kosmos

KOSMOS LIVE Podcast | Jeremy Lent, The Web of Meaning

KOSMOS LIVE PODCAST SERIES Preparing for Profound Change

This podcast series, Preparing for Profound Change, explores the converging challenges facing our world and offers strategies for coping with what lies ahead. Economic turmoil, climate chaos, political upheaval – these may seem like forces to fear, but in fact offer us deep opportunities for transformation.

Episode 10 – Jeremy Lent, The Web of Meaning, with Host, Nicholas Joyce

Guest, Jeremy Lent is author of The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning, which investigates how different cultures have made sense of the universe and how their underlying values have changed the course of history. His new book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe, was published in Spring 2021.

Host, Nicholas Joyce is a whole systems designer and energetic architect. Formerly on the board of the Global Ecovillage Network and Foundation for Intentional Community, he now spends his time focused on ONEBoulder, a unique and gamified approach to introducing practices and principles of regenerative culture to a city of +100,000 people.

Jeremy Lent | A lot of what the book is about is showing how, what modern science tells us, whether it’s systems thinking, complexity science, or evolutionary biology, or cognitive science, actually points to the same deep wisdom that some of the greatest wisdom traditions of the world have been telling us for millennia. Whether it’s Buddhism, Taoism or indigenous knowledge from around the world. Similarly, what the cognitive understanding tells us points to the wisdom of the hearts, of actually of our feelings.

Western thought teaches that our mind is totally separate from our body, and therefore our feelings don’t have validity. And the notion of an integrated intelligence is not to deny the importance and value of that conceptual thinking, but to look at how we can use that very special, uniquely human gift and apply that to this recognition of what I call our animate consciousness, or our animate intelligence, which is the intelligence that we share with all of nature. That’s the intelligence we see not just in other mammals around us, like dolphins, or elephants, or chimpanzees who are highly intelligent in ways that we recognize; but even in trees, and ecosystems, and even in single cells – the deep intelligence of nature.

Within each of us as humans, that deep intelligence shows itself in the ways in which we feel, especially when we’re interacting with somebody. But because of the fact that we’ve all been socialized and conditioned, it’s difficult sometimes to trust our feelings.

Nick Joyce | Yes, absolutely. The theme for this Kosmos Quarterly is Realigning with Earth Wisdom. I’m wondering if you could speak a little bit to how you think people can get back in touch with our animate intelligence.

Jeremy Lent | What I call animate intelligence, and Earth wisdom, is a very similar take on the same thing, which is this recognition that life itself has spent billions of years here on Earth, evolving ways of doing things and being healthy as part of bigger ecosystems and showing incredible intelligence. Again, from our mainstream thinking, we’re used to thinking of humans as being smarter than any other creature, and that ‘artificial intelligence’ is somehow way beyond anything that nature has ever done. And in the book I compare the two different ‘AIs’: artificial intelligence and animate intelligence.

What’s amazing is, thanks to science we’ve begun to understand in recent decades, that even at the level of a single cell – (and we have 40 trillion of them in our bodies) – one single cell is capable of ways of making sense of the world in ways even our most advanced super computers can’t actually do. A cell senses thousands of things at the same time, and goes through unbelievably complex processes of figuring out what it’s doing, and communicating with other cells around it. This is part of an unfolding of evolution of billions of years.

And when you look at things – what we think of as inanimate natural things – like trees or plants, we now know that, not only do trees or plants have multiple senses, over a dozen senses, more than we can even imagine or think about, they even communicate with each other through ecosystems, and what’s been now called the ‘Wood Wide Web’ by biologist Suzanne Simard.

So there’s actually true collective intelligence all around us that we’re only beginning to recognize. That’s the intelligence of nature. One of the great elements of that Earth wisdom that’s evolved over billions of years is recognizing the power of cooperation. We’ve been told from our textbooks, from Richard Dawkins, and The Selfish Gene, and all that stuff, that nature has evolved to be supremely competitive. The opposite is actually true.

This is not wishful thinking. This is the result of scientific analysis of how evolution actually occurred, that the major steps in evolution, from prokaryotes, to cells with a nucleus, to multicellular animals, to communities, to mammals and to humans… every step increases an organism’s learning to cooperate with each other, which has led to the rich diversity of life on Earth right now.

A lot of listening to Earth’s wisdom is to recognize what the Earth itself, what Gaia itself, is telling us about how life can actually be lived in a more flourishing way, both for individual organisms and to flourish as part of something much, much bigger.

