Future Primitive

Speakers at Bioneers By The Bay Connecting For Change (2011)

Christopher Johnson is a highly acclaimed, nationally known Spoken Word artist and Poet. Christopher has been on many National Poetry Slam Teams including New Jersey, Providence and Boston. In 2007, Christopher won the $10,000 dollar grand prize for spoken word in the Fame Cast contest. He now resides in Providence, Rhode Island where he gives workshops throughout the Rhode Island school system.

www.marioninstitute.org/connecting-for-change/events/performance-christopher-johnson

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Speaker at Bioneers By The Bay Connecting For Change (2011)

Destined from birth to teach the ancient wisdom, ritual and practices of her ancestors to those in the West, Sobonfu, whose name means “keeper of the rituals” travels the world on a healing mission sharing the rich spiritual life and culture of her native land Burkina Faso, which ranks as one of the world’s poorest countries yet one of the richest in spiritual life and custom.

It is this reliance on spirit, community and ritual that has allowed Sobonfu’s personal and professional path to become one. Since the beginning of her journey in the West Sobonfu has traveled extensively throughout North America and Europe, conducting workshops on spirituality, ritual, the sacred and intimacy.

Sobonfu has written two books, The Spirit of Intimacy, and Welcoming Spirit Home, her newest offering which draws on rituals and practices involving community, birth miscarriage and children.

www.sobonfu.com

www.marioninstitute.org/connecting-for-change

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Joan Halifax is a Zen Buddhist Roshi, anthropologist, ecologist, civil rights activist, hospice caregiver, and the author of several books on Buddhism and Spirituality. She currently serves as abbot and guiding teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a Zen Peacemaker community which she founded in 1990. In the 1970s she collaborated on LSD research projects with her ex-husband Stanislav Grof, in addition to other collaborative efforts with Joseph Campbell and Alan Lomax. She is founder of the Ojai Foundation in California, which she led from 1979 to 1989. As a socially engaged Buddhist, Halifax has done extensive work with the dying through her Project on Being with Dying (which she founded). She is on the board of directors of the Mind and Life Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated in exploring the relationship of science and Buddhism.

Roshi Joan speaks with Joanna about aging and death, engaged Buddhism and systemic activism, personal and social transformation, the historic significance of LSD as a Dharma door, embodied compassion with dying people, speaking truth to power…

Music: “Song without words to Bohdana Pivnenko, I.-Elegy”  (from Fleeting Melodies) by Valentin Silvestrov {Bohdana Pivnenko (violin) and Valeriy Matiukhin (piano) }

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Kawan Sangaa Woody Morrison began his training as a History Keeper for the Haida people at the age of three. Heir to the chief of the Whale House, he has sat in ceremony with tribal elders from around the world and has been an active planner and participant in international conferences on environmental, economic and health issues. He is president of the Vancouver Society of Storytelling and on the board of directors of Wisdom of the Elders, a non-profit organization that records and preserves indigeous oral traditions and cultural arts in order to regenerate the greatness of culture among native peoples.

www.wisdomoftheelders.org

www.ancientwisdomrising.com

Woody Morrison speaks with Joanna about the indigenous perception of time, storytelling and humor, the communication with whales and the Earth, the soul and the breath of life, the  cultural discrimination against native culture, sustainable societies…

Music: “We are the Ones“, Live Music at the Conference

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F. David Peat is a holistic physicist and author who has carried out research in solid state physics and the foundation of quantum theory. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Liverpool. For many years he was associated with physicist and philosopher David Bohm. While living in Canada Peat organized discussion circles between Western scientists and Native American elders, and while living in London organized a conference between artists and scientists. He has authored or co-authored many books including “Synchronicity: The Bridge between Matter and Mind” “Seven Life lessons of Chaos“, “Turbulent Mirror” and “Gentle Action“. His most recent book is “A Flickering Reality: Cinema and the Nature of Reality“. He has written on the subjects of science, art, and spirituality. He is also director of the Pari Center for New Learning, which is located in the village of Pari near Siena in Tuscany, Italy. He is adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and a Distinguished Fellow at the University of South Africa.

www.fdavidpeat.com

David speaks with Joanna about beauty, synchronicity, “Bohmian dialogue” as an experiment in holistic communication, change and complexity, his views about the sacred, the crucial role of the merry trickster…

Music: “Mirage”  (from Vaghissimo Ritratto) by Gianluigi Trovesi

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Dennis McKenna is an American ethnobotanist and ethnopharmacologist. He has authored numerous scientific articles and books, among them - The Invisible Landscape – with his brother Terence McKenna.

