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Awakin Weekly: The River Cannot Go Back

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InnerNet Weekly: Inspirations from ServiceSpace.org
The River Cannot Go Back
by Kahlil Gibran

[Listen to Audio!]

2422.jpgIt 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.

About the Author: By Kahlil Gibran.

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The River Cannot Go Back
What does becoming the ocean mean to you? Can you share an experience of a time you faced the fear of losing who you were, only to enter into an identity that was much greater than you could imagine? What helps you shed your riverhood and embrace your oceanhood in every moment?
Jagdish P Dave wrote: Are there two separate identities-the river identity and the ocean identity? Or is there One identity? Outwardly, there appearstwo identities like the river and the ocean. But when they embrace each o…
Mariette Fourmeaux wrote: Becoming the ocean means to surrender, to release the river banks that have held me confined and restricted. The river banks that have tried to define me and control me. I finally break free and surre…
David Doane wrote: The River Cannot Go Back is a beautiful statement by Gibran. Becoming an ocean means to me returning fully to that from which I came. I am a wave of being in the ocean of Being. I’ve had times of …
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Awakin Circles:
Many years ago, a couple friends got together to sit in silence for an hour, and share personal aha-moments. That birthed this newsletter, and rippled out as Awakin Circles in 80+ living rooms around the globe. To join in Santa Clara this week, RSVP online.

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Some Good News

5 Poems to Celebrate National Poetry Month
How I am Finding Purpose and Connection in a Pandemic
Contact with the Sacred

Video of the Week

Contact with the Sacred

Kindness Stories

Global call with Otto Scharmer, Sanjay Sarma & Dacher Keltner!
486.jpgJoin us for a conference call this Saturday, with a global group of ServiceSpace friends and our insightful guest speaker. Join the Forest Call >>

About
Back in 1997, one person started sending this simple “meditation reminder” to a few friends. Soon after, “Wednesdays” started, ServiceSpace blossomed, and the humble experiments of service took a life of its own. If you’d like to start an Awakin gathering in your area, we’d be happy to help you get started.

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On our website, you can view 17+ year archive of these readings. For broader context, visit our umbrella organization: ServiceSpace.org.

Vertical Literacy: Reimagining the 21st-Century University

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DailyGood News That Inspires

May 25, 2020

a project of ServiceSpace

Vertical Literacy: Reimagining the 21st-Century University

Leadership is about the capacity of the whole system to sense and actualize the future that wants to emerge.

– Otto Scharmer –

Vertical Literacy: Reimagining the 21st-Century University

The traditional output of universities knowledge is not the missing piece to catalyzing social change. MIT Senior Lecturer Otto Scharmer offers a new university model that builds the capacity to lead transformative change through deeper inner work and outer knowledge, so we no longer collectively create environmental, social, and economic results that nobody wants. { read more }

Be The Change

Join us for a discussion this Tuesday on re-imagining higher education in this transformational moment. { more }

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Contact with the Sacred

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DailyGood News That Inspires

May 24, 2020

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Contact with the Sacred

Our heart knows what our mind has forgotten — it knows the sacred that is within all that exists, and through a depth of feeling we can once again experience this connection, this belonging.

– Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee –

Contact with the Sacred

With spectacular visual images, this film reminds us of the necessity of connecting with the sacred in everyday life. It honors the sacred through sensory feelings of connection, with both the vast expanses such as mountain tops and waterfalls, and with the single dandelion sending its seeds into the future. This connection is further enhanced by the peaceful music that accompanies the images, providing a total experience of having touched the sacred. { read more }

Be The Change

Make time to connect with the sacred in a new way today.

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How I’m Finding Purpose and Connection in a Pandemic

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DailyGood News That Inspires

May 23, 2020

a project of ServiceSpace

How Iâm Finding Purpose and Connection in a Pandemic

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.

– Albert Schweitzer –

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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Compassion Disruption (+ Today’s Event!)

How do we respond with compassion?  â â â â â âÂ

 â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â  â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â âÂ

ServiceSpace
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Dear ServiceSpace Community,

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,

Nipun and the ServiceSpace Crew
Change Yourself, Change the World
P.S. Today, 🙂 our “French Gang” of young volunteers in Paris are interviewing one of the pillars of ServiceSpace: Deep Talk with Audrey Lin
Â
ServiceSpace is an incubator of volunteer-run projects that nurtures a culture of generosity. What started as a small experiment in 1999 has rippled into myriad expressions of service in dozens of countries around the globe. For more, watch a video on our unique design principles.
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Grieving My Way Into Loving the Planet

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DailyGood News That Inspires

May 22, 2020

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Grieving My Way Into Loving the Planet

Make yourself fierce; break in. And then your great transforming will happen to me And my great grief cry will happen to you.

