Dear friends and acquaintances on Turtle Island, dear (future) collaboration partners in global healing!
This will be a slightly longer report as we look back to an abundance of experiences, important contacts and events from this two months journey:
- The Walking Water Pilgrimage in the Owens Valley (September 1-21)
- The launch of the Terra Nova book in New York City (September 18) and many book events that followed it on the West Coast
- Two public Love Schools in the Bay Area (October 9-14)
- The launch and first gathering of The Grace Foundation America (October 19-21)
- Water and community-building consultations…and much more.
Now all of the team from Tamera, which traveled in the USA this summer and fall are re-united in the mother ship of Tamera and it is time for deep reflection on an extraordinary journey. First, we want to express our gratitude for this entire journey. We will use the wintertime for reflection and want to take the next steps in deepening the network of the Terra Nova Movement and the Healing Biotopes Plan together with you.
Meanwhile the world is moving on full speed through its turbulence of transformation. Just last Friday were the attacks in Paris that are still shaking Europe. Read Martin Winiecki's article about it. The world is calling for a humane, systemic answer to these catastrophes, the urgency of which is on full display in Europe's current refugee crisis, and we are called to not feed the fields of fear and mistrust which are generated by the Paris attacks. Big parts of the world expect catastrophes will be caused by the weather phenomenon El Niño because it will be a “once in a thousand years” event for which we are utterly unprepared. And so much more…
We resonate with the call of the Aleut elder Ilarion Merculieff who we met at Bioneers, calling out that “in these times of utmost urgency, we have to become profoundly calm and patient to make the right decisions.”
What can we focus on that will allow us to respond to these urgent situations and promote the necessary system change?
Everywhere on Earth we are currently challenged not to give up, not to loose hope, but rather to do the opposite. The unprecedented suffering of innumerable people and animals on this planet challenges us to build an equally unprecedented alliance for life, for humaneness, for a future worth living.
Healing Water
We are immensely grateful that we could anchor all of the subsequent public events in the deep frequency of the Walking Water Pilgrimage at the beginning of our journey. This beautiful project created by our dear friends Gigi Coyle, Kate Bunney and Shay Sloan deserves (and has!) its own report which you can read here: walking-water.org/the-pilgrimage/the-pilgrimage-2015/
For us, it also resulted in a deepening collaboration with Rajendra Singh, world-renowned water activist from India, who joined the pilgrimage and wants to expand it to many places around the world in the coming years. He speaks about his work and this idea in following interview: youtu.be/dq9kGK-cvvc
We kept expanding this global dream all the way through the daylong seminar “Healing Water, Healing Love” at the Ojai Foundation. There we also had a chance to contribute some of Tamera's practical water knowledge to this desiccated land when Bernd Müller gave a consultation on water retention. You can find more in the short documentary film: Water is Life.
Our cooperation partner Michal Kravcik from Slovakia just launched his “Global Action Plan for Restoring the Natural Water Cycles and Climate.” We recommend reading and distributing it.
At the annual fundraiser for Andy Lipkis' Tree People, Eric Garcetti, the current mayor of Los Angeles, made a radical speech about the need for a fundamental system change to “fix LA's water situation,” and the necessity to do reconciliation work with the First Nations people. Knowing the difficulty of introducing system change and healing work into the world of conventional politics, we were impressed by his courage and it gave us some hope that the time of real change is coming closer. We give thanks to Andy Lipkis who we observed masterfully interfacing between radical visionary solutions and established institutions. We hope this is the beginning of a profound collaboration.
We want to deepen the cooperation with Walking Water and invite all of you to participate – so that its healing message can meet the dire water crisis of California.
Terra Nova Book Launch
While some walked the desert, Martin Winiecki and his team held the launch of the English language version of the book Terra Nova: Global Revolution and the Healing of Love by Dieter Duhm at The New School in New York City.
