The phrase “axial age” has been used to describe the relatively brief period of time — roughly 700 years — when the great religions of the world arose: Hinduism and Buddhism in India; Confucianism and Taoism in China; and monotheism in the Middle East. The period from roughly 900 BC to 200 BC is referred to as an “axial age” because it set the orientation or direction for spirituality for more than two thousand years into the future.

Around the world, the axial age was marked by the growth of trading networks, the rise of large cities, and massive armies equipped with iron-age weapons. This was also a time of extreme violence and widespread warfare. All of the world’s great religions understood that a core challenge was to moderate the violence that emerged from our perceived sense of separation from one another. Despite their great diversity of culture and geography, a common understanding of the need to put compassion at the forefront can be found in all of the world’s wisdom traditions. Here are a few examples:

As you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.
– Christianity
What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary.
– Judaism
No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.
– Islam
Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you.
– Hinduism
Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.
– Buddhism
Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you.
– Confucianism
Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.
– Taoism
All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves.
– Native American

As these quotes reveal, the first axial age began with a view of separation and the “other.” In a world of growing individualism and differentiation, the religious emphasis on compassion served as a vital bridge between people. Now, a second major axis with a very different orientation is opening in the world. Religions of separation are becoming religions of communion as we realize there is no place to go where we are separate from the ever-generative womb of the living universe. The second axial age begins with a recognition emerging from the combined wisdom of both science and spirituality; namely, that we are already home — that the living universe already exists within us as much as we live within it. In the words theologian, Thomas Berry, “The universe is a communion and a community. We ourselves are that communion become conscious of itself.” Compassion remains a vital element of spirituality, but it is now being held increasingly within a context of communion rather than separation.

As people around the world move into spiritual communion and empathic connection with the living universe, we see the role of religion differently: Less often do people look for a bridge to the divine. Increasingly, people seek guidance and community in the journey of awakening within the living universe. People want to know there are others on the journey of soul-making and seek guideposts along the way to support the awakening of their experience of unity and intimacy within the universe. Less and less are people seeking only religions of belief. Carried along in this great cultural project of awakening, we are increasingly seeking religions of direct experience — religions of communion with a living universe.

When our aliveness consciously connects with the aliveness of the universe, a current of aliveness flows through us. At that moment — when life meets life — a direct connection between the living universe and ourselves is realized and we have an awakening experience. We no longer see ourselves in the universe, we experience that we are the universe. We do not need to manufacture or imagine awakening experiences. Instead, we only need to experience directly what is already true about the fundamental nature of ourselves as beings who live within a living universe. When the conscious knowing of ourselves becomes transparent to the reality of our participation in an ever-emerging universe, we recognize there was no separation to begin with — we all emerge in communion at every moment within the unity of a continuously regenerating universe.

Richard Matzkin, M.A., is a sculptor, jazz musician, author, and retired psychotherapist. Richard has had numerous one-man shows, and his sculptures are in collections throughout the United States. He and his wife, Alice, are authors of the much-honored book, The Art of Aging: Celebrating the Authentic Aging Self. They live in Ojai, California. Contact Richard through the Web site: www.matzkinstudio.com/.

CREATIVE EXPRESSION IS AN ESSENTIAL ASPECT of the human spirit. In every place on the globe, in every era from prehistoric times to the present, humans have engaged in the creative arts.

The active aspects of artistic creativity involve an individual taking that which is free to be molded — be it art materials, musical notes, written words, vocalization, or body movement — and manipulating it in a way that becomes a personal expression. Its counterpart is passive appreciation, which also demands creativity. Just as creating art can evoke thought and feeling in the one creating it, experiencing that art — listening to or watching a performance, or viewing an art piece — can also evoke thought and feeling in the participant.

My own experience as a sculptor and jazz musician provides a hint as to what might be occurring during the creative act that would account for these healing effects. As I engage in sculpting or playing music, I enter an altered state of consciousness akin to meditation. My discursive mind turns off or fades into the background; I am not aware of my body; time ceases to exit; there is no past, no future, only the present moment. All that exists is fingers moving clay or the flow of the music.

