How much does our ancestry shape our identity? How relevant is it to our lives today? In this highly practical and inspiring book, experienced family researcher Cherry Gilchrist takes us on a fascinating journey to the heart of who we really are and demonstrates how looking at our past can change the present.

Growing Your Family Tree: Tracing your roots and discovering who you are

‘It happened one summer night, a few years ago. I had been working on my Welsh line of ancestry, trying to figure out the branch of the tree which I could now trace back to my 3 x great-grandfather, Edward Owens of Abbeycwmhir, a soldier who fought in the Napoleonic Wars. All that night, my sleep was disturbed by what seemed like a babble of voices. I heard people chattering insistently, and I knew that they were my Welsh ancestors. I could not make out what they were saying, but I had the distinct impression that they wanted to be ‘found’ again, and that they wanted their story to be told.’ (Chapter Two: Growing Your Family Tree)

It was a shock when I discovered that ancestors are not just names in birth, marriage and death records, but may still be intimately connected to us. I had held out against family history, and laughed off my father’s pursuit of it until at a certain age my perspective changed. Then I became intensely curious about my ancestry, especially on my mother’s side; going up the female line had an intrinsic appeal. Taking the plunge into the world of genealogical websites, microfiches and dusty documents, I began to trace the past, and found myself in the middle of an exciting detective story. Names were wrested from the shadowy past, faces unexpectedly put to names when photos turned up, and stories of heroes and villains built from nuggets of evidence. Overall, I found lives which were examples of love and endurance. There were no noble names on this side of the family, but I didn’t need them – there was enough nobility of being to inspire my loyalty.

But family history doesn’t stop with the stories either, as my encounter with ‘the Welsh voices’ shows. Was I just a victim of my imagination? All over the world, I reasoned, in times past and present, people have made a connection with those that have gone before them, in what anthropologists now like to call ‘ancestor veneration’. Ancestors are seen as protecting, guiding, and sometimes even disruptive influences – but they form a part of ongoing human life. I discovered, on my travels, ceremonies on Bali and on Easter Island that celebrate and invite the presence of the ancestors. So perhaps our practice of family history is at root a form of this. And when I began to interview other family historians, in the process of writing this book, I found that many of them shared this view that our ancestors are, in some sense, still present in our lives. Whatever terms we see this in – as a living chain of DNA recognised deep in our bodies, as a web of spirits or an imprint of historical events that can never be erased from consciousness – it is powerful and inspiring, and may be a dimension that we can reinstate in our lives. Even the diagrammatic family tree is a version of the Tree of Life, which features in so many myths and in core spiritual practices.

The subsequent chain of events in my life showed to my own satisfaction that this was not just imagination on my part. When such contact with the ancestral chain is made, the course of events may change.

‘Within a couple of months extraordinary things started to happen. A seemingly random hit on a website for a Welsh chapel led me to finding two separate lots of new cousins, also direct descendants of Edward Owens, and still living in the same region as my ancestors in mid-Wales. I had previously thought that everyone had moved away from the area. When I met up with Harold, my third cousin, he shook my hand, looked deep into my eyes, and said, “You’re the first member of the family to come back for a hundred years.”’

***

About the Author: Cherry Gilchrist is the author of nearly thirty books on relationships, personal development and culture. She runs an annual course on life story writing at Marlborough Summer School. Cherry also works with patients at a local hospice, helping them to set down their life stories and she has participated in creating a training programme for new volunteers. Growing Your Family Tree is her latest book.

By Simon Small (Article from Watkins’ Mind Body Spirit magazine, issue 29, February 2012)

There is no escape from the Greatest Question.

Yet individuals can spend a lifetime refusing to acknowledge its existence; civilisations, eons.

Every now and again it forces its way into the open at a personal level, for most to be resolutely reburied as expeditiously as possible. Even more rarely, if ever, does a whole culture turn to look the Greatest Question firmly in the eye.

Star Pilgrim is a novel, set in the near future, about a civilisation that does just that. It is about an old, incredibly advanced alien race that has realised that only this question ultimately matters. It has become their all-consuming quest.

***

About the Author: Simon Small is chaplain to the Abbey House retreat centre in Glastonbury. He also works independently in the field of spirituality – writing books, leading retreats and seminars across the UK, and acting as a spiritual guide to individuals. Simon lives in Glastonbury UK with his wife, Jane. The great passion of his life (apart from Jane) is exploring and sharing the awesome mystery of existence. In this quest he is inspired by the great spiritual traditions and the insights of science and philosophy. “Star Pilgrim” is his latest book.

Something is happening to us. Trying to make sense of their awakening experiences, people troll the Internet and discover the idea of “ascension” – the doctrine that humanity is on the verge of a process of spiritualization, a transition to a higher, and less material, dimension. Implicit in the term is the concept of rising above. Rising above what, may we ask? When did rising above become something to aspire to?

The concept has deep roots indeed, as old as civilization (though less old than humanity). When mass agriculture allowed a differentiation of labor, with farmers at the base of a hierarchy and the king at the top, the idea grew that to be working in the dirt was to be lowly, inferior, lesser. Often, the king’s feet were not allowed to touch the ground. He, along with the priests, occupied another realm, removed as much as possible from materiality. Indeed, they were seen as emissaries of the heavens, where the gods were believed to reside.

All of this was original to agricultural civilizations. Hunter-gatherers found their gods everywhere, not just in the sky but in the waters, rocks, mountains, and trees. There was no aspiration to rise above nature, nor to conquer it. That ambition only arose with the domestication of plants and animals. Soon thereafter, the wild realm became something separate from the domestic realm, and natural forces became something threatening, something to be tamed for the good of humanity. The concepts of good and evil arose then too, modeled after a new, oppositional relationship to nature. While the hunter-gatherer understands that each species has a necessary gift to give for the good of the whole, to the farmer, it was the corn that was good and the weed bad; the sheep that was good and the wolf or the locusts bad.

