Blessings For Earth-Healers

Blessings for Earth-Healers - Starhawk

 

We give thanks for all those who are moved, in their lives, to heal and protect the earth, in small ways and in large. Blessings on the composter, the gardeners, the breeders of worms and mushrooms, the soil-builders, those who cleanse the waters and purify the air, all those who clean up the messes others have made. Blessings on those who defend trees and who plant trees, who guard the forests and who renew the forests. Blessings on those who prevent erosion, who restore the salmon and the fisheries, who guard the healing herbs and who know the lore of the wild plants. Blessings on those who heal the cities and bring them alive again with excitement and creativity and love. Gratitude and blessings to all who stand against greed, who risk themselves, to those who have bled and been wounded, and to those who have given their lives in service of the earth.

 

May all the healers of the earth find their healing. May they be fueled by passionate love for the earth. May they know their fear but not be stopped by fear. May they feel their anger and yet not be ruled by rage. May they honor their grief but not be paralyzed by sorrow. May they transform fear, rage, and grief into compassion and the inspiration to act in service of what they love. May they find the help, the resources, the courage, the luck, the strength, the love, the health, the joy that they need to do the work. May they be in the right place, at the right time, in the right way. May they bring alive a great awakening, open a listening ear to hear the earth's voice, transform imbalance to balance, hate and greed to love.

Blessed be the healers of the earth.

About the Author: Excerpted from The Earth Path by Starhawk. 

If a man going down into a river, swollen and swiftly flowing, is carried away by the current -- how can he help others across? --Buddha

How Anxiety Reduces Empathy

--by Kira M. Newman, syndicated from Greater Good, Jul 12, 2016

One afternoon in Dublin, I found myself running through the airport, convinced I was about to miss a flight for the first time in my life.

My anxiety surged at the sight of a long security line, but luckily an airport official ushered me to the front. I didn’t care how the waiting passengers felt about my preferential treatment, and I don’t remember much about the people I encountered during that nerve-wracking afternoon. I was thinking only about my goal: to get home.

In short, my empathy for others plummeted as my anxiety mounted—and a recent paper helps explain this phenomenon by linking anxiety to egocentrism. In doing so, it provides yet another reason why cultivating empathy is so crucial.

In a series of six studies with more than 1,300 total participants, researchers from universities including Harvard and Columbia induced anxiety, anger, disgust, surprise, or pride in participants by asking them to write about a past experience when they felt one of those emotions. (Some participants did nothing or wrote about how they typically spend their evenings, generating a neutral feeling.)

Then, participants were tested on perspective taking. In one study, they specified whether a book placed on their right side (but someone else’s left) was on the right or left side of a table. In another, they indicated the position of a green light from their perspective and someone else’s.

In a third, they had to figure out whether the recipient of an email would read it as sincere, when they had privileged information suggesting it was sarcastic. In yet another experiment, they read scenarios like the one below and filled in the blank as quickly as possible:

Anna made lasagna in the blue dish. After Anna left, Ian came home and ate the lasagna. Then he filled the blue dish with spaghetti and replaced it in the fridge. Anna thinks the blue dish contains (lasagna/spaghetti).

In these studies, participants who were feeling anxious or surprised were more likely to give the egocentric answer—or take longer to answer from someone else’s perspective—than those who were feeling angry, disgusted, proud, or neutral. In other words, the stressed people had trouble seeing things from another’s point of view: I know the blue dish contains spaghetti, so Anna must know, too. And the more anxious they were, the more egocentric they became. (On questions that didn’t involve perspective taking, they didn’t perform any worse than the other participants.)

The finding that anxiety and surprise increased egocentrism was, well, surprising—particularly when the self-focused emotion of pride did not.

Why was this happening? The researchers found a clue in a final pair of studies: Participants were also more egocentric after induced to feel uncertain, and surprise and anxiety are both associated with uncertainty. While anger makes us certain in our righteous indignation, anxiety and surprise make us unsure of what’s going on and what will happen next. And when we feel uncertain, we tend to fall back on what we know to be true—namely, our own perspectives and feelings.

Although Anna’s lasagna might not seem particularly relevant in the grand scheme of things, these findings point to a disturbing possibility. If our stress-filled lives generate more moments of anxiety, that means our perspective taking is routinely compromised—and with it, part of our ability to empathize and connect with others.

Now more than ever, we need to train our empathy muscles. Consider trying these science-based practices, particularly if you’re prone to anxiety:

Active Listening: Listen better and express active interest in your conversational partner, making them feel heard and understood.

Shared Identity: Think of someone who is very different from you, and then try to imagine all the ways that you two are similar—seeing them as an individual, not an out-group member.

Mindful Breathing: Focus attention on your own breathing to cultivate awareness.

That day in Dublin, I caught my flight. I also learned a lesson in empathy. No one wants to live life as if they’re constantly late for a plane, too stressed to look around and connect with others. We’re much better off cultivating empathy, building connection, and accepting that what will be, will be—missed flights and all.

This article generated controversy among Greater Good readers on social media. Read about it and gain more context for this study in “What is the Relationship Between Stress and Empathy?”