Listen Now

READ: The Conversation in Kosmos

Links for this Podcast

Website: Jeremylent.com
Blog: Patterns of Meaning (patternsofmeaning.com)
Book: The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning
Organization: The Liology Institute
Santiago Theory of Cognition created by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela

Credits

HOST | Nicholas Joyce

EDITOR | Bridget Yachetti

WEB | Karen Andersen

This Kosmos Live series, Preparing for Profound Change, is made possible by Immediacy, leading creators of educational media for learners of all ages everywhere. And, by Kosmos Community, dedicated supporters of the Kosmos mission – transformation in harmony with all Life.

Balancing a sober understanding of the of the collective challenges we face, with heart-centered response, calls for deep awakening by individuals, communities and societies. Our guests share their personal practices, strategies, and insights to help us manage our strong emotions and step forward to play positive proactive roles during these troubling times.

What skills, competencies and capacities will be most valued in the new world? How can our own inner practices keep us free from anxiety as we prepare body, mind and spirit for profound change? See other episodes in this series here.

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KOSMOS LIVE Podcast | Andreas Weber, On Matter and Desire

KOSMOS LIVE PODCAST SERIES Preparing for Profound Change

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Episode 9 – Andreas Weber, On Matter and Desire

Dr. Andreas Weber is a biologist, philosopher, and nature writer. He holds degrees in Marine Biology and Cultural Studies and is the author of nine non-fiction books and dozens of magazine features and is highly respected for his work in the fields of popular science and environmental sustainability. Andreas explores new understandings of life-as-meaning or ‘biopoetics’ and ‘biosemiotics’ in science and in the arts, and his work has been translated into several languages and published around the globe.

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Download the transcript [PDF]

"The profound changes that are coming are the profound changes that are happening in every process of identity, which is every life form all the time. In a very difficult and astonishing way, let's say the profound changes or even this sadness of goodbye or this sadness of loss which is englobing us, is just a variant of the sadness of loss which happens if you are fully alive."

"In an ecosystem, every being can only exist because it can eat others and it is eaten by others. We have the idea of fundamental interbeing as completely sharing your bodies with others, which you could see as cruelty, but you can also see it as a source of fertility. Only this makes possible that any individual and any selfhood can exist. You need both, and that's another way of talking about the paradoxes I'm talking about in this book. That you need the totality of mutual, how would I call it, of mutual interdependency or interpenetration. You need this to be a self. You need to incorporate other to be a self."

"We're always striving for happiness. I mean, the pursuit of happiness, that's the archetype of American paradigm. It's happiness, but you don't get there in looking for happiness and sacrificing your reality or the way you truly are or the way you really desire to connect or the way the biosphere renews itself through dying. That's all reality and you can't just overlay it with happiness. It doesn't work this way around, so maybe that's part of the teaching where we can have if we open our eyes. It's about how to be real."

"We can implement an ecology of love in our relationships which is not different at all from what is happening in ecosystems, only that we can be, let's say, the actors in that practice. That's even the core message of the whole book is that we have completely forgotten that to be in this world in a fertile and fruitful manner means to be a loving partner of others, and being a loving partner for others means to come to myself through letting the others come to themselves."

Links for this Podcast

Websites

Cultures of Enlivenment

Books by Andreas Weber

Matter and Desire

The Biology of Wonder

Biopoetics: Towards an Existential Ecology

In Kosmos Journal

The Enlivenment Manifesto: Politics and Poetics in the Anthropocene

The Biology of Wonder | Finding the Human in Nature

Enlivenment: A New Bios for our Relation to the Natural World and to Ourselves

Credits

HOST | Rhonda Fabian

EDITOR | Bridget Yachetti

WEB | Karen Andersen

ASSOCIATE | Victoria Price

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KOSMOS LIVE Podcast | Deepak Chopra on Conscious Evolution

KOSMOS LIVE PODCAST SERIES Preparing for Profound Change

Episode 8 – Deepak Chopra on Conscious Evolution

Dr. Deepak Chopra is Founder of The Chopra Foundation and the Chopra Center for Wellbeing, and a world-renowned pioneer in mind-body medicine and personal transformation. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. Dr. Chopra has authored more than 80 books, published in more than 43 languages, including 22 New York Times best sellers.

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Download the transcript [PDF]

"Science is a double-edged sword. It's both divine and diabolical. It can destroy the world, but it can also repair the world if our emotional and spiritual evolution keep pace with the progress that science makes. But there's a disconnect. The scientists are not interested in self-awareness or don't even ask who is doing the science. What is it that knows the experience of mind/body/universe? What is experience? What is the experience of doing science itself? Science doesn't talk about experience. Science only talks about that which is observed, and the mechanisms of that which is observed never ask who's observing and why."

