7. The Integral Transpersonal Journal and the Journal of Transpersonal Research

The process of grounding and growing within EUROTAS becomes visible by the appearance of two professional journals of transpersonal psychology.

The first one is the “Integral Transpersonal Journal” edited by Pier Luigi Lattuada and Giovanna Calabrese.

This journal is seen as a discussion basis for new transpersonal ideas and concepts. It reviews scientific approaches and creates a new scientific paradigm that is able to understand the particular transpersonal model that is an integration of science, art, and spirituality.

Contributions of EUROTAS members are welcomed.

The “Integral Transpersonal Journal” appears twice a year. For paying EUROTAS members it is included in their membership fees. An online edition will appear shortly on the EUROTAS website.

The “Journal of Transpersonal Research” is an online periodical edited by Roman Gonzalvo inSpain. It collects articles for researching transpersonal psychology and psychotherapy. The journal strikes for its creativity and scientific rigor at the same time. So it fills a long empty-standing gap within the transpersonal field.

The Journal appears once a year, contributions should be sent to the EUROTAS office or directly to Roman Gonzalvo.

8.  ATP/ITP Conference Spirituality; Promises and Pitfalls

Joint Conference from the Association for Transpersonal Psychology and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology - "Spirituality: Promises and Pitfalls"

February 17 - 19, 2012,Menlo Park,California,USA

The third biennial ATP-ITP Spirituality & Psychology Conference will bring together clinicians, therapists, spiritual guides, faith-based and healing practitioners, academics, and researchers to explore the promises and pitfalls of the spiritual path. Spiritual freedom and awakening are the goal, but spiritual bypassing and abusive power relationships are also well known perils on the spiritual path.

Join keynote speakers Roger Walsh, Shauna Shapiro, Robert Frager, and Jeanne Achterberg along with a host of luminaries including Brant Cortright, Jim Fadiman, Arthur Hastings, Olga Louchakova, and David Lukoff, to examine the nature of spiritual illusion while we seek the wisdom and health benefits available in spirituality.

Recent neuroscientific findings, the wisdom of spiritual teachers, and up-to-date applications for psychotherapy, personal growth and social transformation are all included in this conference. Through experiential workshops, presentations, music, ritual, yoga, meditation, drumming and social networking you will have the opportunity to explore and experience in three tracks:

1. Spirituality and Culture: The relationship between culture and spirituality as integral parts of human development, world view, and well-being
2. Spirituality and Research: Transpersonally-oriented research, including neuroscience, and the cultivation of spiritual emergence and development
3. Spiritually Oriented Psychotherapy: The interface of spirituality and clinical practice including the role of spirituality as a resource for clients.

Registration opened in October, 2011. Register early for best pricing!

For registration: http://www.regonline.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?EventID=973319

9. The Hellenic Association for Transpersonal Psychology and Research

The Hellenic Association for Transpersonal Psychology & Research was founded by Lindy McMullin and a group of doctors, psychologists, educationalists and individuals interested in promoting Transpersonal Psychology and Psychotherapy in January 2011. In this changing world, there is a need to reach beyond our everyday life, drawing on the wisdom of the ancient world, of perennial philosophy and complementarity.

Synthesis is the non-profit, non-religious Transpersonal Association of Greece, comprised of individuals from various professional fields that embrace the Transpersonal Perspective and who seek to further promote and integrate this enlightened perspective across various disciplines and the larger social context as a whole. This will include providing Transpersonal Literature, Seminars, Workshops and an International conference. Synthesis also provides a setting where like- minded individuals can come and discuss, debate and exchange new and illuminating ideas from the world of Transpersonal Psychology with a focus on research.