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This article is printed here with permission. It originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC). Based at UC Berkeley, the GGSC studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being, and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society. 

Be The Change: Breathe deeply and listen to others carefully to combat anxiety and egocentrism in stressful situations.

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in. --Morrie Schwartz

Letting Love Come In

--by Mia Tagano, Jul 22, 2016

Two and a half years ago my grandmother was placed in a nursing home where she will live out the rest of her life. She has dementia and so her memory capacity has been marred.   Somehow though she remembers kindness.  She is my constant teacher.  One of things we like to do is walk down the halls in the nursing facility saying hello to the other residents.  We stop say hello and wait for an answer.   We rarely get a verbal response. My grandmother will put her face up real close so she and the neighbor will be looking eye to eye then, she will say hello again as she squeezes their hand.   She doesn't actually understand anymore that most of the residents are no longer verbal.  Still, some kind of connection is made.  And, actually there is no memory of these encounters but the next time we pass there is some kind of recognition whether a flicker of the eyes, or a silent reach of a hand.  It is beautiful even if I am perhaps the only witness who understands the connection comes from an earlier time.  Community is created by these moments, these silent connections, these touches of the hand.  When I go to the nursing facility, it is like going to the village.  I do not know the individuals histories but I have a sense of their spirits now and I have come to care for them.  In that context, I would like to share a story of my time with my grandmother and some of these elders that I have come to think of as my relatives too in a way. So....

Two fire trucks and an ambulance were in front of the nursing home as I pulled up. My chest tightened. The reality here is that people do not necessarily get better – they come here to die. Still, after visiting almost 6 months now, I have come to care for the residents. It always makes me sad when someone passes. Inside, I half expected there to be a rush of firemen or paramedics shouting, “Code blue” or “Clear the way!” but that is only on TV.

Here, it is business as usual – all in a days work.

Down the hall, Mr. Le was propped up on the sofa, his one foot in his wheel chair. He has good days and not so good, today was a sad one. I sat with him while he spoke to me in Vietnamese with tears in his eyes; I held his hand and nodded as if I understood.

Later, Mrs. Owens brightened up as I came into the room and reached for me as she always does now. I spoke to her about the cold and laughed about winter being here for sure before going to my grandmother who was working intently on a word search puzzle. Turns out she’s pretty good at finding the words; It is the one activity that keeps her from wandering around lost. I greet her with a big smile and hello – she responds in kind adding, “Where have you been? Long time no see! Sit down, Sit down!” It is part of our ritual. Next we take a walk through the halls where she complains to all the nurses, “She’s making me…WALK!” We all laugh including her.

Next, is shower-time - another something she will lightly complain about at first but is always grateful for during and afterwards. We spend shower-time getting wet (me barefoot but fully clothed) and laughing through the washing and drying. It is a sweet time, I will never forget. Before putting her to bed, she hugs me tightly and thanks me for helping her. I say my goodnights and sweet dreams to both her and Mrs Owens who now adds, “Be careful!” with a tiny wave and a smile.

As I approach the front lobby, I see Mr. Yakov in the doorway – he was trying to escape (for a 90 something year old man with a broken foot confined to a wheel chair, he is pretty mobile). Now, he is holding on to the door refusing to let go. 3 nurses are trying to get him to come inside.

Tomorrow all of this will be forgotten. At least, by most who live here. For the rest who remember, no matter, it will be a new day for us as well .

UPDATE from two years later: Mr. Le has a girlfriend now - a sweet woman who also lives at the facility and who speaks only Korean (he only speaks Vietnamese). She doesn't walk so he pushes her in her wheel chair from his wheel chair with his one foot. At meals, they sit together and he shares his napkins with her (he was homeless at one time so hoards napkins-this is connected somehow). When they are apart, he is more disoriented and she calls repeatedly for "the old man" in her language (after I found out what she was saying and before I knew of their friendship, I wheeled her over to the old man I thought she meant (there are a few to choose from lol), she seemed agitated and wrinkled her nose but when I took her to see Mr. Le they became animated as if in the middle of a conversation) - when they are together, they are happy - love is a beautiful thing and, not so complicated really.

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Mia Tagano is an actor, voice over artist and performing arts teacher. She's toured with the Royal Shakespeare Company and performed in scores of stage productions in the United States. Her dedication towards her 96-year-old grandmother has touched many across the world. Read more about her inspiring journey here.    

Be The Change: The next time you encounter someone whom you find it difficult to communicate with, try to build a bridge that goes beyond language.

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

You Are Not Depressed; You Are Distracted

You Are Not Depressed; You Are Distracted - Facundo Cabral

 

You are not depressed; you are distracted. You believe that you have lost something, which is impossible, because everything that you have was given to you. You did not make a single hair of your head so you can not own anything. In addition, life does not subtract things, it liberates you from them. It makes you lighter so that you can fly higher and reach the fullness. From cradle to grave, it is a school, and that is why those predicaments that you call problems are lessons, indeed.