SACRED ECONOMICS: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition by Charles Eisenstein, paperback (496 pages).

And so was born the ambition to conquer and transcend nature. We conceived of a non-material soul or spirit separate from, and more sacred than, the material body. We elevated the mind over the body, the will over the desires, the conquest of biological drives over their fulfillment. We aspired to rise above our animality, to become creatures of (depending on whether one took a scientific or a religious view) pure reason, or pure spirit. The way to do that was to retreat from the world: to meditate in a cave or monastery, or retreat into a laboratory or study.

Why is rising above a good thing? Why does “superior” mean better and “inferior” mean worse? Why is lowly or base not a compliment? Why do we want to “raise our vibration”? Is a piccolo better than a bassoon?

The mythology of ascension taps into the same ambition as our other attempts to master, control, and transcend nature, whether they be through technological or psychological means. It is quite understandable, looking out at the world today, that one would want to leave the sordid life of materiality behind. That, however, might be more a comment on how we have treated the material world than on materiality itself.

Perhaps what we need is not the transcendence of materiality, but to embrace it more fully. Having made a ruin of Earth, are we then to leave it behind for some spiritual realm of the fifth dimension? That is an example of the very attitude that has enabled us to ruin it to begin with: matter doesn’t matter, it is not sacred. We have certainly treated the planet that way. Today we feel pulled to reconnect with nature, with community, with our emotions, with our physicality.

An evolutionary shift is nigh, but it is not a raising of our vibration into non-materiality. It is a reconnection with and resacralization of the material realm. Our “ascent” to supposed mastery of nature has run its course, generating a multitude of crises that are birthing a transition into a new age: an Age of Reunion. No longer seeing ourselves as separate, our relationship to nature is becoming one of cocreative partnership

Paradoxically, our reunion with nature, materiality, and the flesh might bring on the state of being we associate with ascension after all. For matter is much more than we have made of it; it is much more than a pile of inert, generic building blocks. Every bit of it is alive, sentient; it is spirit manifest, and every body is soul made flesh. All the qualities that we have relegated to a separate spiritual realm exist already, right here, in the world of matter. By returning fully to this world, here and now, we will find ourselves living, paradoxically, in a different world, relating to all beings in a different way, enjoying an unimagined sensitivity of perception. Ascension implies leaving the world behind for a more rarefied realm, but that realm is already here, if only we can lower our vibration.

***

About the author: Charles Eisenstein is a teacher, speaker, and writer focusing on themes of civilization, consciousness, money, and human cultural evolution. He speaks frequently at conferences and other events, and gives numerous interviews on radio and podcasts. Eisenstein graduated from Yale University in 1989 with a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy, and spent the next ten years as a Chinese-English translator. He currently lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and serves on the faculty of Goddard College. http://charleseisenstein.net/

Watkins' Mind Body Spirit magazine issue 29 features the Spiritual 100

We are delighted to share with you our 2012 list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. This marks the second year that we are publishing our 100 list. Last year’s list was extremely popular and we received a great deal of feedback. We’ve done our best to consider as many people as possible and our spiritual database includes the names of approximately 500 candidates. This list is meant to serve as a positive guide to some of the leading modern teachers that are alive today, and we hope that you are as inspired as we are by their impact. There are a few interesting newcomers to this year’s list. Meanwhile, we are sad to report that three members of last year’s list recently passed away: Kenneth Grant, Sai Baba, and Jerry Hicks.

There are several factors that were taken into account when compiling the list. The main three criteria are:
1) The person has to be alive
2) The person has to have made a unique and spiritual contribution on a global scale
3) The person is frequently googled, appears in Nielsen Data, and is actively talked about throughout the Internet

It’s interesting to think about the amount of times that a person is googled; in a sense, being googled is a form of digital voting, and illustrates just how often someone is being sought out.

Watkins’ Mind Body Spirit magazine (previously Watkins Review) is a quarterly publication by Watkins Books, London’s oldest and largest independent esoteric bookshop, established in 1893. Watkins’ Mind Body Spirit magazine is now available from most WHSmith high street stores in the UK, as well as in Canada, Australia and over 700 Barnes & Noble stores in the USA. You can also get a copy of the current issue (£3.50) or take out a subscription directly from Watkins Books. We appreciate your support!

LIST AT A GLANCE: (scroll down for the top-10 in detail)

Dalai Lama (c)Darko Sikman

1 - Dalai Lama.

Born Lhamo Dondrub, Tenzin Gyatso is the 14th Dalai Lama. Tibetan Buddhists believe him to be a reincarnation of his predecessors and the Buddha of compassion. He is a vocal activist for Tibetan independence and has made an incredible contribution to global spirituality. His visit to Mongolia in November 2011 was criticized by China, but his popularity shows no sign of waning. Time Magazine call him “The most influential person in the world”, while The Times commented “He draws crowds that no other spiritual leader or politician could hope to match…he seems to look at life in a different way to everyone else”. His latest book Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World was published in January.

www.dalailama.com ::  Born in Taktser, Tibet :: 06/07/1935 :: Spiritual Leader

Eckhart Tolle

2 - Eckhart Tolle.

