BetterListen!

Excerpt from "Witches, Scholars, and Other Freedom Fighters" with Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem offers us this excerpt from her recording “Witches, Scholars and Other Freedom Fighters.”

 

What was true in my day is still far too true now, and so we need scholars who are revolutionaries and who dare to think what we might study if we looked at the world as if everyone mattered, and if we studied each continent in the reality of their existence instead of the political fact of their power, in our view of the world.  In fact by not doing that we are missing a very great deal. Think about what we did not learn about the Native-American cultures.  There are hundreds of sophisticated peoples, yet we are only just discovering how useful to us Native American cultures are that were already in this country before it was “discovered”.  And think about the true source of much of our democratic tradition in this country.  

I doubt very much the immigrants -- the European immigrants who came here -- knew a great deal about ancient Greece.  And in any case, in ancient Greece, only about five people voted.  It was a very limited privilege -- very limited privilege -- and in fact the source of our knowledge about democracy really came from the Native American cultures that were already here. We learned the structure of our government from the Iroquois confederacy. And those wise people advised us and were present in Philadelphia explaining that it was of course possible to allow a high degree of autonomy as they did to various nations.  The Cherokees and others still cede overall umbrella powers in a confederacy. Benjamin Franklin admitted that this is a major source of our democracy in this country, but with condescension: “Well if those savages can do it so can we.”

New Instant Access MP3 Format Lectures from Marianne Williamson

  We are pleased to announce that five more titles from the Marianne Williamson Lecture Series recorded live in Los Angeles are now available.  These include a fantastic talk given on June 1 titled "Spirituality & the Oil Spill" in which Marianne talks about our country's addiction to oil and applies the tenets of the 12-Step Program to this troubling situation.  This unique view of the disaster is enlightening and heart-breaking, yet hopeful in offering us a roadmap of what we as Americans and individuals need to do to heal from this catastrophe and how we can better relate to each other and the rest of the world.

New Lectures from Marianne Williamson with Free Previews:

Spirituality and the Oil Spill 

The Value of Showing Up

Situation Perfect

Life is a Choice 

Pure Potentiality 

Excerpt from "Your Universe and You" with Edgar Mitchell

We are pleased to continue to bring you even more from Edgar Mitchell with this excerpt from "Your Universe and You".  

There is a fundamental original design for all of this.  A priori knowledge that the universe was constructed in thought a priori and laid out in all its glory, and we are just following a plan.  That isn’t the evidence either.  The evidence is that we’re in an evolving, creating, self-organizing, learning universe.  And the consciousness that is us is a part of the consciousness that is creating it all along.  And that, instead of being passive participants in this play, we are the major actors and have been all along.  We just forgot who and what we are.  So the ancient question can be rephrased only slightly, to give us a better picture of what it is that we are dealing with.  Virtually all of our systems of the past have talked about our physicality; we’ve expressed ourselves as physical beings yearning for a spiritual experience.  And if we turn that around and say that the alternative is that we are eternal conscious beings creating a physical experience, I think we have it closer to being right.  The problem is that it is very difficult for us to experience that.  

 

How many have heard Deepak Chopra, Dr. Deepak Chopra?  Quite a few of you. Good. Some haven’t.  Dr. Chopra is an Indian by birth. Not an American Indian -- the real type.  Trained in the west. Family of physicians.  On the staff at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Hospital and at this point dedicated to bringing some of the ancient wisdom of the ayurvedic medical techniques into western medicine.  And he speaks of these subjects, virtually the same as I do, but from the point of view of medical scientist and practitioner.  And he gives a wonderful little analogy that I like so much from his native county and it’s called precognitive commitment.  It is the notion that you take a young elephant and tie them with a small green vine in their youth, and then as they grow up -- I mean you always tether them with a small green vine -- but when they grow up they may be able to break a chain tied around their leg but they can’t break a small green vine. Because they are precognitively committed to that which confines them.  If you take insects and put them in a closed jar, and keep them alive in there for awhile and then take the lid off, very, very few will escape.  They are precognitively committed to their environment.

 

We have become precognitively committed to the idea that we are physical first and spiritual second when it is really the other way around.

Edgar Mitchell Bio and Links

Click Here to Order

Excerpt from "Way of the Spiritual Warrior" with David Gershon

Join David Gershon as he explores the first quality of the spiritual warrior – courage and bravery – in this excerpt from his recording “Way of the Spiritual Warrior”.

