The Revolution Has Begun -

"The Shift Hits the Fan"

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I’ve known Paul Hawken for many years and was excited when he started the
organization, WiserEarth. I joined and have met some wonderful people from
around the world. Here’s a report from Narda Azaria Dalgleish, an activist from
the United Kingdom.

Right on the Pulse of the Shift

Highlights of my visit to WiserEarth and the Bioneers Conference

(Originally written as a short report for the Beshara Meeting)

San Francisco, October 13-24 2010

Narda Azaria Dalgleish posted 10 December 2010

"If we raise enough money for you to come to the WiserEarth editors’ annual
meeting will you come?", my online WiserEarth friend Deborah Phelan asked me
a few weeks ago. Then, when I hesitated she bribed: “Bioneers Conference!” So
just like that, money was pledged within the hour between Deborah and four
more WiserEarth staff members to bring me over. At the request of WiserEarth
Executive Director Peggy Duvette, complimentary passes to the conference were
kindly arranged to be left for five of us at the entrance by Bioneers founder,
Kenny Ausubel himself.

Exactly two years ago I came across WiserEarth - a social network inspired and
founded by Paul Hawken (watch). I found it through a link on Nick Yiangou's
article about the Pachamama Alliance Symposium, posted on the old Beshara
Webzine. I joined WiserEarth there and then, initially to create an organization
page for the Beshara School. Gradually, with the generous tutorials and patience
of Bowo, WiserEarth's Online Community Manager, I learned how to use it's
online technical tools such as tables, colours, alignments and link content in the
many group pages I’ve created to highlight visionary themes. I felt like a toddler
given paints and paper for the first time, utterly amazed how some mornings I
would get up with an idea and an hour or two later it would be out there, either
complete or in process.
By the time I joined WiserEarth, I
had already watched the
documentary The 11th Hour about
five times. Unlike any environmental
documentary I’ve watched before
(or since), this was by far the most
exciting, comprehensive ecoliteracy
manual and much more. I was so
intrigued that I copied the subtitles
of the whole film and followed up
some of the speakers on YouTube.
It was interesting to notice that
many of the videos I watched were
from the Bioneers Conferences.
Kenny Ausubel, an award-winning
social entrepreneur, author,
journalist and filmmaker, had
launched the annual conference
with his wife in 1990. He was a
central advisor to Leonardo
DiCaprio’s The 11th Hour, its first
featured speaker and its presenter
at film festivals.
What struck me in the film, perhaps commonality of intent, be their focus
even more than the fresh portrayal
of the man made peak everything
called the global crisis, was noticing convergence of response - a
for the first time the scope and
scale of humanity's innovative and
collaborative response - like an
inverse mirror image.
“There’s a fundamental illusion in the world that somehow people are
Many of the 60 or so expert
scientists, designers, architects,
environmentalists, politicians,
lawyers, industrialists, authors,
farmers, peace activists, etc. had
become, by their vision and
response, a representation and a
point of reference to a systems
paradigm shift.
See below how industrialists Ray
Anderson and Gary Hirshberg, and
environmentalist Andy Lipkis are bold
examples of systems paradigm shift,
proving ‘green business’ is restoring
nature’s ecosystems, is healthier,
sustainable, provides more jobs and
is much more profitable all round.
WiserEarth had sprung organically
from Hawken’s research (watch)
where he observed the biggest, most
diverse, fastest growing social
movement the world has ever known.
Over 100.000 ORG's and thousands
of groups and individuals on
WiserEarth alone, show a
environmental, new consciousness or
social justice. An unprecedented
humanity set out to transform the
crisis and itself.
separated from Nature when the reality is that we are part of Nature - in fact,
we ARE Nature.
And that’s probably the most fundamental misunderstanding in the world
that’s causing all this havoc.”

Kenny Ausubel, The 11th Hour

This sudden magnanimous invitation comes despite drastic reduction in my

online voluntary activity over the past few months. I find myself flying to San
Francisco bewildered, shocked ... nothing is asked of me in return. The thoughts,
'Why am I invited’, and ‘For what,' persist. "Befriending the Unknown" comes to
mind. Three days before I fly, I dream ... can I see this as a 'password' to a new
kind of reorientation?...

10 October 2010

she calls me softly in my sleep ‫היא קוראת לי ברכות בשנתי‬

she calls me softly ‫היא קוראת לי ברכות‬

in my mother's tongue ‫בשפת אימי‬

but I am so sure ‫אבל אני כל כך בטוחה‬

her calling me is reciting ‫שקריאתה אלי היא שינון‬

she is reciting a new poem ‫היא משננת שיר חדש‬

reciting softly in my sleep ‫משננת ברוך בשנתי‬

wording words in my mother's tongue ‫ממללת מילים בשפת אימי‬

calling me lest I make her small ‫קוראת לי שמא אעשה אותה קטנה‬

‫ שמא אעשה אותה קטנה‬,‫בקומי‬

in my waking, lest I make her small ‫ קמה נבהלת‬,‫ואני קמה‬

and I wake, I wake up startled

‫ זכרתי‬,‫זאת היא אני‬

she is me, I remember ‫אף לא מילה זכרתי‬

‫ לא חלום‬,‫זוהי אני‬
not a word I remember

she is me, not a dream

The Revolution Has Begun -

"The Shift Hits the Fan"

Kenny Ausubel's opening address.