"Everyone has to be realistic, and mood making is a big danger, especially in spiritual circles. You pretend to be positive and you're feeling miserable. You have to be realistic. What you have to do is you have to practice. You have to have a discipline, a spiritual discipline of self-reflection, which is asking yourself meaningful questions like 'Who am I? What do I want? What is the purpose and meaning of existence? What is my contribution? What is my story? Can we have a different story? What does a good relationship mean? What does a friendship mean? Who are the role models in history, mythology, religion, that we can look up to? What are your unique skills and talents and how do we use them to the service of humanity?'"

"Once we started to use labels and language and descriptions to explain experiences, and tell stories, then that story manifested as the human universe, but it also made us extremely powerful in evolution, so we became a permanently victorious species. A permanently victorious species disturbs the ecosystem, which is a very delicate, fine-tuned, balanced organic system of life. A permanently victorious species risks its own extinction. We are at that point. We have to decide whether we evolve to the next stage of human evolution, through conscious evolution."

"We have to go deep into our essential nature, which is pure consciousness, which is infinite creativity, which is evolving at its own pace, but which we can accelerate. Rare, yes, if we have to use a word, then love would be the ultimate truth at the heart of creation, but love not as a sentiment or an emotion, love as the knowingness that is only one in the deeper reality that we are members of one body, members of one mind, and members of one consciousness."

Links for this Podcast

Websites

Deepak Chopra

The Chopra Center

The Chopra Foundation

Books by Deepak Chopra

You Are the Universe: Discovering Your Cosmic Self and Why It Matters

Super Genes

The Future of God: A Practical Approach to Spirituality for Our Times

The Soul of Leadership

The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire

Ageless Body, Timeless Mind

In Kosmos Journal

An Interview with Deepak Chopra: You Are the Universe

Referenced in this Podcast

The Upanishads

Credits

HOST | Rhonda Fabian

EDITOR | Bridget Yachetti

WEB | Karen Andersen

ASSOCIATE | Victoria Price

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KOSMOS LIVE Podcast | William Ury on Mediation and the Middle Way

KOSMOS LIVE PODCAST SERIES Preparing for Profound Change

Episode 7 – William Ury, on Mediation and the Middle Way

William Ury is co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation, and one of the world’s leading experts on negotiation and mediation. He is co-author of Getting to Yes, the world’s bestselling book on negotiation, and more recently author of Getting to Yes with Yourself. William has served as a negotiation adviser and mediator in conflicts ranging from Kentucky wildcat coal mine strikes to ethnic wars in the Middle East, the Balkans, and the former Soviet Union.

Listen Now

Download the transcript [PDF]

"All the professors and everyone thought the Berlin Wall was going to be there, and the Cold War was going go on for generations, and there was Northern Ireland.. South Africa. Apartheid…and yet I watched, and participated, and visited all those places, and worked in all those places, and watched as conflicts, that we thought were seemingly impossible, gradually gave way to - not the end of the conflict - but the transformation of the conflict. That's what's key. Sometimes, we think it's end of the conflict. Well, conflict is part of life, but to change the form of the conflict from a destructive form of war, violence, oppression, to a constructive form of dialogue, negotiation, democracy, nonviolent action, that's the key."

"[There’s] an old Tibetan prophecy from maybe 1,000 years ago. It's called The Shamballa Prophecy, and it's that at some point in the distant future, there will come a moment when the Earth, itself, is in danger like you're mentioning, and at that moment in that generation, there will come into being a new breed of warriors, or I would call them healing warriors. They call them Shamballa warriors in the Tibetan prophecy, and they're endowed with two weapons, and the first one is insight, the ability to really look inside, and that's where self-forgiveness comes from, and the second is compassion. So, it's those two valuable tools that are so key right now if we're going to begin to heal ourselves, heal our communities, and heal our planet."

"Respect comes from the Latin, which means to look again, to see the human being there, and the most common behavioral way in which we show respect is actually to listen, and we're in a world right now, which is all about talking, and everyone's talking, and they're talking past each other, and we have talk shows. We need listen shows…"

"As someone who's been very active as a mediator in negotiations in conflicts around the world, one thing I've noticed is that, as I mentioned earlier, we are our own worst enemies, and as the old saying goes, "When angry, you will make the best speech you will ever regret." We're reaction machines. So, to me, the foundation of successful negotiation, actually, starts with ourselves.."

