Is the world out of balance because we do not understand the dreaming?

When I watched the new show, Dreams, Visions and Realities I was struck by how important it is that these two worlds come together... The dream time and the waking... the inner and the outer. It seems this conversation shows how it can be done... it shows us possibility of another way of being. One connected to the other, seamlessly.

As Dr. Stephen Aizenstat says in the show, dreams are important because they connect us to our essential nature and help us to navigate towards our true direction. It is a space we need to respect for there is an intelligence at work. What if every human was navigated by their true nature? How different would our relationships, sense of belonging, and the dynamics of our world, be?

One of the reasons we created GLOBAL SPIRIT is to engage you, our community, in a lively discussion -- and through the miracles of technology, this is possible. So please participate by watching the show on January 22, 9pm ET/6pm PT on Link TV or online, and engaging in the live chat with Dr. Stephen Aizenstat to follow. It's easy! Just go here.

You can post questions in advance here below, or on Facebook. Please invite your friends. We look forward to being with you on January 22. You never know... asking the right question of a dream specialist might just change your life.

(Mosaic Video Alert: March 28, 2011) NBN reports on a new crime committed by Muammar Gaddafi and his regime: the rape of Iman al-Obeidi. The victim is a "lawyer who embodies the model Libyan woman, but bothered the regime for being a free woman.” Iman was detained and raped by 15 of Gaddafi's mercenaries. The regime first accused al-Obeidi of being drunk and mentally ill, then offered to bribe the rape victim in exchange for her silence, a request that was rejected. Benghazi residents held a solidarity rally with Iman and online activists rallied behind her with a Facebook page entitled "We are all Iman al-Obeidi."

(Mosaic Video Alert: March 15, 2011) The BBC reports on pro-democracy protests in Syria in which hundreds of Syrians took to the streets of the capital Damascus, chanting slogans and demanding political reforms. Protestors marched from the Hamadiyah Market to the area of Hariqa calling for freedom. This unprecedented mobilization in Syria was organized on Facebook. In the West Bank city of Ramallah, hundreds of protestors gathered in response to a call made by youth groups on Facebook. Dubai TV reports that demonstrators called for an end to internal Palestinian division between Fatah and Hamas. They chanted slogans demanding national unity and appealed to both Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

Al Jazeera's Arabic language channel reports that Gaddafi's forces violently attacked protestors in the Libyan cities of Misurata and Az-Zawiyah this morning. Eyewitnesses say that Gaddafi's troops were armed with machine guns and that dozens of people were injured and killed.

Reporters from Dubai TV stationed at the Egyptian-Libyan border state that Egyptian workers are pouring across the Salum border crossing. Thousands of buses wait on the Egyptian side of the border to transport people returning from Libya. Of the 1.5 million Egyptians residing and working in Libya, nearly 20,000 have returned to Egypt in the past few days with haunting stories of the atrocities they witnessed in Libya.

In Yemen, BBC Arabic reports that President Ali Abdullah Saleh ordered security forces to protect protestors and prevent confrontations between pro- and anti-government demonstrators. This came after two people were killed and eleven were injured in clashes that erupted two days ago near Sana'a University.

Protests also persist in Bahrain, where demonstrators have filled Pearl Roundabout to mark the one-week anniversary of "Bloody Thursday." The tens of thousands who continue to protest in Pearl Square say they will not withdraw before their goals of constitutional and political reform are met.

New TV reports that in Beirut, many Lebanese youths were disappointed at the poor attendance at an anti-Libyan regime rally organized on Facebook. While many expressed enthusiasm for the rally, only a small number of people attended. A Lebanese Gaddafi impersonator provided extra flair to the protest.

NBN also reports on Muammar al-Gaddafi, describing his madness as "laughable and tragic." The Libyan dictator depicted himself as a Greek god and said that he is the one who created Libya and will also be the one to save it. The report includes an interview in which Gaddafi gives his own unique definition of democracy.

NBN reports on Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, describing his madness as "laughable and tragic." The Libyan dictator reached a new low when he described himself as a Greek god and said that he is the one who created Libya and will also be the one to save it. The report includes an interview with Gaddafi in which he gives his own unique definition of democracy.