Dennis has spent a number of years as a senior lecturer for the Center for Spirituality and Healing, part of the Academic Health Center at the University of Minessota. He is now a senior research scientist for the Natural Health Products Research Group at the British Columbia Istitute of Technology in the Vancouver area.  He is a founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute and serves on the advisory board of non-profit organizations in the fields of ethnobotany and botanical medicines. He recently completed a project, funded by the Stanley Medical Research Institute, to investigate Amazonian ethnomedicines for the treatment of schizophrenia and cognitive deficits. At the Heffter Research Institute, he continues his focus on the therapeutic uses of psychoactive medicines derived from nature and used in indigenous ethnomedical practices.

http://www.heffter.org/board-mckenna.htm

Dennis’ kickstarter.com Project: The Brotherhood of  The Screaming Abyss

Dennis speaks with Joanna about the KickStarter project of writing a memoir of his experiences with his brother Terence McKenna as a collective effort, the noetic experiment at La Chorrera, teonanacatl and primordial language, following the call of the Mystery…

Music: “Tejido de sueños (Tissue of dreams)” from Nierika, by Jorge Reyes

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Barbara Marx Hubbard is an author, public speaker, social innovator, and president of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution.

As a member of the Jonas Salk Foundation’s Epoch B group, Dr. Hubbard is working to understand and catalyze the actions needed to navigate a quantum change to avoid global collapse. She is a founder and member of the Santa Barbara Conscious Evolution Community. She is initiating the SYNCON Process, for synergistic convergence to overcome the polarization in the United States by bringing together opposing groups to seek common goals and match needs and resources in the light of new capacities at the growing edge of the sciences and the psychologies. Her websites are designed to be global communion/communication hubs for the conscious evolution of humanity.

A graduate of Bryn Mawr College with a B.A. cum laude in Political Science, Dr. Hubbard studied at La Sorbonne and L’Ecole des Sciences Politiques in Paris during her junior year. In the 1960′s she published one of the first newsletters on evolutionary transformation called The Center Letter in collaboration with Abraham H. Maslow, founder of Humanistic Psychology. She worked closely with Dr. Jonas Salk and was one of the original contributors to the Salk Institute.

In the 1970′s she co-founded The Committee for the Future in Washington D.C., which developed the New Worlds Educational and Training Center based on her work. She co-produced 25 SYNCON conferences to bring together people from every field and function to seek common goals and match needs and resources in the light of the growing edge potentials of humanity. She was one of the original directors of the Center for Soviet American Dialogue and served as a citizen diplomat during the late 1980′s. She was awarded the first Doctorate in Conscious Evolution by Emerson Institute.

Dr. Hubbard’s books include Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential, Emergence: The Shift from Ego to Essence, The Evolutionary Journey: Your Guide to a Positive Future, and Revelation: A Message of Hope for the New Millennium.

www.barbaramarxhubbard.com

Barbara speaks with Joanna about the “universal human”, “the planetary birth celebration”, and the evolutionary possibilities (and perils) of our species…

Music: “Barren” (from Fields & Waves) by O.rang

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Kim Rosen, MFA, has touched listeners around the world with poetry’s power to awaken, inspire and heal. She is the author of Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words (Hay House, 2009) and the co-creator of four CDs of spoken poetry and music, including Only Breath , an interweaving of spoken poems of ancient and modern poets with the music of cellist/composer Jami Sieber. Combining her devotion to poetry with her background as a spiritual teacher and therapist, she gives “Poetry Concerts”, inspirational lectures, and workshops throughout the U.S. and abroad.

http://www.kimrosen.net/

Kim Rosen speaks with Joanna about the many facets of poetry (right brain language, shamanic/biological medicine, prayer…), the 4th chamber of memory, the gnostic wisdom of “Thunder, Perfect Mind”…

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Linda Tucker was educated at the universities of Cape Town and Cambridge, where she specialised in Jungian dream psychology and medieval symbolism. She began her research into the White Lion mysteries after being rescued from lions in the Timbavati region of South Africa in 1991 by a shangaan shaman woman, Maria Khosa. In 2002, Linda Tucker founded the Global White Lion Protection Trust, to ensure the protection of these magnificent creatures. WhiteLions.org

Linda speaks with Joanna about her amazing initiation in Africa and the extraordinary message for our times from these special beings…

Music: “El Medahey” (from ‘Apocalypse Across The Sky’) by Master Musicians of Jajouka

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An award winning writer, Teri is the author/co-author of ten non-fiction books, including The Fiery Muse: Creativity and the Spiritual Quest (Random House of Canada) and one for young adults, The Canadian Junior Green Guide (McClelland & Stewart). Written in conjunction with the highly respected environmental watchdog, Pollution Probe, it became a Canadian best-seller.

