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.

by David Sadka, Contributing Editor

A great awakening is underway. More and more individuals are tuning into our deep connection with Gaia. Transformative change is happening at the most fundamental levels as we and the earth are being blasted with increased electromagnetic frequencies. These changes may manifest through major physical earth disruptions and on the personal level with new insights and awareness. The resulting stimulation of the magnetite in our pineal glands could open our perceptual nets to new dimensions of reality on a mass scale. The 9.0 Japanese quake and resulting tsunami and the current political unrest throughout the Middle East may be just the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come.

Although the presenters at the 2011 Prophets Conference in Palm Springs represented a diverse range of disciplines and passions, they all focused on awakening. They also went one step further with advice to help us navigate through these challenging and exciting times.

The key suggestions from the presenters were:

• Unplug from your cultural and social conditioning
• Heal your personal stories and release the shadows that accompany them
• As you create more room inside yourself, you become more available to receive the energy and intelligence that’s coming through.
• Seek your internal wisdom and trust its movement
• There are forces within and outside us that support our coming into deeper alignment with the universal forces that are birthing a new world

Each of us as human beings is faced with a choice. We can embrace the great adventure and open ourselves to a larger guidance that’s unfamiliar, unknown and non-linear and relies on a deeper intelligence that’s aching to awaken and express itself far more frequently. The other choice is to desperately hold onto belief systems rooted in fear and separation that no longer serve humanity’s evolution and the evolution of our living planet.

Selected Ideas

According to Geoff Stray and Mayan mythology, on December 21, 2012 the sun at winter solstice will end a 5125 year time cycle and begin the birth of a new creation.

In the Hopi prophecy, we will experience an evolutionary leap with the activation of our heart intelligence, enabling a rebirth of the human species. In the Maori prophecies the veils between the living and the dead will fall away. The Incas see a merging of the three worlds – the underworld, the everyday world, and the over-world. It also represents the merging of the top three chakras into one state of consciousness.

According to Geoff, the whole solar system is passing through a cloud of magnetized plasma and we are on the edge of it. We are beginning to move into the denser part of this cloud beginning now through 2014 and should be in the thick of it by next year. The plasma is seeping into the solar system and causing atmospheric and magnetic changes on all the planets including the Earth.

NASA is expecting record-breaking solar flares over the next few years causing geomagnetic storms on the earth. These storms will create serious problems for everything that relies on computers which is everything from cars to computers to nuclear plants.

As our perceptions expand we may be able to witness what Tibetan prophecy describes as a hidden city in the Himalayas and in the Incan myths as the hidden city of Paytiti.

To prepare for this, we need to be ready for change. In the Tibetan prophecies, the last king of Shambhala will come out on his white horse and kill the barbarian. This is a metaphor for the killing of our inner barbarian, the shadow that keeps us inside our own illusion of separation.

James Gilliland is witnessing the invisible is becoming visible at his ranch in Washington State where he and many guests have been visited by space craft and Pleiadean spirit beings. Their message is to keep letting go of all social conditioning and personal shadows so that we can begin to enter their vibration and dialogue with them, helping us to evolve toward unity consciousness. The more we become this instrument of love the more we can become a true instrument of change on planet earth.

Dr Albert Villoldo, has been working with the Inka shamans in the Andes and talks about the plasma storms that will cause disruption of the electromagnetic fields. He claims that “the codes for the new human are coming from the sun, allowing us to reprogram our DNA, and awakening the divine human. The energy field is the software and the DNA is the hardware.” Like the other speakers he asserts that “the less we are in the grip of the Western myth and our personal story, the more we can download.” He further says that “we are the midwifes of a new mythology. We are at the beginning of a new era and a new kind of time, time not ruled by cause and effect. We are stepping into infinity, which is no time.”

As soon as ‘little grandmother,’ Kiesha Crowther, uttered her first words filled with vulnerability and pain inside a trembling voice, swells and waves of unexplainable tears began welling up from deep inside the audience as she spoke from her soul. “We are killing the earth and each other and ourselves. Our mother is in deep sadness and pain. This is the mother to us all. We need to love her as much as we love our own mother.”

