Circle For Original Thinking

We live in an era when nearly every governor, state congressperson, or mayor supports maximum economic growth. 

It doesn’t matter what party you are from – or whether you support lower taxes or more social programs. Economic growth covers up all sins. Increasingly, it does not matter what country you are from. Economic growth is promoted as the way forward, the way to becoming more prosperous, the way to becoming a more “developed” nation. But economic growth is not the answer. In the words of Oren Lyons, we are acting like jockeys, whipping our horses to go faster and faster, unaware that the finish line is a brick wall. 

How do we get people to understand: We cannot grow infinitely on a finite planet. How do we get people to understand that without fertile soil, clean air and water, all life is endangered, including human life. When will we remember that humans are made of light, air, water, and earth – that what we do to the elements we do to ourselves? 

Why has the Western developed world – ever since the industrial revolution – been relentlessly pursuing progress? Why do we put our short-term economic goals first while ignoring the despoilation of the planet? It is not out of malice. It is not entirely out of fear, racism, or greed. It is more that we don’t know a different way. We had a dream – a belief that increased goods and services made for a higher standard of living – and that was all that mattered. We have been chasing that dream ever since. In our dream, we don’t count our blessings. What we have now is insufficient. We want more – the more the better, and the faster we get there and the more convenient the better. 

Fortunately, my two honored guests know this is not the only way to live. They have met people who have another dream and it has changed the way they live. All over the world, Indigenous peoples carry a dream that sees all of creation as our relatives – a dream that respects the right of everything to exist. A dream that sees a way to live life differently, a way to perceive differently, a way to look at the world in a joyful, ecstatic manner – a way to be fully alive! 

What will it take to change our dream?  How do we dance and sing a new reality into being? Join us as we delve into this with John Perkins and Bill Pfeiffer. 

BIOS

Bill Pfeiffer aka “Sky Otter” is the founder of Sacred Earth Network (SEN) which continues to implement leading edge visions for over 25 years. In that time, Bill has made Russia a second home having traveled there 44 times assisting the environmental and indigenous movements through SEN. This has given him a rare cross-cultural perspective. He has also led hundreds of spiritual ecology workshops, including men’s and breath work.  He has 25 years of experience in Re-evaluation Counseling and Vipassana meditation, and has undergone extensive training with Siberian shamans. Bill has partnered with and designed experiential workshops with Joanna Macy, John Perkins, Llyn Roberts, Cathy Pedevillano, and John Seed. He has also spent much time in the US Southwest learning about Native medicine ways and the crucial importance of the petroglyphs and pictographs. His  book, “Wild Earth, Wild Soul: A Manual for an Ecstatic Culture” has been met with high acclaim. I’ve read the book and reviewed it for Amazon. The first 50 pages alone are an important summary of Western civilization and what needs to change. John Perkins, a kindred spirit, wrote the Foreword.

John Perkins began his career as a “Chief Economist” at a major international consulting firm, advising the World Bank, United Nations, IMF, U.S. Treasury Department, Fortune 500 corporations, and countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. He worked directly with heads of state and CEOs of major companies.

He wrote about all this in his first book with the provocative title “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” – one of the most eye-opening true stories you can ever read to find out how the world really operates, and of John’s role in creating that, which he came to regret.

The book was on the NY times best seller list for 73 weeks. John has lectured at Harvard, Oxford, and more than 50 other universities around the world. He has been featured on ABC, NBC, CNN, NPR, A&E, the History Channel, Time, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Der Spiegel, and many other publications, as well as in numerous documentaries including “The End of Poverty?”, “Zeitgeist Addendum”, and “Apology of an Economic Hit Man”.

John was was moved to be a founder and board member of Dream Change and The Pachamama Alliance, tremendous nonprofit organizations devoted to establishing a world that future generations will want to inherit. It is this work that has led to special recognition = such as the Lennon Ono Grant for Peace, and Rainforest Action Network Challenging Business As Usual Award.

Economic Hit Man and his other books: “New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”, “Touching the Jaguar – The World is As You Dream It”, “Psychonavaigation”, “Spirit of the Shuar”,  and “Secret History of the American Empire” have sold more than two million copies.

