Just Shine

As people around the world begin to wake up and commit to help build a sustainable, peaceful and just world the single most-often asked question is “So what should I do?”  Answering this head on is to fall into a trap, because helpful as it seems to offer suggestions this immediately limits folk from using the full range of their own creativity and individuality.

The compromise I chose in writing Your Planet Needs You was to point out some key principles which can steer us, but still offer plenty of scope for interpretation; one of these is the subject of this post, Just Shine.  Here’s an extract from the book

What a wonderful force of positive energy we are in the world.  We already know the power of positive thoughts when we are optimistic, helpful and encouraging to others; we know how good this makes others feel.

So every day is a chance to shine and to see this light reflect back in other people

Just Shine starts with being constructive, always finding the good in people and situations, however difficult this might be.  It means celebrating Possibility as well as Success; it means the glass is half-full

Just Shine is role modeling the good humour, kindness and courtesy that we enjoy so much in other people

Just Shine means being a source of love and encouragement in the world, leaving others feeling better than you found them

Imagine how far the ripple spreads when you smile or show a simple kindness to someone else.  Imagine a room chock-full of smiles, a town brimful of kindness or a world overflowing with love.  Isn’t that the Future Worth Choosing?

I know the power of a smile, no-one I know practices smiling better than my wonderful wife, Sand and I get to constantly see the effect that oh-so-simple gesture has on people.  So gather yourself, be prepared for people to assume you are i) on drugs, ii) in love or iii) not from round here, and go for it.  Just shine.

Traveler’s Dilemma

So I’ve just returned from a month long,4-country trip taking the Awakening the Dreamer message around South East Asia.  The results are new or enlarged communities of active citizens committed to amplifying this message in Hong Kong, China, Malaysia and the Philippines.  The further ripples from these same folk are already being felt in South Africa, India, Singapore and doubtless other places too.  In the context of our work, awakening the citizens of the world as a an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilled and socially just human presence, this seems quite a result.  But there is always a cost to consider in this, the cost of all this travel.

For the flights alone I have caused 4.41 tonnes of carbon dioxide to be emitted into the upper atmosphere through my 19 866 miles of flying. There are several ways to look at this; one is to consider what an annual carbon ration would be per person, and estimates here are mostly in the range 1.5 – 3.0 tonnes per person – yikes.  Another view posits that if we are to collectively emit no more than 250 billion tonnes of carbon in order to reduce the probability of a 2 °C warming to 25 per cent, then for today’s population we each have only 36 tonnes left that we can ever emit . . . ever!  So I’ve used up 12.25% of my lifetime’s carbon ration in just this one trip.

A couple of questions remain

Is this justifiable? There is no way to answer this objectively, we can only weigh the balance between the value to our long-term future of this process of awakening and linking active citizens and the environmental cost of so doing.  What do you reckon?

Can I offset this environmental damage? Yes is the answer.  In fact one of my flights has already been off-set as a generous donation by Gregers Reimann in Kuala Lumpur – thanks Gregers.  And the work of the Pachamama Alliance helps to preserve nearly 2 million acres of pristine tropical rainforest, a valuable carbon sink as well as the forest home to the Achuar people.

Today as we are ever more acutely aware of the health of our planet home any active that isn’t directly restorative to the environment can be called raise questions for which there are no easy answers. I’ll leave the last words to Seize the Day, a radical British folk band . . . . . and to you, what would you do?

What’s Missing in Being the Change

Its often said that we’re preaching to the choir.

There are millions of people who ‘get’ the urgency of the current situation and want a change, they see it ad believe it is possible, and still there is one question that nags away in my thinking -

What will it take to turn the good intentions of so many people around the world into a positive and unstoppable force for change?

Perhaps the adage lies in the most used and most appropriate quote for these time, from the Mahatma Gandhi, “you must be the change you wish to see in the world” and in the way we hold “being the change”.  You see I think we’re still holding this as an option, a nice thing to do, an awareness I usually have when I go to the supermarket or a dinner party conversation.

Its as if we advocate change but want to continue to enjoy the benefits of the unchanged world, our comforts and choices, the 5-planet lifestyle, its just too hard to give these up.  So to assuage the guilt we cloak it all with a veil of progressive thought. We’ve got all the opinions ready to roll off our tongues, we can discuss the good, the bad and the horribly ugly of the world we live in with the best of them, showing appropriate amounts of outrage or distaste.  We even recycle and use cloth bags, can’t you see how green I am?