 

You lost nobody; the one who died is just going ahead, because we all are going there. Besides this, the best of him/her, his/her love, is still in your heart. Who could say that Jesus is dead? There is not death, but only movement. And on the other side there are some wonderful people waiting for you: Gandhi, Michelangelo Whitman, St. Augustine, Mother Teresa, your grandmother and my mother, who believed that poverty is actually closer to what we call Love, because money distracts us with too many things, and makes us apprehensive and doubtful.

 

Do only what you love and you will be happy; the one who can do what he/she loves, is blessed and destined to have success, which will definitively come, because what must come, will come, but will come naturally. Do not do anything for obligation or commitment, but for love. Only then there will be fullness in your life, and with fullness everything is possible; and possible without any effort because what will move you will be the natural force of life, the same that raised me when the plane crashed with my wife and my daughter, the same which kept me alive when my doctors predicted that I would have only 3 or 4 more months of life.

 

Liberate yourself from the tremendous burden of guilt, responsibility, and vanity, and be ready to live each moment deeply, as it should be.

 

You are not depressed, you just need to be busy. Help the child who needs you, and that child will be your child’s partner. Help old people, and young people will help you when you be old. In addition, service to others is an absolutely guaranteed happiness, as certain as enjoying and taking care of nature for those who will come tomorrow. Give without measure and you will receive without measure.

About the Author: Gautemalean poet -- excerpted from here. 

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. - Joseph Addison

Building a Reading Revolution

--by Ashoka, syndicated from virgin.com, Jul 03, 2015

 

In this guest blog, Felicity McLean from Ashoka introduces The Reader Organisation and how they're working to create a reading revolution, instilling and encouraging empathy and community cohesion in companies (and other groups) through reading aloud...

Reading aloud is more than words on a page. Shared Reading interactive groups delivered by The Reader Organisation in health, care, criminal justice, education, corporate and community settings for wellbeing, personal development and community-building, can also be an invigorating team building exercise. It's a slow, almost meditative activity. Don't choose the obvious, says Jane Davis, Founder of The Reader Organisation and newly elected Ashoka Fellow. The beauty of literature is that it can come at things (and people) in unexpected ways.

The Reader Organization is an award-winning charity and social enterprise that has pioneered the movement of shared reading as a practical way of improving wellbeing, building stronger communities and extending reading pleasure. The charitys mission is to build a reading revolution, connecting people with great literature and each other through weekly Get Into Reading groups, facilitator training, events and literary publications (http://www.thereader.org.uk/).

Why should mindfulness and community cohesion matter in the corporate space? Organisation Culture consultants Change The Conversation argue "if an organisation is to be able to improve its performance and to sustain that over time, it has to develop a culture in which communication, energy and ideas can flow around it as they naturally need to."

Shared reading groups demonstrate wide-ranging personal impacts for their members such as improved self-confidence and self-esteem, widened horizons and a sense of belonging. This leads to a stronger sense of personal identity, improved quality of life and steps towards employment. The groups also create strong and safe communities through social participation and help to develop empathy and understanding towards others.

   *  80% feel more positive about life

   *  80% feel more understanding towards other people

   *  94% have an opportunity to interact with people they wouldnt normally meet in their day to day life

Below Jane Davis of The Reader Organisation recommends 4 surprising reads, which can provide essential HR guidance:

1. Michael Drayton's famous end-of-a-love-affair poem: 'Since there's no help come let us kiss and part is a wonderful read-at-work poem, opening up huge areas normally seen as the province of an HR department. Can you keep someone in your team when they want to leave? Should you?

2. Shakespeare's Sonnet 29: 'When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men's Eyes offers a massive lift-off, arocket-boost to anyone faced with a complex or overwhelming task. Who or what inspires us when we are struggling? Who do you mentally turn to when you are 'in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes?'

3. Perhaps you are thinking of standing down, heading towards retirement or wanting to start over again, older and wiser? Try Edmund Waller's 'Of The Last Verses in The Book':

                The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,

                Lets in new light through chinks that time has made;

                Stronger by weakness, wiser men become

4. For those of a more cynical cast of mind, you can't do better than to engage and inspire your team with extracts from Alexander Pope's Essay on Man: 'presume not God to scan/the proper study of Mankind is Man'.

Poetry is all about human values, and almost any poem will offer an opportunity to discuss the personal elements behind every problem and every solution in business. What kind of people are you? Poetry will tell.

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This article originally appeared in virgin.com and is republished with permission.

Ashoka is a leading global network of social entrepreneurs, with over 3000 fellows spanning 88 countries. It builds networks of pattern-changing social innovators and selects high-impact entrepreneurs, who creatively solve some of the world’s biggest social challenges, to become Ashoka Fellows.

Be The Change: Do something completely different for a change -- join a book club in your area and embrace the experience.

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

The Power Paradox

The Power Paradox - Dacher Keltner

 

Life is made up of patterns. And one pattern kept appearing in scientific studies I've conducted over the past twenty years. It's called the power paradox: we rise in power and make a difference in the world due to what is best about human nature, but we fall from power due to what is worst. We gain a capacity to make a difference in the world by enhancing the lives of others, but the very experience of having power and privilege leads us to behave, in our worst moments, like impulsive, out-of-control sociopaths.