Touching the Jaguar (2020) tells the story of John’s journey from Amazonian shaman to economic hit man and then social/environmental activist.  The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2016), a follow-up to the classic New York Times bestseller, brings the story of economic hit men and jackal assassins up to date and chillingly home to the U.S. It goes on to provide practical strategies for each of us to transform the failing global death economy into a regenerative life economy.

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This week, Glenn Aparicio Parry shares directly with listeners some of his own thoughts about current events, putting them in a larger historical context.

An uplifting but realistic peek at the founding of the United States, the history of the Republican and Democratic parties, emphasizing how much they have changed over time and could change again, perhaps even become defunct and have a new party form.

The questions he examines are:  “Why stay optimistic during troubles times?” and “Is the world transforming in a positive way?” He reflects on human culture: Are we a destructive force that imagines we are separate and transcendent from nature? Or can we learn to listen and be directed by the wisdom that is found in the land? Can we merge ecological and social justice? Can we remember how to love nature, so that we love each other?

Join us for a special podcast with Glenn Aparicio Parry. 

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A tiny virus did what climate scientists and the Paris accords could not do. It shut everything down. Mother Earth took a breath. The air and water became clearer and cleaner. More people planted gardens. We had time to think. And most importantly, to reset our thinking. 

What is the human relationship with the microbial world? How did we get to the brink of environmental destruction in the first place; what are zoonotic diseases and why are they emerging now; how does this crisis end? Can we get back to normal, and do we want to? 

In the md-twentieth century, a German philosopher Jean Gebser forecast a time like this, when our normal sense of time and space itself would be turned upside down in preparation for the emergence of a new, integral sense of awareness — a mutational, evolutionary leap that transcends our illusory, limited view of our own evolution while transforming and integrating past structures of consciousness into a time-free originary presence – or everpresent origin.  

What lessons do ancient viruses and bacteria hold for us in understanding evolution and this exciting new emergent mutation of consciousness?

Join us as we explore the coronavirus, interdependent evolution, and the awakening of time-free consciousness with guests Jeremy Johnson and Barbara Karlsen.

BIOS

Jeremy Johnson is a philosopher, editor at Integral Leadership Review, publisher at Integral Imprint, and Senior Research Associate at Perspectiva. His academic research, writing, and publishing advocates new forays into integrative thinking and praxis—aligning the scholastic, poetic, and spiritual—as existentially crucial work for pathfinding in a time of planetary crisis. He is the author of Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness, editor of Mutations: Art, Consciousness and the Anthropocene (2020) and host of the Mutations podcast. Jeremy currently serves as president for the International Jean Gebser Society and is working on his second book, Fragments of an Integral Futurism (2021). You can read more on his Patreon. You can find Jeremy on Twitter  @jdj_writes

“Our modes of consciousness (our way of thinking of time) are breaking down. They are going throuh a death process. The more we can accept that reality, the less suffering, the less struggle has to happen. ” Jeremy Johnson

Barbara Karlsen, PhD, is a Continuum movement teacher, nurse, and somatic psychotherapist trained in birth psychology. She earned an MA in somatic psychology from Naropa and a PhD from California Institute of Integral Studies. She maintains a private practice in Marin County, California, where she teaches and practices the shamanic art of Continuum and re-birthing. Her special area of interest is in Earth-based spirituality and ancient Buddhist psychology. She contributed a book chapter to The Corona Transmissions: Alternatives for Engaging with Covid-19,  and is the author of a forthcoming book called Becoming Terrestrial: Embodying the Intelligence of Nature (to be published by Inner Traditions).

“We are our microbes. We are our viruses. It’s a matter of recognizing these are germs to be killed – this is a consciousness that is primordial – it is the fabric of all existence. If we nullify this consciousness that is the basis of all life, we are doomed.” Barbara Karlsen

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A tiny virus did what climate scientists and the Paris accords could not do. It shut everything down. Mother Earth took a breath. The air and water became clearer and cleaner. More people planted gardens. We had time to think. And most importantly, to reset our thinking. 

