have to learn to recognize your own depth.” In 1985, mythologist and writer Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904–October 30, 1987) sat down with legendary interviewer and idea-monger Bill Moyers for a lengthy conversation at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch in California, which continued the following year at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The resulting 24 hours of raw footage were edited down to six one-hour episodes and broadcast on PBS in 1988, shortly after Campbell’s death, in what became one of the most popular series in the history of public television. But Moyers and the team at PBS felt that the unedited conver... posted on Jun 5 2015 (19,328 reads)

Palmer’s Spectacular Commencement Address on the Six Pillars of the Wholehearted Life “Take everything that’s bright and beautiful in you and introduce it to the shadow side of yourself… When you are able to say, ‘I am … my shadow as well as my light,’ the shadow’s power is put in service of the good.” In 1974, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher and Oxford alumnus Chögyam Trungpa founded Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado — a most unusual and emboldening not-for-profit educational institution named after the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa and intended as a 100-year experiment of combining the best... posted on Nov 3 2015 (59,949 reads)

a world that has been relentlessly primed to favor the myths of independence and certainty over the truths of interconnection and mystery, the practice of reverence can seem foolish and unfashionable. But no one here exists independent of all others. And the vast complex of our knowledge, though impressive, is erected on the shores of an ocean of unknowns. Reverence is a glad acknowledgement of these realities. It does not require you to be religious, or part of an organized faith. If there are any prerequisites for reverence they are only this: The capacity for wonder and love. And an awareness in the heart, of the dignity and worthiness inherent in this earth, this life, this moment... posted on Apr 23 2016 (17,939 reads)

I first began hearing about Mark Dubois, his name was mentioned with a note of awe. “You’ve got to meet him, Richard!” People like giving me suggestions and I’m grateful for them; this one, however, had a different energy about it. But then nothing further happened. It wasn’t until two years later that I met Dubois at a ServiceSpace gathering. One doesn’t forget meeting Mark. First, he’s taller than almost anyone you’ve ever met. And second, you receive the longest hug from a stranger you’ll ever run into. It makes an impression. The man is a force, an embodiment of a special dimension of love that manifests in an irrepressibly physi... posted on Feb 13 2017 (10,798 reads)

in an age where we seem to be more connected than ever, research shows that we are lonelier than ever. Inspired by the writings of Thoreau, Steinbeck, and the teamwork of his community garden, David Levins decided to break down the barriers of isolation, one conversation at a time. In 2012, he initiated A Kind Voice, a nationwide, volunteer-run phone line where people call in anytime for one-on-one conversation. Simply for the sake of sharing and being kind to one another. In this Awakin Call conversation with Bela Shah, we had the privilege of hearing David’s insights and stories from sowing seeds of down-to-earth, human-to-h... posted on Aug 7 2017 (9,493 reads)

Life of One’s Own: A Penetrating 1930s Field Guide to Self-Possession, Mindful Perception, and the Art of Knowing What You Really Want “I did not know that I could only get the most out of life by giving myself up to it.” “One must know what one wants to be,” the eighteenth-century French mathematician Émilie du Châtelet wrote in weighing the nature of genius. “In the latter endeavors irresolution produces false steps, and in the life of the mind confused ideas.” And yet that inner knowing is the work of a lifetime, for our confusions are ample and our missteps constant amid a world that is constantly telling us who we are an... posted on Jan 1 2018 (13,852 reads)

Your Whole Self to Work: How Vulnerability Unlocks Creativity, Connection, and Performance (Hay House Inc., 2018, 224 pages). Portions of this essay are excerpted from the book with permission from the publisher. Have you ever wanted to speak up about an issue or situation at work, but were afraid to? Or wanted to share something about yourself, but worried people might judge you? Or pretended to understand something professionally that you really didn’t? If you’re anything like me and most of the people I know, you could easily answer yes to some of these questions. However, to truly succeed in today’s business world, we must be willing to bring our&nb... posted on Sep 30 2018 (8,174 reads)

is the story of an ordinary man. He was an outcast, a landless labourer who had to trek across an entire mountain every day, just to reach the farm that he worked on. It was a treacherous trek, and led to accidents often. His people needed help, there were lives at stake every day. He decided, if no one would help his people, he would. Then, without pausing for a thought, he went ahead and did just that with his bare hands. This is the story of Dashrath Manjhi: the man who moved a mountain, so that his people could reach a doctor in time. The Comunity of Gehlour It was 1960. Landless laborers, the Musahars, lived amid rocky terrain in the remote Atri block of G... posted on Oct 9 2018 (19,450 reads)

hours or seconds, she couldn’t tell or remember. It was her secret for many, many years, through the difficult times at home. She felt she couldn’t share it with anyone-- because how could they believe that she disappeared with the water when she was under water? Part II Many, many moons later when she was an adult and didn’t believe anymore in mermaids, she found herself again on the beach. She looked at her feet, sand, people, sea, and suddenly all became clear... the images were there but she was gone...she and all became the same…The mermaid in the story, and the story in the mermaid…It’s that, looking at itself, through itself, as i... posted on Jun 24 2020 (6,038 reads)

then translated into English by somebody else—then you turn it into a Coleman Barks translation. Can you tell us how that process goes for you? CB: Well, it’s a little mysterious. I go into a kind of a trance, reading the poem in its scholarly translation, and try to—well, [there’s] nothing marvelous about it, it’s just kind of a trance that any reading involves—where I try to feel what spiritual information is trying to come through Rumi’s images and then I try to put that into an American free-verse poem in the tradition of Walt Whitman and many others. So that’s the general liniments of the process. TS: Do you ever h... posted on May 29 2021 (5,369 reads)