Being the change isn’t an option any longer, its has to become the necessary, ever-present companion to what is otherwise just verbal posturing and an empty promise.  Its uncomfortable but nonetheless true that if we’re not part of the solution we are part of the problem; and this is in every choice and every purchase and every action.  Being the change is disengaging from the world that doesn’t work, not just following who’s doing what for climate change but getting to grips with not flying, not driving, turning the heat and the air-con off.  Being the change is disengaging from all of the patterns of oppression which we are tied into, with our purchases or our habits and our speech and our own nasty prejudices (hands up if you’re free of these), being the change is disavowing violence in our own lives as well as the policies of our governments.  Being the change is stopping consumption, not merely refocusing the urge toward ‘good’ purchases.

Being the change is now a question of integrity.  You see 5 years ago when this thinking was new it was OK to play with these opinions but today, as experts tell us the time we have to turn this around is ticking down real fast if you are indulging in any of this thinking there is an imperative to “do something”

So let’s advocate people start their own active disengagement from the old dream, let’s up the ante on this.  And of course, to take this stand we need to be committed to our own active disengagement, being the exemplars of all we say.

Most of all being the change is not discretionary, its a pre-requisite and an ever more urgent response

The Killing Fields of Planet Earth

There is some information which is hard to really grasp, no matter how many times we hear it.  The impact you and I are having on the animals, plants and other life forms that share space with us on Planet Earth is just this kind of information.

I could toss out a few facts;

• we’re right in the early phases of a mass extinction
• half of all other life forms might be extinct in 50 years
• there are only about 3 000 tigers left in the world
• approximately 20 species go extinct every day

Its still hard to get.  What’s more all of this is driven by the human population, that’s you and me! When land is transformed for human use, farming, mining, urban sprawl or new roads, we either destroy the habitat where other species live or we gobble up their food and water.  Hungry humans now consume 40% of all organic matter that grows on Earth, starving other species into extinction.

You and me are, unfortunately, inextricably linked into this.  This might be news to us – I was never told this as I was growing up – but every single thing I consume is part of this systematic extermination.  That’s right – everything I consume, my food, clothes, the electricity that lights the house, the petrol, diesel or jet fuel that moves me around, that wonderful and gratifying little something I just bought to make me feel better, my gizmos and gadgets, they are all based on using up the world around us as a one-off giant binge.

Its not surprising we don’t grasp this readily and easily, its very frightening to wake up to the impact we have on the world around us.  We seldom see the consequences of our lifestyle as we enjoy it, and you can bet the producers, manufactures and retailers don’t want you to know at what cost they are making profit from our consumption.

Its also very abstract – I don’t have a relationship to the tigers, butterflies, fungi and bacteria that I’m killing when I visit the shops.  I don’t really understand how important biodiversity is to me, I don’t have to think about pollination when I bite an apple, let alone the zillions of hidden processes that contribute to the delicate balance of life on Earth – but I depend on them all.

So what!  I say Live Lightly on the Planet.  Wendell Berry says;

We can not live harmlessly or strictly at our own expense; we depend upon other creatures and survive by their deaths. To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation. The point is, when we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament; when we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration…in such desecration, we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.

The Great Recycle

When Sand and I moved to the USA we set ourselves a Challenge: to equip our new home without using the transaction of money and for ALL ‘gifts’ to be given to us with intention and love.

Could it be done?

The answer was – for sure

We built a wonderful new home together in our rented apartment, a haven of love and peace, a grand experiment in recycling and all for $0.00. We proved that there is enough spare and unwanted “stuff” out there already to equip a home, many times over, and enough love and generosity to supply everything we needed.  What’s more we learned invaluable lessons about simplicity, the differnce between our wants and our needs, and about what really counts in a home, and in a life.

