Digital Dharma:

The Dance of Full-Soul Communications

There is nothing in this world which does not speak. Everything and every being is constantly calling out its nature, its character and its secret; and the more the inner sense is open, the more it becomes capable of hearing the voice of all things. Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Sufi Message

We live in the age of instant communications. An electronic web surrounds the planet. Our ideas travel instantaneously to all points of the globe on electromagnetic waves and pulses of light. Emerging from what French philosopher-priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called the shared noosphere of collective human thought, invention and spiritual seeking, the Infosphere – the totality of our electromagnetic systems for sharing knowledge, is now a field that engulfs our physical, mental and etheric bodies; it affects our dreaming and our cultural life. The evolving human nervous system has been “outered” as media sage Marshal McLuhan predicted in the early 1960’s, into a global embrace that for all its wonder, has overwhelmed our senses and created new forms of media addiction. In the dire view philosopher William Irwin Thompson, our bodies are cooking "in a global mulligan stew of electromagnetic noise."

It is true that the electronic media amplify, distort and attenuate our senses, change our awareness, and “mediate” our experiences. But from an esoteric perspective, everything we have created holds a lesson for our spiritual unfolding. If the universe itself is a field, not just of matter, but also of information, then the Infosphere must also hold in its microcosm, all of the levels of human experience: all knowledge, all dramas of politics and power, all of our dreams, and even, metaphors for healing!

In this experiential workshop we will use the language of our outer communications networks – the Infosphere – to guide us in opening and clearing our inner communications transceivers of subtle energies: the body’s seven chakras. Using the tools of guided meditation, esoteric sound, and the anchoring power of the Dances of Universal Peace, participants will release the old messages that block the full development of each chakra's communications potential. We will explore how to send true broadcasts of one’s inner self at each of the seven levels of esoteric truth, and to recognize the subtle signals send to us by all of the nodes on the great net of Creation. And, in doing so, we will strengthen our attunement to each other, to the natural world, to our inner knowledge and creativity, and to the Divine in all its forms and manifestations. Digital Dharma workshop themes will include:

• Emergence: Earth Connection and Separation
• Relationship: Clearing the Cords
• Personal Power: Receiving Instruction, Broadcasting Inspiration
• Compassion versus Codependence: Seeing the Other as the Beloved
• Communicating the Truth, Filtering Falsehood
• Observing the Codes of Consensual Reality
• Downloading from the Divine Grid

Leaders Biographies

Steven Ray Vedro: In his “digital” life, Steven has advised numerous government agencies, universities and public broadcasting stations in planning and managing distance learning networks and digital media initiatives. His technology articles have been published in Technos Quarterly, Current Newspaper of Public Telecommunications, and the Continuing Education Review.

His spiritual and personal transformation work includes thirty years of meditation practice. Steven is a graduate of the Hoffman Process, the Inner Focus School of Soul Directed Advanced Energy Healing, the Transformational Attunement Program, and is being mentored as a Ritual Elder in the Mankind Project’s “New Warrior Trainings.” He is an initiate in the Ruhaniat Sufi Order. Quest Books released his book, Digital Dharma: Expanding Consciousness in the Age of the Infosphere, in October 2007.

Tasnim Fernandez: Born in Mexico City, Tasnim awakened to the inner life of spirit in her late teens. Over the years, her journey of inquiry and discovery led her to a lifelong immersion in the sacred literature of the world religions and mystical traditions. She has studied Alchemy, Kundalini Yoga, and Jungian psychology, as well as the teachings of Judaism, Tibetan Buddhism, Huichol Shamanism, Mystical Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam.

She was initiated into the way of the Sufis by Hazrat Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan in 1971 and serves the Sufi Order International as a Center Leader, a Healing Conductor, and as a minister of the Universal Worship. Tasnim is recognized and acclaimed as one of the foremost leaders and mentors of the Dances of Universal Peace. She is also a trained semazen - whirling dervish - in the Mevlevi Sufi tradition. She is the spiritual director of the Church of All in Burbank.