Christine Page guest – 7 of 7 On the Road of “2012 NOW – Empowering the Transformation”
Living Dialogues
Duncan Campbell
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Episode 98 - Christine Page guest – 7 of 7 On the Road of “2012 NOW – Empowering the Transformation”

Episode Description:

“For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.” – Margaret Mead

This is the seventh and last in a seven-part series of “Pilgrimage Dialogues” forming part of and leading up to a Conference Gathering in Fort Collins, Colorado on May 29-30, 2009, entitled “2012 NOW – Empowering the Transformation”, for which I am serving as the Master of Ceremonies and opening presenter. Past Living Dialogues in this series have included dialogues with myself and Robert Sitler, John Major Jenkins, Stanislav Grof, Richard Tarnas (parts 1 and 2), and with Sobonfu Some’.

Details and registration information available at www.unveiling2012.org.

Duncan Campbell: 2012 Now: Empowering The Transformation, a uniquely innovative, interactive and affordable gathering in this time of global uncertainty, will take place Friday night and all day Saturday May 29 and 30 at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in Fort Collins, Colorado. Beyond just information, to practical tools for change and direct experience of participating in the ongoing transformation of our times. Now is the time and the opportunity to synchronize consciousness with the evolutionary pulse of the cosmos. Join participants bringing stories from around the planet as we explore, co-create, and experience together the transformative dynamics necessary for a successful transit from now through the year 2012 and beyond. More information available on the Conference website, www.unveiling2012.org. See you there.

The meaning of the Greek word “Apocalypse” is “lifting the veil” or “revelation”. These seven “pilgrimage dialogues” in advance of the Gathering – contemporary 21st century versions of the medieval Canterbury Tales – are examples of such revelatory “shared stories” on this Road of 2012 NOW.

Here is a summary dialogue excerpt describing the Conference between myself and Sobonfu Some’, who will conduct the concluding ritual of celebration:

Sobonfu Some’: Well I really believe that initiation is a necessity, you know, much like, you know, 2012 is saying “here is a big initiation”. It, initiation, is a necessity because we have to initiate in order to be able to move forward, to be able to tap into our essence, into our gift and so on. And, you know, in my African tradition the first initiation that we all go through is that of being born, because we are coming from being full of spirit to taking on this human tool that we call the body. And, you know, also, we’ll go through many, many initiations. And I think what we’re talking about in the Conference is that we’re going to get to the place where we are basically going to celebrate being able to give birth to our self and to whatever new vision is going to come out of this Conference Gathering -- so that we can together welcome each other and celebrate together. And I think that is the icing on the cake, you know, that is awaiting us.

Duncan Campbell: I think absolutely that’s the case, and myself as Master of Ceremonies and yourself as the person who will be leading us in the concluding celebratory ritual are both involved in helping the entire gathering to activate, all of us together, a kind of transformational space -- including not only the presenters who will be articulating on the stage, but all of the participants with their deep listening who are evoking the insights that are articulated coming out of the group energy field. And this opportunity for expression will also be something we can all look forward to at the extended lunch time on Saturday, when there’s going to be a large and deliberate space for people in very small groups to share stories, deep stories, with each other and evoke and integrate their experience. This is very essential to a true initiation -- that is not just a one way transmission of information, but is actually a transformative initiation -- where together we can evoke an experience that is both intimate and personal in our sense of shift, as well as a kind of collective amplification that allows all of us to celebrate, as Barack Obama suggested in his Inaugural Address, “our common humanity”. And that experience has a great carry over effect into our everyday lives and relationships.

Sobonfu Some’: Now how amazing is that, because, you know, a lot of people go into conferences and never really get to put in their voice; and, you know, in my Dagara people’s African tradition, when you go anywhere we are always trying to get our voice in, you know, to express yourself with and to others, because it’s like we are all making this huge cauldron and the stories that we bring, everything we share of our self, is part of what is going to make whatever we’re cooking really delicious. And for people to be able to have this opportunity as a gift, not only to themselves but a gift to the community, I really believe is amazing.