After completing two books on the environment, Teri began to focus much of her writing on topics related to creativity and contemporary spirituality, subjects of deep personal interest to her. Teri first began studying yoga in her twenties in Paris with a teacher who had lived in Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram for more than twenty years. Several years later she traveled to India to meet Gopi Krishna – considered by many to be the world’s leading authority on kundalini. Since then she has been a student of the philosophy behind yoga and has been involved in researching the link between creativity, inspiration, and mystical experience. Both her latest book, The Divine Feminine Fire: Creativity and Your Yearning to Express Your Self (Dreamriver Press), and The Fiery Muse deal with this topic; she has also written a number of articles and spoken widely on the subject.

Her workshops on creative writing and the link between creativity and spirituality have met with great success, and she now divides her time between leading workshops and writing.

She is an active member of PEN Canada, the Writers’ Union of Canada, and the Institute for Consciousness Research, and she was one of the founders of the Kundalini Research Network in the United States.

http://www.teridegler.com/

Teri speaks with Joanna about the serpent power as an evolutionary force of transformation, longing & fear, Shakti/Shekinah/Sophia, creativity and the Divine Femenine…

Introductory music: ”Amazon Beginnings”

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David Spangler is an internationally known spiritual teacher and writer. Instrumental in helping establish Findhorn in northern Scotland.

In 1974 Spangler helped the social philosopher and cultural critic William Irwin Thompson, to found the Lindisfarne Association and became one of the first Lindisfarne Fellows, a group of scientists, artists, religious teachers, political activists, economists, and visionaries whose number included Gregory Bateson, Elaine Pagels, E. F. Schumacher, Stewart Brand, Paul Hawken, James Lovelock, and Paul Winter, among others.

His themes have included the emergence of a holistic culture, the nature of personal sacredness, our participation in a coevolving, co-creative universe, partnering, and working with spiritual realms, our responsibility to the earth and to each other, the spiritual nature and power of our individuality, and our calling to be of service at this crucial time of world history. Many of these themes come together in his primary work, which is the development of a spiritual perspective and practice called Incarnational Spirituality.

His books include, among others, Emergence; The Call; Everyday Miracles; Parent as Mystic, Mystic as Parent; Blessing: The Art and the Practice, and Subtle Worlds: An Explorer’s Field Notes.

David speaks with Joanna about earth-oriented/higher-order spirituality, his experience of the soul and its relationship to embodiment, the essential quality of playfulness, holopoesis, the second ecology of Spirit… among other topics.

http://www.lorian.org/davidspage.html

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Joan Heartfield, Ph.D. has been involved in the exploration of human consciousness for most of her life.

“I opened to a quality of intimacy so empowering and linked to The Divine, I realized I had stumbled upon what seemed like a missing link I never knew existed. I realized that the core of the human experience is all about our ability to love and be loved on all levels. I began to see how we filter and diffuse the love that wants to come into our life. Everything I had learned up till that point suddenly deepened and I began to teach from a place I can only identify as Source. This is a literal place where all experience becomes accessible and tangible. We live what we teach, and the joy in our lives is a real testimony to what we’ve embodied.”

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Josie RavenWing has made the study of multi-cultural healing systems and spiritual paths her life’s work. An internationally known workshop presenter and author The Book of Miracles: The Healing Work of Joao de Deus, The Return of Spirit: A Woman’s Call to Spiritual Action and A Season of Eagles, Josie began working as a pioneer in dance therapy and later as a psychotherapist with an eclectic and holistic approach. She has been teaching workshops in the fields of healing and spirituality since 1984 throughout the US and abroad, combining her background in psychology and her own inner guidance with knowledge and training from many world traditions. In addition to her workshops she offers powerful individual healing work and spiritual training upon request.

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Peter Russell studied mathematics and theoretical physics at Cambridge University then switched to experimental psychology. He studied meditation and eastern philosophy in India and on his return to the UK took up the first research post ever offered in Britain on the psychology of meditation. In the mid-seventies he joined forces with Tony Buzan and helped teach “Mind Maps” and learning methods to a variety of international organizations and educational institutions.

Peter Russell has been a keynote speaker at many international conferences, in Europe, Japan and the USA. His multi-image shows and videos, The Global Brain and The White Hole in Time have won praise and prizes from around the world. His principal interest is the deeper, spiritual significance of the times we are passing through and has written several books in this area.

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Christian de Quincey - philosopher, author, media visionary and international speaker on consciousness, cosmology, and spirituality at conferences and workshops in the United States and Europe.

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