all seen the images of violence coming from Ukraine, as the Russian invasion continues. They’re hitting Anastasiia Timmer harder than most of us, because she was born and raised in Ukraine. Now a criminologist at the California State University, Northridge, Timmer studies why people commit acts of violence. “Growing up in Ukraine and learning our history shaped my desire to better understand causes of behavior, beliefs, and generational trauma,” she says. â€¨ She and her team of Ukrainian, Russian, and American researchers went to Ukraine in 2017, after the Russian invasion of the Ukrainian provinces of Crimea and Donbas. At that ... posted on Apr 23 2022 (3,171 reads)

of today's society is designed through the lens of financial wealth, but is our world richer for it? Nipun Mehta uses that question as a springboard to make a compelling case for alternative forms of wealth that are often overlooked -- like time, community and attention. Drawing on his personal journey with ServiceSpace, as well as fascinating research and real-world examples, below is the transcript of an inspiring TEDx talk that invites listeners to consider a catalytic question: what forms of wealth do we care to amplify?] Decades ago, one of my friends was volunteering with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, India, and one of these major donors walks into the place, checks ... posted on Apr 19 2016 (51,622 reads)

Our deepening connection led us to collaborate on an art project of our vibrantly colored, large scale watercolor paintings. These works would speak to the heart of our planet’s climate crises. We had the opportunity to see many excellent climate change exhibitions that brought the devastating reality of what was happening to the earth to the public eye.  Unfortunately, the responses to these exhibits often resulted in depressing people so much they looked AWAY from the images. I understand that the pain of what they saw activated fear and their nervous system reacted by going into a fight or flight response. Helen and I knew we needed to explore a different way forw... posted on Sep 26 2023 (3,242 reads)

Tanenhaus is worried about the future of his hometown. As a fourth generation resident of Binghamton, New York, and executive director of Binghamton’s housing authority, he’s watched his city of 50,000 residents transform from a thriving upstate New York community with a strong manufacturing base to one with a shrinking population and rising crime rates. Like other towns around the U.S. hit by the current economic downturn, Binghamton is experiencing an increase in drug use and delinquency among its youth, which troubles Tanenhaus. “The neighborhoods are deteriorating,” he says. “There are a lot of people working hard to improve the quality of life here. B... posted on Jun 2 2011 (11,485 reads)

psychology of spaghetti sauce and why too many jams make you lose your appetite. Why are you reading this? How did you decide to click the link, load the page and stay? How do we decide to do anything at all and, out of the myriad choices we face each day, what makes one option more preferable over another? This is one of the most fundamental questions of the social sciences, from consumer psychology to economic theory to behavioral science. Today, at the risk of meta-irony, we look at not one but five fantastic books and talks that explore the subject. Take your pick(s) — if you can, that is.   JONAH LEHRER HOW WE DECIDE Among other things, Jonah Lehrer writes the excell... posted on Oct 10 2011 (36,282 reads)

with something wonderful, so they partnered with a handful of top-notch designers to create murals that are just that — absolutely wonderful. Today, these inspired murals can be found in more than 60 libraries across the five boroughs, featuring the work of designers and illustrators cherry-picked by the Pentagram team — from a series of photographic portraits by Dorothy Kresz, to a visual interpretation of words through silhouettes by Rafael Esquer, to books hidden in images in the iconic illustration style of Christoph Niemann. Needless to say, we love the idea. Design is only as valuable as the change it ignites — in our understanding of beauty an... posted on Dec 11 2011 (8,721 reads)

dangerous belief in our culture is that we can't change. We’ve all heard the disempowered statements: “He’s just grumpy. He can’t change that.” or “I will always be anxious. It's the way I was born.” While we most certainly have genetic predispositions, the brains of individuals’ young and old can change in amazing ways.   Neuroplasticity is a fancy way of saying that our brains can change. We are not victims of our neurons or genes. We are empowered creators of our mental states. The erroneous belief that we are "set in stone" can stop people from trying to change and take away their responsibility. In the s... posted on Apr 23 2012 (147,122 reads)

Descartes has to do with C. P. Snow and the second law of thermodynamics. When legendary theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking was setting out to release A Brief History of Time, one of the most influential science books in modern history, his publishers admonished him that every equation included would halve the book’s sales. Undeterred, he dared include E = mc², even though cutting it out would have allegedly sold another 10 million copies. The anecdote captures the extent of our culture’s distaste for, if not fear of, equations. And yet, argues mathematician Ian Stewart in In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed ... posted on May 8 2012 (15,454 reads)

parent knows the bittersweet ache of watching their children grow and leave the nest, but what happens when your baby is not yet two years old and can already run as fast as a car? No one knows exactly how a one-month-old cheetah cub made her way under the fence of the Ol Pejeta chimpanzee sanctuary in Kenya in October of 2010. It’s no small miracle that sanctuary workers spotted her before the apes could make a meal out of her, yet great concern set in after an extensive search turned up absolutely no trace of the cub’s natural mother. With nowhere else to turn, sanctuary staff loaded the little cheetah onto a jeep and they se... posted on Nov 18 2012 (31,677 reads)

year, hundreds of thousands of new graduates enter the business world, eager to climb the corporate ladder. Their progress on the early rungs of that journey will often be determined by qualities like hard work, determination, knowledge and technical proficiency. But business consultants Alan S. Berson and Richard G. Stieglitz argue that those same qualities prove less helpful at higher rungs on the ladder, and may even be one's downfall if they are not balanced by a very different set of leadership qualities. They sum up the thesis of their new book, Leadership Conversations: Challenging High-Potential Managers to Become Great Leaders, like this: "As you move into upper leade... posted on Jul 2 2013 (36,438 reads)