What is the human relationship with the microbial world? How did we get to the brink of environmental destruction in the first place; what are zoonotic diseases and why are they emerging now; how does this crisis end? Can we get back to normal, and do we want to? 

In the md-twentieth century, a German philosopher Jean Gebser forecast a time like this, when our normal sense of time and space itself would be turned upside down in preparation for the emergence of a new, integral sense of awareness — a mutational, evolutionary leap that transcends our illusory, limited view of our own evolution while transforming and integrating past structures of consciousness into a time-free originary presence – or everpresent origin.  

What lessons do ancient viruses and bacteria hold for us in understanding evolution and this exciting new emergent mutation of consciousness?

Join us as we explore the coronavirus, interdependent evolution, and the awakening of time-free consciousness with guests Jeremy Johnson and Barbara Karlsen.

BIOS

Jeremy Johnson is a philosopher, editor at Integral Leadership Review, publisher at Integral Imprint, and Senior Research Associate at Perspectiva. His academic research, writing, and publishing advocates new forays into integrative thinking and praxis—aligning the scholastic, poetic, and spiritual—as existentially crucial work for pathfinding in a time of planetary crisis. He is the author of Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness, editor of Mutations: Art, Consciousness and the Anthropocene (2020) and host of the Mutations podcast. Jeremy currently serves as president for the International Jean Gebser Society and is working on his second book, Fragments of an Integral Futurism (2021). You can read more on his Patreon. You can find Jeremy on Twitter  @jdj_writes

Barbara Karlsen, PhD, is a Continuum movement teacher, nurse, and somatic psychotherapist trained in birth psychology. She earned an MA in somatic psychology from Naropa and a PhD from California Institute of Integral Studies. She maintains a private practice in Marin County, California, where she teaches and practices the shamanic art of Continuum and re-birthing. Her special area of interest is in Earth-based spirituality and ancient Buddhist psychology. She contributed a book chapter to The Corona Transmissions: Alternatives for Engaging with Covid-19,  and is the author of a forthcoming book called Becoming Terrestrial: Embodying the Intelligence of Nature (to be published by Inner Traditions).

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The past year has brought us an ongoing global pandemic, tremendous social unrest, political polarization, the near complete erosion of truth in politics, the rise of authoritarianism and white nationalism culminating in the insurrection at the US Capitol.  Amid all of this chaos and destruction, where do we find hope? And not just hope based in shallow wish fulfillment, but hope grounded in deep perennial wisdom traditions? 

Jurgen Kremer and Karen Jaenke, editors of ReVision Journal, decided to do something to dispel the dismal atmosphere of the past year. They put together an issue of ReVision Journal that confronts the shadow side of human history, exploring different stories and worldviews that are expansive, complex, and flexible enough to uplift the spirit needed most. Join us as we explore Places of Hope in today’s edition of “Circle for Original Thinking.”

Guest Bios

Jürgen W. Kremer received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the Universität (Uni-versi-tat) Hamburg, Germany. In 1982 Jurgen settled in the San Francisco Bay Area to teach full time and serve as dean at Saybrook University and [later][ at the California Institute of Integral Studies. His teaching and research interests range from general psychology, clinical psychology and research methods to the relevance of indigenous knowledge for today as well as ethno-autobiography. For four years he co-directed, with Dr. Apela Colorado, a program for Native American students and others concerned with indigenous roots and origins. Jürgen is widely published, has served on several editorial boards and has been an executive editor for ReVision (a journal of consciousness and transformation) since 1994. Today Jürgen is a tenured faculty member at the Santa Rosa Junior College. He is also a consultant to the UN University for Peace and its Indigenous Science and Peace Studies program.

Jürgen has published regularly since 1976, with 150 plus publications to his credit (journal articles, book chapters, books). Most recently he co-edited three volumes on culture, consciousness, and therapy. He published the textbook Psychology in Diversity, Diversity in Psychology – An Integrative Psychology for the 21st Century with Kendall-Hunt. His Ethnoautobiography (with R. Jackson-Paton) is scheduled to be re-issued in its third edition with the same publisher. His multicultural textbook Abnormal Psychology has been issued in January of 2020 by Kendall-Hunt. 

