Non-Violent Listening

You can practice deep listening in order to relieve the suffering in us, and in the other person. That kind of listening is described as compassionate listening. You listen only for the purpose of relieving suffering in the other person.
– Thich Nhat Hanh

Dear Friends,

We generally think of listening as a passive act, as if we are a tabula rasa (blank slate), open to whatever words leave the speakers’ lips and cleanly fall upon our open ears and inquiring mind. A more accurate statement might be that, “we don’t listen, never have and never will!” What we fail to take into account when we consider the complex phenomenon of listening is what is really going as a listener: We listen through a myriad of filters based on our past experiences, sense of identity and beliefs, from there we are listening to see if we agree or not, or we are preparing our rebuttal or just spacing out and thinking about how this person or conversation reminds us of someone or something from the past. It’s no wonder that there is so much alienation, divisiveness and separation in the world...

When we understand that our past is always influencing and shaping how and what we hear, we have an opportunity to become an active co-creator in generating a non-violent way of listening, connecting and communicating. Instead of just passively “listening to” what the other is saying we can begin to influence the conversation by proactively generating an active non-violent listening filter to how we listen. How do we do that? We generate in our selves an active “listening for” love, compassion, understanding, aliveness and common commitments! Can we listen with the intention of relieving suffering in the speakers heart? Can we listen from a place of loving awareness?

I want to appreciate you without judging. Join you
without invading. Invite you without demanding.
Leave you without guilt.
– Virgina Satir

Read the entire letter from Michael here.

Love Your Enemy: A Campaign to reclaim Human Dignity Through Nonviolence.

Dear friend,

You may have heard that The Metta Center for Nonviolence is launching an ambitious campaign to counteract the hostile attitudes that may be stirred up by the anniversary of 9/11 — and much more. It’s called

Love Your Enemy: A Campaign to reclaim Human Dignity Through Nonviolence.

This campaign will take advantage of the attention focused by the coming tenth anniversary of 9/11; but it begins much sooner — as soon as you get this letter — and continues until we or our descendants have put the search for security on a new basis and foreign policy on a new track. Our hope is to a) empower individuals to use nonviolence in their daily lives, b) empower both individuals and organizations to use nonviolence as a template for a new security policy, and c) to bring together a community of actors who can collectively build the universal yearning for peace into a vital force.

The campaign is unfolding in three phases:

1. From now until September 10th - 12th, 2011,
2. September 10-12th : a nationwide Satyagraha,
3. After the Satyagraha: ‘constructive programme’.

Moving Meditation News

Friday Nights:
HIGH INTENSITY COSMIC FRIDAY NIGHT FIVE RHYTHMS BLOW OUT DANCE
OK! For those of you who wanted to go back to a Friday Evening High Intensity Waves we are going to try it. If this is really what you want I will know by your attendance. I am willing to shift the class to Wednesdays, but first I need to know that this is really what you want and need. Join us for this High Intensity Cosmic Blow Out Dance (otherwise know as HICBOD)

Presence: July 9th Sacramento with Michael and Bella
(Atten-dance at Module 1 is not required)

To enroll online, or for more information, click here.

This module will focus on discovering your own unique vibrant heartbeat & and connecting deeply with others. You do not have to have completed session one to attend this day-long intensive. Each module works with a different aspect of deepening presence. To find out more or to register go to www.bodyjoy.net

photo by David Lovere

Special Moving-Meditation Wave Offer

This month: Indigenous movement wave – with $25 donation to Conversations – Monthly wave program.

Free Personalized 5R type music wave or book — For $25 a month contribution to KVMR's Conversations you will receive a new dance cd or book each month you contribute… Or book and cd for $40 for both. Keep Conversations going and support the Well of Light. Thank you for your ongoing support. We need it now more than ever... May it come back to you a hundred fold.

Upcoming Events

June 26th, 3pm
Men & Women Together: Finding Wholeness
A Gender Reconciliation Circle
With Lisa Schrader and Michael Stone

The future of humanity will be decided not by relations between nations, but by relations between men and women.

Although men gather to initiate the sacred warrior within and women empower the divine feminine in their circles, few opportunities exist for us to enter into conscious inquiry about our relationship with each other.

Despite major advances worldwide in the men’s and women’s movements, “the battle of the sexes” rages on creating subtle to catastrophic results for us all. Join Lisa Schrader and Michael Stone for an informal circle of inquiry, dialogue, and embodied practices to:

• Explore the patterns of wounding between men and women
• Share from the heart about what we yearn for from the opposite sex
• Listen, heal and honor one another
• Celebrate the energy of reconciliation through sacred movement & ritual

WHEN:
Sunday, June 26, from 3-6 PM, followed by potluck meal 6-8 PM
WHERE: Grass Valley, CA
COST: By donation
RSVP: Space is limited to 15 men and women each so please contact us to apply for participation. (530) 346-6778 or lisa@awakeningshakti.com

November 17th and 19th
Carolyn Baker Lecture and workshop.
Stay tuned for more information...

