Letter from James O'Dea (61k pdf)

"In meditating about the conference, I had an image that flashed before me. I could see a flowing river of souls streaming into the Hyatt in Crystal City on the evening of July 7th. A flash of yellow gold..."

"We are responding to a call that is asking us to recreate our time. A time which offers a great role for a new science of human becoming, a new science of conscious life; a new cosmology..."

Juanita Brown and David Isaacs
Co-Originators, The World Cafe

Our intention is to nurture and support the collective wisdom of those who are gathering at the IONS conference so that the intergenerational wisdom which resides in the whole (both presenters and participants of all ages) can become aware of its Self on behalf of life affirming futures.

Deborah Jones
Nine Gates Mystery School

When imagining the upcoming gathering in Arlington, VA, my inner vision filled with sound… first the sound of the Tone struck the day the IONS Conference was conceived. I heard the rustle of waking ones, with ears tuned to hear, moving toward the beckoning. The rustling soon gave way to a rhythm, to the Waking Ones’ collective mantra. I heard clearly, in many languages, thousands of voices chanting the following:

My Life is my witness.
My Life sees both the light and shadow,
and weaves a complex melody,
Sung quietly in the still of a lonely night
And loudly with the sound of each new born’s first in-breath.
This witness loves my soul’s yearnings –
Sometimes desirous of wonder, other times just wanting;
A witness willing to reflect truth, if only I’m strong enough to
Lift the eternal mirror.

My Life is my testimony.
My Life tells not what my mind thinks about transformation,
But rather what my Spirit directs this body to do –
What my Spirit whispers softly to the cells of this form
About my essential willingness to be the very hands of
The Mighty Force that, when combined with my own,
Shapes this Universe.

My Life is the fullest spectrum of possibility.
Only I can take away from, or contribute to, the depths of its quality.
Each color, each sound, in a world of duality, can be brilliant or dull.
This Life is the artist.
This Life is the unifier.
This Life is the healer of us all.
I am expressing my Essence completely
Through this Life.

Such a mantra, put into action one person at a time, will undoubtedly result in essential shifts for personal, social and global transformation. If one can… all can!

Rigby Leighton
Nine Gates Mystery School

I realize that "noetic science" means much more than the scientific investigation of the phenomena of consciousness--it points to the quality of knowing that arises from the expanded consciousness of each of us. It will be a gathering of spiritual scientists, human beings who reverse the Cartesian paradigm, declaring "I am, therefore I think."

Out of my being emerges a capacity to apprehend, with both heart and mind, this phenomenal reality, and with apprehending comes the possibility of consciously creating. No illusion of scientific objectivity here--the scientist is the experiment. How could it be otherwise?