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Archive for 2017

Kindness Weekly: Glass Is Half-Full

KindSpring.org: Small Acts That Change the World

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For over a decade the KindSpring community has focused on inner transformation, while collectively changing the world with generosity, gratitude, and trust. We are 100% volunteer-run and totally non-commercial. KindSpring is a labor of love.

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At the end of our life our questions are simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well? — Jack Kornfield

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October 29, 2017

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space EditorEditor’s note: Thoughts are very powerful and shape your energy and reactions subconsciously. Learning to focus on positive thoughts requires deep inner work. It takes a conscious effort to change your inner dialogue from first being aware of the negative thought and then trying to replace it with a more constructive one. Thinking positively takes work but the rewards are immeasurable. space
space Smile Big space
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Small Acts of Kindness

space Mish wrote: “She stole five eggs to feed her children. Instead of arresting her, Officer and colleagues gave her two truckloads of food for her children and grandchildren.”
space mindyjourney wrote: “On the way out of the grocery store, gave nephew Zach a quarter and asked him to put in the BIG gumball machine, so a child could find and be surprised :)))).”
space RoseBeautyxo wrote: “I just bought a new skirt but the zipper broke. I talked about it to a couple of employees and one of them, who is a seamstress fixed it for me with no charge :)”
space Give Freely space
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Featured Kindness Stories

Story1 The officer and the workers came together to buy him much-needed shoes
Story2 Her attentiveness to the elderly woman’s need in the bathroom was a blessing for both
Story3 A national de-monetization of currency leads to issues at the petrol station
space Love Unconditionally space
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Idea of the Week

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The Evolutionary Power of Mindful Communication

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DailyGood News That Inspires

October 29, 2017

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The Evolutionary Power of Mindful Communication

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

– George Bernard Shaw –

The Evolutionary Power of Mindful Communication

Mindful communication encompasses a number of qualities in both listening and responding. From entering conversations free from our fixed opinions and perceptions, to communicating in such a way that allows another to feel heard, Diane Musho Hamilton shares what mindful dialogue is (and is not). She explains that mindful dialogue is of particular importance in today’s society in which polarized views compete for space from our kitchen tables to conference rooms. As a mediator, group facilitator, and contemporary spiritual teacher, Hamilton shares her insights about how the way we communicate with one another affects our nervous system, identity, and relationships. “When we talk about mindful communication, what we’re really saying is that we have the capacity to become aware [of], to witness, or to watch our communication style and its impacts.” Read on, or listen to the full interview to learn more. { read more }

Be The Change

What barriers do you face that might get in the way of mindful communication? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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Speaking Loudly for a Quiet Place

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October 28, 2017

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Speaking Loudly for a Quiet Place

If we can teach people about wildlife, they will be touched. Share my wildlife with me. Because humans want to save things that they love.

– Steve Irwin –

Speaking Loudly for a Quiet Place

“Bear Witness,” chronicles the year Dave and Amy Freeman spent in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) Wilderness to bring awareness to the threats posed by a proposed sulfide-ore copper mining on the wilderness edge. The video is divided up into four seasons and documents the beauty of the BWCA during each season through video and journal-like audio. It tells their story through their words and perspective, adding a personal touch and a descriptive connection to an area that many may never see. Not only are they advocating for BWCA, but also for standing up for all of the world’s wilderness areas. In December 2016, U.S. Federal Agencies denied the mining lease and began an environmental review of the Boundary Waters to determine potential impacts from mining.
{ read more }

Be The Change

Here are 10 ways you can help save the Boundary Waters. One of them is to share this story. { more }

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Business Lessons from the World of Improv

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October 27, 2017

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Business Lessons from the World of Improv

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

– Joseph Chilton Pearce –

Business Lessons from the World of Improv

While few of us associate the world of business with the world of improv, the two may not be as far apart as you originally think. Bob Kulhan, founder and CEO of ‘Business Improv’, is working to bring the two worlds together, through bridging the comedic with the corporate. “Improvisation,” he argues, “is a communication-based art form that…is based in some core principles of business.” Improvisation in business is about breaking down our biases and skewed ways of looking at a problem and working together to see the opportunities that lie within. Read more to learn about abandoning fear, the power of ‘and’, and why making mistakes isn’t always a bad thing. { read more }

Be The Change

Practice saying “Yes, and” this week instead of “Yes, but”. Share your reactions in the comments section below!

