Sangha of Auspicious Companions

May 23, 2020

a project of ServiceSpace

How Iâm Finding Purpose and Connection in a Pandemic

“As a millennial living alone in a small studio in San Francisco, I felt paralyzed knowing that orders to shelter in place would likely soon go into effect, trapping me in just 300 square feet for the unforeseeable future.The coming weeks loomed bleak and lonely, a growing shadow of despair that I knew would engulf so many of us. I was at a loss for what to do next. My first instinct was to call Kate, a friend in her 60s, who offered some of the best advice I’ve ever received. “Find a way to transform your anxiety into action,” she said. Maybe it was that simple.” { read more }

Be The Change

For more ideas on how to turn anxiety into action visit Karunavirus. { more }

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Last couple months have been filled with incredible activity that has showcased the unique beauty of our global ecosystem. It has also raised nuanced questions: What are our practices to embrace uncertainty? Is this a war or a love story? Should we return to normal or adapt? What does community building look like now? How do we lead with emergence, well beyond emergencies? While laddering the new, how do we compassionately hospice the old?

Such a generational turning point is an opportune time to nurture uncommon narratives, and it has been heartening to see tens of thousands attracted to those possibilities. Few upcoming highlights:

• Love Wins: for moments when we forget that love is far stronger than fear, KarunaVirus features over 700 news stories of how people from all walks of life are courageously cultivating a pandemic of compassion. Read highlights.
• What Would Gandhi Do? What started as a casual inquiry has now become a viral webinar series. Tomorrow, first Indian woman to sign the Giving Pledge and former chairman of a half dozen large corporations will reflect on ideas like ‘small is beautiful’ and re-imagining abundance. RSVP here.
• Transformative disruption. So many systems are now open to radical shifts, and we are helping co-create solutions. This week, luminaries like Otto Scharmer, Coleman Fung, Laurie Santos, Dacher Keltner and Sanjay Sarma, are supporting our dialogue on — Re-imagining Education! Join us.

For the last several years, questions that we’ve been presencing via our Laddership Circles have been dramatically relevant for our current context. To respond to the surge of interest, we’re innovating a new format — a game perhaps, a 4-week challenge, or perhaps an obstacle course with our habit patterns. Fifty of us are in. Sign-up for the June experiment.

This week’s Awakin reading by Kahlil Gibran speaks to a flowering that so many seem to be embracing:

“It is said that before entering the sea, a river trembles with fear. She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages. And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever. But there is no other way. The river can not go back. Nobody can go back. To go back is impossible in existence. The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean, because only then will fear disappear, because that’s where the river will know — it’s not about disappearing into the ocean, but of becoming the ocean.”

Towards the Ocean,