It was as if my own tears began telling a story. Showing and connecting me to this deep knowing that lives inside my blood and bones and goes well beyond social norms and personal identity. Its as if the tears gave rise to a primordial beast awakening inside me, shooting flames like a dragon, melting all social institutions and beliefs that have imprisoned this all knowing fierce being that I am. Its as if the tears are feeding this hunger to walk on this earth from this fierce loving place without apology. Was this a glimpse of the new world coming and my role inside it? What can happen when all our glimpses begin to connect, synergies with one another, and be supported by one another?

Little Grandmother goes on, “It’s time to remember who you are. Mother Earth speaks through feeling and vibration. Stop letting the mind rule your feelings. It’s not about doing. It’s about becoming and being the love and compassion that you are. You are being supported by three times more energies hitting the earth today than a year ago. These energies are supporting the birth of the earth into its heavenly self and us humans as well if we make the choice to allow it.”

According to speaker, Freddy Silva, the sacred sites are also here to support us in birthing into our divine selves aligned with the universal creative force. Each sacred site has a particular geometric configuration, built as a mirror of universal laws. The universal forces inside these sites allow “for a thinning of the veil between profane space and sacred space. It affects you biologically and the chemical reactions that transpire in the body open us into a receptive state where the imagination is stimulated and one may even hear or see visions.” Silva further noted that all these temples are built on deposits of water-even the ones in the desert. They are always located at the spot where the earth’s electromagnetic lines converge.

Daniel Pinchbeck sees a global awakening both politically and spiritually with social technology and social media playing a key role in orchestrating it. “We are quickly moving out of the information revolution into a wisdom revolution. The evolution of the mind is speeding up.” It is characterized by a “changed realization of time and space, non-duality, and new social and economic systems that are regenerative and sustainable.”

Barbara Marx Hubbard declared “Dec 22, 2012 is Bearth Day for planet earth. It’s day one of our new world, day 1 of a new phase of human evolution. Lets come together as a whole so we can make this quantum jump together. Let’s celebrate what is being born, what is emerging in all areas from health, energy, education and technology.”

We are in the middle of the decline of institutions and structures that are created around separation with no built in mechanism for true cooperation and self-expression. Existing structures cannot support the co-evolving, co-creating of human life.

We all play a vital role in what’s emerging. Hubbard challenges us to, “Connect into that universe within you that wants more – to an internal voice speaking to you without dogma…zeroing in on your unique creativity and connecting you with universal forces. ” As we step into this zone within ourselves a “fresh swath of ideas and insights will accompany it that are aspects of this new consciousness emerging. They will become the vital underbelly and foundation of it. It will require great courage and wisdom and deep trust within ourselves to step up with that inner knowing and begin creating from it.”

So lets not forget Bearth Day December 22, 2012. “Lets celebrate our radical departure from our separateness into our connected universal nature. Lets celebrate the rewiring of the nervous system of our planet via the internet and the rewiring within ourselves and within others into this universal grid.”

I experienced a lot of information from the scientific to the wildly speculative and met a lot of interesting attendees and would recommend future Prophets Conferences around the world to anyone seeking to explore the multidimensional mystery of life and accelerating the shift of consciousness that is a prerequisite to the conscious evolution and transformation of humanity.

For more information on upcoming Prophets conferences, please visit greatmystery.org.

David Sadka is a writer, actor and entrepreneur whose new book will be published before the end of the year.

David’s Desk is David Spangler’s opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey. These letters are his personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you wish to receive these letters, view past ones, or learn more about David and his organization, please click here.

Watching events unfold in Egypt, I can’t help but remember that I lived through an Arab revolution myself when I was ten years old. I was living in Morocco at the time. Both my parents were working for the U.S. military, my father as an intelligence agent and my mother as a registered nurse. We lived on the U.S. Air Force base of Nouasseur, about twenty miles from Casablanca.

At the time Morocco was a French protectorate. The king, Mohammed V, had been exiled, and the French ran essentially an apartheid state in which the native Moroccans had virtually no rights whatsoever. In October of 1955, an Arab liberation army, the Jaish al-tahrir, began a revolt. At first we were unaffected. Life on the airbase went on as usual. Then the principal of our grade school was killed by French troops. They had mistaken him for a rebel while he was driving back to Nouasseur with his wife from a party in Casablanca. At that point the base went into lockdown. For several weeks, we were not allowed outside the fenced compound. Eventually, though, the French conceded control of the country to the Moroccans, and the king was reinstated.

