The Great Turning Institute

Other ways you can support THE REVOLUTION OF THE SPIRIT

Buy and Help promote our new book

REVOLUTION OF THE SPIRIT - Touching Heaven, Healing Earth

by Dr. Craig F. Schindler

 It is a call to live your higher purpose dedicated to a more compassionate self and world.  We will:  Work with agent and publisher to promote the book worldwide. Obtain endorsements from prominent spiritual leaders of diverse traditions, and from environmental, human rights and peace.  Use the book as a text and put inspiring messages from the book on-line.

Conduct the WISDOMLEADERSHIP INTENSIVE II

We will: continue building the leadership corps, training 50 more leaders with 25 mentors from the first Wisdom Intensive. Course meets one Saturday retreat per month from October to April. Use the Eight Wisdom Keys and insights from emerging neuroscience to refine the transformative practice in our lives. Learn hands-on skills for authentic communication, dialogue and compassionate leadership, shifting from small self to big Self. 

Launch the SOULFORCE “LIT” (Leadership In Transformation) NETWORK 

LIT means leadership in transformation. When you join the soulforce practice you commit to live the global ethic (respect for self, others, Earth) and to embody the Eight Wisdom Keys to increase your mindfulness, compassion, stewardship and peacemaking dedicated to restoring the Earth and creating lasting peace.  Our goal is 50 people committed to the Soulforce practice by the end of 2014; 250 people by 2015; 1200 people by 2016; 6000 by 2017;  30,000 by 2018; and then to go viral to reach the tipping point of 10% (700 million).  

Teach the REVOLUTION OF THE SPIRIT Course

The theme of this course and celebration is based on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ‘s quote: “Our goal is to create the Beloved Community and this will require an inner change in the quality of our soul, as well as an outer change in the quantity of our compassionate action.”  We will invite 300 people meeting once per month as a large event, plus small groups every two weeks and check-ins with practice partners every week. We will teach the book with inspiring multi-faith music, meditation, movement and regular talks from Dr. Craig Schindler on the Eight Wisdom Keys, the Soulforce Revolution and the ways we can transform our lives and our world through mindful being and compassionate action.  We will seek to secure renowned guest speakers.  The event will be videotaped, edited and streamed on the web for an increasing number of people to take the course on-line and commit to their own soulforce practice as part of the Gathering Light. 

Facilitate The SOULFORCE SUMMIT DIALOGUE

A Shared Ethical Platform:  The purpose of this mediated dialogue is to help establish a shared understanding of the global ethic and the ethical platform that can bring together the various movements (based upon respect for self, others, Earth) into a meta-movement.  With Theo Brown, national organizer of Project Victory, we will facilitate a 3 day dialogue retreat with key leaders from diverse faith communities committed to the ethic of compassion, the environmental movement, human rights, women’s rights, food revolution, human potential, conflict resolution and peace movements.  Each group drafts a short statement of their essential mission:  what are the most critical changes that must happen to protect Earth and secure humanity’s future? With these statements, we will use dialogue to agree upon ethical platform that articulates our global ethic and the essential conditions needed for the Great Transformation of restoring Earth & creating Peace.

Design our interactive WEB PRESENCE

We are currently developing several web sites, including:  refining the Project Victory.org site; and creating the Revolution Of The Spirit.com and .org; the Wisdom Intensive.com.  We will be developing the interactive and personally supportive methods on-line to support people in developing and sustaining their transformative soulforce practice. 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

“Our goal is to create the Beloved Community and this will require an inner change in the quality of our soul, as well as an outer change in the quantity of our compassionate action.”  We are writing you to share a vision of how we can overcome the threats to our future and help build a beloved community in out lives and on Earth.  Everyday as we hear the news about the ice caps melting or extremist religious violence or the shocking oppression of women and minorities, we feel the pain of immense suffering on Earth, and yet our great teachers of wisdom – such as Dr. King, the Dalai Lama, Jane Goodall, Desmond Tutu – affirm that the power of mindfulness and universal love (soulforce) when lived by millions, will transform our world.  And we are writing you to ask for your support for our programs in 2014-2015.

