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 By Stephen Dinan, founder and CEO of The Shift Network
Tomorrow is World Water Day, an official day of the United Nations!
We are delighted to join Unify, UPLIFT, and people around the world in celebrating the importance of water for our personal and planetary health. We are calling for actions to protect clean water sources and to make safe drinking water available for all.
With these groups, we are co-creating a series of free events on March 22, featuring people and activities around the world:
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From 1:00–5:30 pm Pacific, The Shift Network will broadcast an online telesummit (with Deepak Chopra, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Gregg Braden, Ocean Robbins, Mona Polacca and more)
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From 5:30–7:00 pm Pacific, UPLIFT will broadcast a live global webcast of events from the Ganges in Rishikesh, and elsewhere;
- At 6:00 pm Unify will coordinate a moment of synchronized global meditation on water.
To learn more about these free events and how you can participate, click here.
This issue of The Catalyst is also themed around water, which is essential for life. In fact, in many cultures people say, “water is life!” When scientists look for life on other planets, they look to see if there is water. Water is the most essential ingredient for our health, and a source of great beauty and blessings. We are born from water and depend on the health of our water ecosystems for the well-being of our communities.
Even deeper, many indigenous peoples and spiritual traditions call us into a sacred relationship with water as a key foundation of spiritual practice. In essence, they say, water can be seen as the Divine Mother manifesting on Earth.
In this edition of The Catalyst, we are featuring illuminating articles from a number of friends, including Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati, Grandma Agnes Baker Pilgrim, Chief Phil Lane, Jr., Chip Richards, and Jacob Devaney, each of whom takes our understanding of water to a deeper level.
On the action front, we invite you to help us bring safe drinking water to 1,000 people in the developing world. We are offering a $5,000 challenge matching grant through Generosity.org that, with an additional $5,000 raised from good-hearted people like you, will build two water wells in Ghana, enough water for 1,000 people. Over 748 million people do not have access to clean drinking water and millions of people die every year from waterborne diseases.
Please, join us in this campaign to bring the most fundamental ingredient for life to 1,000 people, click here to donate. (Be sure to write “Shift Network” in the comment box so we can match your donation.)
We also encourage you to join a water blessing event near you — to learn more, click here. For people in the San Francisco Bay Area, we invite you to join the water blessing at Lake Merritt in Oakland and to support their Indiegogo campaign – click here to learn more and to donate. (We want to thank Amelía Aeon Karris, Dave Room and Armando Davila for their leadership with this event – see Member Profile.)
In this issue, we also are featuring four videos — from Unify, Generosity.org, Turtle Lodge and Parmarth Niketan (an interview our Director of Peace, Philip Hellmich, recently conducted with Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati in Rishikesh, India.) And you’ll also find two artists, both of whom are launching new CDs this weekend — Heather Houston and Elijah Ray. Heather’s Prayers for the Water music will be featured in World Water Day.
Finally, we want to thank Mitch Gold, a Shift Network community member, for this background information about World Water Day: “it was instigated by Noel Brown of UNEP at RIO 91 — it was a letter from Mitchell Gold then representing Earth Day Ontario, and Dennis Hitchmough representing The Environmental Educators of Ontario that inspired Noel Brown to push the idea forward in RIO.”
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 #LoveWater 2015
Join us on March 22, World Water Day, as we #LoveWater. Register at unify.org for the free telesummit, live webcast, and synchronized meditation.
 Hanna's Story from Generosity.org
We invite you to help bring safe drinking water to 1,000 people like Hanna. The Shift Network is providing Generosity.org with a $5,000 challenge grant to build two water wells in Ghana, enough water for 1,000 people. Please, join us in this campaign, click here to donate. (Be sure to write "Shift Network" in the comment box so we can match your donation.)
 Mother Ganga: Interview with Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati
In Rishikesh, India — Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati, of Parmarth Niketan, talks about the significance of Mother Ganga. (Interviewed by Philip Hellmich, Director of Peace with The Shift Network.)