Eckhart’s profound yet simple teachings have helped countless people throughout the world find inner peace and greater fulfillment in their lives. At the core of the teachings lies the transformation of consciousness, a spiritual awakening that he sees as the next step in human evolution. His books, The Power of Now and the highly acclaimed follow-up A New Earth are two of the best-selling Mind, Body, Spirit books in the world. Eckhart Tolle TV is a subscription service offering monthly live streamed guided meditations and new teachings with Eckhart, an on-line community, and more.

www.eckharttolle.com :: Born in Lünen, Germany :: 16/02/1948 :: Spiritual Teacher and Writer

Thich Nhat Hanh

3 – Thich Nhat Hanh.

Buddhist monk, teacher, author and peace activist. He founded the Order of Interbeing and the Unified Buddhist Church, along with monasteries and spiritual centres in Vietnam, the USA and France, where he now lives. His latest book The Novice, a retelling of an ancient Vietnamese folk tale, proposes a real way of being in the world relevant to the twenty-first century.

www.plumvillage.org :: Born in Thua Thien, Vietnam :: 11/10/1926 :: Spiritual Leader

Deepak Chopra (c)Helga Esteb

4 – Deepak Chopra.

As a writer on Ayurveda, mind-body medicine and spirituality, Chopra has had huge success with titles such as Ageless Body, Timeless Mind and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. In 2011 he published The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes: Harnessing Our Power to Change the World with his son Gotham and apologised for his “unfair criticism” of Richard Dawkins, after a long-running feud. His latest book, War of the Worldviews: Science vs Spirituality, pits his views against leading physicist Leonard Mlodinow.

www.deepakchopra.com :: Born in New Delhi, India :: 22/10/1946 :: Physician, writer and public speaker

Paulo Coelho (c)cinemafestival

5 - Paulo Coelho.

The Alchemist is one of the top selling books in history, with over 65 million copies sold in 150 countries. Warner Bros bought the film rights in 2003, but the project stalled. In 2008, Harvey Weinstein bought the rights to the film. Laurence Fishburne is set to direct and play the lead role. Coelho has sold more than 100 million books worldwide and his work has been translated into 67 languages. His latest book Aleph was published in September.

paulocoelho.com :: Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil :: 24/08/1947 :: Novelist

Elizabeth Gilbert (c)Deborah Lopez

6 – Elizabeth Gilbert.

Gilbert is best known for her 2006 memoirs, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia. Oprah Winfrey so enjoyed the book she devoted two episodes of her show. The film appeared in 2010 starring Julia Roberts. Gilbert followed this up with a sequel, Committed: A Skeptic makes Peace with Marriage, covering her life after Eat, Pray, Love.

elizabethgilbert.com :: Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, USA :: 18/07/1969 :: Novelist and memoir writer

Iyanla Vanzant (c)J Lyons Photography

7 – Iyanla Vanzant.

An inspirational speaker, spiritual teacher, author, and television personality, Vanzant was named one of the 100 Most Influential Black Americans by Ebony magazine, which said that “Her books, lectures and television appearances have made her a multimedia high priestess of healthy relationships”. Her latest book is Peace from Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You’re Going Through.

innervisionsworldwide.com :: Born in Brooklyn, New York, USA :: 13/09/1953 :: Lawyer, minister, talk show host and author

Ken Wilber

8 – Ken Wilber.

Wilber has advocated Integral Thought and influenced figures as varied as Bill Clinton, Deepak Chopra, and Billy Corgan. He founded the Integral Institute and has written about adult development, developmental psychology, philosophy, worldcentrism, ecology, and stages of faith.

www.kenwilber.com :: Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA :: 31/01/1949 :: Author and Integral Theorist

James Redfield

9 – James Redfield.

Best known for The Celestine Prophecy, which he self-published in 1992. Redfield produced and co-wrote the screenplay of the movie, which came out in 2006. Redfield’s latest book, The Twelfth Insight, is now available in paperback.

www.celestinevision.com :: Born in Birmingham, Alabama, USA :: 19/03/1950 :: Writer

Rhonda Byrne

10 - Rhonda Byrne.

Well known for The Secret book and DVD, Byrne advocates the belief that we can all transcend our suffering by not falling prey to negative thoughts. She has been listed among Time Magazine’s list of 100 people who shape the world, and has also produced television shows. Her new book The Magic is published in March.

www.thesecret.tv :: Born in Australia :: 12/03/1951 :: Writer and TV/Film producer

To read the full Spiritual 100 list, please ask for issue 29 of Mind Body Spirit magazine at your local newsagents, WHSmith (UK) or Barnes & Noble (US), or purchase a copy online directly from Watkins Books.

by Maureen Seaberg

Like the Marine who becomes “Avatar” in James Cameron’s astonishing film, there are people among us whose perceptions may place them in a rare category of consciousness right here on Earth. They are synesthetes. And like the Na’avi of Pandora, they are my tribe.

(c) Petr Vaclavek, Shutterstock

Synesthesia is defined as “a neurologically-based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.” Despite a prodigious memory like most synesthetes (the additional sensations act as a mnemonic) I’ve never been able to memorize that definition, which falls so short of the wonder of seeing phosphorescent color around my letters, numbers, days of the week, months and some music. To me, it is only a tiny part of what goes on in a synesthete’s mind. And to me, synesthesia is not just some neurological glitch (crossed neurons or lack of inhibition between them are the two dominant theories) but a form of consciousness and even an interface to the quantum.

Scientists are discovering now that beyond seeing colored music, or tasting words, or seeing auras or having facility with metaphor, synesthetes have a proliferation of “mirror-touch” neurons present in all of us which may actually communicate with other people’s mirror-touch neurons. This means that synesthetes are highly empathic. In addition, leading Near Death Experience researchers Dr. Pim van Lommel and Dr. PMH Atwater have written of NDE experiencers “returning” with synesthesia where there was none before. Dr. Atwater herself saw the return of her childhood synesthesia (it is sometimes outgrown) after a dramatic NDE. I myself have had lifelong Out of Body Experiences, (OBEs), and feel more research must be done here.