These events touched my family directly. One of my father’s jobs was to act as a liaison for the U.S. government with the King, the royal family, and his advisers. This sent him into the countryside on a number of clandestine missions on behalf of both the King and the United States. Some of these involved counter-espionage against the Soviets who were also working behind the scenes during this revolution to prevent the Monarchy from being reinstated and promoting a communist take-over instead.

When Morocco gained its independence the following year, the King gave my father a proclamation making him an honorary Moroccan citizen. The world had Lawrence of Arabia but in our family, we had Marshall of Morocco!

My father died a number of years ago, but I can’t help thinking of how he would respond to the events happening in the Middle East. He loved the Arabs, and in all the universities in which he worked as a teacher, he was always the faculty adviser for Arab and other Middle Eastern students. But he knew from his own travels how prevalent corruption, oppression, poverty, and the lack of human rights were throughout North Africa and the Middle East. He often commented to me that the situation in these countries was a powder keg that would one day explode. And now it looks like that explosion may have come.

On the surface the driving force behind the protests is largely economic. Chronic poverty and unemployment in many Arab countries coupled with lack of opportunity for advancement has been met in previous years with corruption, indifference or oppression on the part of their governments. No more. The youth of these countries, better educated, desiring a freer and more fulfilling life, and united by social media with the rest of the world won’t stand for business as usual any more.

But apart from economic and political concerns, are there other forces at work “under the hood,” so to speak? What subtle forces are active here?

As the protesters took over Tahrir Square in Cairo, I felt I wanted to tune in to see what information might be available from inner colleagues. I was thinking I might communicate with a spiritual being attuned to the Egyptian people but instead I found myself in contact with a Presence that seemed like an “Angel of Humanity.” This Presence said in effect, “What is happening here is part of a process that goes beyond Egypt and its concerns. It is a human occurrence. It is one expression, conditioned by the circumstances of the Middle East, of an unfoldment that all humanity is experiencing, not just Egyptians or Arabs. This is the most important thing to know.”

I found it interesting that I was asked not to focus only on what was happening in Egypt, as important as it is, but to see it in a larger context. It was a request to appreciate the extent to which all humanity is participating in change and that none of us is exempt from the need to confront old ways of thinking and acting in order to gain the freedom and insights necessary to construct a future that will better serve us and all of life.

It is easy to forget this participatory side of things. I look out my window at a peaceful neighborhood, and the protests in Egypt and elsewhere seem far away, visible only on my computer or television screen. The challenges the Egyptians are facing are not my problems; I am not out marching in the streets to overthrow an oppressive regime that has lasted for thirty years and seemed prepared to extend its rule for more years into the future. One elderly man in Cairo said in an interview that for the first time in his life, he felt he could think for himself, without fear and without others telling him what to think. That brought me to tears, but I don’t personally have that issue in my life. I do not have to rebel against a secret police state that dictates what I can believe and not believe.

Because of this, I can feel distant from what the people in Cairo and Alexandria and Port Said are experiencing. I can sympathize, I can empathize, I can wish to support their efforts, but at the end of the day, their issues are not mine. All that turmoil I see on the television is happening in Egypt, not in the little town where I live. I can feel united with the protesters by our shared human aspirations for freedom, peace and a better life and also by a shared understanding of suffering, but we are separated by the differences in the specific issues that confront us and in the circumstances those issues create.

What the Angel of Humanity (if that is what it was) was saying, though, is that underneath these surface differences is an activity that goes beyond the commonality of shared aspirations or empathy. Rather than letting the differences in our specific needs and circumstances separate us, we can see more deeply and broadly into what is happening in our time. We can realize that we are all facing and struggling with a need to change and go beyond our current ways of treating each other and our world if we are all going have a livable future, much less realize the fullness of our human potential.

In December of 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a talk at Western Michigan University on the theme of social justice and the emerging new age. In it he said:

“All I’m saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated, that somehow we’re caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”

This thought by Dr. King catches the sense of what this Angel was implying, but there was more to it even than this. It was, I think, an invitation to see ourselves as revolutionaries in the context of seeking to overthrow oppressive and limiting thought forms and ways of thinking.