Duncan Campbell: That’s beautifully put. I love the image that you give here of together we’re collectively creating a crucible or a great cauldron, not only a crucible for the water of life, but a great cauldron in which to cook and use the fire of life to transform our experience, because these are transformative elements, all of the elements are: Earth is nurturing, Wind is empowering, a Fire literally is transforming, and Water is liquid and fluid and moves between the solid state of ice to the evaporated state of the clouds. And so every one of the elements will be involved here. We will be having time outdoors; we will be celebrating the natural world in a beautiful natural environment in Fort Collins, Colorado. And I think that these “pilgrimage dialogues” are pointing to that transformation as they are evolving here. In my first dialogue, with Robert Sitler, he emphasized the joy and the wisdom that is accessible in everyday life that he himself has experienced in the Mayan culture and which he shares so beautifully. Next has been John Major Jenkins, whose great research into the galactic alignment and embedding it and situating it in connection to the primordial tradition, sometimes called the perennial philosophy, has shown how we can bring all of this that 2012 is pointing to into the Now; that this “2012 phenomenon” is not an event that we’re waiting for, that we’re going to have to be acted upon at some time in the future, but it is an atmosphere of opportunity that is present right here, right now…And that energy field is present right now in helping germinate and evoke from you and I what we’re saying and inviting people to; so that in a sense you and I are acting here as inviters and embodiments of the kind of dialogue and transformation that we can anticipate will be happening among us all and amplified at that particular moment on May 29 and May 30 of the Gathering. But that’s only a moment in a continuum of many moments before and after, that we’re all already uncovering and witnessing being unveiled in people all over the world.

Sobonfu Some’: Yes, and, you know, as you speak and you share that it makes me think about today being this energy that renews itself time and again, which gets stronger every time, as the energy is being shared every time. So as people today listen to this dialogue, and share it with other people, it is renewed and it gets stronger and so on. That’s the image that came to me.

Duncan Campbell: Well, I have to say, Sobonfu, it’s been just a wonderful opportunity here for myself and our other deep listeners, and yourself for that matter, for us to have this chance and opportunity to engage in this dialogue together, and I have always so appreciated the great joy and cheerfulness that you embody and bring to any time that I’ve ever had the pleasure and privilege to encounter you. And so I’m very much looking forward to this conference, even as I’m deeply appreciating the present moment here, because the gift I think of this very dialogue is not only to inspire that more such moments can happen between us, but in one’s own life everyday, today for instance, and the moments that follow.

Sobonfu Some’: Yes, and I’m very grateful for you, for the gift of yourself to the world really and for having such a strong and powerful vision that you can not only share with the world, but that you can get other people be a part of the dance of that vision as well. And I think that is, that is a gift that not everybody has, and I thank you for holding that for all of us.

Duncan Campbell: Well thank you very much Sobonfu, and I want to thank our co-producers Larraine Tennison and John Major Jenkins and everyone involved with this project, all the presenters that are part of this pilgrimage series that is now leading us, as it were, like milestones toward the Conference Gathering on May 29 and 30. If people are wanting further information, they can go to www.unveiling2012.org. And we really extend an extraordinarily warm and intimate invitation for your continued participation. If you cannot physically put yourself in that Fort Collins environment, you’re very much invited to participate through your deep listening to not only these dialogues, but to the continuation of Living Dialogues after that, and also to honor the fact that really it is true -- and we’re experiencing it with great gratitude for our listenership and their Website Contact emails from around the world -- that as the world becomes smaller, “yes, we can” and do experience in greater depth and greater joy our own common humanity.

We invite you and look forward to seeing you at the conference on May 29 and 30, 2009 in the natural beauty of Fort Collins, Colorado, entitled “2012 NOW - Empowering the Transformation”. For further information and registration you can go to www.unveiling2012.org.