Tasting the Universe by Maureen Seaberg, available from Watkins Books

About two years ago I left breaking news to depart on a quest to understand what more I believe there is to know about synesthesia. Used to covering crime stories and mysteries, I found the history around synesthesia both: a crime because what was previously known about it was forgotten during the rise of the school of psychology known as behaviorism, and a mystery because though new scientific research now burgeoning around the world had found many important clues to its nature, the meaning of it, be it the biological or the metaphysical nature of it, remained just out of reach. And no one seemed to want to address the vast spiritual literature mentioning the trait despite the scientific imperative to follow the thread where it leads, no matter where it leads. And though I humbly submit, I’m just a layperson, my discoveries were frankly, historic. The resulting book, Tasting the Universe (available from Watkins Books in the store and online [on orders over £30 free delivery + free Watkins Review: Mind Body Spirit magazine]), has just been released through New Page Books.

My research gathered the first-time testimonies of rumored tribe members violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman and Billy Joel who generously spoke to their fellow synesthete. In addition, thanks to my professor Dr. John Michael Lennon of the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, where I studied on scholarship, previous writings by Norman Mailer on Marilyn Monroe were found to reveal his description of her synesthesia. It was later confirmed by a surviving niece. The great mentalist the Amazing Kreskin, more yogi master than showman in my estimation, also gave his first-time testimony. And one open synesthete, three-time Grammy Award winner Pharrell Williams spoke at length for the first time about what he believes is the gift’s metaphysical nature.

With the help of many leading theologians, and the especially gifted Tibet House Director of East West Research Dr. William C Bushell, I found religious literature from the Bible’s Exodus to the Kabbalah to Buddist writings by Zen Master Dogen all address the trait through the ages in the context of an enlightened awareness. And while I pondered God for a time in my manuscript, agreeing with Pharrell Williams that synesthesia is a conduit to the Creator, I knew there was a new pulpit to visit: quantum physics. Why do the lighted photisms, those colorful forms synesthetes see, look like subatomic particle trails sometimes or even stars being born?

I reached out to the affable and brilliant consciousness researcher Dr. Stuart Hameroff of the Center for Consciousness Studies in Tucson, Arizona. “Synesthesia is a deeper form of regular consciousness,” he tells me. “Synesthetes have a lower threshold to quantum consciousness.” He believes the phenomena associated with synesthesia (colored music, for example) happens at the quantum level, perhaps in the tiny microtubules of the neurons and even deeper. He believes that people with synesthesia have had their threshold altered so they tend to inhabit quantum consciousness more often than regular people. “And dreams, I think, are more quantum-like. Dreams have deep inter-connections, multiple code systems and possibilities—timelessness, sometimes.” He thinks this is more typical of quantum information. And he thinks the qualia, or the way things seem to us (like the taste of chocolate or the way a sunset looks), that make up the senses are also in the quantum world. “So it could be that synesthetes are more in what you might call an altered state or a dream state or a quantum state.”
The Center for Consciousness Studies Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference takes place in May in Stockholm and will feature a day-long workshop on expanding the lexicon of synesthesia: http://consciousness.arizona.edu

That the leading consciousness and quantum researchers have turned their attention to this remarkable experience is heartening. And the prestigious Rhine Center at Duke University has received a grant to study synesthesia and Psi. It’s a brave new frontier surrounding this most colorful group of people, who may just be quantum avatars.

TASTING THE UNIVERSE: People Who See Colors in Words and Rainbows in Symphonies: A Spiritual and Scientific Exploration of Synesthesia by Maureen Seaberg, published by New Page Books, £13.99 (check out discount from Watkins Books) Paperback (288 pages).

Published in the Watkins Review: Mind Body Spirit, issue 27 (summer 2011).

Join us on July, 14th 6.30-7.30pm - Aidan will be signing books and giving a talk at Watkins Books, London. The event is free. His latest book, "Shinto: A Celebration of Life" is a study of the Shinto religion and in particular its concept of Kami (Deity and deities), Kannagara (similar but not identical to Wu Wei in Daoism) and Musubi, or organic growth, which points to a more eco-centric way of living and thinking.

Shinto: A Celebration of Life by Aidan Rankin

For orthodox economists, the relegation of Japan to ‘third largest’ economy in the world after the United States and China is bad news for the Land of the Rising Sun. This is because they measure success by how far and how quickly the economy can expand. Strength is equated with ever-increasing consumption of ‘things’ and the continuous generation of ‘wealth’, defined in exclusively material terms. Weakness, in turn, is equated with contraction or stasis.

This process of expansion is held to be limitless and eternal, and yet everything must be measurable or quantifiable to ‘count’. Progress is viewed in terms of a straight line, moving inexorably forward. Inevitable and unstoppable, it demands that individuals and nation-states alike compete with each other in a constant struggle to ‘keep up’.

From this conventional standpoint, Japan is in a state of prolonged crisis. Orthodox measurements suggest that it is failing to progress. In the west, the concept of economic expansion as an end in itself has held sway for several centuries, underlying the European Enlightenment, the industrial revolution and the present technological age. There has been a presumption in favour of mechanistic ‘models’ of economics and society over more holistic world views that emphasise the spiritual as much as the material dimension.

The assumption behind this form of economics has been that humanity is ‘the measure of all things’, separate from and independent of the natural world. This approach has been imported to areas of the world that have chosen to copy the west or had western values thrust upon them.

