Biography Planet Coexist Council
Overview
Michael Bedar is known by the epithets, 'Networker for a Higher Purpose' for his interconnection abilities; 'Love Chanter' for the Chanting in Love Devotional Music Retreat that he leads with Santi Krause; and 'Vision Vehicle' for carrying visions into manifestation. In addition to being the producer of internationally distributed videos, including Ecoparque and Sexuality, God, and Revolution, Michael is developing a voice for musical facilitation, writing, events, retreats, and media appearances. He speaks to help youth and adults of all walks make the transition from a prevalent Culture of Death to the Culture of Life.
His understanding of the Culture of Life at its essence has ripened since 2003 from four years of living at the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Patagonia, Arizona. The Tree of Life is an oasis of light and love for the physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and ecological awakening of the Self and the Planet. At home in the Tree of Life Community, Michael has been appointed as a Tree of Life Teacher by its director, the respected spiritual teacher and peaceworker, Rebbe Gabriel Cousens, M.D. Michael is also on the board of directors of the Tree of Life at the Dead Sea, and the coordinator of the Peace Every Day Initiative, a network of over 120 spiritual groups of thousands of people becoming their prayer, meditating daily to create peace by being peace.
As the Tree of Life's events & retreats planner and media relations supervisor, Michael's service includes creating optimal student experience during retreats, which focus on consciousness, nutrition, inspiration, and worldwide organizing to establish support for the Culture of Life. These retreats include the Interdependence Celebration of Consciousness and Live Food Retreat, the Spiritual Yoga Fasting Retreat, the Living Essene Way, the Zero Point Process, Sacred Relationships Couples Intensive, Gardening for Peace Training, and the Conscious Eating Intensive.
Michael produced, with host Dr. Cousens and a hundred globally authoritative and inspirational guests, the radio programs Physician of the Soul and Creating Peace by Being Peace, the latter of which became number one in the Internet-radio ratings for the entire year in which it was produced. Production of these shows has stopped while Michael participates in establishing an international social communication tele-network for the Culture of Life, which will be broadcast on the Whole Urth Network. Michael has presented, supported, and shared spiritual music at the New Living Expo, the North American Vegetarian Society Summerfest, the Raw Spirit Festival, Peace 21 Celebration, the International Yoga College Seminar Series, Conference on Science and Consciousness, the Milan Yoga Expo, and many others. As Media Relations Supervisor, he plays a central role in the publication and distribution of Dr. Cousens' bestselling books, including Spiritual Nutrition: Six Foundations for Spiritual Life and the Awakening of Kundalini, Sevenfold Peace, and There is a Cure for Diabetes. Michael has booked dozens of national, international, satellite, and local radio and television interviews, including the Oprah Network's Mehmet Oz Show, NPR, Pacifica Radio, New Dimensions, Coast to Coast AM, the Fountain of Youth Tele-Summit, the Healthy Living Network with Cathy Silvers (from Happy Days), and in print in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Times, LA Times, LA Yoga, Alternative Medicine, Natural Health, Outside, Conscious Choice, Healing Lifestyles, News Target, Science and Theology News, Veg News, Lilipoh, and many more. Michael also developed and coordinated the Culture of Life Film Series, which for two years served southeastern Arizona with expansive entertainment as well as visiting speakers.
Michael has contributed to developing a program known as Reversing Diabetes Naturally In 21+ Days, which specifically helps people reverse a symptom of the shadow of the Culture of Death, known as diabetes. Michael is co-creator of the feature film and DVD releases that will show six true diabetic persons' transformative journeys from the Culture of Death diet to the Culture of Life, a la Supersize Me-answered! Michael participates as a 4-year Spirit Dancer in the Yellow Horse Clan of the Lakota Nation. He also served as a coordinator in the Four-Direction Run for Peace in 2007. Through relations with the Nations, Tribes, and the Tree of Life Foundation, Michael participates in the process of reviving indigenous wisdom cultures from the brink of extinction due to non-native diet, disease, and sheer forgetting. He is also involved in the awakening of health freedom rights, as essential to the natural human right of life and liberty. This work focuses on rising above the inadequate level of human consciousness that would allow for the erosion of nutrition availability by the misuse of the FDA by pharmaceutical economic interests and the FAO's Codex Alimentarius, or "Food Code," set up to dominate human health and remove access to natural wellbeing.
Michael is further training to inspire and support the healing and transformation of individuals and the planet. He has received attunement in Reiki universal life force healing energy, which is one aspect of training towards being initiated as an Essene Priest in the Essene Order of Light. The Essenes are a meeting place of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, all of which are expressions of the essential earth-connected, spiritual, shamanic experience of oneness. In addition, Michael is working on his Master's thesis on the relationship of intestinal microbiology to composting and water quality in the Spiritual Vegan, Live-Food Nutrition Program at the Tree of Life's Human School of Living Arts.