– Rainer Maria Rilke –

Grieving My Way Into Loving the Planet

“In this excerpt from the new anthology ‘A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Times,’ journalist Dahr Jamail describes how Macy and her work helped him survive profound war trauma and climate grief. Macy, a scholar and teacher of Buddhism, systems thinking, and deep ecology, is the author of 13 books and a respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and ecology. She originated The Work That Reconnects, a framework and methodology for personal and social change. It is influential work that, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, helps people transform despair and apathy into constructive, collaborative action.” { read more }

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What are you grieving in this period? What might this grief be summoning you towards? For more, read this beautiful piece on “The Geography of Sorrow”. { more }

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Contact with the Sacred

This week’s inspiring video: Contact with the Sacred
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KarmaTube.org

Video of the Week

May 21, 2020
Contact with the Sacred

Contact with the Sacred

With spectacular visual images, this film reminds us of the necessity of connecting with the sacred in everyday life. It honors the sacred through sensory feelings of connection, with both the vast expanses such as mountain tops and waterfalls, and with the single dandelion sending its seeds into the future. This connection is further enhanced by the peaceful music that accompanies the images, providing a total experience of having touched the sacred.
Watch Video Now Share: Email Twitter FaceBook

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The Last Nail in Individualism’s Coffin?

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DailyGood News That Inspires

May 21, 2020

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The Last Nail in Individualism's Coffin?

It is only through the pursuit of practical and effective efforts to promote human rights that we show our real commitment to the welfare of individuals and society.

– Alexander Downer –

The Last Nail in Individualism’s Coffin?

“For centuries, individualism or the notion that every human individual has intrinsic value has underlined ideas about societal organization, the economy and justice. Recently, however, the primacy of the individual’s inalienable rights and freedoms has come under immense pressure.” Rohini Nilekani, one of India’s most prominent and inspiring philanthropists shares more about the very real threat to the positive dimensions of individualism in our current world, and what we can do to protect them. { read more }

Be The Change

For more inspiration, join this weekend’s Awakin Talks webinar with Rohini Nilekani in conversation with other luminaries of service. More details and RSVP info here. { more }

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5 Poems to Celebrate National Poetry Month

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DailyGood News That Inspires

May 20, 2020

a project of ServiceSpace

5 Poems to Celebrate National Poetry Month

When one tugs at a single thing in nature,
he finds it attached to the rest of the world.

– John Muir –

5 Poems to Celebrate National Poetry Month

“I write this at the end of what seems like the longest month of my life. For a poet here in the United States, April is almost always the loudest, stormiest, busiest month–filled with readings to attend, to give, and new poetry collections blooming every week. What a time to luxuriate and revel in the power of a finely crafted metaphor, a clever line break, or a last line that just pierces you into silence for a moment! But what of this year, when death and illness seem to be the only thing now blooming when we tug (or touch) each other?… I have faith that we will be able to touch each other and break bread together at the same table again soon. Maybe not as soon as I’d like, but soon. And when that day comes, how lucky to find ourselves attached to the rest of the world once again!” Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil shares more thoughts and five poems in honor of National Poetry Month here. { read more }

Be The Change

Is there a particular poem that has brought strength, perspective or inspiration to you? Share it with a friend today.

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Spotlight On Kindness: Beyond Perfection

Human beings are capable of great feats, incredible ways of contributing to our families, and communities. And yet at the same time, we can also be really messy, and bump up against each other’s shortcomings. Our lofty ideals of perfection about ourselves and of others may be setting us up for failure. Perhaps it is not so much perfection that we should aim for, but simply just compassion. –Guri

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“You’re imperfect, and you’re wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.” –Brene Brown
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Editor’s Note: Human beings are capable of great feats, incredible ways of contributing to our families, and communities. And yet at the same time, we can also be really messy, and bump up against each other’s shortcomings. Our lofty ideals of perfection about ourselves and of others may be setting us up for failure. Perhaps it is not so much perfection that we should aim for, but simply just compassion. –Guri
Kindness Rocks
Kindness In the News
Dennis Ruhnke, a farmer in his 70s taught us and NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo an important lesson in giving. Kansas State University awards him a B.A. degree, after discovering he was 2 credits short in 1971.
Read More
Kindness is Contagious.
From Our Members
This Principal was amazing even before schools moved to remote teaching and she now continues to work around the clock for students and teachers. Her community finds a way to express their gratitude.
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Stop Trying To Be Perfect
Hugs Is perfection a lie that we’ve been told all of our lives? In this short energizing video, Prince Ea has a powerful message about questioning our ideals about trying to be perfect.
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In other news …
If you can’t do it perfectly, why do it at all? In this TED talk, a recovering perfectionist Charly Haversat challenges our obsession with perfection in our personal lives, workplaces, and beyond.
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