One doesn’t have to be a professional artist, musical genius, or Zen master to enter this flow. My wife, Alice, a painter, and I have conducted beginner’s art workshops for adults at community colleges, taught art to children, and worked using art therapy in psychiatric hospitals. Almost invariably, as a roomful of people become absorbed in their work, the silence and the sense of peace in the room are palpable.

The act of creation is a living, breathing process. You are giving birth to something from deep inside yourself — your unique expression. Creating a piece of art presents you with the opportunity to proclaim, “This may not be a masterpiece, but this is who I am … This is what I have created!” This can be especially satisfying and empowering for elders, who see their sense of control and authority gradually slip away as they age and become less “productive.”

Another factor that makes creative work so engrossing is the element of surprise, of improvisation. As the composer composes, the artist paints, the poet writes, each note, each brush stroke, each word is an exploration that carries the artist along into the unknown. I watched a film, shot over a period of several days, of Picasso painting a portrait. In that time the painting went through numerous transformations before Picasso finally brought it to completion. This element of exploration, of stepping into the unknown, is the very essence of creativity, and it is the antithesis of stagnation. Stagnation — being bored, listless, uninvolved — can be a plague of the elder years, when the weight of disability or a “been there, done that” attitude can dampen one’s vitality. Stagnation is as deadly as any disease.

	In this beautiful book, painter and sculptor Alice and Richard Matzkin explore the experience of aging through their art, finding inspiration rather than despair. The Matzkins — now in their late 60s and early 70s — use their paintings, sculptures. and personal narrative to examine aspects of growing older: the progression of physical changes, sensuality and relationships, aging parents, spirituality, and death. They feature well-known people such as feminist Betty Friedan and potter Beatrice Wood, as well as friends, neighbors, relatives, and themselves. They both explore the older nude body in some of their work. Drawing on their own experiences and the wisdom of older mentors, they demonstrate that the elder years can be a time of growth and wisdom rather than stagnation and loss. This wonderfully illustrated book is a feast for the eyes as well as nurturing to the spirit, and it leads to a greater appreciation of the miracle and blessing of life.

Artistic creation has played an important role in my renewal and also that of my wife Alice. Both of us possessed artistic gifts as we were growing up — skills which lay fallow as we were raising children and pursuing careers. In our 40s, our creative fires were rekindled and we returned to painting and sculpting. As we entered our 50s and felt the physical effects of aging, we began to use our art as a way to explore our issues about growing old and dying. Thus began a series of projects related to aging that brought our fears and anxieties to the surface where they could be consciously experienced, worked through, and transformed into understanding. Those projects — portraits of inspiring elder women; sculptures of old men in dissolution; paintings of elder nude women; sculptures of old couples in tender embrace; and sequential portraits of an aunt ages 89–97, showing the progressive effects of age on the body — helped us come to a deeper acceptance of and understanding about our own process of aging, and led us to value the preciousness of each present moment.

In time, we were able to add another medium to our creative arsenal, writing. Inspired by the focus that our artwork brought, we authored an award-winning book,The Art of Aging: Celebrating the Authentic Aging Self. With speaking engagements and additional projects, we find ourselves today, at ages 68 and 71, busier, more creative, and more engaged than at any other period in our lives.

Age is no barrier to creativity. Examples abound of elder artists whose creative production extends into late old age. Our neighbor, the potter Beatrice Wood, continued drawing and throwing pots until she was 105 years old. The autumn and winter of life is an optimum time for engaging in creative activity. Retirement and liberation from child rearing allows leisure time for exploration into creative resources. Elders have more life experience to draw upon to fuel artistic endeavors. Wisdom, wider perspective, and maturity of years lived can allow creativity to blossom with greater depth and richness. And that creative juice can invigorate the body, vitalize the mind, and renew the spirit in our elder years.

