use of the term “empathy” has been expanding in recent years, from workplaces to prison systems to conversations about gun control. Research into mirror neurons in the 1980s and 1990s brought sharper focus to the notion of empathy, but it has since acquired numerous dimensions, according to Cris Beam, a professor at William Paterson University in New Jersey and the author of  a new book titled, I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy. Empathy is ingrained in the psyche from birth, although sociopaths and psychopaths may be born with a “disability” — that of missing empathy. Empathy skills also can be enhanced. Beam explored the var... posted on Jun 26 2018 (10,600 reads)

Alberto Gutiérrez is known as the “Lord of the Books” to the thousands of book-loving children he’s helped in Bogotá, Colombia. The garbage collector, featured in an AJ+ video posted Monday, takes discarded books from wealthy neighborhoods and adds them to a makeshift library in his home. The collection of over 20,000 books is open to the kids in the low-income neighborhood where he lives on the weekends.  “This should be in all neighborhoods, on each corner of every neighborhood, in all the towns, in all departments, and all the rural areas,” Gutiérrez told The Associated Press in 2015. “Books are our s... posted on Oct 16 2018 (13,049 reads)

something larger than myself.” Rilke’s words left no doubt. He had known this trapped place of grief. He had felt his way in the dark, touching the hard walls, realizing there was no escape from pain. He’d experienced the blocked path and felt the paralyzing thickness of sorrow. You might think a poem describing grief’s trapped darkness would depress me. You might imagine I’d long for poems about life everlasting and continuing bonds. Instead, Rilke’s images of helplessness and human smallness filled me with gratitude. Someone had been where I was and survived. Someone had found beauty in our human anguish. Rilke’s poem helps us endure the... posted on Jul 7 2018 (36,986 reads)

I was 6 years old, I began to go for an hour every day, before school had started, to work with a speech therapist who taught me to put my hand on her throat, and my throat, and then focus on matching her vibration as she would make a sound, because I had to learn how to talk. One of the things I noted right away was that when we matched vibration, I became really connected with her. It was a feeling of connection in my heart, a feeling of love that I would feel for her in those moments." Myron Eshowsky is a shamanic healer, mediator, consultant and author who was born with congenital severe hearing loss that he learnt to adapt into a skill for deep listening. He serves curre... posted on Oct 8 2018 (9,653 reads)

from Intrinsic Hope: Living Courageously in Troubled Times by Kate Davies, New Society Publishers  April 201 Be where you are; otherwise you will miss your life. --Attributed to the Buddha The first habit of hope I’d like to discuss is being present. This means paying attention to whatever is going on and not getting sidetracked or distracted — in other words, living where life is actually happening rather than in our heads. To understand the difference between being present and not being present, think of a time when you felt completely alert and aware. What was happening? Where were you? What did you see and hear? Chances are you can probably remember ... posted on May 3 2021 (59,113 reads)

from: In the Business of Change: How Social Entrepreneurs are Disrupting Business as Usual (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018, and is reprinted with permission from the publishers) Disruptive. Innovative. Creative. An increasing number of social entrepreneurs have come to realize that moving from ideation to success often requires going beyond the usual, the traditional, the expected. They need to shake   things up, turn ideas upside down and infuse their solutions to challenges with a creative twist, new technology and/or a bold rethink. Of course, innovation is not an approach unique to social entrepreneurs. It’s a popular tool for any entrepreneurs who... posted on Aug 10 2018 (7,776 reads)

Orians is a staff attorney at The First 72 Plus, a New Orleans nonprofit founded by six formerly incarcerated people to help other formerly incarcerated men and women navigate the first 72 hours of their release. She is also the co-founder of Rising Foundations, a partner nonprofit that provides pathways to self-sufficiency for formerly incarcerated people, with an aim to stop the cycle of incarceration in low-income communities through small business development and home ownership.   Even as a high school student growing up in Castle Rock, Colorado, and then as an undergraduate at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Orians was attuned to the failure... posted on Jul 16 2018 (7,595 reads)

in the business of creating a miracle here on earth.” – Charles Eisenstein What is it like to be in the midst of a miracle? The idea of a miracle sounds so warm and delicious, the kind of thing you would aspire to experience in a minute, right? Well, in fact, here on earth we are in the middle of miracle school, whether you remember enrolling or not. And, much like life itself (a miracle in its own right), it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. It’s very important to know the signs that one is participating in a miracle so you can see it through and not mess it up. Because miracles inspire panic, not awe, while they are in process. Keep this... posted on Jul 25 2018 (13,176 reads)

a good question, and it’s a tough question because so many are driven by the last opportunities to protect wild areas and to reconnect isolated pieces of nature that I don’t think there is sufficient attention to how to “green” cities. That has a really serious consequence because it’s not only the quality of life, it’s people’s opportunity to react with a little bit of nature. Jonathan Rose: What’s very interesting is if you look at images of the future that came out of what I’m going to call the conquering nature period of time – from the late 1800s through World War II – they were all entirely gray, dark, conc... posted on Jul 30 2018 (8,875 reads)

release of the Mister Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? calls to mind the essential message of Rogers’ long-running children’s program, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Fred McFeely Rogers, who died in 2003, was also an ordained Presbyterian minister. Over the course of three decades on public broadcasting, he brought to millions of children what his faith’s General Assembly referred to as “unconditional love.” In preaching love, Rogers wasn’t just attending to the moral character of his youthful audience. He believed that he was also promoting their health. As he said in 1979, “My whole ap... posted on Jul 19 2018 (20,525 reads)