Background
In 2001, Michael earned a B.S. from University of California at San Diego in Environmental Interaction Chemistry, was active in drama, activism, and athletics, and earned minors in Cognitive Science and Law and Society, including Internships in the UCSD Medical School, the San Diego Supercomputer Center-National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure, the Distributed Cognition and Human Computer Interaction Lab, and the Regional Workbench Consortium for collaborative research, outreach, and education for sustainability at the city, regional, and global scale. These studies included funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, and contributed as an assistant to peer-reviewed papers in Behavioral Brain Research, Urban Studies, Journal of the Built Environment, Journal of Applied Toxicology, Toxicological Sciences, Chemical Senses. In 2002 at the Gesture Research Conference held at the University of Texas, Michael presented research on using symbolic notation to choreograph dance and became an original member of the academic society, the International Society for Gesture Studies, which brought together the communications, linguistics, cognitive science, neuroscience and physiology, speech recognition, robotics, anthropology, dance, and depth psychology communities.
From 1999 to 2001, Michael's interest grew in municipal permaculture infrastructure through involvement in the Ecoparque decentralized urban sewage-transformation ecological park, a community-scale municipal U.S.-Mexico/university/community undertaking. This experience led him to discover that technology exists to transform human development into an Eden-like state, in terms of emotional, family, community, environmental, energetic, creative, and economic well-being. From this realization came his documentary, Ecoparque, which shows and proposes the local-scale organic centers to solve environmental humanure needs while reconnecting people to the life force of the Earth. This documentary was honored with prizes at multiple film festivals, and led to Michael's establishing Environ-MentalProductions.com. Ecoparque's release led to Michael's giving speeches on organic decentralized water treatment methods to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Buckminster Fuller Institute, San Jose College, San Francisco Institute of Architecture, Border Environmental Cooperation Commission, Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies, Sierra Club, National Hispanic Environmental Council, and Eric Lloyd Wright's Wright Way Organic Architecture Center. In 2001-2002, Michael was a founding member of the Iris Forum, the first multi-partisan environmental thinktank holding symposia for transcending misunderstandings about environmental solutions across political party boundaries.
The discovery that implementing this existing technology was a matter of consciousness-a matter of cultivating the will, culture, and love of self and planet-began Michael's journey beyond academic-mindedness into the path of being one with the mystery of who we are. In the coldest winter of New England's recent history, January 2004, Michael and 14 young spiritual musicians and activists journeyed through 16 states from California to Maine, making bridges between the surging holistic awareness among youth and the potentialities for systemic societal shift into peace. One result was turning 1000 University of New Hampshire students out for a Tim Reynolds guitar concert and Ground Control breakdance performance while vegan presidential candidate, Department of Peace Founder, Rep. Dennis Kucinich spoke to an inspired generation, and all danced together.
Michael grew up in New York City; Charleston, SC; and the San Francisco Bay Area with his sister two years his junior. His parents are teachers and counselors of Jewish, slightly religious descent, and lifelong consciousness ascent! Michael thanks his parents for love and love of music. Seeing the differences in public grade schools and high schools between New York, Charleston, and California was itself an education. Michael is currently discovering options for educating children that, in contrast to commodifying a child's self-concept into the shape of a servient employee and unquestioning consumer, rather honors the spirit within each child as a gift of the Divine with a unique sacred design. Between family travels, school expeditions, and personal journeys, Michael has experienced the Cascades Range from Mount Shasta to the Vancouver Sounds, the High Sierras, the Rockies, the western deserts and canyonlands, the shores of the Great Lakes and Canadian Shield, the trails of the Appalachians, pre-colonial New England, and plantation country of the south. The northeast, the southeast, the northwest, and the southwest have all helped forge Michael's metal and richly contributed diverse perspectives to his alloy. Outside his native country, Michael has touched the earth and cultures of the Sonora, Baja California, and Central regions of Mexico, whose land speaks to his heart; southern Spain, Portugal, Morocco, and the island country, St. Lucia, in the Caribbean's ineptly named "Lesser" Antilles. Michael has a creative mission involving divinely inspired artists of multiple generations, as well as his own music, integrated with his foundation work.
Michael sees his 30's, which begin next year, as a blossoming of the most abundantly-seeded soil imaginable during his 20's. He thanks all who have touched him, which is everyone, and knows that since his heart opened, everyone's can. Michael is available and empowered to carry the vision of life and peace into awakened reality.