Awakin Calls

Clair Brown, a professor emeritus in the Economics Department at UC Berkeley, taught the basic Economics 1 class at Berkeley for over 30 years. She often found that the students in her sprawling introductory classes had a hard time reconciling the dominant neoclassical model that she taught with the real world that they experienced from day to day.  They were frustrated with the assumption that “more is better” – that having more income and what it buys is what makes people better off. They also were shocked that economics did not compare wellbeing across different income groups – it accepted as a base assumption that the rich benefited just as much as the poor from another dollar of income.

Prof. Brown’s students wanted to know why there was so much emphasis on economic growth in the abstract, and so little discussion of issues like inequality and environmental degradation. Over the years, Brown herself had put a lot of thought into the same questions.  As a budding practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, she asked “How would Buddha have taught Econ 1?” 

“In the economic model, it makes sense to go shopping if you are feeling pain, because buying things makes you feel better. Yet we know from experience that consuming more does not relieve pain. What if we lived in a society that did not put consumption at its center? What if we follow instead the Buddhist mandate to minimize suffering, and are driven by compassion rather than desire?”

To explore these questions with an alternative economic model, she developed a sophomore seminar “Buddhist Economics”.  The global outreach and connections led to her writing the book, Buddhist Economics: An Enlightened Approach to the Dismal Science (Bloomsbury Press, 2017).  The book has been praised by Nobel Laureates Amartya Sen and George Akerlof, and by leading public policy voices including Robert Reich and Jeffrey Sachs.

According to Professor Brown, mainstream economics takes as given three basic assumptions:  that people are self-centered, caring only about themselves; that people chase after income to support fancy lifestyles; and that the environment exists for human domination.  Buddhist economics, by contrast, posits that human nature is kind and altruistic; that people are interdependent with one another; and that people are interdependent with nature.

Says Brown:  “One of the reasons I got interested in Buddhist economics and wanted to teach this course – and I also wrote a book, called American Standards of Living – is that I was just appalled by the materialism in our culture, and how, with economic growth and people getting better and better off, we didn’t cut back on work, as people had predicted. We didn’t make life more balanced, we didn’t take time to be creative and spend time with our friends and build our communities. Instead, we just kept working harder and harder. And today, the materialistic culture, which is reinforced by the mainstream economic model, says, “Hey, you want to feel better?  Make more money and go shopping” – it’s like you can never be satiated with this model. And it seems like that reflects American life. We want more and more, we consume more and more, and the other things in life that should be important to us – our families, our communities – are suffering from that. And of course, I think we’re suffering too from all the stress.”

One of the earliest tenured women professors in the Economics Department at UC Berkeley, Brown was influenced greatly by exposure to racism and social norms surrounding gender while growing up in the American South.  She recognized that structural and social factors skewed the notion of “choice” and of well-functioning markets.  Brown's early research focused on employment disparities by gender and race, the role of unemployment insurance, and women in the workplace. Her later research focused on the global labor market for high-tech workers, the global competitive advantage of China, India and the US in the semiconductor industry, and the impact of education and immigration policies on engineers' employment and earnings.

Join us for a fascinating conversation with this pioneering economist!

 

As a diamond merchant and savvy businessman in Surat, India, Parag Shah used to look for R.O.E. -- return on equity. While running one of the most successful companies in the industry at its peak, Parag felt that his cup of gratitude overflowed, and so he started doing lots of philanthropy. Among his many projects was an International Baccalaureate school, which is now one of the premiere schools in India with 1500 students. In his words, however, while his philanthropy shifted his attention away from monetary return, it continued his focus on building up another form of "R.O.E." -- return on ego.

After a few years of unlearning, particularly after being deeply touched by the teachings of J. Krishnamurti, Parag began to feel that every accumulation was hollow unless it was accompanied by a deep inner transformation. That attention to the inner journey has led him to another kind of R.O.E. -- return on equanimity. It's a metric that is shifting not just what he does, but how he does it.

Thus began his experiments with a new form of living. At his International Baccalaureate school, Parag experimented with a gift-economy book store; when his community hosted Karma Kitchen, he volunteered to do the dishes. With friends, he does 21-day kindness challenges and local retreats. Every week, he attends a local Awakin Circle, where he is often silent but deeply tuned in. These are the many small ripples that are adding up to a immeasurable field around him. Savji Dholakia, a billionaire diamond merchant, has been among those touched by Parag. Known for gifting cars to all his employees, Dholakia not only started giving out thousands of Smile Decks (in Gujarati) but most recently, he and his son swept neighborhood streets and served people tea on the roads -- just to spread love.