 

How we handle the power paradox guides our personal and work lives and determines, ultimately, how happy we and the people we care about will be.

 

Twenty years ago, when I began the studies that uncovered the power paradox, I confronted the question: what is power? To outsmart the power paradox, we need to know what power is. The first surprise that my scientific inquiry produced was this: our culture's understanding of power has been deeply and enduringly shaped by one person -- Niccolo Machiavelli -- and his powerful sixteenth century book, The Prince. In that book the Florentine author argued that power is, in its essence, about force, fraud, ruthlessness and strategic violence. Following Machiavelli, the widespread tendency has been to think of power as involving extraordinary acts of coercive force. Power was what the great dictators wielded; power was embodied in generals making decisive moves on the battlefields, businessmen initiating hostile takeovers, coworkers sacrificing colleagues to advance their own careers, and bullies in the middle-school playground tormenting smaller kids.

 

But this view of power fails upon careful scrutiny today. It cannot make sense of the many important changes in human history: the abolition of slavery, the toppling of dictators, the ending of apartheid, and the rise of civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights movements, to name just a few. Society has changed dramatically since Machiavelli's Renaissance Florence in ways that require us to move beyond outdated notions of power. We will be more poised to outsmart the power paradox if we broaden our thinking and define power as the capacity to make a difference in the world, in particular by stirring others in our social networks.

 

This new definition of power reveals that it is not something limited to rare individuals in dramatic moments of their highly visible lives -- to malevolent dictators, high-profile politicians, or the jet-setting rich and famous; nor does it exist solely in boardrooms, on battlefields, or on the U.S. Senate floor. Instead, power defines the waking life of every human being. It is found not only in extraordinary acts but also in quotidian acts, indeed in every interaction and every relationship, be it an attempt to get a two-year-old to eat green vegetables or to inspire a stubborn colleague to do her best work. It lies in providing an opportunity to someone, or asking a friend the right question to stir creative thought, or calming a colleague's rattled nerves, or directing resources to a young person trying to make it in society.

Power dynamics, patterns of mutual influence, define the ongoing interactions between fetus and mother, infant and parent, between romantic partners, childhood friends, teens, people at work, and groups in conflict. Power is the medium through which we relate to one another. Power is about making a difference in the world by influencing others. And such power is given to us by others, rather than grabbed.

About the Author: Excerpted from this article.  Dacher Keltner is a researcher at UC Berkeley, founder of Greater Good Science Center, and speaks about these themes in his latest book on power. 

Keeping Nothing Between

Keeping Nothing Between - Eugene Gendlin

 

In a restaurant a little girl in the next booth turns to look at you. It is an open look, direct from her – to you. She doesn’t know that strangers are not supposed to connect. She does not put this knowledge between herself and you. There is nothing in between. You look back. Her parents make her sit down and face forward. But then, when they all leave, she turns around at the door, to look again. After all, you and she have met therefore she wouldn’t just leave.

 

In first grade the children look at the teacher searchingly, openly, reachingly. They put nothing between. The teacher is concerned with the eight levels of reading ability, and does not look back.

 

Do only little children keep nothing between? Or can adults do that too? We can, but for us it is a special case.

 

If you came to see me now, I would not look at you like that, nor would I notice if you looked. You would find me in a certain mood in my private struggles. I am also preoccupied with writing this paper. If you suddenly walked in, a third cluster would come: The social set for greeting someone properly. I would respond to you out of that set. Or if you are an old friend, I would respond from the familiar set of the two of us. If you then wanted to relate in some fresh, deep way, it would take me a minute to put our usual set aside, to put my concern about my chapter away, and to roll my mood over so that I am no longer inside it. Then I would be here without putting anything between. But it would be easier to remain behind all that, and depend on my automatic ways.

 

If I really want to be with you, I keep nothing in front of me. Of course I know I can fall back on the automatic ways. If need be, I can also defend myself. I have many resources. But I don’t want all that between us.

 

If I keep nothing between, you can look into my eyes and find me. You might not look, of course. But if you do, I won’t hide. Then you may see a very insufficient person. But for contact, no special kind of human being is required. This fact makes a thick peacefulness.

About the Author: Extract from You and I - The Person in There by Eugene Gendlin. 

A Plumber Or A Philosopher?

He is not a philosopher.....but...

 

worth sharing....(as I share!!!)

 

"I hired a plumber to help me repair an old farmhouse.

 

He already had a rough and tiresome day.

 

* a flat tire
* his electric drill fault
* his old car broke down.
* his tiffin was spoilt
* he lost his wallet
* his bank was calling for loan repayments

 

In all the tension and stress he finished my repairs.

 

Since his car broke down, I drove him home.

 

While I drove him home, he sat silently, but I could mark his agony and restlessness.

 

On arriving, he invited me in to meet his family.

 

As we walked toward the front door, he paused at a small tree, touching the tips of the branches with both hands and closed his eyes.

 

When the door opened, he was smiling and happy.