 Nibi Water Gathering at Turtle Lodge
Here is an international call to attend the Nibi Water Gathering at the Turtle lodge, on the Shores of Lake Winnipeg, one of our most endangered lakes, where the four rivers meet. At the Water Ceremony the Original People of Turtle Island (North America) will formally establish their leadership. The gathering will take place June 4 and 5, 2015. To learn more, click here.
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 Reflections on Water from the Banks of Mother Ganga
By Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati
The cycle of life is intricately linked to water; it is even, perhaps, embedded in water. From our first nine months swimming in a womb to our ashes being immersed in a sacred river or scattered across the ocean, from the essential nectar we drink to that which turns apple seeds into apple trees, water is an integral part of our very existence. However, unlike oxygen which silently, invisibly, maintains the breath in our lungs and the beating of our heart, water is a visible, tangible presence and one with which we interact — directly and indirectly — throughout the minutes of our day and the days of our lives.
To read more, click here.
 Grandma Agnes Baker Pilgrim: Thank Water for Your Life
A Global Message and Call to Action from Grandma Agnes Baker Pilgrim
Story By Chip Richards
Honored as a "Living Treasure" by her tribe, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz, and as a "Living Cultural Legend" by the Oregon Council of the Arts, Grandmother Agnes Baker-Pilgrim (or “Grandma Aggie” as she is affectionately known) is an Ambassador for Mother Earth who has touched the lives of people from many lands, helping us remember sacred ways of living that we came here to share as people of the Earth . . . [read more]
 Water, a Sacred Gift of the Creator to All Life
By Chief Phil Lane, Jr.
In 1969, my Grandfather, Frank White Buffalo Man, Hunkpapa Lakota, shared with me a wonderful spiritual insight and understanding that relates to how we must learn to respect, honour, love, support, and understand each other as different nations, tribes, communities, peoples, religions, and cultures of the Human Family — the spiritual qualities and power of water and how very, very important it was for the Human Family to respect and protect water. What my grandfather called, "a Sacred Gift of the Creator given to all life on Mother Earth!"
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 The Healing Power of Whales' Song
Can we learn to ‘sing one song’ together?
By Chip Richards
I remember the first time I heard it... I forgot my wetsuit that morning, so I was shivering as I paddled out into the spring waves, but the water was so clear that it felt like it was calling me... and I knew I had to answer. As I reached the deeper waters out past the break, I slid off my surfboard and dove down deep — something the buoyancy of my forgotten wetsuit would not have allowed so easily. I swam down as far as I could go... and as I dived beyond the morning sun-rays, I suddenly heard him in the distance. His hauntingly peaceful hymn, echoing through the water, moving to and through me . . . [read more]
 Fukishima: Opportunity of Global Proportions?
Our Greatest Disasters can lead to our Greatest Collaborations
By Jacob Devaney
Every technology comes with risks, nobody ever learned to walk without skinning their knees. This is not an article to argue for or against nuclear power, which is a very heated and divisive debate. This is an article about something we can all agree on... the health of our waters, the people, and the land. If we meet in the middle ground somewhere between panic and denial, the Fukushima disaster becomes a great opportunity for international cooperation and future preparedness . . . [read more]
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Join us on March 22 for World Water Day with a series of free events to #LoveWater. 1:00–5:30pm PST — The Shift Network #LoveWater Telesummit; 5:30–7:00pm PST — UPLIFT #LoveWater Global Webcast; and, 6:00pm PST Unify #LoveWater Moment of Synchronization. To learn more and/or create an event in your city, visit: www.unify.org.
The Gaiafield Project and the Children of the Sun will sponsor two additional synchronized global meditations on water on March 20 and 21 — to learn more, click here.
