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

RECEPTION"The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible" serves as a handbook to the midwives of a new age, a spiritual guide to the permaculture/new economics nomads, a wake up call for those in Silicon Valley and the Financial District who have found success in our current world, and an inspiration to burnt out hippies to give this love thing one more try.We find ourselves at a transition between ages, moving from the Age of Separation to the Age of Interbeing. Humanity is in a stage of adolescence. But our entrance into young adulthood is by no means guaranteed, although change is inevitable. I find the title to be misleading, as the book isn't about the Age of Interbeing, but rather, how to get there. This is likely the more useful topic.Some would say we've been here before. G. I. Gurdjieff talks about a time before the sand storms of the Caucuses 7,000 years ago when human civilization was at least as developed as it is today. The Shivapuri Baba said we're coming to the close of a 6,000-year period; and as humanity is much older than that, his statement infers there have been cycles of development before this one. Ancient Origins would have us believe that the distant past of our race has been anything but primitive.Regardless of whether you pay those sources any attention, something does set this stretch of human history apart from anything in recent millennia: the ecological limits with which we've already begun to collide. Deep Green Resistance can get you a good sense of the circumstances. Certain communities have periodically reached these limits before on a regional scale, but this time it's global.Are we going to make it this time? Why didn't we make it last time? Charles might liken the first question to the way that Bill McKibben talks of global warming. Speaking at Slow Money in 2011, I remember Bill reminding us that it's our obligation to have hope when pondering the possibility of coming to right relationship with the biome of the planet earth. Behaving as say, Goldman Sachs, has, putting the economy before the planet, has no possibility but failure. So why not look on the bright side?Late in the book Charles gets into his view of miracle. A miracle is an impossible event. And what defines possible? Our worldview, our paradigm. One aspect of this transition between ages involves a fundamental shift in perspective. In the Age of Interbeing, there are no islands in the universe. Every being has a relationship with every other being. Questions of scale take on a very different meaning. From the perspective of Separation, the smallest acts can have impossibly large impacts. Think fractals, think microcosms, think holism.During this transition, we have a foot in each world. The rules that govern possibility take on a shifty nature. We walk between two divergent realities, sometimes unsure which one houses us at any given moment. One useful model can be that of roles; we each have two faces, one for the old world and one for the new. Our role in Separation might be an accountant, when our role in Interbeing might be artist or gardner. It takes courage and strength to show our new faces to the old world, and in some circumstances, the old world can crush these faces.That's where community comes in. Belief is a social force. Enlightenment, if you please, is a communal activity. J. G. Bennett was very much of this perspective. And it makes sense: in Separation the frame of reference focalizes around the individual; in interbeing, the focal point is community.And yet the path that Charles describes in the book, the challenges that we each face during this transition, are primarily internal. Where as Charles' middle two books focus more on cosmology, this book is a return to a spiritual approach, similar to that of his first book. The experience of reading it reminds me of "The Power of Now." Both are personal, humble, and practical accounts of how we can each work on ourselves.Moving from the grand story of humanity Charles draws in his lengthy earlier works, this book is short, approachable, and focused on the self. I find this progression natural and fitting. If we seek to change the world, we must change ourselves.I'm left with a number of concepts to ponder. One such topic is that of authenticity. In Interbeing, we do things because they matter. We don't take one action in anticipation of it leading to something we desire; every act is a monad. For example, in Interbeing, we don't get a