Karen Jaenke, Ph.D. is Chair of the Consciousness & Transformative Studies MA program at National University. In 2016, she placed the Consciousness Studies program online., giving it global reach.   Formerly, she served as Director of the Ecotherapy Certificate at JFKU (2011-14) and Dissertation Director at the Institute of Imaginal Studies in Petaluma, CA from 2001-2008. She is also an Executive Editor of ReVision:  Journal of Consciousness and Transformation, she has edited journals and published articles on: Imaginal Psychology, Shamanism and the Wounded West, and Earth Dreaming, as well as numerous articles on dreams. She is the founder of Dreamhut Consulting (www.dreamhut.org)  and her creative vision synthesizes dreamwork, indigenous ways of knowing, the subtle body, with (Gaian) or living planetary awareness… 

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Einstein once said “linear time is an illusion, but a stubbornly persistent one.“ Have we have been looking at time all wrong – that instead of looking for linear cause and effect we should be looking for relationship? The late Anishaanabe elder Tobasonakwut Kinew thought so. He preferred to think of time as: “What kinds of things want to happen together?”

Is it a coincidence that some of the most innovative researchers into time and dreams think similarly? People like Monte Ullman, James Hillman, and today’s guests, Judy Gardiner and Cynthia Sue Larson,  have noticed that our dreams freely cull events from what we call the past, present, and the future into one homeopathic serving. In short, the past, present, and future are all the same; time does not exist in dreams, at least not in the same way that enables us to make our schedules in the light of day. And while dreams are one way to burst the linear bubble of time, there are other ways too. Even while awake we can learn to access interdimensional portals of time that connect with our ancestors in the most creative ways. They may even come back to life — among other ways of sliding back in forth into parallel realities that explode our limited view of time.

And finally, what are the larger consequences of this research?

Can we better understand the ecological and spiritual crisis we now face, earth changes that are coming to fruition, and more, through an expanded awareness of dreams and time? And if we understand what is unfolding now, does it foretell an era of greater peace and harmony on the other side of the chaos? Are we currently in the middle of what German philosopher Gebser called the “irruption of time” and on the other side there is integration – what Gebser called “integral” consciousness?  Join us as we go beyond our limited concepts of time, space and dreams to explore the coming breakthrough in consciousness.

BIOS

Following a corporate career, Judy B. Gardiner set out to explore the bewildering images in her dreams. She began writing, lecturing and conducting workshops on Cosmic Dreaming, a dimension of dreaming which reveals a unified theory of consciousness tying together Science and Spirit. Discovery of ancient knowledge and universal wisdom led her to extensive research which unearthed explanations of science far beyond her waking knowledge. Collaboration with the late Dr. Montague Ullman, acclaimed for his work in REM sleep and ESP birthed the discovery of a bi-directional potential for all dreamers – the ability to observe and connect personal concerns and cosmic events. Judy is now fine-tuning a decades-long research study targeted to the scientific community which explores the interconnection of neural correlates, electromagnetism and corresponding earth and human behaviors. The destination is “planetary consciousness.”

“Life’s experience departs with the enteric soul. This may be called enteric memory. It returns to Earth when the soul, once again, is physicalized. It then becomes cellular memory and resides within the visual cortex, which is activated by the visual reminders of past lifetimes.” Judy Gardiner

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of several books including Quantum Jumps, Reality Shifts, and High Energy Money. Cynthia has a degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is founder of RealityShifters, president of the International Mandela Effect Conference, managing director of Foundations of Mind, and creator and host of Living the Quantum Dream.  She has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at: www.realityshifters.com

“The invitation that we are getting from consciousness and the cosmos is that causality is not unidirectional in time and space; it is based on relationships.” Cynthia Sue Larson

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With all our systems – economic, political, healthcare, and more – crashing all around us, how do we even begin to imagine change? Where is the change? How do we think about it; talk about it; take part in it? Is there such a thing as systems change anymore? Or are we kidding ourselves with abstract formulas that cannot possibly keep up with the changes happening all around us?  