 New Film screenings of Awake: The Life of Yogananda are taking place in Theaters across the United States and Canada. To find a showing near you or to arrange for a screening, click here. (The filmmakers were interviewed in the Summer of Peace, the recording is available for free.)
 Book Launch — March 29, 2015: Rita Marie Johnson’s new book Completely Connected: Uniting Empathy and Insight For Extraordinary Results, is now available for preorder on Amazon.com (check it out here). What began as an effort to research more peaceful solutions to human conflict has evolved into a remarkable method for connecting our enormous brain power with our equally enormous capacity for empathy. In short, when we connect with ourselves, we increase our ability and willingness to connect with others. To learn more, click here.
 James O'Dea's New Book: The Shift Network is delighted to announce our lead peace faculty James O'Dea has published a new book: The Conscious Activist: Where Activism Meets Mysticism. The Conscious Activist is truly a masterpiece for our time as it describes the many rigorous initiations needed before the power of the activist can become one with the power of the mystic. To order your copy, click here.
 The Gandhi King Season for Nonviolence commences for the 18th consecutive year on January 30, 2015 in cities across the globe. The annual 64 day campaign, co-founded in 1998 by Dr. Arun Gandhi and The Association for Global New Thought, is an educational, media and grassroots awareness campaign spanning the January 30 and April 4 memorial anniversaries of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. To learn how you, your family, school and/or place of worship can participate, click here.
Please join Global Wave 2015, Governments will be meeting at the UN from April 27–May 22 to discuss nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. The Global Wave will start at a huge peace rally in New York on April 26, and then go around the world in 24 hours arriving back in New York on April 27 as the government conference begins. To learn how you can participate, click here.
The Alliance for Peacebuilding – 2015 Annual Conference – Peacebuilding and Democracy in a Turbulent World – May 13 to 15, 2015 – Washington, DC — The peacebuilding and governance/democracy communities recognize the need to work together. The conference will explore the links between these fields, and will help build bridges in both theory and practice to take on today’s most complex global crises. For more information - click here.
A Historic East-West Celebration – Fuji Declaration Launch Events – Tokyo – Copenhagen – Mt. Fuji – May 15–17, 2015: The Fuji Declaration is an international alliance of individuals and organizations who are united by a commitment to live and collaborate toward the advancement of a more harmonious and flourishing world. The Fuji Declaration is an invitation to people from all nations and walks of life to join in a commonality of purpose beyond borders. To learn more, click here. To sign the Fuji Declaration: click here.
 Building The New World Conference – Hosted by Radford University in Radford, Virginia May 28–31, 2015. BTNW is based on the “Wheel of Co-Creation” designed by Barbara Marx Hubbard. Barbara will open the conference and other evolutionary speakers include: Jerome Glenn, Grandmother Mona Polacca, Charles Eisenstein, Glen T. Martin Ph. D., Yuval Ron, Dot Maver, and Philip Hellmich. To learn more, click here.
Nibi Water Gathering – A Gathering of All Nations – June 4 and 5, 2015 – Ogimakamik Lodge of Leadership at Turtle Lodge – On the Shores of Lake Winnipeg - Sagkeeng First Nation, Manitoba, Canada. We are making an International Call to attend the Nibi Water Gathering at the Turtle lodge, on the Shores of Lake Winnipeg, one of our most endangered lakes, where the four rivers meet. For More Information, Please Click Here. Watch YouTube video on the Gathering Here.
Campaign Nonviolence National Conference – Santa Fe, New Mexico – August 6–9, 2015. Presentations, nonviolence workshop, and vigils at Los Alamos on the 70th anniversary of the nuclear age. Featured speakers include James Lawson, Erica Chenoweth, Roshi Joan Halifax, John Dear, Kathy Kelly, Lennox Yearwood, Jr, Kit Evans-Ford, Medea Benjamin, and Ken Butigan. To learn more, click here.