 

In seconds he underwent an amazing transformation.

 

He hugged his two small children, gave his wife a kiss, laughed, and never even slightly made them feel the troubles that he had encountered that day.

 

I was astonished and curious. Seeing my inquisitive eyes he said, “Oh, that's my Trouble Tree. My best friend.  My trouble carrier for the night”.

 

He replied. "I know I can't help having troubles on the job, but one thing's for sure. Those troubles don't belong in the house with my wife and the children.

 

So I just hang them up on the tree every night when I come home and ask God to take care of them. Then in the morning I pick them up again.”
He smiled and shared a secret.

 

He said, “when I come out in the morning to pick 'em up, there aren't nearly as many as I remember hanging there the night before!!”

 

Life may be a burden of worries, but there is a way to keep our loved ones untouched from these worries.

 

Time will heal every wound.

Whoever is tensed today, look for a tree.🌳

The best way to multiply happiness is to share it with others. –Unknown

The World's Happiest Man on Altruism

--by Oliver Haenlein, syndicated from wearesalt.org, Feb 20, 2016

Matthieu Ricard, also known as ‘the world’s happiest man’, spent the best part of 25 years in the Himalayas with barely any contact with the Western world he was born into. At 26-years-old he left behind his molecular biology studies and settled into a life of serenity and spiritual training under his Buddhist teachers, high up in the heavens on the other side of the world.

However, he is now very much back on the Western scene. When I ask Ricard why he returned, he sighs and says: “When I was in my hermitage I thought, if I can do something useful, maybe I should come down for a bit”. He seems to long for the mountains, but the continued success of his projects since abandoning his Himalayan retreat seem to have anchored him to the ground. The “something useful” the 69-year-old modestly refers to is a series of spectacular humanitarian and academic achievements.

He has set about trying to teach the world how to be happy, and how to show empathy, kindness and compassion to one another. He has done this, to name a few examples, through a range of books, including the recent compendium ‘Altruism’; through talks and conferences including presentations for TED that have a combined view count of over six million; through advisory work with the Mind & Life Institute, a non-profit chaired by the Dalai Lama; through studies with neuroscientists to highlight the transformative effect meditation has on the brain; and through an amazing 150 humanitarian projects in 15 years.

Ricard tells me his charitable foundation, Karuna Shechen, aided more than 200,000 people in 500 villages after the recent devastating earthquake that shook Nepal. He has helped treat hundreds of thousands of patients, and put tens of thousands of children in schools. It seems then, that the world is a better place since he swapped the peace of the Himalayas for his new hectic schedule of engagements.

Altruism

His latest book, Altruism, provides a complex look at a remarkably simple approach to solving the ills of the world. Ricard’s work has always revolved around positive transformation, and now he has published an 800-page guide to using one of the traits most inherent to human nature to overcome the challenges of the 21st century.

Listening to Matthieu make a case for altruism and its plethora of positive consequences, it all seems so obvious. And is it a coincidence that the person who has helped so many humans on this planet is also known as ‘the world’s happiest man’?

The book took him five years to write, and contains an impressive 1,600 scientific references, providing a convincing argument on how important the widespread adoption of genuine concern for the wellbeing of others could be for changing the world.

He takes a three-pronged look at the world’s main challenges: the economy in the short-term, life satisfaction in the mid-term, and the environment in the long-term.

The last thing one might expect from a Buddhist monk is a deep and nuanced knowledge of modern economics, but this is just what Ricard possesses. Our conversation sees him talk in-depth on how the traditional model could be adapted to a more caring form of economics for the benefit of everyone. The issue of climate change is also covered in great detail in Altruism, with compassion presented as the solution to the growing catastrophe.

A global book

Ricard summarises his work: “The book is really the culminating point of all life between the east and west, modern science and traditional science, and mind science, or Buddhism let’s say; but mostly it’s not about Buddhism at all. It’s really a global book of a human being who happens to be a Buddhist monk. I used everything I could learn through 70 years, and I researched for five years to point out that altruism is not a luxury or utopia, but the only answer to the challenges of our times.

Positive change

He has an indomitable belief in the goodness of the human spirit, but explains a new methodology is needed to create positive change: “Except for a few greedy psychopaths in suits who only want to make money at the cost of others, basically you can assume that people wish for a better world.

“But unless they have a concept with which to build a better world together, then they’re just lost, groping in the dark. So the idea of having more consideration for others is the only concept that works, there’s really no other.

“I’m not saying that I found something extraordinary. I didn’t find anything, it just occurred to me when talking to all these wonderful people from different disciplines that this was the unifying concept; it’s not a big discovery, it just seems obvious tome.”

At the heart of Ricard’s belief in the potential of widespread altruism is his confidence in human nature. But it’s not just that he’s an optimist; he says science is also on his side.

Basically good

“People are basically good. If you look at evolution, one of the difficult points was how evolution can explain altruism; now you see all the great evolutionists like Martin Nowak with ideas that actually say cooperation has been much more creative to evolution than competition. Those are not just eccentric guys; they are the core of the science.