Most of Parag's recent acts of service go unnoticed, and that cloak of invisibility is what he prefers. Any value that comes his way quietly gets multiplied before going out farther into the community. He inspires with his own example, with many small acts of kindness. To support others, he has been a visionary behind Laddership Circles, which help change-makers think from a lens of inner transformation.

With his vintage one-liners and humor, Parag is gently supporting many ripples in ways that perhaps can never be fully counted. Yet just ask his wife, or two sons, and they'll tell you why. Siddhant, his oldest son now in his mid twenties, says it plainly, "I speak to my Dad every day, even when I studied abroad. He always has time for me. I just love who he is, and I want to be like him when I grow up."

Join us in conversation with this humble and beautiful ladder!

“Many of the challenges in this world stem from our disconnect with nature — both within us and outside of us. When we steward bees in a bee-centric rather than business-centric way, there is an opportunity to learn about the interconnectedness we share with all life.”

When you first meet Debra Roberts there are two words that you’re likely to hear right away: bees, and Appalachia. Debra is a natural (treatment-free) beekeeper and international honeybee educator, speaker, mentor, advocate, artist, and writer. She stewards her bee sanctuary in the Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina, outside Asheville, where she lives with her husband Joe, cat Habla, and millions of honeybees.

Debra says, “I am totally bee-sotted. I am not commercial and rarely harvest any honey. My bee sanctuary, right next to our house, is a place that is holy to me. … My path is to explore sacred relationship with the bees, to learn from them, and to inspire and support others in doing the same, and it is also to provide a safe place for bees to flourish in the world….”

For Debra the “sacred path of bee” begins as soon as she enters her bee yard, which she calls her sanctuary.

“When you enter the space of bees as a beekeeper, they teach you over the years that if you’re calm, you’re focused, you’re present, you’re free of anger, you’re respectful, you’re grateful – all of these things contribute to a much more successful and real relationship with bees.

“I’m in my bee yard day in, day out, month in, month out, year in, year out. One day I realized, it was a practice! What if I could bring more consciousness to that? Not just calmness, but also consciousness. This practice was changing me, and they were changing me. From that point, the sacredness of the relationship welled up and out. Feelings of reverence, benevolence, and all of those lovely things were there. Then I realized that this practice is no different from any spiritual tradition that also values these same things.”

Debra is founder of Holy Bee Press, Vice President of The Center for Honeybee Research, Founder of The Honeybee Project, a bee mentor for Hamaatsa (an indigenous learning center in New Mexico), editor of a series of ongoing articles about honeybees and natural beekeeping, on the Steering Committee of Bee City USA, and received her Master Beekeeping certification in 2010. She is founder faculty of The College of the Melissae: Center for Sacred Beekeeping in Ashland, Oregon and was chosen as one of the Heroes of Asheville in 2014. She also created the online series, The Sacred Path of Bee for bee appreciators worldwide.

For Debra the Sacred Path of Bee is about even more than personal spiritual practice – it has become a life mission. This has intensified since 2006 when bees everywhere suffered a “colony collapse disorder” – for reasons which are still not fully understood but which are placing our whole food system at risk. “As a result,” she says, “more women have stepped forward into beekeeping than in the whole history of humans and bees.”

The key to what Debra practices – and teaches and supports around the world – is what she calls “bee-centric” beekeeping, as opposed to commercial beekeeping.  “There is now a flood of women worldwide stepping toward bees, like myself, not having it be a plan. The impulse is compassionate. It has nothing to do with commerce. It has nothing to do with bees as livestock. It is about beings who need to be well and have the right to be well.  So this impulse is starting to change the face of beekeeping, which changes the face of life itself.”

Debra came to beekeeping after spending years as a documentary film maker. She was burned out and decided to take a six-month sabbatical.

During that time she went to Hopi territory to visit the family of Thomas Banyacya, a Hopi leader who had been chosen to reveal Hopi traditional wisdom and teachings, including prophecies for the future. Debra had met him and later heard he had passed, so she felt a calling to visit his family and pay her respects.

