so I was reflecting on this very same question when I was going through the process of writing this book, and I thought back to my childhood. There were two incidences that I think really began leading me to where I am today, the first one was this. My dad was a professor of Earth science, and so I was a haughty teenager and I said to him as a teenager, "Hey dad, what’`s the fun in studying rocks?" He said, "Well if you only ever live on one planet in your life, don’`t you think you ought to get to know that planet?" I was like oh, it made a lot of sense. Later on in college, when I was lost, trying to figure out what to study, I thought a... posted on Feb 9 2020 (6,326 reads)

Therefore, the whole country is not in Tao, and I also am not in the natural order of things because I am in a disordered country. So, I had to wait three days until I was back in Tao and then naturally the rain came.’”1 Where are today’s rainmakers, those who “come from another country where things are in order?” Did we banish them all too long ago, exile them from our world of science and rational thought? It was long common in indigenous cultures, when life went out of balance, to consult their shamans and dreams. But today we have few shamans and even our dreaming self has been censored, its stories relegated to our journals or the therapist’... posted on Aug 9 2020 (15,302 reads)

to imprint the photographic plate with a image of the star as it had been twenty-five years earlier, immortalizing a moment already long gone. And yet in a cosmological sense, what exists is precious not because it will one day be lost but because it has overcome the staggering odds of never having existed at all: Within the fraction of matter in the universe that is not dark matter, a fraction of atoms cohered into the elements necessary to form the complex structures necessary for life, of which a tiny portion cohered into the seething cauldron of complexity we call consciousness — the tiny, improbable fraction of a fraction of a fraction with which we have the perishable... posted on Jun 14 2021 (4,710 reads)

by Olivier Adam.  A good part of my life has been spent relating to situations that might be deemed hopeless—as an anti-war activist and civil rights worker in the nineteen sixties and as a caregiver of dying people and teacher of clinicians in conventional medical centers for fifty years. I also worked as a volunteer with death row inmates for six years, continue to serve in medical clinics in remote areas of the Himalayas, and served Kathmandu Rohingya refugees who have no status, anywhere. Ending gender violence and feminism have also been a lifelong commitment. You could ask, why work in such hopeless situations? Why care about ending the direct and structural ... posted on Nov 15 2021 (4,264 reads)

worldview, our beliefs about what reality is, our views on what (if anything) has value and meaning, what Aldous Huxley called an ‘individual’s philosophy of life’, contributes more significantly than we often think to our mental well-being. From pessimism to existentialism, might reading certain philosophical ideas actually lead to depression? The connection is not so simple. Philosophy can both depress and inspire us. But, at the end of the day, our worldview matters – it matters what we think, writes Sam Woolfe. The psychology of philosophy is a relatively new field. It refers to the relationship between psychological traits and philosophical beliefs. This f... posted on Nov 13 2021 (5,630 reads)

seeing limitations in Evie, Rachel saw superpowers—unique ways of engaging people and interacting with the world. It inspired her to meet others like Evie, so she set out on a trip around her home country of New Zealand learning from children with similar conditions and capturing their stories using her camera. It resulted in The Super Power Baby Project, a large-format coffee table book featuring joyful, striking portraits of 72 children, as well text detailing their qualities and life-changing powers. The work has won several awards, and taken Rachel to the TEDx stage and numerous conferences around the world speaking about the relationship between language and human... posted on Jan 16 2022 (3,859 reads)

of the disease, I was an invalid in bed. Because of my pain and extreme weakness, changing my posture was a dramatic event. I needed to heed every little sensation in my legs and feet in order to go from sitting to standing. Getting out of my bed and going to the bathroom took the same kind of focus and attention as going on safari. The people in the zen community where I lived put up a sign-up sheet for volunteers to clean my room, do my laundry, and wash my hair. At first my conscious life was all pain. Swept up by the power of the pain, overwhelmed and consumed by it, I couldn't feel anything else. I had spent most of my life looking at my body from the outside, mostly critici... posted on Apr 26 2023 (3,285 reads)

this deeply moving episode, Fill to Capacity podcast host Pat Benincasa speaks with writer and life coach Jennifer Bichanich. Jennifer opens a window on her experiences with profound loss, including losing her beloved husband when the church they were remodeling went up in flames. Despite immense grief and despair, Jennifer found ways to rebuild her life and discover her own creative resilience. Working with a shamanic energy healer, delving into art therapy, and joining the Modern Widows Club, she found community, healing and the possibility of creating something beautiful from the ashes of her life. This podcast explores themes of grief, healing, and the power of creativity in navigatin... posted on Nov 20 2023 (2,587 reads)

most significant economic challenges in generations. From the hardships of unemployment to the perils of mounting debt, worry about the health of a national economy that depends on consumerism and market success dominates our conversation. But have we asked what the economy is really for?   Since the Second World War, we have been assured that more economic growth is good for us. But is it? By any measure, the U.S. economy, in its pursuit of constant growth, is in dire need of critical life support. Too many people have lost jobs, homes, scholarships and retirement savings, along with peace of mind, in the face of complex uncertainties. Those individuals that have jobs are earning l... posted on Nov 20 2011 (23,541 reads)

near the stroke of midnight, we conjured a collective experience so potent, so real, that I continually question whether it happened at all. In the morning, I bid goodbye to the scholars, and was left with Stephen, a steaming cup of tea, and the fading light of the afternoon. A piece of our conversation became “The Meaning of Death” which you can watch below (presented, or perhaps more accurately, provoked by Marc Erlbaum, who is collecting musings on the meaning of life). Watch my new short: The Meaning of Death (6 mins) Needless to say, it was challenging to condense even a minutiae of Stephen’s work into a 6 minute short film. Our intention is ... posted on Aug 7 2013 (33,810 reads)

action. Wearing gardening gloves, at one boy’s suggestion, they worked to clean up the habitat they had worked so hard to create. Later, they joined their teacher in a circle to discuss what they learned: why it was important to take care of nature, what they could do to help, and how the experience made them feel. “It broke my heart in two,” said one girl. Wright-Albertini felt the same way. “I could have cried,” she said later. “But it was so rich a life lesson, so deeply felt.” Indeed, through the mock disaster, Wright-Albertini said she saw her students progress from loving the ocean creatures they had created to loving the ocean itself. ... posted on Sep 26 2013 (30,916 reads)