Undoubtedly, the post-Enlightenment era has brought many benefits to artistic creation, scientific research and political thought. Repressive dogmas and distorted traditions have been challenged with a great measure of success. The concept of human rights remains the world’s strongest emancipatory force: I write at a time of political ferment in the Middle East. However, the negative aspects of the linear and mechanically ‘rational’ approach to progress are becoming increasingly apparent. In particular, the sense of disconnection from nature is wreaking environmental havoc and harming the human psyche.

As a species, we are discovering that the Earth’s resources are finite and that we cannot plunder them indefinitely. There is a search for alternatives to the ideology of unlimited economic expansion. With this comes a growing awareness that continuous material accumulation is no longer viable for us as a survival strategy. Moreover, it is also quite literally not enough.

Far from making us feel stronger and more confident, materialism has left us with a sense of unease about the direction in which humanity is going. Narrow individualism has, in reality, diminished us as individuals, because it has undermined the sense of community that is integral to being human. Uncontrolled economic ‘growth’ has failed even to deliver material security, while greatly increasing global inequality and placing our ecological balance in peril.

Viewed from this angle, Japan’s slowdown might be seen as more of an opportunity than a crisis. It is offering a whole society, and especially the upcoming generation, a chance to reflect on its long-term values and goals. In post-recession Japan, the move towards a more balanced, ‘steady-state’ economy is generating a more profound interest in the quality of life, including the environment. There is evidence of a renewed emphasis on co-operation and a re-evaluation of our true needs as human beings, as opposed to what we have been conditioned to ‘want’ or demand. In October 2010, for example, the Financial Times journalist Harry Eyres reported that there was a spate of books by younger writers with titles like Rebellion of the Simple Lifestylers and The Young Generation That Doesn’t Want Much.

This radical new movement draws (consciously or otherwise) upon a rich cultural inheritance. Central to this is Shinto, the indigenous spiritual tradition of Japan. Shinto is as much a disposition or sensibility as it is a philosophy or religious faith. There is no doctrinal orthodoxy, no concept of ‘sin’ and more emphasis on appreciation of life than preparation for death. Shinto practice is known as ‘the Way According to Kami’ – the divine presence innate in everything that is alive.

At the heart of Shinto is a sense that all living systems are intimately connected and dependent on each other as parts of Dai Shizen or Great Nature. In the words of Yamamoto Yukitaka, of the Tsubaki Shrine, ‘Dai Shizen is the vast cosmic setting into which we are born, where we live and within which our lives find any meaning’.

Shinto has much in common with Native American and Aboriginal Australian belief systems, as well as those of pre-Christian Europe. Yet unlike them, it has been able to evolve freely, without being violently interrupted or suppressed. Therefore, it is fully in tune with a modern, technological civilisation. One of Shinto’s most important – and relevant – ideas is Musubi, or organic growth. This is a cycle of expansion and contraction that governs all ecosystems, and by so doing ensures the continuity of life. Musubi can teach us as much about economic and social as ecological balance. It reminds us to live creatively, but without setting out to ‘conquer’ or separate ourselves from Great Nature.

In Shinto, our lives are seen as part of a continuous natural process, connecting past, present and future generations. We are asked to show ‘sympathy with all creatures’ – including fellow human beings – because they are extensions and reflections of ourselves.

Whatever our cultural backgrounds, we can find beauty and wisdom in this gentle, subtle but highly practical view of life. I hope that my book will increase understanding of Shinto and its relevance to the modern world.

Addendum: This article was written before the earthquake and tsunami, events which show that Great Nature can be swift and terrible as well as benign.

An Inconvenient Truth – How the Church erased Jesus’s brothers and sisters from history

-by Tobias Churton

Published in The Watkins Review, Issue 26, Spring 2011

Some time ago, I sat down with my family to watch the movie version of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. After a good dose of Tom Hanks’s adventures as symbol sleuth Robert Langdon, I began asking myself the question, ‘Why are people so involved in this story?’ I concluded that the root of the fascination lies in a single straightforward question: Whatever happened to Jesus’s family?

It occurred to me that such a question might serve as the launching-pad for a book-length investigation. Fortunately, Michael Mann at Watkins Publishing shared this opinion and The Missing Family of Jesus was born.

We’ve all seen paintings of ‘The Holy Family’. It’s a pretty nuclear affair. We might see Joseph leading a donkey on which Mary sits, holding the baby Jesus. Otherwise, we might see Mother Mary and baby Jesus – but no daddy at all.

Families just weren’t like that in those days.

Even the canonical gospels give us some hints. Mark 6,v.3 tells us that Jesus (Yeshua or ‘Joshua’) had brothers: James (properly ‘Jacob’), Joses (Joseph), Simon and Juda (called ‘Judas’ in Matthew). But after the establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire, 300 years later, believers were discouraged from dwelling on questions like: ‘Whatever happened to Jesus’s Family?’ Even today, in Catholic encyclopaedias of the Saints, ‘Saint James the Just’ – universally regarded as Jesus’s brother by the earliest Church Fathers – is called the ‘son of Alphaeus’, deliberately obscuring any theologically compromising family relationship.

The Jesus of the Church jumps out as an ‘only child’ from the pages of dogma. He is God’s ‘only begotten son’. This is a theological point, but we know now that Jesus was a part of history, and like everyone else, he came from a family. Indeed, his family was important to his work. The first ‘bishop’ of the ‘Church’ in Jerusalem after the Crucifixion was James the Righteous (‘Zaddik’), brother of Jesus. James continued his more famous brother’s hostility to the governing priests, scribes and pharisees. According to Eusebius, they had James clubbed to death in AD 62. Brother James was succeeded as second ‘bishop’ of Jerusalem by Jesus’s cousin, Symeon, son of Klopa. According to Hegesippus, Symeon, though a man of exceptional age, was also martyred, like his kinsman James, in AD 106 or 107. Furthermore, according to Church historian Eusebius, the grandsons of Jesus’s brother Judas survived until the reign of the Emperor Trajan (AD 98-117) when they were interrogated on grounds of being of the House of David, and therefore politically suspect.