Right now, everyone is trying to figure out how to live in a worldwide pandemic. We have been in pandemics before, but never in such a  radically interconnected world—with high-speed air travel and even faster electronic communication, rampant environmental pollution, nuclear weapons, and emerging autocracies, among other complicating factors. What have we learned? Do we know how to deal with uncertainty in a productive way? Or are we on a downward spiral due to humankind’s inability to create balance among other humans and the more-than-human world?

We all want to rebuild a more coherent and beautiful world. But we cannot move too fast. We must first learn to dance with trickster energies. It may be preemptive to propose replacement forms of order in the midst of such chaos – instead, we might need to learn a new language, a new mode of being in the world that is more creative and flexible. What stance and mindset will help us adapt to the rapid and radical changes of the present?  

With our systems unraveling, this is our opportunity to go beyond symptoms to root causes that unite seemingly different events. What are the openings that Trickster is making known to us? What are the resources, stories, lessons, opportunities, and wisdom we can draw from uncertain times?  Join us as we delve into Dancing with Uncertainty. 

Guest Bios

Alfonso Montuori has been a long-time professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He has also been Distinguished Professor in the School of Fine Arts at Miami University, in Oxford Ohio and at the University of Rome, and in 1985-1986 he taught at the Central South University in Hunan, China. Alfonso was born in Holland, and lived in Lebanon, Greece, England, and China before coming to the United States in 1986. His father was Italian and his mother Dutch, and he grew up speaking several languages. An active musician and producer, Alfonso has performed with or recorded artists such Joe Henderson, Roy Hargrove, Aztec Camera and his wife, noted jazz singer Kitty Margolis. His research has focused on creativity, transdisciplinarity, complexity, leadership, education, and social change, and has been translated into Chinese, French, Italian, and Spanish.  Alfonso is also a consultant in the areas of creativity, innovation and leadership development whose clients have included Fortune 500 companies, non-profits, and artists.

Nora Bateson, is an award-winning filmmaker, research designer, writer and educator, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute based in Sweden where she has put together a team that works on an innovative form of inquiry Nora calls Transcontextual research and a corresponding new form of information she calls “Warm Data.” An international lecturer, researcher and writer, Nora wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father, Gregory Bateson. Her work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems. Recipient of the 2019 Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. Her book, Small Arcs of Larger Circles released by Triarchy Press, UK, 2016 is a revolutionary personal approach to the study of systems and complexity, and the core text of the Harvard University LILA program 2017-18. Her next book, Warm Data, also will be published by Triarchy Press with a publication date that is still to be determined. 

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Addressing the Primary Wound of Separation

The primary wound at the root of social and ecological dysfunction is separation. While ancient humans understood life as a blessing and humanity’s health as inextricably tied to the health of the Earth, moderns have come to imagine that we are separate from both the natural world and each other. These expressions of separation have not only led to environmental pillaging and hoarding of resources; they have also led to existential and social isolation, despair, depression, rage, racial prejudice, sexism, religious fundamentalism, war, and genocide. We can bring about social and ecological healing only if we address the primary wound of separation.

Reconnecting with Nature is the axis for change. We will never heal without first acknowledging that our current relationship with the natural world is one of power over nature—and then consciously changing from a dominator mentality to one of partnership. Similarly, relationships between perpetrators and victims will not change until one group acknowledges what they have done to the other.  Without doing so, victims tend to perpetuate the cycle of violence, becoming oppressors of new victims. An honest encounter with wounding is the only way to deconstruct the prevailing false narratives and create a healthier story.

In the late 1990s, Judith Thompson and James O’Dea begin their collaboration in the emergent field of social healing with initial funding from the Fetzer Institute. They created a forum for dialogue around the deeper psychological and social context of human rights violations. They initially gathered thought leaders from around the world to create a framework for addressing worldview change around social healing. They next took their work to Israel, Palestine, Rwanda, and northern Ireland, among other places. They addressed social healing through constellation work, talking circle dialogue, and restorative justice practices, among other modalities. They helped many individuals interrupt the intergenerational transfer of wounds that we had come to expect among war-torn populations suffering from deep historical trauma.  