We meet once a month for seminars and workshops, embracing the Transpersonal vision in its worldly context, focusing on research, especially in the field of education. Our aims are to bring to light the benefits of Mindfulness Training in schools, to run programs for accreditation in Transpersonal Psychotherapy and to introduce spiritual crisis as part of an informative seminar to the police force and the field of nursing. Our association has members from different countries as well as Greece, in an effort to bring global unity through international conferences and hosting guest speakers through different workshops. Our website has a growing Bibliography and a number of scientific articles, encouraging people to become acquainted with a new paradigm and world view. Greecewill be hosting the 16^th EUROTAS conference and we believe that this is an important step in bringing the spiritual richness ofGreece's past back into its present day struggle to find balance in the global crisis.

www.transpersonal.gr

10. News from the Centre of Transpersonal Psychology in the UK

Dear John

It was grand to receive an update regarding EUROTAS and to hear of current developments. I was particularly interested to hear about the recent conference – I do hope it went well inVarnaand that your presentation was well received. When’s your book coming out? I know myself and several colleagues would be very interested in it.

I’m not sure how much Peter has kept you informed of developments at CTP. We’ve had to undergo some fairly rigorous re-writing of policy and procedures as part of our re-accreditation with UKCP. That’s all completed now fortunately and we have a loyal membership of therapists, most of whom trained under Ian Gordon-Brown and Barbara Somers. However, membership is not growing, partly because we have not run a training programme for some time now and recent developments have meant that therapists can now register directly with UKCP rather than through a member organisation such as CTP.

Currently, we’re focusing on developing our CPD programme for our members and other therapists interested in the Transpersonal. We also continuing to develop links and joint work with Transpersonal Perspectives, our sister organisation which offers workshops etc for people from all walks of life.

We’re keen to maintain our links with EUROTAS and on behalf of the CTP I’d like to offer my thanks to yourself and Beata for all that you’ve done over the years in keeping that link strong. I have very fond memories of theRegentsCollegeconference myself and hope to attend another conference when time and finances permit.

In the meantime, would it be possible for you to continue to represent CTP? We’re undergoing an internal restructuring at the moment as a result of Peter and a number of other council members stepping down but I anticipate by the spring next year, we will be a position to focus our attention on external links and partnerships much more.

With warmest wishes and kind regards
Mark

Mark Price
Chair, Centre for Transpersonal Psychology
17 West View Road,
St Albans,
Herts
AL3 5JX

11. Interesting Work at the American Community School in Athens

The Association has joined EUROTAS and has been welcomed as Ingo has mentioned above. Lindy McMullin is the President and writes about her work with the American Community School in Athens:

‘Mindfulness is a lifetime’s journey along a path that ultimately leads nowhere, only to who you are.’ (Jon Kabat-Zinn 1990).

I recently returned from the EUROTAS 13^th International Conference that was held in Bulgaria and am pleased that the Hellenic Association for Transpersonal Psychology & Research was accepted as a member of EUROTAS.  Greece will host the 16^th EUROTAS Conference in 2014.

The American Community Schoolin Athens has been brought in touch with Mindfulness Training and Mandala Work. This is part of the syllabus being taught in the Middle School Drama classes, something that I believe is only part of a greater whole. Students have worked on the Mandala, a word in Sanskrit that means circle. looking at their characteristics whilst focusing on their own individual potential. Part of our training to become actors and actresses incorporates writing in a journal after every lesson and writing a reflection on progress made during the more experiential parts of our lesson. I would like to take this opportunity to share some of the reflections with you.

Students are encouraged to share their experiences of both mindfulness and their experiences of guided visualizations. We sit in a circle for this sharing and each person holds the ‘talking stick’ which embodies respect and integrity, whilst students explore the deeper recesses of their being within a group context. Ever mindful of the aspects of Quantitative Reasoning, one of the class projects is to make a Venn diagram, to illustrate the similarities and differences they have found between the animal they chose to research, their idol and their description of self. In order to follow through to the end of the semester, students will be given the same assignment after they have completed their course in Drama, to see how much they have gained through the course and how their initial criteria may have deepened, through their practice.