We, of course, are focused on the physical realm; it is the environment most apparent and immediate to all of us. But our colleagues and helpers in the spiritual realms deal with the invisible environment of subtle energies, thoughts and feelings. This environment can be every bit as oppressive as a tyrant; it can be every bit as harmful as a department of secret police. Certainly it can’t cause us physical pain and suffering, at least not directly, but it’s this environment that in its polluted and negative states gives rise to and energizes such physical phenomena such as tyrants and secret police, torture and terrorism, murder and mayhem. It’s this environment that can hold beliefs and thought forms that limit our conceptions of ourselves, that blind us to the wholeness of the earth, that make us doubt the goodness of the earth and the presence of the Sacred.

It is the oppression of this inner tyranny of ancient and outworn thoughts, emotions, habits, and beliefs that all of us, all of humanity, is now struggling against, like a butterfly trying to break out of a cocoon. We are all being called to make our way to the Tahrir Square of our minds and hearts, there to stand together and demand the old ways step down so a new humanity may emerge.

The world and we revolve around this pivot point of history in search of a new and better tomorrow, demanding creative and holistic change. The Revolution is upon us! What inner tyrannies will you overthrow today?

If you wish to share this letter with others, please feel free to do so; however the material is ©2011 by David Spangler.

by Kate McCallum

It wasn’t always the case that Hollywood, the media capital of the world, could be expected to embrace a day-long symposium on the power of arts and media to transform. When I broke into the industry in 1985, power was held by the major studios and four broadcast and cable outlets with a fifth emerging on the horizon. Most of the time, transformation only mattered in terms of ratings and dollars and cents.

But the industry has begun to show signs of shifting beyond its obsession with tinsel and stardom. Signs of that shift have become apparent – the upcoming launch of Oprah’s new network, for example, and the number of communities and groups that have been forming in Los Angeles and in cyberspace.

One of them is c3: Center for Conscious Creativity, which I co-founded several years ago and which gives me a vantage point from which to report on the many new initiatives that are changing the landscape of media and its life-affirming potential.

A brief history: While working at Universal Studios and pursuing a Masters in Consciousness Studies, I met and then teamed up with Philip Horvath, another student and Universal employee, and together we started c3. The mission was to create a space/community dedicated to research and education addressing consciousness, creativity, media and the arts. We set out to bring consciousness experts, futurists, and educators together with artists and media makers to inspire deeper meaning in the arts and media. That was the vision.

For five years the vision evolved as we hosted and produced numerous screenings, concerts, workshops and classes – and created an organizational culture of openness and understanding. In 2009 we launched a social networking platform and became an official partner of the LA Opera by participating in the first citywide arts festival – RING FEST LA 2010.

In November of 2009 c3 brought advisory board member and futurist Jerome Glenn from Washington, DC, to speak about the future of arts and media from a global perspective. Jerome is co-founder and president of The Millennium Project, a global think tank that accumulates research through collective intelligence that addresses 15 global challenges and solutions. Its findings are published annually in the State of the Future report. At the event he spoke about his desire to create a Global Arts and Media Node, a topic we had been discussing for some time. This Node would assist the Millennium Project by aggregating future trends in the arts and media, disseminating the information found in the State of the Future report, and brainstorm emerging global art forms, much like the work of the 16th Century Florentine Camerata Society that led to the invention of the art form called…opera! In January 2010 Jerome and the Millennium Project officially invited c3 to chair the Global Arts and Media Node, and this past June the c3: VisionLAB produced the first “State of the Arts” symposium. It was a tremendous success!

Over the past several years, a number of organizations have been sprung up in LA and elsewhere that are dedicated to inspiring consciousness and social activism through media and entertainment. Among them are:

* Architects of a New Dawn

* Creative Visions Foundations

* Elevate Films

* GATE: Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment

* The Hollywood Hill

* META: Media Entertainment Technology and Art

* PGA: Producers Guild of America’s Green Initiative

* United Nations Creative Community Outreach Initiative

* Images & Voices of Hope

There is a very encouraging trend in the land of tinsel and stardom. Let us hope that it portends a new era in media and entertainment at a local, national, and global level. Our collective mission is to utilize these incredibly powerful tools and collectives as “weapons of mass instruction.” Media and art have the potential to assist in the transformation and the evolution of both the individual and society, and we as creators are eager to join the ranks of the many others dedicated to that mission.