by Stacey Nemour, black belt in Kung Fu, and highly respected martial artist

It is said when the student is ready the teacher will appear. In this case, spiritually-aware people in entertainment and media have been waiting for a movement that will echo the awakening now happening around the world. And it has arrived, in the form of “GATE.”

John Raatz is the founder and Eckhart Tolle and Jim Carrey are honorary co-founders. The Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment (GATE) is shepherding the emerging and rapidly expanding transformational entertainment and media genre worldwide.

I interviewed John about the upcoming “GATE 2,” which is an event that cultivates, promotes and advances collaborations between transformational content creators and purveyors, and it is open for all those interested in being part of the expansion of the transformational genre that is currently happening around the world.

According to John, “Many have thought that religion, big business or government would save us … but, with most of these institutions in serious disarray today, the one remaining infrastructure through which wisdom and possible solutions can flow is the entertainment industry and all forms of media. Many people within the industry are already transformationally oriented. One of our missions is to bring together these individuals and assist them in creating and disseminating content of a transformational nature for the benefit of all humanity, of the world.”

Raatz feels that each person in the entertainment and media industry has a role and a responsibility to facilitate personal, social and global transformation. He explained his observation that “there is a schism between the business and creative sides of the entertainment industry. One that’s usually been there. Often, the creative side wants to develop meaningful, more transformationally oriented product, while the business side is focused on commercial value. Once in a while, they coincide.

“This also reflects a general split in our culture — an imbalance that favors commercial success over deeper, more personal success on a human level. Whatever is happening on a microcosmic level is also happening in the larger reality; it is all mirrored back. And now’s the time to try to find a healthier balance, when so much of our world is threatened in so many ways. That’s what GATE is seeking to do in the entertainment and media industries.”

Raatz continues, “Many Native American tribes would sit in council when they had an important decision to make. If it was determined that the decision would negatively impact any of the next seven generations, they simply would not do it. We need to bring more of that spirit to the decisions we make in all aspects of our lives.”

Eckhart Tolle, author and spiritual teacher, GATE honorary founder, notes, “The only actions that don’t cause opposing reactions are those aimed at the good of all. Inclusive, not exclusive. They join; they don’t separate. They are not for ‘my’ country, but for all of humanity, not for ‘my’ religion but for the emergence of consciousness in all human beings.” That spirit is also often embodied in transformational entertainment and media, according to Raatz. Tolle will be speaking at GATE 2.

Jim Carrey, actor/activist and GATE honorary founder, has said, “I am so lucky to be a part of this community, and to do something that is of value.” Carrey will also be speaking at GATE 2.

John identified the audience for transformational entertainment and media as one that is rarely paid attention to: what he calls the Cultural Creatives. In early 2000, two sociologists were commissioned to record Americans’ values and lifestyle preferences. Some of the 19 characteristics these Cultural Creatives relate to are: preservation of nature, a strong awareness of planet-wide issues, spirituality as an important aspect of life, maintaining loving relationships, intense interest in spiritual and psychological development, and wanting to be involved with creating a new and better way of life.

It was determined that 50 million Americans then fell into that category, with an additional 90 million Cultural Creatives in Europe. The numbers are even larger now, as this is the fastest growing segment of the U.S. and world population. The book that resulted from this research was The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People are Changing the World, by Paul H. Ray., Ph.D., and Sherry Ruth Anderson, Ph.D.

Raatz notes: “At GATE, we want to be the supporting mechanism that assists those in the entertainment and media businesses who are transformationlly oriented to speak their truth through their work. And guess what! That’s monetizeable! The audience is ready!”

Raatz is not new to aligning his spiritual light with his creative expression. He is the founder and principal of the pioneering “transformational” marketing and PR firm, The Visioneering Group, whose mission is “Linking Spirit, Vision & Progressive Values with Compassionate Communication to Promote a Positive and Sustainable Future.”

Established in 1988, Visioneering exclusively serves the Cultural Creatives (body/mind/spirit) market, and was the first such firm to do so. He played a large part in putting the game-changing transformational film “What the Bleep Do We Know?” on the map, following with “Peaceful Warrior.” He worked with Madonna on her “Ray of Light” album and set up a private screening for her of “What the Bleep.” She was so moved by it that she introduced John to her teachers at The Kabbalah Center, which became a Visioneering client. Over the years, the company has worked with a wide array of authors, musicians, filmmakers and influential spiritual teachers, whom he calls the “Leading Lights of Consciousness.”

Raatz has been teaching Transcendental Meditation since 1976 and found, 30 years ago, when he started in the film business, that many well-known celebrities, such as Merv Griffin, Mike Love, Clint Eastwood and Ned Beatty, were also practicing TM. At the time, they formed an organization to teach it to people in the entertainment business.

