Go Deeper
AddThis
Alice Walker
~~~
Everybody can create change because you have yourself. That's the biggest thing that anybody could have. If you can change yourself that will change the world.
~~~
I just don't resonate with the view that somehow it's only the gifted people, it's only the activist people that can do things. That's part of the reason we're in the horrible situation that we're in. Everybody can do something, there's just no end to work to be done on this planet.
~~~
I think spirituality, for me, is a sense of wholeness, oneness and moving in the world in that reality, that I am not separate from anything. And I am constantly interbeing with everything. I am connected to the stars that I see and the stars that I will never see and I am from them and I will return to them in some cycle far beyond what I can even imagine. I'm always here, I will always be here, I have always been here, wherever here is. I feel completely at home in this reality that I'm in. I sense it, feel it as miraculous, divine, and myself no less miraculous, no less divine.
I feel a great sadness that so much of it would be destroyed and is destroyed just because humans don't care enough. It's just amazing to me that people could wantonly destroy such perfection.
Please visit Alice Walker's Visionary Page to learn more about her
go to top
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
~~~
COMING SOON....
~~~
God created us not because god needed us, god created us because god wanted us. We are the result of a divine loving and we're ultimately meant for loving, we're meant for love, we're meant as those who will communicate love and make this world more hospitable to love.
COMING SOON....
~~~
God created us not because god needed us, god created us because god wanted us. We are the result of a divine loving and we're ultimately meant for loving, we're meant for love, we're meant as those who will communicate love and make this world more hospitable to love.
Please visit Archbishop Desmond Tutu's Visionary Page to learn more about him
go to top
bell hooks
~~~
Some small act in your daily life can have profound political impact, spiritual impact. That it's not necessarily that you have the big production, the big march, the big struggle, the big war, but it can just be the kind gesture, the moment of oneness when one awakens.
~~~
Being fearless for me is about paying proper respect to ones fear. That you understand it as a force and that it's never going to be completely absent. I always feel like it's like the dragon I bow to and then I have to get on with it, that I can't allow fear to get in the way but I also can't not acknowledge its place.
Please visit bell hook's Visionary Page to learn more about her
go to top
Joanna Macy
~~~
The first primal movement of the human spirit is gratitude, to be alive, and gladness in that. And I didn't earn it, I didn't invent this, and look the sky is blue and the flowers are blooming - this is all pure gift.
~~~
We never thought it could get this bad, but we never imagined it could be this good. That the human could display such incredible creativity and connectivity and ingenuity as is happening now in this movement that has no name, in this great turning.
~~~
Velcrow asks Joanna: "What do you say to those people who have lost their power in the face of this vastness?"
That it's an easy out. It's a form of self-pity and we can't afford that now. It's a form of disrespect for the gift of life that has been given to you. As long as you've got air to breathe there's something you can do.
The first primal movement of the human spirit is gratitude, to be alive, and gladness in that. And I didn't earn it, I didn't invent this, and look the sky is blue and the flowers are blooming - this is all pure gift.
~~~
We never thought it could get this bad, but we never imagined it could be this good. That the human could display such incredible creativity and connectivity and ingenuity as is happening now in this movement that has no name, in this great turning.
~~~
Velcrow asks Joanna: "What do you say to those people who have lost their power in the face of this vastness?"
That it's an easy out. It's a form of self-pity and we can't afford that now. It's a form of disrespect for the gift of life that has been given to you. As long as you've got air to breathe there's something you can do.
Please visit Joanna Macy's Visionary Page to learn more about her
go to top
John Lewis
~~~
Growing up as a child I saw segregation and racial segregation. I tasted the bitter fruits of racism. I saw hate. And I came to the conclusion that hate was too heavy a burden to bear.
~~~
The words of Dr King inspired me, I felt like he was talking directly to me, saying, "John Lewis, you too can be part of this effort." There was something about his words that was very much in keeping with the teaching of Jesus, with the teaching of humanity, that somehow and someway that we have to look out for each other. And I knew then that I had to do something. I had to find a way or make a way to be part of an effort.
I started sitting in at segregated lunch-counters in restaurants. We'd be sitting there in an orderly, peaceful, non-violent fashion and someone would come up and spit on us. Or put a lit cigarette out on our hair or down our backs. But we didn't fight back, we didn't strike back, we didn't hate - we had been taught to love. Love is a better way, much more powerful, much more creative. And somehow I came to not only internalize but to personalize that teaching to realize that in every human there is something very special, there is a spark of the divine in every human being and I didn't have a right to dislike, to despise or to hate or to strike out against that spark of the divine.
~~~
When you accept non-violence simply as a technique or tactic you become like a faucet - you can turn it on, you can turn it off.
When you accept non-violence as a way of life, as a way of living, you're saying in effect the way of love, the way of peace is one of those immutable principles you will not deviate from.
Please visit John Lewis' Visionary Page to learn more about him
go to top
Noah Levine
~~~
My whole life I'd blamed everybody. It was the cops, it was the system, it was parents, teachers, name it. It was their fault. And that moment in the rubber room after a suicide attempt in juvenile hall, this is not everyone else's fault. I have created the mess that I'm in. And from that place of personal responsibility came a ton of shame and guilt and a flood of pain and an inkling of hope. If I created it maybe I can do something about it. If it's not everyone's fault and I'm not just a victim then perhaps there's the possibility of change.
~~~
But even when we're free from that stuff for the most part there's still gonna be fear. And maybe we need to make different words from the kind of healthy sense of, "I'm not gonna step out onto the road because I'm afraid of getting run over", that's a healthy, wholesome fear - don't get free from that, you'll be in big trouble. But it's quite different than that kind of fear-based mentality that stops us from action and what we need to do and should be doing. And so yeah, for the most part I feel like it is about coexisting with fear. Freeing ourselves from the neurotic unwholesome fears.