The earliest ‘Church’ in Jerusalem was to a significant extent, a family affair. Like all families, there would have been problems. Jesus did not need children of his own; his family provided man (and woman) power.

Why are these facts so little known? Why for so many people is Jesus an ‘unreal’ character? The answer is simple. The Roman Church did not want a ‘real’ character. The Roman Church wanted a super-real character, preferably with no character at all, as we understand the term. By the late fourth century, the Jewish Christians, who followed the old tradition first established in Jerusalem (and who were nicknamed ‘the Poor’), were regarded as heretics – outside of the care of ‘the Church’. The Roman Church had effectively usurped the Family and become self-appointed executors of Jesus’s Will and Testament. How could they do this? After Emperor Constantine gave ‘Christianity’ imperial sanction, the Roman Church had the power and might and muscle of the state of Rome behind it.

The Missing Family Of Jesus constitutes the first systematic, historical investigation into all of the evidence surrounding the questions ‘Who belonged to Jesus’s family?’ ‘What do we know about their relationships to one another?’ ‘What happened to Jesus’s Family?’

What do we have to go on? There is some historical evidence, disparate, sometimes obscure, but sufficient to build a picture of reasonable probability, without recourse to wild speculation. There is legendary material, of which much has been made for conspiracy-style narratives. This material is examined rationally. The Missing Family of Jesus scrutinizes the historical basis, such as it is, for the ‘Holy Blood Holy Grail’ narrative. Good history is at last liberated from storytelling.

The book includes in its sweep a thorough search into what orthodox authorities have called ‘apocryphal material’, accounts not included in the official canon of the Churches, but from an historical perspective, of value. For example, in several apocryphal gospels, the figures of James the Righteous and of a possible twin (‘Didymos’ or ‘Thomas’) brother, called Judas, are given special – and fascinating – prominence. James and Judas/ Thomas were important to some Jewish Christians living in Syria in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries. We cannot dismiss evidence simply because the Churches do not like it. The shortcomings of evidence are highlighted.

We also possess an abundance of historical and archaeological knowledge which helps us to establish real conditions and real possibilities as regards social and political conditions relevant to the story.

It must be the case that behind both the historical and the legendary evidence, there exists a missing, truthful picture of the family of Jesus. The task of the book has been to establish as much of that truth as is historically possible within the bounds of reasonable probability.

I am delighted to announce that the project has succeeded in bringing our picture of Jesus back home, for while I suspected at the start that such an examination might help us to get back to Jesus’s historical family, I had no idea that the search would take me directly to the ‘historical Jesus’. This, for me, was an astonishing experience, one in which I must confess I felt a guiding hand from above; I can find no other words to describe the experience.

The final chapter is subtitled ‘The Mystery of Christianity Solved’. I admit this sounds extremely bold, even rash, but I can convey to you in all sobriety that that is precisely what has been achieved. How I came to this momentous conclusion, I shall leave, naturally to the book itself, but I can say this: it is my belief that sooner or later, this book’s conclusion will have to be addressed by the highest religious authorities and, as a US contact has recently informed me, the results should be ‘world-changing’. Well, I don’t know about that, but it might be person-changing, and we can all do with a spiritual wake-up call. It all seems a long way from an evening in watching a filmed novel on TV. But does not the Lord move in mysterious ways?

For those who like bullet-points, here are some key points explored in The Missing Family of Jesus:

• The book shames the early Catholic Church for deliberately obscuring the significance of Jesus’s family in an effort to preserve the doctrine of the virgin birth. This continues.
• In searching for the real family of Jesus, the real, historical Jesus has appeared. He stands now in a political and religious context that is comprehensible, yet still immensely striking, and inspirational.
• The book reveals the weaknesses in the more extreme views of Robert Eisenman (James, the Brother of Jesus) ie: that proto-Christianity was built upon the character of James, first bishop of Jerusalem, allegedly one with the Qumran Teacher of Rightousness, and his battle with the ‘spouter’ Paul.
• The book demolishes the historical edifice of the ‘Holy Blood Holy Grail’ story as far as Jesus’s family is concerned.
• The book shows how the ‘Gnostic Gospels’ exploited the canonical record for their own philosophical purposes. Their modus operandi exposed, the book places Gnostic studies on a new footing.
• The background, politics and essence of Jesus and his family’s position is read through a painstaking analysis of canonical sources, revealing for the first time why Jesus was called ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ or ‘Jesus the Nasorean’. The importance of the non-canonical Book of Enoch is emphasised. It is at Dan that Enoch, prophet and scribe, one to whom was revealed the ‘Son of Man’, must publish God’s condemnation of the wicked angels who have anciently possessed mankind. The Old Testament ‘Dan’ is the New Testament Caesarea Philippi where Jesus and Peter bicker violently over Jesus’s identity. Caesarea Philippi was also called Paneas (today: Banias), for its caves and springs were sacred to Pan. Herod the Great erected a temple to Caesar Augustus there. From Banias springs a fountain that is a source of the holy river Jordan, and it is on the old Roman road to Damsacus. Dan’s significance to Jesus’s real mission is revealed after millennia of obscurity.
• Jesus’s father was not ‘a carpenter’ and the traditional picture of Jesus and his disciples is exploded by the evidence.
• Jesus’s life and message are presented entirely within terms of the Jewish faith current in his time, with an accent on the esoteric interpretation of that faith, current in his time. The primitive ‘Christian’ message is revealed, and we find that it was shared with, and promoted by, his family.
• The scandalous approach of Paul is shown in terms of an attack on Jesus’s brother James. This attack has provided the Catholic Church with ammunition for the false propaganda that Jesus was rejected by ‘his own’, that is, his family, and by extension, the entire Jewish people. The Catholic Church is revealed as having been founded fundamentally on an anti-Jewish position.
• The historical and political circumstances around Jesus’s birth and parentage are analysed objectively, revealing a comprehensible situation that makes perfect sense of the elements of the canonical stories, but sets their meaning in their proper context, with the aid of new insights derived from the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’.
• The gospel writers do not appear to have understood the true setting in which Jesus operated; they are at a remove. Their stories contain facts but the background that makes them intelligible is often missing. The one-sided view of the New Testament creates ‘Christianity’ at the expense of the facts about Jesus and his family.
• This book will make Jesus and his family intelligible for the first time, without mythology, to believers and non-believers alike. The book is objective and does not attempt to evaluate the rightness or otherwise of theological positions or religious prejudices, showing only where theology has ridden roughshod over significant facts.
• All of the evidence concerning Jesus’s family is presented and analysed in its historical context. We can follow Jesus’s descendants until c.220AD. After the Church joined itself to the power of Rome, there was no interest shown in the Judean royal family who had created the seed and gave their lives to promote it.
• The uncomfortable facts surrounding Mary, Jesus’s mother, a Temple slave, are revealed, with a suggestion that she was sexually abused by a priest, possibly a member of the family.

