offer children of Tibet. He said to her, "You must go into Tibet and help rural people. When you are on the path of service, all doors will open to you." That meeting deeply impacted the trajectory of Arlene's life of service. In 2004, she left behind her clinical practice to dedicate her life to serving pregnant women living in the most vulnerable conditions in the most remote places of the world. By 2009, she started One Heart World-Wide, which spread its life saving "network of safety" model to 60,000 women in remote villages in Nepal, the Copper Canyon in Mexico, and deep into the Amazon jungle in Ecuador where few dared to go. What follows is an edited transcr... posted on Jul 11 2017 (7,455 reads)

entrepreneur, meditator, and activist for the common good. He is also the founder of "ReLoveUtion" -- a renaissance of compassionate societies. What follows is an edited transcript of an Awakin Call interview with Joserra, moderated by Rina Patel. You can read the full transcript or listen to the audio here. Rina Patel: I want to jump right into things and ask you what a Re-Love-ution is? Joserra Gonzalez: I had an experience in India, two years of volunteer work, and I was touched by many of the things I could see there. I can say I have never received so much love. It really touched me deeply how people treated me, how everyone gave me everything withou... posted on Jul 21 2017 (8,483 reads)

and saddening. The failure of those students in every aspect of their lives sickened the heart. And along came a new principal, a principal who—it’s relevant to note—came from the Philippines, a culture which has an inherent respect for things spiritual in a way American culture does not. And he brought the teachers together and said to them, in substance, as his very first proclamation as principal, that: We have to start to understand that the young people we are working with have nothing of external substance or support. They have dangerous neighborhoods. They have poor places to live. They have little food to eat. They have parents who are on the ropes and b... posted on Aug 25 2017 (15,508 reads)

listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Albert Flynn DeSilver. Albert is an internationally published poet, memoirist, novelist, speaker, and workshop leader. He served as Marin County's first Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2010. His work has appeared in more than a hundred literary journals worldwide. He's the author of the books Beamish Boy: A Memoir, Letters to Early Street, and Walking Tooth and Cloud. With Sounds True, Albert Flynn DeSilver has written a new book called Writing as a Path to Awakening: A Year to Becoming an Excellent Writer and Living an Awakened Life, where he invites the reader on a year-long journey of growth and... posted on Sep 20 2018 (10,529 reads)

for a while. And those moments of uncertainty - will the experiment, conducted for the thousandth time with some tiny modification, finally yield the desired result? - can be quite dramatic. Films about painters can be spectacular, as they go about recreating every stage of a famous painting's evolution, from the first penciled line to the final brush-stroke. Music swells in films about composers: the first bars of the melody that rings in the musician's ears finally emerge as a mature work in symphonic form. Of course this is all quite naive and doesn't explain the strange mental state popularly known as inspiration, but at least there's something to look at and listen to. ... posted on Dec 1 2017 (8,316 reads)

expert Robin Dreeke and co-author Cameron Stauth talk about their book on building trust. Building good teams starts with having strong relationships based on a foundation of trust. But how does one develop that trust at work or in life? Counterintelligence expert Robin Dreeke, who spent decades as a senior FBI agent, knows how to make strangers trust him enough to be recruited as spies. And it’s not about deception or being a ‘yes’ man. In the book, The Code of Trust: An American Counterintelligence Expert’s Five Rules to Lead and Succeed, Dreeke and co-author Cameron Stauth share simple steps to generating trust from all sorts of people. T... posted on Feb 5 2018 (12,425 reads)

Her recent lecture at University of California Berkeley’s Law School, “Law’s Middle Way: Mindfulness and Restorative Justice” typifies her skill at bringing alternative and controversial approaches to powerful institutions. I interviewed Sujatha in Berkeley, California in the Spring of 2016. What follows is an adapted excerpt of our conversation. Sebastian Robins (SR): Can you tell us about your spiritual and religious beliefs and how they intersect with your work? Sujatha Baliga (SB): I was raised Hindu and was a very devout Hindu child. I ultimately lost my faith because of the abuse I was suffering in my home and my inability to reconcile h... posted on Mar 5 2018 (18,424 reads)

find your prince or princess" principle. I found out what didn't make me happy, and that continuous search led me into what we would call "spiritual realms," life's bigger picture, and which finally integrated more into the everyday life. TS: Let's say someone is listening right now and they have a sense in some way of feeling disillusioned in their life. Maybe a relationship has ended that was an important relationship, or there's some sense that their work in the world needs to shift. It's really interesting that you pointed out—I hadn't thought about it—the word itself, "disillusioned," that we're dropping our ill... posted on Jul 13 2018 (13,492 reads)

novel, but its great defender. If a critic points out an overindulgence here, a purple passage there, well, then Clive explains this is simply what he intended. It was all to achieve a certain effect. In fact, Clive doesn't mind such criticism: nit-picking of this kind feels superficial compared to the bleak sense he first had that his novel was not only not good, but not true. No one is accusing him of so large a crime. The critics, when they criticise, speak of the paintwork and brickwork of the novel, a bad metaphor, a tedious denouement, and are confident he will fix these little mistakes next time round. As for Maria Gomez, everybody agrees that she is just as you... posted on Mar 14 2018 (11,863 reads)