Praxis Peace Institute: Cuba — Nov. 29 – Dec. 6, 2015 — Praxis Peace Institute, in conjunction with Cuba Educational Travel has prepared a spectacular program for our travelers. Lecture and Discussions with Cuban economists, historians, and journalists at Havana University and the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy. Visit agricultural cooperatives, organicfarms, and meet locals in their homes, and much more. Details and to Register: click here.
 World Peace Library – Free Resource — Be sure to take advantage of the World Peace Library, a wide-ranging resource on peace newly compiled by the Shift Network: It contains more than 300 inspiring talks and mini-workshops from individuals such as Archbishop Tutu, Nobel Laureate Jody Williams, Jane Goodall, Deepak Chopra, James O'Dea, Karen Armstrong, Chief Phil Lane and many more. With neuroscientists and lamas, faith-based activists and political leaders, this Library offers something for all in their peacebuilding efforts. The Shift Network has made the World Peace Library a free resource for all and encourages its use to promote peace in your families, schools, and wider community.
1 Billion Acts of Peace — a global community of everyday people performing thoughtful actions that contribute to world peace. The Shift Network is delighted to join Peacejam Foundation, Google, Wells Fargo, Hill+Knowlton Strategies and many others have come together to create the "One Billion Acts of Peace" Campaign — an international global citizens' movement designed to tackle the most important problems facing our planet. To learn more, click here.
If you have an announcement to share, click here.
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2015
Catalyst: (#6, 3/21) (#5, 3/15) (#4, 2/22) (#3, 2/8) (#2, 1/25) (#1, 1/11)
2014
Catalyst: (#26, 12/28) (#25, 12/14) (#24, 11/30) (#23, 11/16) (#22, 11/1) (#21, 10/19) (#20, 10/5) (#19, 9/21) (#18, 9/14) (#17, 9/01) (#16, 8/17) (#15, 8/3) (#14, 7/20) (#13, 7/4) (#12, 6/15) (#11, 6/1) (#10, 5/18) (#9, 5/4) (#8, 4/20) (#7, 4/6) (#6, 3/23) (#5, 3/9) (#4, 2/22) (#3, 2/8) (#2, 1/26) (#1, 1/12)
2013 Catalyst: (#22, 12/14) (#21, 11/30) (#20, 11/16) (#19, 11/3) (#18, 10/20) (#17, 10/6) (#16, 9/21) (#15, 9/8) (#14, 8/25) (#13, 8/4) (#12, 7/21), (#11, 7/7), (#10, 6/16) (#9, 6/2) (#8, 5/12) (#7, 4/28) (#6, 4/14) (#5, 3/24) (#4, 2/24) (#3, 2/9) (#2, 1/26) (#1, 1/13)
Birth 2012 Catalyst: (#15, 12/9) (#14, 12/1) (#13, 11/22) (#12, 11/10) (#11, 11/3) (#10, 10/20) (#9, 10/6) (#8, 9/16) (#7, 9/8) (#6, 8/25) (#5, 8/16) (#4, 8/4) (#3, 7/28) (#2, 7/21) (#1, 7/14)
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Become more aware of your relationship with water and how it impacts your life. Do as Grandma Agnes Baker Pilgrim does: when you come in contact with water, stop to say, “I love you water.” (See featured article.)
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 The 3 Keys to Deeper Dating: Transforming your Search and Finding Lifelong Love — A Free Online Event with the author of Deeper Dating and renowned psychotherapist Ken Page.
Discover life-changing insights for finding lasting love and a groundbreaking approach to dating which uses the gifts of your authentic Self to lead you to truly fulfilling intimacy.
March 25, 2015 at 5:30pm Pacific.
 Transforming Your Journey of Aging: Learning to Savor Life’s Later Chapters with Passion with Conscious Eldering Leader and Author
Ron Pevny.
A powerful opportunity to redesign your elder years as a time of wholeness, fulfillment, meaning and impact — a season for living with joy, energy and creativity.