excerpt is from Ben Goldfarb’s new book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher www.chelseagreen.com Close your eyes. Picture, if you will, a healthy stream. What comes to mind? Perhaps you’ve conjured a crystalline, fast-moving creek, bounding merrily over rocks, its course narrow and shallow enough that you could leap or wade across the channel. If, like me, you are a fly fisherman, you might add a cheerful, knee-deep angler, casting for trout in a limpid riffle. It’s a lovely picture, fit for an Orvis catalog. It’s also wrong. Let’s... posted on Aug 15 2018 (8,009 reads)

have been barraged in the past couple of weeks by a series of major news events – some of them unsettling. President Trump’s trip to Europe left many unsettled about the future of the decades-old U.S. relations with Europe, and a summit with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin left many uneasy when Trump did not forcefully back the findings of American intelligence agencies. This all happens after hysteria on all sides over a Supreme Court nominee and a fountain of bad news about natural disasters, immigration issues, growing addiction rates, and a startling 30 percent increase in deaths of despair. It doesn’t matter which s... posted on Aug 17 2018 (30,593 reads)

multitude of voicemails and text messages from desperate neighbors flooded Jessica Ramirez’s cell phone on a brisk morning in October 2013. Winter was coming. Using social media to reach potential donors as well as those seeking help, Ramirez created a makeshift donation center on the sidewalk outside her Southwest Detroit home. There, the community organizer and her neighbors handed out warm clothing to children and recycled beds, dressers and microwaves to new mothers who needed furniture. When school began the next year, she was at it again, donating reams of school supplies she had collected from businesses and individuals. “Everything was being done out of my home ... posted on Aug 21 2018 (5,987 reads)

USA Today poll revealed that many voters consider their political opponents to be hateful, stupid, or racist. What are the solutions? There are many, no doubt, but here’s one to consider: moral elevation. That’s the “warm, uplifting feeling that people experience when they see unexpected acts of human goodness, kindness, courage, or compassion,” according to psychologist Jonathan Haidt, now the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at the NYU-Stern School of Business. Take, for example, the undocumented immigrant in Paris who saved a child dangling from a balcony. Or the boy who raised over a million d... posted on Aug 28 2018 (10,257 reads)

kids find this hard to believe, but when I was a child I’d never heard of zucchini. We knew of only one kind of summer squash: the yellow crooknecks we grew copiously in our garden. They probably also carried those down at the IGA in summertime, if any unfortunate and friendless soul actually had to buy them. We had three varieties of hard-shelled winter squash: butternuts, pumpkins, and a green-striped giant peculiar to our region called the cushaw, which can weigh as much as a third-grader. We always kept one of these on the cool attic stairs all winter (cushaw, not third-grader) and sawed off a piece every so often for our winter orange vegetable intake. They make delicious pie... posted on Sep 14 2018 (13,882 reads)

land on the red planet this August. Much has changed since the heady early days of spaceflight, when, fueled by cold-war rivalries, the United States and the Soviet Union spared no expense to send the first astronauts into orbit and eventually to the moon. The last manned mission to the moon was in 1972. Since then, NASA has focused on the space shuttle program and sending unmanned robotic probes to the planets, as well as the Hubble Space Telescope, which has transmitted never-before-seen images of the far reaches of the universe. Is space travel a pointless luxury or a psychic necessity? How will venturing still farther into space change our view of ourselves? Are we ready to do so... posted on Sep 16 2018 (13,817 reads)

is the transcript of a talk that Rev. Bonnie Rose delivered at an Awakin Circle in the summer of 2018.] I think I am going to speak about 'Sacred Imperfection' today. I was sitting here meditating, thinking why did I pick something so hard?  It occurred to me that my whole life, particularly as a minister, there's been a lot of pressure to be a certain way my whole life. I've been trying to get it right and finally be perfect enough to be a really good minister. And what I've discovered in the last couple of years as I've grown more and meditated more deeply -- also through a lot of the values that I've practiced because of ... posted on Sep 4 2018 (8,669 reads)

resident of Vietnam, Giang Dang came from a traditional background in development.  After some years of working in a multi-national aid organization, she started to notice a need for depth of local connections and started Action for the City in Hanoi.  Showing how small scale actions can affect change through community's inter-connections, Giang is a champion of minimizing consumption of resources, reducing transportation emissions, and promoting green spaces and organic urban agriculture.What follows is the edited transcript of an Awakin Call with Giang. You can listen to the recording here. Xiao: Today I'm very excited to be moderating this phone ca... posted on Sep 5 2018 (3,745 reads)

Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. A prolific writer, his books include War Is a Lie, When the World Outlawed War, War No More: The Case for Abolition, War Is Never Just, A Global Security System: An Alternative to War, and his most recent, Curing Exceptionalism: What’s wrong with how we think about the United States? What can we do about it? All are available on his website. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio and is a three-time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.&... posted on Jan 28 2019 (6,169 reads)

discovered that breathing more deeply helps us center ourselves, but did you know why? A friend recently emailed me an article by Dr. Shawna Darou, ND in the 11/30/15 issue of UPLIFT magazine (http://upliftconnect.com), on the mechanics of how it works. Included are exercises that can help us reduce inflammation in the body, as well as jack up a flagging immune system. The secret is to activate the Vagus nerve, which travels all the way from the brain to the digestive system, operating via the parasympathetic nervous system. So if you or someone you know complains of digestive disturbances, high blood pressure, depression or some inflammatory condition, don’t ... posted on May 8 2019 (16,764 reads)