What does wholistic in Wholistic Peace Institute mean?
The Wholistic Peace Institute (WPI) uses the spellings wholistic and holistic interchangeably. Holistic comes from the Greek word holos, which means to heal. Essentially holistic refers to an inner holiness or inner healing or a place of wholeness, which when known and properly used, can, for instance, reverse disease. Specific to the purpose of the institute, violence and war are certainly diseases that have and do plague this planet. As founder and executive director of the institute, the future of which Mr. Spanovich dreams and toward which he works is one where the violence and war are eradicated.
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The Wholistic Peace Institute or WPI works toward a future where the diseases of violence and war are eradicated. |
This spelling and this application is most commonly used by medical and nursing professions (such as the American Holistic Medical Association), which address the human body as a whole rather than a sum of parts. How can anyone taking a drug that bombs the central nervous system be expected to study or hold a job successfully? How can someone who only eats highly processed, questionably nutritious foods expect to recover from cancer or win a marathon? With so many areas of the world in chaos, can Delphian students – safe on a hill in Oregon – turn a blind eye? Holistic assumes the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and only by harnessing the whole can one expect to attain life’s highest goals.
In his dreams and good works for peace. Mr. Spanovich does not dream alone.
Mr. Spanovich centers his peace conferences around invited Nobel Peace Laureates, and is working on a book that complies their teachings from institute conferences. Peace luminaries at WPI events range from the Dalai Lama to the last apartheid president of South Africa, F.W. De Klerks. The institute’s work has been commended by former Oregon Senator Mark O. Hatfield.
Over the past 15 years, Mr. Spanovich developed a system for applying a wholistic approach to strategic planning and decision-making as well, and has developed the curriculum and taught this approach at Oregon’s Marylhurst University.
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Mr. Spanovich’s latest work features a forward from the Dalai Lama, one of the many Nobel Peace Laureates with whom the Wholistic Peace Institute has worked. Spanovich stands over the Dalai Lama’s shoulder. |
Mr. Spanovich has completed a manuscript on how to apply this approach to governmental, corporate, and world peace issues for which the Dalai Lama has written foreword, praising the importance of this innovative work. The approach seeks to create a greater sense of wholeness by employing all the methods by which a human being operates:
Mental: new ways of thinking about situations
Emotional: new ways to bring healing and compassion into conflicts between people
Spiritual and intuitive: how to tap the inherent power of our creativity to think of new solutions and to try them
Physical: how create new systems that are practical and that work
Spanovich at the Delphian School
He gave a talk to the Youth for Human Rights club as well as to a larger group of Delphian students, detailing the peace work he has done over the past decade, including North and South Korea, China, India and Pakistan. He also talked about his work with Nobel Peace Prize winners, including the Dalai Lama, and the importance of human rights education.
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Mr. Spanovich offered a challenge to Delphian’s Youth for Human Rights Club: to provide every classroom in Oregon with a poster of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. |
He offered this challenge as a project to our Youth for Human Rights Club: to provide every classroom in Oregon with a poster of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With a poster in every classroom, students and teachers will take more of an interest and learn more about human rights and what they have to do with the outside world and their own lives. He offered to help fund this project. Our club considers this a challenge well worth accepting.
For more information about the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights click here.
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After horrors of World War II, the United Nations and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt assembled this listing of universal human rights. These decades later, it is clear that too many nations and individuals have missed the point. Thus the Youth for Human Rights Chapter at the Delphian School, and many other such chapters around the world, pick up the crusade where others have left off. |