“I wanted to bring them a gift. I lived near a man who had honey, and I had all these jars of honey. So I took some with me, got in the car, drove for three days, found my way to the door of his son, knocked on the door and said, ‘I’m Debra Roberts from North Carolina. I have infinite respect for your father.’  I offered my jars of honey to him and his wife.  And she said, ‘Wow – I was just about to go to the store because we ran out of honey!’

“That’s the moment when I felt that bees sort of went under my radar and into the heart of my life.  Then a couple of months later I saw a sign for bee school in Ashville. This was something I never planned to do but when I did, it was like falling in love. It was like – millions of beings had just kind of colonized my heart! It changed my path forever. I let go of everything else and just … went to the bees.”

"Getting sober, 18 years ago, was the most important catalyst and spiritual change in my life. I remember looking down at my dogs and seeing their utter dependency and need for me to be present, and without hesitation, I got up and poured my drink down the sink and never looked back." -- Mark Barone 

Soon after the passing of Mark Barone's beloved dogs, his partner Marina Dervan went online to adopt another dog but instead of finding a dog, she learned the chilling reality that approximately 5,500 dogs are put to death each day in the United States. The statistic shook both of them to their core, and less than two days later the vision for An Act of Dog was born. Mark committed to painting 5,500 portraits of shelter dogs in an effort to cultivate awareness and compassion for animals and raise funds for rescue groups around the country. "My intention as an artist is to put the soul back into these animals that have been lost and ensure that all the rest have a second chance at a beautiful life," Mark says.

Over the past three years he has done just that, painted moving portraits of 5,500 animals fated to be put down, seven days a week and "bearing witness to their fragility and total dependency on us to take good care of them. It has been the most emotionally painful experience that I've ever had-yet the most enlightening and fulfilling."

The portraits are finished and a PBS documentary about the project is nearing completion, but Mark and Marina are far from done with their mission. They are now working with schools and community partners with a plan to host the portraits in an interactive Museum of Compassion where children can come create and learn how to channel their art in service of social change.

Mark Barone is an award-winning artist and narrative painter whose work has been featured in publications and exhibitions nationwide and hangs in collections around the world. He is the CEO of ArtSmartCities, and has consulted with cities across America on how to revitalize underserved neighborhoods through art. His past awards include the Governor's Award in the Arts, American Planning Association Distinguished Planning award, the National award for a Special Community Initiative, and the Rudy Bruner award for Urban Excellence. He devoted his retirement savings to An Act of Dog, and while he doesn't know what the future holds for him as an artist, "What I do know is that my life is no longer about me. It's about contribution."

Marina Dervan is the CEO of "The Honesty Coach", and a corporate executive coach who developed her own system, dubbed "The Conflict Cure," to help people navigate their way through emotional upheaval and harmful mental constructs back to a place of peace and personal power. Her diverse clientele includes CEOs, celebrities, couples, teenagers, political leaders, and the military. All proceeds from her consulting work are donated to An Act of Dog, where she is a full-time volunteer juggling many different roles.

Cheryl Angel is an indigenous leader, wise (Sioux) Lakota elder woman, mother of five children, and lifelong devoted water protector who helped initiate and maintain the Standing Rock camp since April 2016, and who was vital in the nonviolent resistance to the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines. Her voice among the water protectors is one of integrating deep prayer with nonviolent direct action, guiding two women-led actions at Standing Rock. A spiritual activist from the Sicangu (Rosebud) tribe -- one of the seven tribes that conform the Lakota/Nakota/Dakota People in the Great Plains of North America -- Cheryl moves from a deep space of love and nonviolence as guided by her ancestors and Lakota traditions and ways of being.

Cheryl was born in the Black Hills, South Dakota, known to the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota people as The Heart of Everything That Is. Her mother had heart problems, and was unable to care for her, even at birth. Her first baby sitter was a horse. Cheryl didn’t meet her siblings formally until she was 4 years old. At around age 5, Cheryl was taken by her father to the reservation where she lived with the Two Kettle community, and was looked after by 80-year-old elders. In third grade, Cheryl was put in St. Francis boarding school for two years. While at boarding school, she and the other kids suffered from physical and psychological abuse – her braid was immediately cut off and she was given short hair and bangs, she had to take baths in a dungeon, and she was punished for speaking her language or practicing her spirituality.

