Communique 3
Ashland, Oregon. April 16, 2003
From Rita Curtis, Worldwide Coordinator
APPROXIMATE READING TIME: 12 minutes
IN THIS ISSUE:
1. What Humanity’s Team Actually Does
2. Leaders Are Stepping Forward
3. Teaching the Teachers
4. There is Still Time
What Humanity’s Team Actually DOES
Thousands of people have joined Humanity’s Team since its inception just two and a half months ago. Now they are asking, “What can I do? What do members of Humanity’s Team do?”
Humanity’s Team is a way for each of us to affect the world by creating the space of possibility for a New Spirituality to emerge on the earth. Members do this by acting as spiritual activists—first in their homes, then in their neighborhoods, places of work, churches, temples, mosques and houses of worship, then in their communities, then in their states or nations, and, ultimately, in all the world.
Some people have difficulty imaging their outreach extending that far, yet the truth is, when people become organized and create an active, vital, working network, they can touch the world entire, and in a very profound way.
Yet all transformational work begins interiorly, and moves outward from there. So, there is much that must be done within one’s own soul, and then, within one’s own home, and then, within one’s own town or village or city.
The important thing is to make a decision to begin. And for those who have already begun, the important thing is commitment; to see oneself as committed to assisting in the transformation of the world. Personal and planetary transformation becomes your highest purpose; indeed, it becomes your raison d’etre.
If, to some people, that sounds like too big an undertaking, it is because those people think they have to do all this alone. That is why we have formed Humanity’s Team. We have formed Humanity’s Team so that no one has to experience themselves being alone in the business of transformation. Now we have each other, and suddenly the impossible becomes possible.
There are many ways in which all of us may now continue—as a huge group at last—the collective work of inner and outer change. Among them:
A. SELF-EDUCATION
This may not, at first, seem like the most exciting idea. After all, your whole life has been an education. Now you’re ready to do something with what you have learned. Yet we cannot create the space for a New Spirituality to emerge on the planet until we are able to fully explain what the New Spirituality is all about.
We need to be clear. We need to be spiritually articulate. We need to feel empowered and complete around this, with no questions in our mind as to what we’re talking about and urging other people to explore. Many others will have questions, and we must be ready with answers.
What do we mean by “the New Spirituality”? What are its principles? What are its messages? Why is a new spiritual approach desirable? What is different about it? Are we saying that this is a “better way”?
By identifying what the New Spirituality is, and being clear as to why it may now be very desirable to help such a spiritual movement emerge on the earth, Humanity’s Team members prepare the way for that to occur.
Persons who already feel totally clear about all this may skip the following and move right to Section B of this outline: Extending the Outreach. For those not feeling totally conversant, totally able to understand, apply, experience, and articulate the basic principles of The New Spirituality, an important step in helping Humanity’s Team move forward with its mission will be Self Education. Yet it need not delay other steps. We can do more than one thing at the same time. The exciting activities suggested in the rest of this outline do not have to be postponed.
It is strongly suggested that Humanity’s Team members double-track. That is, they we all do two things at once: increase our own awareness and knowledge while we increase the awareness and knowledge of others. In this context, self-education becomes a lifelong activity.
We see HT members engaging in the self-education process at four levels.
LEVEL 1.
The first step in this process could be to systematically educate oneself individually. Commit to exploring some of the basic literature that speaks of alternative ways of perceiving God and Life. We strongly suggest that this reading begin with The New Revelations: A Conversation with God, published by Atria Books. You may then wish to move to the other Conversations with God books, including Conversations with God-Book 1, Conversations with God-Book 2, Conversations with God-Book 3, Friendship with God, Communion with God, and Conversations with God for TEENS.
Other highly recommended books include Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein, A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson, As a Man Thinketh, by James Allen, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, by Richard Bach, The Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield, Healing Society, by Dr. Ilchi Lee, Jump Time, by Jean Houston, The Four Agreements, by Miguel Ruiz, A Course in Miracles, published by the Foundation for Inner Peace, and two books by Barbara Marx Hubbard, Conscious Evolution and Emergence.
Some of these books are novels, some are non-fiction. All of them lay out the framework and reveal the core concepts of The New Spirituality. They can be read as an informal curriculum in four to six months. This may be done prior to, or concurrent with, other activities, below.
