August 2003
A Global Embrace of Marchers and Meditators
The worldwide movement toward holistic and spiritual awakening
by Ralph White
Cortes Island, British Columbia. Over the last quarter century, many of us have clung to the notion that there is some kind of awakening of consciousness happening on the planet. Countless spiritual visionaries have spoken of just such a global paradigm shift, but in today’s America can we really see any evidence that this is happening? Skeptics might do well to examine a little known event that again passed virtually unnoticed — the annual International Gathering of Holistic Learning Centers that took place last May at Hollyhock, Canada’s beautiful island retreat in British Columbia.
Names like Esalen in Big Sur, California, and Omega Institute in Upstate New York, may be widely known in the holistic community but, in fact, there are hundreds of similar centers in numerous parts of the world. Some are in the heart of big cities, like New York’s Open Center, while others, like Hollyhock, are located in secluded settings of exquisite natural charm. All share a dedication to the creation of a more holistic, spiritual, and ecological world — and all work with presenters from a broad spectrum of inner disciplines and philosophical and artistic perspectives.
These centers have quietly and subtly evolved into an informal planetary network of alternative learning. They have become hubs of cultural and spiritual renewal. Yet they have done so purely in response to their sense of the soul and society’s needs and entirely without any form of centralized organization.
An Emerging Ecology of Consciousness
In essence, holistic learning centers are places that change people’s lives. Books and magazines are wonderful, but alone their influence is limited. We need places where the new cultural paradigm can express itself, places devoted wholeheartedly to the great work of awakening consciousness. In contemporary society these are unlikely to be limited to monasteries and cathedrals. They emerge instead from a few seemingly crazy individuals who feel that their city or region needs some kind of focal point for life-enhancing new ideas and practices.
Most universities are too gripped by the reductionist spirit of post-modernism or an attachment to conventional secular thinking to consistently serve as instruments of creative change. So someone pulls together a few speakers, rents a hall, produces flyers and advertisements, and the center begins to move into manifestation. Community begins to form, people feel differently knowing that an oasis exists for their kind of thinking and being, and hope stirs in people’s hearts that they are not alone in their beliefs and intentions. At workshops and conferences, participants are inspired to bring a more holistic perspective into their professional domain or into their family lives. And thus the work of awakening and renewal goes on.
Since the mid-1980s, many of the world’s leading holistic learning centers have met annually to share notes and ponder the overall direction of the inner and outer changes to which they are dedicated. While the participants have changed over the years, and the location of the Gathering has ranged from Big Sur to Moscow, the same awareness is always present that these centers are, in some way, all part of an emerging ecology of consciousness. This is an event that makes vague talk of planetary transformation come alive and real. To sit in a room with dozens of totally autonomous centers, often from vastly different cultural and linguistic contexts, is to realize that, without question, there is a spontaneous, worldwide movement toward holistic and spiritual awakening. It really is happening.
From Behind The Iron Curtain
The Gathering began on the East Coast when Esalen, the New York Open Center, Interface from Boston, Omega and, soon after, Hollyhock came together to share information, talk frankly about what was and was not working, and create a natural camaraderie. The event was a time to exchange ideas, new visions and best practices in an open spirit — conscious that the competitive, withholding attitudes of conventional business were not for them. The group met frequently throughout the second half of the‘80s, moving from center to center, and at the beginning of the new decade the Gathering shifted to Europe.
In 1990 the setting was the Association Les Courmettes, a delightful French center high on a mountaintop overlooking Nice on the French Riviera. Representatives of the various centers arrived from Germany, Belgium, England, Scotland, Holland, Switzerland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, as well as the United States and Canada.
It seemed that for a few days a true united nations of alternative spirituality was in operation. All it took was a few moments of silence at the first lunch and a little opening of the heart to move attendees to tears as they recognized their sense of unity and shared commitment to the larger goal of a change in global consciousness.
It was the time of the demolition of the Berlin Wall and so it was deeply moving to the Gathering attendees when a few fledgling centers from behind the Iron Curtain showed up. That’s why it was decided that the following year the Gathering would be held near Budapest. Could it really be true that hidden among the millions targeted by our nuclear missiles for decades were people with the same yearning for spiritual knowledge and holistic living as us? From the point of view of the 21st Century, such a question seems almost absurd. But little more than a decade ago the communist lands were a vast black hole in our knowledge and the deep inner concerns of their inhabitants were almost entirely unknown.
The Gathering in Hungary was a fascinating and eye opening experience. It was attended by the early pioneers of alternative culture in Poland and Czechoslovakia — people who had started Zen publishing houses under the suspicious eyes of the authorities, or a rare American teaching English to President Havel’s staff in Prague and eager to bring something more worthwhile from the West than Big Macs and M&Ms. Suddenly it was clear that the post-communist world was filled with people on our wavelength, that Cold War rumors of Russian hippies rioting at Santana concerts were probably true, and that the whole holistic movement suddenly had a massive new field of endeavor.