Cheryl wondered if her life was worth anything. The only thing she’d experience out of life was abuse, neglect and loneliness, until one day a friend told her, “Give it all to the Creator as a gift... Creator doesn’t care what the gift is, but you need to package it and send it over in order for Creator to help you. ... It doesn't matter if what you have to offer is only pain.” Cheryl did. She spent the entire night crying and praying. By the next day, she felt healed. This experience deepened Cheryl’s connection to Creator and gifted her with the understanding of the importance of prayer and surrender. Every morning, and in every ceremony, Cheryl prays, “Please take me to where I can do something good today.” She believes this prayer is what has set her on her journey as a water protector.

One of her sons, Happi, was one of the first Standing Rock water protectors who locked himself down to an excavator to stop the DAPL construction. In an interview about this action of nonviolent civil disobedience, Cheryl said: “Water is sacred to us. We use it every day not just to live, but for ceremonies, for spiritual cleansing, for healing and for blessing.” Later, she participated to set up a camp directly blocking the construction of the pipeline. 

At Standing Rock, Cheryl held several circles around Gandhian nonviolence and she was able to find intersections with the Lakota way of life. In particular, the Gandhian conception of "soul force" (satyagraha) or "clinging to truth" has a direct correspondence with the Lakota concept of "nagi", from Cheryl’s perspective. She often appeals to the '"nagi'" inside each and every one of us, as a way to connect with our best self.

In November 2016, at one of the peaks of resistance at Standing Rock, Cheryl left for New Mexico to attend a ceremony with other healers. After the ceremony, she went to a sacred river to pray with the water. Even though it was in the middle of winter, and the water was freezing, when Cheryl touched the water, her hands became hot. She could feel that the water and she were communicating. The water recognized her. It didn’t feel slippery, it felt of substance. She felt the sacredness of the water, and felt a deep knowing that water is life. This empowered Cheryl to rise into her calling of being a life-long water protector. When Cheryl returned to camp, she led over 800 people in a silent women-led nonviolent direct action to the front lines.  Renowned author, activist and legend, Starhawk -- founder of Earth Activist Training -- recalls the experience: "I stood behind Cheryl [Angel] and listened to one of the most powerful moments of pure nonviolence I’ve ever experienced.”

Cheryl lives by her prayers. Whether she is on the front line, marching on the streets of DC, supporting the indigenous people in Mexico, or with her prayer horses at home, she prays. Cheryl believes that anyone that is around her while she is praying is part of her ceremony, “The police are not the enemy. They are our brothers and sisters. They also need our prayers and they are a part of our ceremony.”

Join us in conversation with this remarkable spiritual activist and leader!

Pranidhi Varshney is a devoted ashtanga yoga practitioner and teacher, and the founder of Yoga Shala West, a community-supported ashtanga yoga studio in West Los Angeles. She teaches to share the deep love she has for yoga practice and for all students who follow this path. She aims to cultivate, for herself and for her students, a sense of balance on and off the mat – simultaneous strength and surrender.

A former actress, soulful singer, and entrepreneur of multiple forms of capital, Pranidhi Varshney is on a journey to deepen herself and her community in a greater sense of trust and interconnection. While studying theater and music at Northwestern University, Prandihi found herself on tour and landing in Los Angeles, where she pursued a career in acting for half a decade. A widening rift between the values of her work in the entertainment industry with her dedicated yoga practice prompted her to migrate and eventually transition completely into full time yoga teaching. In her own words, she writes, “I practice because yoga is the most effective tool I’ve found for inner transformation. I teach because it’s the most authentic way that I can be of service.”

Finding herself at odds with the consumer and image-driven nature of contemporary yoga, Pranidhi founded Yoga Shala West in 2015. The space not only offers classes to practice Mysore-style Ashtanga yoga, but has uniquely grown into a burgeoning community of practitioners who aspire to embody the deeper values – such as oneness, stillness, compassion – embedded in the heart of the practice.

Setting in place unique design elements – such as a contribution-based fee structure and high-quality student onboarding process – Pranidhi strives to create the conditions for deeper values to pulse through the operations. She explains, “Running a value-based business is so much more profitable than running a business based purely on financial capital, because the rewards can be seen, felt, and experienced in multiple forms.”