LEVEL 2.
A next, or parallel, step might be taking Online Courses created specifically for Humanity’s Team outreach by Greatest Visions, a conscious-commerce company created by Neale Donald Walsch to produce products and services that support the mission of making the messages of the New Spirituality available to everyone. These courses allow for serious, in-depth exploration of the concepts of the New Spirituality as articulated in the Conversations with God series of books. Information on available courses and how to take them on your home computer will be found at www.cwg.orgunder the STUDY tab.
LEVEL 3.
You may wish to become a leader in the effort to provide educational opportunities for others. You may do this by forming a New Spirituality Study Group in your area. Helpful suggestions on how to create and run such a group will be available from Humanity’s Team beginning June 1, when it publishes A GUIDE TO FORMING A NEW SPIRITUALITY STUDY GROUP. A modest purchase price will be requested to help cover publication expenses, More information on New Spirituality Study Groups may be obtained by sending an email to:
studygroup@HumanitysTeam.com
LEVEL 4.
At the outset we said that, now, no one needs to feel alone in the process of personal and planetary transformation. One of the ways that Humanity’s Team members will be joining forces with each other will be the creation of Humanity’s Team Living the New Spirituality Groups. Designed to provide ongoing support to Team members as well as members of the general public as they move through the process of embracing new spiritual realities, the Humanity’s Team Living the New Spirituality Group is a small peer group exploring emotional and spiritual issues and led by a lay facilitator (rotating each meeting among the group’s membership). Once again, more information may be had by contacting Humanity’s Team at: LivingtheNS@Humanity’sTeam.com
It is the hope of Humanity’s Team that New Spirituality Study Groups and Humanity’s Team Living the New Spirituality Groups will spring up in communities, towns and villages across the globe. Our goal is to see 500 such groups formed by June, 2004 – for we are very clear that spiritual education and spiritual community will form the basis of worldwide revitalization of our religious, political, economic, and social systems.
B. EXTENDING THE OUTREACH
As we seek to make ourselves self-aware (and simultaneous with that process) we may begin to reach out to share with a larger world the wisdoms and the insights of The New Spirituality. For it will become clear to us—particularly as we move through the whole-systems approach to worldwide transformation which Humanity’s Team espouses—that we teach what we have to learn.
In the outline here, this sharing with others began in Item A, Level 3 above. It now continues, in a larger, even more organized way, through:
Establishment of local Humanity’s Team groups
Establishment of local Humanity’s Team groups in nations across the globe, creating a presence for this worldwide outreach at the grass-roots level. It is hoped that these Local Teams will meet no less than once a month, and will form smaller working groups gathering more frequently, to plan and produce specific on-the-ground outcomes relating to local concerns (as well as national and international issues). These Local Teams will put into place action programs, leading to the goals of creating the space for a New Spirituality to emerge on the earth, including:
a. Creation of a Network of New Spirituality Study Groups
Creation of a Network of New Spirituality Study Groups and Humanity’s Team Living the New Spirituality Groups within local areas, to promote the understanding and experiencing of the principles of The New Spirituality.
b. Offering of Classes and Learning Activities
Offering of Classes and Learning Activities in the application of these understandings to every day life. These could include classes and programs such as:
i. Parenting and The New Spirituality
ii. Relationships and The New Spirituality
iii. Sexuality and The New Spirituality
ii. Business and The New Spirituality
iii. Education and The New Spirituality
iv. Health, Nutrition, Body Care and The New Spirituality
v. Politics and The New Spirituality
vi. Spiritual Activism and The New Spirituality
These programs may be offered in people’s homes, in spaces available for free or at minimal cost (church basements, public library meeting rooms, local college assembly rooms, etc.), or in rented quarters. The above are only examples. Local Teams will no doubt create and present classes and programs of a wide variety.
c. Sponsoring Community Level Dialogues
Sponsoring Community Level Dialogues, inviting participation by members of the local clergy, the political leadership, government officials, educators, the artistic and cultural community, and the public at large.
i. These groups would meet regularly—perhaps once every other month—and could form themselves into smaller task forces focused on discussions and open dialogues addressing specific issues of concern to segments of the community, or the community as a whole.
