By Peter Moore
Word in the West re: China, our neighbor in the East, is bad! China poses multiple challenges to USA dominance: economically, culturally, militarily. One Belt One Road is changing the worldwide geopolitical landscape. They’re ripping off intellectual property by studying models developed in the West and perfecting them in the East.
There is truth in the above, but something quite distinct from these conventional claims is also emergent in that vast country. I visited China during the month of November, 2018, and my takeaway was progressive. I was invited to Beijing to participate in a 5-day conference titled “Holistic Wellness International Forum.” There I gave a speech titled “Universities of the Soul in a Network of Light.” Corollary to that flowery title was a more focused subtitle, “How Holistic Centers Proliferate Across Our World.”
The reason I was invited to give that speech was in part because of my role at Breitenbush Hot Springs, but more directly because I am board president of an international non-profit, the Holistic Centers Network (HCN). HCN concerns itself with formalizing the network of existing holistic centers the world over, and assisting new centers to come into being. Legacy centers, including Esalen Institute, The Haven, Omega Institute, Findhorn Foundation, New York Open Center, and dozens of others are members of HCN, and for this reason, HCN was asked to be the co-host of this International Forum in China.
The Forum was huge by Breitenbush standards. Held in a great hall with seating for 800, there were booms with television cameras moving above the heads of the audience, bright stage lighting and sound, etc. Over the five days an array of presenters, both foreign and Chinese, from a diversity of academic and institutional backgrounds, spoke on subjects related to holistic wellness, human potential and the metrics of happiness. Real-time Mandarin/English translation services were provided with headphones issued to all audience members (à la the UN), and breakout sessions allowed everyone to comingle in small discussion groups. Communication metrics showed that some quarter of a million Chinese people listened in on the speeches as they were presented over the days of the event.
The development of holistic educational centers and how they arise around the world is a passionate interest. I came to Breitenbush in spring, 1978, and have been working with its core values ever since. About Breitenbush, we say it is a place to bring life into balance. In my view, that balance is achieved through the nurture of nature, as well as incorporation of approaches and practices that raise consciousness and manifest our human potential as individuals.
Beyond individual personal growth there is the corollary potential (speculative though it may be) of a species-wide evolution of consciousness underway; by which I mean, although it must begin within each of us as individuals, there is, theoretically, the possibility that humanity as a whole is evolving—psychically as well as physiologically. Which is to say, I am hopeful about our species, and I am patient. Give us another, say, 50,000 years and we may evolve into a much more collaborative, less competitive/combative group of hominids on the planet. Stated differently, the next step in bringing life into balance will be broadly socio-cultural, and it is at this level that I see the development and proliferation of holistic centers across our world as serving an emergent global ‘movement.’
Holistic centers require no loyalty to political or religious institutions, and I suspect that is why China’s central authority supports them. The entire curriculum can be understood as supporting personal liberation, i.e. everything taught or gained at such educational institutions contributes to the greater emotional intelligence, well-being and happiness of the individual. Bene Wellness, our Chinese co-host organization, states that, in China, the spiritual void is being felt by an increasingly affluent population, and the thirst and quest for personal and spiritual growth is becoming the trend there.
Their mission, “to establish a connection and find balance between the popular culture of modern day China and the spiritual values and practices that make up the core curriculum of holistic centers,” openly addresses “the new consciousness emerging worldwide.” They see holistic centers emerging in the world, and they want to support the development of such centers in China. In establishing the first annual Holistic Wellness International Forum, Bene Wellness’s purpose was “to build and provide a quality platform where leaders of worldwide holistic centers, wellness scholars and practitioners alike could exchange their learning, experience and viewpoints.”