Open the doors to the shala, and you’ll be greeted with overflowing fruit from students’ backyards – all brought in in the spirit of sharing. And the basket the fruits sit in is itself a gift from another shala member. Walk a little further, and you’ll see an open source bookshelf, where anyone can take or leave a book. There’s a glow about the place that reflects the down-to-earth spirit with which it operates, and gives rise to spontaneous convergences of goodness. When the shala turned one, Pranidhi was compelled to spill forward the circle of kindness into the surrounding neighborhood. A crew of students responded by bringing in homemade desserts and together they shared in offering tasty treats and smiles to elders at the adjoining senior center. Small touches of care and possibility surround each day’s unfoldings – a quality that beautifully reflects Pranidhi’s way of being.

In addition to managing and teaching in the shala, Pranidhi produces open-source practice videos to support greater access to yoga and holds space for deeper experiments in leading with values. She writes regularly, has released a stirring album of Sanskrit chanting, serves as a Yoga Gives Back ambassador, sits on the advisory board of the Yoga and Body Image Coalition, and volunteers with ServiceSpace’s Laddership Circles and youth internships to continue to ignite transformation in herself and others. Through all her work, she aims to inspire, provoke, build community, and ultimately touch the heart.

Join us on June 3rd for an illuminating conversation with Pranidhi!

 

"Once we recognize that every conflict has emotional, energetic, and spiritual overtones, we can go deeper, and explore the subtle, invisible, vibratory lines along which it, and much of reality, runs. By paying attention to the music of ordinary communication we can discover a hidden fulcrum that can be used to nudge a conflict from impasse to resolution." -- Kenneth Cloke

Kenneth Cloke is Director of the Center for Dispute Resolution in Southern California.  He specializes in mediation, negotiation and resolution of complex organizational, interpersonal, and public policy disputes.  Ken also provides services in designing preventative conflict resolution systems. He is an internationally recognized speaker and author.  Ken’s practice includes work with leaders of public, private and non-profit organizations.

It is the Ken's approach to conflict resolution that distinguishes him in the field. According to Ken, "conflict is overridingly spiritual, because every conflict presents us with a life choice, an opportunity for transformation, and an invitation to transcendence."  In order to attain transformation or transcendence, "we require a combination of inner and outer skills" -- of meditation techniques (which probe our inner frontiers) and mediation techniques (which probe our outer frontiers). Specifically, the mediator and the parties can access transcendence by employing both "meditation techniques that assist us in becoming more centered, compassionate, and aware of ourselves and others" and "mediation techniques that enable us to engage in authentic and committed listening, openhearted communication, empathetic dialogue, creative problem solving, collaborative negotiation, genuine forgiveness, and reconciliation."

Ken's work thus involves getting to the heart of a conflict, which by its nature can be a "powerful source of learning, development and growth," for all involved. Ken often calls this work "risky" and "dangerous" for the mediator or arbiter of the conflict, as it calls on him or her to embody the inner and outer qualities of true resolution and justice. Accordingly, Ken's advice to mediators is "to recognize that everything the parties do or experience in conflict already exists inside you, along with everything they need to know, feel, and learn to resolve their disputes. Therefore, you are the technique, and your capacity for empathy, awareness, and calming presence will resonate inside them, eliciting qualitatively different outcomes."

A 1963 graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, Ken Cloke initially gravitated toward the law because of the civil rights struggles that were taking place in America. After law school, Ken worked "as an active participant in civil rights, civil liberties, and anti-war movements." In time, however, Ken started feeling that this work often "increase[d] conflict" and resulted in a "failure of resolution and learning[,] as political adversaries became unable or unwilling to engage in open and honest dialogue."

Ken then worked as an Administrative Law Judge for the California Public Employment Relations Board, where he was assigned to settle unfair labor practice claims. For Ken, this work provided "a relief from the precise, narrow categories of juridical reasoning and arguments over legal entitlement." Ken observed: "Through mediation, I was able to help people learn how to talk to each other and solve their problems collaboratively without my having to decide the issues for them. I found not only that I loved the emotional engagement of mediation, but that its outcomes and processes revealed a truer form of justice than I had experienced in the law."

By happenstance, the Neighborhood Justice Center was conducting a mediation training, and within the first five minutes of taking the training Ken was "hooked." Ken was so hooked that he dedicated his life to mediation, arbitration, and other forms of conflict resolution that do not rely on the coercive apparatus of a top-down judicial system. An experienced arbitrator, mediator, consultant, and trainer, Ken has since become a nationally recognized leader in the field of conflict resolution. Notably, Ken specializes in resolving complex multi-party conflicts, which include: community, grievance and workplace disputes; collective bargaining negotiations; organizational and school conflicts; sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits; and public policy disputes.