degree to get a job. We could get a degree, but only due to it's inherent value. In other words, value is completely illiquid. In contrast, in Separation, value has been commodified and liquidated through money. To those in Separation, money is the essence of value. In Interbeing, we need a fundamentally different understanding of money. This is an expansive concept to try to wrap one's mind around. Maybe that's one of the reason Charles used the word hearts in the title as opposed to mind; with something this different, understanding grows out of an intuitive feeling, rather than a mental model.EXCERPTS, NOTES, AND ADDITIONAL RESOURCESTABLE OF CONTENTSSeparationBreakdownInterbeingCynicismInsanityForceScienceClimateDespairHopeMorphogenesisNaiveteRealitySpiritOrthodoxyNewnessUrgencyScarcityDoingNondoingAttentionStrugglePainPleasureJudgementHateRighteousnessPsychopathyEvilStoryDisruptionMiracleTruthConsciousnessDestinyInitiationMYTHOLOGYWho am I?Why do things happen?What is the purpose of life?What is human nature?What is sacred?Who are we as a people?Where did we come from and where are we going?INTERBEINGThat my being partakes of your being and that of all beings. This goes beyond interdependency - our very existence is relational.That, therefore, what we do to another, we do to ourselves.That each of us has a unique and necessary gift to give the world.That the purpose of life is to express our gifts.That every act is significant and has an effect on the cosmos.That we are fundamentally unseperate from each other, from all beings, and from the universe.That every person we encounter and every experience we have mirrors something in ourselves.That humanity is meint to join fully the tribute of all life on Earth, offering our uniquely human gifts toward the well-being and development of the whole.That purpose, consciousness, and intelligence are innate properties of matter and the universe.SEEDS OF THE TRANSITIONWisdom lineagesSacred storiesIndigenous tribesMIRACLEWhen one is aligned with the purpose of service, acts that seem exceptionally courageous to others are a matter of course.When one experiences the world as abundant, then acts of generosity are natural, since there is no doubt about continued supply.When one sees other people as reflection of oneself, forgiveness becomes second nature, as one realizes "But for the grace of God, so go I."When one appreciates the order, beauty, mystery, and connectedness of the universe, a deep joy and cheerfulness arises that nothing can shake.When one sees time as abundant and life as infinite, on develops superhuman patience.When one lets go of the limitations of reductionism, objectivity, and determinism, technologies become possible that the science of separation cannot countenance.When one lets go of the story of the discrete and separate self, amazing intuitive and perceptual capabilities emerge from lifelong latency.HEALINGIt will come from the people and places that were excluded from full participation in the old Story of the People, and that thus preserved some pieces of the knowledge of how to live as interbeings.It will come from the ideas and technologies that were marginalized because they contradicted dominant paradigms. These include technologies of agriculture, healing, energy, mind, ecological restoration, and toxic waste remediation.It will also draw from marginalized or near-forgotten social and political technologies: consensus-based decision making, nonhierarchical organization, direct democracy, restorative justice, and nonviolent communication, to name a few.It will engage the kinds of skills that our present system suppresses or fails to encourage. People who have languished outside our dominant economic institutions, working for very little doing what they love, will find their skills and experience highly valued as pioneers of a new story.It will liberate the marginalized parts of people who have been suppressing their true gifts and passions in order to make a living or be normal. To some extent, this category probably includes every member of modern society. We can feel the stirring of these suppressed gifts any time we their, “I wasn’t put here on Earth to be doing this.”It will embody and validate marginalized parts of life, the things we neglect in the rush and press of modernity: qualities of spontaneity, patience, slowness, sensuality, and play. Beware of any revolution that doesn’t embody these qualities: it may be no revolution at all.A Gathering of the TribeMy tweets on the book - #AgeOfReunion