I would very much like to hope that at the 16^th EUROTAS conference, we will be able to have a team of students talk about their experiences with Mindfulness and that this will serve the world at large, especially by introducing a more global awareness into a shift in the consciousness within the education system world-wide. Up to now, it has been said that ‘our schools do not emphasize being’. From now and onwards, this is an important aspect of change within our society and I am honored to be part of this change within the ACS Athens community.

Lindy McMullin MSc
www.quantumgreece.com

12. The Palgrave Handbook of Spirituality and Business

Edited by: Luk Bouckaert, Laszlo Zsolnai

LUK BOUCKAERT is Professor Emeritus at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. He is director of the SPES (Spirituality in Economics and Society) Academy and President of the European SPES Forum inLeuven.

LASZLO ZSOLNAI is Professor and Director of the Business Ethics Centre at the CorvinusUniversity of Budapest,Hungary. He is chairman of the Business Ethics Faculty Group of CEMS - the global alliance of academic and corporate institutions; and a fellow associate at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge,UK.

A summary of the most important issues, approaches and models in the field of spirituality in business, economics and society. The Handbook of Business and Spirituality presents a comprehensive pluralistic view covering all the major religious and spiritual traditions.

It is a response to three developments that challenge the business-as-usual mindset. Firstly, in response to a growing interest in spirituality applied to models of transformational leadership, in theories of social capital and in practices of values-driven management, it explores the emerging field of business spirituality - its main concepts, models and practices.

Secondly, there is a growing awareness that the world is unsustainable without a strong commitment to frugality and self-restriction, and that material resources such as clean air and water, as well as non-material resources such as trust, compassion and peace, are fragile. Managing our vital resources will not succeed without good management of our spiritual resources. Therefore, this handbook aims to elucidate some of the conditions for a transformation towards a post-capitalist, values-driven global economy.
And thirdly, although the interest in spiritually-driven entrepreneurship and governance is increasing, spirituality remains a vague and confusing concept that needs intellectual clarification. Hence, it seeks to clarify the concept of spirituality in the field of business and economics.

Heuristic in style and content it explores new ideas on the frontier of the discipline which will appeal to scholars and practitioners looking for up-to-date and insightful knowledge. This handbook is structured in five parts:

• the nature of spirituality;
• spiritually inspired economics;
• socioeconomic problems in spiritual perspective;
• business spirituality; and good practices and working models.

Chapter 5. “Transpersonal Psychology” is written by John Drew and will be available on the EUROTAS website

13. The Wrekin Forum – an invitation

Claire McDonald of the Wrekin Trust writes;

 Would you like to be a Local Connector or Presenter under the guidance and assistance of the Wrekin Forum?  As a Local Connector you will be part of a Wrekin supported UKnationwide network of volunteers hosting groups which explore spiritual enquiry and are part of the evolving consciousness of the planet.

As a Presenter, you may offer your expertise and skills in spiritual areas to those within this collection of groups as they gather together. "

Please contact me
Claire McDonald
Phone: +44 7771 701031 (M)

All is Well and All is Well and All Manner of Thing is Well...

14. Transpersonal and Shamanic Visit to Mexico July 2012

This special visit will again be led by  Bernadette BLIN, Francis LERY, Magda SOLE, Jaume MESTRES and Jean-Marie JOBELIN

From 21 July to 5 August 2012

For further information - contact us. Phone: +33 1 30 37 17 31

15. Last Words

There is a secret cave of the heart. ….. where the entire game is undone and you are exactly where you were prior to the beginning of the whole show. With a sudden shock of the utterly obvious you recognise your own Original Face, the face you had prior to the Big Bang, the face of utter Emptiness that smiles at all creation and sings as the entire Kosmos – and it is all undone in that primal glance and all that is left is the smile and the reflection of the moon on a quiet pond, late on a crystal clear night.
Ken Wilber:  A Brief History of Everything.

Please start thinking about the sea as winter approaches and the Baltic Sea at Latviain particular where our 14^th EUROTAS Conference will take place in September 2012