OneVoice

Coalition for OneVoice

Creating a Collective Energy among Spiritual and Transformative Organizations and Practitioners in the Greater New York Area

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Coalition for OneVoice logo, recalling "I want to be like a butterfly" by Fred Johnson sung at the COV founding in 2006 with Deepak Chopra and Andrew Cohen

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wpeB4.jpg (9099 bytes) VIDEOS

Access these COV Videos by clicking www.coalitionforonevoice.org

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TREE FRIENDS project

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Deepak Chopra and Andrew Cophen at COV Launch

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Andrew Harvey at COV's "Passion to Connect" Event

Access these COV Videos by clicking www.coalitionforonevoice.org

Formed in 2006 to “create a collective energy for transformational change” in New York City and its surrounding region.

VISION: Coalition for OneVoice reflects the evolution of consciousness toward an enlightened society, the nature and details of which are presently unfolding.

MISSION: Coalition for OneVoice serves our passion for connection by fostering a universal perspective, deep dialogue and a conscious community in New York City. It brings together individuals and organizations who are dedicated to spiritual, social and environmental transformation for the betterment of all beings. This unity strengthens each participants impact on society while forming a collective power to meet the challenges that call our community to action.

History and Activities

With nearly one thousand persons and organizations engaged at many levels, a revolving Core Leadership Circle leads the Coalition and its twenty-some “Focus Circles” that direct passion and action to areas of engagement including spiritual and transformational practice, education, environment, health, social change and many more.

Since 2006 COV has sponsored “Passion to Connect”-- in 2006 with Deepak Chopra, Andrew Cohen, Alex Gray, Judy Martin and others, and in 2007 with Carolyn Myss and Andrew Harvey (see links at left for video of Deepak Chopra, Andrew Cohen and Andrew Harvey).

In 2008 COV created the “World Shift to Peace Festival” with Matthew Fox for the United Nations International Day of Peace.

The Focus Circles regularly host programs and activities in the city, including of most recent note, “Greening of NYC” programs including “Tree Friends” (see links at left for video of the "Tree Friends") and several citywide discussions about the awakening of human consciousness and models and visions for a better world future.

Along with the "Focus Circles" other Circles meet regularly for meditation and deep dialogue, sharing experimental interactive processes, and lively discussion of world issues and events.

Membership is open to all. COV can be contacted through the Multiplex (kurtjohnsonisd@yahoo.com) and through its WEBSITE at:

www.coalitionforonevoice.org

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Matthew Fox: COV "World Shift to Peace" and "Cosmic Mass" co-sponsored with One Spirit

Jane Hughes Gignoux, a COV Founder. Thirty years ago I embarked on the journey, still ongoing, of restructuring my life. Early on in this process, I realized in essence it meant changing my story. As I say in my workshops, “You can’t change what happened but you can change the story you tell yourself (and others) about it.” Eleven years ago, after several years of spiritual nudging, I published a book of folktales from around the world and throughout time, Some Folk Say: Stories of Life, Death, and Beyond. Using these stories as a springboard, I offer workshops and courses to help people transform their relationship to death—and therefore life. Changing the story. www.lifedeathbeyond.com

Two years ago, as a founding member of the Coalition for OneVoice, I was led to take story-changing to a whole new level. Slowly at first but building steadily, came the awareness that perhaps the story most in need of changing is the basic one embraced by most human beings of who we are in relationship to life on planet Earth. Thus evolved TreeFriends: Using the Arts to Transform Our Relationship to the Natural World.

TreeFriends’ core purpose is to create urban behavioral change in response to multiple global crises. Using the arts: poetry, art, music, dance, theatre and deep dialogue, TreeFriends invites people to revisit our fundamental human story in order to change it radically so that it aligns with current scientific findings that confirm the interrelated and interdependent nature of all life on planet Earth. www.coalitionforonevoice.org

Kurt Johnson, a COV Founder. I was one of the original founders of OneVoice. It's purpose to "create a collective energy" among persons, organizations and networks doing spiritual and transformational work in the New York City region, had been a dream for many years.

It is rather amazing that simultaneously, in 2006, eleven different persons, meeting first as two separate groups (one based on FIONS, one based on ISDnA/EnlightenNext and the Alliance for a New Humanity, but both attended by Alan Steinfeld of New Realities) came together within one week to "petri-dish" this idea together.