Links for this Podcast

Books by William Ury

Getting to Yes with Yourself (And Other Worldly Opponents)

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In

The Power of A Positive No: How to Say ‘No’ and Still Get to ‘Yes’

Getting Past No: Negotiating in Difficult Situations

The Third Side: Why We Fight and How We Can Stop

Getting Disputes Resolved: Designing to Cut the Costs of Conflict

Beyond the Hotline: How We Can Prevent Crisis that Might Bring on a Nuclear War

Must We Fight? A New Perspective on Violent Conflict and Its Prevention

Windows of Opportunity: From Cold War to Peaceful Competition in US-Soviet Relations

In Kosmos Journal

New Approaches to Healing Collective Conflict and Trauma: Our Responsibility as Global Citizens

Referenced in this Podcast

Thomas Hübl

The Abraham Path

Conflicts

Colombian Conflict

Apartheid in South Africa

Kurdish-Turkish Conflict

Credits

HOST | Rhonda Fabian

EDITOR | Bridget Yachetti

WEB | Karen Andersen

ASSOCIATE | Victoria Price

This Kosmos Live series, Preparing for Profound Change, is made possible by Immediacy, leading creators of educational media for learners of all ages everywhere. And, by Kosmos Community, dedicated supporters of the Kosmos mission – transformation in harmony with all Life.

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KOSMOS LIVE Podcast | Ma'ikwe Ludwig on Intentional Community

KOSMOS LIVE PODCAST SERIES Preparing for Profound Change

Episode 6 – Ma'ikwe Ludwig on Intentional Community

Maikwe Ludwig is a longtime advocate of Cooperative Culture and locally, self-determined solutions to climate disruption. She serves on the board of directors at the Fellowship for Intentional Community, and is the Executive Director of Commonomics USA. She writes, teaches, and organizes from her home base in Laramie, Wyoming.

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Download the transcript [PDF]

“By my best estimate, after looking at a lot of data, I think that what is sustainable is probably about 10% of the consumption of your average American at this point. That means we need to come way down. That's a 90% reduction in how your average American is living, in terms of the amount of resources consumed. That doesn't mean that it's going to be terrible, and some sort of horrible Stone Age existence. There's ways to do that and examples out there of doing that without it being a big deprivation trip.”

"I've lived in intentional communities now in Michigan, and Missouri, and New Mexico, and now we're working on forming one in Laramie, and growing food is really, really different in all four of those places. You're going to be looking at the same things, like how do we grow food? How do we support ourselves? Where does our water come from? How do we get our energy?"

"In a nutshell, the culture that we have in mainstream America, at this point, is one that really glorifies competition, and independence, and individuality. In fact, we've been measured, compared to a lot of other countries, and we're actually the most individualistic culture in the world. Our schools, in a lot of ways, are kind of competition factories. We're training our children, from a very young age in how to compete effectively. Partly because we are then launching them out into an economic system that's very competitive. We really teach very little about sharing, and cooperation, and empathy."

Links for this Podcast

Books by Ma’ikwe Ludwig

Together Resilient

in Kosmos Journal

How to Start a Meal Sharing Co-op: An Excerpt from Together Resilient

Websites

Fellowship for Intentional Community

Commonomics USA

Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage

Catholic Worker Movement

Global Ecovillage Network

Gaia Education

New Economy Coalition

Referenced in this Podcast

The Conundrum by David Owen

Credits

HOST | Rhonda Fabian

EDITOR | Bridget Yachetti

WEB | Karen Andersen

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KOSMOS LIVE Podcast | Joe Brewer on Cultural Design and Midwifing a New Era

KOSMOS LIVE PODCAST SERIES Preparing for Profound Change

This podcast series, Preparing for Profound Change, explores the shifting global landscape and offers strategies for coping with what lies ahead. Economic turmoil, climate chaos, political upheaval – these may seem like forces to fear, but in fact offer us deep opportunities for transformation. Balancing a sober understanding of the of the collective challenges we face, with heart-centered response, calls for deep awakening by individuals, communities and societies. Our guests share their personal practices, strategies, and insights to help us manage our strong emotions and step forward to play positive proactive roles during these troubling times.

What skills, competencies and capacities will be most valued in the new world? How can our own inner practices keep us free from anxiety as we prepare body, mind and spirit for profound change?

Episode 5 – Joe Brewer on Cultural Design and Midwifing a New Era

AVAILABLE September 4th, 2017

Joe Brewer is a change strategist working on behalf of humanity, and also a complexity researcher, cognitive scientist, and evangelist for the field of culture design. Joe is working to bridge the vast body of scientific knowledge about cultural change with the efforts of practitioners around the world to help guide humanity toward resilience and well-being.

"How is possible that we can create a future that collectively no one wants? It partly comes from us being unable to see the larger systems we're embedded in and partly has to do with this developmental history of 10,000 years of war, conquest, and empire building that has only really reached saturation at the planetary scale within the last 50 to 100 years."

