Ph.D., an
Apollo astronaut who having taken the hero's journey to the moon and returned,
brilliantly delineates how humankind's exploration of both outer and inner space
represents the next epoch in the evolution of life itself, a process over which
human beings have increasing control. Dr. Mitchell founded the Institute
of Noetic Sciences
in 1973
"to expand knowledge of the nature
and potentials of the mind and spirit, and to apply that knowledge to advance
health and well-being for humanity and our planet."
He has spent over twenty years
studying human consciousness and psychic and paranormal phenomena in the search
for a common ground between science and spirit.
Recommended reading:
Ervin Laszlo, Ph.D.,
founder and President of the
Club of Budapest, was one of the first representatives in the area
of systems philosophy and general theory of evolution. He published nearly 70
books translated into as many as 18 languages. In the course of his long
academic career as a professor for philosophy, systems philosophy and future
sciences, he worked in teaching and research at a variety of reputable
universities in the US, Europe, and the Far East.
Recommended reading:
Fred Alan Wolf
earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from UCLA. He continues to write,
lecture throughout the world, and conduct research on the relationship of
quantum physics to consciousness. He is the National Book Award Winning
author of Taking the Quantum Leap and many other books including The
Spiritual Universe. He is a member of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collegium
of Scholars. Dr. Wolf has taught at the University of London, the
University of Paris, the Hahn-Meitner Institute for Nuclear Physics in Berlin,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and San Diego State University in the United
States. His latest book is entitled Mind into Matter.
Recommended reading:
Gabrielle Roth is
founder and director of The Moving Center and is an
internationally renowned theater director, philosopher, and recording artist who
has created her own form of ecstatic dance. She is the best-selling author of
Maps to Ecstasy: A Healing Journey for the Untamed Spirit and
Sweat Your Prayers: Movement as Spiritual Practice. Her teachings, for
the past thirty-five years have permeated many areas of the culture and included
many diverse settings such as schools, hospitals, corporate offices, theaters
and growth centers. Her work has been featured in numerous national
publications. Her award winning musical recordings are on the cutting edge
of shamanic trance/dance music. Roth's workshops have an electric
intensity that mates contemporary currents of rock music, modern theater and
poetry to the ancient pulse of shamanism.
Recommended reading:
"Gregg
Braden is a rare blend of scientist,
visionary and scholar with the ability to speak to our minds, while touching the
wisdom of our hearts.”
-Deepak Chopra, M.D.
Best selling author and guide to sacred sites throughout the world,
Gregg
Braden has been a featured guest for international conferences and media
specials bridging ancient wisdom and modern science. A former earth scientist
and senior aerospace computer systems designer (Phillips Petroleum, Martin
Marietta Aerospace, Cisco Systems)
Braden
is now considered a
leading authority on bridging ancient traditions and the science of our
future. His journeys into the remote mountain villages, monasteries, and
temples of times past, coupled with his background in the hard sciences,
uniquely qualify him to bring the benefit of long-lost traditions to the
forefront of our lives today. Captivating audiences of all ages, Braden
empowers our lives with a life-affirming message of hope, through his remarkable
synthesis of science and spirituality.
Recommended reading:
Hank
Wesselman, Ph.D. has worked for 25 years
with an international group of scientists investigating the mystery of human
origins out in East Africa's Great Rift Valley. In the 1970s, while doing
fieldwork in the remote, arid landscapes of Southern Ethiopia, he began to
experience spontaneous, extraordinary expanded states of awareness similar to
those of traditional shamans. In an attempt to understand, he went beyond
scholarly research into direct, personal contact with the ancient methods
practiced by tribal people for achieving mystical states. Wesselman
is an anthropologist who has taught anthropology at the University of California
at San Diego and the University of Hawaii at Hilo, and currently offers classes
at American River College and Sierra College in northern California.
