The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible (Sacred Activism Book 2)

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How to choose? What will you believe, given how easily reason, logic, and evidence are conscripted to the service of a story? Here is an alternative: Choose the story that best embodies who you really are, who you wish to be, and who you are in fact becoming. How could your sacred union be a representation of the more beautiful sacred unions our hearts know is possible? The unions we envision for the future. Side note - of course LOVE can look like many different things, it doesn’t mean rolling over / being submissive.)

Another form of disruption is simply to create a living example of a different way of life, of technology, of farming, of money, of medicine, of schooling … and by contrast reveal the narrowness and dysfunction of dominant institutions.” In Eisenstein's conception, the self is an illusion because basically all and everything is interconnected. He calls this the Story of Interbeing. This also leads him to question for example linear causality and to believe in a bunch of weird things (water memory, morphic fields, etc.) But will we make it? If, as in so many other questions, evidence and reason alone are insufficient to determine a belief, then how will we answer that question—especially when the answer implicates everything else, even our basic stories of self and world. I offered an answer earlier: to choose the story you will stand in.This is a book summary of The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible by Charles Eisenstein.

We are following an invisible path, learning from each other how to follow it. As we do that, and as we learn to see its subtle markings, the path becomes visible. Absent a map, and in the very early stages of a new story, we can only follow our intuition at each choice point, guided by our heart-compass, not knowing how our turnings will add up to the destination.” That is the self of interbeing. Divested of “situation,” your attention is my attention is everyone’s attention. We are the same being looking out at the world through different eyes. And these “eyes,” these vantage points, are each unique. As the comedian Swami Beyondananda puts it, “You are a totally unique being—just like everybody else!” The most direct way to disrupt the Story of Separation at its foundation is to give someone an experience of nonseparation. An act of generosity, forgiveness, attention, truth, or unconditional acceptance offers a counterexample to the worldview of separation.” So what can I say about the book? I can't fully agree with the book, although I don't really think the book was intended to provoke agreement. Instead of just reading the book, you, in a way, read yourself while reading it. It questions the way you perceive and make meaning of the world, and in this regard I would say it is a good book. In the following I'll leave you with some of the interesting and thought provoking bits of the book: There’s something about this quote that sums up where I think we are at the moment. Let me give you an example of what I mean. In this past week my social media feed has been full of doom and gloom articles about the state of the world – and the environment in particular. The gorgeous British summer, long, sunny and unusually warm, is used as evidence that the climate crisis, so long predicted, is with us here and now.Once upon a time a great tribe of people lived in a world far away from ours. Whether far away in space, or in time, or even outside of time, we do not know. They lived in a state of enchantment and joy that few of us today dare to believe could exist, except in those exceptional peak experiences when we glimpse the true potential of life and mind. But while Harari explains this realization through the insights provided by the life sciences in a quite logical way, Eisenstein goes in the directly opposed direction by questioning science and even scientific consensus. He deems them as deeply flawed because they are rooted in what he calls the Story of Separation. A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face. The more beautiful world I inhabit accords with Charles Eisenstein’s vision: a world where we embrace the shadow and give it name so that the healing can begin. Take this book and let it seep into your very being.”

On the collective level the same is true. As we awaken to the interconnectedness of all our systems, we see that we cannot change, for example, our energy technologies without changing the economic system that supports them. We learn as well that all of our external institutions reflect our basic perceptions of the world, our invisible ideologies and belief systems. In that sense, we can say that the ecological crisis—like all our crises—is a spiritual crisis. By that I mean it goes all the way to the bottom, encompassing all aspects of our humanity. Paradoxically, the path to achieve the impossible consists of many practical steps, each of them possible.”I felt it again when I gave birth to my son at home, this feeling---this knowing---that I was a part of an eternity of creation and in that one moment, that eternity came through me. It's difficult to explain, but since then, I've worked to recapture that feeling of oneness and belonging. I've studied Buddhist, Jewish, Taoist, Baha'i, Muslim, and Christian traditions, and this feeling of oneness is only heightened as I see similarities between each of these traditions. The more I see the oneness, the more I want it, and the more I seek it. And this intuitive understanding seems to trigger a desire to reboot our relationship with the natural world. To find a way to be in connection, in communion. To be in a respectful and nourishing relationship with Mother Earth – a relationship that enshrines both give and take.

Both authors claim that the subject, the self, is basically an illusion, or just a story we inhabit and tell ourselves and each other; a story we use to make sense of the world and interpret everything that happens. A tribeswoman asked, “How do you know this will work? Are you sure our shaman’s powers are great enough to send us on such a journey?”

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The answers to these questions are culturally dependent, yet they immerse us so completely that we have seen them as reality itself. These answers are changing today, along with everything built atop them—which basically means our entire civilization. That is why we sometimes get the vertiginous feeling that the whole world is falling apart. Seeing the emptiness of what once seemed so real, practical, and enduring, we stand as if at an abyss. What’s next? Who am I? What’s important? What is the purpose of my life? How can I be an effective agent of healing? The old answers are fading as the Story of the People that once answered them crumbles around us. With chapters covering separation, interbeing, despair, hope, pain, pleasure, consciousness, and many more, the book invites us to let the old Story of Separation fall away so that we can stand firmly in a Story of Interbeing. It is no small thing. Our shaman will put you into a deep, deep trance, so complete that you will forget who you are. You will live a human life, and in the beginning you will completely forget your origins. You will forget even our language and your own true name. You will be separated from the wonder and beauty of our world, and from the love that bathes us all. You will miss it deeply, yet you will be unable to name what you are missing. You will remember the love and beauty that we know to be normal only as a longing in your heart. Your memory will take the form of an intuitive knowledge, as you plunge into the painfully marred Earth, that a more beautiful world is possible. As you grow up in that world, your knowledge will be under constant assault. You will be told in a million ways that a world of destruction, violence, drudgery, anxiety, and degradation is normal. You may go through a time when you are completely alone, with no allies to affirm your knowledge of a more beautiful world. You may plunge into a depth of despair that we, in our world of light, cannot imagine. But no matter what, a spark of knowledge will never leave you. A memory of your true origin will be encoded in your DNA. That spark will lie within you, inextinguishable, until one day it is awakened.