As institutions crumble and the world as we have known it becomes increasingly unfamiliar and uncertain, how do we align with the deeper story that we came here to live? What fibers of our being must we strengthen in order to navigate the collapse of the old paradigm and co-create the one waiting to emerge? It is possible to forsake our denial and face what is so if we are inspired by a host of ancestors from the past who have shown us how to navigate monumental changes in other times and places. Amid the threads of unraveling in our world, we can pluck the threads of ancient wisdom in order to live resiliently. In this public talk, and in the workshop to follow on Saturday, we will draw upon the timeless truths of our ancestors through song, story, poetry, and embodied community building in order to reclaim our truth and power amid chaos.

New Podcasts

Click here to view the Podcasts page, and to listen to the following podcasts:

Derrick Jensen: Listening to the Voices of the Natural World through Dreams
click to listen

Derrick Jensen is an American author and environmental activist. Jensen is a leading voice of cultural dissent. He explores the nature of injustice, how civilizations devastate the natural world, and how human beings retreat into denial at the destruction of the planet. His work examines the central question, “If the destruction of the natural world isn’t making us happy, then why are we doing it?” Jensen and Keith are the authors of Deep Green Resistance. His new book Dreams, is about to be released and the subject of this show. www.derrickjensen.org

Carolyn Baker: Navigating the Coming Chaos
click to listen

Carolyn Baker, Ph.D., was an adjunct professor of history and psychology for 11 years and a psychotherapist in private practice for 17 years. Much of her writing offers emotional and spiritual tools for preparing for living in a post-industrial world. Carolyn’s latest book is Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Handbook For Inner Transition. Her other books include Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse, Coming Out From Christian Fundamentalism: Affirming Sensuality, Social Justice, and The Sacred, U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn’t Tell You and The Journey of Forgiveness. carolynbaker.net

Nipun Mehta: Gift economies of the future
click to listen
Nipun Mehta is the co-founder of CharityFocus.org-- a fully volunteer-run organization that leverages technology to inspire greater volunteerism and shift our cultural ethos towards generosity. CharityFocus has grown into an incubator of "gift-economy" projects ranging from web services to a film production company to a print magazine to a restaurant; with a growing membership base of 200K, they serve millions of global viewers to their websites and send more than 50 million solicited newsletters every year. In 2005, Nipun and his wife embarked on an unscripted walking pilgrimage in India that dramatically deepened their understanding of gift-economy values. Nipun’s mission statement of his life simply reads: "Bring smiles in the world and stillness in my heart." www.charityfocus.org

Will Tuttle, Ph.D.: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony
click to listen
Will Tuttle, Ph.D. is a professional pianist, composer, and teacher. For the past fifteen years he has presented at progressive churches, vegetarian and human potential conferences, and intentional communities throughout the country. He trained in Korea as a Zen Buddhist monk and has worked extensively in Tai Chi, yoga, mediation, intuition development, and spiritual healing. He is the author of The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony. willtuttle.com

Hank Wesselman Phd: Ancestral Wisdom from a Hawaiian Shaman
click to listen
Research paleoanthropologist Hank Wesselman is one of those rare cutting edge scientists who truly walks between the worlds. He has spent much of his life working among traditional tribal peoples, primarily in Africa and Polynesia. For the past 30 years, he has conducted research with an international group of scientists, exploring eastern Africa's Great Rift Valley in search of answers to the mystery of human origins. He is also a shaman in training, now in the 20th year of his apprenticeship. He is the author of many books including his latest, The Bowl of Light. www.sharedwisdom.com

Deep Green Resistance with Lierre Keith and Derrick Jensen
click to listen
Lierre Keith is an American writer, radical feminist, food activist, and radical environmentalist. Keith's most recent book The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability is an examination of the ecological effects of agriculture and vegetarianism. Keith is associated with the Deep Green Resistance movement. Her views have attracted negative attention from some vegetarians, what one journalist has called a "Vegan War". Keith is currently completing a book with Aric McBay and Derrick Jensen about "resistance strategy" as part of the Deep Green Resistance movement. www.lierrekeith.com