Recommended reading:
Howard
Martin is co-author with Doc Childre
of the book, The HeartMath Solution, and is an Executive Vice President
and Chief Creativity Officer of HeartMath LLC and was one of the original
leaders who helped Doc Childre found HeartMath. HeartMath is at
the forefront of human development with techniques that use the transforming
power of the heart to release stress, access higher levels of intelligence,
establish emotional balance and stimulate higher brain functioning. Howard has
been with HeartMath's world-wide training and consulting team
since 1991 and has been instrumental in developing and teaching HeartMath's
practical, yet dynamic, programs in mental and emotional balance and personal
efficiency to thousands of program participants. Howard Martin
shares breakthrough scientific research which shows that the heart is the
control tower of the body's systems and overall health. These
life-altering techniques show how to deepen the qualities long associated with
heart-intuition, compassion, courage, love,
appreciation and joy. As a result,
one can tap into a power that can greatly improve performance, health and
relationships.
Recommended reading:
Huston Smith, holder
of eleven honorary degrees, is considered to be the world’s foremost religious
scholar. His book The World's Religions
has been the most widely used textbook on its subject for a third of a century.
Counting its several editions, it has sold over two and a half million copies
world-wide. In his work, this eloquent, warm, and accessible teacher
presents his passionate, vital message about the full potential of the human
spirit. Smith also takes us into the religious significance of entheogenic
plants and chemical. In 1996, Bill Moyers
devoted a 5-part PBS special to Smith's life and work, "The Wisdom of
Faith with Huston Smith." Smith has produced three series for public television:
"The Religions of Man," "The Search for America," and (with Arthur Compton)
"Science and Human Responsibility." His films on Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and
Sufism have all won awards at international film festivals.
Recommended reading:
Hunbatz
Men is a Mayan Elder, Day Keeper
- an authority on the history, rituals, art, ancient healing techniques,
chronology and calendar systems of Mayan civilization. The Daykeeper,
in the tradition of the Maya, is the recipient of knowledge that
has been passed down from generation to generation through centuries of time. It
is an oral tradition that implies a lifetime of learning. His teachings contain
revelations that are most needed in today's anxious world and are a great
contribution to the quest for the ultimate truth.
Recommended reading:
Hyemeyohsts Storm is
the legendary and world renowned author and teacher who first introduced the
knowledge of the Medicine Wheels, the Legacy of the Zero Chiefs
and their Sacred Medicine Wheel Teachings, to the modern world in his best
selling classic Seven Arrows, published in 1972, and now in its 46th
printing. He is a Northern Cheyenne and German mixed blood, who was born
and raised on Indian reservations in Montana. Storm
is the Founder and Director of the Spiritual organization - The Circle of the
Earth Temple and Institute, and the Founder and Director of the International
School of Metis Art, and is an artist and teacher, as well as a writer.
Recommended reading:
Swan Storm
is an American Metis (mixed blood) woman and is Hyemeyohsts Storm's
partner in Life and in Teaching. For over fourteen years she has studied the
Knowledge of ancient Earth Teachers, Leaders and Zero Chiefs, who were women of
the Medicine Wheel Teachings and Ancient Ceremonial Wisdom. Swan
is now a highly respected
Earth Teacher in her own right and is currently completing her
first book and a musical CD.
Ilona Selke
brings us an inspiring adventure that invites us to use our imaginations to
bridge to an invisible world, reaching beyond the confines of the physical. Her
techniques come from researching the dolphins of the Hawaiian Islands and
finding out about the workings of their holographic thought processes as they
move within a “dreamtime” dimension. Ilona's visionary work is an
inspiring adventure that invites us to recreate our world through accessing the
wisdom of dolphins and the dimensions of the dreamtime.
Recommended reading:
Jai Uttal,
highly acclaimed sacred music composer, recording
artist, multi-instrumentalist, and ecstatic vocalist, combines influences from
India with influences from American rock and jazz, creating a stimulating and
exotic multi-cultural fusion that
is truly world spirit music. The
Kirtan presentation by Jai and Geoffrey at The Prophets
Conference Victoria had the crowd singing and dancing in utmost
celebratory joy.
Jai Uttal and Geoffrey Gordon have taught workshops together at
Esalen Institute, California Institute of Integral Studies, Omega Institute,
Yoga Journal Conferences, International Transpersonal Association, Body and Soul
Conferences, as well as yoga centers in the U.S. and internationally.