Consequently, there were annual Gatherings in Russia, Poland, and, eventually, Croatia. In each location, people would emerge from these spiritually repressed countries ravenous for information on how to start and develop holistic centers. Although they knew little of Western counter culture, they were eager to learn and to create communities for the healthy renewal of their battered societies. And they were willing to give years of their lives to making available teachings and practices long held at bay by the iron fist of state censorship.
There was a special sweetness in the early‘90s as former political and military enemies greeted each other in the spirit of mutual support and love. Obviously it was not possible to create major holistic learning centers in the economic turmoil and chaos that pervaded the Slavic world at the time, but inspiration, encouragement, and models of holistic thinking could be successfully offered and gratefully received.
The Gathering returned to the West in Amsterdam and France in the latter part of the decade, and then shifted back to North America last year when Western Canada’s remote but exquisite Hollyhock became the host. The attendees included Findhorn from Scotland, Naropa from Colorado, the Institute of Noetic Sciences, the Ojai Foundation and the University of Creation Spirituality, all from California and, as ever, the Open Center from New York. In addition to these well-established centers, there were embryonic initiatives from Brazil and Australia ready to learn from the elders of this community.
As always, a powerful sense of warmth and connectedness between all participants was evident from the start. These organizers who devote so much of their lives to creating nourishing and transforming experiences for others need to take time to nourish themselves. They need to escape the notorious sense of isolation that can afflict even a well-attended center in a society whose media largely ignore the activities and interests of Cultural Creatives. For those behind the scenes, too often the least holistic part of their work is their own lives. Harried, stressed, overworked and underpaid, rushing for the next deadline, planning the next event, they need to take time to slow down, meet their peers, and try to put their fingers on the pulse of the overall holistic movement.
Integration Into The Heart Of Society
Where are we now after 30 or more years of effort to bring holistic perspectives to society at large? Do our efforts need to shift focus? At this year’s Gathering, participants pondered the perennial question of how to reconcile their dual roles as both businesses and semi-sacred places. Unlike most businesses, their aim is to celebrate rather than feel threatened by the constant appearance of new centers which they view as part of the inevitable and appropriate expansion of awareness to which they are all committed. This year for the first time a Christian retreat came into the fold, happy to view itself as a holistic center. And there was a wave of impressive, well-funded new centers on two continents that showed how far alternative approaches to health, lifestyle, and inner development have come since the madcap schemes of the often impoverished pioneers decades ago.
Some veterans suggested that from the late‘60s to the early‘90s we saw a kind of new dispensation, a time in which new teachers and teachings were constantly appearing and it was the job of a center’s program director to stay abreast of the latest Tibetan lama to emerge from the Himalayas, or a new shaman, bodywork technique, or fresh dimension of complementary medicine or contemplative practice. For perhaps 25 years the supply of new ideas seemed limitless as we mined the Eastern religions, the esoteric traditions, the body/mind disciplines, the indigenous cultures, and the world’s mythologies for new insight. Now, they argued, that time of dispensation has largely ceased and we live in a period when our goal has shifted toward the integration of these new riches into the very heart of society.
Thus, for the next quarter of a century, perhaps the future of holistic learning lies increasingly in the direction of professional training programs and degrees. Might centers rely less on people’s spare time and money, and more on the funds participants are ready to devote to serious, in-depth education? And finally, is the new edge the integration of all these holistic and ecological insights into a social and political life that has become dangerously out of balance?
Certainly, Hollyhock’s Leadership Institute is doing pioneering work. Its goal is to bring together two worlds that really need to interact more fully. On the one hand we have the social and environmental activists whose understandable anger and confrontational tactics can so easily lead to early burn out. On the other, we have the meditation practitioners, the devotees of inner work, bodywork and artistic expression, who can run the risk of New Age narcissism if they ignore the larger political context in which our lives take place. As these worlds meet and inspire each other, the transformed planet that we all long for moves a big step closer.
The heart, however, of the International Centers’ Gathering is the meeting of so many diverse groups in a spirit of love, mutual support and unity. Whether they come from Australia or Siberia, Scotland or Santa Cruz, a similar vision lives at the core of most centers that changes for the better the lives of the many who attend their programs. Holistic centers always take courage, inspiration and insight from each other’s work. Ultimately, their very existence worldwide is powerful evidence that the awakening for which we all yearn is alive and well, and probably living in a center near you.
Ralph White is co-founder of the New York Open Center and editor of Lapis Magazine.
Copyright @ 2003 Dragonfly Media
A Sampling of Spiritual Centers
Institute of Noetic Sciences, near San Francisco, CA
Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, Occidental, CA
Salt Spring Centre, British Columbia
University of Creation Spirituality, Oakland, CA
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