"stewardship" fits our emerging world? When we consider the powerful forces transforming our world — climate change, peak oil, water and food shortages, species extinction, and more — we require far more than either crude or cosmetic changes in our manner of living. If we are to maintain the integ­rity of the Earth as a living system, we require deep and creative changes in our overall levels and patterns of living and consum­ing. Simplicity is not an alternative lifestyle for a marginal few. It is a creative choice for the mainstream majority, particularly in developed nations. If we are to pull together as a human commu­nity, it will be crucial for peopl... posted on Apr 29 2014 (19,475 reads)

to his fundraising target he is more adamant than ever to reach it. Tragically his deadline is short as his latest scans show his brain tumour is growing. He says: “These days people make bucket lists, and the very top of mine – the one that matters most – is raising money to make sure Kelli gets the medical help she might need. “Some people have advised me to slow down and concentrate on enjoying the rest of my days. But how can I knowing Kelli’s bright life might be cut short? “Fundraising is a lot of hard work, especially on days when I feel too poorly to get out of bed. But I honestly feel I can’t relax until I know Kelli can have t... posted on Nov 12 2014 (64,529 reads)

simplicity has a long history, we are now entering radically changing times—ecological, social, economic, and psycho-spiritual—and we should expect the worldly expressions of simplicity to evolve and grow in response. For more than thirty years I’ve explored the “simple life” and I’ve found that simplicity is not simple. I’ve encountered such a diversity of expressions of the simple life that I find the most accurate way of describing this approach to living is with the metaphor of a garden. A Garden of Simplicity To portray the richness of simplicity, here are ten different flowerings of expression that I see growing in the “gar... posted on Jan 5 2015 (71,995 reads)

keeps us healthy and happy as we go through life? If you were going to invest now in your future best self, where would you put your time and your energy? There was a recent survey of millennialsasking them what their most important life goals were, and over 80 percent said that a major life goal for them was to get rich. And another 50 percent of those same young adults said that another major life goal was to become famous. And we're constantly told to lean in to work, to push harder and achieve more. We're given the impression that these are the things that we need to go after in order to have a good life. Pictures of entire lives, of the choices that people make and h... posted on Jan 8 2016 (135,478 reads)

and live longer. Happy people are more likely to get married and have fulfilling marriages, and they have more friends. They make more money and are more productive at work. Based on decades of research, it has become clear that happiness is not just a personal issue; it’s a matter of public health, global economics, and national well-being. But it doesn’t come easy, as most of us know. Disappointments and annoyances grab our attention like gnats, and even the good things in life seem to lose their luster over time. Add to that a crammed schedule and mounting obligations, and happiness might just seem out of reach—achievable for other people, perhaps, but not us. ... posted on Apr 29 2016 (69,645 reads)

who know him personally would tell you about his infectious smile. :) ] Thank you, Harshida and Dinesh, for hosting this event. I've always wanted to come here and just haven't had the chance, so it's great to be with all of you. I'll land on some science that I think would be really interesting to the ServiceSpace community, but I first wanted to give you a little bit of a personal journey about how I got there. I'm also at an age in the middle of life where you think back to, "Why are you sitting here in this chair thinking about the narrative that gets to this moment." I was really lucky to grow up with a a couple of parents who ... posted on Nov 4 2016 (30,659 reads)

some years ago David Milarch hovered above the bed, looking down at his motionless body. Years of alcoholism had booted him out of his life. An inexplicable cosmic commandment would return him to it. His improbable charge? To clone the world's champion trees - the giants that had survived millennia and would be unvanquished by climate change. Experts said it couldn't be done. Fast-forward to today, and Milarch is now the keeper of a Noah's Ark filled with the genetics for repopulating the world's most ancient trees. Founder of the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive he is on a mission to restore the lungs of the planet -- a mission that now reaches close to 300 mi... posted on Mar 23 2017 (28,584 reads)

people soaked up Roshi Joan Halifax when I interviewed her in 2012, at the Hall of Philosophy at the Chautauqua Institution. Ms. Tippett: So Joan, I’ve been reading things you’ve been writing the last few years since we spoke before, and I loved the title of this essay you wrote called “Seeing Inside,” which — I’m always looking for fresh language for the important, ordinary things we do, and that’s really fresh language about spiritual life, contemplation, reflection. And you trace that experience of yours back to a period as a young girl, that the beginnings of that experience, when a virus took away your eyesight — was that ... posted on Jan 23 2018 (16,077 reads)

the study of other consciousnesses and seeded the disorienting awareness that other beings — “beings who walk other spheres,” to borrow Whitman’s wonderful term — experience this world we share in ways thoroughly alien to our own. Today, we know that we need not step across the boundary of species to encounter such alien-seeming ways of inhabiting the world. There are innumerable ways of being human — we each experience life and reality in radically different ways merely by our way of seeing, but these differences are accentuated to an extreme when mental illness alters the elemental interiority of a consciousne... posted on Jul 11 2018 (13,133 reads)