Our approach is interdisciplinary, and combines deeply intuitive methods with computer and network-based methods. We have been building internet systems for 15 years, and have developed a wide range of connections with individuals and organizations working in areas of interest to us. Today, in a national and global context of increasing concern about economic and environmental stability, we are poised to expand our outreach and our network influence, through a spectrum of projects we believe can help lead the way towards a new century of global vitality and cultural renaissance.

As former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has recently said, regarding his class at Yale University on Religion and Globalization, the globalization process is pulling people closer together. Traditional borders are increasingly permeable, and this “de-localization” is driving the emergence of new and unprecedented possibilities for cooperation and understanding. At the same time, common human tendencies towards polarization and “us against them” thinking are also intensifying, in ways that are dangerous and destructive.

The Interspirit Foundation recognizes the great possibilities inherent in a wise international culture, and envisions our national society and indeed the entire world moving into an inspired era of mutual understanding and co-creativity. We are fostering relationships and building a broad array of tools and systems intended to bring this vision into the world.

The Interspirit Foundation and our many interconnected projects have a long history, tracing back to the late 1980’s, or conceivably back to the 1970’s or late 1960’s. The project has grown through a long evolutionary process that began with psychology and philosophy and science, and has developed into an internet system involving online databases and an array of interconnected web sites and projects.

Since the beginning, our work has been highly idealistic, and has been developed as a response to challenging or dangerous world conditions. We have followed the general idea that human beings are meant to be successful on this planet, and that our contemporary crisis – in the environment, in economics, in cultural relations – is not surprising, and could simply be anticipated as the consequence of ordinary human weakness and the diversity of cultures developing semi-independently across the planet. Yes, we human beings have made mistakes, yes we have been messy, and yes we have committed horrendous crimes against ourselves and the world. But we can move beyond these things – and these behaviors can be seen as a kind of immaturity, along the way towards a far more illuminated and evolved global culture, that we believe can blossom out of this confusion and injury.

Our guiding instinct from the beginning has been the assumption that we do have what we need, that civilization is going through a profound transition, that we can be guided by the deepest instincts of intuition and the words and visions of our greatest leaders and philosophers. Now, as we are beginning to come together as an institutional framework, The Interspirit Foundation today is rising to a call being heard all over the world. We are developing tools and methods and frameworks that can incorporate and assimilate the great wisdom and knowledge that is available to us now, and devising means that this knowledge and capacity can be brought into the world in a graceful and natural way.

Today, all over the world, driven by the forces of globalization, as mentioned by Tony Blair, and profoundly amplified by the tremendous acceleration in knowledge and understanding, we are hearing a call for something new – a “new consciousness”, a new kind of awareness, a new sense of interconnectedness, a new sense of common ground, a new way to understand humanity as “one family”. Some people call this “the shift” – and we hear talk of this shift in many places. But is this awareness really so recent? In 1970, there was a very popular book published entitled “The Greening of America” that reviewed these kinds of possibilities.

There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past .It will originate with the individual and with culture, and it will change the political structure only as its final act. It will not require violence to succeed, and it cannot be successfully resisted by violence. It is now spreading with amazing rapidity, and already our laws, institutions and social structure are changing in consequence. It promises a higher reason, a more human community, and a new and liberated individual. Its ultimate creation will be a new and enduring wholeness and beauty -- a renewed relationship of man to himself, to other men, to society, to nature, and to the land.

Today, almost 40 years after the publication of Charles Reich’s book, this underground revolution has continued to evolve and mature. Gone are the beads and bell-bottoms that were part of that sixties vision, but the drive to community, to the transformation of social structures, to an enduring wholeness and liberated spirit – these themes underlie this “shift” movement as it continues to expand in the world today.

Throughout the years since the publication of The Greening of America – and many other related books, such as Marilyn Ferguson’s The Aquarian Conspiracy, or Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, those of us who were riding that wave of insight and revolution have continued to refine our ideas and evolve our understanding. Sometimes we have been called “cultural creatives” – or sometimes simply “ex-hippies”.

For many of us – a dream was born in us those many years ago, and that dream continues to live. It has been authenticated, tested and tried, purified and made more realistic. But at its core, there is a vision of hope and beauty and freedom and creativity, that seems linked to something eternal in the human spirit, something that is rising around the world as a response to conditions in the world today. Through the Interspirit Foundation – we are hearing that call, and building tools that we hope can allow us to respond in unprecedented ways.

We believe that the power and insight that was at least partially born in the sixties, and ripened all these years, is coming into a kind of high fruition, yearning for breakthrough and influence and meaning-in-the-world. For those of us who have been paying attention, who have been taking notes, who have been collecting and refining our understanding, who have not become cynical or disillusioned or forgetful, the potentials of today might indeed be understood as a “greening”. Something is coming ripe, coming into maturity. Through the Interspirit Foundation, we are giving this “something” a clearer articulation, and are gathering up its many pieces into a single integral framework.

Things we are doing today:

1. Building a comprehensive internet system involving large databases, and the support of a wide array of groups and organizations working in the areas of interfaith, new consciousness, and the women’s movement
2. Developing communication networks for these groups, providing ways that projects and groups can be overlapped or merged in various creative ways
3. Developing original research into consciousness and semantics and ontology and network science, in ways that are pertinent to change in the world
4. Developing designs to directly implement and actualize these inspired higher visions of human possibility
5. Working in a hands-on way with groups and individuals anywhere in the world whom we feel are responding to something like this call, and whom we believe can and should be brought into constructive and creative relationship with one another
6. Improving and continuing to invest in our technical infrastructure for supporting this agenda
7. Developing working relationships with creative individuals and organizations whom we feel can and should be part of an emerging national or global consortium, working in these areas

Today, September 2008, as we have now received our tax-exempt 501c3 status from the IRS, we are beginning to prepare an outreach and development program, intended to communicate this larger vision. We are beginning to draw into our projects the voices and participation of individuals and groups anywhere who are attracted to these possibilities, and who want to find themselves interconnected by relationships, by interrelated ideas, and by the hard-wired connectivity of an internet system that can support the complexity and breadth of this process.

We are beginning to build our corporate infrastructure – expanding our Board of Directors, and our Board of Advisors. We are adding more groups and organizations to our networking system. We are continuing to build new network tools. We are ramping up our internet capacity and power. We are looking to create tight working relationships with other organizations in the world who are responding to this same call. We are looking to develop teamwork and team-based approaches to collective problem-solving. We are refining our collaborative methods. We are gathering up everything that has been learned about “group process”, and the psychology of co-creativity. We are working at local levels, regional and national levels, and at the global level. We are beginning to develop tools to support conferences and conference management, and are assisting in the registration and planning of several conferences. We are contacting experts and possible contributors, and soliciting their participation. We are radiating a vision of idealism, human interconnectivity, and the primacy of spirit. We are exploring ways that these new possibilities can dovetail into “real world” politics. We believe that “a revolution is at hand”, that “the shift”, driven by globalization and the universal availability of knowledge, is leading towards wonderful new breakthroughs. With our internet tools, our network development skills, and our inspired vision, we are poised for breakthrough across a spectrum of disciplines.