The seven qualities of the spiritual warrior.  First quality is the quality of courage, or bravery. Let me read a quote. “It requires courage to come out, reach out, and effect positive change in ourselves and in the larger institutions we serve. It requires courage to love.  It requires courage to accept that we ourselves can push the universe into higher states of order.” That’s a quote from Jim Channon, Evolutionary Tactics.  Another quote: “For the warrior, the experience of the tender heart is what gives birth to fearlessness.  Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness; it comes from letting the world into your heart.  You are willing to open up without resistance and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.  Without the tenderness, the bravery is brittle like a china cup.” From Rick O’ Shea, How to Be a Warrior.  And one last quote, before we get into actually talking about courage and bravery: “The warrior’s way is not invulnerability but vulnerability -- to the world, to life, and therefore to the presence”. That’s from a book called, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior.

So what are the qualities of courage and bravery? First quality that I see of courage and bravery is the willingness to say the difficult things. The willingness to say the difficult things, to be vulnerable.  I found in my life, that to achieve is not that hard. But what really became scary for me was to share what made me vulnerable, which was in fact that I might be thought of as less than in the eyes of the world.  That is my self-esteem; when that was put into play when that was what was really at stake, that’s where I found my vulnerability or where indeed had fear.  The way I came to know about that was through my wife, who is one of my mentors for better or worse.  

David Gershon Bio and Links

Excerpt from "Science and the Inner Experience" with Edgar Mitchell

We continue our series of excerpts from Dr. Edgar Mitchell’s talks with this transcription from “Science and the Inner Experience”.

 

Move out now further into space.  See the shape of the earth as a sphere.  Let’s move on out until we see the earth about as we would see it -- the size of a ball, a baseball held at arms length.  Look at that magnificent little planet blue and white, peaceful.   The turmoil that goes on underneath that layer of atmosphere and those clouds is not evident to us here.  We recognize it as a haven of life, our home, our planet. As far as we know for sure, the only haven of life in our galaxy, but as we suspect, probably not the only one.  But a beautiful little planet in the immensity of space and set in the background, billions and billions of points of light. Far more so -- ten times more than we can possibly see from the surface of the earth. Representing stars, galaxies, galactic clusters, billions and billions of such points of light, and our tiny little planet about the size of a ball held at arms length.  A beautiful peaceful haven for life. And in the immensity of the universe all of a sudden you feel connected. 

We are all apart of the same thing.  There is a connection.  There is intelligence.  There is a feeling of oneness, an extension of self.  And it’s a joyous and wonderful experience.  As I experienced it at this point coming back from the moon and looking at the earth, suddenly I recognized that our scientific description of reality of this universe was far from complete. Our model was not yet filled out, and on the other hand our religious descriptions of ourselves, of creation, of the universe --  all of them were somewhat flawed and incomplete as well. In other words, our knowledge of who and what we are.  How we got here.  Where we came from and where we are going is very inadequate at this point in history, and yet there is a feeling of intelligence, of peace, of abundance, of process, that gives one comfort and joy in observing this magnificent universe of which we are a part.  Contemplate that for a moment. See this little planet from that perspective, and see if you experience it as I did.

Edgar Mitchell Bio and Links

Excerpt from "Indigenous Peoples -- Message to the World"

  We at BetterListen! are delighted to offer this excerpt from our recording of "Indigenous Peoples -- Message to the World." Below is a transcription of The Indigenous Peoples Declaration of Interdependence. Recorded Live at The First Earth Summit in Rio in 1992.

Declaration: We the Indigenous Peoples walk to the future in the footprints of our ancestors, from the smallest to the largest living being, from the four directions, from the air, the land and the mountains.  The Creator has placed us, the Indigenous Peoples, upon our mother the earth. 

The footprints of our ancestors are permanently etched upon the lands of our peoples.  We the Indigenous Peoples maintain our inherent rights to self-determination. We have always had the right to decide our own forms of government, to use our own laws, to raise and educate our children, to our own cultural identity, without interference.  We continue to maintain our rights as peoples despite the centuries of deprivation, assimilation, and genocide. We maintain our inalienable rights to our lands and our territories, to all our resources above and below, and to our waters we assert our ongoing responsibility to pass these on to the future generations. 

We cannot be removed from our lands.  We the Indigenous peoples are connected by the circle of life to our lands and environment. 

We the Indigenous peoples walk to the future in the footprints of our ancestors.  Signed in Karoka, Brazil on the 30th day of May, 1992.

 For More Information

 

Global Mind Change by Dr. Edgar Mitchell

Join Dr. Mitchell in a further exploration of humanity, science, fulfillment, what it means to be a human and our place in the universe.

Part of the 3 lecture series, recorded in the 90's are perhaps more relevant than ever.

"I suggest to you that the way we need to look at it is because we are not really physical beings yearning for a spiritual experience.  We are in reality eternal creative beings.  Creating a physical experience and it takes quite a shift in mind set to get your self around that one." - Edgar Mitchell Bio and links

Running Time: 128 minutes Listen Here	Buy From BetterListen! MP3 download info
	also available on