The book’s chapter ‘The Banality of Good’ asserts that many have the wrong impression about humanity: “Everyday good does not make much commotion and people rarely pay attention to it; it doesn’t make the headlines in the media like an arson, a horrible crime, or the sexual habits of a politician.”

Kindness

However Ricard believes inspiring kindness is all around us: “There’s this vast exaggeration of the negative aspect of human activities. When you tell people that violence has constantly declined over the last five centuries people say ‘it’s impossible, it’s not true’. But violence has steadily decreased – it’s about 100 times less than five centuries ago all over the world.

“Look at NGOs; the rise of the NGO is the true revolution of the 20th century. There are millions of NGOs and people who spend their time trying to do something for others, so why do we not give more attention to that?”

This vision means, Ricard believes, that we are perfectly placed to start tapping into what is already a part of us, to create something better: happier societies, a more compas- sionate business environment, and a less damaging approach to the environment.

Environment

While he had not initially planned to include the environment in his work, Ricard tells me that the book took a whole lot longer since the importance of altruism to the planet’s future became all too apparent.

“Professor Lord Stern from the London School of Economics did a calculation that there might be 200 million climate refugees within 30 years. Compared to that, Lampedusa is just nothing”, he says, referring to the Italian island currently at the heart of a refugee crisis.

“Around 30 per cent of all species could disappear by 2050. Everything is interdependent, it’s not just about losing a few frogs in the Amazonian forest, everyone will be affected; not only humans, our whole biosphere will be completely different. That’s the sixth major extinction of species since life appeared on earth. It’s not about some apocalypse doomsday scenario, it’s just what’s happening.”

The problem, he tells me, is short-sightedness: “We are equipped to react to immediate danger. If a rhinoceros comes in your kitchen, you run. If someone tells you that it’s coming in 30 years, you say ‘oh, we’ll see’.”

Since we need to look beyond our emotional reaction, he calls for a ‘cognitive altruism’ when looking at climate change: “It’s not that we don’t care, but it’s about thinking carefully about what’s going to happen; cognitive altruism, cognitive compassion, cognitive empathy.

“I hope there will be a million people in the streets in Paris before the United Nations Climate Change Conference to say ‘that’s our planet, don’t mess it up, that’s our children, our grandchildren’.”

Application

So the idea is all well and good, but how can we practically and actively start applying altruism to society and business?

Ricard explains that education and working with children is immensely important, “knowing that the potential is there

in children and knowing their tendency, their propensity to be cooperative and so forth”.

In business, he believes a practical application is, for example, simply increasing cooperation within a workplace, to boost morale, efficiency and the flow of information.

He believes we are already starting to see encouraging signs: “The most vibrant part of the economy is the positive economy: crowdfunding, impact investing, socially and environmentally responsible investment, cooperative banking, microcredit with business people like Mohammed Yunus, and so forth.

“Although it’s just seven per cent of the world economy, it’s the fastest-growing and it also fares best through crisis because people are more motivated. When something is meaningful, if there’s a component of benefiting others, then you are more likely to stick with it.”

Optimism

Unsurprisingly, the happiest man in the world is optimistic about the future of ‘caring economics’. “There are many encouraging signs”, he says. “At the World Economic Forum, what you could call the sum of the capitalist world, Klaus Schwab (founder and executive chairman) said, ‘let’s place this week under the sign of care and compassion’. These might be just words, but they are significant words in a place where usually they say more about consumption or the euro crisis. Action might not follow immediately, but 10 years ago this was definitely not happening.”

Matthieu’s achievements are surely seminal in creating a happier, more compassionate, more peaceful, and more sustainable world. The tremors of his work could be felt for years to come. If business leaders, politicians, or even the everyday person on the street can embrace the principles laid out in Altruism, Ricard, who has touched so many lives already, could just help to save us all.

Maybe he’ll now let himself return to a more peaceful existence in the Himalayas. “I’m 70 next year,” he says, “I think it’s a good time now to slow down a little bit”.

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Republished with permission. This article originally appeared on Salt. Salt is a platform for Positive Change Agents. Its goal is to make the world a better place by promoting compassionate business practices. 

Be The Change: Choose one cause that moves you and commit to supporting it in some way every week, whether with your time, energy, resources, or even your positive thoughts.

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

Giving Up Is Different From Letting Someone Down

Giving Up is Different From Letting Someone Down - Brother David Steindl-Rast

This inner gesture of letting go from moment to moment is what is so terribly difficult for us; and it can be applied to almost any area of experience. We mentioned time, for instance: there is the whole problem of “free time,” as we call it, of leisure. We think of leisure as the privilege of those who can afford to take time (this endless taking!)-when in reality it isn’t a privilege at all. Leisure is a virtue, and one that anyone can acquire. It is not a matter of taking but of giving time. Leisure is the virtue of those who give time to whatever it is that takes time-give as much time to it as it takes. That is the reason why leisure is almost inaccessible to us. We are so preoccupied with taking, with appropriating. Hence, there is more and more free time, and less and less leisure. In former centuries when there was much less free time for anybody, and vacations, for instance, were unheard of, people were leisurely while working; now they work hard at being leisurely. You find people who work from nine to five with this attitude of “Let’s get it done, let’s take things in hand,” totally purpose oriented, and when five o’clock comes they are exhausted and have no time for real leisure either. If you don’t work leisurely, you won’t be able to play leisurely. So they collapse, or else they pick up their tennis racket or their golf clubs and continue working, giving themselves a workout as they say.

