Dear Reader,

Many Kosmos friends are reporting mental confusion and unusual physical fatigue after months of confinement from the pandemic. The devastating fires in the west, the struggle for racial justice, and the harsh partisan rhetoric surrounding the upcoming elections, all add to feelings of upheaval and loss. There is also a kind of anticipatory fear as we wonder, “what next?”.

Yet, many also believe this is a time of breakthrough and rebirth, even as we mourn the suffering. We recognize the extraordinary potential in what is emerging, the sacred responsibility of being alive in these times. And we wonder where to turn our attention, how to best serve this evolutionary moment. The changes are breathtaking, our journey shared.

The Autumn edition of Kosmos is titled Rapids of Change | Our Collective Journey. It arrives September 19th. We have focused on the ways of being and doing that matter most to us right now: developing our empathy and solidarity, decolonizing our views and our institutions, increasing local self-reliance, protecting and defending Mother Earth. This is a very special issue, created in collaboration with #CuraDaTerra (Cure of the Earth) and guest co-editor Alnoor Ladha, featuring David Abram, Charles Eisenstein, Vandana Shiva, Elisabet Sahtouris, and other transformational thinkers.

We want to make sure you can easily access the 20+ features and articles in the edition. In the past, there may have been some confusion about how to do so. Take a look below for clear answers about Kosmos and the Quarterly.

Frequently Asked Questions | A Kosmos Primer

How do I access the new Quarterly, in its entirety, on September 19^th?

Join as a member here, if you have not already done so. There is no cost to create an account.

Is the Quarterly available in print form?

The Quarterly is not available in print form at this time. We converted to an online publication in the Summer of 2018. The new format is more Earth-friendly and significantly lowers our production costs. We are also able to offer more content, including film, music, and spoken word.

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Can I read some stories without a membership?

Yes. We make a few stories available on our website right away, and release some others over time. Visit our homepage.

How do I access previous editions of Kosmos?

Anyone can access previous complete editions, with or without membership, here:

What is the difference between the Newsletter and the Quarterly?

Kosmos Quarterly is an online thematic journal containing up to 30 fresh features, most of them only available at Kosmos. The Newsletter is sent out every few weeks to share news, opportunities, events and featured stories. The Newsletter archive is here.

How can you provide Kosmos at no cost?

In this time of polycrisis, and for the foreseeable future, Kosmos has eliminated pay walls. All our content is free to access. We accept no advertising and are entirely supported by your donations.

Who started Kosmos?

A group of associates at the UN, interested in spirituality, values and transformation, were the genesis of Kosmos. Nancy Roof is the Founder and Editor Emeritus.

Who is the editor of Kosmos now?

Rhonda Fabian is the editor of Kosmos, in collaboration with a circle of guest editors, staff and a Board of Directors. She also writes the newsletter.

Can I publish an essay, poem or artwork in Kosmos?

Four times a year, Kosmos invites submissions of essays up to 1000 words, poetry, or other artwork, in response to thematic prompts. We choose several works to publish in our Quarterly and on our website. Watch here for upcoming calls for submissions.

 

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Special Preview

Rapids of Change | Our Collective Journey

Excerpts from the Autumn Edition of Kosmos Quarterly, coming 9/19/20

In collaboration with #CuraDaTerra (The Cure of the Earth)

 

CRAZYWISE | Shamanic Mysticism and Mental Wellness

Reflections and Work of Phil Borges

For over twenty-five years Phil Borges has been documenting indigenous and tribal cultures. He often saw these cultures identify “psychotic” symptoms as an indicator of shamanic potential and was intrigued by how differently psychosis is defined and treated in the West.

(image) Namid 70 Tsagaannuur, Mongolia
‘Namid started her shamanic work when she was 14 years old. I watched in amazement as she spent a whole night beating her drum, sweating profusely, spinning wildly and repeatedly falling to the floor, calling on the mountain spirit to help a woman having trouble in pregnancy. She continued to see people the next morning who had come from miles away to seek her help. One by one, she gave them the money I had just given her for my lodging. She said, “if you want to live a long life, continue to help others.”’

