TOOLS OF CONSCIOUSNESS (TOC)

By Stephen Dinan, founder and CEO of The Shift Network

Yet the “modern” mainstream world that we call advanced civilization is so focused on youth culture that we tend to deny and suppress the aging process. This rampant age bias can leave people feeling marginalized, unimportant and just plain lonely as they enter their “golden” years. That’s not only a shame, it’s deeply troubling because we need the experience, power and wisdom of elders to truly create a healthier culture.

That’s why we created the Transforming Aging Summit, a groundbreaking free online event offered from March 7 to March 9 to highlight the many opportunities that truly “conscious aging” can offer our soul’s journey here on earth. We CAN make our later years our greater years when we understand and appreciate the psychological, biological and spiritual dimensions of aging — and discover how to shift negative beliefs and patterns around aging to positive perspectives. (To register for this free summit, click here.)

We are so grateful for Ron Pevny’s leadership in creating the Transforming Aging Summit. Ron is a faculty member with The Shift Network and the founder of The Center for Conscious Eldering. In addition to pulling together fantastic speakers for the summit, Ron shares an insightful article in this issue on how to become your best self as you age.

In this edition of The Catalyst, we’re also featuring thoughtful articles by Transforming Aging Summit speaker Ashton Applewhite on how ageism fits in with all the other “isms” plaguing the world, new Shift faculty member Tom Pinkson on how to mine the gold of your golden years, and clinical psychotherapist Katia Petersen on how to help elders actively participate in society. You’ll aso find an in-depth look at “The Secret Life of Lady Liberty.”

In our Featured Media, we offer a video excerpt from a talk on ageism given by Ashton Applewhite, an eye-opening Candid Camera-like video showing reactions from people who find themselves facing blatant age discrimination, and a sobering look at photos of the last moments of the Standing Rock protest.

Our Member Profile features Shift staff writer Phil Bolsta, who gives us a behind-the-scenes look at how and why he created his life’s work, a book that one reviewer called “the owner’s manual God should give you when you’re born.”

Our Featured Artist is Joanna Damiana, a singer-songwriter who Shft Network friend Tara Divina calls “simultaneously angelic and soulful.” Joanna’s new album is titled “The Spaces Between.”

We would love to hear your answer to the question, “What do you love about getting older? To share your thoughts in our Facebook Page community, click here.

Our Shift Philanthropy will stay focused on Standing Rock, a powerful example for all of us and a movement we need to continue to support, especially now that sacred lands are being desecrated in flagrant disregard of longstanding treaties.

In the midst of all the political and cultural turmoil we’re currently experiencing, remember, every thought you have can make the planet a better place, because every positive, peaceful thought adds that much more loving energy to the complex web of divine energy we call the Universe.

Truly, the closer you move toward enlightenment, the closer we all move toward an enlightened world.

Ashton Applewhite — Attitudes Towards Aging Affect Our Health

Age Discrimination — The Food Truck Experiment

This powerful video, created by AARP, makes a brutal point about ageism in our society. AARP set up a hidden camera to capture people’s reactions to a food truck with a sign that said it would not serve anyone over the age of 40. The video is part of AARP’s #DisruptAging campaign that underscores the pervasiveness of ageism in today’s culture and workplace. Watch the video by clicking here.

Native Nations March on Washington — Friday, March 10

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and indigenous allies are calling on us to continue the fight against big oil and join them in marching on Washington, D.C. on March 10 to bring this issue to the doorstep of our elected officials. The march is being organized by the Native Nations Rise Planning Committee.

As Earth Guardians, we are joining in solidarity with the indigenous peoples of the world who are bravely standing to defend our planet and our health from destructive fossil fuel projects. We must continue to work off the momentum created at Standing Rock to push towards a clean, sustainable energy future.

If you can join our brothers and sisters in Washington, D.C., RSVP to the event here. If you are unable to make it, there will be solidarity events taking place on March 10 all over the world! Please share the event with your network and talk to your friends and family about the actions of our water protectors.

For more information, click here.

Photos of the Last Moments of the Standing Rock Protest

After a Trump administration executive order, the Army Corps of Engineers ordered protesters to vacate the camp by 2pm local time on Feb. 22, 2017. Authorities were set to physically remove everyone in the way of the Dakota Access Pipeline’s construction upon sacred Native American land. In a symbolic gesture, the protesters set fire to their camp. See the photos by clicking here.

