image by Maximum Mitch

This is a guest post by Nancy Fisher, a healer and dear friend from Long Island, NY.

On Monday May 18th, The Alliance for a New Humanity (ANH) and Intersections International hosted the Be the Change Community Outreach Program at the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City. For those unable to attend the event was streamed on the web.

With presentations by Deepak Chopra, president of the ANH, and the Rev. Robert Chase, Director of Intersections International, the evening promised to be a passionate and interesting ride. And it didn’t fail to deliver.

The ANH mission is to ‘connect people, who, through personal and social transformation, aim to build a just, peaceful and sustainable world, reflecting the unity of all humanity’. Inspired by a shared intention to create a critical mass to effect the change needed to create a better world, Be the Change is a world-wide movement presented by the Alliance for a New Humanity in Cooperation with Intersections International. It hopes to inspire individuals in local communities to actually participate in co-creating change. Deepak Chopra advises “it is a process that provides guidance, tools and support systems necessary to insure sustainability and success”.

At the start of the evening Deepak spoke passionately and poignantly about the mission of ANH, which sprang forth from an experience he had on Sept 11, 2001. After an 8 hour ordeal thinking that his son had died on one of the planes that had hit the World Trade Center and then finding out that he was not and that he was in fact alive, led him to the realization that we share this with people all over the world. That other people in faraway lands also worry about their children suffering everyday with real problems of death and destruction. More than half the people around the world survive on less than two dollars a day and 40% of all children go to bed hungry every night.

A possible solution that could harness the collective creativity, intelligence, love and compassion to a new level of consciousness, one of non violence started to grow and with that understanding the ANH was born. Their strategy involves 3 steps: 1st Transform yourself, 2nd Make a difference, and 3rd, share the stories of success to inspire and connect.

Deepak then went on the share a story an evolutionary biologist told him about how evolution has always happened through leaps of transitions and that those only occur through times of crisis. And that this time now could be that time. That through our nervous systems consciousness has become conscious of itself. This is called meta-biologic evolution and the potential for something really new to become is possible. Here he gives the example of the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly and how their cluster of imaginal cells feeding on the left behind carcass of the caterpillar to create a whole new organism is analogous to all the places in the world that are clusters connecting the sense of a possibility of a very wonderful moment.

Next in a powerful moment and in his doctor/philosopher/scientist like style he asked us all (a gathering of 1,500 people ) to all breathe in deeply and reminded us that as we did, we werre literally breathing in 10 to the power of 22 atoms and breathing out the same.  Literally sharing a million atoms every time we breathe, we are “members of One breath, One energy field, One emotional field, members or parts of same Consciousness, Love, God. We are contained in One mind, One Body. Feel that in your Heart.”

Next up to speak was the Director of Intersections International who echoed Deepak Chopra’s words of collaboration and transformation. He recounted numerous examples of how being the change in real time, from the story of two Nigerians enemies intent on killing one another in the name of religion who decided to give up the stories they believed about themselves and become brothers, to the expressions of people who donate kidneys and simply view it as another form of hospitality.

In his blog a few days later he wrote:

Deepak spoke first. I joked that whoever put the program together did me an eternal favor because I could now forever say that Deepak Chopra was my opening act! He used the language of science and technology to frame cosmic questions. He talked about how we share a common consciousness and how, scientifically, we all actually breathe and absorb parts of one another. Indeed, as he reminded us, we are one. Wise. Brilliant.  My approach was different—stories, not science—and that we must change both as individuals from the inside out and as a society from the outside in. In so doling, we meet at the “intersection” where we find our deepest humanity and our best hope for a humane society. Though our framing was different, our message was the same and the crowd seemed to “get it.”

After this key note speech we all were lead on an audience participation discussion session and gave us two questions to ponder the neighbor/stranger behind us. The first question was what one thing would I do that would have the greatest impact on change? And the second question asked that once we had the idea what possible outcomes could be created. I turned to look behind me and the saw a women in her late 60s alone and beautifully made up. I pushed past the usual reluctance to meet someone new and as I extended my hand and asked her name she said out loud the same thing I was just thinking!...it was funny in a way because it was the ice breaker that bridged the gap. She was lovely and had a beautiful manner of ease and eloquence about her. And as we discussed together the ‘assignment’ we found out even more how impersonal we all really are ( That’s what I was thinking anyway) Her answers and mine mirrored one another in that we both agreed that to first transform ourselves was going to be the only way to then share a better person out there. That through our example perhaps people would want to be the same.  After the exercise they pointed out that this is what the ANH does to create dialogue around the world to in effect change it.

Next up was the Music and Poetry part of the evening. Led be a moderator named Fred Johnson who works with Intersections International and tours internationally as a musician ‘dedicated to using the arts as a tool for personal wellbeing and global peace,’ we were treated to a spontaneous, collaborative and creative concert/poetry reading performed by Deepak Chopra with violinist Ann Marie Calhoun and pianist Daniel Kelly.

The poems, said Deepak, were just newly translated from the Farsi language, never before heard in English in public. The 6 pieces performed were a spontaneous collaboration between them all, truly inspirational and literally at times brought tears to my eyes. The violin player especially moved me with her innocence, positivity, and style.

That was the end of the evening. I went over to my friends and asked them what they thought. We all agreed that it was an interesting night and that we could see the potential in gatherings like this as well as the cynicism that always threatens to ruin an otherwise potentially inspiring event. And that we all had a choice whether to let that negativity in or not.  That night we chose not…and we were encouraged that we could come together with others who shared our interest in doing something new to change the world and become One with the Evolutionary Positivity of Life.