FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 29, 2011
CONTACT:
Kathy Mason
Humanity’s Team
+1-720-938-2536 (mobile)
ATTENTION EDITORS: All Global Oneness Day activities are open to the press. This includes a 10-panel telesummit set to run from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. EDT Oct. 24 (15h00 GMT to 01h30 GMT Oct. 25). Register at www.global-oneness-day.org.
Tens of Thousands in 40 Countries
to Celebrate 2nd Global Oneness Day Oct. 24
BOULDER, Colo. — Tens of thousands of compassionate activists worldwide will show what it is like Oct. 24 to live for a day demonstrating humanity’s inner unity on the second annual Global Oneness Day.
The day will be celebrated with parades, concerts, dance celebrations, exhibitions, educational events, meditations, acts of service and other activities in more than 40 countries, said Humanity’s Team, a global grassroots movement “awakening the world to oneness” that created the day last year with support from more than 75 other non-governmental organizations and other groups and individuals.
Prominent Global Oneness Day supporters include South African Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu; artist-musician Yoko Ono; spiritual writers Deepak Chopra, James F. Twyman and Humanity’s Team founder Neale Donald Walsch, who also founded the Global Conversation philosophical, practical and strategic process to effect gentle revolutionary change.
Key organizational supporters include the Association for Global New Thought, a worldwide organization co-founded by leading New Thought ministers including the Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith, and The Shift Network human-potential social media services company seeking to bring about positive social change.
The Shift Network is to co-produce with Humanity’s Team a 10-panel Global Oneness Day telesummit from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. EDT (15h00 GMT to 01h30 GMT Oct. 25). The telesummit, in English, is free of charge. Register at www.global-oneness-day.org.
Summit panelists are to include Chopra; Walsch; Twyman; veteran U.N. envoy and U.N. Culture of Peace emissary Anwarul K. Chowdhury; futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard; “The Four Agreements” author Don Miguel Ruiz; political activist and Tikkun magazine editor Rabbi Michael Lerner; mystical scholar and Institute for Sacred Activism founder Andrew Harvey; developmental biologist and “The Biology of Belief” author Bruce Lipton; researcher Lynne McTaggart, whose book “The Field” discusses scientific discoveries supporting the theory the universe is unified by an interactive field; Academy Award-winning filmmaker and Spiritual Cinema Circle co-founder Stephen Simon; French producer-director Emmanuel Itier, whose recent films include the award-winning “The Invocation” documentary, written with actress-producer Sharon Stone, about God and world peace; and singer-songwriter Kenny Loggins, who brought us “Footloose,” “Danger Zone” and “I’m Alright” in the 1980s but then experienced a spiritual rebirth.
A special five-person telesummit panel discussing uBuntu, the classical African worldview of oneness, will include South African Member of Parliament and University of South Africa law lecturer Mathole Motshekga and uBuntu School of Philosophy Director and former anti-apartheid activist Johann Broodyrk.
Global Oneness Day was created following a Humanity’s Team presentation to the United Nations of a petition signed by more than 50,000 people from 168 countries appealing to the world body to support the day, akin to Earth Day but intended to inspire awareness and appreciation for humanity’s inner oneness.
Official U.N. recognition would mean the world body, for the first time, would officially proclaim oneness to be an issue in which it has a permanent interest and commitment. It would also mean the United Nations would decree Global Oneness Day an international holiday to be observed as a public holiday by all 193 U.N. member states.
On receiving the signatures on behalf of the U.N. Culture of Peace, Chowdhury said international peace efforts, no matter how well-intentioned, would not succeed until people recognized we are all one.
“I believe that unless we have that sense of solidarity among the peoples of the world, all our efforts of peace and security will go nowhere,” Chowdhury said at an indoor ceremony at U.N. headquarters in front of the Chagall Peace Window.
Oneness brings about an appreciation of humanity’s interdependence, which supports tolerance, understanding and solidarity, necessary for lasting peace, said Chowdhury, a former undersecretary-general and high representative of the United Nations.
Humanity’s Team Worldwide Coordinating Director Steve Farrell said oneness “shows the connection of all things, that our differences don’t have to create divisions and our contrasts don’t have to product conflicts.”
“In fact, oneness invites us to celebrate our cultural, religious and other differences because diversity is part of who we are and is inseparable from respecting human dignity,” he said.
Humanity’s Team and other activists are stepping up their U.N. appeal, advocating in behalf of the day to national governments and adding to the original petition signatures through a global Oneness Declaration in the hope of receiving the world body’s support.
For more information about Global Oneness Day, contact Kathy Mason at kathy.mason@humanitysteam.org or +1-720-938-2536.
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Thousands in 25 Countries to Celebrate 1st Global Oneness Day Oct. 24
Tutu, Ono, Chopra, Beckwith, Keating among supporters
BOULDER, Colo., Oct. 18, 2010 — Thousands of people in more than 25 countries will celebrate the first Global Oneness Day Oct. 24 by demonstrating humanity’s inner unity and outer diversity, organizers announced today.
The day — initiated by the global grassroots Humanity’s Team movement and supported by the Association for Global New Thought and some three dozen other groups — “is a day when the greatness of the whole is reflected in the greatness of its parts,” Humanity’s Team Worldwide Coordinating Director Steve Farrell said.
It is also a day that is a key steppingstone toward creating lasting peace in the world, organizers said.
“Lasting peace requires that we awaken humanity to our underlying oneness, educate people to the beauty of our diversity and alert the world to the imperative that we must embody these values so that life as we know it may not only be preserved, but renewed and transformed,” AGNT President the Rev. Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith said.