We can laugh about it, but it goes deep. The letting go is a real death, a real dying; it costs us an enormous amount of energy, the price, as it were, which life exacts from us over and over again for being truly alive. For this seems to be one of the basic laws of life; we have only what we give up. We all have had the experience of a friend admiring something we owned, when for a moment we had an impulse to give that thing away. If we follow this impulse -- and something may be at stake that we really like, and it pains for a moment -- then for ever and ever we will have this thing; it is really ours; in our memory it is something we have and can never lose.

It is all the more so with personal relationships. If we are truly friends with someone, we have to give up that friend all the time, we have to give freedom to that friend -- like a mother who gives up her child continually. If the mother hangs on to the child, first of all it will never be born; it will die in the womb. But even after it is born physically it has to be set free and let go over and over again. So many difficulties that we have with our mothers, and that mothers have with their children, spring exactly from this, that they can’t let go; and apparently it is much more difficult for a mother to give birth to a teenager than to a baby. But this giving up is not restricted to mothers; we must all mother each other, whether we are men or women. I think mothering is just like dying, in this respect; it is something that we must do all through life. And whenever we do give up a person or a thing or a position, when we truly give it up, we die-yes, but we die into greater aliveness. We die into a real oneness with life. Not to die, not to give up, means to exclude ourselves from that free flow of life.

But giving up is very different from letting someone down; in fact, the two are exact opposites. It is an upward gesture, not a downward one. Giving up the child, the mother upholds and supports him, as friends must support one another. We cannot let down responsibilities that are given to us, but we must be ready to give them up, and this is the risk of living, the risk of the give and take. There is a tremendous risk involved, because when you really give up, you don’t know what is going to happen to the thing or to the child. If you knew, the sting would be taken out of it, but it wouldn’t be a real giving up. When you hand over responsibility, you have to trust. That trust in life, that faith, is the courage to take upon yourself the risk of living, and dying -- because the two are inseparable.

About the Author: Brother David Steindl Rast is a Bendictine monk. You can learn more about his life in this profile, and on gratefulness.org The excerpt above is from an essay published in 1977 issue of Parabola. 

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive. --Howard Thurman

What Role Were You Born to Play in Social Change?

--by George Lakey, syndicated from opendemocracy.net, Jun 27, 2016

 

Bill Moyer was a streetwise, working class white boy from row-house Philadelphia, who — in the turbulence of the 1960s — went to Chicago to work for an anti-racist housing campaign. He wound up joining Martin Luther King Jr.’s national staff as an organizer.

I played tag football more than once with Moyer, catching his grin as he mercilessly overwhelmed his opponents through daring and smarts. He might have been the most joyfully aggressive Quaker I’ve known. By the time he died in 2002, Moyer had given significant leadership on multiple political issues, including the national anti-nuclear movement.

In California, Moyer went to graduate school to study social movement theory and indulge his love of analytical thinking. He became best known for identifying eight stages of successful social movements, which he named the Movement Action Plan, or MAP. I found activists using MAP as far away as Taiwan, where they had already read it in translation before I got there.

Moyer also invented a powerful tool that clarifies how we work for change on two levels: individually and organizationally. Four Roles of Social Activism, he called it, and right now the tool is helping environmentalist organizations in the Philadelphia area clarify their relationships to the new campaign Power Local Green Jobs. The tool also empowers individuals to become more effective. In this column I’ll describe the four roles so you can notice their resonance personally for you and also for your group.

With Moyer’s permission, I tweaked the names of three of the four roles, making the differences sharper; you’ll get both names here.  I call the roles advocate, helper, organizer, and rebel.

The advocate role

The advocate focuses on communication with what Moyer called “the powerholders,” who can change a policy or practice. Think of the civil liberties lawyer suing the city for stop-and-frisk that profiles people of color, or the lobby group urging city council to change that policy. Moyer calls this role the “reformer,” while acknowledging that an advocate might urge changes that are radical in content.

In workshops, I invite people to scan their childhoods to recall whether they usually turned to an authority to correct what they felt was an injustice or problem. Maybe they went to the teacher after class to report bullying on the playground, or told a parent that little sister was upset. I’ve found that many adults who prefer to play the advocate role in social movements expressed that preference early, often developing some skill and confidence.

The helper role

The helper is drawn to direct service, personally doing what they can to remedy the situation. They address gender and racial discrimination in jobs by teaching how to write resumes or initiating job training. They attack carbon pollution by weatherizing houses or starting solar installation co-ops. Because much of mainstream community life is marked by service, Moyer’s name for this role is “citizen.”

When adults known for playing helper roles look back on their childhood they sometimes remember their own intervention to stop the bully, or their being the first one to bring a band-aid when little brother falls off the bike.

