CBD 2023: From Chauvet Cave to Star Wars: Art, Myth, and a Spiritual Futurism with Netanel Miles-Yépez, DD

Today, as we are often compellingly called to acknowledge the horrors of humanity’s past and the probability of our extinction, we are frequently frightened or shamed into inactivity and despair. However, the exquisitely important call is the one that supports us to recognize what we are, and acknowledges the spiritual import of our evolution, looking into our deepest past and reaching out to our possible future. In this talk, artist, philosopher, and religion scholar, Netanel Miles-Yépez, will invite us to feel into the world of our primal spirituality—as recorded in the imagery of the Chauvet-Pont d'Arc Cave, Lascaux, and the Cave of the Trois-Frères—and to reach out to a future spirituality, using the imagery of Star Wars and other fictional universes as metaphors for human becoming.

Netanel Miles-Yépez, DD, is an artist, philosopher, religion scholar, and spiritual teacher. He is co-founder of Charis Foundation for New Monasticism & Interspirituality, which is dedicated to the emergence of a newly conceived contemplative life in dialogue with all of the world's great wisdom traditions. Netanel studied History of Religions at Michigan State University and Contemplative Religion at the Naropa Institute, before pursuing traditional studies with such spiritual luminaries as Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, founder of the Jewish Renewal movement, and Father Thomas Keating, founder of Contemplative Outreach. He is the author of The End of Religion and Other Writings (2023) and the translator of My Love Stands Behind a Wall: A Translation of the Song of Songs and Other Poems (2015). Currently, Netanel lives in Boulder, Colorado, where he is Visiting Professor in the Department of Wisdom Traditions at Naropa University.

You also are invited to join Netanel's Contemplation by Design iPause #3 Guided practice session in which he will lead us in a Charis (Greek for Grace) meditation on Oct. 27.

CBD 2023: From Chauvet Cave to Star Wars: Art, Myth, and a Spiritual Futurism with Netanel Miles-Yépez, D.D. is part of the FREE Contemplation by Design Summit, Oct. 24- Nov. 2, 2023.

The full Summit schedule is posted at: http://contemplation.stanford.edu/summit. All events are FREE and online. Registration opens September 12, 2023