Ken has been an Arbitrator and Mediator for over thirty-three years in labor management disputes, has served as Judge Pro Tem for the Los Angeles municipal and superior courts (the "people's courts"), and is a member of a number of arbitration panels.  He has practiced conflict resolution at a number of different levels, including at an international scale. He is President and co-founder of Mediators Beyond Borders -- an organization that often focuses on systemic conflicts in dozens of nations. Ken believes that what's needed at the global level is a "conflict revolution," or a "revolutionary shift" "from adversarial to collaborative processes, methods, and techniques," "from debate to dialogue," and from a power- and rights-based approach to conflict to an interests-based one.

For Ken, it comes down to the following: "Whether our conflicts are intensely personal and between private individuals, or intensely political and between nations and cultures, three critical areas require ongoing improvement and transformation. These are: our personal capacity for introspection, integrity, and spiritual growth; our interpersonal capacity for egalitarian, collaborative, heartfelt communication and relationships; and our social, economic, and political capacity for designing preventative, systemic, strategic approaches to conflict resolution, community, and change."

Aside from his undergraduate and legal education at U.C. Berkeley, Ken has received a Ph.D. in History as well as an L.L.M. in Labor Law from U.C.L.A.  He has done post-doctoral work at Yale Law School and has extensive university teaching experience in the areas of law, mediation, history, political science, conflict studies, urban studies, and social sciences. Ken is an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University’s School of Law, Strauss Institute; Harvard University School of Law, Program on Negotiation, Insight Initiative; Albert Einstein College of Medicine Cape Cod Institute; and University of Amsterdam A.D.R. Institute.

A prolific author, Ken has published numerous books including Mediating Dangerously: The Frontiers of Conflict Resolution; The Crossroads of Conflict: A Journey Into the Heart of Dispute Resolution; Conflict Revolution: Mediating Evil, War, Injustice and Terrorism; Mediation: Revenge and the Magic of Forgiveness; Thank God It's Monday! 14 Values We Need to Humanize The Way We Work; Resolving Personal and Organizational Conflict: Stories of Transformation and Forgiveness; The End of Management and the Rise of Organizational Democracy; and The Art of Waking People Up: Cultivating Awareness and Authenticity at Work.

Jose Ramon Gonzalez (“Joserra”) is a service-hearted generosity entrepreneur, meditator, and activist for the common good. With his witty humor and kind heart, Joserra has a profound ability to connect with just about anyone he meets.

Born in Burgos, Spain, a town placed in the middle of an ancient pilgrimage route called the Camino de Santiago, Joserra began asking from the earliest age, How can I serve? At age 19, he traveled to rural Argentina where he discovered radical generosity, what it means to serve, and the inner richness of economically “poor” communities. He went on to explore service by studying Development and International Cooperation and NGO Management.

Through his studies and work, Joserra experienced a disconnect between the world of development and what it really means to serve humanity. It wasn’t until he moved to India that he felt a deep internal shift in his heart that pointed the way forward for him. As a recent volunteer with the NGO Manav Sadhna for two years, Joserra worked with urban slum communities in India to create organic vegetable gardens. He soaked in the precepts of Mahatma Gandhi, Vinobaji, and other modern-day Gandhians in the Moved by Love, ServiceSpace, and Manav Sadhna ecosystems. In India he learned and experienced the power of listening, holding space, and doing small acts of kindness. He was touched by the heart healing power of simple acts.

Joserra observes, “I learned how only in Spain 4,000 people commit suicide every year. Many of them at a young age. It looks like isolation and lack of empathy are some of the trigger points that make people take that self-destroying step. In the face of this reality, the facilitation of an emergence of a culture of kindness looks like something which goes to the root of such big problem.”

Without skipping a beat, Joserra now facilitates such kinds of emergence every day, in micro and macro ways. He brings forth the spirit of a generosity-based culture by transforming his home into a community space with an ethos of holistic living and radical generosity. He hosts weekly Awakin Circles for stillness and shared reflection in his hometown of Burgos, Spain. He performs random acts of kindness for others.