The organizer role

While the advocate and helper who want to make a bigger difference may themselves need to organize — by starting a nonprofit, for example — the organizing part is not the most satisfying for them. The advocate is happiest when convincing the judge that equal marriage is constitutional. The helper loves to witness the graduating class that includes more people of color.

The organizer, on the other hand, experiences joy from collecting people who may not even know each other and turning them into a well-oiled team, or tripling the attendance at the union local’s monthly meetings. Organizers often believe that the sheer power of numbers will make change because powerholders are afraid of alternative sources of power and may concede something to head off further growth.

When organizers were children they may have been the ones who revived the celebration of Martin Luther King Day at school, or boosted the flagging morale of the drill team. Moyer calls them “change agents,” and he himself was certainly that.

The rebel role

The rebel who sees a problem or injustice prefers to make a commotion of some kind to force powerholders to make a change. Martin Luther King Jr. explained that a campaign must create a crisis. Gandhi made so much trouble that he made India ungovernable by the British. True, some famous rebels needed organizing skills to scale up their commotion to the crisis point.

But rebels look at numbers not for their own sake but to determine “how many people will it take to create what degree of crisis?” Alice Paul left the mass movement for woman suffrage in order to lead a smaller band of rebels willing to make the nonviolent trouble that forced U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to give in to justice.

Roles can be played positively or negatively

While some activists dismiss one or more of these roles as uncool — “the nonprofit-industrial complex” or “sellout lobbyists” or “infantile protesters” — Moyer found the record clear: Successful social movements include all four roles.

He acknowledged, though, that any of these roles can either assist or undermine a movement, depending on how people play the role. Advocates, for example, can — through communication with powerholders — find ways of framing demands that make it more likely that the movement will take a large step forward. On the other hand, they can get co-opted by the powerholders and undermine a campaign’s clarity so it settles for less.

Rebels can either generate drama that motivates the undecided to take the issue more seriously and to side with the movement, or it can choose tactics that are so self-marginalizing that the undecided lend their support to the powerholders.

Helpers can empower people who are feeling helpless by giving them skills and assisting them to see that they can only get what they really want through solidarity with others. Or the helpers can adopt the false belief that society changes through individuals enhancing their lives one-by-one.

In his book “Doing Democracy,” Moyer describes a number of positive and negative ways each role can be played. Looking fearlessly at his analysis helps our learning curve.

How do you play your role?

I’ve personally performed a lot of voluntary service, started and led new organizations, and lobbied elected officials. In my heart of hearts, though, I’m a rebel. To avoid burnout, I need to remember that. I’m healthiest, most creative and productive when I’m in touch with my rebel self and find a group that’s OK with that.

Becoming self-aware is also helpful for organizations. They do best when they clarify their mission, even when that means saying “No” to lots of otherwise good ideas that are offered but aren’t really aligned with the essence of their role. Earth Quaker Action Team, my primary affiliation, claims its rebel role in the larger struggle for environmental, economic and racial justice. In our new campaign Power Local Green Jobs, other groups we talk with expect that we will join with them as they advocate, or organize, or do job training. We get to explain over and over the advantages of a division of labor: “Do what you’re best at and we’ll root for you while we do our rebel thing.”

A group that embraces its particular role in the movement can also have a diversity of roles within its membership. Within EQAT we have people who as individuals shine as organizers, helpers and advocates and contribute quite a lot to the group’s internal life. Within any group there is room for all as long as they support the clear, overall mission.

Of course a membership that includes multiple role identities will also experience conflicts, and that’s a good thing — especially when hard choices must be made. An organizer may object that a rebel’s tactical proposal is premature because the group doesn’t yet have the resources to deal with the consequences.

A helper may say that more solar installation training needs to be in place before the utility yields and funds extensive rooftop programs, or else the poor and people of color will be overlooked when workers start lining up for jobs. An advocate may note that the opponent is for the first time engaged in serious consideration of the demand, and argue that this is the wrong time for militant action.

People who face strategic hard choices are more likely to come up with creative and wise next moves when the four roles fight it out — fighting fairly while acknowledging differences. The research is clear: Over time, diversity actually does produce the best outcomes. Or at least diversity works when everyone agrees on the bottom line: The role the group plays in the larger movement.

This illustration from Earth Quaker Action Team can be repeated for organizations taking a different role: advocacy, say, or helping or organizing. The combination of diversity of membership and unity of purpose is a winning combination.

Bill Moyer’s Four Roles is about effectiveness. Instead of one organization trying to do many things and risking scatter, his vision was that of a proliferation of groups, each maximizing strength through focus while networking and supporting a broader sense of unity. That’s what a powerful movement looks like.

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Syndicated from the Transformation section of openDemocracy where this article first appeared.  George Lakey co-founded Earth Quaker Action Group which just won its five-year campaign to force a major U.S. bank to give up financing mountaintop removal coal mining. 

 

Be The Change: This week initiate a conversation with friends, colleagues or family about the four roles, and explore which role each person resonates with most and why.

 

Sourced From www.dailygood.org