Evolutionary Leaders: In Service to Conscious Evolution is an initiative that was established in the summer of 2008 by the Chopra Foundation, the Source of Synergy Foundation and the Association for Global New Thought to leverage the extraordinary collective potential of renowned Evolutionary Leaders in the consciousness movement so that together they could create a unified field for deeper engagement by:

• Envisioning together how they can utilize their collective energy and intention to accelerate the shift in consciousness and how to bring it more into the mainstream;
• Exploring the cutting edge of action and thinking in the consciousness movement by mapping major pieces of the movement;
• Creating a more concrete sense of collective engagement by clarifying the specific roles each participant/community/larger network is serving in the movement;
• Creating a deeper collective ground for new potential collaborations, sharing of resources, and mutual support among ourselves and our organizations;
• Contemplating and acting on ideas of how new levels of consciousness can help solve some of the world’s current challenges.

The Evolutionary Leaders issued A Call to Conscious Evolution following their first retreat to help birth a new planetary culture that activates our full potential as a human species.

It’s an historic moment in time and evolutionary leaders around the world have a key role to play in this new era of change and responsibility. They are working together to shape a new narrative of conscious evolution and focusing on manifesting ways in which we can strategically engage a collective field of potential to further ignite a movement in consciousness for the benefit of all.

The Evolutionary Leaders have been successful in establishing a collective platform that is generating various exciting projects. The Evolutionary Leaders met again in July 2009 as an expression of their continuing commitment to a collaborative approach to accelerating the shift in global consciousness and will meet again in August 2010.  Both videos are worth viewing.

Here’s a dynamic exposition by Peter Russell who is a fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, of The World Business Academy and of The Findhorn Foundation, and an Honorary Member of The Club of Budapest. At Cambridge University (UK), he studied mathematics and theoretical physics. Then, as he became increasingly fascinated by the mysteries of the human mind he changed to experimental psychology. Pursuing this interest, he traveled to India to study meditation and eastern philosophy, and on his return took up the first research post ever offered in Britain on the psychology of meditation.

The four parts of this 35 minute video on the the Global Brain are well worth watching.

The Story

I arrive at Dumas Bay Friday evening glad I have only a few pieces to present this weekend with three other facilitators taking more of the role in the training. This gives me an opportunity to observe, take in the collective energy and deepen my own experience of this work with Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream symposium to which I have dedicated much of my time in the last two years. As is my practice I spend a lo of time in self contemplation….not thinking but more focusing on the spirit energy and the chi sensations in my body, especially around my solar plexus and abdomen.

Through Friday evening I maintain this focus on body sensations and my deeper heart, and by Saturday I am noticing that I feel like I am dropping further, deeper into myself. My voice is beginning to sound deeper to me, coming more from my belly and not just my head or throat. The group is having a good time and I love the singing, movement work and appreciate what the other presenter/leaders are doing and saying.I notice I feel good about them and trust their intention and wisdom. It feels safe and heartful.

Sunday comes around, and I realize I will need to speak to the group about relational presence along the lines explained by Lee Glickstein. Lee’s work certainly has a kernel of truth in it, but there is much more wanting to be experienced.  I had been musing during parts of the night on what more wanted to be said and experienced.

Before I am about to speak, I’m hearing the group talk–people are sharing. My consciousness is now deep inside me–perhaps around my heart/belly mind, so their words seem far away, something swimming on the surface of consciousness and not partaking of the deep feeding of soul possible when one gets to greater depths. So I sense a call to take us deeper into the ocean of being by sharing what is going on with me in this present moment. I’ll offer this paraphrase.

” I wonder what we are really doing with the symposium–what the root message and experience is that wants to come through. World healing comes through inner  healing–the better world we wall want comes from inside and then flows outward as a coming together of all the disconnections our modern life has created. Like you and me, the people who come to the symposium are drawn at the deepest part of their being because there is a driving thirst for truth, reality, connection, love. They, like us, may not know this conciously, because we go about with this veneer of OK-ness. After all, we’re priveleged, and have so much compared to others who have little. You see, it is a perception of our essential brokeness and suffering that we are awakening to which has brought us to this place, and we can’t really give ourselves, the people who come to symposiums or Pachamama herself what is due unless we are radically honest and surrendered to all  the truth regarding ourselves, our times and our deep sense of loss.