Derrick Jensen is an American author and environmental activist. Jensen has published several books questioning and critiquing contemporary society and its values. Jensen is a leading voice of cultural dissent. He explores the nature of injustice, how civilizations devastate the natural world, and how human beings retreat into denial at the destruction of the planet. His workexamines the central question, “If the destruction of the natural world isn’t making us happy, then why are we doing it?” Jensen and Keith are the authors of the soon to be released Deep Green Resistance. www.derrickjensen.org

Book of the Month

Navigating the Coming Chaos: A handbook for Inner Transition
by Carolyn Baker

The collapse of industrial civilization, well underway since at least 2007, presents humankind with unprecedented and daunting challenges in the area of energy, environment, and economics. Just as the Transition Handbook of 2008, provided specific strategies for addressing these changes logistically, Navigating The Coming Chaos, provides a toolkit of emotional and spiritual preparation for an uncertain future. It offers us an opportunity to step across an evolutionary threshold in order to become a new kind of human being living in conscious self-awareness of our intimate connection with all life in the universe.

Note: Carolyn Baker will be Speaking in our area with Mat Stein, author of When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance and Planetary Survival on November 17th to be followed by an all day work shop on Saturday November 19th. Mark your calendars for this inspiring and informative presentation!

Articles

The Sky Really Is Falling

The rapid and terrifying acceleration of global warming, which is disfiguring the ecosystem at a swifter pace than even the gloomiest scientific studies predicted a few years ago, has been confronted by the power elite with equal parts of self-delusion. There are those, many of whom hold elected office, who dismiss the science and empirical evidence as false. There are others who accept the science surrounding global warming but insist that the human species can adapt. Our only salvation—the rapid dismantling of the fossil fuel industry—is ignored by both groups. And we will be led, unless we build popular resistance movements and carry out sustained acts of civil disobedience, toward collective self-annihilation by dimwitted Pied Pipers and fools.

To read the full article, click here.

Understanding Why We Change

How do people change? How do they make significant and long-lasting shifts that affect every aspect of their lives?

Learning something new, taking a different approach, or engaging with someone with a different perspective from your own can cause noticeable changes in your everyday life. Even just watching a movie or reading a book can alter your outlook to some extent. But change with a capital "C" -- the kind that changes your beliefs, motivations, behaviors, and general way of being across all aspects of your life seems to boil down to an essential shift in worldview -- a fundamental transformation in consciousness.

To read the full article, click here.

Humans May Have Loaded the Bases, but Nature Bats Last

Humanity is facing a challenge unlike any we've ever had to confront. We are in an unprecedented period of change. Exponential growth is causing an already huge human population to double in shorter and shorter time periods.

When I was born in 1936, just over two billion people lived on the planet. It's astounding that the population has increased more then threefold within my lifetime. That staggering growth has been accompanied by even steeper increases in technological innovation, consumption, and a global economy that exploits the entire planet as a source of raw materials and a dumping ground for toxic emissions and waste.

To read the full article, click here.

Worst Ever Carbon Emissions Leave Climate on the Brink

Greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year, to the highest carbon output in history, putting hopes of holding global warming to safe levels all but out of reach, according to unpublished estimates from the International Energy Agency.

To read the full article, click here.

The New Geopolitics of Food

Lester R. Brown
Foreign Policy

In the United States, when world wheat prices rise by 75 percent, as they have over the last year, it means the difference between a $2 loaf of bread and a loaf costing maybe $2.10. If, however, you live in New Delhi, those skyrocketing costs really matter: A doubling in the world price of wheat actually means that the wheat you carry home from the market to hand-grind into flour for chapatis costs twice as much. And the same is true with rice. If the world price of rice doubles, so does the price of rice in your neighborhood market in Jakarta. And so does the cost of the bowl of boiled rice on an Indonesian family's dinner table.

To read the full article, click here.

Meet the Movement for a New Economy

Gar Alperovitz
Yes! Magazine

The idea that we need a “new economy”—that the entire economic system must be radically restructured if critical social and environmental goals are to be met—runs directly counter to the American creed that capitalism as we know it is the best, and only possible, option. Over the past few decades, however, a deepening sense of the profound ecological challenges facing the planet and growing despair at the inability of traditional politics to address economic failings have fueled an extraordinary amount of experimentation by activists, economists and socially minded business leaders. Most of the projects, ideas and research efforts have gained traction slowly and with little notice. But in the wake of the financial crisis, they have proliferated and earned a surprising amount of support—and not only among the usual suspects on the left. As the threat of a global climate crisis grows increasingly dire and the nation sinks deeper into an economic slump for which conventional wisdom offers no adequate remedies, more and more Americans are coming to realize that it is time to begin defining, demanding and organizing to build a new-economy movement.