As we left the  UK  to move to the States we  were  able to  recycle the largest part of all our worldy goods (2 homes full of ’stuff’ which had been collected for over 40 years) to a variety of good causes;
Oxfam got around 1000 books to sell, the Salvation Army were able to help a bunch of families with hundreds of items of kitchen equipment and household goods – they even got a beautiful full range of office furniture – for their new offices! A lovely young family down on their luck got a pair of bunk beds, bedding and boxes of ’stuff’, Save the Children are selling pictures, dozens of ornaments, lamps, clothes, coats, jackets, jewellery, 60 neckties no longer required and a dozen or more pairs of shoes which were hardly worn, the Shelter for the Homeless received duvets, bedding, sheets, towels and a whole pile of coats, shirts and trousers to keep their customers warm through the winter.  Our local Youth Club received a garden table and benches and a dozen boxes of household ’stuff’ to sell and raise funds for the wonderful work they do for their young people. The family that moved into our UK home even got a new vacuum – it was the very last thing we had to give away – and theirs had broken that very morning!

And then according to the universal law of flow we acquired beds and sheets, dishes and pots and pans, bikes and books and rugs and tables and chairs – everything we needed and more.  The Great Recycle Experiment was a complete success, a great joy and a deep learning.

The Whole Big Deal in a Nutshell

We’ve reached the moon, split the atom, probed outer space and the inner workings of our bodies; the achievements of us humans seem immense. But there is one triumph that still eludes us – saving the human race from itself.

You see we’ve conquered the world, laid claim to every last strip of land and subjugated every other species but haven’t yet mastered ourselves. The human race is out-of-control, cannibalising its own home in an orgy of consumption.

How does this show up? Looking around we see that our industrial processes are using up the natural capital of the planet faster than it can be replaced, and pouring out our toxins into what’s left. That’s showing up in a bunch of ways, peak oil, peak water – in fact Peak Everything – as well as climate change, the problem which is grabbing the headlines right now.

If we look at the human family within this, we’ve just exited the bloodiest century ever, with a world population that is doubling every 50 years or so, massively divided into horrifying extremes of poverty and wealth – with billions of people denied the basics of food, water, shelter, healthcare and education. And all of this is worsening year-on-year.

For those of us in the resource-poor part of the world our concerns are likely to be fairly basic and immediate, survival for ourselves and our families. In the other parts of the world, where we enjoy some degree of privilege, our accumulated wealth and our lifestyles of choice and comfort still aren’t buying us peace of mind – our spirit just knows somethings missing, or just not-right in all of this.

And until sometime last year that’s how the self-inflicted problems were showing up, as issues of the environment or social justice or spiritual malaise. Then in 2008 the impact of how-we-live-now showed up in a whole new way that grabbed our attention as never before, biting us where it hurts most – in our wallets. The global financial crisis is another, very urgent symptom of the same problem, the core problem which lies at the heart of all of our issues – our way of living is unsustainable, it can not last.

And the root cause – our thinking is off-track.  You see our thoughts shape the world – and the thinking which underpins the way we live in the majority of the world right now is badly faulted. Our thinking is acquisition, greed, consumption, my-gain-at-your-expense, convenience all of which creates a culture of shopping, celebrity worship, addiction and excess.

The root solution – is to change our thinking.  As soon as we can get off the limited thinking of personal gain fuelled by industrial growth without regard for the consequences then we will be able to focus our enormous ingenuity, creativity and focus on crafting a Future Worth Choosing.

That’s where you and I come in.  When we make a stand for a world which is environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfilled, and when we line our lives up with this stand, when we take the choices that deliver a peaceful, just and sustainable world we will be living a Future Worth Choosing now.

Hail a New Dawn, a New Dream is Possible

What a joy to witness the inauguration of a man of colour as the leader of the USA. We know he stands as a symbol of hope and new possibility, the whole nation here is feeling that. American friends talk of a new era, pride and possibility that has been buried for the last 8 years. So we, the millions in Washington and the many more millions around the world who watched President Obama take office with grace and some style, can be sure we are stepping into a new era. And Obama in his speech was signaling this so clearly, in language not heard before from a US American leader.

Its amazing to think that the work of the Awakening the Dreamer Initiative was only started in ‘05 as a response to the dearth of discussion about the environment in the last US Presidential election, and now the new President is saying;

“each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet” and “we will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories”.

Better is to come, for beyond the ecological he goes on to say this about social justice;

“a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous” and “that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself”

And then he talks about our spiritual nature;

“the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment — a moment that will define a generation — it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.”