<iframe width=”580″ height=”390″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/PizJjpNkULI” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

For more….visit matzkinstudio.com

In the film, Billy is played by Brad Davis with a screenplay by Oliver Stone based on Billy’s autobiography and divides viewers into opposing camps: those who think it’s one of the most intense real-life dramas ever made, and those who abhor its manipulative tactics and alteration of facts for the exploitative purpose of achieving a desired effect. The film went on to be nominated for seven Academy Awards and won an Academy Award for “Best Music”, “Original Score” by Ennio Morricone, “Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium”

Now 33 years later, actor, writer and director Billy Hayes sets the record straight, sharing his harrowing experiences with audiences in his one man show, Riding the Midnight Express at the Hayworth Theater, 2511 Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles at 8pm on Thursday nights for a limited run.

The show clarifies some disputed points in the film but it is Billy’s humanity that shines through his 80 minute monologue. Billy’s emotions surfaced often during the show and while it is fascinating to hear the story told in his own words with grace and humor, it is his amazing courage, unwavering hope and heart that shines through his intense performance and life.

Many other men in that prison and other American men in other prisons around the world during the 60′s and seventies were broken or emotionally scarred for life receiving the same kind of treatment Billy did and the story of his escape is every bit as compelling as his arrest and prison story.

If you are interested in the true story of a a young and foolish kid who thought at the time he was invincible and paid the price, Billy’s one man tour de force is well worth seeing and, if you know any young person who is teetering on the edge with drugs, this is a cautionary tale that shows the dark side of what can be a glamorous projection. In this regard, a college tour and Broadway run are being explored.

Finally, Billy makes it clear that not all Turkish people are brutal, a fact, he has dedicated his life to righting as the film’s portrayal dramatically reduced tourism to Turkey for years. In 2007, Billy Hayes traveled to Turkey to apologize for the way the country was depicted in “Midnight Express,” saying that the image of Turkey produced by the film ”was not fair to them or true to my experience.”

More recently Billy was featured in a National Geographic special, Locked Up Abroad.

In short, I was deeply moved to see and hear a man who has made it through a dark night of the soul with his humor, dignity and love still intact.

For tickets, visit the Hayworth theater website, thehayworth.com.

Leo F. Buscaglia reflects on Arthur Miller’s After the Fall saying it is “probably one of the most underrated works of American literature.  He wrote it right after the suicide of his ex-wife, Marilyn Monroe, and tried to ask the question,  “What could I have done to have saved someone in my life?”  This was a play that said, “I have to learn to forgive. Others and myself.”  One of the healthier characters in the play says the following (that’s all about embracing our shadow):

“I think it is a mistake to ever look for hope outside of yourself. One day the house smells like fresh bread, and the next, smoke and blood.  One day you faint because the gardener cuts his finger.  Within a week you’re climbing over corpses of children bombed in subways.  What hope can there be if that is so?

“I tried to die near the end of the war.  The same dream returned to me each night until I dared not go to sleep, and I grew ill.  I dreamed I had a child.  And even in the dream I felt that the child was my life, and it was an idiot, and I ran away from it.  But it always kept climbing into my lap, and clutching at my clothes, until I thought, if I could kiss it, whatever was in it that was my own, perhaps I could sleep again.  And I bent to its broken face, and it was horrible. But I kissed it.

I think, Quentin, one must finally take one’s life into one’s own arms, and kiss it.

From Ode Magazine for Intelligent Optimists

Don’t leave your shadow behind when pursuing enlightenment…

It’s been commonplace in the Far East for millennia, but the search for enlightenment has been snowballing recently in the West. Since “flower power” in the 1960s and the New Age movement that followed, we’ve been awash in techniques and insights that purport to help us achieve a higher state of consciousness. Spirituality and enlightenment have gone mainstream. Managers meditate before board meetings. Newspapers and magazines without spirituality supplements are becoming rare.

And the Buddha has edged out the garden gnome as the outdoor ornament of choice.