The upcoming GATE events will be held Feb. 4, 2012, at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills, Calif. For more information and discounted tickets, visit http://www.gatecommunity.org. Use Promo Code TRANSFORM for an additional 20 percent discount.

As all of have been made painfully aware, happiness is an inside job. We make ourselves happy and buying toys and eating food only delays dealing with deeper issues. At the same tine, the worldwide economic crises brought on by over borrowing by governments and the resultant austerity programs foisted on their citizens is both repugnant and immoral.

This is the time to turn around the economic game so it works for all of us rather than the 1%.

From the producers of The Economics of Happiness DVD which will be the subject of a review in February and whose trailer appears below comes a March Conference dedicated to the same theme. Bringing together some of the greatest economic visionaries of our time who collectively are redefining economics so that it serves people and the planet, the conference will be held from March 23-25 at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, California.

Conference themes include Breaking Down the Old Economy, Small Scale on a Large Scale, Local Futures and Reweaving the Fabric of Hope.

Among the stellar international group of presenters are Vandana Shiva, a worldrenowned activist, physicist, feminist and the founder of Navdanya, Annie Leonard, the author and host of The Story of Stuff and director of The Story of Stuff Project, Richard Heinberg, the author of ten books, including The Party’s Over, Peak Everything, and The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, Bill McKibben, the author of a dozen books about the environment and the economy including The End of Nature and Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, Helena Norberg-Hodge, the founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC) and its predecessor, the Ladakh Project. She is the author of Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh and producer and co-director of the film, The Economics of Happiness, Judy Wicks, the founder of White Dog Café and an international leader and speaker in the local living economies movement. Judy is co-founder of the nationwide Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), Rebecca Tarbotton, Executive Director of Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and former Project Coordinator at ISEC. Under her direction, RAN challenges corporate power in order to protect endangered forests, transform dirty energy expansion into a clean energy future, and combat global warming.

There will also be performances by Jennifer Berezan (edgeofwonder.com), Nina Wise (ninawise.com) and Wes “Scoop” Nisker (http://woodzie.org/scoop/)

You can download the PDF Conference brochure by clicking here

The date to obtain discounted tickets is January 15, so if this is of interest to you, please check out the brochure and make your ticket purchase before then.

Please let me know if you decide to attend and perhaps a group of us can have a lunch or dinner together. I will be there to interview a few of the conference speakers in preparing my story.

by Richard Tarnas, PhD and Dean Radin, PhD

From Institute of Noetic Sciences

Ed. Note: There are few scholars in the world better equipped to evaluate where civilization is headed than eminent professor of philosophy and cultural history Richard Tarnas. In the following dialogue, excerpted and edited from the Institute of Noetic Sciences’ teleseminar series, Shifting Paradigms, IONS Senior Scientist Dean Radin talks with Dr. Tarnas about the notion of paradigm shifts and what is required for a society to make such a leap. To read a chapter from Tarnas’s book, Cosmos and Psyche, go here.

Radin: In your first book, The Passion of the Western Mind (1993), you explain the context in which we find ourselves, how we got where we are. Most people most of the time don’t think much about why they believe the things that they do and why society works the way that it does. In your second book, Cosmos and Psyche (2006), you use an enchanted view of reality, in a sense, to show why some of the aspects of traditional astrology are actually quite useful in seeing where we are and where we are going.

Tarnas: I wrote The Passion of the Western Mind as a kind of overview of the history of the Western worldview up until the late twentieth century. I wanted to try to see the larger paradigm shifts that took place and the major factors that were at work in forming our current worldview. We really can’t understand ourselves or the present without having a good grasp of the historical factors that shaped us. I love that sentence from historian Daniel Boorstein: “Trying to understand and create the future without knowing the past is like planting cut flowers.” We need a sense of our roots. The Passion of the Western Mind gives that kind of overview.

It’s particularly focused on the West, starting from the ancient Greeks, because that’s the cultural worldview that is so fundamental in shaping the global context today. For better or worse, modernity is the most powerful influence on our global civilization now, and that history goes from the ancient Greeks up through the Roman period, right through the medieval era to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the scientific revolution, and so forth, up to the modern and postmodern periods. In my first book, I attempted to see the big picture as well as the ways in which a culture’s philosophy, religion, and science interact in any given era; it will shape the worldview, the cosmology, the notion of the divine, the notion of our understanding of the human self and its place in the universe. All these things constitute a worldview. So, in that book, I sought to understand that evolution of consciousness as well as I could.

My second book, Cosmos and Psyche, is actually the reason I wrote the first book, which served as a kind of prelude and a foundation to the second one—I’ll go into that in a second.

But perhaps we might want to engage some of the larger issues that go into paradigm shifts and why a culture seems ready or ripe for a major change of vision at a particular time? What makes a difference?

