of making a living and a way of serving others but has also been my teacher. In reading Small Is Beautiful I realized that so much of what my business has taught me can be found in the great lessons of E. F. Schumacher: the benefits of keeping your business a small human-scale enterprise, focusing on the needs of workers rather than only on what they produce, using a management style that balances freedom with order, building sustainable local economies, and respecting the land and nature. The effects of industrialization that worried Schumacher decades ago have gotten even worse: namely, wealth inequality and the growing degradation of our environment. Today much of what I c... posted on Apr 17 2018 (7,723 reads)

those lines. It just really stuck with me that being outside and enjoying the outdoors but also protecting the outdoors was something that I wanted to do more of and keep in my life.  So what are the wild places that you love most? Where are the places that you gravitate back to? Oh man. It’s so hard. I mean I really do have a very special place in my heart for the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state which is where Gordon lives and where I really learned to listen to nature. And specifically one of our national parks called Olympic National Park. In the United States, I don’t know if you’ve ever been here before, but we have, there’s a lot of bad... posted on Feb 18 2019 (6,588 reads)

stems from the fact that culture is such an isolated field, and that art is even more isolated; an ivory tower in the field of culture surrounded first by the whole complex of culture and education, and then by the media which are also part of culture. We have a restricted idea of culture, which debases everything; and it is the debased concept of art that has forced museums into their present weak and isolated position. Our concept of art must be universal and have the interdisciplinary nature of a university, and there must be a university department with a new concept of art and science."      At UC Davis, such a department actually exists.   Richar... posted on Apr 30 2016 (10,038 reads)

someone in their home with their child still has a certain amount of control available. RW:  The idea that we’re born with a digital gene is disturbing. There’s a way that technology creates its own thoughts, so to speak, and pretty soon people’s thoughts are being defined by the technology. Mary:  Exactly. This is exactly what Neil Postman called “Technopoly,” the way technologies shape the symbols we think with, what we think about and the very nature of the community in which we think. I’m paraphrasing.      One of the things that needs to be understood about this digital technology is that you can’t do anything ... posted on Jul 11 2016 (21,070 reads)

all call home. PLANT A TREE Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree." A tree is a gift to future generations. And it is quite a gift. Trees have their own language and provide hubs for environmental regeneration. Tree-lined streets are healthy streets. A tree can be an alternate cathedral, helping us reclaim a sense of peace and being firmly rooted in nature. On a larger scale, planting trees can combat climate change, celebrate life, and restore vanishing wilderness. RECYCLE Many of Earth's resources are... posted on Apr 18 2017 (11,496 reads)

of living make the horses the ideal model for us to learn from at this and any time in our lives: Foundation, Flexibility and Fellowship. ​Before we go any further may I invite you to take a moment, breath deeply and enter the paddock in the imagination of your heart. A small herd of gentle horses grazing peacefully in the warm summer sun. You are supported by an equine professional as needed. Together you make your way to a small grove of trees and sit down in the cool shade on nature’s carpet of green. You settle in to watch the quiet herd do what they do best. Live in the moment, in tune with nature, their own energy and each other.  â€‹ This is the... posted on Jul 21 2021 (6,573 reads)

yes. My father and then my dad’s teacher, Rilke, has been with me for a while. And that phrase, 'homecoming,' what does that evoke for you? Yeah, homecoming. To feel comfortable, to feel truly, truly comfortable. And in that context, can you share what lies at the heart of what you do? What is it that you're attempting to offer into the world? You know, I think it's contact, actual contact with oneself, with other people and especially with everything in nature. Of course, many people find it easier to have contact with nature, but real contact with other people, with what you're feeling-- that things really ring true. That's what I've bee... posted on Oct 19 2021 (3,070 reads)

a few minutes, I would then ask people to take a vote so we could learn from our collective wisdom. Invariably, a consistent response would come back: Whether it was schoolteachers in India, business leaders in Brazil, students in Europe and the US, a common response came back. Roughly three-quarters of audiences would vote that we are in our adolescence as a species. When I asked people to volunteer their reasons for that estimate, common responses were: “We are rebelling against nature, trying to demonstrate our independence and superiority.” “We are behaving recklessly, without regard for consequences because we think we are immortal.” “We are seeking... posted on Jan 6 2021 (5,331 reads)

with David Whyte. David Whyte is a passionate speaker, poet, and the author of the Sounds True audio learning program, Clear Mind, Wild Heart, and a new program from Sounds True, What to Remember When Waking: The Disciplines of an Everyday Life. David is also a featured presenter at our 2013 Wake Up Festival: A Five-Day Experience of Transformation, August 14th-18th in Estes Park, CO. In this conversation, David and I spoke about exile as a core human competency, the conversational nature of reality, and vulnerability as enhanced perception. David also shared with us some of his poetry, and talked about what it might mean to tap into the invisible support that surrounds us. Here... posted on Jul 7 2014 (40,449 reads)

humans are born selfish? Think again. Dacher Keltner reveals the compassionate side to human nature. Humans are selfish. It’s so easy to say. The same goes for so many assertions that follow. Greed is good. Altruism is an illusion. Cooperation is for suckers. Competition is natural, war inevitable. The bad in human nature is stronger than the good. These kinds of claims reflect age-old assumptions about emotion. For millennia, we have regarded the emotions as the fount of irrationality, baseness, and sin. The idea of the seven deadly sins takes our destructive passions for granted. Plato compared the human soul to a chariot: the intellect is the driver and the ... posted on Nov 5 2014 (22,603 reads)

they're true. Because if people believe that they're true, they create ways of living and institutions that are consistent with these very false ideas. And that's how the industrial revolution created a factory system in which there was really nothing you could possibly get out of your day's work, except for the pay at the end of the day. Because the father -- one of the fathers of the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith -- was convinced that human beings were by their very natures lazy, and wouldn't do anything unless you made it worth their while, and the way you made it worth their while was by incentivizing, by giving them rewards. That was the only reason anyone... posted on Nov 26 2015 (19,166 reads)

