Throughout the past two years there's been a reoccurring theme in my life. Whether it be the "lift from center" admonition of my dance instructor or chiropractor, or listening to Dakota environmentalist Tom Goldtooth saying that you can only use the mind through the heart. Those who don't come from the heart have "lost their connection to the earth," everything meaningful I come in contact with seems to be saying "come from the heart."


So I wasn't surprised when, a few weeks ago, I found myself listening to a workshop given by Joseph Chilton Pearce--the author of The Crack in the Cosmic Egg. The setting was Network For A New Culture's Summer Camp outside of Portland, Oregon. Through more than eight hours of energy-packed speaking, Joseph demonstrated to us through empirical evidence how and why the heart is the most powerful part of the body--how it "literally sets the pace for everything else that occurs in the body--including thought--and how it also, within itself alone, has the capability to heal not only itself and its "host," but also to effect the healing of others.

He went on to talk about how you can measure energy from the heart in amperes and that it expresses a measurable "energy field" of about a three foot radius from the heart itself. For example, if you are within 3 feet of a person in distress and re-live in your mind to its minutest detail an incident in your life where you felt most loved or appreciated, the odds are good that the person in distress will become calmer and more at peace. Additionally, both hearts would be found to be electrically in "entrainment:" in synch. Joseph also emphasized that children who did not get the chance to be at their mother's breast have more difficulty coming into entrainment with other humans, animals, or even with the earth (which emits its own frequency).

So what does this have to do with creating an ecological future? Well, if it's true that those who have lost their connection with their heart have lost their connection to the earth, then perhaps one of the keys to stopping the destruction of the planet is to return to the heart. Someone once told me that "the rape of the Earth won't end until the rape of women ends. The rape of women won't end until racism ends. Racism won't end until genocide ends..." and so on and so forth. In essence, all of the "-ism's" are just spokes of the same wheel: oppression. While many of us are working on the more obviously "ecological" aspects of the wheel, there are those trying to change the culture from the inside out--to make the world a safe place for people to come from their hearts, to express their innermost feelings, and to learn to love and be loved. Network For A New Culture (NFNC) is one such group aspiring to create a world where we can be free to come from our hearts.

NFNC is a North American group that was originally influenced by the German group ZEGG, whose acronym stands for Center For Experimental Cultural Design in German, and, like ZEGG, seeks to build a sustainable, violence-free culture through exploring intimacy, personal growth, radical honesty, transparency, and the power of community. How do they do this? The main cauldron they use is an annual summer camp where what goes on is as experimental as the culture they're trying to build. This year the featured speakers included, among others Joseph Chilton Pearce, Bruce Lipton, and Patch Adams, and each presented on a day with a given focus: relationship with the self, relationship with the family, relationship with one's community, etc. Personally, I'd never been to a camp with so many high caliber presenters one after the other

But, as much as I was uplifted by the speakers, I was even more amazed by the environment. Within a few days of intense bonding, the feeling in the converted trolley barn where the workshops were held was deeply nourishing--by mid-week almost everyone had dropped their layers of armor. In fact, while listening to Joseph speak, a pile of us were entwined on the floor, in full "entrainment" with one another. Even as a large group we were experiencing what it feels like to be physically, emotionally, (and why forget spiritually?) in synch, but it soon became obvious to even Joe himself that he, and everyone in the room, was in the midst of a healing energy produced by linking the hearts of a number of individuals whose desire was to simply feel connected. We were living in the moment the incredible things he was teaching!

Another speaker, Bruce Lipton, followed up by showing us that everything we need to know about living can be seen in the behavior of a single eukaryotic cell: over thousands of years, cells learned that by linking together, they could ensure a better chance for survival--we could say that they were the first "intentional communities."

So we learned, or were rather reminded, that a whole is more than the sum of its parts, that we can enable our visions of how we want to live by reconnecting not only with our own hearts, but also with the hearts of others in a deep, personal way, which, in turn, increases the healing energy that can be then given back to the earth/planet.

Augmenting the speakers, there were workshops which deepened our heart-connections with one another experientially. We began with the Human Awareness Institute's (HAI) introduction to Love, Intimacy, and Sexuality in the first week and progressed to Bob and Maggie's Erotic Spiritual Play workshop during the second week. Also during the second week came the ZEGG-based Communication game and the Forum, all designed to increase the intimacy between the individuals and the community we were instantaneously creating.

By coming to NFNC's Summer Camp I felt I was finally truly living that common theme that had been running through my life: to come from the heart. I even learned how to physically feel the difference between heart and mind-based interactions. I was used to being in entrainment with the Earth, but the depth of connection with my fellow human beings during these two weeks was beyond anything I had ever experienced before.

One of the organizers most influenced by ZEGG said that "ZEGG got together to save the planet, but found that they couldn't do that until they healed the wounds between men and women. That's what we're here to do." And not only men and women, but between men and men, women and women, the individual and the community, and between the community and the Earth. And it's true: until we can begin repairing the rift between people, we cannot succeed in living healthily on the Earth. NFNC's Summer Camp provided a place where we could explore the power of our hearts and do whatever healing is necessary to be in entrainment with ourselves, others, all our relations, and ultimately, with the Earth.

This article appears in the Talking Leaves magazine published by

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