Project Victory – For The Children

In 1985 Gary Lapid, Theo Brown and Craig Schindler founded Project Victory with the recognition that in the nuclear age with weapons of mass destruction, humanity needs a new meaning of victory.  We need a victory for the Earth and for all our children and the future of life. Our real goal has always been to help ignite a Great Turning that becomes the Revolution of the Spirit for a more compassionate and sustainable future.  For almost three decades now we have been working to advance the conditions for real peace and stewardship.  Our book, THE GREAT TURNING (1989) was called a “win/win masterpiece,” translated into German and Russian and used around the world as a handbook for peacemaking. We have taught conflict resolution, compassionate communication, mediated dialogue and leadership to tens of thousands.  We have conducted numerous dialogues on race relations, peace and security, the environment and the largest national dialogue on race ever (10,000 people in 165 cities). We conducted the first Interfaith Dialogue with many groups and leaders of diverse religious traditions in Washington D. C.  We were the first to use the term, “The Great Turning,” and now it has become a key phrase for the growing movement around the world. Now we are launching a new stage of Project Victory’s work – an expanding network dedicated to “the soulforce practice.” As millions of us practice mindfulness, compassion, stewardship and peacemaking in our lives, we can create the conditions for a more verdant and peaceful world.

Launching The Soulforce Practice

The great souls across traditions have been to the mountaintop and seen a coming time of justice and lasting peace, and have declared that each of us can help to realize the Great Dream through embodying the power of universal love.  (agape) In 1906 Mahatma Gandhi coined the word, satyagraha (soul-force) meaning the power of love-truth-soul.  As Gandhi said: “When the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.”  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. declared that soulforce was the most powerful method to attain equal rights for all and to create the Beloved Community. Jane Goodall, Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, Betty Williams in Ireland, Maya Angelou and others have affirmed that the voice of women has a special soul-force in the struggle for a nonviolent and sustainable world. The Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela affirm that soulforce can transform our lives and our world.

Our goal for 2014-2015 is to promote the book, organize a series of courses and inspire an expanding network of people and groups committed to living “the soulforce practice” for a more compassionate and sustainable world. 

Dr. Craig Schindler’s new book, REVOLUTION OF THE SPIRIT: Touching Heaven, Healing Earth is a roadmap for the revolution of the spirit.  The book is a call to live your higher purpose for a more compassionate self and world.  It outlines Eight Wisdom Keys drawn from humanity’s enduring wisdom and emerging neuroscience.  The soulforce practice is based upon the commitment to live the global ethic – treating self, others and the Earth with respect – and the Eight Wisdom Keys.  Neuroscientists have established that whatever we do with regularity creates new pathways in our brain.  Thus by practicing what we want to become, we can evolve ourselves with intention toward the increased mindfulness, empathy and compassionate leadership needed to transform self and world.  Many recent studies show that the practices of mindfulness and centering prayer, altruism and kindness, meditation and gratitude - contribute to elevating our experience of wellbeing, happiness, and true fulfillment.

Coming Together For The Worldwide Rising

In his book, Blessed Unrest:  How the Largest Movement In the World Came Into Being And Why No One Saw It, Paul Hawken, documents more than 1.5 million organizations dedicated to defending the environment, protecting indigenous peoples or advancing human rights.  We don’t yet recognize this vast meta-movement, he says, because it is decentralized.  It has no fixed organization yet in response to our global crisis it is growing rapidly in local areas around the world. In addition to Paul Hawken’s list, there are a multitude of other groups around our planet seeking to reduce suffering and strengthen peace: the numerous faith communities dedicated to love and compassion; those working for women’s rights, social justice, reconciliation and lasting peace; the human potential, mindfulness, and inner peace movements; the organic food, health and wellness movements; and the numerous groups teaching conflict resolution.

The worldwide rising to remake our world is already underway: Yet it needs us, the ten percent tipping point, to step up and to spread the vision of the coming dawn The call is to step forward and do your unique part to help kindle “the largest movement in history” – to embody the transformation needed for our lives and to remake our world. Just as many streams converge to form a great river, it is time for the many groups committed to living our global ethic to join together. At the core of all these movements is our global ethic taught by the great wisdom traditions – to live with respect toward self, others, and the Earth. The revolution of the spirit is already stirring and yet needs to be actualized in our lives and spread by each of us.  Like a torch, we can pass it from person to person, group to group, so the flame of mindfulness and compassion lights up our world.