Under the Volcano, by Charlotte Du Cann
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 (5,497 reads)

Uncolonising the Imagination, by Charlotte Du Cann
thing about Finnish is that it’s not linear, it’s orbital,’ said the ticket collector on the 10:35 train to Leeds. ‘The language comes from the land. You have to find the object in the sentence and then everything else around it will make sense.’ Here is the orginal conversation I held with the mythologist Martin Shaw for the latest Dark Mountain journal #11. We ran a shortened version for a DM blog series on the 'mythos we live by' in March, asking six writers who work with story to explore what a mythological response to an age of converging crises might look like. Follow us as we traverse a territory that includes underworld&... posted on May 13 2018 (7,646 reads)

Seeing the Whole , by Andrew Zolli
world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” W.B. Yeats Human perception is a fickle, paradoxical instrument. Our visual sense, while more acute than that of many species, is hardly the keenest in the animal kingdom. An eagle, for instance, has eyesight so sharp it can spot small prey more than three kilometers away. The next time you happen upon one in the wild, know that it saw you coming from far away, and waited patiently for you to arrive. Birds are also “tetrachromats”; in addition to the spectra that are visible to humans, they possess a fourth kind of cone in their retinas, which allows them to see u... posted on Aug 5 2018 (10,725 reads)

The Sunray Peace Village, by Elissa Melaragno
EASTERN CHEROKEE TRADITIONS RESTORED IN THE MOUNTAINS OF VERMONT FROM THE TRAIL OF TEARS TO THE LEGALIZED OPPRESSION OF THEIR SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, THE EASTERN CHEROKEE PEOPLE HAVE A HISTORY FILLED WITH VIOLENCE AND PAIN. THIS, HOWEVER, IS A STORY OF RESILIENCE, TRUTH-TELLING, SANCTUARY, AND SERVICE. Nestled in a valley within the Green Mountains of Vermont is a place called Odali Utugi—The Sunray Peace Village. Odali Utugi means Hope Mountain. On this beautiful 27-acre site, Sunray Meditation Society has, since 1987, been creating a Peace Village for today’s world, modeled after the Cherokee Peace Villages of the last century. It is a place where people of a... posted on May 31 2018 (9,700 reads)

Elucidating Human Consciousness Through Art, by Linda Codega
receiving his doctorate in neuroscience in 2011, artist Greg Dunn made an unconventional decision: to dedicate himself to his art. A long time observer of human consciousness, his images of the human brain have been displayed in museums all over the United States, including the Franklin Institute. He recently spoke with the Garrison Institute about his art, philosophy of the mind, and why he compares his work to that of Zen artists. How did you get started as a professional artist? My original plan was to go the academic route. Then I started painting the first year into my neuroscience degree. At some point, I realized that I just wasn’t producing anything in the... posted on May 7 2018 (11,826 reads)

I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy, by Knowledge @ Wharton
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 (10,738 reads)

6 Habits of Hope, by Kate Davies
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 (59,463 reads)

A Miraculous Life of More, by Anna Alkin
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 (13,329 reads)

Healing Civilization Nature's Way, by Tom Anderson
ability to thrive in a changing world depends on a major overhaul of the way cities are built and organized, and a dramatic increase in the amount of land protected for the sake of biodiversity. Those were key components of the Garrison’s Institute’s recent symposium, Pathways to Planetary health (April 17-19, 2018), along with regenerative economics and pervasive altruism. In the third of our follow-up conversations, we talked to two of the leading thinkers and practitioners, Thomas Lovejoy and Jonathan F.P. Rose, about our cities and biodiversity. Tom Lovejoy’s credentials are almost too numerous to recount. He did seminal work in the Brazilian rai... posted on Jul 30 2018 (8,995 reads)

Cooking Stirs the Pot for Social Change, by Korsha Wilson
arms hurt as I walked through Brooklyn on a cold December night. I was carrying a 10-pound, party-size tray of macaroni and cheese with three cheeses, cooked to just a touch beyond al dente, with a breadcrumb topping. I was headed to a community potluck and had spent the better part of that morning making (read: babying) a mornay sauce, cooking the pasta, and baking the mixture in the oven. As I walked the six blocks from the subway station to the venue where the meeting was being held, my arms started to shake. I started to wonder why I didn’t just pick up a bag of chips and a jar of dip and call it a day, but then I remembered the excited messages I received when I told my fellow ... posted on Jul 9 2018 (8,088 reads)

4 Ways to Train Your Brain to Feel Better, by Laurel Mellin
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 (30,930 reads)

Change the Worldview, Change the World, by Drew Dellinger
years after Thomas Berry’s “The New Story,” new generations are seizing on the power of narrative. I was sitting in a classroom in Assisi, Italy, with one of the leading environmental thinkers of our time, and he was talking about the power of story. “It seems that we basically communicate meaning by narrative,” he said. “At least that’s my approach to things: that narrative is our basic mode of understanding.” In that summer of 1991, Thomas Berry (1914—2009) was a 77-year-old sage; a Catholic priest—though never quite comfortably—a cultural historian, and a scholar of world religions, retired from teachi... posted on Sep 19 2018 (12,037 reads)