"Collapse is not like what's shown in Hollywood movies. Collapse doesn't happen in 10 to 15 minutes of violent outbreak in a movie scene. Collapse happens across decades to hundreds of years. The Roman Empire took about 300 years to collapse. This Western, industrial civilization is already in the process of collapsing. The United States as an empire is already past its peak and going into decline. If we recognize that collapse is longer timescales than we normally think about and that it's already underway, this allows us to let go of the feeling that we need to stop it from happening because we can't stop it from happening, but at the same time, collapse doesn't mean total annihilation of all things. Collapse means this system goes away and there's a silver lining to that."

"If I were to say it succinctly, even though the succinct explanation doesn't really get at it, I would use the words of the evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson when he says that we need to become wise managers of our own evolutionary process. A great deal is known about the competition and cooperation between different species and ecosystems. There's this huge body of knowledge about these things, but generally speaking, when humans get together to solve societal problems, we don't apply an evolutionary framework to dealing with things like public policy."

"We have ecological expressions of culture that are fit to local landscapes, and some will prove to be resilient and others won't, and we can't know ahead of time which ones they will be, but whichever ones are resilient will have embodied within them the natural intelligence of nature to be successful in the new environment, and if they are networked, they can spread that learning as intelligence to support the decisions of other communities, so these culture design labs are a network of communities that become self-aware of their change process so that as they become resilient or they don't, learning happens across the network, and if they're successful, the network survives. Or said another way, humans don't go extinct, that we manage to discover how to be resilient in the new environment."

Listen Now

Download the transcript [PDF]

Links for this Podcast

Joe Brewer's Blog

Highlights:

Culture Design Labs — Evolving the Future

Becoming Midwives in the Great Transition

You Pay More Taxes Than Exxon Mobil

Guiding the Evolution of Cultural Sciences

In Kosmos Journal

The Predicament of Knowledge: A Challenge for Culture Design

The Cultural Sickness Needs to be Named

What If It’s All Connected? Humanity and the Global Crisis

Mentioned in this Podcast

Psychoanalysis shapes consumer culture | Or how Sigmund Freud, his nephew and a box of cigars forever changed American marketing.

The Rand Corporation: The Think Tank That Controls America

Credits

HOST | Rhonda Fabian

EDITOR | Bridget Yachetti

WEB | Karen Andersen

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KOSMOS LIVE Podcast | Judy Wicks, Engaged Business, Activism, and Local Economy

KOSMOS LIVE PODCAST SERIES Preparing for Profound Change

What skills, competencies and capacities will be most valued in the new world? How can our own inner practices keep us free from anxiety as we prepare body, mind and spirit for profound change?

Episode 4 –Judy Wicks, Engaged Business, Activism, and Local Economy

AVAILABLE to Kosmos Community August 4, 2017; Public August 15, 2017

Author and activist Judy Wicks is co-founder of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, BALLE, and an international leader and speaker in the local living economy movement. She is former owner of the White Dog Café, acclaimed for its socially progressive and environmentally responsible business practices.

..."the whole economy is out of balance. That there's too much masculine energy, too much focus on efficiency and cost controls and so on. And nothing could exemplify this better than the factory farming of animals. And when you think about this, say, the hens, the battery cages of hens, the name of the game is how little can you give the hen? How little space, how little light and air, how little food and water, to produce the cheapest egg on earth. And there's no feminine energy whatsoever in this system. It's really ... There's no nurturing at all.

I think the most important thing about activism is to realize your own power, that every single person counts, and that's how change comes. That we each take action in a way that we can, and that we build on that. And to think big, to dream big!

...if we can have a culture that respects and has compassion for animals, that that's the ground floor of building a compassionate world, so that we as human beings can really find our place in the web of life and the family of life. Not as torturers and exploiters, but as lovers of life and of all species and of each other. So that's my dream.

I think the number one thing that people can do is to buy local food and locally produced renewable energy and in doing this, in building local self-reliance, we get to know our community better. We get to know our farmers, our farmers markets. And I think there's a joy in this."