To read the full article, click here.

7 Ways to Stop Wall Street's Con Game

Wikipedia defines a “confidence trick” as “an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. The victim is known as the mark, the trickster is called a confidence man, con man, confidence trickster, or con artist, and any accomplices are known as shills. Confidence men exploit human characteristics such as greed and dishonesty.”

Ever hear a business reporter on the evening business news say, “Today, investors drive up the price of commodities to create a hundred billion in new value,” or some such? Sounds great, almost implying we should offer thanks to these champions of the public good who are risking their fortunes to expand the pool of wealth to enrich us all. The reporter is manipulating the language to set us up as marks in the Wall Street con.

To read the full article, click here.

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On Giving-Thanks

For it is in giving that we receive.
St. Francis of Assisi

We need your support to continue to provide Conversations, The Well of Light and other up to date information on what is happening in the environmental, spiritual, and social justice arenas. If you get value from these offerings I invite you to support their continuation by funding them. Your contribution makes a difference and so do you. Thank you for being a supporter of Conversations...

Free Personalized 5R type music wave or book — For $25 a month contribution to KVMR's Conversations you will receive a new dance cd or book each month you contribute... Or book and cd for $40 for both. Keep Conversations going and support the Well of Light. Thank you for your ongoing support. We need it now more than ever... May it come back to you a hundred fold.

Blessings,
michael

You are like a candle. Imagine you are sending light out all around you. All your words, thoughts and actions are going in many directions. If you say something kind, your kind words go in many directions, and you yourself go with them. We are ...transforming and continuing in a different form at every moment.
– Thich Nhat Hanh

Upcoming Shows on Conversations

June 14th
Sark: Transforming Loss & Change into Gift & Opportunity
Sark (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy) is a best selling author and artist who has empowered millions to live their creative dreams, manage their businesses, and savor personal connections. Her books have sold over two million copies. She is the founder and creative fountain of Planet SARK, A thriving business that creates fabulous products and services to support empowered living. www.planetsark.com

June 21st
Mat Stein: Emergency Preparation and Crisis Survival
Matthew Stein is an author, engineer, inventor and specializing in hurricane resistant, energy efficient and environmentally friendly homes. He is the author of When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency. www.whentechfails.com

June 28th
Lisa Schrader: Awakening Shakti
Lisa Schrader, the Founder of Awakening Shakti, has impacted the lives of thousands of women over the past 10 years as a workshop leader, author, speaker and coach. Her work has been featured on Oprah, Oxygen and VH1. She is the author of "Kama Sutra 52: A Year's Worth of the Best Positions for Passion and Pleasure" from Quiver Books. She has a private coaching practice supporting clients worldwide and is certified through the International Coach Federation.  www.awakeningshakti.com

July 5th
Kathy Lemay: Financing Social Change
Kathy LeMay is the founder, president, and CEO of Raising Change, which helps organizations raise capital to advance social change agendas and individuals create Generosity Plans to help change the world. LeMay, who began her global activism in war-torn Yugoslavia where she worked with women survivors of the siege and rape-genocide camps, has been a social change fundraiser for 15 years, raising more than $150 million dollars in the fields of women's human rights, hunger and poverty relief, and movement building. In addition she has directed an additional $100 million in philanthropic dollars to organizations working to make a difference. www.raisingchange.com

July 12th
Will Keepin, Ph.D., & Cynthia Brix, M.Div, MA.,: Divine Duality:
The Power of Reconciliation between Women and Men

Will Keepin, Ph.D., President and Executive Director.  Will co-founded the Satyana Institute in 1996, and founded its Power of Reconciliation project (formerly Gender Reconciliation), which has organized more than fifty intensive gatherings in six countries for healing and reconciliation between women and men. A mathematical physicist with thirty scientific publications on sustainable energy and global warming, he presented testimony to European and Australian parliaments and the US House of Representatives. Will is author of Divine Duality: The Power of Reconciliation Between Women and Men. www.satyana.org

Cynthia Brix, M.Div, MA., Program Director.  Cynthia is an interfaith minister specializing in international peacemaking, and spiritual direction for young adults.  She is co-founder of the Women’s Spiritual Mastery project, and she co-directs the Power of Reconciliation project.  A long-time student of Eknath Easwaran's Passage Meditation, Cynthia leads retreats on interfaith spirituality, and she is adjunct faculty at Holy Names University.  Cynthia is contributing author of Divine Duality: The Power of Reconciliation between Women and Men, and co-author of Women Healing Women. www.satyana.org