d. Local and regional Spiritual Activism Projects
Undertaking and coordinating local and regional Spiritual Activism Projects, such as:
i. Public awareness campaigns
ii. Voter Registration and Get-Out-the-Vote campaigns
iii. Conscious Citizenry
iv. Letter-writing campaigns
v. Petitions, demonstrations, nonviolent protests
vi. “Buycotts” (a term which Neale Donald Walsch has coined to mean the opposite of boycotts, or the showing of organized positive support for products and companies demonstrating themselves to imbue the principles of The New Spirituality)
These are only examples. Local Teams will no doubt create and coordinate spiritual activism projects of a wide variety.
e. Retreat and Workshop Programs
Funding and sending its members to Retreat and Workshop Programs offered and recommended by Humanity’s Team and its parent organization, the Conversations with God Foundation, designed to give people the skills to better understand and integrate the messages of The New Spirituality. These could include:
i. The Level One 5-day intensive, ReCreating Yourself, produced by the Conversations with God Foundation
ii. The Level Two 6-day intensive, Being It, produced by the Conversations with God Foundation
iii. The Dahn Hak introductory program of body-mind-spirit integration
f. Training Programs
Funding and sending its members to Training Programs offered or recommended by Humanity’s Team, designed to give people the skills to live and teach the messages of the New Spirituality. These could include:
i. Level 1, Level 2, or all 3 levels of the Leadership Education Program created and offered by the Conversations with God Foundation.
ii. Programs and opportunities for personal and spiritual growth offered by other groups and organizations, such as the educational courses of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution created by Barbara Marx Hubbard, further work in advanced training in Dahn Hak, a deep-change program of body-mind-spirit integration created by Dr. Ilchi Lee, or the Warrior-Monk Training created by Bill Kauth, to list just a few examples.
These are only examples. Local Teams will no doubt discover many such opportunities for spiritual enrichment, training and growth.
C. NETWORKING and COORDINATING
Humanity’s Team is working jointly with a number of organizations to create a worldwide interlinking of people and organizations of similar purpose, goals and intention. Humanity’s Team is part of a Global Hub and a Virtual Community connecting millions of people in thousands of locations co-creating hundreds of projects producing on-the-ground changes in countless day-to-day lives.
In addition, Humanity’s Team will connect and coordinate individuals and groups within its own organizational structure around the world. It will suggest and sponsor programs of a wide variety, such as:
1. Creating Tomorrow,
seen as an annual special event produced at the community level and inviting spiritual, political, business and education leaders to come together to share, demonstrate, exhibit and propose new possibilities about how we can work together to create a functional, adaptable and sustainable future. Humanity’s Team will encourage Local Teams to sponsor Creating Tomorrow events in cities around the globe.
D. PROVIDING A PLACE TO MEET AND PARTICIPATE
Local Humanity’s Team groups may eventually choose to establish Humanity’s Team Centers in cities, towns and villages around the world where people may gather for meetings and activities relating to the Humanity’s Team educational program and outreach.
Humanity’s Team seeks to create the space of possibility for a new spirituality to emerge on the earth by inviting humanity to notice that there may be something human beings do not understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which could change everything.
Humanity’s Team observes that the core cause of humanity’s continuing conflicts and suffering is its most basic and sacred beliefs about God and about Life.
The intention of the Team is not to endorse or set forth a particular spiritual path, but to describe the overarching principles of a path not yet widely taken, to set forth a process by which individuals around the world may open their minds to examine this path, and to articulate a broad base of new ideas about God and about Life that it humbly invites humanity to explore.
Humanity’s Team encourages a two-fold process of
(A) letting go of the idea that humans already hold all the knowledge, all the information, and all the truth they need to create the world of which they have dreamed, and need not look further, and
(B) enlarging present belief systems about God and about Life to include new thoughts and concepts not heretofore seriously considered by the world’s predominant religious or political movements.
Humanity’s Team Centers will provide a space for such exploration, and for the implementation of the ideas emerging from it.
E. ABOUT THE NEW SPIRITUALITY
Humanity’s Team wishes to make it clear that The New Spirituality is not to replace organized religions, but enhance them. The idea here is not to abandon currently theological thinking, but to enlarge and expand it.
The New Spirituality exists to revitalize religion, to re-ignite the spiritual experience, and to reconnect humanity.