Prominent Global Oneness Day supporters include South African Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu; artist-musician Yoko Ono; spiritual writers Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Neale Donald Walsch and Andrew Harvey; Trappist monk and priest Father Thomas Keating; futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard, and U.N. Culture of Peace emissary Anwarul K. Chowdhury.
The day, planned as the first annual worldwide celebration, provides opportunities for individuals, organizations and nations to create practical acts demonstrating unity, diversity, harmony and compassion on a shared date, comparable to what happens on Earth Day.
Practical action will provide tangible, experiential proof of how we can live “when we come from a place of oneness,” Beckwith said. “It will encourage us all to expand our hopes, beliefs and behaviors so that at any moment oneness may permeate all aspects of life.”
“Would the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have occurred if humanity had already recognized we are all one?” Beckwith said. “Would we now tolerate accelerated global warming, extreme poverty and hunger, and gender inequality? Would we fight each other under the banner of organized religion and in the name of God?”
Recognizing the oneness of humanity and all of life is the key to solving most chronic and acute world problems, Beckwith said.
U.N. ENVOY: NO PEACE WITHOUT ONENESS
Indeed, peace efforts will continue to fail until people embrace humanity’s oneness, Chowdhury said May 20 on receiving a grassroots plea to the United Nations, signed by more than 50,000 people from 168 countries, appealing to the world body to affirm humanity’s oneness and endorse an annual Global Oneness Day.
“I believe that unless we have that sense of solidarity among the peoples of the world, all our efforts of peace and security will go nowhere,” said Chowdhury, a former undersecretary-general and high representative of the United Nations.
A sampling of scheduled Global Oneness Day events, to date, includes:
• PHILIPPINES: A Global Oneness Eve Celebration with speakers and workshops at Mogwai Cinematheque in Quezon City near Manila.
• AUSTRALIA: A Oneness Circle, picnic, free hugs campaign and other “unity in diversity” activities at the Botanic Gardens of Adelaide.
• SOUTH AFRICA: A five-hour workshop and picnic near Johannesburg to “reflect upon, celebrate and experience that which we have in common, as well as that which is uniquely who we are, in respect of religion, spirituality, culture and our connectedness to all of life.” Organizer Humanity’s Team South Africa — leading a drive for South Africa’s Parliament to embrace oneness by declaring a National Ubuntu Day — said it would also hold a food and clothing drive “because we are all one.”
• GERMANY: A bilingual, German-English public global oneness meditation teleconference, with local phone numbers in most European countries and the United States and free phone service over the Internet through Skype.
• ITALY: A screening of “ONE: The Movie” near Venice to increase awareness of humanity’s connections “in a world that too often seems disconnected and broken.”
• ENGLAND: People holding hands in Oneness Circles in at least seven cities, including around the base of the historic Cabot Tower in Bristol, followed by discussions and shared meals in most cities.
• ARGENTINA: A festival with music, dancing, free hugs, a shared meal and “reflections on practical ways of living in oneness” at the Seven Palms Community in Buenos Aires.
• BRAZIL: A Festival of Unity at a major square in Salvador da Bahia, a city known as Brazil’s “capital of happiness” due to its joyful population and many outdoor parties.
• UNITED STATES: Oneness Circles in at least 16 cities, interfaith services in a number of churches, a meditation in Seattle, a rally for oneness in Hagerstown, Md., and a daylong visit to the Montgomery (Ala.) Zoo organized by a group that wants “to develop a greater appreciation for all life.”
In addition, at least three dozen New Thought churches in six countries will hold special services that day, AGNT said. Beckwith’s Agape International Spiritual Center in Culver City, Calif., with more than 9,000 members, will stream its three morning Global Oneness Day services live over the Internet on www.agapelive.com.
“Oneness is more than a beautiful word,” Beckwith said. “The voice of science increasingly agrees with what mystics, prophets and sages have said for millennia — that life is a unified whole with multiple dimensions, each complementing the other. This means we are all one!”
GLOBAL ONENESS DAY TELECONFERENCE
A key official ceremonial event will be a 60-minute public “Global Oneness Day Celebration Connection” teleconference with Walsch, Chowdhury, Hubbard and more than a dozen other international dignitaries, celebrities and grassroots leaders beginning at 10 a.m. EDT (14h00 GMT). The teleconference — at phone number +1-218-486-3850, access code 52059# — will include a report on Global Oneness Day activities around the world.
A separate public teleconference spotlighting U.S. Global Oneness Day activities is set for 6 p.m. EDT. It will use the same phone number and access code.
A number of activities led up to Global Oneness Day. Three of the biggest included the Humanity’s Team “peace through oneness” International Day of Peace observances Sept. 21; AGNT’s Seasons of Interfaith-Intercultural Celebration, part of its Gandhi-King Season for Nonviolence Campaign; and a free, global “40 Days to Oneness” program of daily practices and weekly teleconferences that Humanity’s Team began Sept. 11 with Walsch as a special guest and will end Oct. 23 with Harvey. The program, supporting the expression and celebration of oneness, is based on the book “The Proof,” by James F. Twyman and Anakha Coman, and done in collaboration with the authors.
“The awareness that even with our individual differences we are all one will shift the political, economic and spiritual reality so humanity can finally realize a dream it has had since time immemorial — citizens of the world living in peace, harmony and happiness,” Beckwith said.
For more information about Global Oneness Day, visit www.global-oneness-day.org.