Listen Now

Download the transcript [PDF]

Links for this Podcast

Judy Wicks’ Website
http://judywicks.com/

Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE)
https://bealocalist.org/

White Dog Café
http://www.whitedog.com/our-story/

In Kosmos Journal

Fall | Winter 2013
Good Morning, Beautiful Business: The Unexpected Journey of an Activist Entrepreneur and Local Economy Pioneer
http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/good-morning-beautiful-business/

June 24, 2016 Newsletter
Building a Local Peace Economy: We Have the Power
http://www.kosmosjournal.org/news/building-a-local-peace-economy-we-have-the-power/

July 12, 2016 Newsletter
Hyperlocal Lending: Circle of Aunts & Uncles
http://www.kosmosjournal.org/news/hyperlocal-lending-circle-of-aunts-uncles/

Mentioned in this Podcast

David Korten
A leading critic of today’s global economy and champion of the term “Living Economy”
http://davidkorten.org/

Unilever purchased Ben & Jerry’s
https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_truth_about_ben_and_jerrys
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2000/04/the_scoop_on_ben_jerrys_sellout.html

Battle of Seattle against the World Trade Organization
https://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/exhibits-and-education/digital-document-libraries/world-trade-organization-protests-in-seattle
https://www.britannica.com/event/Seattle-WTO-protests-of-1999
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-dark-side-of-globalization-why-seattles-1999-protesters-were-right/282831/

The Social Venture Network: Supporting and empowering diverse, innovative leaders who leverage business to serve the greater good
http://svn.org/

Greenpeace
Leading organization promoting solutions for a greener future through peaceful protest and creative communication
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/

Standing Rock
An assembly of indigenous tribes and water defenders at Standing Rock Reservation in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline
https://www.standingrock.org/

Credits

HOST | Rhonda Fabian

EDITOR | Bridget Yachetti

WEB | Karen Andersen

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KOSMOS LIVE Podcast | Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Reconnecting with the World Soul

KOSMOS LIVE PODCAST SERIES Preparing for Profound Change

What skills, competencies and capacities will be most valued in the new world? How can our own inner practices keep us free from anxiety as we prepare body, mind and spirit for profound change?

Episode 3 –Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Reconnecting to the World Soul

Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee writes and teaches about spiritual responsibility in our present time of transition, and the emerging global consciousness of Oneness. He has also written about the feminine and the "world soul", or anima mundi, and on the groundbreaking subject of spiritual ecology.

Llewellyn is the founder of the Golden Sufi Center. His books include Working With Oneness, Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth, an anthology of essays, and most recently, Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life.

"...I call it the loss of the sacred, which is incredibly tragic if you know how precious this substance of the sacred is, how precious it is to human beings, how precious it is to the planet. We are living in very toxic times, it's jokingly called the post-truth era. The mystic and the Sufis have written a lot about the veils of distortion, and how to see through the veils of distortion, but they are more distorted than ever and it requires an extra special vigilance, attentiveness and mindfulness to stay true to one's own deepest purpose in this minefield of exploitation, in this minefield of greed in which sadly, even a lot of spirituality has become polluted by profit and loss, by commercialism.

...we reclaim the sacred in our inner life through prayer, through meditation, through devotions, and in our outer life just through being present in the sacred that is all around us, that permeates everything, but for some reason there is this poison, and I deliberately call it poison, in our contemporary culture, that stops us from experiencing it, that veils us from what alone gives real meaning to life.

...This will be a multi-generational story, it won’t be fixed in the next five, 10, even 20 years, maybe in the next 200 years, but we have to be pioneers of consciousness, and this is something the mystic has always been. We push the frontiers of consciousness, we see what is possible within the human being, we dare to live a new story."

Listen Now

Download the transcript [PDF]

Links for this Podcast

Books by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Working With Oneness
https://www.goldensufi.org/book_desc_working.html

Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth
http://www.goldensufi.org/book_desc_s_ecology.html

Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life
http://www.goldensufi.org/book_desc_10Practices.html

The Face We Had Before We Were Born: A Spiritual Autobiography
http://goldensufi.org/book_desc_face.html

The Return of the Feminine and the World Soul
https://www.goldensufi.org/book_desc_feminine.html
Websites

Golden Sufi Center
https://www.goldensufi.org/
Founded by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, this Center aims to make available the teachings and work of the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Order of Sufism

Working With Oneness
http://workingwithoneness.org/

Spiritual Ecology
https://spiritualecology.org/

Referenced in this podcast

Anima mundi: the “Soul of the World”
https://www.goldensufi.org/a_animamundi.html
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee on the way ancient philosophers and alchemists referred to the spiritual essence of our world

Rumi’s Poetry
http://www.shambhala.com/the-rumi-collection.html

http://www.rumi.net/rumi_poems_main.htm
http://www.poetseers.org/the-poetseers/rumi/index.html
Revered 13^th Century Sunni Muslim Sufi mystic poet

Joanna Macy’s Work
http://www.joannamacy.net/
Scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking and deep ecology

Thich Nhat Hanh: “We need to fall in love with Earth”
https://plumvillage.org/letters-from-thay/thich-nhat-hanhs-statement-on-climate-change-for-unfccc/
Thich Nhat Hanh’s statement on Climate Change for the United Nations