I was very, very moved by John Robbins when he says “…there’s a great loneliness of spirit today,” or when Paul Hawken says in that same clip “…people will admit in their most poignant moments that it’s really hard right now.” What we and the people who come to symposiums are wanting, what life itself is wanting is for us to show up in our deep and honest presence to ourselves and our own truth. What is going on with you in this very moment–inside of you? What’s happening in me?  Well, you can see I’m in tears right now, and I see many of you holding deep emotion as well. Our sadness, liberated from the constraints of social agreement, looking good, self-protection, just like our spacious joy wants to be free, felt and moved through–so that life, like the Spring, can arise again in our dead souls.

Letting go and giving ourselves over to the truth inside us in the moment–giving of ourselves this way to the participants who come–I think this is the core of our lives right now, and the place from which the better world arises. This is where we start to be real, make deeper connections and from which the grace to realize the things we need to do emanates from.

So when we move through our daily lives, are with our kids, friends, co-workers and also when we get up in front of others doing a symposium, we bring bring this deep transparency, this child-like openness with us always. This is an undefended, undefined, unrehearsed space of possibility, where what want wants to happen is not under your control and does not belong to you or me. If you look at your arm, leg, torso, face and say to yourself “This arm, this leg, this body does not belong to me, but to life itself.” Or you might substitute for “life” words like Christ, Buddha, the universe, the great Spirit–then you are moving closer to the realization that your life, our lives are not our own, but belong to, are part of and serve the whole. And being free of “me”, “Mine,” “I,” in this way is such a liberating and new feeling, like shucking off a pair of ill-fitting shoes or pants, and then afterwards wondering why it took so long to let go of what never really did fit in the first place. Only that we were too ignorant to know that until we were free, looked back and laughed at our prior folly.

Let’s use this space to do some dreaming into the why and who of this conference event around the role, practices and audience dealing with creativity, play and innovation.

A simple exercise to begin the visioning process will help move us along. Assume there is something that wants to happen–a higher purpose which we can serve and source.  Our intent now is to become empty vessels as much as possible–freer of our own biases, likes, dislikes and even the boundaries of our own knowing. We want to tap into the larger teacher or wisdom source within each one of us.

We’ll do this with a method of preparation, a question and then a recording of the response.

Play with these instructions as you like, and modify them to suit your own inclinations:

-Relax. Lie down if you want. Scan the body from head to toe and le go of any tension–head, neck, arms, torso, hips, legs, feet.  Do this a second time. Feel how much lighter you are.

-Take three, long deep inhalations and exhalations. Imagine on the exhale expelling any mind-chatter, busy-ness and random thoughts.

-Now imagine you are standing before an ocean that is limitless–see it, hear it, feel the water. This is the ocean of your mind–with no beginning or end.

-Ask of this ocean a question or questions pertaining to our inquiry, like: (a) What wants to happen with this event or (b) what is the seed inspiration that is trying to come through here (c) any other question that comes to mind.

-Then wait and experience the answer. Might be in the form of words, sound, music, an image or images. Record what you experience in whatever way/channel you want–writing, drawing, singing, reference to other media.

Then let’s share here what came up and start to synthesize the outcomes.

What Are We Really Doing with the Symposium?

Has the time come to address more directly what I have sensed we are doing with the symposium? Namely, if we are about waking up, then we are talking about a change in consciousness—our own and humanity in general, and perhaps the entire Earth community is also engaged in some evolutionary shift in tandem with the human. After all, if everything is connected then surely, as the Apostle Paul says in Romans “…the whole of creation is in labor until the sons of God may be revealed.”

If this is the true bottom line and measure of our work, then should we not bring forth this narrative of consciousness change more explicitly and not leave it as an assumed background thread in a presentation where the impact it could make is diminished?

After all, we and the people we are serving have a spiritual thirst. When we give out less than what the emerging being really needs, the spiritual power in what we do is not fully released.

Two books I’ve read recently shine their own particular light on our identities as facilitators, awakening Earth citizens and cosmological beings. One is Andrew Harvey’s The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism and the other is The Translucent Revolution by Arjuna Ardagh. Both cite prophecies of the religions and wisdom traditi0ns of many cultures as well as formal and informal research on consciousness trends across many populations globally. They conclude that humanity has reached the borders of the long foretold millennium, that period in human history when significant numbers of us are breaching a threshold into integral consciousness, precipitating a “tipping point,” (to use a term popularized by Malcolm Gladwell) that ushers in a new epoch in human being and human knowing.