What Does a Compassionate Workplace Look Like?, by Nir Eyal, Monica Worline
Worline is Executive Director of the CompassionLab at the University of Michigan, a research scientist at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University, and co-author of Awakening Compassion at Work, forthcoming in February 2017 from Berrett-Koehler. She sat down with author and entrepreneur Nir Eyal to discuss why empathetic teams make better business deals, how more caring leaders can help prevent corporate scandals, and the steps for cultivating compassion at work. This conversation originally appeared in Heleo: In-Depth Conversations with the World’s Leading Thinkers. Nir Eyal: What is the business case for c... posted on Sep 13 2018 (7,650 reads)

How Does Change Happen?, by Jason Angell
Angell at Longhaul Farm in the Hudson Valley, New York. Credit: Theo Angell. For most of my life I‘ve been a political activist, believing the story that social transformation comes through radical legislation pushed along by brave elected leaders. I once imagined becoming one of those leaders myself, and had a mental picture of giving a speech to a massive group of people in what looked like the National Mall in Washington DC.   I know I inherited that picture from my father, who harbored dreams of being a politician who had something true to say to people that would lead them out of the wilderness. He ran for Congress in 1972 unsuccessfully in the same commu... posted on Oct 28 2018 (7,379 reads)

Farewell Badger, by Tesa Silvestre
Books, 1992 Have you ever read Badger’s Parting Gifts? It tells the story of an old Badger who knows he will be dying soon, and worries about how his friends Mole, Frog, Fox, and Rabbit will cope with his departure after he goes down “the Long Tunnel.” The rest of this beautifully illustrated book revolves around the touching and creative ways in which Badger’s friends end up cherishing his legacy, and working through their loss. It is one of my favorite children’s books, and it has a very special place in my heart because it was first read to me on the night before my mother died. She was a gifted psychotherapist who worked fo... posted on Dec 6 2018 (12,107 reads)

Live In Your Soul: 10 Insights From A Visionary, by DailyGood Editors
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 (9,919 reads)

Stephen Jenkinson Reimagines Dying, by Pierz Newton-John
Newton-John on Stephen Jenkinson Having taught classes on grief and dying, I’ve read many books on the subject of death, but nothing quite like Stephen Jenkinson’s Die Wise. From the moment I opened it, I was galvanised, not just by the depth of its insights, but by its remarkable prose style. Eschewing the cool, objective tone of most modern non-fiction, Stephen adopts a storyteller’s voice: passionate, poetic, at times elliptical and difficult, but always engaged at the level of heart and gut. For all the obvious intelligence, there is nothing academic here: these are the outpourings of a man who has grappled with death intimately, in the trenches of ... posted on Oct 19 2018 (12,519 reads)

How Silence Leads Us To Awe, by Matthew Fox, Lama Tsomo
Reverend Matthew Fox is a former Dominican priest in the Catholic Church. In 1993, he was expelled by the Vatican for espousing feminism and other progressive ideas in his Institute for Creation Spirituality. Lama Tsomo is an American-born secular Jew who first made a career as a psychotherapist. In her forties, she embraced Buddhism, and began study at home and abroad. She was ordained a lama in the Namchak lineage in 2005. Fox and Tsomo’s new book, The Lotus & the Rose, features a series of conversations in which the friends explore the essential principles shared by Buddhism and Christianity, as well as the differences that distinguish them.  Matthew... posted on Oct 20 2018 (10,620 reads)

Conscious Business & the Spiritual Wisdom of Sounds True, by Nadia Colburn
Simon is the founder and CEO of Sounds True, a multimedia publishing company that Tami founded in 1985 at the age of 22 with the mission of disseminating spiritual wisdom. Today, still faithful to its original mission, Sounds True has grown to have nearly 110 employees and a library of close to 2000 titles featuring some of the leading teachers and visionaries of our time.  Sounds True is a pioneer in the conscious business movement, and Tami leads in a way that values their multiple bottom lines, which include relationship and mission as well as profit.  Tami also hosts Insights at the Edge, a popular weekly podcast where she has interviewed many of today’s... posted on Nov 24 2018 (6,473 reads)

Where Homework Means Building Affordable Housing, by Deonna Anderson
year, beginning in the fall, a group of third-year architecture students from Auburn University take up residence in a small rural Alabama town to begin building a house. In the winter, when a new semester begins, they are replaced at the Newbern, Alabama, project site by another cohort of 16 students who finish up the job and prepare the house for its new occupants. The 20K Home Project began 13 years ago as a challenge to architecture students at Auburn to build a $20,000 house, with $12,000 in material and $8,000 for labor. The idea was to create “the perfect house” for needy families in rural areas where dwellings are often substandard and where affordable build... posted on Nov 30 2018 (3,984 reads)