Lebanese Impersonator Ridicules Gaddafi

New TV reports that in Beirut, many Lebanese youths were disappointed at the poor attendance at an anti-Libyan regime rally which was organized on Facebook. While many expressed enthusiasm for the rally online, only a small number of people actually attended. However, their deprecation and ridicule of the Libyan leader and regime was made evident by a Gaddafi impersonator.

I arrived in Tunis on January 1, only a few days after a wave of rallies had erupted due to the suicide of an unemployed college graduate, who torched himself after police confiscated his fruit cart, cutting off his only source of income. Mohammed Bouazizi, 26, sold fruit and vegetables without the necessary vendor's permit in the town of Sidi Bouzid, located 160 miles from the country's capital Tunis.

At the time, Tunisians had been protesting for a couple of weeks over poor living conditions, high unemployment, government corruption and repression. Three people had been killed in the protests by the time of my arrival. The atmosphere was tense, public protests were rare in Tunisia where dissent was usually repressed; however, no one I spoke to in Tunis believed then that these demonstrations would lead to the ouster of President Zein El Abidine Ben Ali who eventually fled the country to Saudi Arabia after ruling Tunisia for 23 years.

The Jasmine Revolution, as it is dubbed now, was not televised on Tunisia's main television station, Tunisie7, nor did it make headlines in the local press, but the news spread like wildfire on Facebook, YouTube, mobile phone, and to a lesser extent on Twitter (most of the tweets were from outside Tunisia).

Prior to my arrival to Tunis, I had spent the past five weeks in the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territories debating social media, its impact on youth, and its relationship with journalism in the Arab world with my interlocutors.

It is very easy, but over-simplistic and naive to decide on a social media interpretation for the Jasmine Revolution, as we have been witnessing by many bloggers and self-appointed Middle East experts, many of whom neither speak Arabic nor have spent an extended period of time in the Middle East. They desperately want to convince us that Tunisians needed an external technological Western invention in order to succeed. A Twitter revolution of some sorts, as they previously labeled the Iranian Velvet Revolution, as though Arab masses were not capable on their own of saying "enough is enough."

Certainly social media was used as a communication tool for Tunisians to air their frustrations with the economy, unemployment, censorship, and corruption. But many factors lead to its success, such as a well organized trade unions movement, and the most potent weapon in the Arab world, the youth.

Population ageing is widespread across the world, but most Arab countries have been experiencing a youth explosion. More than one third of them are now unemployed. Tunisia is a bit different since it is one of the few Arab countries that opted for a family planning policy initiated during the rule of its first president, Habib Bourguiba. Tunisia, however, has also adopted a development plan with a focus on higher education, leaving a large number of young college graduates unemployed.

When I was driving around in Tunis, posters of President Zein El Abidine Ben Ali were sprinkled throughout the city with the slogan, "Together We Meet Challenges," a slogan meant to tout his plan of development by focusing on job creation, increasing revenue and enhancing Tunisia's positioning and influence on the regional and international scales. This obviously has failed, leaving a country of over- educated youth, many of whom are unemployed or doing menial jobs. Mohammed Bouazizi was the catalyst for their revolution.

Today, millions of Arab youth are disenchanted with politics and live a dramatic rupture with the state. Restrictions on freedom of expression, though improving in several countries, dominate the mass media in the Arab world. Social media has in many instances opened the door for them not only to share ideas, but also to take action. We've seen a vivid example of this during the Jeddah floods when the Saudi government tried to suppress the news about the devastation caused by nature due to poor infrastructure in the Arab world's richest country, but the news quickly spread on Facebook and the internet by concerned young Saudis. We've witnessed a bread revolution in Egypt, also driven by high unemployment and poverty; again initially transmitted to the outside world by young bloggers before it became international headlines.

Throughout history, when social discontent can no longer be contained, people have taken to the street to demand change. Having the most rudimentary technology, or none at all have not prevented these movements, a case in point being hand printed pamphlets distributed prior to the French Revolution, Gandhi's ability to inspire and mobilize through the exponential power of word of mouth, and the leaflets and tape recordings of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini speeches that were smuggled into the country prior to the Iranian Revolution.