Joserra consistently galvanizes local volunteers and members of his community in Spain in nonstop events -- from a pay-it-forward restaurant (“Karma Kitchen”), to multi-day Head, Hands, Heart experiential retreats which engage in both collective and individual transformation. His energetic efforts have progressively deepened ties of trust in his community, and been an avenue for people from all walks of life, from students to adults of all professions -- from a homeless young man to a 99-year-old grandmother -- to practice the spirit of service, the ripples of which extend into the ethos of their communities, city, and, ultimately, world.

Joserra has also gone deeper in his meditation practice (“internal service work”), spending 2 hours, sometimes more, meditating each day and having spent 7 months serving in a Vipassana center in 2015.

His journey has taken him to international retreats and gatherings where he has been able to learn and share with servant leaders from around the world, like Giftival in Brazil, Gandhi 3.0 in India or the recent Symphony of Peace Prayers in Japan -- spaces that foster and explore the new stories and narratives we want to write as humanity.

Joserra lives in a way that engages a subtle kind of capital. One that works in the rhythms of nature, impacting our social fabric in a deep, invisible, and resilient way. On a daily basis, he labors with a pure-hearted grace, tilling the soil and watering the roots of a gradual paradigm shift. He does it all from a space of selfless service -- all his actions and efforts are done with no expectation of anything but his own inner transformation, and a conviction that, when work is done in such a way, the collective virtues of those around him will rise and ignite a "ReLoveUtion" -- a renaissance of compassionate societies.

 

Rajni Bakshi is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist and author who writes about social and political movements in contemporary India.  She stands in the “fertile ground” between journalism and activism – chronicling struggles for more humane and ecologically sound ways of life.  She has written extensively and with great erudition on topics ranging from Gandhian thought to economic, political and social theory, to identity-based social and political groupings. Her books have included Bapu Kuti: Journeys in Rediscovery of Gandhi (1988), which became the inspiration for the Indian blockbuster feature film “Swades”. Her Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom: for a market culture beyond greed and fear (2009) explores a series of probing questions dealing with the history, anthropology and philosophy of the market system to explore the clash of competition and compassion in our social orderings. It arose from Rajni’s fascination with how grass-roots activism could add up to lasting change as long as the market system remains what it is.

Above all, Rajni is a storyteller. For more than forty years she has used the power of storytelling to navigate the complex interface of India’s social and spiritual fabric to affect social change.  “As a newspaper reporter, I initially enjoyed the thrill of just going out there and getting a ‘story’, any story,” Rajni says. “But that thrill rapidly faded. It was still important to record what is, but to do so from an angle and with a light that illuminates what can be. For the most part this involved making visible those people, ideas and actions that seem at first extraordinary but which actually expand our imagination in ways that empower the ‘ordinary’ in all of us.” 

Rajni’s writings are profound journeys into the intellect and spirit. Her conversations reflect her deep search for truth overlaid on the breadth of her knowledge and experiences.  She started out her journey as a correspondent for a newspaper, after a BA from George Washington University and a MA from the University of Rajasthan. This stint lasted four years. For Rajni, being a newspaper correspondent felt like a profession, whereas she wanted a vocation – one that would give her the freedom to follow her instincts and not run any races.  As she mentions in one of her interviews, “The easy track is often one dimensional. If you want greater adventure and fulfillment then it is good to step off the track sometimes and wander off into the uncharted territory.”

Rajni is a child of India’s partition. Her family lived in Lahore, now part of Pakistan, during India’s independence, before the partition displaced them to various parts of India. The stories of partition became part of her family lore.

Rajni serves on the boards of Child Rights and You (CRY), Citizens for Peace and the Center of Education and Documentation (Mumbai and Bangalore). She has written several monographs including Trusteeship: Business and the economics of well-being (2016); Civilizational Gandhi (2012); An Economics for Well-Being (2007); Let’s Make it Happen: a backgrounder on New Economics (2003). She has also explored Swami Vivekananda’s writings and legacy in A Warning and an Opportunity: the Dispute over Swami Vivekananda’s Legacy (1994). She is currently on sabbatical from her role as Gandhi Peace Fellow at Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations, a Mumbai based foreign policy think-tank. She is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, an autonomous body under the Ministry of Culture.

Join us in conversation with this remarkable public intellectual and gifted storyteller!

"I'm here to help make the world more beautiful, inside and out."