Throughout the journey we had many other public events where this book and its foundational thoughts for a new culture were presented. We are grateful that it found such positive and profound resonance with so many. Author Andrew Harvey calls it a “magnificent visionary book” while Jim Garrison, president of Ubiquity University, says it articulates “the revolutionary potential of living...in the spirit of love and nonviolence.” Alnoor Ladha, head of The Rules, points out that Terra Nova “dives deep into the assemblage point of our collective fears and repressions, the real foundation for neo-liberal capitalism.” They and other leading thinkers will help to create a field for the depth of work that is required to solidify the foundations of a new culture based on love.
Those of you who haven't gotten their copy yet, we warmly recommend that you read Terra Nova. This book offers the fundamental insights of our project in terms of building community, liberating sexuality, healing love and creating a world without war. Order the book – either as hard copy or eBook – through our website: http://terranova.tamera.org
If you want to support Terra Nova, bring the book to the awareness of many more people:
- If you like the book, consider writing a review! It is precious to us to have people in the US who love the thoughts of Tamera: write reflections and reviews; publish your articles on your web blogs, social media or media outlets. Make sure to send them to us too!
- Go to your local bookstore and recommend the book dealer to order it.
- Make the Terra Nova book a special gift to your friends, beloved ones, colleagues, employees in the holidays! For special discounts contact Martin: [email protected]
- Become a retailer for Terra Nova and other Tamera literature. We offer to sell you books for 25% discount (starting at ten copies), so that you can also generate revenue. If you are interested, please reach out to Martin at [email protected]
- If you are active on social media, make sure you follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay updated! We also run a weblog with inspiring thoughts and comments to current global events: terranovavoice.tamera.org
Love Schools in the Bay Area
A central part of generating a field of this depth were the two public Love Schools held by Sabine Lichtenfels and Benjamin von Mendelssohn in Oakland. We were very happy when the first Love School was sold out and so we offered a second one, which also sold out. This shows the hunger and readiness in the people in the United States to absorb the knowledge that has been incubating for over thirty years in Tamera. Our concept of healing love is more of a structural and collective endeavor than an emotional and individual approach. As we face humanity's immense longing and historic trauma in love, we see that completely new ways of life need to emerge – new communities based on trust – in order to solve this issue. This won’t happen overnight; it is a planetary project that could last for a century. For all of us this seems to be one of the most challenging shifts we are undergoing: from the individual-self to the communal-self!
So to all people who were inspired by this work and want to continue, we call out again to balance intense experiential spaces by thoroughly studying the basic thoughts of Terra Nova as a spiritual anchor. Please only practice Forum after a solid training in transparency and community-building. Too many times we experienced how the pain that also surfaces in the work could not be contained and blew apart groups that started out with great enthusiasm. Returning to Tamera we are working on new ideas for educational programs to give continuity to the spark of community and transformation work that was experienced in the Love Schools. This will be one of the main topics of our internal planning time in Tamera during winter. We have already invited some of our new cooperation partners to Tamera’s annual Global Love School in May, where we will also continue exploring how to anchor the Love School work in the United States. Additionally, we encourage people to use the public Love Schools in Tamera to deepen their study. (Potentially also together with the group you want to create a project with!
As study material, we have uploaded the opening talks from the Love Schools in Oakland by Sabine and Benjamin:
Talks: youtu.be/quTeDmxyUX0
Q&A: youtu.be/Sp8rryCWeR8
The Grace Foundation Launch
Another highlight was the launch of The Grace Foundation America with the first gathering for the Healing Biotopes Plan. This small and intimate gathering was convened by Benjamin in a retreat center two hours north of San Francisco in the middle of some redwoods. Global visionaries Sabine Lichtenfels (love and community), Charles Eisenstein (economy), Jürgen Kleinwächter (technology) and Bernd Müller (water and ecology) presented their unique knowledge as elements of a holistic model for system change – the Healing Biotope.