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 without expectations, with so much love and patience. And since that experience for me it is about this: how can I bring the spirit of love to everywhere I am?. Our nature is this- how can we spread the love? This is the Re-love-ution, an opportunity to spread love. Recently we just had a 3-day retreat, "Head, Heart, and Hand" retreat. People left ... posted on Jul 21 2017 (8,551 reads)

the math jumps out of the page, kind of grabs us by the lapel, slaps us in the face, and says, “Look at me. What this is telling you is there might be parallel universes.” And we say, “Oh, that’s curious. Let’s think about that, investigate it.” So that’s the typical rhythm of the way in which these ideas surface. This idea that you’re referring to comes out of quantum mechanics, which is this new way of describing the fundamental particles of nature that emerged in the early part of the 20th century. And the new idea is that you can only predict the probability of one outcome or another. Newton wouldn’t have said that. He would say, ... posted on Dec 3 2018 (5,853 reads)

clouds, smoke, streams, the wind-blown waves of sand on the beach, the pattern of branches against the sky, the shape of summer grasses, the markings on rocks, the movement of animals. Even solid bones have lines of flow on their exterior and in their spongy interior. Spiders build their webs, caterpillars their cocoons in water-like spirals. The rings in an exposed log look like a whirlpool. And looking up in the night sky we can see a river of stars. Alan Watts once remarked to me, “In nature, the shortest distance between two points is never a straight line, but a wiggle.” One need only follow a deer through the woods to verify this; animal trails meander like dried stream be... posted on Aug 17 2020 (9,377 reads)

patriarchy at almost every turn.”[i] Julian insisted that the feminine penetrate every aspect of our understanding of the divine, all dimensions of a triune God. She is a forceful spokesperson for the “motherhood of God” in our day when matricide, the killing of girls and women, wisdom, creativity and compassion, a matricide that culminates in the despoiling and crucifixion of Mother Earth, is going on everywhere…. She lays out her case for the goodness and grace of nature during a time of pandemic when so many were turning their backs on ever trusting nature again. In Julian’s day, people drew very different conclusions from the pandemic--namely, that natu... posted on Nov 13 2020 (10,578 reads)

a very male way of looking at the world. I have to say, with all due respect to my gender, it is really how men look at it. They get in this Promethean mode like Bill Gates and say, “Well, we’re going to fix it, and we’re going to get new technologies to fix the technologies that have caused the problem.” And every time you get a technology to fix all technological problems, you get new technological problems. You don’t fix it at all. You just change the nature of the problems. Rather than looking at it as an “it” out there somewhere, which doesn’t exist—it’s a figment of the imagination, and the ego, so forth—we... posted on Sep 29 2021 (2,966 reads)

unconditioned Now.      These three - beauty, truth, and goodness - being spoken of together has held up over the millennia. There’s something intuitively whole about the way they co-create each other and co-emerge and co-exist. I do think they open the door. When we experience it, it stops the momentum, and it opens up; it cuts right through into that vastness. And he talked about it reminding us of home; I would say yes, it reminds us of the true home, our inner nature. RICHARD:  That’s beautiful, Aura. Pavi, I know you have some questions. Pavi Mehta:  Yes, I think are three domains in which I have questions.  At this time [in ... posted on Oct 14 2021 (3,412 reads)

even some rocks, were seen as sacred and alive—as was anything that moved. These ancient views are well documented in ancient creation myths. In China, people asked, “Where does this world come from?” It’s born out of a vast cosmic egg—an organism. In South America the myth said that the world comes out of the body of a serpent—an organism. Same in the Ancient Near East. The entire world was enchanted. With Galileo there’s a new great idea of nature that emerges. We go from the idea of nature as one vast living organism to one vast mechanism. Galileo takes a child’s toy, a telescope, and he aims it at the heavens and he doesn’t... posted on Nov 10 2021 (11,813 reads)

hardly any sound as powerful as a pipe organ; the resonating sounds fill every inch of the room. Whether you’re most familiar with the sound from the heart racing intro to The Phantom of the Opera or the classic bridal march, there’s a magic to the sound of an organ. So, what if that acoustic power was combined with an even more awe-inspiring power, nature to create the world’s largest instrument? In a cave below the hills of Luray, Virginia there is an acoustic wonder that combines music and nature into a singular, incredible experience. The Great Stalacpipe Organ in Luray Caverns turns the Earth into a magical instrument producing one of the most unique con... posted on Apr 25 2024 (4,659 reads)

marking the ever-shifting boundary between the known and the unknown. Paraphrasing the Socratic paradox, Gleiser writes: Learning more about the world doesn’t lead to a point closer to a final destination — whose existence is nothing but a hopeful assumption anyway — but to more questions and mysteries. The more we know, the more exposed we are to our ignorance, and the more we know to ask. Echoing Ray Bradbury’s poetic conviction that it’s part of human nature “to start with romance and build to a reality,” Gleiser adds: This realization should open doors, not close them, since it makes the search for knowledge an open-... posted on Mar 16 2015 (18,442 reads)