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This Hardworking Group Is Cleaning America’s Last Frontier

This week’s inspiring video: This Hardworking Group Is Cleaning America’s Last Frontier
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Video of the Week

Oct 26, 2017
This Hardworking Group Is Cleaning America's Last Frontier

This Hardworking Group Is Cleaning America’s Last Frontier

Eight million tons of plastic waste end up in our oceans every year. Currents in the Pacific bring much of that garbage up to beaches along the Alaska coastline. In 2002, a group of volunteers began cleaning up this debris, and in 2006 this work evolved into a project known as the Gulf of Alaska Keeper (GoAK). To date, GoAK “has removed over 3 million pounds of toxic plastic debris from over 1,500 miles of critical and sensitive coastal habitat.” In many locations, the debris has been accumulating for decades. The items GoAK removes from these coastline habitats aren’t just sent to landfills, they are all sorted, counted, logged, and weighed. In 2007, GoAK also started looking into the origin of the trash, which accumulates from all over the world, and is exacerbated by natural events such as the tsunami in Japan. We are all responsible. We all use plastic. We can all take action on a personal, local, regional, and national level to reduce the amount of waste and litter ended up in these environments.
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The Blind Man and Double Amputee Who Planted 10,000 Trees

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October 26, 2017

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The Blind Man and Double Amputee Who Planted 10,000 Trees

Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.

– Kahlil Gibran –

The Blind Man and Double Amputee Who Planted 10,000 Trees

Two friends from Northern China are not letting their handicaps hold them back. Jia Wenqi, a double amputee, and Jia Haixa, who is completely blind, have been working together to plant trees along a riverbank in Yeli Village, planting an astounding 10,000 trees over the last decade. Finding it difficult to gain employment, the pair approached the local government with their idea. They hope that their efforts will pay off for generations to come. They each use their unique skills and capabilities to achieve their mission, at times carrying each other across the river and using their feet to hold and pass objects. “I am his hands. He is my eyes,” says Haixa. Read on to learn more about the incredible work of this fearless duo. { read more }

Be The Change

What do you find most inspiring about the work of these two friends? How can you bring the spirit of their service-hearted collaboration into your own life and relationships?

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A Call for Another Way of Living

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October 25, 2017

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A Call for Another Way of Living

To learn that the most practical thing in life is to be idealistic is an enormous gift.

– Godfrey Reggio –

A Call for Another Way of Living

After he was asked to leave the order of the Christian Brothers, and with no training in filmmaking, Godfrey Reggio made the remarkable Qatsi trilogy. He had a way of following his own vision. “What I learned is that it’s what I did every day that determined what I was going to think. I’ve never forgotten that. Every now and then, I’ll give a convocation address at a university and I try to always caution the students to not let their diplomas become their death certificates. If you give up your imagination, if you give up your ability to create for the wages of a good job, then you might give up that which predicates us as human beings, the ability to create our own lives.” This remarkable interview shares more of Reggio’s journey and vision. { read more }

Be The Change

If you feel called to undertake some project and haven’t been officially licensed with some kind of degree or certificate, consider simply beginning.

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The Wisdom of the Animals

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October 24, 2017

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The Wisdom of the Animals

Keep close to Nature’s heart…and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

– John Muir –

The Wisdom of the Animals

Animals hold a special place in every child’s life, but for Steve Karlin, his childhood experiences with animals later formed his resolve to help animals and people in the process of healing. In 1980, he founded Wildlife Associates in northern California. Wildlife Associates still operates today to provide a safe haven for injured animals and to teach children in the San Francisco Bay Area, many of whom also carry trauma. ‘Teach Me To Be Wild’ is a recent documentary about Steve’s work at the sanctuary. In this interview learn more about how nature can create avenues for healing. { read more }

Be The Change

Today, notice how an animal in your life is teaching you about healing. Even if you don’t have a pet, what do wild birds or animals around you have to tell you about living a life of healing?