The churches may be empty, but God is alive and well. In the U.S., 30 percent of people say they consciously pursue enlightenment through self-help means such as meditation or yoga. Many compile personal “religions” from various Eastern and Western philosophical traditions.

For them, spirituality isn’t something you practice once a week in a house of worship. They strive to make spiritual, holistic, ecological consciousness an integrated part of their everyday lives. They receive encouragement from popular books and movies, like The Secret, What the Bleep Do We Know!?, The Power of Now and The Intention Experiment, which tell us we shouldn’t be victims of an unpredictable fate but co-creators of our own lives.

The new seekers of enlightenment aren’t waiting for the government to fix things; they’re stepping up to the plate themselves. This is no protest generation loudly expressing dissatisfaction at a system that needs to be brought down. These people would rather use their energy to create an alternative society that prizes green over gray, quality over quantity, love over fear and inspiration over dogma. They build a philosophy for living not just by learning and reading but, most of all, through experience. Using meditation and yoga, they learn to switch on what myth expert Joseph Campbell calls their “God force.”

The business world, too, is tapping into insight to increase inspiration and turn on the God force. Companies like Google, Apple and 3M make sure employees get enough moments of silence, relaxation zones and time for goofing around; they know that’s how you create the conditions for flashes of brilliance. These companies have discovered that enlightened minds and expanded consciousness boost not only creativity, but profits, too. The days when people made fun of spirituality and enlightenment seem to be over. In fact, spirituality and enlightenment appear to have become almost hip.

For some people, though, pursuing enlightenment mainly causes stress—it’s one more item on an overlong to do list. And talk about a big job. Seeking enlightened consciousness is no small matter. It can generate a lot of pressure. If you fail to visualize that ideal partner, does it mean you’re “not spiritual”? And if you wind up getting sick after years of living a healthy, conscious life, is it your fault for not thinking in an enlightened enough way?

I know from experience that the pursuit of enlightenment can cast a long shadow. It’s precisely when you’re seeking the light that the darkness—fear, stress, impotence, guilt, shame—becomes most visible. But this isn’t a bad sign. On the contrary, it’s evidence that you’re strong and conscious enough to see and embrace the shadow side of your personality.

It takes strength to be ill, the ancient Chinese used to say. The more love, compassion, wisdom and calm you store up, the more capable you’ll be of facing up to hatred, disappointment, envy, fear and disturbance. If I’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s that you can’t get to the light without bringing your shadow along, simply because you won’t be complete.

Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian founder of anthroposophy, said that for every step you took in the spiritual realm you had to take three on Earth. If you didn’t balance your pursuit of higher things and the divine with embracing the low, the wicked, the bad and the sinful, the gap between who you were and who you thought you should be would be too wide. Psychiatrists have a word for this: psychosis.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung clearly spelled out the dangers of leaving the shadow behind in the pursuit of enlightenment. He was also the first to use the word “shadow” to refer to the disavowed parts of the personality. The Jungian shadow consists of the aspects of the self that we condemn, reject, deny, suppress and project onto others. We avoid looking at our own dark, unconscious side because it makes us ashamed. Our shame leads us to push it down into the crypts of the soul. Thus banished, it becomes our shadow.

Jung understood that just because these disavowed parts were unconscious didn’t mean they were harmless. Aside from the fact that it takes vast amounts of energy to keep the shadow under control, it’s precisely those things we suppress that increase in power. When we bring the shadow up to the conscious level, not only do we regain our lost energy, but our rejected parts become functional again. Instead of sabotaging us, these inner personalities and voices become our allies. Ultimately, we can learn to integrate the two aspects of the self—light and dark—and make them one.

In The Hero With a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell talks about the spiritual journey each of us makes in his or her own way. That journey ends, he says, when we become “master of two worlds.” The hero needs to find a balance between the spiritual and the material. “Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division,” he writes, “from the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the causal deep and back—not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other—is the talent of the master. The Cosmic Dancer, declares Nietzsche, does not rest heavily in a single spot, but gaily, lightly, turns and leaps from one position to another.”

