Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Book Recommendation and Beautiful Quote from Sacred Economics


From the fabulous Kristen McKee of Cohort J comes the following recommendation...Thanks Kristen!:
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Kristen McKee,
Conversation Leader
Here is the link to Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein. The book itself offers some genuine and practical ways in which we might transfer to a more caring economy while embodying partnership. The following excerpt made me think of all of us somehow, and about leading and teaching about caring economy, while remaining in partnership with ourselves and others:
"To enter more deeply into right livelihood, bow into service each day. Trust your desire to give, remember how good it feels, and be open to opportunities to do so, especially when they are just at the edge of your courage. And if they are beyond the edge of your courage, don’t torment yourself. The fears that block your givingness are not an enemy. They form a cocoon of safety. When we grow, the fears that were once protective become limiting; we become impatient with them and seek to break free. That impatience bears new courage. Today, this growth process is happening to humanity generally. The program of Ascent** that once seemed good and right to us — pushing the frontiers of science, conquering the universe, triumphing over nature — seems right no longer, as the consequences of that ambition become painfully hard to ignore. Collectively we have entered a crisis moment, in which the old is intolerable and the new has not yet manifested (not as a common vision, though it has for many individuals).

So, when it comes to right livelihood or right investment, let us be gentle. For ourselves and others, let us trust the natural desire to give, and let us trust the natural growth process that propels us toward it. Instead of attempting to guilt ourselves and others into it (and generating resistance to our sanctimony), we can offer opportunities and encouragement to give, and we can be generous with our appreciation and celebration of the gifts of others. We can see others not as selfish, greedy, ignorant, or lazy people who just “don’t get it,” but rather as divine beings who desire to give to the world; we can see that and speak to that and know it so strongly that our knowing serves as an invitation to ourselves and others to step into that truth."

** This, from his previous book, is essentially his way of referring to the dominator paradigm.

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