more heroic workarounds. Ultimately, it becomes clear that the problem isn’t just the software: an entirely new operating system is required to get where we need to go. This realization dawned on me gradually over the years I spent researching my book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning. My research began as a personal search for meaning. I’d been through a personal crisis when the certainties on which I’d built my early life came crashing down around me. I wanted my life going forward to be truly meaningful—but based on what foundation? I was determined to sort through the received narratives of meaning until I... posted on May 16 2019 (6,232 reads)

cherry blossoms have arrived, and it feels like nature has handed us a beautiful gift. At the Japanese Tea Garden, here in San Francisco, I lean into a low hanging blossom and inhale the delicate sweet scent. The wet pink petals touch my nose, and once again, I am reminded of the generosity of nature, year after year. From the air we breathe, to the body we each inhabit, we are living a profound gift, and yet, we can struggle to see and relate to life as a gift.   In his seminal book, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, Brother David Steindl-Rast poses a question worth pondering: “Why is it so difficult to acknowledge a gift as a gift?” He believes that admitti... posted on Jun 23 2019 (6,455 reads)

you’re trying to become happier, you’ve probably heard the advice to practice gratitude. “Gratitude is literally one of the few things that can measurably change people’s lives,” writes pioneering researcher Robert Emmons in his book Thanks! His studies suggest that gratitude can improve our health and relationships—making it one of the most well-studied and effective ways to increase our well-being in life. But prescribing gratitude to everyone is a problem: Most of what we know about it comes from studying Americans—and, specifically, the mainly white American college students from the campuses where researchers work. That crea... posted on Aug 11 2019 (9,816 reads)

embodying/being related to grateful living? Over the last two years, we have had the privilege of having many people share their stories with us. Sometimes it’s just a light-hearted conversation with an elderly couple about their secret to a marriage that has lasted 60 years. Sometimes the subject is more difficult – about how someone has had to deal with depression and thoughts of suicide, for example. Each and every story has helped to remind us of what is really important in life and that there is so much to be grateful for in the simple pleasures of everyday living. This filmmaking journey fills us with a sense of gratitude for life and the beautiful people that surround... posted on Sep 17 2019 (11,391 reads)

from the book Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche by Bill Plotkin. Published by New World Library, 2013 www.newworldlibrary.com. It’s time to take another look at ourselves — to re-enliven our sense of what it is to be human, to breathe new life into ancient intuitions of who we are, and to learn again to celebrate, as we once did, our instinctive affinity with the Earth community in which we’re rooted. We’re called now to rediscover what it means to be human beings in a wildly diverse world of feathered, furred, and scaled fellow creatures; flowers and forests; mountains, rivers, and oceans; wind, rain, and snow; Sun and Moon. Our I... posted on Sep 25 2019 (8,098 reads)

will always be a need to tell powerful stories from some of humanities darkest times. This rings especially true for stories about the Nazi’s and the Holocaust because we have a resurgence of the same sentiment that led to one of the worst regimes in history. Diane Ackerman wrote a story based on real life historic heroes that remind us that we can fight against oppression in a non-violent way with her book “The Zookeeper’s Wife”. With the film out this weekend, we talk with Ackerman about her novel and how it still holds up as a reminder of human kindness in a sometimes cruel world. I never heard about the story before I read your novel.  Was it hard to... posted on Sep 29 2019 (4,326 reads)

article from the YES! Media archives was originally published in the Spring 2011 issue of YES! Magazine. So many of us have good ideas for helping the world. But we tuck away our ideas. I did. I’d tell myself that if the idea were any good someone else would have already done it. That I’m not capable of making a difference. I’d sit on my ideas, get on with my life, and then feel angry at the world because the problems I cared about didn’t get solved. I had that fear of going first. Then I took my first hapless step into what I call accidental activism. In 2006, I started a project where I lived as environmentally as possible for a year—with my litt... posted on Nov 18 2019 (6,298 reads)

the waning days of 2015, I decided to mark a milestone birthday by simply saying “thank you.” My plan was to write one letter each week of that year to someone who had helped, shaped, or inspired me on the road to the person I am today. Nothing fancy: just one gratitude letter at time. I later called this letter-writing spree my Thank-You Project—and it would change my life in a profound, positive, and lasting way. I have discovered that writing a “gratitude letter” is one of the most common prescriptions from researchers looking for a way to elevate gratitude levels in their everyday lives. In fact, that’s often how scientists test their theories: T... posted on Dec 9 2019 (8,522 reads)

and sorrowful landscape of loss, and writes: Is beauty itself an intricately fashioned lure, the cruelest hoax of all? […] A wind rose, quickening; it invaded my nostrils, vibrated my gut. I stirred and lifted my head. No, I’ve gone through this a million times, beauty is not a hoax… Beauty is real. I would never deny it; the appalling thing is that I forget it. Art by Carson Ellis from Du Iz Tak?, a lyrical illustrated story about the cycle of life and the eternal cycle of growth and decay Watching a maple leaf twirl to the ground in its final flight, Dillard considers something else we easily forget, as essential as beauty — the i... posted on Dec 21 2019 (12,032 reads)

manipulations of those who foment that disconnection for their own short-term gains. Deep down, somewhere below the roots of consciousness, I sense we all know that in gratitude, in nature itself, we are more powerful than those forces of disconnection. By coming together in gratitude, we rediscover enough shared loving strength to outlast and transcend those negative forces. And we do so in a way not motivated by mere resistance, but by becoming re-centered in the fundamental beauty of life. How does The Nature of Gratitude inspire gratefulness and related actions (love, kindness, compassion, etc.)? How do you think art brings gratitude to life? Tom: Participation with ar... posted on Mar 5 2020 (5,907 reads)