It takes more than a crash course in enlightenment to become master of two worlds. The trip upward is inextricably linked to a trip downward. We need a crash course in the dark side, too. But Westerners aren’t fans of darkness. “Weak” emotions like doubt, regret, remorse and fear are just plain inconvenient for anyone ­seeking to get ahead. And they’re deadly on the trading floor.

Ever since that other enlightenment movement—the 18th-century one—we’ve mainly occupied ourselves with leaving “darkness” behind forever and moving toward “light.” We seek ever-greater amounts of happiness, success, power and possibility. We want it all. And along the way, we don’t wish to be reminded of life’s flip side: death, decline, disappointment, failure, suffering. We’d rather stay young and innocent forever. This is understandable, of course, but paradoxically, our efforts to do so carry us further and further away from the light. Enlightenment is found partly in the dark. “Where you stumble, there your treasure lies,” Campbell says.

The reason I’m interested in Campbell’s work is that, as far as I know, he was the first person to chart a precise path through the dark underworld of repressed emotions. For five years, he shut himself away and read for nine hours a day, working his way through more or less all the world’s myths, sagas, legends and sacred texts. As he did, he began to see a pattern. Every hero who went in search of the Holy Grail, God, Shambhala, the light or the treasure passed through the same archetypal stages of development. Campbell concluded that we all had the same life lessons to learn, initiations to undergo, obstacles to defeat and insights to attain.

Knowing the structure of this archetypal story—which Campbell calls the monomyth—gives you insight into your own developmental path. Along the way, you discover your personal calling, greatest power, favorite problem, chief mentor, Holy Grail, inner hero and ultimate life source. At the end, you’re able to embrace your shadow, dance with dragons and live in the two worlds of light and dark.

According to Campbell, few people are able to take this last step. “[T]he responsibility [of bringing wisdom back to the kingdom of humanity] has been frequently refused. Even the Buddha, after his triumph, doubted whether the message of realization could be communicated.”

Why is it so difficult to return to everyday existence? “The returning hero, to complete his adventure, must survive the impact of the world,” Campbell says. He must “accept as real… the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? Why attempt to make plausible, or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss? … The easy thing is to commit the whole community to the devil and retire again into the heavenly rock dwelling, close the door and make it fast.”

A few years ago, I interviewed Pim van Lommel, a Dutch authority on near-death experiences, and he confirmed what Campbell had said. When you undergo a consciousness-expanding experience—in this case, liberation from the “prison” of your body and the limiting identifications and patterns that come with it—you can feel hopelessly lost once you come back to Earth. The way you see yourself and life has changed radically, but how do you explain your new vision to friends and family members? And how do you handle it in relation to everyday life and the everlasting compulsion to keep the economy going?

If you don’t integrate the two worlds, one of two things will happen: You’ll either remain an oddball forever or readjust and go back to acting “normal.” Most people opt for the latter, gradually falling back into their old habits. Only a rare few, Campbell says, manage to keep both worlds alive inside themselves.

A scene in the film The Lord of the Rings does a good job of illustrating the “impact of the world.” As Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin are returning home after a powerful (inner) adventure, they pass a female hobbit sweeping her doorstep. She gives them a dirty look, as if to say, “Where have you bunch of good-for-nothings been?” It’s not quite what you expect after you’ve just saved the world from destruction.

Then we see the heroes sitting at a table in the village square. It’s the moment they’ve been looking forward to. They’d expected to receive a hero’s welcome and recount their stories in elaborate detail as a crowd hung on their every word. Instead, they’re sitting there by themselves, glancing around sheepishly. Life in the Shire has gone on without them. To their friends and families, they’re still just Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin—four hobbits who happen to have had an adventure.

What can they do? This is the critical challenge we face today. How do we bring the worlds of light and dark together?

Tijn Touber is the author of the Dutch books A Crash Course in Enlightenment and Living in Enlightenment.