Wendell Berry: Poet, novelist, and environmentalist
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wendell-berry

Thomas Berry
http://thomasberry.org/
A spiritual leader and avid advocate for the environment

Kogi people of South America
https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/kogi-urgent-call-guardians-heart-world
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee in Kosmos Journal

September 20, 2016 Edition
The Loss of the Sacred and a Prayer for the Earth
http://www.kosmosjournal.org/news/the-loss-of-the-sacred-and-a-prayer-for-the-earth/

February 23, 2016 Edition
The Sacred Feminine Today
http://www.kosmosjournal.org/news/the-sacred-feminine-today/

August 11, 2015 Edition
Spiritual Ecology Fellowship | Midwifing a New Story
http://www.kosmosjournal.org/news/spiritual-ecology-fellowship-midwifing-a-new-story/

February 24, 2015 Edition
Interview with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee: Global Citizens of a Living Earth
http://www.kosmosjournal.org/news/interview-llewellyn-vaughan-lee-global-citizenship-and-the-unity-of-being/

Fall | Winter 2013 Kosmos Publication
Caring for a World with a Soul
http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/caring-for-a-world-with-a-soul/

Fall | Winter 2011 Kosmos Publication
Praying for the Earth
http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/praying-for-the-earth/

Credits

HOST | Rhonda Fabian

EDITOR | Bridget Yachetti

WEB | Karen Andersen

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Kosmos Live! | Mark Gerzon, Mediation in a Time of Division

KOSMOS LIVE PODCAST SERIES Preparing for Profound Change

What skills, competencies and capacities will be most valued in the new world? How can our own inner practices keep us free from anxiety as we prepare body, mind and spirit for profound change?

Episode 2 – Mark Gerzon, Mediation in a Time of Division

AVAILABLE to Kosmos Community July 15th, 2017; Public July 21st, 2017

Mark Gerzon is a leadership expert who convenes and facilitates conversations in high conflict areas. He works to close the divide and open the dialogue between opposing parties. Mark has advised the U.S. Congress, the World Economic Forum, UNDP, and many others. For the last 30 years has served as president of the Mediators Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to incubating projects that promote mutual understanding and the common good.

“The red light went on for me in America in 1996. That's when I saw, "Uh-oh. We're in trouble." And as far as I can tell, we've never added oil to the engine of democracy since 1996. So we have 20 years of driving this car called democracy, trying to do all sorts of stuff but never putting any oil in it. Oil is trust…oil is trust.”

...if you want to be a mediator, you have to develop integral vision, which means literally seeing the whole picture, and then the second tool is thinking systemically. And we could illustrate that with any issue that we might pick today, whether it was immigration or what's happening around the travel ban or the economy, or we could really pick any issue at all, and we'd find that many of the stakeholders, many of the partisans, they've never taken the time or the trouble to develop an integral vision and to think systemically about the problem.

...America is entering a period of a new, prolonged civil war. And we've never had a period in our entire history where we've been continually at war for a generation. It has just never happened. And we've been at war since 2001. And according to some people, it has no signs of ending, because when you have a war on terror, it could go on for the rest of our lives and our children's lives. That's a very different state of mind. And it has to be challenged on the global scale."

Listen Now

Download the transcript [PDF]

LINKS

Mark Gerzon’s Articles in Kosmos

Fall|Winter 2016
Can We Harness Conflict?

January 2016 Newsletter
We Were Global Citizens Before We Were Born

January 2016 Newsletter
Transpartisan | A Working Definition

Fall|Winter 2009
Global Citizens, Part I

Fall|Winter 2009
Global Citizens, Part II

Spring|Summer 2005
Global Passports: The Mark Gerzon Story

Important Links

Mark’s Website and Blog

Mediators Foundation
Founded by Mark to foster leadership for a peaceful, just and sustainable world by identifying, supporting and connecting visionary leaders working in the best interests of our small planet.

Mark Gerzon’s Books

Leading Through Conflict: How Successful Leaders Transform Differences into Opportunities

American Citizen, Global Citizen: How Expanding Our Identities Makes Us Safer, Stronger, Wiser—And Build a Better World

The Reunited States of America: How We Can Bridge the Partisan Divide

Mentioned in the Podcast:

An Inconvenient Truth
Academy-award winning documentary about the dangers of our changing climate, featuring former presidential candidate Al Gore

The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View by Rich Tarnas
A thorough look into the history of Western philosophical concepts

Bridge Alliance
“A diverse coalition of more than 80 respected established organizations committed to revitalizing democratic practice in America” reaching across party lines

CREDITS

This Kosmos Live series, How To Prepare for Profound Change, is made possible by Immediacy, leading creators of educational media for learners of all ages everywhere. And, by Kosmos Community, dedicated supporters of the Kosmos mission – transformation in harmony with all Life. Visit KosmosJournal.org to learn more.