Phil’s recent project, CRAZYWISE, explores the relevance of Shamanic traditional practices and beliefs to those of us living in the ‘modern’ world. Through interviews with renowned mental health professionals including Gabor Mate, MD, Robert Whitaker, and Roshi Joan Halifax, PhD, Phil explores the growing severity of the mental health crisis in America and discovers a growing movement of professionals and psychiatric survivors who demand alternative treatments that focus on recovery, nurturing social connections, and finding meaning.

Members have full access September 19, 2020 / Create a free account

Humanity and the Microbe: A Soul Agreement?

A Humanity Rising Conversation with Elisabet Sahtouris and Jim Garrison

Elisabet Sahtouris: Suppose we made a mass agreement of souls to lock ourselves up because it would be the only way for us to get the necessary breather to make a real shift. For the maturation to happen at a global level we had to do the lockdown globally, and the ‘health crisis’ was the only way to do it. So we created a soul level agreement about this pandemic and we locked ourselves up and look what we did very quickly.

We had a whole new view of what heroism is, who we look up to as role models. And they were the caregivers, the doctors the nurses the ambulance drivers the mask-makers, everybody who was caring.

We have to go universally as humans into caring and sharing, into understanding our oneness, that the crisis affects all of us equally. And the first thing that took us into a different kind of ‘new’ was recognizing that racism had to end, that we are all one, that it is ridiculous to fight each other. We are finally learning the lessons. 

Members have full access September 19, 2020 / Create a free account

 

Creaturely Migrations on a Breathing Planet, by David Abram

From: Living Earth Community | Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing

…Perhaps it would be useful, now and then, to consider the large, collective migrations of various creatures as active expressions of the earth itself. To consider them as slow gestures of a living geology, improvisational experiments that gradually stabilized into habits now necessary to the ongoing metabolism of the sphere. For truly: are not these cyclical pilgrimages — these huge, creaturely hegiras — also pulsations within the broad Body of earth? Are they not ways that divergent places or ecosystems communicate with one another, trading vital qualities essential to their continued flourishing?

Think again of the salmon, this gift born of the rocky gravels and melting glaciers, nurtured by colossal cedars and by tumbled trunks decked with ferns, fungi, and moss, an aquatic, muscled energy strengthening itself in the mossed and forested mountains until it’s ready to be released into the broad ocean. Pouring seaward, it adds itself to that voluminous cauldron of currents spiraling in huge gyres, shaded by algal blooms and charged by faint glissandos of whale song… Until, grown large with the sea’s abundance, this ocean-infused life flows back up the rivers and tributaries and spreads out into the wooded valleys, gifting the hollows and the needled highlands with new minerals and nutrients, feeding bears and osprey and eagles, ensuring that the glinting gift will be reborn afresh from a lump of luminous eggs stashed beneath a layer of pebbles.

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This circulation, this systole and diastole, is one of the surest signs that this earth is alive — a rhythmic pulse of silvery, glacier-fed brilliance pouring through various arteries into the wide body of the ocean, circulating and growing there, only to return by various veins to the beating heart of the forest, gravid with new life.

Members have full access September 19, 2020 / Create a free account

 

An Evolutionary Transition is Coming – Are You Ready? by Robert Cobbold

…When Darwin published the Origin of Species, a critical feedback loop was connected: evolution became conscious of itself. Much like an individual undergoing a spiritual awakening, the evolutionary process has, through us, awoke to itself.

And that self-awareness represents a huge evolutionary leap forward. As any therapist will tell you, the first step towards changing your patterns of behaviour is to become aware of them. What unconscious triggers cause you to get angry or reach for another glass of wine? If you can become truly self-aware in those moments then you have given yourself a choice. You’re no longer stuck in an automatic pattern of behaviour.

What I’m trying to describe here is analogous, except we’re talking about the self-awareness not of individuals, but of the evolutionary process as a whole. Because evolution too has its habits and patterns, and some of those are conducive to humanity’s evolutionary flourishing, while others are holding us back.

Members have full access September 19, 2020 / Create a free account

 

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