To continue reading this penetrating interview, click here.

Three upcoming IONS events:

“Conscious Aging” Telecourse

On January 18th, IONS begins its next 8-week educational program, “Conscious Aging,” facilitated by Kathleen Erickson-Freeman, IONS Elder Education Program Manager, and featuring experts in the field of conscious aging. Sessions will take place on eight consecutive Wednesday evenings from 5–7pm PT through March 7th. The course is $75 for IONS members and $235 for nonmembers (you can join for as low as $35!); low income rates are also available. To register, go here. Next on the schedule: “Buddha’s Brain: Taking in the Good” with Rick Hanson, PhD, from March 14 – May 2. More details coming soon…

Spirituality and Psychology Conference
February 17–19, 2012
Menlo College, Atherton, CA

The third biennial ATP-ITP Spirituality & Psychology Conference will bring together clinicians, therapists, spiritual guides, faith-based and healing practitioners, academics, and researchers to explore the promises and pitfalls of the spiritual path. Join keynote speakers Roger Walsh, Shauna Shapiro, Jeanne Achterberg and a host of luminaries including Jim Fadiman, Arthur Hastings, Olga Louchakova, and David Lukoff to examine the nature of spiritual illusion while we seek the wisdom and health benefits available in spirituality. Enjoy workshops, presentations, music, ritual, yoga, meditation, drumming, and social networking. For more information and to register, visit www.regonline.com/spiritualitypsychology.

Noetic Film Experience

From psi research and positive psychology to meditation, mythology, and personal transformation, IONS’ first Noetic Film Experience will have something for everyone. Join us March 9–11, 2012, at the IONS EarthRise Retreat Center where we will celebrate the power of film while sharing our experiences via panels, receptions, and Q&A with filmmakers and scientists. The lineup is coming together, and additional films just booked include The Dhamma Brothers, a powerful documentary about the introduction of meditation techniques into a high-security Alabama prison. Finding Joe, which explores the work of mythologist Joseph Campbell and his focus on The Hero’s Journey. May I Be Frank, the inspiring story of a troubled man whose life starts to change when he meets the folks at Café Gratitude. Something Unknown, considered by many to be the best film on parapsychology research ever made.

And this just in: Jean Houston will be joining us to introduce and discuss her new movie, A Passion for the Possible, premiering at the festival! Go here to register or for more information.

For sponsorship information, contact Matthew Gilbert at mgilbert@noetic.org.

Mind Valley (http://www.mindvalley.com) is an interesting new community targeting authors seeking a publisher with a difference. You get to keep the rights to your material. They have an outstanding team that can help turn your transformational work into a book, website with SEO, and social media marketing as part of the strategy. Mind Valley also host Awesomeness Fests, gatherings that present transformational material through a non-profit with all proceeds going to the Pachamama Alliance, Lynn Twist’s organization that is helping save the Amazon rainforest and offering Awakening the Dreamer presentations around the world.

My friends visionary Barbara Marx Hubbard, and Shift Network founder Stephen Dinan have earmarked December 22, 2012 – as the birthday of new story for and about Humanity, “a symbolic marker signifying a new era of human evolution.”

New Paradigm Digest is happy to support this yearlong journey that begins … on December 22, 2011. I invite you to consider joining me and the more than 45,000 people who have been drawn to this exciting evolutionary change movement to date for a free virtual event next Thursday, December 22, for Synergy Day, noon PT, 3 pm ET and learn how you can participate in catalyzing shift in 2012 – in your life, your community and on our planet.

Click here to find out more and join this FREE event!

I think you’ll enjoy learning how we can have major planetary impact in 2012 and help support humanity’s evolution into a new peaceful, compassionate and sustainable era. You can sign up even if you can’t attend live and you’ll be sent the recording.

IMAGE

Synergy 1981

SYMMETRY. Tessellation with two 90° centers of rotation.

INSPIRATION. Inspired by the work of R. Buckminster Fuller,

STORY. R. Buckminster Fuller, best known as the inventor of the geodesic dome, was an advocate of doing more with less. His watch word was “synergy” — the behavior of a whole not predicted by the behavior of its parts. I am particularly fond of his interest in tensegrity figures (available in toy form as Tensegritoy), gravity defying constructions of sticks and strings which were originally developed by sculptor Kenneth Snelson. You can find out more about Fuller’s work through the Buckminster Fuller Institute.

This design practices synergy in two ways. First, the word crosses itself four times at two different types of junctions: S becomes Y and E becomes R. Second, letters are joined in pairs, reducing the number of modules to just three. I was pleased to find that this pattern fills a grid without leaving any gaps.

Copyright 2000 Scott Kim.
All rights reserved.