Dena Merriam – My Journey Through Time

Aired Wednesday, 11 July 2018, 8:00 PM ET

Dena Merriam – My Journey Through Time

Astrophysicist, author and host of Cosmos, and skeptic Carl Sagan once asked the Dali Lama what he would do if reincarnation was disproved by science. The Dali Lama, with his great wisdom and equally great sense of humor responded, “If science can disprove reincarnation, Tibetan Buddhism would abandon reincarnation… but it’s going to be mighty hard to disprove reincarnation.” What if we do come back, lifetime after lifetime? Would we learn from each existence and bring that wisdom back with us? Would it make us more loving, compassionate and better stewards of this world that we have been entrusted with?

My guest this week on Destination Unlimited, Dena Merriam, experienced events in her life that awakened memories of previous lifetimes. Dena Merriam is a managing partner and vice-chairman at Finn Partners. Her areas of responsibility include Finn’s work in cultural marketing, creative services, corporate responsibility and in work for religious and non-profit organizations. In the area of creative services, she oversees the publishing, editorial, design, visual technology and new media divisions of Finn. She also manages their Arts and Communications Counselors Division, which develops cultural programs for corporations and governments and provides strategic counsel to museums, foundations and other cultural institutions. In support of the objectives and goals of the United Nations, Dena serves with the Interfaith Center of New York City in the creation of the Millennium Peace Summit for Religious and Spiritual Leaders. Their objective is to engage religious leaders from around the world to work as a resource to the UN in its efforts to resolve conflict throughout the world. She also provides counsel to the State of the World Forum in its attempt to gather world thought leaders to address international problems.

Dena began working in the interfaith movement in the late 1990s, when she served as vice-chair of the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, held at the United Nations in New York. She subsequently convened a meeting of women religious and spiritual leaders at the in Geneva, and from that gathering founded the Global Peace Initiative of Women (GPIW: www.www.gpiw.org) in 2002, an organization chaired by a multi-faith group of women spiritual leaders. The mission of this organization is to enable women to facilitate healing and reconciliation in areas of conflict and post-conflict, and to bring spiritual resources to help address critical global problems. In 2014 she received the Niwano Peace Prize for her interfaith peace efforts.

She joins me this week to discuss her book, My Journey Through Time – A Spiritual Memoir of Life, Death and Rebirth.