September/October 2008 Spirituality
Telling the World's Stories: Global Oneness Project

by Amelia Glynn

What kind of person intentionally starts a business that asks for nothing and gives away everything in return?

Ask Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, founder of the Global Oneness Project (GOP), which is a special project of the Kalliopeia Foundation in San Rafael, Calif.

The GOP is no ordinary venture: its product is hope, distributed in the form of people's stories from all over the world. And its price is one everyone can afford - the only catch being that you share your discoveries with others. The short films, which are available as free high-definition downloads at www.globalonenessproject.org, are bite-sized inspiring introductions. Each film shows an example of how unity, interconnection and social responsibility are helping to spur creative responses to our world's challenges.

DVDs will soon be available from the website, and again no money will pass hands. Instead they will be served up pay-it-forward style: the site simply asks that each DVD be shared with at least five people, and then given away to someone else who will do the same. The interactive site also includes ways for viewers to connect with the project by adding links, sharing comments or becoming a member of the Wiser Earth Global Oneness group.

Ultimately, the project aims to create a shift from "me-based" thinking to "we-based" thinking.

"We're not trying to create a perfect, utopian world," says Vaughan-Lee. "Just one where love, generosity, understanding, abundance - all good the stuff - can be applied to practical social, economic and political systems."

Real People, Real Stories

Oneness and the Heart of the World

Father Thomas Keating is a leading teacher of contemplative prayer in the Christian tradition, and author of Open Mind, Open Heart. He shares his vision of oneness in an interview on the Global Oneness Project website. The spiritual sense of smell is the first mystical experience, according to some of the fathers of the church who elaborated on this in the early centuries of Christianity.

Think of a room that is celebrating an anniversary - your birthday, your marriage or something else - and your dearest friends have provided this enormous bouquet of roses. But they are hiding it behind the sofa in your living room, and so when you come in it's a surprise party. Before they show you the roses, all you can do is smell this fragrance, but without being able to identify where it comes from. But there's an inevitable spontaneous reaction toward this delicious odor that is emitting from somewhere.

It's the attraction to something that you can't see or hear that is delightful in its own way. So is the attraction to silence or solitude. The attraction that provides the most faithful meditators with the motivation to keep going back, rain or shine, is this faith-driven and love-smitten desire to embrace the roses, or at least to investigate where this delicious smell is coming from.

This smell doesn't involve the external sense of smell, and so in periods of prayer when you don't want to go there, when you have other things to do, when it's a dry or challenging period, or when you are unloading the conscience like a sewer - the roses, the mystical roses are still smelling.

And what they are giving you is the healing of the unconscious - the oneness of attraction without seeing and without full satisfaction. Watch the full interview with Father Keating at www.globalonenessproject.org.

How exactly do they find their subjects?

"It's very risky what we do," says Vaughan-Lee. "We show up in a place and make the films happen. There's definitely some planning involved, but there's also a lot of spontaneity in following and trusting our instincts."

He and his crew of three have filmed, produced and edited more than 115 interviews with writers, teachers, healers, artists, political leaders, scientists and community activists in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South America and Africa. A trip to the Middle East is currently in the works.

Denise Zabalaga, co-director of the critically acclaimed documentary film The Giant Buddhas, is the project's videographer and editor. "I see our work as a documentation of the change that is taking place right now â?? a change of awareness in people," she says. "What has been separated, differentiated and segregated is a now something that exists in the past."

The films span a cross-section of people, places, cultures and religions.

In one film, Trever Moeke talks about the Maori word for oneness: kotahitanga. "In the Maori culture we like to say that we are never alone," he explains. "We like to say that we are greater together than we are all by ourselves."

Bob Randall, a figurehead for the aboriginal movement explains in his short film how interconnectedness is simply a natural way of being. "If you are alive you are connected to everything else that is alive," he says. "It doesn't push anyone out and it brings everyone in. You can never feel lonely."

In another film, youth worker Nelsa Libertad Curbelo Cora describes the inspiration behind Barrio de Paz (PeaceTown), a non-violent youth movement in Guyaquil, Ecuador. "Everything in society tells us to distrust others. I think it's the other way around," says Cora. "We need to profoundly trust in those around us, in their potential and in who they are."

"These films help us see how we all can have an impact. What one person does affects everyone around them," says Vaughan-Lee, who grew up with a revered Sufi teacher as a father and with meditation as an everyday practice. From an early age, he learned that oneness, a central tenant of Sufism that celebrates the connectedness of humanity, was a way of life. So it wasn't surprising when Vaughan-Lee began cultivating an interest in other people who were actively and creatively living this idea - and a desire to share their stories.

The Future of Oneness

Vaughan-Lee and his team plan to continue collecting and recording people's stories. And he's the first to admit that he's still learning as he goes. "What began as a web-based only project is evolving," he says. "We're now creating longer pieces and coming up with a central theme for each trip." His goal is to develop television programming and potentially a feature-length film.

"What we have done so far is to give out seeds," says Zabalaga. "When people realize that they're not alone - and there are others who share their hopes, in their own hometown and all over the planet - this awakens their power, sense of responsibility and joy."

Watch or download the inspirational stories at www.globalonenessproject.org.