This new narrative, or way of experiencing ourselves and our beingness in the universe, is unfolding throughout the human community. It is not the province or privelege of a special few enlightened people. In fact, I have met many people of differing political, cultural and religious backgrounds that all share come kind of awareness that “something’s up” in the world, that we are in trouble; that things must change, and that the very nature of their lives has and is changing. Whether or not that change is interpreted as positive or negative depends on where one is standing.

We focalize the tremendous energy inherent in this shift toward unitary consciousness first in ourselves before we can really embody it for others to perceive and resonate with. A transformation of human consciousness is a process of awakening to a new identity, softening the small sense of self bounded by our own wants, beliefs, prejudices into a sense of participation with something far larger. From the perspective of the old human, the new identity is really no-thing.  It is unrecognizable as self as we now understand self, because this new being is clothed in none of the family, cultural or even species-made garments we are accustomed to.

Simply asking yourself “What Am I?” and then sitting with a quieting mind to contemplate the response, one might feel oneself peering into a void, listening for a sound that does not come—as we sort through the usual mental chatter that has little substance or staying power.  Do that kind of enquiry enough and you come to both the frightening and glorious epiphany that “I am nothing.” Our existence as separate selves—with all our pains, demands and stories—is a fiction.  The flip side is that we also are everything, and in that moment feel at the cellular level a divine oneness with all things and a  fulfillment, if only for a moment, of a God-type of love and the “peace that passes all understanding.”

An incredible freedom awaits us in this initiating point in human evolution. We’re going through a painful birthing, where the small me and all the things we grasp out of fear or greed are being loosened as we emerge into this much vaster cosmos. Here the work of living is not done by “me” but in flow with the greater energies of the universe that have always born the trajectory of our lives.

The question we face as symposium facilitators is how do we bring this story forward within a mixed group of people, many of whom may be at very different points in their personal evolution. There is no one simple answer as to how, since this depends on who you are in the moment and the people you are with.

A for myself, I am striving to find a common language that would bridge all differences, a deep well of compassion in myself in which I can embrace the whole room, and a weaving together of various cultural narratives about this transformative time which greatly amplifies the feeling of importance held in the Eagle & Condor Story. In addition, I also believe there are exercises we can offer to participants which help to bring home this consciousness shift more directly, and assist people in discovering how “the great turning” is already manifesting in their lives.

Here’s a few good web sites to review in this regard:

Sufi Islam
http://www.beshara.org/school/lectures/pyiangou.html

Jewish Mystical Tradition

http://www.innerfrontier.org/Practices/TikkunOlam.htm

Tibetan Buddhist-Shambhala Warrior

http://www.livingearthgatherings.org/shambala.html

Christian-The Millenium & the return of Christ

http://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/mill.cfm

Hindu-Epoch of Kali Yuga, or the end times of decay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_Yuga

http://www.mother-god.com/kali-yuga.html

I am particularly impressed with an article, The Globalisation of Consciousness, by Peter Yiangou, an architect in the UK, who gave a talk on at Berkeley in 2007 starting with the Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi’s contribution regarding unity to the understanding of our times.  He concludes “Our generation faces the choice consciously to participate in the preparation for what is to come next, allowing our descendants to be present for a possibility which we can barely imagine – the globalisation of consciousness when both unity and diversity, spirit and body, are celebrated in a single vision by the many as the One, and the One as the many.” Yiangou gives us a rare and valuable historical perspective on the meaning and great import of our times which I find both inspiring and enlightening.

Paul Hawken: Commencement Address to the Class of 2009
University of Portland, May 3rd, 2009

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there.

Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown — Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood — and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity.  Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of
people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

Prayer is an act of love, words are not needed. Even if sickness distracts thoughts, all that is needed is the will to love. St. Teresa of Avila

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. Mother Teresa

Heaven and earth are threads from one loom. Shaker proverb

Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire. Teilhard de Chardin

In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds. Henri Nouwen

Penetrate the heart of just one drop of water, and you will be flooded by a hundred oceans. Mahmûd Shabistarî

My storehouse having been burnt down, nothing obstructs my view of the bright moon. Masahide, Zen poet

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. Jalaluddin Rumi

Every being is an abode of God, worthy of respect and reverence. Hindu Scripture

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. Aesop

When it seems humanly impossible to do more in a difficult situation, surrender yourself to the inner silence and thereafter wait for a sign of obvious guidance or for a renewal of inner strength. Paul Brunton

The winds of grace blow all the time. All we need to do is set our sails. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa

Whenever feeling downcast, each person should vitally remember, “For my sake, the entire world was created.” Baal Shem Tov

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. John Quincy Adams

True affluence is not needing anything. Gary Snyder

If you dedicate yourself to service, the doors will open. Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Catastrophe is the essence of the spiritual path, a series of breakdowns allowing us to discover the threads that weave all of life into a whole cloth. Joan Halifax

If your heart were sincere and upright, every creature would be unto you a looking-glass of life and a book of holy doctrine. Thomas a Kempis

Each minute of life should be a divine quest. Paramahansa Yogananda

Don’t let other people’s opinions burn holes in your dreams. Elsa Joy Bailey

One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others. Archibald Rutledge

Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.  Henry Ward Beecher

I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

To Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love all pray in their distress, and to these virtues of delight return their thankfulness. William Blake

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else. Emily Dickinson

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. The Talmud

The main thing in one’s own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry. Maya Angelou

“I wake up in the morning asking myself what can I do today, how can I help the world today.” Julia Butterfly Hil

Behind every shadow of life is the great light of God. Paramahansa Yogananda

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go

we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

~ Wendell Berry

Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time. Shirley Chisolm

In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair. Howard Thurman

All beauty of this world is wet with the dew of tears. Theodor Haecker

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Maya Angelou

Suffering is the sandpaper of our life. It does its work of shaping us. Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise. Ram Das

Make your meditation a continuous state of mind. A great worship is going on all the time, so nothing should be neglected or excluded from your constant meditative awareness. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa

Instead of looking for love, give it; constantly renew it in yourself and you will always feel its presence within you. It will always be there smiling at you, gazing on you kindly.Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Faith is the courageous confidence that trusts in the Source of all gifts.  David Steindl-Rast

The gardener uses both roses in the flowerbed and thorns in making fences Hazrat Inayat Khan

The foundation of greatness is honoring the small things of the present moment, instead of pursuing the idea of greatness. Eckart Tolle

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life. Rachel Carson

The most beautiful people are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Keep alive within you and bring under wise control that courage which makes you long to undertake great works, which others might consider it folly to attempt. St. Mary Euphrasia Pelletier

Let us accept the invitation, ever-open, from the Stillness, taste its exquisite sweetness, and heed its silent instruction. Paul Brunton

When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another. Helen Keller

In the continuous flow of blessing our heart finds meaning and rest. David Steindl-Rast

Even if I should be locked up in a narrow cell and a cloud should drift past my small barred window, then I shall bring you that cloud, Oh God, while there is still the strength in me to do so.  Etty Hillesum

Dive deeply into the miracle of life and let the tips of your wings be burnt by the flame, let your feet be lacerated by the thorns, let your heart be stirred by human emotion, and let your soul be lifted beyond the earth.Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Can you see the holiness in those things you take for granted – a paved road or a washing machine? If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul. Rabbi Harold Kushner

Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live.Pema Chodron

As one can see when the eyes are open, so one can understand when the heart is open. Hazrat Inayat Khan

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.Etty Hillesum

In your heart must well that sympathy which soothes away all pains from the hearts of others. Paramahansa Yogananda

The greatest surprise is that there is anything at all — that we are here. David Steindl-Rast

God is the mirror of silence in which all creation is reflected. Paramahansa Yogananda

How did the rose ever open its heart and give to this world all of its beauty? It felt the encouragement of Light against its being; otherwise we all remain too frightened.Hafiz

First thing in the morning, before you meet or greet anyone, remember to greet all of nature, all visible and invisible creatures. Say to them: “I am grateful for your work, I love you and want to be in harmony with you!” At this very moment, in response to your greeting, all of nature will open to you and send you energy for the entire day. Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Paradoxically, we achieve true wholeness only by embracing our fragility and sometimes, our brokenness. Wholeness is a natural radiance of Love, and Love demands that we allow the destruction of our old self for the sake of the new.Jalaja Bonheim

Love is the sacrament by which all life is redeemed and fulfilled.  Samuel Miller.