New Live Training Starts Wednesday, March 25, 2015
 Mastering Creativity: Activating the Energy, Mindset and Process for Manifesting Your Genius — A 7-Week Program With New York Times Bestselling Author Michael Gelb.
Expand your access to creative thinking, novel solutions, dynamic energy and playful fun... all in service to unleashing and giving your greatest gifts.
New Live Training Starts Thursday, March 26, 2015
 Writing as a Spiritual Practice: 7 Essential Steps to Personal Freedom — A 7-Module Transformational Journey
with Bestselling Author, Teacher and Speaker
Mark Matousek.
Access your sacred depths with a powerful, transformative writing practice to cultivate an expansive mind, open heart, authentic relationships, liberated creativity — and a freer soul.
Live Training begins March 31, 2015
More Upcoming Events: (all subject to change)
March
• Ken Page 10-week course
• Patricia Ellsberg 24-week intensive
April
• Earth Day Summit
• Shelly Lefkoe 7-week course
• David Crow 7-week course
• Tim Kelley 7-week course
• Gay Hendricks 7-week course
• Miranda Macpherson 14-week course
• Andrew Harvey & Sally Kempton 6-month intensive
• Terry Patten 8-month intensive
May
• Inspiring Woman Summit
• Politics of Love and Justice Summit
• Oscar Miro-Quesada 7-week course
• Margaret Paul 7-week course
• Robert Moss 7-week course
• Luisah Teish 8-week course
• Rabbi Michael Lerner & Cat Zavis 10-week course
• Andrew Harvey 9-month intensive
June
• Enneagram Global Summit
• Summer of Peace
• Stan Grof 7-week course
• Devaa Haley Mitchell 7-week course
• Sheva Carr 7-week course
• Enneagram 10-week course
• Tim Kelley 6-month intensive |
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Generosity.org — The Shift Network is deligthed to provide Generosity.org with a $5,000 challenge grant that, with your match, will build two water wells in Ghana for 1000 people. Over 748 million people do not have access to clean drinking water. Generosity.org is a 501c3 humanitarian organization dedicated to ending the clean water crisis in developing countries, one community at a time. To join this campaign, click here to donate. (Be sure to write "Shift Network" in the comment box so we can match your donation.) |
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Unify — We want to thank Unify for creating an exceptional online interface for the World Water Day celebrations.
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Heather Houston
By Alison Marks
Heather is a dear friend whose music sometimes fills my work days. Both beautiful and powerful, her sounds are unique and uplifting. I was actually with her in Bali a few years ago when she conceived of her new album, Prayers for the Water — which is being released today! Infused with love and prayers for our sacred waters, these soul stirring songs and chants are sure to delight your senses! Watch her beautiful and inspiring video by clicking here and tune in tomorrow to the #LoveWater Telesummit to hear more by clicking here!
Elijah Ray
By Eleanor Tara
One of my all time favorite musical artist discoveries of 2015 is visionary singer and composer Elijah Ray. He's been recording and performing deeply transformational music for years, but I only had the great fortune of coming across his SoundLight albums a few months ago.
True to its name, the SoundLight series has me feel like I'm being bathed in cosmic rays of colorful luminescence. Volume 1 showcases Elijah Ray's angelic side and transports me to heart-soothing astral realms. Volume 2 makes me want to dance and meditate simultaneously (the bonus track, Movement Three, is a new all time favorite song). Volume 3 brings me to worship at the Cathedral of my Soul.
Now comes SoundLight for Lovers, the 4th album in the series. "It's definitely my favorite SoundLight album so far," Elijah says, "My intention is that it inspires a deeper union with both your inner and outer lover."
Once you listen to the SoundLight series, you might find it hard to believe that Elijah creates them live, using only his voice, a mic, and some loop pedals and effects. That's right — this complex, sensual, rhythmic sound is only one man's voice.
You can listen to SoundLight 4 as well as the others in the series by clicking here.
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