Mohammed Bouazizi's self immolation was the expression not only of his despair, but that of youth throughout Tunisia ready to explode. Although they are an educated tech-savvy generation who were able to use social media as a tool, the underlying force was not a byproduct of this and the current situation would have come to pass with or without it.

Crediting social media with these revolutions however, trivializes them and does a disservice to the deep rooted issues that cause them.

As I was leaving Tunis on January 4, news spread again like wildfire of Mohammed Bouazizi's death at a hospital in the town of Ben Arous. Today, Mohsen Bouterfif died. Mohsen doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire on Thursday after a meeting with the mayor of the small city of Boukhadra who was unable to provide him with a job and housing. Boukhadra is in Algeria.

Article first published on the Huffington Post

Bowing to growing international outrage over the imprisonment of film director Jafar Panahi, the Iranian government has now released him on bail. Iranian state television announced that bail was set at $200,000, according to an article published at the Telegraph.co.uk. No further information on Panahi’s release was immediately available.

On March 1, 2010, Jafar Panahi, one of Iran’s most celebrated and influential film directors, was arrested at his home for allegedly planning to make a film about the June 2009 election which returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to office. On Sunday, May 16, while still being held in Tehran’s Evin prison, Panahi began a hunger strike after government officials apparently threatened to arrest his family.

In a letter released by Panahi’s family on May 18, 2010, and published on the website IranHumanRights.org, Panahi stated:  “On Saturday night [May 15, 2010], agents attacked Evin’s Cell 56, forcing me and my cellmates to go outdoors without any clothing and kept us in the cold weather for one and a half hours… They even threatened to arrest my entire family and transfer them to Evin Prison and to send my daughter to an unsafe detention center in Rajaie Shahr.”

On May 3, 2010 Indiewire.com reported that Hollywood’s A-List directors had just signed a petition condemming Panahi’s detention and demanding his immediate release. Signatories included Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Jonathan Demme, Ang Lee and Oliver Stone. Another petition, organized on Facebook, includes over 150 international filmmakers and is still accruing signatures online.

Panahi was supposed to serve as a juror at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival and his absence did not go unnoticed. His juror’s chair was left vacant for the duration of the festival and Abbas Kiarostami, in Cannes to screen his new movie CERTIFIED COPY, called Panahi’s imprisonment “intolerable." According to the New York Times, Kiarostami also stated:  “When a filmmaker, an artist, is imprisoned, it is art as a whole that is attacked, and it is against this that we should react.”

Another leading figure who played a key role in championing Panahi’s cause was film actor Juliette Binoche, who won Best Actress at Cannes for CERTIFIED COPY. When she won her award, she held up a sign bearing Panahi’s name and said his only crime was “to be an artist, to be independent.”

More About Panahi

Panahi achieved early acclaim with the release of his first film in 1995 —-WHITE BALLOON -- which won a Camera d’Or at the Cannes Festival. When it opened in the U.S. shortly thereafter, it quickly became the most successful Iranian film ever released in North America. The film’s protagonist is a seven year-old girl who wants to buy a goldfish to celebrate Norooz, the Iranian New Year. We see the world through her eyes in real time as she attempts to navigate the “forbidden” Tehran marketplace on her own. Screenplay was by Abbas Kiarostami (THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES) for whom Panahi was an apprentice. Time Out London called the movie an “extraordinary debut feature…of audacious subtlety and simplicity.”
 
After its release, the Iranian government attempted to have the film withdrawn from the Oscar best foreign film category and prevented Panahi from leaving Iran to promote it. Panahi’s second feature, THE MIRROR, received the Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno Film Festival. This film, also dealing with the human experience of social injustice as experienced by children, tells the story of a young girl whose mother fails to pick her up from school. She must make her way home through the chaos of Tehran on her own. Halfway through the movie, the young actress breaks character and asserts that she’s tired of acting and the movie moves back and forth between illusion and reality. In his review, Stephen Holden of the N.Y. Times said the film “…poses the deepest questions about illusion, reality and filmmaking. Its portrait of Tehran is unforgettable.”