So Hallelujah, Hooray, Right On. And . . . . . . . .

His job isn’t easy. Years ago I was involved in a programme with the Leadership Trust, a bunch of ex-SAS guys who had become the sexy fashion in leadership development in the UK. We played a game in which a team of 30 or so of us operated a paint mixing factory – lots of fun pretending and filling different coloured buckets with gloop from multi-coloured pipes to fulfil orders from imagined customers. We were all allocated different roles, mine was to play the role of CEO in a team of simple structure, me and a board, supervisors and the workforce. My mission was to change the way the factory team operated. I met with my board and, not short on vision, we communicated to the supervisors in order to have them enroll the workforce in some new practices. Long story short, I sat with horror, confined to ‘HQ’ as my colleagues scurried around trying to change a system that was already set in its way and rolling. It took enormous persistence, co-ordination and focus to have our ideas reflected in what was actually happening. I can still vividly remember the sense of powerlessness, and that in a team of 30 not a nation of 300 million.

And . . . . the work is still for us to do, individually, locally, within our own coomunities and with whatever contribution each of us can give. A new chief at the helm is inspiring and invigourating, but we need to keep his administration to account for delivering on the promises of the campaign trail. As a Brit I’ve been burned. In May ‘97 we elected a young, articulate and inspiring politician, who spoke convincingly of principle-led politics, of ethical foreign policy and justice and equality for all. He seemed such a tonic after 19 years of Conservative governments, but within a year we’d caught him pocketing Bernie Ecclestone’s million quid and 10 years later his legacy is little more than the war in Iraq, the lies that took the UK into that war and the many hundreds of thouands of lives this has taken or touched. Tony Blair ultimately lacked the moral fibre to be the stand he had so clearly defined.

None of this is a comment on Barack Obama, but it is a stark reminder for us to particiapte, get inolved, have our say, Stand Up and Speak Out. So to all of us here in the US of A, let’s seize the opportunity we now have to continue the reform required, in our thinking, our own lives and our systems and structures to build a world that works for us all.

With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come.

A Vision of the Universe from Ireland

Samhain is the beginning of the Celtic New Year, the point of turning at which the cycle of life begins again, after the harvest comes the incubation from which all new life emerges.

It is also the day on which the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest, when the spirits can come visit us most easily and when, perhaps, we can see into their realm.

Else where this has become Halloween, and for most of us passes with no more significance

Where better to be on this important day than in deepest Ireland, not far from the seat of the Irish Kings of old, with 49 people who want to help create a new dream in Ireland and in the world.

I’ve got to tell you about Agnes, Dervilla, Luarena and Mary, four Sisters of Mercy, a religious order of Catholic women who give their lives to serving the poor. Since 1821 this order have been serving the disadvantaged, first in Dublin and then rapidly expanding their ministry into places of need around the world. More recently these women have had the insight to include our increasingly poor and needy planet in their work. So when they found the work of the Pachamama Alliance (Bringing forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just human presence) they saw this as a thoroughly modern and necessary expression of their ministry, encompassing their compassion for the oppressed and excluded,, their newly found concern for our environment and of course their knowing that at peace with ourselves and whatever we regard to be the source of life we can attend to these other needs.

So the four sisters had trained to deliver the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium and taken it into their communities across Ireland. Just a few months and 11 events later they had 45 others inspired to train up to take the Symposium off into their own communities – and a waiting list of 20 or so more.

Our timing was auspicious indeed; we convened on Samhain, studied all the next day, All Saints Day, celebrated mass and studied more on All Souls Day and finished the next day as the sun set on autumn splendour. In these days we shared, sang, danced, laughed and cried and brought through as committed and deep a group as I have seen anywhere

The space was soon full of love, community, song, Irish wit and an abundance of poetry; we had a container in which all experienced a deep sense of connection, belonging and the birth of a new possibility for the individuals and for the group assembled. Once again it was clear that planting deep roots will serve us well in creating a unique and powerful expression of this work in a new country.

The group named themselves Aisling na Cruinne – which translates from the Gaelic as the Dream/Vision of the Universe (its pronounced Ash-ling na crin-eh) – what a vision.