The Extra-Ordinarily Committed Life of Lynne Twist, by Rachel Zurer and Meghan French Dunbar
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 (10,778 reads)

Pope Francis' Encyclical: Hearing the Cry of the Earth, by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Earth “now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her.” So begins Pope Francis in his powerful and long-awaited encyclical on ecology. “The earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor.” Pope Francis chose to be called after a saint for whom love for all of God’s creation was central to his life, and all creatures were his brothers and sisters. Speaking in the voice of this saint “who loved and protects creation,” he calls for a moral response to prevent the “unprecedented destruction of the ecosystem,”—that we urgently need to recognize the consequences of, ... posted on Dec 16 2018 (8,075 reads)

12 Truths I Learned from Life and Writing, by Anne Lamott
seven-year-old grandson sleeps just down the hall from me, and he wakes up a lot of mornings and he says, "You know, this could be the best day ever." And other times, in the middle of the night, he calls out in a tremulous voice, "Nana, will you ever get sick and die?" I think this pretty much says it for me and for most of the people I know, that we're a mixed grill of happy anticipation and dread. So I sat down a few days before my 61st birthday,and I decided to compile a list of everything I know for sure. There's so little truth in the popular culture, and it's good to be sure of a few thing... posted on Feb 12 2019 (848,809 reads)

How Conscious Leadership Can Unlock a Better Workplace, by Rachel Zurer, Meghan French Dunbar, Diana Chapman
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 (8,533 reads)

Breaking Out of Our Resistance Bubble, by Tami Simon
Simon: You're listening to Insights at the Edge. Today is a very special broadcast. Sounds True produced a 30-part series that aired in the fall—called Waking Up in the World—that looked at the intersection of the spiritual journey and social change. One of my very favorite presentations from that series was with CNN host and bestselling author Van Jones. Quite honestly, Van Jones blew my mind when he talked about breaking out of our "resistance bubble"—our kale-eating and Prius-driving subculture; a subculture that many people I know live in—and instead working to find common ground with those that have different viewpoints from... posted on Mar 5 2019 (8,550 reads)

The Difference Between Fixing and Healing, by On Being
follows is the transcript of an On Being interview between Krista Tippett and Rachel Naomi Remen. KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: Rachel Naomi Remen is one of the wise people in our world. I quote from my conversation with her all the time. She’s a physician and a lyrical writer whose long struggle with Crohn’s disease has shaped her view of life and medicine. Living well, she says, is not about eradicating our wounds and weaknesses but understanding how they complete our identity and equip us to help others. The way we deal with losses, large and small, shapes our capacity to be present to all of our experiences. There’s a difference, she says, between curing and heal... posted on Jan 15 2019 (14,409 reads)

On Compassion, Equanimity and Impermanence, by Shinzen Young
People's Pain, Not Their Suffering Just as insight has many facets, so also with service. I would like to talk about just one aspect -- compassion. Compassion is practiced in two ways: subtly and overtly. You can subtly serve any person with whom you interact by allowing their poison and pain to resonate deeply within you, and experiencing it completely so that it does not turn into suffering within you. This is the healthy alternative to both callous indifference and enervating enmeshment. This subtle service is a natural extension of the self-liberation process. You purified your own pain by willingly experiencing it with mindfulness and equanimity. Now, in daily interac... posted on Jan 25 2019 (15,058 reads)

Who Gets to Cry?, by Trebbe Johnson
Radical Joy for Hard Times: Finding Meaning and Making Beauty in Earth's Broken Places by Trebbe Johnson, published by North Atlantic Books, copyright © 2018 by Trebbe Johnson. Reprinted by permission of publisher.  “Why don't you switch channels and see if there’s anything else on?” That’s what the husband of a friend of mine would say during those weeks in the spring of 2010, when oil from BP’s Deepwater Horizon well was spewing into the Gulf of Mexico and his favorite news channel showed him yet another image of dying wildlife: a brown pelican struggling to raise heavy wings drenched in oil; a pod of dolphins plowing through vi... posted on Apr 1 2019 (6,521 reads)