Please visit Noah Levine's Visionary Page to learn more about him
go to top
Paul Hawken
~~~
People really do know what is fair and what is just. And so what you're seeing is a movement that is not only bottom up but it shares a common set of values that wasn't imposed upon it. That didn't come from some leader, some place else, it's not based on ideologies. It's really based on heart and it espouses ideas. So it's a movement of ideas, it's growing. It can't be schismed, it can't break apart because it started that way. The only thing you can do now is start to connect and collaborate and come together in more powerful ways. And that's what we're starting to see.
~~~
I think people in their own ways have come to a very simple and clear conclusion that the only way we're going to save ourselves is to love our world and that that's really the only thing we can do that's effective because everything else intentionally or unintentionally turns out to be harmful. And that understanding I think is growing. I don't think it's necessarily expressed how I'm expressing it, but when you go out and meet the people in these organizations around the world they are loving the world, they are loving people. They are expressing love, love in action.
Please visit Paul Hawken's Visionary Page to learn more about him
go to top
Sam Harris
~~~
Once you start invoking religious claims we change the rules. And we're paying a terrible price for changing these rules because now we have people constraining our social policy, deciding what kinds of medical research we do and don't do, deciding the sexual ethics of their neighbours, deciding what kinds of wars we wage and don't wage, on the basis of ideas that are every bit as vacuous and preposterous as beliefs in witchcraft and beliefs in Zeus and Poseidon and the thousands of other dead gods who nobody worships.
~~~
There's something kind of mesmerizing about this, how common this invocation of god is that people don't really realize how strange it is to have the leader of the free world stand up and talk about god and him being behind the American people and about consulting a higher father when deciding whether or not to go to war, in this case in Iraq. It would seem like a plunge into just the frankest psychopathology if he were invoking any other god like Apollo or Isis - I mean this would be a national emergency. And yet it's the same emergency. We have a man in the oval office who's making perhaps the most consequential decisions any person has made in human history who thinks at some level that his intuitions are being vetted by the creator of the universe.
Please visit Sam Harris' Visionary Page to learn more about him
go to top
Sera Beak
~~~
When I first heard that this film was about spiritual activism I was scared. I thought, I'm not one of those. I'm not one of those who stand on the lines with the little picketing things, I've never been arrested - but the more I started listening to the people we were interviewing I realized I have been doing this in my own way.
Suddenly it became really important to me to acknowledge all the ways that people can be active in their own life, that it doesn't have to look like a stereotypical "activist", that it shouldn't actually. This planet doesn't need a million of the same activists, we need people to be active in ways that are unique to them. That's when we start filling this amazing tapestry with all these beautiful rich colors and we're able to create a whole picture of activism.
That to me is divine.
~~~
The feminine has always been treated traditionally in religion and spirituality as earthly, as salty, as sexual, as sensual, as really grounded and being of action. And so the denial of that, the repression of the feminine, the repression of sexuality that we see in all religions throughout the world has led to so much stagnation and separation between people and their bodies, people and each other, people and this planet, and we're at a crisis because of that. This planet cannot survive without that connection.
Please visit Sera Beak's Visionary Page to learn more about her
go to top
Sister Chân Không
~~~
You can be violent even when you don't use weapons. In the name of human rights you shout at people, you insult people, and I think that that is also violence.
But that Buddha nature, that nature in each of them and in me, that is non-violent. It means you invite the beauty, the goodness of each human being, and try to inspire people to go in that direction.
~~~
When you touch your own peace, your own light, your own deep understanding - that is Buddha in you. But when you utter the word, Buddha, people think, "Oh I'm Christian I have nothing to do with Buddha!"
So if you think that God or Allah is that reality, that reality of peace, of understanding, of joy in you, you can call it God, you can call it Allah. And so don't try to put that all these great beings into a box.
Please visit Sister Chân Không's Visionary Page to learn more about her
go to top
Thich Nhat Hahn
~~~
For me Buddhism must be engaged otherwise it's not Buddhism. When you practice sitting meditation in the temple and you hear bombs and the cry of victims outside, you have to go out and help. You have to do the kind of work that will bring relief for the people around, because to meditate is to be aware of what is going on in yourself and around you.
~~~
The third element of true love is joy. If during the time you love you cry a lot, you'll make the other person cry a lot too. That is not true love. So true love should have the element of joy.
Please visit Thich Nhat Hahn's Visionary Page to learn more about him
go to top
Van Jones
~~~
What I know is that it hurts people to hurt people. What I know is that hurt people, hurt people.
And so behind that plexi-glass, on the other side of that baton, is a hurt person who is hurting more in hurting others. That doesn't mean that you don't resist. It doesn't tell you how to deal with that situation but I think you can deal with that situation better when you maintain all of the truth.
And the truth is there is an injustice here, and there's a truth that says the person committing that injustice is just like me. I've done things that are unjust, I've done things that are unfair, I've done things out of fear, I've done things out of blind rage and you know, people have to at some point recognize the worst in society is just the worst in ourselves.
~~~
You know an activist is somebody who takes action, somebody who gets involved, somebody who's not afraid to roll up his sleeves and get their fingernails dirty and maybe get a little mud on them. Nothing happens without some agitation, without some forward motor. You know they talk about in a washing machine that agitator that gets the clothes clean, moving up and down, keeping things stirred up. Society can settle into a very dangerous complacency unless some people are vigilant and willing to say, ‘Hey wait a minute, who's being left out? Who's being hurt, who needs our help, who's getting away with something they shouldn't be?' Those people are called activists and those are the people who have made history for ten thousand years and have kept the human family moving forward for a very long time.
Please visit Van Jone's Visionary Page to learn more about him
go to top