GLOBAL SPIRIT II


#201: "Love, Fear & Beyond"
While most people consider the opposite of love to be something related to the English word, “hate,” this Global Spirit program explores the oppositional relationship between love and fear, featuring guitarist and spiritual practitioner Carlos Santana, drummer-composer Cindy Blackman-Santana and authors and therapists Jerry Jampolsky MD and Diane Cirincione-Jampolsky Ph.D.

Mixing exciting concert footage with deep conversation, this unique program highlights the more selfless dimensions of love and the pain and suffering of fear and isolation, to ultimately provide powerful glimpses of what is here called “the beyond,” a transcendent relationship with oneself, and with all of life.

#202: "The Pilgrimage Experience"
For thousands of years, people of every tradition have embarked on long, difficult and often costly journeys to sacred places in search of various benefits, from health or material well-being to spiritual renewal. But why do millions of pilgrims endured such hardships? What are they ultimately in search of?

This program utilizes compelling film footage from pilgrimages to India and Peru and brings together Peruvian anthropologist Zoila Mendoza and renowned travel writer Pico Iyer. These guests, together with host Phil Cousineau, shed light on various dimensions of this timeless ritual, which is an important part of most, if not all religions and spiritual traditions.

#203: "The Power of Community"
This Global Spirit program explores the powerful role that intentional communities have played, for many hundreds of years in supporting the well-being, growth, and transformations of many individuals. The program visits two contemporary communities to witness their most important practices, and to access their potential to transform consciousness and catalyze positive societal change.

The program features Zen Buddhist Abbot Roshi Joan Halifax of the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, N.M., and Christian activist Adam Bucko, who heads the Reciprocity Foundation, which has become a sanctuary for homeless youth in NYC. Both guests bring compassion and many useful insights as they apply their traditions, their experiences and their hearts to work with young LGBT and other communities of need in the U.S.

#204: "Inside Sacred Texts"
This program explores the origins, translations, and interpretations of sacred or revered texts and sheds light on the mystical experience these texts often originate from. This program brings knowledgeable, engaging scholars, translators, and practitioners from three faiths together to explore how these seminal texts, which form the foundation of most world religions and have influenced entire civilizations, are in some cases, now being reappraised. Inside Sacred Texts features renowned translator of the Gnostic Gospels, Willis Barnstone, Anglican priest and mystic Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, Tibetan translator Ken McLeod and religious scholar Dr. Nikky Singh.

#205: "The Search for God"
The search for God is perhaps the oldest of all spiritual quests. While the Abrahamic faiths place the concept of “God” as an entity separate from and above man, indigenous peoples tend to understand God or “Creator” as an integral, indivisible aspect of life, or nature. Some non-theistic faiths, such as Buddhism, focus not on a deity, but on a transcendent quality or attribute that the Buddha attained, such as compassion or enlightenment.

This program brings together two teachers from different faiths that have devoted their lives and teachings to the concept of “God” or "Ultimate Reality." Dr. Jacob Needleman is an author and professor of Philosophy, who meets for the first time, Pir Zia Inayat Khan, a scholar and teacher of Islam and Sufism in the lineage of his father, Pir Vilayat Khan and his grandfather, Hazrat Inayat Khan.

#206: "Stories To Remember"
Life’s three fundamental questions : 1. Who are we? 2. Where did we come from? 3. Where are we going? -- have often been approached through philosophy or science. For millennia, for human beings everywhere, these same questions have been posed and explored through the power of story. From different cultures come those stories we tend to remember, the stories that connect us, not just with others, but with that which gives our lives meaning.

This unique program brings together two guests that use the power of story and storytelling as a means of remembering. Kay Olan is a renowned storyteller from the Mohawk Nation in upstate New York. Orland Bishop is a mentor and community organizer in Los Angeles working with members of the LA gangs known as the Crips and the Bloods while wielding the powerful weapons of myth, power and story.

#207: "The Art of Living and Dying"
Our most basic understanding of life is in many ways determined by our understanding of death. While to some, death is an end in itself, to others it is the final test of faith in the existence of a God or an afterlife.