Global Shift Meditation – Join Free! Free Event on the First of Every Month

Join The Shift Network, The Gaiafield Project and people around the world for Global Shift Meditations the first of each month — click here to register for free. We featured Fumi Johns Stewart, Executive Director of World Peace Prayer Society, on March 1, 2017. (The free recording is available here.)

Your Voice:

We want to know: What do you love about getting older?

To share with our Facebook Page community, click here.

Moving From Who We Have Been To Who We Can Become

Elder is a role and elderhood a life stage that has been critical for the wellbeing of the world’s cultures since time immemorial, but which has been lost in today’s world. It was the elders whose role was to embody the wholeness, and share the hard-won wisdom, that their communities needed to survive

To read more, click here.

The Current Moment: What’s Ageism Got to Do With It? 
By Ashton Applewhite

Ashton Applewhite is the author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism. She is a featured speaker in the Transforming Aging Summit and a leading spokesperson for mobilizing against discrimination on the basis of age.

I wake these days remembering that something awful has happened. Reality assembles itself, and I feel worse. The multicultural, egalitarian, globalized society I hope to inhabit is under assault. Bigotry is ascendant. Racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance—pick your prejudice!—are sanctioned, even celebrated. How do we respond to attacks on those most vulnerable? How does the mission to build a movement against ageism fit into this historical moment?

Until I thought hard about it, just posing that last question felt self-indulgent. Why insist on adding another “ism” to the list when so many higher-profile forms of discrimination, racism in particular, rightfully demand bandwidth? Should ageism move to the back of the line, at least until Medicare is in the crosshairs? Here’s the thing: we don’t have to choose. It’s not a competition. And it’s not zero sum. All forms of discrimination intersect with and compound one another. The flip side is that when we make a community a better place in which to be from somewhere else, to worship a different god, to have a disability or be non-white or non-rich, we also make it a better place in which to grow old.

To read more, click here.

Shamanic Wisdom for Fruitful Aging: Medicine Teachings to Mine the Gold of the Golden Years 
By Tom Pinkson, new Shift Network faculty

Our elder years can present us with challenging experiences. Changes in our bodies and minds often feel unwelcome and can leave us struggling as some faculties diminish. Things just don’t seem to work as fluidly and easily as they used to. These are tremors that can shake us off our feet and undermine us at a time when we most need a strong sense of self and wellbeing in order to meet a radical set of changes to the very structure of our lives.

To read more, click here.

Supporting Elders in Shining Their Light
By Katia Petersen

Katia Petersen, PhD, is the executive director of education at IONS. She is a clinical psychotherapist, an author, a renowned trainer and educator, and the winner of two Emmy Awards.

Our society’s family landscape has changed drastically over the past several generations. Families used to stay in the same town, and even the same neighborhood, and younger people would apprentice to and then take care of the elders in their community.

Growing up on a small Island in the Mediterranean, I was surrounded by elders within my family as well as within the community. I was everyone’s child and knew I was loved and supported fully.

I witnessed how elders were included in important decisions, looked up to for their wisdom, and given full care by their loved ones. However, as distant societies and economies have become more interconnected, our younger generation has become more global and more mobile, with a trend towards moving away from one’s family.

To read more, click here.

What’s So Secret About the Statue of Liberty? 
By Robert R. Hieronimus, PhD and Laura E. Cortner

One of the things that surprised us the most as we researched the history of the Statue of Liberty was when we tackled the question, “Why is Liberty depicted as a woman in a land where women had no liberty?” The history of the Statue of Liberty, it turns out, is bookended by the histories of a lot of intelligent and creative activist women who literally changed the world. Especially the women of the early 20th century who pushed through the passage of the 19th Amendment; they literally changed centuries of social conditioning and created a new status level for women.

To read more, click here.

Trump Administration Withdraws Legal Memo
Posted by Standing Rock Sioux Tribe on February 24, 2017

Two days before the Trump administration approved an easement for the Dakota Access pipeline to cross a reservoir near the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe reservation, the U.S. Department of the Interior withdrew a legal opinion that concluded there was “ample legal justification” to deny it.

The withdrawal of the opinion was revealed in court documents filed this week by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the same agency that requested the review late last year.

“A pattern is emerging with [the Trump] administration,” said Jan Hasselman, an attorney representing the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. “They take good, thoughtful work and then just throw it in the trash and do whatever they want to do.”

To read more, click here.

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