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Be the Change

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Lately, I've encountered more and more people who believe our culture is living the wrong story.
The old cultural story is this: we need things to be happy, and we definitely need more money.  Abundance is limited.  We must fight for our share of a decreasing pie. Earth is here for humans to use (or use up).  
What is in the way of creating a New Story? It is this...


Fear.

For example, one result of the old, dysfunctional story is this: most people who have "enough" are afraid they soon won't.  They resent anyone who needs more, even if it's just to survive. Those who do not have enough are afraid too--desperate even--that they won't have what they need to survive.

There are plenty of dystopian Hollywood movies from Mad Max to The Day After  to Idiocracy that show us how a this story like this ends:  it’s a story of death and dying.  In all of these unhappy endings, Earth is trashed for the sake of human needs or conflict.  The vulnerable are exploited. Our c…
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The Time to Mobilize is NOW...

First, here is an excellent article by Bill McKibben on our current response to Climate Castastrophe:

https://newrepublic.com/article/135684/declare-war-climate-change-mobilize-wwii

The net of it is this: it is time for a world-wide large scale mobilization for a "war" we are currently losing.  We can turn it around if we put the same level of intensity and energy into fighting it as we did WW2.

Second: Here are the top 100 solutions courtesy of Paul Hawken and his research team.  "Drawdown" covers proven solutions that ALL need to be implemented in order to reverse Climate Change:

http://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank

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Remember Tomorrowland?

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When I was five years old, I was introduced to the Magic Kingdom.  I loved all the themes, but especially enjoyed Tomorrowland and "The City of the Future."  I knew in my heart that technology
would make everything even better.

Fast forward fifty four years...

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Optimism is a Political Act

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Cynicism is obedience. 

From a great article by Alex Steffan:

"Entrenched interests use despair, confusion and apathy to prevent change. They encourage modes of thinking which lead us to believe that problems are insolvable, that nothing we do can matter, that the issue is too complex to present even the opportunity for change. It is a long-standing political art to sow the seeds of mistrust between those you would rule over: as Machiavelli said, tyrants do not care if they are hated, so long as those under them do not love one another."



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The Story of Earth in 2 Minutes

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A powerful video - story in images. (not to time scale, obviously). Enjoy.


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The Power of Changing the Story

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From Charles Eisenstein:
"Every act that comes from the understanding of interconnection, of inner being, is a spiritual act, and
also a political act.

By acting from a different story, we disrupt the psychic substructure of our mythology. And we offer an alternative... any time that we give somebody an experience that doesn’t fit into the old story, it weakens that old story. It disrupts it. It could be an act of generosity. It could be an act of forgiveness. Anything that violates that understanding that we’re separate, and everyone’s in it for themselves,

Being in service to something larger than yourself. "

Wow and yes.  Watch:


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Principles of Spiritual Leadership

Will Keepin’s Principles of Spiritual Leadership 

Adapted by the Pachamama Alliance from a presentation at Schumacher College, Totnes, England by Will Keepin of the Satyana Institute, Boulder, Colorado, this provisional set of “principles of spiritual leadership” provide the beginning of a collective inquiry into how we can apply spiritual teachings and wisdom in the work of global citizen game changers. 

(1) The motivation underlying our activism for social change must be transformed from anger and despair to compassion and love. This is a major challenge for the environmental movement, for example. It is not to deny the legitimacy of noble anger or outrage at injustice of any kind. Rather, we seek to work for love, rather than against evil. We need to adopt compassion and love as our foundational intention, and do whatever inner work is required to implement this intention. Even if our outward actions remain the same, there is a major difference in results if our underlying intention …
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A New Story

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Let’s start with a story.
Earth’s story began in an instant 13.7 billion years ago. We flared forth as light, underwent a series of creative and irreversible transformations, both physically and psycho-spiritually, until we arrived here –in this moment, on this beautiful blue planet, interconnected with and a part of all that is here in this place. Earth is our home and we are part of her unfolding story.
Problem: We Are Between Stories
Have you ever had a family member who seemed to be in one crisis or another all the time? In many family systems, we encounter individuals that always seem to create crises in their life---and in the lives of those around them. Why is that? Evidence suggests that humans create crises, not just as individuals, but as a culture: institutions crumble around us, ecosystems struggle, Earth’s own climate is shifting…. all crises the we collectively create.
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