“We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth…. and we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself....For the world has changed, and we must change with it…why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration…" -- Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009

And as we say on Living Dialogues:

“Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation”™.

Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ”. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)

Among other heartful visionary conversations you will find of particular interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Robert Sitler, John Major Jenkins, Sobonfu Some, Stanislav Grof, Richard Tarnas, John O’Donohue, Michael Meade, Eckhart Tolle, Ted Sorensen, Frances Moore Lappe, Angeles Arrien, Matthew Fox, David Mendell, Deborah Tannen, Gangaji, Michael Dowd, Duane Elgin, and Joseph Ellis, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site].

After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.

Transcript

Transcript

“Duncan Campbell, I heard about your podcast a few months ago, and have been deeply listening to all the dialogues with your fantastic friends/guests. Your words, ideas, and wisdom are truly inspirational. You have evoked a new appetite for knowledge in me that I hope to share with a starving younger generation. Thank you for doing what you do, and creating a unique space, void of boundaries and classification. A breath of fresh air! Much love and respect.” – Amit Kapadiya

In furtherance of creating and maintaining the planetary dialogues now required in the 21st century, we featured a special series of dialogues with myself and other elders in the weeks leading up to and including the 2008 Olympics hosted by China and the U.S. 2008 elections. Those dialogues can be listened to separately on this site or as gathered as a series on my website www.livingdialogues.com under the collective title “Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogues”. They address various specific political aspects of our planetary crisis, with its dangers and opportunities for creating and sustaining a visionary and evolutionary shift. (We remember that the Chinese character for “crisis” is often described as meaning both “danger” when visioned from a fear perspective, and “opportunity” when visioned from a wisdom perspective.)

In all my Living Dialogues from their inception I talk in various ways about the call to generate dialogues across generational, ethnic, gender, religious, wealth, and national boundaries -- building bridges of understanding and wisdom in the cooperative spirit and reaching out -- required by our 21st century realities, and the essential roles that we all are called to play in our evolution for it to take place.

This is the time for renewed dialogue, for visionary and inspiring discourse producing practical and innovative ways of living and sharing together, to engage the deep spirit and spirituality of our own elder wisdom and youthful inspiration, and in so doing to experience and exemplify that “Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation”™.

And that is what we all do, in our mutual roles as host, deep listeners, and guests, when we gather together here from all parts of the globe in Living Dialogues.

SUBSCRIBE HERE FOR FREE TO LIVING DIALOGUES AND IN THE COMING WEEKS HEAR DUNCAN CAMPELL’S DIALOGUES WITH OTHER GROUND-BREAKING TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKERS LISTED ON THE WEBSITE WWW.LIVINGDIALOGUES.COM. TO LISTEN TO PREVIOUS RELATED DIALOGUES ON THIS SITE, SCROLL DOWN ON THE LIVING DIALOGUES SHOW PAGE HERE -- OR CLICK ON THE NAME OF A GUEST ON THE LIST AT THE RIGHT -- TO HEAR DUNCAN’S DIALOGUES WITH DR. ANDREW WEIL, BRIAN WEISS, COLEMAN BARKS, RUPERT SHELDRAKE, LARRY DOSSEY, JUDY COLLINS, MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, MATTHEW FOX, JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE, DEEPAK CHOPRA, BYRON KATIE AND STEPHEN MITCHELL, CAROLINE MYSS, GANGAJI, VINE DELORIA, JR., MICHAEL DOWD (THE UNIVERSE STORY OF THOMAS BERRY AND BRIAN SWIMME), STEVE MCINTOSH, FRANCES MOORE LAPPE, STANISLAV GROF, RICHARD TARNAS, MARC BEKOFF AND JANE GOODALL, RICHARD MOSS, PAUL HAWKEN, PAUL RAY, JOSEPH ELLIS, DUANE ELGIN, LYNNE MCTAGGART, ECKHART TOLLE, MICHAEL MEADE, ANGELES ARRIEN, SOBONFU SOME. TED SORENSEN, ROBERT THURMAN, DAVID MARANISS, DAVID BOREN, GEORGE LAKOFF, TOM HAYDEN, JAY INSLEE, BRACKEN HENDRICKS, BOB GOUGH, VAN JONES, BARBARA MARX HUBBARD, LESTER BROWN, DAVID MENDELL, DEBORAH TANNEN, JOHN GRAY, ARI BERK, SUSAN JACOBY, JOSEPH M. MARSHALL III, JOHN O’DONOHUE, BRANT SECUNDA, MARK ALLEN, MICHAEL BECKWITH, ROBERT SITLER, JOHN MAJOR JENKINS AND OTHER EVOLUTIONARY THINKERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.