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Awakin Weekly: Seeing Is Not Thinking

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InnerNet Weekly: Inspirations from ServiceSpace.org
Seeing Is Not Thinking
by Jeanne de Salzmann

[Listen to Audio!]

tow3.jpgThe question is not what to do but how to see. Seeing is the most important thing—the act of seeing. I need to realize that it is truly an act, an action that brings something entirely new, a new possibility of vision, certainty and knowledge. This possibility appears during the act itself and disappears as soon as the seeing stops. It is only in this act of seeing that I will find a certain freedom.

So long as I have not seen the nature and movement of the mind, there is little sense in believing that I could be free of it. I am a slave to my mechanical thoughts. This is a fact. It is not the thoughts ­themselves that enslave me but my ­attachment to them. In order to ­understand this, I must not seek to free myself before having known what the ­slavery is. I need to see the illusion of words and ideas, and the fear of my thinking mind to be alone and empty without the support of anything known. It is necessary to live this slavery as a fact, moment after moment, without escaping from it. Then I will begin to ­perceive a new way of seeing. Can I accept not knowing who I am, being hidden behind an imposter? Can I accept not knowing my name? Seeing does not come from thinking.

It comes from the shock at the moment when, feeling an urgency to know what is true, I suddenly realize that my thinking mind cannot perceive reality. To understand what I really am at this moment, I need sincerity and humility, and an unmasked exposure that I do not know. This would mean to refuse nothing, exclude nothing, and enter into the experience of discovering what I think, what I sense, what I wish, all at this very moment.

Our conditioned thought always wants an answer. What is important is to develop another thinking, a vision. For this we have to liberate a certain energy that is beyond our usual thought. I need to ­experience “I do not know” without seeking an answer, to abandon everything to enter the unknown. Then it is no longer the same mind. My mind engages in a new way. I see without any preconceived idea, without choice. In relaxing, for example, I no longer choose to relax before knowing why. I learn to purify my power of vision, not by turning away from the undesirable or toward what is agreeable. I learn to stay in front and see clearly. All things have the same importance, and I become fixed on nothing. Everything depends on this vision, on a look that comes not from any command of my thought but from a feeling of urgency to know.

Perception, real vision, comes in the interval between the old response and the new response to the reception of an impression. The old response is based on material inscribed in our memory. With the new response, free from the past, the brain remains open, receptive, in an ­attitude of respect. It is a new brain which functions, that is, different cells and a new intelligence. When I see that my thought is incapable of understanding, that its movement brings nothing, I am open to the sense of the cosmic, beyond the realm of human perception.

About the Author: by Jeanne de Salzmann, excerpted from Parabola.

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Seeing Is Not Thinking
What does finding a certain freedom in the act of seeing mean to you? Can you share a personal story of a time you experienced “I do not know” without seeking an answer? What helps you stay in front and see clearly?
david doane wrote: Freedom in the act of seeing means to me the freedom that comes from seeing what is, free of judgments, preconceptions, and expectations, free of simply seeing my thinking, which happens so easily.&n…
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Grandmother Power

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DailyGood News That Inspires

October 23, 2017

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Grandmother Power

My generation is now the door to memory. That is why I am remembering.

– Joy Harjo –

Grandmother Power

Across the world, grandmothers are keepers of tradition and leaders of change. In families and communities battling discrimination, poverty, disease and death, grandmothers stand and rise as providers, healers, insurgents. They are storytellers who bridge the past and the future with wisdom and bold, creative action. This is why photojournalist Paola Gianturco has dedicated her life to documenting and advocating for women around the globe. This inspiring story tells of Gianturco’s work that celebrates the life-saving activism and strength of female elders, fueled by witnessing a world that is not good enough for their grandchildren. These are the stories that we need to hear. { read more }

Be The Change

Reach out to an elderly woman today. Ask her to share a story from her life. Seek her guidance. Listen and be present. Share some joy. Let her know that you appreciate her.

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