In moments of surprise we catch at least a glimpse of the joy to which gratefulness opens the door.David Steindl-Rast

Goodness is the only investment which never fails. Henry David Thoreau

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle. Philo of Alexandria

Angels can fly because they take themselves so lightly. G.K. Chesterton

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.Marcus Tullius Cicero

Thanks to the human heart by which we live; thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears.William Wordsworth

The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.Brother Lawrence

Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life reveals just the opposite: that letting go is the real path to freedom. Sogyal Rinpoche

As I contemplate all this, I say “thank you” to all the wisdom teaching, inner work, meditation and practices like yoga and qigong that have kept my heart in peace and helped my overall sense of well-being to not be diminished. Each challenge brought its own test to deal with a range of emotions and thoughts (anxiety, anger, resentment, apathy, escapism). But simply being mindful in the moment, and knowing that all these negative states are like clouds passing in the sky, there came a deeper sense of inner ease that grew throughout the year.

It is said that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.  Another way to think of this is like an athlete–to reach peak performance, you have to stretch and go beyond what you think you are capable of.  I also like the term St John of the Cross gave us: the dark night of the soul.  If we do not have those dark nights that challenge us to the very core, I am convinced that our growth will be limited.

Life is wonderful like this. It seems we get just the right challenges to make us bigger, more courageous, compassionate and wise people. And my life over the last year is no exception. My wife and I are re-uniting and now have a wonderful, deeply loving relationship. I’m right in the process of reviewing my lifestyle choices in food, work hours, stress levels that play a role in cancer, and am pursuing a natural/organic mostly fruit & vegetable diet, and planning cutting out work & volunteer situations that cause me to over-commit. We are also right on top of our financial situation in my organization and have all the resources we need to weather well this current economic downturn.

I likewise view the global economic crisis  not really as a crisis, but as an opportunity to re-evaluate, reduce, become simpler and appreciate again the basic things that life are all about.

It’s all in our attitude. We say “no pain no gain,” and this comes from a view that something unwanted from one perspective, is painful, or a hassel. On the other hand,  what is thought of as painful or undesirable is just that–a thought. Adverse thoughts when clung too and strung out into a whole story determine much of the reality–the drama–we experience.  Saying to ourselves “Oh my God, how terrible it is that I no longer have a wife,” or ” I might die of the big C,” or “I’m going to go broke” powerfully affects our state of mind and quality of life.

Why not instead ask “What good can come from this?” or “How is what is happening now just perfect for me?”  I believe this is not mental manipulation, but a truer assessment of what we would call unfavorable situations.

The fact is that real faith is about seeing everything in life as a sacred blessing. There is no “good and bad.” Those are just colors we add to experience.  Can we go beyond duality, and just say “thanks” for what is?

This is the coming world I write about in One World Arising.  When I talk about the Obama phenomena, I am speaking about so much more than just this one man, but rather the global, transformation of which his candidacy is a part. Consider what Obama himself said about the improbability of his even running for President.  He’s not only a black man, but born in a foreign country, has a father who was a radical muslim, has Hussein for a middle name, and a lead competitor for the Presidency who is a woman now slated to be Secretary of State. And this all happened in two short years.

When we’re in a bad dream, it seems like it could go on forever.  Then, all of a sudden the scenery shifts so rapidly and unexpectedly, that we hardly have time to catch our breaths, much less unpack the significance of the change. Something of this kind of forgetfulness is happening now, and but for a handful of progressive bloggers who are seizing the enormity of the shift, few Americans truly appreciate the depth of change represented in the fact that this past election saw the first woman Presidential candidate running against the first African American candidate. We now have a firmly established precedent for a woman to hold the most powerful cabinet post (Madeleine Albright (under Clinton), Connie Rice (Bush), and now Hilary Clinton under Obama.  That so many women and people of color are entering top governmental posts at all is itself a huge sign of change when you reflect on the all white male cast of presidencies before President Jimmy Carter. 

In short the “playing field” in American politics is changing. What I mean by that is that the rules of engagement for both parties has had to shift to reflect the fact that  the USA is increasingly multi-ethnic, and that gender and racial tolerance is a norm which cannot be overlooked.  This seems like belaboring the obvious. But consider just a short fifty years ago, when 1950′s TV commercials depicted a prevailing image of women as proper mothers in dresses working happily for God and family in their kitchens. And just as bad, when segregation and discrimination against people of color was an accepted norm in much of the United States.