While their work was successful, much remains to be done. Amid worldwide simultaneous ecological, social, political, and health crises, James and Judith join us for a discussion of strategies for coping with and transforming historical trauma and wounding into healing. Join us as we take on the challenging but imperative task of addressing Social and Ecological Healing. 

BIOS

James O’Dea has had varied organizational leadership roles as President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Executive Director of the Seva Foundation and Director of the Washington Office of Amnesty International. James lived in Turkey during civil strife and a coup, and was in Beirut during the Israeli invasion and subsequent massacres in the Sabra Chatilla refugee camps and helped facilitate social healing dialogues in these global hotspots. As lead faculty for the Shift Network’s Peace Ambassador Training, he has taught peacebuilding to more than a thousand students from 30 countries. He is a bestselling author of books such as The Conscious Activist, Soul Awakening Practice, and Cultivating Peace. He integrates his teaching and activism with a deep and practical mysticism and the cultivation of compassionate wisdom. He draws upon a rich tapestry of knowledge and storytelling from many cultural  and spiritual traditions with impressive direct international experience in human rights and peace work, new science and dialogue practice. 

Judith Thompson has been engaged in projects promoting social healing for close to four decades, working primarily with survivors of war and political violence. Her research interests have focused on how compassion arises in the process of social healing, and she written and lectured on this topic worldwide.   

In 1984, Thompson co-founded Children of War, Inc., an award-winning international youth leadership organization that supported the vision and leadership of young activists from 22 war-torn countries. Thompson has also helped to develop social healing programs in Israel/Palestine and Cambodia and, for the past few years, has worked closely with indigenous elders from North, Central, and South America who are seeking to support worldwide social and ecological healing through their traditional ceremonies. Thompson is a longtime board member of the Center for Psychology and Social Change affiliated with Cambridge Hospital, co-chairs the Spirit and Human Rights initiative funded by the Fetzer Institute, and is on the Advisory Board of One by One, Inc., an organization dedicated to bringing second-generation Holocaust survivors together for dialogue and healing. Ms. Thompson was recipient of the Bunting Peace Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies and the International Peace Prize of the Dolores Kohl Education Foundation. 

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Many Native Americans are still suffering from historical trauma from contact with European societies over the past five-hundred years. The negative impacts of colonization upon Native peoples have been undeniable and devastating—and the effects are ongoing. The colonists introduced numerous infectious diseases into Native populations against which they no immunity defenses. They also pushed Native populations to accept a Western education system and forced the adoption of the English language and other mainstream cultural and religious values. Many sacred sites were renamed in ways that were offensive to Native peoples. 

Beginning in the 1830s with the Andrew Jackson administration, outright genocide was committed against Native peoples for much the remainder of the century—culminating in the Massacre at Wounded Knee that killed over three-hundred Lakota people. The genocide extended beyond the human. It included the destruction of the buffalo population, the main food source for all the Plains Indians. All told, colonization wiped out 90% of the Native populations on this continent (and the fate was even worse for the buffalo). 

At the same time, Native American culture has been remarkably resilient. Native traditional ways have continued, even though many Native ceremonies had to go underground for some time. Ceremonies such as sweat lodge purification, pipe ceremony, and yuwipis continue and, importantly, these ceremonies are conducted for the benefit of all peoples and all our relations that share the planet.

Beginning in the late 20th century, we have seen a revival of Native American customs that has been prophesized in many traditions. White buffalo calves, considered to be harbingers of peace prophesized in the Lakota White Buffalo Calf Woman oral tradition, have been commonly born since the 1990s. Something hopeful is being reborn. 

I like to call this time a Turtle Island Renaissance, which like the European Renaissance looked to its past to help inform its path forward. In an era when mainstream economic and cultural values have taken us to the brink of extinction through climate change and rampant pollution, the nation and world has returned to welcoming Indigenous wisdom. But why should Native Americans trust this newfound interest in their ways? Can Native wisdom and ceremony bring us back from the brink of ecological destruction? Can we bring psychological and ecological healing for victim and perpetrator alike? These are just some of the questions we will be exploring today. 

Join us as we delve into the power of forgiveness, compassion, and love, and also the power of gratitude and ceremony with Lakota elder Basil Brave Heart and his friend and mentee, Mike Three Bears Andrews.