THE MISSING FAMILY OF JESUS: An Inconvenient Truth – How the Church erased Jesus’s brothers and sisters from history by Tobias Churton, published by Watkins Publishing, £13.59 (RRP £16.99) Hardback (256 pages).

UPDATE: wE RELEASED A nEW lIST IN 2012. Read spiritual 100 list, 2012

We’re delighted to share our début list of the 100 most spiritually influential living people, that was published in the Spring issue #26 of the Watkins Review (now Watkins’ Mind Body Spirit).*  Yes, we’ve taken up the not so simple task of naming the most popular authors and spiritual teachers, whose contribution in spirituality and spreading awareness is affecting us all.

We live in an age of lists – from groceries and obituaries to Facebook friends, resume facts, lists of city capitals and lottery numbers. Of course, lists that classify the past, are easier to compile than lists that attempt to predict the future. With the holy grail of sorting algorithms, the world is sure to be your oyster.

Lists help us organize, explore and perceive our environments. But are so many lists really necessary? It is very much in vogue to publish lists of people: Time Magazine publishes an annual list of the 100 people who most influence the world; Forbes publishes several lists including a Celebrity 100 list, the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women, and a list of 1000 Billionaires; Art Review’s Power 100 is an annual list of the worlds 100 most powerful collectors, artists, gallerists, etc…

The lists of lists of people, just keep going and going. However, the Watkins Review believes that an important list has been long overdue, and we are delighted to share with you our list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. Lists of influential people contribute to the discourse and issues that each person represents, and the Watkins Review hopes that our list will nurture the debates surrounding contemporary spirituality.

There are several factors that were taken into account when compiling the list. Listed below are the main three:
1) The person has to be alive
2) The person has to have made a unique and spiritual contribution on a global scale
3) The person is frequently googled, appears in Nielsen Data, and highlighted in throughout the blogosphere
It’s interesting to think about the amount of times that a person is googled; in a sense, being googled is a form of digital voting, and illustrates just how often someone is being sought out.

*The Watkins Review magazine (published by and available from Watkins Books at £4.99 or as a subscription) not only offers reviews of all the latest releases in the Mind, Body, Spirit field, but also features articles and interviews with leading authors. The Review is published three times a year and has a readership of over 30,000 people worldwide.

Update: Here’s the post about the new 2012 Watkins’ Spiritual 100,

List at a glance:

Interesting statistics:
Male: 76%
Female: 24%
Median age: 67 years
The oldest: 104 years, Kyozan Joshu Sasaki
The youngest: 30 years, Jeff Foster

*88. Kenneth Grant passed away on January 15th, 2011. His extraordinary influence will continue to be felt.

Next: Read about this year’s 2012 Watkins’ Spiritual 100,

~Please note, the comments are now closed. Click here to see Spiritual 100 list, 2012~

Here are the top 10 people from the 100 Spiritual Power List, published in 2011 in issue #26 of the Watkins Review ( now Watkins’ Mind Body Spirit.

1. Eckhart Tolle. Tolle does not advocate any particular religion, and has contributed to a wide range of spirituality. Eckhart’s profound yet simple teachings have helped countless people throughout the world find inner peace and greater fulfillment in their lives. At the core of the teachings lies the transformation of consciousness, a spiritual awakening that he sees as the next step in human evolution. His books, The Power of Now and the highly-acclaimed follow-up A New Earth are two of the best-selling Mind, Body, Spirit books in the world – more than eight million copies have been sold in North America alone. He deliberately avoided setting up an ashram or centre as he cautions that “one needs to be careful that the organization doesn’t become self-serving”.

2. Dalai Lama. Born Lhamo Dondrub, Tenzin Gyatso is the 14th Dalai Lama. Tibetan Buddhists believe him to be a reincarnation of his predecessors and the Buddha of compassion. He is a vocal activist for Tibetan independence and has made an incredible contribution to global spirituality.

3. Wayne Dyer. A self-made success story, Wayne Dyer inspires readers to actualize  their potential. He is referred to as a “preacher of self reliance” and is currently focusing on interpreting the Tao Te Ching. He lives in Maui, Hawaii and has eight children.

4. Thich Nhat Hanh. Buddhist monk, teacher, author and peace activist. He founded the Order of Interbeing and the Unified Buddhist Church, along with monasteries and spiritual centres in Vietnam, the USA and France, where he now lives.