The best way to reach me is through my website: www.livingdialogues.com. Many thanks again for your attentive deep listening in helping co-create this program.

All the best, Duncan.

P.S. As a way of further acknowledging and appreciating your part in these dialogues, and since I cannot personally answer all of them, I have begun to publish from time to time in these pages some of the appreciations received from you.

Christine Page: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me Duncan, and I must say it’s been a pleasure to sit with you around the hearth and to sit and match our hearts together, which as you say takes us beyond any space or time that might limit us. It’s such a pleasure to have the opportunity to be with you in Living Dialogues, and I am so grateful for the work you’re doing and to, not only now, but your own inner work and the work that I know you’re here to do for the future.

Duncan Campbell: From time immemorial, beginning with indigenous councils and ancient wisdom traditions, through the work of western visionaries such as Plato, Galileo, and quantum physicist David Bohm, mutually participatory dialogue has been seen as the key to evolving and transforming consciousness, evoking a flow of meaning, a dia – flow - of logos - meaning, beyond what any one individual can bring through alone, so join us now as together with you, the active deep listener, we evoke and engage in Living Dialogues.

Duncan Campbell: Welcome to Living Dialogues. I’m your host, Duncan Campbell, and with me for this particular dialogue I’m truly delighted to have as my guest Christine Page, MD. She began her medical practice in London in 1978 and combined it with homeopathy in 1989. She is an international seminar leader on subtle energy and energy medicine, having created a three-level training program to enhance the power of intuition for health care professionals. She is the author of “Frontiers of Health”, “How to Heal the Whole Person” and “Spiritual Alchemy”. She lives in California with her husband. She is also, in another manifestation as a renaissance women, the author of “2012 And The Galactic Center: The Return of the Great Mother”.

And she has recently returned from an extraordinary pilgrimage to Greece and Turkey also with her husband. And I just want to read an appreciation by Carolyn Mace, known to many of you, regarding “2012 and the Galactic Center: The Return of the Great Mother”. Of this Carolyn Mace says, quote, “A masterpiece of ancient wisdom and truth that is so compelling that you cannot put the book down. Rarely does a book come along that reads as if it is a text directly from an ancient mystery school, but ‘2012 and the Galactic Center’ qualifies for that status. It truly is a must-read”, close quote. And Carolyn of course, Carolyn Mace has been a guest several times here on Living Dialogues, and I will just begin then by welcoming you Christine very warmly to the program.

Christine Page: Thank you so much. Thank you for inviting me into this, well it feels like a sitting room where I can sit and talk with you Duncan, and for the wonderful work you’re doing, especially for the conference that’s coming up.

Duncan Campbell: Well thank you Christine. That’s very much appreciated, and I do feel that way as well with you, that what we’re creating here in the conference you’re referring to, the great gathering that will take place in Fort Collins, Colorado on May 29 and 30 entitled 2012 Now - Empowering the Transformation, is really a convocation of friends, of participants, of being in dialogue with each other, whether we’re speaking from the stage or whether people are gathering in groups of four or five at the extended celebratory break that will happen during midday on Saturday of the Conference to be followed by an initiation and celebration ritual lead by Sobonfu Some’, and a concluding dialogue, and finally a feast together, where we all mingle and celebrate on the evening of Saturday, that would be May 30.