The intention was to bring people with resources in touch with the vision of Healing Biotopes and start forming an alliance for their manifestation worldwide. What unfolded was a deep sense of community and solidarity, an utterly new and not yet definable conversation about money, and an overwhelmingly beautiful celebration of gifting. A deeper evaluation of this extraordinary event will still be made and published. If you are interested in this please contact us.
Building a World Council for the Healing Biotopes Plan
On this journey we also contacted a number of highly committed peace workers in order to speak with them about the Healing Biotopes Plan and to see whether we could collaborate on it. For example, we met with Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun Magazine and the “Network of Spiritual Progressives.” We had been aware of his untiring peace work for a long time and were both touched by each other and each other’s work. It was wonderful to meet a person who so clearly holds a global peace vision and clearly sees that it can only come into being if inner and outer peace work are balanced. We also shared our common engagement for peace in the Middle East, a question which we continued working on with a group of Israelis and Palestinians after coming back from the States. Being confronted with the continuously worsening situation there, we wanted to see whether there is still something that could be done to reignite hope for Israel-Palestine. What is clear is that peace in the Middle East will require support from all around the world – especially from the United States. We saw that – despite the monstrous military support from the US to Israel – the emergence of a new, committed peace movement in the US could be the decisive game changer to create peace in one of the world's most long-lasting war zones.
We also met with Dennis Kucinich, a former Congressman and presidential candidate, who has been working for peace with greater vigor than any other US politician for many, many years. He told us that after he entered Congress he quickly realized that the entire system of US politics was nothing but a “war machine.” He said that the situation of the US is as grave as never before, because the military-industrial complex managed to corrupt the whole country and its political structures, which is now dominated by “massive deception,” as he put it. “And that is why,” he said, “the work you are doing is so important. In order to make peace, we need convincing models.”
After this journey, after having met such strong, beautiful souls working for a new Earth, we feel that time has come to form the “secret world government,” as our friend Charles Eisenstein humorously said at the gathering of The Grace Foundation, or as we would put it – it's time to form a World Council for the Healing Biotopes Plan; an alliance of highly committed change agents who are ready to join forces for a humane revolution based on regenerative, autonomous future-communities with profound trust and truth in love. We have a first meeting planned in mid-May 2016 and have started to invite a circle of leaders from around the world.
How to continue?
Throughout our journey, many people were inspired to create a Healing Biotope on the West Coast – long term allies and friends, students of Tamera and people who were getting in touch with these ideas for the first time. Our biggest hope is that those who commit to the creation of such a model find each other and that these different streams converge into one strong project wherever people’s visions are coherent.
Inspired by the Love School, study groups are forming in the Bay Area to give continuity to the focus on healing love and creating a new culture. We recommend that all of you who are inspired by the Love Schools and our work participate and engage in this. Tamera will support this emerging movement as much as we can. If you are interested in joining one of these groups, please reach out to us.
The Terra Nova School will offer its first online education course in early 2016: Transform! - Social Innovation for Systemic Change for all those who want a deeper course of study. For more information, please write to us.
You are welcome to join the Ring of Power, the spiritual network of Sabine Lichtenfels into which she sends a weekly power text. It is connected to a sunrise ritual every Monday. For those who want to deepen their connection to Sabine's work, she and her team are preparing a public Terra Deva course about spiritual ecology. We also recommend her books, which you can find here.
You are all invited to visit Tamera next year and participate in one of our programs (Introduction Weeks, ecological trainings, Love School seminars, Community Courses...) between April and November. Our schedule will be published here in early 2016: www.tamera.org/main-menu/events/
And—we will be back in the States next year. Stay tuned!
All this being said, we would like to conclude by expressing our immense gratitude to the spiritual guidance and all the support and solidarity we received from you on this journey: THANK YOU! We are looking forward to continue weaving the network of healing and are excited about the next steps.
In service of healing,
Sabine Lichtenfels, Benjamin von Mendelssohn, Martin Winiecki and the team