July 19th
Dr. Barbara Fields: A Season for Non Violence
Dr. Barbara Fields is Executive Director of the Association for Global New Thought (AGNT) and is the co-founder and project director of the Gandhi King Season for Nonviolence. She is Co-founder and Project Director of the Synthesis Dialogues with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama of Tibet and Co-director, with Dr. William Ury, of the Harvard Global Negotiation Network’s Abraham Walk Initiative in the Middle East. She serves on the Boards of Earth Action, the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, and La Casa de Maria in Santa Barbara, CA. She is co-founder of The Earth Network, a non-profit alternative television organization dedicated to the environment, social action, and the human spirit. www.agnt.org

July 26th
Ed Tich: War and the Soul
Dr. Edward Tich, author of the groundbreaking book “War and the Soul” and founder of Soldier’s Heart, is a practicing psychotherapist specializing in veterans with PTSD. He has been in private psychotherapy practice since 1975 and began focusing on veteran’s issues in 1979. A practicing psychotherapist for more than 25 years, he is a nationally recognized authority on the psychological, spiritual, historical, and cultural aspects of war in the healing of PTSD. For more go to soldiersheart.net

Conversations airs every Tuesday at 1pm PST on KVMR.
For current shows or more information go to www.AreWeListening.net

Videos

The Metta Center

Conversations

The Commons

Better Than A Hallelujah - Amy Grant

Celebrating 15 Years of Saying 'YES!'

Hot Site of the Month

CharityFocus

The folks at CharityFocus believe that it's impossible to create a better world without the inner change that results from selfless service. In the spirit of sharing, volunteers have put together many inspiring features to help each other cultivate that change. This site offers Daily inspirational quotations, inspiring videos, amazing interviews, and stories of kindness in action...

Their objective is to foster greater awareness of our potential and to assist each other in being agents of positive change. This site is a deep well of inspiration where you can draw from stories of service and kindness in action. Most of all CharityFocus can help you to find a way to be the change you wish to see in the world. www.charityfocus.org

A Call to Action!

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Well of Light Seva Team

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
— Mohandas K. Gandhi

Seva is selfless service to a cause you believe will benefit others. It is the willingness to perform any task for a greater cause without prospect of recognition or reward.

Well of Light has many opportunities to serve our community. If you would like to participate on the Well of Light Seva Team please call Michael Stone @ 530.477.7757 or email michael@welloflight.com

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve."
- Albert Schweitzer

Poetry Corner

A Single Word

A single word can brighten the face
of one who knows the value of words.
Ripened in silence, a single word
acquires a great energy for work.

War is cut short by a word,
and a word heals the wounds,
and there's a word that changes
poison into butter and honey.

Let a word mature inside yourself.
Withhold the unripened thought.
Come and understand the kind of word
that reduces money and riches to dust.

Know when to speak a word
and when not to speak at all.
A single word turns a universe of hell
into eight paradises.

Follow the Way. Don't be fooled
by what you already know. Be watchful.
Reflect before you speak.
A foolish mouth can brand your soul.

Yunus, say one last thing
about the power of words—
Only the word "I"
divides me from God.

- Yunus Emre's (1238-1321)

Walking North

No matter how I turn
the magnificent light follows.
Background to my sadness.
No matter how I lift my heart
my shadow creeps in wait behind.
Background to my joy.
No matter how fast I run
a stillness without thought is where I end.
No matter how long I sit
there is a river of motion I must rejoin.
And when I can't hold my head up
it always falls in the lap of one
who has just opened.
When I finally free myself of burden
there is always someone's heavy head
landing in my arms.
The reasons of the heart
are leaves in wind.
Stand up tall and everything
will nest in you.
We all lose and we all gain.
Dark crowds the light.
Light fills the pain.
It is a conversation with no end
a dance with no steps
a song with no words
a reason too big for any mind.
No matter how I turn
the magnificence follows.

– Mark Nepo

Donate to Conversations

Dear Friends,
For the past six years I have been funding Conversations, The Well of Light and other associated projects out of my own pocket and fund raising events. In order to keep this newsletter coming and keep moving towards syndicating Conversations we need your help. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution if you enjoy receiving our monthly newsletter or listening to Conversations.

It’s easy, just click here to visit the Conversations Investors page, or click the button below:

Free Personalized 5R type music wave or book — For $25 a month contribution to KVMR's Conversations you will receive a new dance cd or book each month you contribute... Or book and cd for $40 for both. Keep Conversations going and support the Well of Light. Thank you for your ongoing support. We need it now more than ever... May it come back to you a hundred fold.

Thank you so much. Your support is greatly appreciated.

Blessings,
michael