Panahi’s most widely recognized achievement in film came in 2000 with the release of THE CIRCLE, a movie that criticized the treatment of Iranian women. Panahi won the Golden Lion, the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, and the movie was hailed as the Film of the Year at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. The film involves the intersecting stories of Iranian women who are struggling with a variety of issues:  giving birth to a girl when a boy was expected, navigating city streets where women are not supposed to walk by themselves, and facing death threats from family members over a possible abortion.  Despite its international awards, the film was banned in Iran.  In the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert explains:  “…the film is profoundly dangerous to the status quo in Iran because it asks us to identify with the plight of women who have done nothing wrong except to be female.”

More recent films, such as CRIMSON GOLD in 2003 earned Panahi the Cannes Film Festival Jury Award. And in 2006, Panahi’s OFFSIDE won the Silver Bear (Jury Grand Prix) at the Berlin Film Festival. In the latter film, a group of Iranian women impersonate men so they can attend a World Cup soccer match.

Updates on Panahi's case will be posted here.

How does technology and the Internet express Oneness? I was watching clips from the upcoming ONENESS: The Big Picture (premiering on May 9th) and Deepak said "The Internet is the emergence of something so powerful but we have not realized it's impact."

This feels very true and I think the proper respect is due. If I write an email or a blog from my heart, it seems to have much more of an impact...people respond in kind. It is like the actual energy of my intention comes through my writing, or more like it, this web of light that connects us. This is Oneness, is it not?

I recently went to a conference called Wisdom 2.0 Summit where they were exploring how we use technology to connect in ways that are beneficial to our well-being and useful to the world. I have to say that having lived and worked in both fields -- technology and spirituality (is this a field?...not sure what to call it, but I do work here...) I was prepared not to be impressed with the level of consciousness there, but I am happy to report that I was wrong. There are people at Google, Twitter, Facebook, Mashable and Zappos that seem to have a deep connection to their responsibility to the whole. I almost cried I was so relieved. I mean if you look at the Huffington Post, they have added a religion section and are dedicating themselves to supplying the world with great wisdom teachers and this is a mainstream political publication!  They recently posted a story called "The Internet as a Living Symbol of Global Oneness" by Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. In this article he said, "I believe that the Internet is a gift we have been given. It provides an image of how the energy of life can flow freely in a way that defies the barriers of nationality and geography. Yet sadly because we are so immersed in the surface activity of this technology, in its tools of commerce and communication, we do not realize its deeper, symbolic dimension. A symbol is a connection to the sacred ground of our being which alone gives real meaning to our daily life."

I would love to hear Deepak comment on this.... I would love to hear how he honors this connectedness in his communications with life and community. I hope to ask this question on Mother's Day, May 9th when we host a live chat with him. I am certain mothers care about this issue because it is part of a larger issue. How do we live a life that honors life....

Thanks to everyone who supported our Women in the Congo campaign during the month of February! With your help, we were able to reach our goal of donating $500 to Women for Women International's Run for Congo Women project. In addition to being able to donate to this very worthy cause, we were able to increase our Facebook fanbase by over 1,000 new members, expanding the impact of Link TV's unique programming and related calls for action around important worldwide causes like the war in Congo.

While this particular campaign may be over, there is no shortage of ways you can help. Please continue to visit our website for action ideas surrounding International Women's Day coming up on March 8th.

For example, on this important day in our home base of San Francisco, women will be gathering on the Golden Gate bridge, an action simultaneously being taken by women in Congo and all over the world, to demonstrate that women can build the bridges of peace and hope. Watch this video for more information or click here:

During this month, where women are often celebrated in the U.S., we are talking about violence against women, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Recently, we were inspired by a heart-wrenchingly honest opinion piece written by Nick Kristof in the New York Times that shed some much-needed light on the vicious injustices taking place against the women of the Congo, which Kristof says is on par with (or even exceeds) the devastation that hit Haiti last month --only not as sudden.  5.4 million people, mainly women and children, have been tortured, raped, and killed as a result of the conflict that began in the DRC over a decade ago.

Join us in spreading the word about this important and under-reported issue in the Congo – where violence against women has become an act of war.  Please visit our page linktv.org/womenincongo to learn more, and then tell your friends about it.  Through the rest of February, for every 10 new Facebook fans Link TV will donate $5 (up to $500) to Women for Women International's Run for Congo Women campaign. With your help, Link TV continues to disseminate the untold stories of the world.