that it really comes to home. It's like, ok, bam! Ruptured brain aneurysm. Within one hour, unresponsive. Has emergency surgery. Survives. But now is in a coma. What's next? There are no immediate answers forthcoming. In one dark situation we had a scan. It was an angiogram that she had had done, and we wanted to get a second opinion on it. So I called up a friend of mine who knew a very prominent interventional neuroradiologist in town. So we sent these films -- or these digitized images -- to him. We called him back in the afternoon, after he had looked at him. My brother was on the phone talking to him. I just hear my brother's side of that conversation. My brother's ... posted on May 16 2018 (6,824 reads)

is not an individual property, but is a property of an entire web of relationships. It is a community practice. This is the profound lesson we need to learn from nature. The way to sustain life is to build and nurture community. A sustainable human community interacts with other communities — human and nonhuman — in ways that enable them to live and develop according to their natures. Sustainability does not mean that things do not change. It is a dynamic process of coevolution rather than a static state. Because of the close connection between sustainability and community, basic principles of ecology can also be understood as principles of community. In part... posted on Feb 28 2018 (10,580 reads)

a mountain in Wales in the teeming rain, we sit in a yurt packed with people, the five of us, on hay bales, dressed in black suits and bowler hats. One of us has a pack of cards up his sleeve, another an African folktale, another a guitar and a song by Nick Drake from the 1970s. I have oak leaves in my hatband to signify an instruction circa 600 BC from the Sibyl who once guarded the door to the Underworld in the ‘Campi  Flegrei’ outside Naples. A link to the pre-patriarchal ‘uncivilised’ world, she guides a lineage of poets to the territory under the volcano where all deep transformations take place: Virgil,Dante, T.... posted on May 22 2018 (5,423 reads)

of Washington, Ricardo Martin Brualla and his colleagues have developed software tools that harvest countless digital snapshots that we post on the Internet and synthesize them into films that show the aggregate change in one place over time. For the first time in our history, broad access to these kinds of tools and imagery make visible, for anyone, the hidden dynamism of the planet—a dynamism that we spy occasionally, and only liminally, in our everyday life. These images reveal not only change, but also vast diversity. Look upon the Earth long enough, and you will find almost every adjective fulfilled, somewhere. The world is beautiful, of course. But... posted on Aug 5 2018 (10,657 reads)

was the event that kept happening that switched it to patriarchy? What happened all throughout history? First, women were revered, and then it was patriarchy, and all male gods. What he looked at throughout all of history was whenever literacy was introduced, that seemed to kind of rewire people's minds into sort of a left-brain—he knows that it's much more nuanced than left- and right-brain—but kind of rewiring society to be more patriarchal. Then, with the advent of images that we're seeing with electromagnetism, and with television, and film, and the internet, that women are rising once again. He wrote a New York Times bestselling book about it ... posted on Aug 11 2018 (6,115 reads)

the field who really believe that humans come in as little savages, and we have to spend all our time civilizing them. There's another school of thought that says we come in altruistic, compassionate, and honorable, and it's bad circumstances in life that turn some people into negative forces in the world. But our natural state is not that, so it's a huge difference of approach to who kids are. Our materials assume that kids are compassionate and altruistic. One of my personal images on that is a hospital nursery: When one newborn begins to cry, others will cry, and I hear them saying, "Somebody's in trouble here. Come help." There's a natural alliance in ... posted on May 10 2018 (11,834 reads)

the busy-ness of our contemporary life, we are drawn into ceaseless activity that often separates us from the deeper dimension of ourselves. With our smartphones and computer screens, we often remain caught on the surface of our lives amidst the noise and chatter that continually distract us, that stops us from being rooted in our true nature. Unaware we are drowned deeper and deeper in a culture of soulless materialism. At this time I find it more and more important to have outer activities that can connect us to what is more natural and help us live in relationship to the deep root of our being, and in an awareness of the moment which alone can give real meaning to our every... posted on Jul 5 2018 (19,445 reads)

In some of my earliest memories, I’m perched between two branches of a plum tree that grew in front of my house. To climb, I’d grip the lowest branches and stretch my foot as high as it would reach, pulling myself up to sit comfortably in my little throne of branches. There, I’d peer through the pale purple blossoms, across the sidewalk, admiring the tops of cars. I don’t remember any fear—just the scrape of callused feet on bark; the triumph of successfully hoisting my knee onto a branch; the comfort of my hands circling that final limb as I reached the perfect nestling spot. Growing up with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, I was anxious a lot. ... posted on Oct 7 2018 (10,461 reads)

wise abbot decided to teach his students about the nature of light and darkness.  He brought them to a desolate cave and sealed the door.  It was completely dark.  “Find a way to dispel the darkness,” he told them. One monk found a large stick. “I will beat the darkness,” he said.  That will fix it.” The second monk found a broom and said, “I will sweep the darkness away.” The third monk pulled out a shovel, saying “I will dig a deep hole and the darkness will escape.” Nothing worked.  The darkness persisted. Then a fourth monk found a candle. He lit the candle and revealed other candles stash... posted on Oct 27 2018 (8,447 reads)