The dialogues that we’re having right now, this is the final one in what we have called a series of seven Pilgrimage Dialogues, reminiscent in its own way a 21st century version of Goeffery Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales from the middle ages where he depicted there the group of pilgrims making their way from London by foot to Canterbury to be together at the cathedral of Thomas Becket. And as they wended their way toward Canterbury they would stop at inns and break bread together and share stories.

And so this is one of the most powerful transformational vehicles that exists in our human species. It is the power of shared stories that goes right back to the very origins and beginnings of our species. And so I’m really delighted that you’re experiencing it as I am Christine as a kind of conversational intimacy here, and you can feel, as you and I have already spoken, the virtual presence of the people that will in fact be listening to this particular dialogue in Chronos time, maybe a week from now, maybe a year from now, but their presence is already felt here in Kairos time, we might say, beyond the measurable chronology of time and space in its normal sense. They’re actually present here and they’re evoking from us this kind of familial atmosphere as if we were around a fire a millennia ago and sharing stories in the Bardic way.

And so with that setting I would like to invite you to share the unique stories that you possess, as we all possess unique stories, in a fresh baked bread kind of way from this most recent journey that you and your husband have made with a group to Greece and Turkey. And lets begin that way because the principles we’re going to be talking about, about the father and the mother energies coming together in alignment, sacred marriage, creativity, transformation and our access to that deep passionate inspiration of our creative essence are all something that you just recently experienced in a very particular way, and then we will lead from there into talking about the phenomenon of 2012.

Christine Page: Mm, wonderful. I always feel that as we’re sitting around that fire, you know, one of the thoughts that I have of these times are they’re such a time of remembering and how we, when we do listen to other people’s stories some pieces may just glide by us, they just mean nothing to us, maybe nothing at that moment. But then other times it’s like that spark coming out of the fire, something sparks inside us and sometimes even we miss the end of a story because we’ve been inspired to go somewhere else in our own dream state.

And I think that’s been my journey. I was very fortunate to be brought up amongst very strong wise women to the extent that they were seen as being fay, which is a Scottish word for being psychic or intuitive. And I spent most of my life amongst those strong and impressive women who did not need to do anything else except to be themselves, and I learned that self-respect as I was growing up, my father had that same respect for women… And I was also very fortunate to have two parents who loved traveling. And so we traveled many places. As a young child it was easy for me to go from England across to Europe and we traveled to Greece and Turkey when I was young many times indeed, and I have probably traveled to many parts of the world now visiting often the indigenous people, but also part of my own journey as a doctor, being able to really tap into the peoples of the world at a level which I couldn’t have done just as a tourist. I was allowed into peoples not only homes, but hearts because of my career.

And the recent journey into Greece and Turkey was one that we planned two years ago to go there, my husband Leland and I, because we’d taken groups to New Zealand and to England and to Peru and to Hawaii, but it still, the place that Greece and Turkey are now holding very importantly for the world are a place where the masculine and feminine are maybe two different cultures, you could say a more Christian culture versus a more Muslim culture. The borders perhaps between Eastern Europe and even the Middle East and Europe, these two countries hold it very delicately, and we wanted to take a group of people who would understand this marriage that’s taking place, not only between different cultures or male and female, but within all of us at this time, the marriage of opposites, that diversity that needs to now be brought together into unity.