Things moved very quickly after that. Because of the far-flung, but influential, constituencies of those eleven persons, within a few months we were able to plan a New York City "kick-off" event-- "Passion to Connect"-- featuring Deepak Chopra, Andrew Cohen, Judy Martin, Fred Johnson and Alex Gray. This was quite an evening, with somewhere between 700-800 persons attending.

Of course, energy for the project was huge at the beginning. Yet, as we learn from Ken Wilber's classic work on "state and stages", it's one thing to experience a high energy "state" together, yet another to build something together that lasts (call it a "stage", a "structure" or a "permanent trait"). Many groups never get beyond that first burst of shared intention.

Knowing this, we build OneVoice carefully. We created two more big New York events-- one with Andrew Harvey and Caroline Myss (one Sacred Activism) and another with Matthew Fox (World Shift to Peace Festival). But perhaps more important than these were a string of intra-community events within OneVoice, at Chapel of the Sacred Mirrors, All Souls Unitarian Church, East-West Books Center, One Spirit Learning Alliance, Marymount College and Integral Yoga (among others) that nurtured this community to come together much more organically.

Within a year we established first 10, and then eventually 20 "Focus Circles", circles that met regularly to channel intention into tangible projects based on persons sharing their vision and gifts. Many of the current projects growing from the COV Focus Circles, like TreeFriends and The InterSpiritual Multiplex grew from the Focus Circle activites of OneVoice. Soon we'll see another emerge from the Integral Focus Circle.

COV works entirely through Circles. It's leadership is a revolving self-select Circle of the persons most interested, and free at the moment, to put energy into the Coalition's vision and work. In 2010 the original 11 founders met for a dinner together to celebrate the fact that COV appears here to stay. COV looks forward to working with everyone who has an interest in creating this "collective energy" among those working for awakening and transformation in New York City, and through New York City, the world.

From Emily Squires: I believe that the human race is at a critical juncture in its evolution at this very moment. We can either raise the consciousness of our species to a new level of understanding and caring for one another and the world around us. Or, we can sit idly by and let climate change and political, economic, and social lethargy drag us down so far that we will die out, as would any other failed species.

That is why I am one of the founders of the Coalition for OneVoice (COV) http://www.coalitionforonevoice.org/ , a gathering of like-minded organizations and individuals in the New York City Metropolitan area that are committed to raising the level of public discussion toward a more conscious relationship with others and the planet. My personal background is in television production, and I have just finished a video entitled TreeFriends, which is a project of COV.

It is also the reason I am on the board of Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences http://www.fions.org/ whose aim, along with the Institute of Noetic Sciences http://www.noetic.org/ , is to scientifically probe and to share information about the farthest reaches of humankind’s perceptions, beliefs, intention and intuition. We are thrilled that Dan Brown’s new book, The Lost Symbol, is bringing the idea of transformation to the general public http://www.thelostsymbol.com/main.html .

I am proud to be on the board of the Source of Synergy Foundation www.SourceofSynergyFoudation.org whose aim is to unite us into a collective force which will help usher in a leap in human consciousness.

SOSF partnered with the Evolutionary Leaders, a group formed in conjunction with The Chopra Foundation and Association for Global New Thought, to work toward an evolution in consciousness. We invite you to join us in the Call to Conscious Evolution <http://www.evolutionaryleaders.net/ACalltoConsciousEvolution>

Editor's Note: Emily Squires is usually too humble to mention her six Emmy Awards as Director of Sesame Street.

InterSpiritual Dialogue 'n Action (ISDnA, est. 2002) & Broadband Contemplative Alliances Network (bcan.ws, est. 2004) with Brother Wayne. Multiplex Maingate is www.isdna.org; Multiplex Visitors Center is multiplex.isdna.org. All rights reserved for original materials first published here; thanks to many associates for linked and associated materials. ISDnA's educational partner is One Spirit Interfaith (www.onespiritinterfaith.org), ISDnA is a founding member of The Order of Universal Interfaith (www.ouni.org), World Council of Interfaith Congregations (www.ouni.org), Coalition for OneVoice (www.coalitionforonevoice.org) and the Universal Order of Sannyasa (originally envisioned by Bro. Wayne, www.orderofsannyasa.org). Administrator Contact kurtjohnsonisd@yahoo.com