As I took the stage in the late morning of November 11, 2018, amidst thunderous fanfare and applause, and escorted by a beautiful young woman in traditional Chinese attire, I found it highly symbolic the timing of my presentation. I opened by noting that, at precisely this same moment 100 years ago—at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year 1918—the guns ceased, ending “The War To End All Wars” in Europe. I further noted that, contrary to ending all war, the 20th Century marked the most obscene barbarity as a succession of subsequent wars followed, making it a century of ceaseless war. But here we were, precisely 100 years later, at a new 11th hour, having an international forum exploring holistic wellness and the metrics of happiness in global terms.
If hope is a discipline (and I think it is) then our meeting today represented a glimmer of hope for us all. I went on to note another more personal symbolic anniversary, the birth of my daughter exactly 40 years ago to the day, on November 11, 1978. I described her birth by candlelight in a little cabin in the forest near the Breitenbush River; no electricity, no running water or flush toilet, no attending physician or midwife, only wood heat and a little book describing how to deliver a baby. I went on to describe Breitenbush at that time, a ghost village of about 100 buildings with rotting foundations and caved in roofs, broken windows, abandoned vehicles, etc. The group of us living there on that day was small, just 8 or 9 people, but we had a vision to form an intentional community and create a service-based holistic center dedicated to a set of principles. Our founding document, the Credo, would be our roadmap. During the 40 years that have elapsed since Jazz Minh was born, that vision of establishing a holistic educational center at Breitenbush has continued to be realized. And now we see that, far from being a tiny isolated local initiative in Oregon, it was part of an emergent world culture. Breitenbush is a microcosm that reflects the macrocosm of developing holistic centers around the world.
Holistic centers act as culture change agents, in addition to positive effects they bring forth in individual lives. The fact that such centers proliferate in diverse societies and situations—urban/rural, first world/third world, capitalist/communist, northern hemisphere/southern hemisphere—is testament to their ubiquitous relevance. Holistic centers arise because people get that something else is possible—beyond the necessities of survival; beyond the conventions and expectations mediated by social conditioning. People all over the world are waking up to the fact that we are ONE people inhabiting this planet, and that our species must implement the necessary measures of sustainability if we want to continue to thrive into the future. Those measures, taken together, form the essential curriculums of holistic centers the world over. Put differently, each center is a local expression of a universal, evolutionary impulse. There is a dawning realization that a ‘movement’ is in motion, from latency to wakefulness.
Our Breitenbush Credo ends with the following:
It is our hope that the thriving community which we create will be an inspiration to others in their exploration of lifestyle and community. We also extend ourselves to the greater society in which we live, the world community, and commit ourselves to being socially, spiritually, politically, and environmentally responsible.
That “world community” exists in a way we never imagined when we wrote those words 40 years ago. And though politicians and propagandists and policy wonks hiss about dangers posed by the foreigners in the Far East, the truth is that there is an inevitability unfolding; the vast majority of people want to come together. It is an evolutionary imperative.
In my speech, I told my audience the best way to predict the future is to invent it. That is what we’re up to here at Breitenbush. What my audience told me is, we’re in good company, that they’re on board to invent a better future too! Those dominance-threatening Chinese are at it again! Paying attention to a model we’ve been working on in the West, then going us one better in manifesting it in the East! Is this ripping off intellectual property? No, this is riffing off good ideas. It is cultural evolution, not cultural appropriation. Ultimately let’s hope those clever Chinese out-compete us in this realm too. The world has a lot of people in it and we need more holistic centers serving to support the conscious evolution of the species. Maybe we can beat that 50,000 year evolution projection of mine in time to avert the ecological and other catastrophes that inevitably await unless we, as a species, get it together to co-create sustainable ways of life on this planet of ours.
It is time for a Globalized Green New Deal.
Peter Moore is Business Director of Breitenbush Hot Springs Retreat & Conference Center and Board President of HCN. He can be reached at: bd@breitenbush.com
Peter Moore, Board President of HCN, and Christine Lines, Executive Director.
Peter, thanks for sharing this, interesting and touching to read and thanks for your work with Centers Network!
Great article Peter. Thanks for all you do in our world.