The Magic of Moss and What it Teaches Us, by Maria Popova
without feeling,” Mary Oliver observed in her magnificent memoir of love and loss, “is only a report.”In Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (public library) — an extraordinary celebration of smallness and the grandeur of life, as humble yet surprisingly magical as its subject — botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer extends an uncommon and infectious invitation to drink in the vibrancy of life at all scales and attend to our world with befitting vibrancy of feeling. One of the world’s foremost bryologists, Kimmerer is a scientist blessed with the rare privilege of belonging to a long lineag... posted on Mar 29 2019 (7,047 reads)

Who is Mother?, by Matt Hopwood
midwife in Oslo, Norway. | Karen Beate Nøsterud/norden.org via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 2.5 DK. "Who is there in this world but Mother? I am Mother, you are Mother, Mother is mine, Mother is yours, Everything is Mother." Traditional Baul Song from Bengal. Since 2012 I have walked thousands of miles throughout the United Kingdom and spoken with people around the world, asking them to share their experiences of love and connection. What are the loving narratives of their lives? What does love mean to them? As the journey has grown so the experiences have deepened, and the sharings with others have deepened too. What started as a personal jour... posted on May 14 2019 (5,838 reads)

Ceres Community Project, by The Gratefulness Team
think we all crave connection. Ceres gives a lot of people a way to create it…Caring for each other, especially through the vehicle of food, is a gift for both the receiver and the recipient. Here in our feature “Grateful Changemakers,” we celebrate programs and projects that serve as beacons of gratefulness. These efforts elevate the values of grateful living and illuminate their potential to transform both individuals and communities. Join us in appreciating the inspiring and catalyzing contribution these Changemakers offer to shaping a more grateful world. Ceres Community Project The Ceres Project energizes communities by linking what we eat and how w... posted on Apr 5 2019 (4,780 reads)

Kazu Haga: The Creation of Our Beloved Community, by Bela Shah
following piece is based on an August 2nd, 2014 Awakin Call interview with Kazu Haga. You can listen to the full recording of the interview here. Kazu Haga’s dream is that one day, children in every school in the United States will not only learn traditional subjects like math and history but also how to practice nonviolence. As they grow up in our society and confront conflicts that will inevitably arise, they will know how to relate to each other as human beings instead of enemies. Kazu is the founder of the East Point Peace Academy, an organization that is dedicated to bringing about a culture of peace. Just close your eyes for 20 seconds and imagine what a culture of... posted on Apr 8 2019 (6,545 reads)

Solar Sister, by The Gratefulness Team
in our feature “Grateful Changemakers,” we celebrate programs and projects that serve as beacons of gratefulness. These efforts elevate the values of grateful living and illuminate their potential to transform both individuals and communities. Join us in appreciating the inspiring and catalyzing contribution these Changemakers offer to shaping a more grateful world. Solar Sister Solar Sister trains and supports women to put clean power in the hands of people in rural African communities. This women-led movement works to recruit, train, and support entrepreneurs who earn income by selling clean energy products directly to people without power. Since its founding in 2010... posted on May 22 2019 (6,344 reads)

Three Ideas. Three Contradictions. Or Not., by ted.com
name is Hannah. And that is a palindrome. That is a word you can spell the same forwards and backwards, if you can spell. But the thing is --  (Laughter)  my entire family have palindromic names. It's a bit of a tradition. We've got Mum, Dad --  (Laughter)  Nan, Pop.  (Laughter)  And my brother, Kayak.  (Laughter)  There you go. That's just a bit a joke, there.  (Laughter)  I like to kick things off with a joke because I'm a comedian. Now there's two things you know about me already: my name's Hannah and I'm a comedian. I'm... posted on Feb 11 2020 (6,425 reads)

