BOULDER, Colo. — Tens of thousands of compassionate activists worldwide will show what it is like Oct. 24 to live for a day demonstrating humanity’s inner unity on the second annual Global Oneness Day.
The day will be celebrated with parades, concerts, dance celebrations, exhibitions, educational events, meditations, acts of service and other activities in more than 40 countries, said Humanity’s Team, a global grassroots movement “awakening the world to oneness” that created the day last year with support from more than 75 other non-governmental organizations and other groups and individuals.
Prominent Global Oneness Day supporters include South African Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu; artist-musician Yoko Ono; spiritual writers Deepak Chopra, James F. Twyman and Humanity’s Team founder Neale Donald Walsch, who also founded the Global Conversation philosophical, practical and strategic process to effect gentle revolutionary change.
Key organizational supporters include the Association for Global New Thought, a worldwide organization co-founded by leading New Thought ministers including the Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith, and The Shift Network human-potential social media services company seeking to bring about positive social change.
The Shift Network is to co-produce with Humanity’s Team a 10-panel Global Oneness Day telesummit from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. EDT (15h00 GMT to 01h30 GMT Oct. 25). The telesummit, in English, is free of charge. Register at www.global-oneness-day.org.
Summit panelists are to include Chopra; Walsch; Twyman; veteran U.N. envoy and U.N. Culture of Peace emissary Anwarul K. Chowdhury; futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard; “The Four Agreements” author Don Miguel Ruiz; political activist and Tikkun magazine editor Rabbi Michael Lerner; mystical scholar and Institute for Sacred Activism founder Andrew Harvey; developmental biologist and “The Biology of Belief” author Bruce Lipton; researcher Lynne McTaggart, whose book “The Field” discusses scientific discoveries supporting the theory the universe is unified by an interactive field; Academy Award-winning filmmaker and Spiritual Cinema Circle co-founder Stephen Simon; French producer-director Emmanuel Itier, whose recent films include the award-winning “The Invocation” documentary, written with actress-producer Sharon Stone, about God and world peace; and singer-songwriter Kenny Loggins, who brought us “Footloose,” “Danger Zone” and “I’m Alright” in the 1980s but then experienced a spiritual rebirth.
A special five-person telesummit panel discussing uBuntu, the classical African worldview of oneness, will include South African Member of Parliament and University of South Africa law lecturer Mathole Motshekga and uBuntu School of Philosophy Director and former anti-apartheid activist Johann Broodyrk.
Global Oneness Day was created following a Humanity’s Team presentation to the United Nations of a petition signed by more than 50,000 people from 168 countries appealing to the world body to support the day, akin to Earth Day but intended to inspire awareness and appreciation for humanity’s inner oneness.
Official U.N. recognition would mean the world body, for the first time, would officially proclaim oneness to be an issue in which it has a permanent interest and commitment. It would also mean the United Nations would decree Global Oneness Day an international holiday to be observed as a public holiday by all 193 U.N. member states.
On receiving the signatures on behalf of the U.N. Culture of Peace, Chowdhury said international peace efforts, no matter how well-intentioned, would not succeed until people recognized we are all one.
“I believe that unless we have that sense of solidarity among the peoples of the world, all our efforts of peace and security will go nowhere,” Chowdhury said at an indoor ceremony at U.N. headquarters in front of the Chagall Peace Window.
Oneness brings about an appreciation of humanity’s interdependence, which supports tolerance, understanding and solidarity, necessary for lasting peace, said Chowdhury, a former undersecretary-general and high representative of the United Nations.
Humanity’s Team Worldwide Coordinating Director Steve Farrell said oneness “shows the connection of all things, that our differences don’t have to create divisions and our contrasts don’t have to product conflicts.”
“In fact, oneness invites us to celebrate our cultural, religious and other differences because diversity is part of who we are and is inseparable from respecting human dignity,” he said.
Humanity’s Team and other activists are stepping up their U.N. appeal, advocating in behalf of the day to national governments and adding to the original petition signatures through a global Oneness Declaration in the hope of receiving the world body’s support.
For more information about Global Oneness Day, contact Kathy Mason at kathy.mason@humanitysteam.org or +1-720-938-2536.