San Francisco Bay Area artist, Robert Bengtson, expresses his love for beauty through the mediums of photography, interactive art, wood, metal, plaster... and puts his creativity into inspiring the human spirit. Robert is a visual artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area who's been creating fine-art commercial photography for over 20 years.  Focusing on details that some may not see the beauty in – such as an imprint in the sidewalk or a pair of clasped hands – he chronicles the exquisite details of people, places and objects.  He applies his fine-art photography skills to personal, residential and commercial projects, and is also known for his stunning custom photography books.

In 2008, after decades of creating beautiful photographs for his audience, Robert had the vision to more directly invite his audience into co-creating the art.  “In 2008 I had this very clear vision of an art installation [at] Burning Man which happens in the Nevada desert every year,” he said.  “I had never done anything like it.  I am a photographer by trade. … But it was just so clear to do this.  So I made this art piece that was inviting people to reflect – it was about participation. … The experience of using art and creativity to inspire self-reflection in someone and then being able to even capture that and having them write their response to a question was amazing for me.  And it opened up this whole new realm as an artist and as a human …”

That installation, entitled “Self-Evidence” was themed The American Dream and invited visitors to sit in and complete a circle comprised of 12 other human female casts (as the 13th member), and then to enter a tee-pee by walking through the circle.  Each female cast embodied a different human quality, which was written across her chest in calligraphy: Compassion, Courage, Creativity, Fairness, Heart, Intention, Laughter, Love, Optimism, Self-Awareness, Truth, Vision, Wilderness, and Wisdom.  Inside the teepee participants were invited to reflect about democracy, community, the feminine, and Native American wisdom and to answer a question in writing:  To what do you pledge your allegiance?  At the end of the week the inside of the teepee was filled with answers, fluttering like feathers in the wind. 

From 2008 to 2011, Robert had a total of four interactive art installations which invited self-reflective viewer participation in order to inspire self-discovery.  “I went from a photographer basically saying, ‘look what I made – what do you think about what I made?’ … Then I had this experience of the piece really being about ‘what do you think about your own experience?’  This isn’t about what I made, it’s about what you discover by interacting with this and really creating an opportunity for that.  And it was like a whole other dimension got added to the scene.  It was like I was a chef that was given another spice to cook with or something.  It was like it went into technicolor and I realized that that was like a missing ingredient that I was kind of searching for with my photography.” 

In early 2012, Robert started a new participatory, people-powered project, Inspiration Campaign, to invite individuals to come together to make the world more beautiful, inside and out, through beautiful, empowering, nothing-for-sale advertising.  The aim was to inspire the human spirit, and to transform mainstream media into a source of inspiration.  If you have visited San Francisco in recent years, you probably have seen his "advertisements" on the city billboards with messages like, "Humankind. Be both." "You belong." "Love first."

Robert’s vision for the Inspiration Campaign was to combine crowd-sourced content (“what message would you gift the world?”) with crowd-funded purchasing power (i.e. $5 / month) to place inspirational messages on traditional physical advertising spaces.  “Activate what’s great within people. Billboards, buses, commercials, community outreach, etc. Meaningful moments. Nothing for sale. Gifts for human consciousness. Powered by The People.”  Over the last four years, inspirational messages have appeared on 36 billboards, 12 buses, and 3 newspapers, resulting in over 14 million media impressions, bringing countless positive moments for the people in the San Francisco Bay Area and illustrating how individuals matter when they consciously come together as creative force.

In 2014, Inspiration Campaign received a grant award from The Pollination Project. “Inspiration Campaign is a way for us to decide what kind of media we want to see in our world," he said, "We need examples that show the power individuals have when we come together.” That is why the Inspiration Campaign is people-powered: people submit and vote on the messages, and people chip in and contribute to buy the ad spaces. Robert asks in his blog, What would love do? "We are all... guided by our own internal, love-choosing compass. How would Love write that next email? How would Love interact with the cashier ringing you out? How would Love respond [to] that person driving in front of you?"

“Every act is a creative act.  Every word is a creative act.  Every day is a creative act.  Our lives are creative experiences. … So many people don’t think they’re creative because it’s been so attached to being worthy of art in a gallery, and that’s just one of the many old stories that we can jettison and really realize everything we do is a creative act. … The more we think of it and see it that way the more we can bring consciousness into it and be more intentional, I think, and more appreciative that we’re all creating all the time.”

Join us for an inspiring conversation with Robert Bengston, who creates and inspires with love.