Read this book if you know there’s a better way to live, a way that restores connections to each other and connections to the earth; a way in which we were born to live; a way that we used to live but have long abandoned. Read this book if you want this way to be illustrated for you and colored in with vibrant hues. Read this book if you want some direction on how to get there.Charles seems to have learned important lessons after writing two other extremely provocative books on how we got to where we are and how to make radical and not-so-radical changes (Ascent of Humanity and Sacred Economics). Since publication of those books, he speaks all over the world about them. I have read all three books now.This third book, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, makes me think of Charles Eisenstein as a modern-day Annie Sullivan—prodding a willfully blind, dumb, mute and emotionally immature culture to recognize knowledge buried deep within, which, once recognized, will change life forever. It feels as though, through the questions and rebuttals he’s received on his travels, he now knows his audience, and how to speak with us.When I read The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, I got the sense that Charles has learned that we are all Helen groping in the dark. We are impertinent but teachable--ignorant but questioning. And so he has to take us back to the place where maybe we will recognize something—a spark that he treats so gently that, rather than fanning it out, by the end of the book it has grown to stand on its own, turning to ash the hard wood of our outmoded beliefs.With his musical prose, right in the book’s beginning he takes us by the shoulders and assures us that once upon time, where we came from was a place where people didn’t compete, didn’t hoard retirement funds, didn’t have to buy recycling buckets, didn’t have to enact laws to keep the air and water clean, didn’t turn on TV or the internet for some vague and meaningless social connection. In other words, we are living an aberrant lifestyle. We haven’t progressed. Well, we have progressed in a certain sense and in an important sense—but we have bought that progress with Separation. Now it is time for Reunion and Interbeing, and they are beckoning us at this particular time.And, importantly, he recognizes that in order to make his case for an exodus from this aberration, he has to peel back layers and layers of thoughts and beliefs that will keep us stuck in Helen’s blind and dumb world. And that’s exactly what he does in this book.What helps is his modest downplay of his qualifications. He doesn’t claim to be Moses or Christ. Nor does he claim to have credentials in quantum physics. He’s not Einstein or Margaret Mead and he tells us that right off the bat. Rather, a theme running through the book is a very humble sentiment: if I can think this, and if I can believe in it, anyone can. He reminds me almost of the self-recriminations of St Teresa in Interior Castle, telling her “dear sisters” how inadequate she is for the task of taking us all on the journey to our God-self. Eisenstein does the same thing, exhorting his “dear readers” to understand that he is simply one person describing one world that seems crazily unlike the one we’re in, a world of Union and Beauty. Despite my humble status, he tells us, I have some ideas to present to you on how to move from the Age of Separation to the Age of Interbeing, to the Age of Reunion. But hey, I’m just one of you all, and we’re all in this together. “Enlightenment,” he says, “is a group activity.”In Charles’ weaving of the story of Interbeing he becomes apologist for both cynic and dreamer. And in doing so, he gives us an example of how we might straddle the space between Separation and Reunion in order to come to the place where we can understand without judging; accept without capitulating.Each chapter has a theme, such as “Separation,” “Force,” “Reality,” “Hope,” “Judgment,” “Miracle,” etc. Each of these chapter themes are a layer of the onion he peals away to prod our resistant minds to overcome current beliefs in order to see what there might be. Indeed, not which might be, but what is, and that which we simply cannot see from our vantage point—a view obscured by mountains of “the way things are.” From this vantage point, we are the proverbial clueless frogs in the pot of water, not conscious of the water heating up and not conscious of the life beyond--if we dare to open our eyes—and then to leap.So, my own reading experience ran parallel to the themes—and my mind became a concoction of curiosity, doubt, cynicism, separation, naivete, disruption of my beliefs. And hope. And joy.And tears. Because it’s poignantly reassuring to read The More Beautiful World and go from *yes*, this is difficult to envision, and *no*, no one person has the key (certainly not the humble author), and *yes*, if we simply perform small acts with integrity the world might change and *no*, it’s not easy given the quicksand we’re in, but *yes!*, isn’t it exciting to imagine--because by imagining, maybe we will invoke the reality of a new world!...…And *no*, you can’t pursue this dream without cutting the hard wires, the very hard wires of Separation that have been soldered and resoldered on our souls and our minds by virtue of our inherited belief systems over the past millennia.But if we can prod ancient knowledge that runs deep in the aquifers of our souls and find a crack in the rock of our assumptions, we will be on the road to The More Beautiful World. We will learn language to move forward. We will have uttered “wah-wah” at the pump, and have thus have started the journey. Not to the *most* beautiful world, which is too fantastical and hard to wrap our minds around, but to the *more* beautiful world, which we all can work on. It’s possible, and it's achievable--individually and collectively. And this book shows us how.

The words of Charles Eisenstein always feel like ambrosia for the hurt inside the soul. What more can I possibly say but read this book and anything else he has written or will write.

The Old Story of Separation is crumbling. The New Story of Interbeing is being born!Charles shows us how to heal our wounds from our damaging culture and step boldly into a More Beautiful World, full of mystery, playfulness, naiveté, and a great deal of joy.One of these books where everything that is said has given me precise and inspiring words to a mute feeling that was screaming inside of me.Immense gratitude

It gives the hope we need to keep moving and believing that we are in the best moment to transform the world!

The more beautiful book my heart has read ! Thanks Charles for this work, is a collective heritage for the human beings

The book resonates with me, starting from the title. it helped (is helping) me to understand causality. his wisdom is not threatening... he seemed to me like a friend, or like a younger brother... an honest book, that we need to make sense of this world, and live in harmony...I wish they kept the price lower to make the book accessible to more people.