most radical thing any of us can do at this time is to be fully present to what is happening in the world.” For me, the price of admission into that present was allowing my heart to break. But then I saw how, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, despair transforms into clarity of vision, then into constructive, collaborative action. “It brings a new way of seeing the world, freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on earth,” Joanna said. Her lifelong body of work encompasses the psychological and spiritual issues of living in the nuclear age and is grounded in a deepening of ecological awareness t... posted on May 22 2020 (5,215 reads)

what the underlying needs of his father might be, that were leading to this long-held strategy of criticism. This inquiry allowed him to shift the momentum of the discussion with a simple question, "Dad are you concerned and just want me to benefit from your experience? Seeing into his father's needs allowed Thom to halt the patterns of judgment in that moment. To shift from seeing his father as a didactic, know-it-all to a caring parent who wanted to contribute to his son's life, and help trouble-shoot his problems. "It was instantaneous for me, and the thing I noticed was -- he didn't have to change, but I got to hear him differently. Right after that I was hoo... posted on Jul 11 2020 (7,829 reads)

public lexicon the concepts of “othering and belonging.” For powell, "othering" hurts not only people of color, but whites, women, animals and the planet itself, because certain people are not seen in their full humanity. Belonging is much more profound than access; “it’s about co-creating the thing you are joining” rather than having to conform to rules already set. Born in Detroit the fourth son of a minister and sharecroppers, powell has focused his life’s work on how a belonging paradigm can reshape our world for the better. What follows is the edited transcript of an Awakin Calls interview with powell. You can listen to the call in its... posted on Jul 18 2020 (5,614 reads)

following piece has been adapted from Thrive Global I first met Master Mingtong Gu 8 years ago. A friend had invited me to his studio in Petaluma, CA, for a qigong workshop. Qi (“chee”) means life-force energy, gong means cultivation. Slow, easy movements. Low risk enough. And evidence-based. I was a doctor of internal medicine, trained to think critically and methodically, cautious of anything that might fall into the realm of “miracles.”  But I was also desperate. I had suffered for years with complex autoimmune illnesses, including Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and chronic fatigue syndrome—the shadow conditions of Western medicine. Despite conv... posted on Aug 3 2020 (13,442 reads)

For You, Tomorrow For Me.” This is the meaning behind ayni, a living Andean philosophy and practice that awakens a balanced and harmonious relationship between nature and man.  In Andean cosmology, this is expressed through complementary opposites such as male/female; sun/moon; gold/silver. Their interaction is a form of reciprocity called ayni.  One of the guiding principles of the way of life of the Quechua and Aymara people, this equilibrium of exchange and mutuality, which has been practiced since ancient times (since before the Incas), creates a cycle of connectivity and support essential to social and spiritual wellbeing. Anthropologist Catherine Allen... posted on Sep 4 2020 (4,931 reads)

was looking to buy a horse that could be a backyard buddy, a friend to their current quarter horse mare and new member of the family. She didn't want to spend a lot of money, so I suggested we go to the local monthly horse auction to see if we might rescue one of the horses from a potential death sentence. For those of you who are unfamiliar with horse auctions, many times the meat buyers end up taking the unwanted animals at low prices. There are always horses there who have plenty of life left and just need someone to show up and recognize their value, see their heart, and offer them a space where they can just be a loved horse. We found a few older horses who seemed to be dump... posted on Nov 24 2020 (11,695 reads)

your responsibility or the way of showing your gratitude. And so the simple technique that I teach my students is: “When your mouth drops open, click the shutter?” And it is this shock of recognition, this joy,  this wonder that shows itself in great art. To me photography is a way to do just that;  to call out in a moment of awe: “Will you look at that! Will you look at that!” Getting people to receive…to see the gifts they’ve been given.. life itself!  Life along the roadside, with the flowers and the weeds, and the pebbles and the trees, and the sounds of birds! And looking up and seeing the clouds, the light and the shadows. We&... posted on Dec 14 2020 (9,595 reads)

are open to us, we can take responsibility for and help to protect the land that we occupy. The land which in a sense we personify. In modern Western society, we want to preserve everything and we want to live forever. We wage war on old age and write songs about being forever young. Because death is seen as no more, no less than the end of the line—something to be held off and resisted—we live in constant fear of it. But to the Celts, death was inextricably intertwined with life. Every month the moon died and was reborn. Every winter the Sun died and was reborn. The tide came in and the tide receded. To think that you could avoid these natural cycles was not only unthink... posted on Mar 9 2021 (11,033 reads)

alchemical journey into the heart of things was just an old story our fathers, groping in the thicket of their own obliviousness, told their children to get them to sit still. Now, we had fire—we had the tale of an uneasy tryst between a man, a woman, and an apple to help us understand our unflattering origins. Thanks to science, to true knowledge, we had the account of an inexplicable explosion at the beginning of time, the explosion that began this feverish rush of madness we call life. In the grand scheme of things, there was no room for Obatala and his golden rope. There was no room for my people. There was no room for me. I must have understood my teachers supremely well ... posted on Apr 25 2021 (6,481 reads)

of that, that idea of surrender. I don’t help him, I don’t make up the images with him, I may be guilty of that sometimes, but I can’t think of one right now. TS: You mentioned that you didn’t even hear Rumi’s name until you were in your late 30s. I’m curious, when you heard his name or you read your first Rumi poem, did you immediately go up into flames or something like that? CB: [Laughs] TS: I mean, the karma of your life was about to be forever changed. CB: That’s certainly true, but not exactly the first one. That was a Robert Bly conference, where he thought it would be a great afternoon writi... posted on May 29 2021 (5,289 reads)