Glenn Aparicio Parry, PhD, of Basque, Aragon Spanish, and Jewish descent, is the author of Original Politics: Making America Sacred Again (SelectBooks, 2020) and the Nautilus award-winning Original Thinking: A Radical Revisioning of Time, Humanity, and Nature (North Atlantic Books, 2015). Parry is an educator, ecopsychologist, and political philosopher whose passion is to reform thinking and society into a coherent, cohesive, whole. The founder and past president of the SEED Institute, Parry is currently the director of a grass-roots think tank, the Circle for Original Thinking. He has lived in northern New Mexico since 1994. www.originalpolitics.us

Mike Three Bears Andrews, (formerly known as Mike Two Bears Andrews— the third bear is for forgiveness) is a ceremonialist with a very inclusive definition of ceremonies that includes forgiveness ceremonies, holotropic breath work, shamanic drumming journeys, pipe ceremonies, prayer and healing circles, vision quests, purification/sweat lodges, yuwipis, workshops, and more. Mike is a Sun Dancer, a pipe carrier in multiple traditions, and regularly puts people out on vision quests in the lineage of the Muskogee Creek elder Marcellus Bearheart Williams, who he met in 1995. Mike has lived in Taos for the past quarter century. 

Mike Three Bears Andrews was a board member of SEED, an organization that focused on education and dialogue circles with Native and Western scientists. Mike played a significant role in putting together the 2012 SEED conference, Wisdom from the Origins: The Mayan Calendar and Other Prophecies on the Future of Humanity. 

Mike originally came from the corporate world with academic training in Chemical Engineering. He earned his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from New Mexico State University. 

Mike met Basil Braveheart years ago in passing, but it was in 2014 that Basil became a friend and important mentor to Mike.

Basil Braveheart is a living treasure of the Lakota nation, a Lakota elder and teacher from the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota. 

Like nearly a third of Native American children of his generation, Braveheart was sent to a Catholic boarding school, part of a long-standing federal policy whose goal was to eradicate Native culture and religion. After 11th grade, Basil dropped out of school to enter the Korean War. The year was 1951. He was 17 years old. In Korea, the stress of war took his toll on him, and he began to drink to ease his pain.

After returning from the war, he became a teacher, school principal and superintendent of schools. He holds dual MA degrees in both Educational Administration and Counseling. 

Gradually, he began to realize that he needed treatment for alcohol abuse. He entered AA and became a recovering alcoholic—but it was not only the principles of AA that helped him—he combined those techniques with the spiritual practices of his Lakota heritage. In his 46 years of recovery, Braveheart has incorporated Native rituals like sweat lodges, sun dance and vision quest, and he has that found these rituals enhanced by his passage through addiction. Out of this came the autobiography The Spiritual Journey of a Brave Heart.

Ba...

In honor of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing, we do not have any guests on the program. Instead, Glenn Aparicio Parry offers his personal reflections on RBG in the context of American history and what he sees as America’s sacred purpose: unity in diversity, a purpose yet to be realized.

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg was Jewish but she was also catholic with a small “c.” She was a Universalist. She represented the universal good in human beings. And if she were Catholic, I believe she would be canonized. I also believe her legacy will not be polarization because Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be active in the spirit world. She will appear in people’s dreams and visions. She will have an impact on events yet to unfold.”

~ Glenn Aparicio Parry

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Glenn Aparicio Parry, PhD, of Basque, Aragon Spanish, and Jewish descent, is the author of Original Politics: Making America Sacred Again (SelectBooks, 2020) and the Nautilus award-winning Original Thinking: A Radical Revisioning of Time, Humanity, and Nature (North Atlantic Books, 2015). Parry is an educator, ecopsychologist, and political philosopher whose passion is to reform thinking and society into a coherent, cohesive, whole. The founder and past president of the SEED Institute, Parry is currently the director of a grass-roots think tank, the Circle for Original Thinking. He has lived in northern New Mexico since 1994. www.originalpolitics.us

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Traditional native flute music by Orlando Secatero from Pathways CD.
Liberty song by Ron Crowder, Jim Casey and Danny Casey

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