Recommended listening (Music CDs):
James
Redfield
synthesized his interest in interactive psychology, Eastern and Western
philosophy, science, futurism, ecology, history, and mysticism in The
Celestine Prophecy. This adventure parable about a spiritual journey
to Peru created a model for spiritual perception and actualization that
resonated with millions of people and focused on the mysterious coincidences
that occur in each of our lives. It has become one of one of the most
successful self-published books of all time. In October 1997 Redfield
was awarded the highly prestigious Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Senate
at the XXIII Pio Manzu International Conference in Rimini, Italy.
Pio Manzu is a non-governmental arm of the United Nations headed
up by
Mikhail Gorbachev.
Recommended reading:
Jan Phillips
is an award-winning writer, photographer, video producer, and
workshop director. She is the author of God Is at Eye Level - Photography as
a Healing Art (Quest Books, 2000), Marry Your Muse - Making a Lasting
Commitment to Your Creativity (Chicago: Quest Books, 1997), Making Peace
- One Woman's Journey Around the World
(New York: Friendship Press, 1990), and co-author of A Waist is a Terrible
Thing to Mind—A Wake Up Call. Her work has appeared in the New York Times,
Ms., New Age Magazine, Harper's, Christian Science Monitor, National Catholic
Reporter, Utne Reader, Texas Highways, and in dozens of newspapers and magazines
around the world. Her photographs have been exhibited at the National Women's
Hall of Frame, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Los Angeles County
Museum, Tyler Art Gallery, the Children's Museum, Sarah Lawrence College Gallery
and in several international venues. As an artist/activist,
Jan's commitment to spiritual healing and social justice resonates in her
work and her workshops are vibrant with that passion and sensibility.
Recommended reading:
Jean
Houston, Ph.D., is a scholar and researcher
in human capacities, and for the past 30 years has co-directed, with her husband
Dr. Robert Masters, the Foundation for Mind Research, first in New York City
and now in Pomona, New York. Their work has focused on the understanding of
latent human abilities. She is the founded of the Mystery School --a program of cross-cultural mythic and spiritual studies dedicated to teaching
history, philosophy, the new physics, psychology, anthropology, myth, and the
many dimensions of our human potential. Dr. Houston was the protégé of
the late anthropologist Margaret Mead, who instructed her in the workings
of organizations and power structures in many different cultures. With the late
mythologist
Joseph Campbell, Jean Houston frequently co-led seminars and
workshops aimed at understanding interrelationships between ancient myths and
modern societies.
Recommended reading:
Joan
Phillips Ocean, M.S.W.
shares the ancient wisdom uncovered during her research work with dolphins and
whales. She experiences their gentle communications as sound holography, a
"language" that intensifies physical senses, bypasses rational-cognitive
paradigms, resonates directly with our cellular intelligence, and awakens
multiple levels of perception and consciousness. Ocean has devoted her life to
"participatory research"—swimming among the dolphins and whales, watching and
learning from them as they transcend linear sensory reality and expand into the
larger Universe where the unknown civilizations welcome us. She explains
that a merging of different dimensions, of differing planes of existence, is
occurring now and that when we choose to prepare ourselves mentally, physically,
emotionally and spiritually to cross thresholds of consciousness, our belief
systems will expand to accommodate these beautiful, unknown, yet faintly
familiar realms.
Recommended reading:
Joanne Shenandoah,
Wolf Clan, Oneida Nation, Six Nations
Iroquois, has been selected as North America's Native Artist of the Year (2003).
With 12 albums to her credit and a Grammy Nomination she has been described by
the Associated Press as the most honored aboriginal musician of her time. She
has nine Native American Music Awards as well as an honorary doctorate from
Syracuse University.
John Perry Barlow
is a former lyricist for the
Grateful Dead, and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation. Since May of 1998, he has been a Fellow at Harvard Law School's
Berkman Center for Internet and Society, following a term as a Fellow with the
Institute of Politics at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Barlow could be described as an outspoken advocate for opening technology
information as an avenue to create needed changes as a form of conscious
evolution, understanding, freedom and community. He has written for a diversity
of publications, including Communications of the ACM, Mondo 2000, The New York
Times, and Time. He has been on the masthead of Wired Magazine since it was
founded. His piece on the future of copyright, "The Economy of Ideas" is taught
in many law schools and his "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" is
posted on thousands of web sites. He was the first to apply the term Cyberspace
to the "place" it presently describes.
Recommended listening:
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