Health called “the ‘bible’ for crisis communication.” In 2017, Prager published a different kind of book, What the Dolphin Said, about her journey to understand the non-verbal communication dolphins use to bring healing, comfort, and indeed, joy, to children and adults with all kinds of disabilities, as well as to able-bodied divers, sailors, surfers, and others who encounter them in the ocean. As she became more familiar with the dolphins and their work with human patients, she became convinced that some of them are trying to convey, not just another form of communication, but an urgent message of empathy and connectedness that they ho... posted on Mar 28 2018 (16,965 reads)

get to meet a lot of amazing, powerful leaders in our work here at Conscious Company — and yet some people stand out even more from that rarified group. Lynne Twist is one of those standouts. She’s a rare combination of driven and playful; flexible, yet clear. She brings a laser-sharp focus to living her values. She’s relentless in her pursuit of changing the dream of modern society, and it’s not all talk — she’s authentic about living it day to day. She sees the core worth of every person she’s with, whether they’re a billionaire or a poor orphan (and she’s spent plenty of time with each). If you’re with her, she... posted on Dec 7 2018 (10,541 reads)

and to have that daily — have a ritual of writing. MS. OLIVER: Well, I don’t — as I say, I don’t like buildings. MS. TIPPETT: Yeah. MS. OLIVER: So I was — the only record I broke in school was truancy. I went to the woods a lot with books. MS. TIPPETT: Right. MS. OLIVER: Whitman in the knapsack. But I also liked motion. So I just began with these little notebooks and scribbled things as I — they came to me. And then worked them into poems later. And always I wanted the “I.” Many of the poems are “I did this. I did this. I saw this.” I wanted them — the “I” to be the possi... posted on Jan 18 2019 (45,708 reads)

professor of pastoral care and counseling at Candler School of Theology. “All of our experiments in some way deal with the power of seeing yourself and the power of seeing others,” he said. “If you cannot see the people around you as individuals made in the image of God, there is no way that you can hear what they are saying as meaningful.” Until that happens, any change that is created will not be sustainable, he said. “The primary foundations of our work are creating spaces where we can see and hear, and then, with that foundation laid, we begin envisioning possibilities for change,” Ellison said. Ellison’s research focuses on cari... posted on May 20 2019 (6,109 reads)

a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students. She also helped start the Resilience Project here at Stanford. Abraham Verghese is an esteemed professor of medicine and physician. He founded and directs the Presence project at Stanford. And he’s also, just in case you haven’t heard, a bestselling, globally renowned writer of fiction and nonfiction. Of course, there is his wonderful novel Cutting for Stone but also two beautiful autobiographical works, The Tennis Partner and My Own Country. And I would say that, among other things, these books touch deeply on the art and challenge of being alive and on the complexity and costs ... posted on Jun 7 2019 (6,130 reads)

by Zoë Keating] Katy Payne:By golly, they’re singing, of all things. They’re doing something that we recognize as singing. And so what that has done for me is to make me feel that what lies ahead to be discovered is absolutely limitless. We are not at the pinnacle of human knowledge. We are just beginning. Ms. Tippett:I’m Krista Tippett and this is On Being. [music: “Seven League Boots” by Zoe Keating] For more than two decades, Katy Payne worked with the Bioacoustics Research Program at Cornell University’s Laboratory of Ornithology. She’s best known for creating the Elephant Listening Project in dense forest areas of Centr... posted on Oct 22 2019 (4,970 reads)

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 entirety her... posted on Jul 18 2020 (5,720 reads)

to the Earth? Here, Hang Mai, a Vietnamese natural farmer and social entrepreneur, who together with her partner Chau Duong mid-wifes those wanting to make this transition to the village, reflects on this question. I belong to the baby-boomer generation in Vietnam after the end of the war in 1975. My generation experienced the difficult life in the city after the war. We did not have enough food, clothing, or even clean water. After school, all of us children were involved in housework like standing in line to collect water, carrying water home by foot or by a wagon. We all had to find a way to fetch enough water for our family. Once I asked my dad: “If the war happens ag... posted on Jul 8 2021 (3,518 reads)

find that in the ancient world in general. The Buddhist sayings are transcribed in Pali and then re-transcribed into Sanskrit or other languages, for instance. And some sayings are dated as being more historically closer to the Buddha than others, certainly. The same is true, really, with the study of Christianity. So while everyone agrees that Jesus spoke Aramaic, scholars don’t agree about what the earliest texts are. I’ve essentially tried to get around this problem in my work by saying that we agree that Jesus spoke Aramaic, so let’s look at the sayings that are attributed to him both in the Gospels—that is, the Gospels in the Canonical Bible, as well as t... posted on Jul 28 2021 (7,472 reads)

The Untethered Soul in Action, an online course many people report to be utterly life-changing. You can find out more at michaelsingerpodcast.com. That’s michaelsingerpodcast.com, and you can save 15% off any Michael Singer program available through Sounds True when you use the code Singer15 at checkout. Again, that’s Singer, one, five. And now, Ceasing to Be Caught in the Waters of Mind with Michael Singer. MICHAEL SINGER: Jai Guru Dev. Jai masters. Eventually, if you work enough on yourself, you’ll find that what’s happening is that you are resting on your mind like you would float on water. I imagine a bird who’s fallen into the water and the wi... posted on Dec 31 1969 (128 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 (4,253 reads)