This extraordinary post-modern rendition aptly illustrates a common understanding, as it were,
Cary and Michael Huang’s demonstration offers an interesting object-lesson around the perennial wonder at our place in the universe.Their particular question-demonstration – the relative scale of time and space – strings together all the known dimensional equations that could possibly illustrate an answer, and all of it measured to the ‘nth’ degree, no less.

This is clearly a case of the mind bootstrapping it’s way up to the mystery, isn’t it – only embraced in the final moments out of sheer exhaustion! But it is also similar to a fish trying to analyze – and thereby objectivize – water, when it’s very existence could not possibly be separate from it.

We know that some can only ‘hold the mystery’ once they feel they’ve got their mind around it – or have at least given it their best shot. But many of these are people like you and I, though disguised as skeptical scientific materialists  – and having put aside their original childlike wonder, not to say their ‘divine intuition’, now trot out their strongest possible resistance to making any ‘poetic leap of faith’ whatsoever.

So this is why we turn to art, poetry, nature and our mythic sensibilities, and surely these are what really constellate the greater context in which to fully experience our humanity – in contrast to extolling the endless intricate measurements of a left-brain Newtonian world, more recently sopped up to the detriment of less expendable human qualities – and apparent today in all our societal institutions.

It is where we have found ourselves again through all the ages, and will continue to do so when the prideful machinations of ‘the scientific prerogative’ have either fallen to the ground in shattered and irretrievable shards, or soundly put in their place, as it were. For we, and all that is around us, are already greater than the sum of the parts!

Having said that, I notice that the musical back-up tells a lot of this story all by itself ….

But here I want to simply call attention to the way in which these and similar types of fashionable discussion result from our common insistence, in the western mindset – as an a priori bias –
that somehow existence precedes consciousness!

Fortunately quantum reality is showing us it can only be the other way round.

– Peter Oldfield

Click here to view this performance.

One of the most frequent questions we’re asked is, “What can I do to help accelerate the global shift in consciousness that is happening now?”

Recently, our friends at Integral Life released a video to their private membership of its founder and the world’s foremost integral philosopher, Ken Wilber, answering that very question.

You’re likely already familiar with Ken Wilber. But in case you’re not, he’s largely responsible for bringing what we now refer to as “integral philosophy” and “integral spirituality” into the world. It’s easy to say it’s one of the most important accomplishments of the past century.

In fact, President Bill Clinton considers him one of the most important thinkers of our time, and we’ve been influenced by and benefited from Ken’s work immensely. The truth is, few people have the kind of authority that Ken Wilber does when it comes to showing how we can take the next step for humanity.

In the video, he discusses the single most important thing he feels any individual concerned with our global welfare can do to help create an integral world.

Click here to watch the video.

Watching the video, you’ll realize how you–and everyone else involved in this emerging integral movement–are in a unique position to actually push the leading edge of consciousness forward… to help create a global transformation, the likes of which has happened literally only five or six times in history.

We hope you find it valuable, inspiring, and empowering. Listening to messages like Ken’s has never been more important and timely for this moment in our movement’s–and perhaps even humanity’s–history.

Who am I?

How you answer that question says a lot, not just about how you see yourself, but also about how you see others and how you relate to the world. And it’s an important question at this time in history when the challenges of our global community are drawing us out of limited identities based on “me” and “mine” into identities based on the “we” of the whole planet.

Identities help us find our way in the world, navigate challenges and make choices. They can be founded on anything from the color of our skin or religious orientation, to goals we have achieved or dreams we hold. Often during times of stress those boundaries can contract and tighten—we protect what is ours more rigorously and separate ourselves from the needs of others.

But times of struggle can also be motivation to expand our boundaries. Instead of contracting around our own needs, we can open to the needs of others, share resources, and choose to cooperate. As we do so, our identities shift and the separation between “me” and “you” or “us” and “them” seems less compelling and defining. But how can this happen? Where do we start?

To read the complete article, click here.