HOST | Rhonda Fabian

EDITOR | Bridget Yachetti

WEB | Karen Anderson

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KOSMOS LIVE Podcast | Alnoor Ladha, Mystical Anarchism in a Post-Capitalist World

This podcast series, Preparing for Profound Change, explores the shifting global landscape. Economic collapse, climate chaos, political upheaval - these may seem like forces to fear, but in fact offer us deep opportunities for transformation. A post-carbon, post-capitalist world calls for deep awakening and action at all levels - by individuals, communities and societies.

What skills, competencies and capacities will be most valued in the new world? How can our own inner practices keep us free from anxiety as we prepare body, mind and spirit for what lies ahead?

Episode 1 - Alnoor Ladha, Mystical Anarchism in a Post-Capitalist World

Alnoor Ladha is founding member and Executive Director of /The Rules (/TR), a global network of activists, organizers, designers, coders, researchers, writers and others dedicated to changing the rules that create inequality and poverty around the world.

Alnoor writes and speaks about new forms of activism, the structural causes of inequality, and the link between climate change and poverty. He is writing a book about the intersection of spirituality and politics.

"This current system is essentially anti-life. And we cannot go on in this way, dependent on 3% global GDP growth, and the extraction of all our resources, and taking ancient fossils from the ground to prop up a Ponzi Scheme economy.

...The system is a complex, adaptive, evolutionary system. {The market-based system} is the greatest Frankenstein or artificial intelligence we’ve ever created. And what it does is co-opt all dissent, and it rewards those people who best serve the logic of the system.

...I think this is a moment of bifurcation. There is this great sort of split happening on the planet, that I feel like the darkness is becoming extreme and the light is becoming extreme simultaneously, and they are going in these sort of two opposite directions. And I think the old strategy of reform - let’s somehow convince and persuade people to come into our camp - is not the right strategy anymore.

...As the old Buddhist saying goes, enlightenment does not happen in the cave, it happens in the mouth of the lion. It happens at that moment you are being tested. And there are omens around what the integral yoga of our time is, so incarnating in a time that is as troubled as ours is an omen for engagement. And knowing that 95% of humanity, of our brothers and sisters are suffering, that 200 species a day are going extinct, is an omen that this is the thing to work on collectively." - Alnoor Ladha

Listen Now

Download the transcript [PDF]

Links for this Podcast

The Rules: A global network of activists, organizers, designers, coders, researches, writers, and others dedicated to changing the rules that create inequality and poverty around the world

Alnoor Ladha’s work in Kosmos Journal:

Killing the Caterpillar: Competing Worldviews at the Chrysalis Stage of Humanity

Seeing Wetiko: On Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition (and by Martin Kirk)

Mystical Anarchism: A Journey to the Borderlands of Freedom

Mentioned in the Podcast:

Oxfam research - Oxfam International’s new research that highlights the extreme global economic inequality of today.

IPCC Report - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest assessment of climate change related science.

Standing Rock - An assembly of indigenous tribes and water defenders at Standing Rock Reservation in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline

Global Eco-Village Network - A growing network of regenerative communities that bridge cultures, countries, and continents

Tamera - A peace research project in Portugal working on the social, ecological, and ethical foundations for a realistic utopia.

The Transition Town Movement (in the United Kingdom) - A movement of communities coming together to re-imagine and rebuild our world.

The Zapatista Movement in Mexico - A movement that began in Chiapas, Mexico to protect indigenous rights in the face of colonialism and globalization

The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions (Jason Hickel) - “A provocative, urgent, and ultimately uplifting account of how the world works, and how it can change”

Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Karen Barad) - Delves into Barad’s theory of agential realism, producing a new interpretation of quantum physics with far-reaching implications “…Puts Barad’s expertise in feminist studies and quantum physics to superb use, offering agential realism as an important alternative to representationalism” (Arthur Zajonc)

Sri Aurobindo: Integral Yoga - Sri Aurobindo’s teachings of Yoga practices focus on inner self-development to lead toward elevated consciousness

The Rules’s new video: Capitalism - Learn how capitalism is destroying our world and why we need to change the rule

Memory, Fire and Hope: Five Lessons from Standing Rock

2016 Kosmos Seed Grant Recipient | Activist Ashram, New York, NY

Seed Grant Alum | Activist Ashram, One Year On

Credits

HOST | Rhonda Fabian

EDITOR | Bridget Yachetti

WEB | Karen Andersen

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