5. Deepak Chopra. Deepak began as an endocrinologist, and then shifted his career towards alternative medicine. As a writer on Ayurveda, mind-body medicine and spirituality, he has had huge success with titles such as Ageless Body, Timeless Mind and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. Chopra’s immense cultural influence spans beyond traditional MBS, from children’s books to comics.

6. Louise Hay. Louise Hay is a motivational author, and the founder of Hay House. Her best known work is You Can Heal Your Life; Hay House has published over 300 books, and has made an immense contribution to mind-body-spirit literature and the New Thought Movement. Thinking positively can definitely make a difference!

7. Paolo Coelho. The Alchemist is one of the top selling books in history—with over 65 million copies sold, and holds the Guinness world record for being translated in the most languages!

8. Oprah Winfrey. Oprah might be the most influential person in the world. She has discovered and advocated for so many spiritually influential thinkers—from Obama to Eckhart Tolle. We ranked her at only 8th place, because her influence isn’t focused on spirituality, but eighth place may act as a metaphor since 8 means infinity in numerous metaphysical paradigms.

9. Ken Wilber. Wilber has advocated Integral Thought and influenced figures as varied as Bill Clinton, Deepak Chopra, and Billy Corgan. He founded the Integral Institute and has written about adult development, developmental psychology, philosophy, worldcentrism, ecology, and stages of faith.

10. Rhonda Byrne. Well known for The Secret book and DVD. Byrne advocates the belief that we can all transcend our suffering by not falling prey to negative thoughts. She has been listed among Times Magazine’s list of 100 people who shape the world, and has also produced television shows. Last year she published The Power as a sequel to The Secret.

Learn more about the Watkins 100 Spiritual Power list >>

See this year’s Spirutal 100 list

The definitive purpose of dreaming remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of life. The worlds of science and psychology both have their views but no one has the absolute answer as to whether dreams are purely a physiological or psychological necessity.  Dreams are many things, often all at once. Science has so far proven that they are ways of seeking solutions; maintaining our mental health; improving performance and maintaining sleep.

From my own experience of dreams I believe they play a more fundamental role in our lives than we have thus far given them credit for.  For me, their purpose is threefold; they are a process of re-organisation of the self, a means to understanding who we truly are and an infinite source of creativity and inspiration.

This latter idea, of exploiting their creative potential, is the most unexplored and potentially evolutionary way of using our dreams. The idea that dreams are sources of creative genius is not new. Our world would not be as it is without dreams, from Einstein’s’ Theory of Relativity to Paul McCartney’s Yesterday dreams have exerted their magical influence upon us.  However, the process of proactively engaging the dreaming mind to seek solutions rather than purely responding to random dreams has received little attention. Yet everything in our biochemical and biological make-up entirely supports this active engagement with the dreaming mind.  Not only that but we give it credence in our language. We know thing’s will seem better if we “sleep on it” even if we have no idea as to why that might be other than the restorative benefits of a good night’s sleep.

During the REM (rapid eye movement) dream part of sleep all the rational, logical chemicals in our brains are switched off and all our most creative chemicals are switched on.  We truly are solution seeking missiles whilst in dream sleep.  I believe we’re missing out on a massive, chemical opportunity by not utilising this entirely natural nocturnal activity.

The issue with dreams is less to do with their occurrence and more to do with their interpretation.  We tend to dismiss them because their meaning isn’t immediately apparent.  But we don’t consider what’s spoken in Chinese to be meaningless just because we don’t understand Chinese. It’s the same for dreams; they have their own language which, when we learn it, allows dream meanings to become abundantly clear.  The book addresses this aspect in depth through a myriad of different techniques that enables you to discover the language of your dreams allowing you to unlock the creative and healing power inherent within them.  There is also a double CD of the same name that guides you directly through dream techniques and relaxation experiences to help you analyse dreams and incubate new ones.

You can easily train yourself to remember more dreams and to have increasingly improved recall.  I’ve done this myself and share how to do it in the book. I wasn’t what I would call a “natural dreamer” yet I’ve trained myself to remember a dream on a specific topic when I need to.  Mostly I remember a clear dream. However, I’ve noticed that even if I don’t remember a specific dream if I immediately act on the issue I asked about the problem seems to magically resolve itself. As if my mind has worked the problem out whilst I’ve been sleeping, which in effect it has.

The fundamental requisite for training your dreaming mind is desire. If the part of the brain that governs REM sleep is removed we still dream.  Yet if we remove the part of the brain that controls desire we cease to dream. Desire governs the world of dreams – both the waking and sleeping ones!  If you have a desire to work with your dreams and a strong desire to seek solutions and inspiration from them then that is what will start to occur.

Desire is also relevant when programming your dreaming mind to seek answers.  What you seek to know must be worthy of your search. This is of course entirely subjective, it is what is important and valuable to you that counts.  That may be very different from what is valuable to someone else. You must also be prepared to act on the information you receive.  For example if you asked about a relationship yet know if your dream told you to leave that relationship you’d remain in it then don’t ask the question.  Wait until you’re ready to hear the answer.  One of the easiest ways to programme your mind is simply to focus on an issue as you’re drifting off to sleep and ask “What do I most need to know about x, y or z?” E.g. what do I most need to know about my direction in life? For big questions the answers may come over two or three nights of dreaming.  Remember to write the dreams down in a journal solely saved for this purpose and use the book to work out the meanings.

The more you work with your dreams the more astonished you will be at what you discover about yourself, your issues, your inspirations, insights and creative solutions. It’s all there waiting to be discovered simply by listening to the whispers of your dreams.