The world’s great religions all have such joyous treasures to give us, such wonderful wisdom to share, and such encompassing love to announce. Humanity’s Team observes, however, that it would be of enormous benefit to eliminate from their teachings those doctrines having to do with separation (the idea that God and others are “over there” and we are “over here”), righteousness (the idea that “ours-is-the-only-way”), and violence (the idea of an angry, jealous, punishing God who uses and condones the use of violence as a means of conflict resolution).
Now there are those who will say, “But that is the very core of many religions.” And that, of course, is the point. When the core of most religions is forgiveness, acceptance, and love, everything on our planet will change.
As we explore the religious doctrines of separation, righteousness, and violence, all we have to do is accept the possibility that we could be wrong about these things. That alone—just accepting such a possibility—would set the stage for the most important exploration and dialogue in, and between, the world’s great religions that has been undertaken in thousands of years.
Nothing, NOTHING, would revitalize our religions faster, or more impactfully. Yet such a decision—the choice to accept and announce such a possibility, and to begin such a dialogue—will take great courage. It will require many people to take the first step of The Five Steps to Peace—which is to acknowledge that some of humanity’s old beliefs about God and about Life are no longer working. Creating the space for people to take such a step will require leadership.
And that is what Humanity’s Team is all about.
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Leaders are stepping forward…
People are now claiming leadership on Humanity’s Team. Anyone may self-select to become the leader of a Local Humanity’s Team, and some people are already taking us up on that, particularly in Australia and in the United States.
We are still looking for local leadership in Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, the Middle East, Russia, and elsewhere. We are certain this leadership will emerge. Indeed, over 1,000 people have already registered for the First Leadership Gathering of Humanity’s Team on June 27-28-29 in Portland, Oregon, and we know that many people will self-identify as area leaders there. For a list of communities and leaders identifying themselves so far, please go to www.HumanitysTeam.com, and click on Communities and Leaders.
Teaching the Teachers…do you see yourself here?
One of the most exciting outreach activities of Humanity’s Team is our TEACHING THE TEACHERS TUTORIAL, offering Personal Instruction and Guidance for Advanced Messengers of The New Spirituality. This is a two-day, 20-hour intensive learning activity personally led by Neale Donald Walsch, working in close contact with a handful of students.
The program will be offered Monday, June 30 and Tuesday, July 1, from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. on the two days immediately following the First Humanity’s Team Leadership Gathering, at the same site near Portland, Oregon. This is a fee-based program for people who know that they are now truly ready to move to the next level in their experience of themselves as a Messenger. The tuition is $650 and includes five nights lodging on the site of the Leadership Gathering, as well as meals for the two-day tutorial.
It is designed for those intending to participate in the Leadership Gathering (attendance at which is free), and allows them to stay on-site at this event from its beginning. On-site lodging is available to no other members of the public attending the Leadership Gathering.
During the two days of this intensive tutorial, Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God and creator of Humanity’s Team, will interact quietly with the persons now identifying themselves as senders of this message of new spiritual opportunity, explaining in striking detail and with breathtaking clarity all of the most important concepts and principles of The New Spirituality, responding to questions from his students, and interacting with them in intimate open dialogue intended to produce deep personal clarity.
The Teaching the Teachers Tutorial can serve as an extraordinary stand-alone learning experience, and would also be an excellent introduction to the extended Humanity’s Team Leadership Education Program, which extends over several months and prepares participants to become study group facilitators, class instructors, and retreat presenters for Humanity’s Team. Watch the Humanity’s Team Website for more information about the Leadership Education Program.
Spaces in the Teaching the Teachers Tutorial are extremely limited and must be reserved in advance. Please call Kristen Arnett at 541-482-8806 or email: tutorial@HumanitysTeam.com
There is Still Time
If you have not already done so, please go to www.5StepsToPeace.com and learn about how you may participate in a major worldwide spiritual activist activity created by Neale Donald Walsch this Passover and Easter weekend.
And that’s it for this edition of the HT Communiqué. This publication is designed to keep you up to date on the activities of Humanity’s Team, which we hope will continue to receive your commitment and support.
Thank you for being part of Humanity’s Team.
RITA CURTIS
Worldwide Coordinator
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