Veh reading letters and comments from DailyGood readers and KarmaTube viewers to her 96-year-old kindergarten teacher Betty Peck In 2012 not long after ServiceSpace founder Nipun Mehta gave his viral commencement speech, Paths are Made by Walking, ServiceSpace received the following email: Dear Keepers of Servicespace,  I thoroughly enjoy your work. Just today I forwarded your graduation speech to my old class...Meanwhile I want to alert you to a remarkable woman, Betty Peck, who at 90+ exemplifies so many of the qualities you write about in your columns. She happens to be my mother. I highly recommend coming to tea at her home and meeting her.  Wi... posted on Sep 29 2018 (9,942 reads)

dedicated this Doodle on their homepage in India and several other countries to Dr. V's centennial, October 1st 2018.  When a crippling disease shattered his lifelong ambition Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy chose an impossible new dream: to eliminate needless blindness. There are 37 million blind people in our world, and 80% of this blindness is needless -- meaning a simple operation can restore sight. By 1976 Dr. V (as he came to be known) had performed over 100,000 sight restoring surgeries. That same year, he retired from government service at the age of 58, and founded Aravind, an 11-bed eye clinic in south India. No money. No business plan. No safety net. Over t... posted on Oct 1 2018 (9,830 reads)

The Abundance of Less: Lessons in Simple Living from Rural Japan by Andy Couturier, published by North Atlantic Books, copyright © 2017 by Andy Couturier. Reprinted by permission of publisher. Introduction to the 2017 Edition Much of what you will read in this book was originally published in 2010 under the title A Different Kind of Luxury. This revised version with its new format and many new photographs has been updated at the end of each person’s profile with how their lives have changed in the intervening years. Given the book’s setting in Japan, and the environmental activism of the people in it, I felt it important to write about how they have understood and... posted on Nov 28 2018 (8,933 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 (10,656 reads)

TE LAND TRUST AND PLANTING JUSTICE Corrina Gould co-founded the Sogorea Te Land Trust to reclaim Ohlone land in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the San Francisco Bay Area, demand for land seems endless. Property values are sky-high, rents are backbreaking, and people just keep coming. Over 2 million more are expected to settle here by 2040. Bulldozers and backhoes reshape neighborhoods. Cranes dominate the horizon. Land, with a home or high-rise plopped atop, can build a fortune for its owner. Today’s land rush is nothing new. For more than 200 years, there has been a run on Bay Area real estate — a relentless wave of colonization, the... posted on Dec 18 2018 (5,449 reads)

1997 year, Diana Chapman was a stay-at-home mom teaching scrapbooking in Ann Arbor, MI — “as mainstream a life as they come,” she says. Then her brother-in-law, the CEO of Monsanto at the time, gave her a gift that would transform her life: $5,000 to use as she pleased. She had always been interested in personal development and human consciousness, so when he made the suggestion that she use the money to learn from the best coaches he knew, psychologists Gay and Katie Hendricks, she jumped on the opportunity. After studying with the Hendrickses for a decade and taking their work into a business context, Chapman is now one of the world’s foremost experts on ... posted on Feb 13 2019 (8,467 reads)

a hike in the woods because it has a similar feel to me. You feel at home there. Exactly. And if you believe in evolution, it is our home. I’m a firm believer that genetically these are our places. And when we shut ourselves off from these places. I just don’t think it’s healthy. We need to get back out into these places and remember that that’s what feels good. And it feels good for a reason. There was some interesting research recently about people looking at images of cities and looking at images of nature and how the brain responds with a certain level of agitation to cityscapes but that it doesn’t respond to nature in the same way. It’s just... posted on Feb 18 2019 (6,622 reads)

interviewed Fred Rogers, creator and host of television’s Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, by telephone a few years before he died. The occasion was the publication of his new book. Mister Rogers arrived on television after I grew up but I’d watched his show with our young daughter. She and I both preferred the often frantic Sesame Street, finding the Neighborhood a bit slow, sometimes a bit boring. Yet we kept watching it because we sensed something real and true behind the words and deeds of Fred Rogers and his friends and puppets on the show. Still, when I picked up the handset to call the man, I didn’t know what to expect. What would he b... posted on Mar 17 2019 (9,391 reads)

us a different ground on which to stand as we make ethical determinations. I think there's a connection between a sense of aesthetics and a new understanding of what biology is telling us about the nature of networks in life. Those two things are connected, and beauty forms a bridge between an understanding of the world that is rooted mostly in scientific analysis and one that can connect to questions of ethics and to finding the good in life. Pavi: Your work in the forest brings up images of greenery, the wind going through your hair, and tuning in, and yet you were bitten, stung, scratched, and scorched! Can you speak a little bit about the roles of those polarities? David: ... posted on Mar 22 2019 (4,988 reads)

process with the doctor as an assisting guide and midwife. A doctor who insists on retaining his or her protected role as “healthy healer” remains separate, defending him or herself against the ultimate helplessness that lurks, phantom-like, in all of our lives. Cut off from his or her own feelings, such a doctor will not be able to join with the sufferer. Missing will be the crucial collaboration in containing, processing and integrating the patient’s horrible sensations, images and emotions. The sufferer will remain starkly alone, holding the very horrors that have overwhelmed him and broken down his capacity to self-regulate and grow. In a common therapy resulting... posted on Feb 20 2019 (10,361 reads)

“My mother and father aren’t present in the home, so I’m the one who cooks dinner for my younger siblings. I help them with their homework. I’m the healer in my family.” If they had been, as Parker Palmer said, identified by their roles, there’s no way that conversation would have unfolded. But they were connecting based upon the gifts of their souls, which provide an entryway into conversation. We also utilize artwork, with hundreds of provocative images placed upon the wall. We invite people in groups of two or three to move around the room and engage in small conversations with strangers about three questions: Who do you see when you look ... posted on May 20 2019 (6,229 reads)