And when we were there we experienced both the masculine and feminine within both cultures, but it was very interesting to notice how the Greek culture would still live very much based on the patriarchal rising that occurred during the classic period Greek, of the civilization was still very strong. It didn’t mean that it was still out of balance, the women there were very strong, but as you walk amongst the sites in Greece, you get this sense of what was there before, we could be talking through five-hundred thousand BC, two-thousand years ago, four-thousand years ago, this sense of that there was more of a balance between the male and the female, and in fact the feminine, the vessel of the feminine, the power of the feminine were valued, and that the masculine did come in and say, “I cannot give that much power to the feminine.” And it was very obvious by seeing how the site that were to maybe a female, to Artemis, having in many ways been allowed to go to ruin, some of the great sites like the Elusian Mystery Site that lasted for fifteen hundred years now is one of the biggest oil refinery places in the Mediterranean, and where the other sites, which perhaps were more in honor of Zeus or Apollo had been cared for with greater, greater care.

As we moved into Turkey, I, we were surprised just strong this feminine was in Turkey. One could say that we had maybe different views of the Muslim appreciation of the feminine, that in fact the feminine was very strong and very present, and there was much more of a balance between the masculine and feminine, we were surprised. And one of the things that I learned as I was writing the book, that in fact Muslim culture is the only culture that still has a fully lunar calendar, where the Chinese and the Hebrew both have a solar lunar calendar, it is the reason why they have the crescent moon as their symbol because this is representing the lunar calendar that’s in place.

And we managed to go to one site where we actually came across an image of a great mother, which was a very portly figure of this very large lady, but there she was with her hand on two animals, one is thought to be a leopard, one thought to be a lion, very much symbolizing the power of the above and below that this Great Mother had. And these symbols or this image comes from a site just outside Konya, Turkey, and the site is showing that this is eight thousand years ago, that this worship of this Great Mother, honoring of her, was in that way eight thousand years ago. And I think just one of the last things I wanted to say is that what was so interesting was that when they dug up these images they found no weapons buried with her, no signs of sacrifice, which suggests that eight thousand years ago in that part of the world there was not war, there was not a need to defend yourself, and this really tells me that we need to change some of our history books that may be saying that we come from a place of savages and we’re now evolving into a more enlightened group, perhaps we are, perhaps come from a place of more enlightenment, more harmony and we are now moving back to that place in our history now.

Duncan Campbell: And so, that’s so interesting Christine because indeed at this time in history, at the beginning of the 21st century there are many prophecies that are coming into play from different traditions all around the world, not only the Mayan with 2012 and the galactic center or alternatively the end of the Long Count calendar and the debate over how those two relate, is not really what we’re going to focus on. We’re going to focus on the fact that there is a moment in time that everywhere on the planet there are stories and prophetic visions that are converging at this time in history about a great transformation to take place, whether it’s Nostradamus, whether it’s John and The Book of Revelation in the Bible, whether it’s from the Asian Shambhala tradition.

Any number of prophecies are predicting that this is a time of great potential consciousness transformation, and we can tell that from our own felt experience and if we needed any reminding of course, the events of the last several months and the last year of 2008 with the great financial collapse have brought this home to many people everywhere on the planet.

And so the question really is at this point to keep as I see it, and I think as you see it and as we’re creating in this conference, to keep our eye on the forest rather than the trees, to see the larger emerging possibilities from a perspective of understanding the very nature of transformation itself. And in that transformation the role of the feminine, and particularly the archetype of the Great Mother, is of course primary. As C.G. Jung said in the middle of the 20th century, “All transformation always passes through the body, or the embodiment, of the feminine.” And this has been one of your great passions throughout your life Christine, is not only how to hold the space for nurturing in your medical and in your healing work, but also how to hold the space for transformation. In your many travels around the world, as in mine, we have both had the privilege of entering into a deep dialogic space with people everywhere on the planet, on all the continents and in various indigenous tribal situations and cultures.

And so what I think I’d like to invite you to do now is to talk about the perspective of what you see evolving at this point in time, particularly with respect to 2012 and the galactic center, what that womb of the Milky Way and its alignment with our earth and with our solar sun of our solar system could have as a metaphorical deep meaning for all of us, and what you mean by the return of the Great Mother.

For full transcript, please contact Duncan Campbell