This Global Spirit program presents a deep conversation between two dedicated spiritual leaders in the end-of-life movement, meeting for the first time. Harpist, singer, and lay Benedictine Therese Schroeder-Sheker, founder of the Chalice of Repose Project, joins Frank Ostaseski, the Zen Hospice Project co-founder and current director of the Metta Institute, to explore how a less fearful and more conscious relationship to death can radically shift our experience of life.

#208: "Rumi & The Sufi Path of Love"
How did a 13th-century Sufi mystic from Central Asia become the most widely read poet in the United States? Why did UNESCO declare 2007 as "the year of Jalaluddin Rumi"? This Global Spirit program brings together two distinguished studio guests from different cultural traditions: Sufi sheik Kabir Helminski of the Mevlevi Sufi tradition, and Iranian filmmaker and multi-lingual website host Parisa Soultani, who presents portraits of Rumi “lovers” from her “gathering of lovers” project.

This program mixes knowledgeable, in-depth conversations with evocative film segments from Turkey, Iran, and the USA to explore the depths of Rumi’s poetry and teachings. Host Phil Cousineau explores questions such as: What do Rumi's poetry and message have to offer to raise religious tolerance in today's world? What does Rumi’s perspective offer to discussions of extremism? What is Rumi’s concept of divine Love, or “Iskh,” and how is this love similar or different than what other great teachers, such as Jesus, taught?

#209: "Sacred Ecology"
This Global Spirit program explores the natural world as an access point to the sacred. With global warming on the rise and the number of animal species now declining at alarming rates, this program asks if we humans are trapped in a never-ending destructive cycle fed by our ever-increasing desires? Or do our most serious environmental problems stem in part from our very concept or understanding of “self”? Eco-philosopher and Buddhist teacher Joanna Macy meets global ecologist, anthropologist, and filmmaker Michael Tobias to explore some of the most basic existential questions: How do we see “ourselves” amongst the wider family of Earth’s inhabitants? Are our human notions of “ecology” or of “the sacred” blind to nature’s fundamental laws and truths?

#210: "The Call of Wisdom"
The ancient Greeks believed there was another dimension beyond logic and reasoning and they called it Sophia, or wisdom, which they believed to be the ultimate good. In Eastern traditions, wisdom is often synonymous with the truth, as in “the true nature of existence,” available only to those who can see beyond the ephemeral, the ever-changing. This program examines the true nature of wisdom, how it is recognized, and why our survival today as a species and a planet may depend on it. THE CALL TO WISDOM features Jean Shinoda Bolen, an author, Jungian analyst, and activist, and Roger Walsh, a professor of psychiatry, philosophy, and anthropology. These two engaging guests come together for the first time to discuss this rich topic and address a range of important questions such as: Are we now as a species, headed for wisdom or catastrophe?

#211: "Sound of the Soul"
Sound Of The Soul is a compelling portrait of an Arab country where Muslims, Christians, and Jews have lived together in relative peace for centuries. This powerful music-driven documentary demonstrates how music is a unifying, transcendent force, and a strong starting point for reducing conflict and crossing religious divides. Beautifully photographed during the Fez Festival of World Sacred Music, Sound Of The Soul presents unforgettable performances from groups from Morocco, Ireland, Afghanistan, Mauritania, the USA, Portugal, and France. A refreshing antidote to religious fundamentalism and violence, the episode ultimately reveals the essential oneness among all faiths, so aptly expressed in the Afghan singer Farida Mahwash’s closing affirmation: “Music has no religion, no borders, no boundaries. Music is the sound of the soul.”

#212: "Earth Wisdom for a World in Crisis"
With the dramatic increase in global warming and a thinning ozone layer, the United Nations has realized that native peoples may possess some critical keys to the very survival of our species and fragile ecosystems of the planet. Host Phil Cousineau and the Global Spirit crew attend the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York City. The program documents the proceedings and interviews a range of renowned indigenous leaders and tribal representatives such as Chief Oren Lyons, Marcos Terena, Jake Swamp, Viktor Kaisiepo and Gloria Ushigua, who are joined by more than 2000 people at a unique gathering of indigenous peoples from around the world.

The program also tells a parallel story of the non-violent resistance at Standing Rock Reservation, at what was determined to be the largest gathering of Native tribes in more than 100 years. It features exclusive original footage of the protests in early December 2016, along with interviews and on-location speeches from Lakota Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault, tribal councilwoman Phyllis Young, as well as with other native and non-native veterans and other water protectors.