Befriending Ourselves: An Invitation to Love, by Kristi Nelson
are the one you have been waiting for. ~ Byron Katie Everything flourishes in the nourishment of our appreciation. If we are interested in greater flourishing in our lives, it will surely serve us to surrender the burden of incessant goals, shoulds, aspirations, and the need for accomplishments. We can release the litany of ideas about what we must have and need to fix, who we should be, and whose permission we might require before we can be grateful for who we are. We can even set down many of the confines of how we have learned to identify ourselves in the world. We do not need to do, have, or be anything to be worthy of receiving our own acceptance and kindness. Instead, we can tu... posted on Jul 28 2019 (9,038 reads)

Wild Imagination, by Geneen Marie Haugen
16, 2019 John Atkinson Grimshaw, Midsummer Night, or Iris, 1876 “Go forth onto the land”—and reanimate the world Descended from the indigenous hunter-gathers of the European arctic, I am an uprooted – or unrooted, or partially rooted – human being, currently re-homed in the American Southwest. Part of my family’s story was deliberately misplaced. Like the colonized indigenous people of North America and other continents, my Sami ancestors ingested profound shame for their “uncivilized” ways. Decades ago, when I started to wonder if there was something unspoken in my family story, I asked my mother if our Finnish ancestry might ... posted on Jul 25 2019 (8,400 reads)

Gratefulness Embraces Parkinson's, by Tim Roberts
was diagnosed with Parkinson’s just over three years ago when I was 50. Receiving the diagnosis from a matter-of-fact doctor was a traumatizing experience, and I felt that my life and my family’s identity had collapsed. Life was difficult and still is difficult, yet something amazing is beginning to happen. I have slowly started to shift my attitude from the anger, fear, and loneliness brought on by the Parkinson’s and the grim predictions of a Parkinson’s future to a more body-based feeling of gratefulness for the wholeness of life as I experience it second by second.  I have discovered not only profound wonder and indebtedness for the gift of my life and r... posted on Aug 4 2019 (6,805 reads)

It Could Be Worse, by Michael Eselun
imagine that the very last person to survive the end of the world as we now know it, will at some point turn around and say to no one there at all—“Damn!  But I guess it could be worse!”  It’s a pretty darn universal coping strategy I find. And an effective one.  It demands that we step back from our current circumstances and get a larger perspective. And it sort of insists that we muster some kind of gratitude for whatever we do have, slapping us into an “attitude of gratitude.” In my work as a cancer chaplain, at the Simms/Mann-UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology, I would say that upwards of 90% of the folks I’ve seen over the y... posted on Aug 20 2019 (10,220 reads)

The True Life of the Forest, by Silver Donald Cameron
conversation is presented courtesy of TheGreenInterview.com, a website that has produced more than 100 feature-length interviews with many of the world's greatest environmental thinkers and activists. More about the site here.  Dr. Diana Beresford-Kroeger, botanist, medical biochemist, writer and broadcaster, combines medical training with a love of botany. She is an expert on the medicinal, environmental and nutritional properties of trees, and author most recently of The Global Forest. When her parents died, she was raised by an uncle who taught her everything from physics to Buddhism and Gaelic poetry. She was one of only ... posted on Sep 12 2019 (6,941 reads)

Giving Directions, by Akiko Busch
has been made in recent years of the manner in which people ask for directions—women do, men don’t; women will admit to being lost, men generally won’t. Of much greater interest to me is the way people give directions. MapQuest and GPS notwithstanding, we all need to pull over and ask someone for help sometimes. The odd and overtly contradictory instructions that are then invariably offered charm me so thoroughly that I often end up glad to have gotten lost. Providence, Rhode Island, is a city in which I am prone to wrong turns, and on my last trip there, I made the inevitable stop at a bodega to find out how I might find my way out of town and back to Route 6. The ... posted on Sep 22 2019 (3,875 reads)