Book Excerpt | A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage, and Wisdom in Any Moment
By Spring Washam, an excerpt from the Chapter "Meeting the Great Cheif Compassion," in her book A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage, and Wisdom in Any Moment
A few years ago, I was completely exhausted from all the projects I was involved in, and I began to crave solitude. I have always felt that deep down I am secretly a nun and my yogini nature loves solitude. This time I planned a…
Diary of a Watts Princess: A Memoir of Hopes and Dreams
Between Worlds
By Matt Licata, via his blog, A Healing Space
Sink into the womb of now
At times, all our reference points will be taken away, with nothing given to replace them. What we were so clear about just a few days ago is nowhere to be found. The relationship we thought would be there forever, the creativity in our work, our deepest insights and realizations – recycled in the activity of the vast.…
How to Train Your Lightning Bolt: Shifting Ontologies of Parenthood
The Beautiful Question | Unbounded
by Scott Lenox, via his blog, The Beautiful Question,
Just Now, In the Face of Madness
Nestled above the rainforest canopy, where neither the jaguar nor her prey will ever see them, orchids dance in the slightest breeze as they greet the sun, their faces resplendent in the morning's first rays.
Gliding low above the river, soundless and unhurried, wings wide and still, its crimson beak…
Cultivating a Fierce Heart
Dear Reader,
Replacing the old calendar with a new one was not enough. Change is involute; beginnings contain endings contain beginnings. In December we explored the collapse of perceived meaning, the loss of the path many describe as a 'dark night of the soul'. In this edition we explore some of the tentative, difficult first steps from broken-heartedness to fierce-heartedness, when the small…
Fierce Compassion in the Anthropocene
By Willa Miller, via the Garrison Institute
During the winter season a few years ago, 108 inches of snow fell in Boston, breaking the record for the most seasonal snowfall in recorded history. And this snow, it did not melt. We watched it drift into six-foot banks in our backyard, burying our dwarf Japanese maple entirely.
Day after day dawned frigid, stinging our cheeks as soon as we walked…
New Approaches to Healing Collective Conflict and Trauma: Our Responsibility as Global Citizens
By William Ury, Thomas Hübl
Kosmos Journal, SPRING | SUMMER 2017
Hübl: What are your experiences negotiating with parties that are often severely traumatized, and how do you see the trauma being played out in negotiations versus mediating conflicts that are not based on heavy trauma?
Ury: There’s a deeper emotional layer in conflicts with a lot of collective trauma. Negotiations in the…
Unheard Invitations: Piercing the Veil Between Species
By Susan Eirich
Kosmos Journal, FALL | WINTER 2016
The wild animals are lonely for us.
We are lonely for them.
We have become disconnected from each other.
What if we expanded our sense of community to truly include all living beings? Included their perspectives, needs, and gifts? What would be the state of our environment then?
In 2000, I founded Earthfire Institute, a…
Liminal Leadership
By Nora Bateson
Kosmos Journal, FALL | WINTER 2017
"Most of what matters now won’t matter later. Coming generations will shake their heads at the sacrifices their ancestors made for material wealth. They will not care how much prestige you gathered, how many bitcoins you bought, who considered you famous, or even what widget or vaccination you invented. If humanity makes it to the next…