"The revolution has begun. But in fits

and starts. The challenge is it's one
minute to midnight - too late to avoid
large-scale destruction. We have to
fan the shift to ecoliterate societies at
sufficient scale and speed to dodge
irretrievable cataclysm.

The Bioneers Conference attracts

From breakdown to breakthrough, it's
a revolution from the heart of nature
and the human heart. It leads with a
basic shift in our relationship with
nature from resource and object to
mentor, model and partner. Game-
changing breakthroughs in science,
technology and design such as
biomimicry are revolutionizing our
very ways of knowing.” Read more...
more than 3,000 people each year
to the national conference in San
Rafael, California, and is beamed by
satellite simulcast to 20 localized
Bioneers conferences across the
US and Canada to another 10,000
attendees. Link
(An extract from Kenny Ausubel's opening
address at the Bioneers Conference, October
15th, 2010, San Rafael, California.)

Almost without exception, the speakers at the Bioneers Conference

started their talks with reference to their personal story. Some went as
far back as their humble childhood beginnings, leading on to how they
arrived at their vision-experience, through to their present contribution,
its measurable effects and their message. I presume this personalized
presentation is deliberate; it’s honest, direct and effective without
diluting from the subject. It moves people, sparks them into vision, into
blessed unrest, into action. I like it. I like it very much because it brings
you also to the zone of realistic and pragmatic hope.

I arrived a day and a half before the
conference. “This is the best
arrangement! I’m taking the sofa!”
Deborah insists as she nobly leads me
into her single bedroom in the ground-
floor apartment overlooking the stunning
bay below. Deborah is a passionate
progressive, a veteran journalist, editor,
teacher, ready-to-be-arrested-activist-
everything who has been covering
environmental issues, events, and
people for about 30 years. A force to be
reckoned with!
She loved the Symposium event
group, Can I See Myself and the
World as One Self? and mentioned it
and the Beshara School in an article
she wrote for the DailyKos titled: "I
would rather have a heart opened
by wonder than one closed by
belief." It was later nominated - out
of thousands - best article of the year
... Link.

After that we became close friends,

One day on our way back home she working together on big events such
says: “See this?”, pointing at a building as the Copenhagen COP15,
on my right, “This is a school with mostly coordinating news from reporters,
black children. I want to quit my teaching
job and come here to teach ecoliteracy
and environmental leadership.” Lo and
behold, the next day she spots an ad
and sends a CV with her proposal. They
call her two days later ...
designing and linking pages, and
keeping up with Deborah’s flood of
general incoming news.
Now we're at it again. Deborah has
been commissioned by TckTckTck to
report from the 16th Conference of
the People (COP16) for the UN in
Cancun Mexico ... and I update the
WiserCOP16 group page.
First thing, we are off to Bolinas,
a small town alongside the
Pacific Ocean. Deborah tells me
about the 1971 oil spill which
drew a large contingent of San
Francisco's hippies. They
volunteered in the clean up and
stayed on to farm the land, fish
and open small home
businesses. One of them, John
Francis, known as the Planet
Walker stands out at the
Bioneers conference.

His response to the Oil Spill was

radical: He refused to use
motorized vehicles for 22 years
and kept a vow of silence for 17
years during which time he
earned his B.A at Southern
Oregon State College, an M.Sc.
in Environmental Studies at the
University of Montana and a
Ph.D. in land resources at the
University of Wisconsin.

John has been employed by the

United States Coast Guard to
work on legislation relating to
management of oil spills. In
1991, he was named a United
Nations Environmental Program
Goodwill Ambassador.

Redefining Environment

John broke his vow of silence on the 20th anniversary of Earth Day, when he felt
he had a message. It all came down to his realization that: "People are part of
the environment, that we are it, we are part of this, and if we are part of the
environment, then our first opportunity to treat the environment in a
sustainable way or even to understand what sustainability is, is in how we
treat each other.

And so, environment really has to do with a lot of things. It has to do with
human rights and civil rights and economic equity and gender equality and
education equality; all the kinds of ways that we relate to one another.
That's our first opportunity to really treat the environment in a sustainable
way."

John Francis, Bioneers 15 October 2010 Video

We bumped into John on our way out and after a short conversation he gave us
his card. I told him about the unique Self-Knowledge and Global Responsibility
Symposia. He looked in my eye as I was speaking, nodding his head, lit up ...
Over so many years of not speaking, he has learned how to listen to himself and
the world without lying ... “Were you to be invited to speak, would you come?”
With the WiserEarth Press pass dangling on my chest I pushed my luck, “Yes”.
“To the Scottish Borders?”, “Yes”. My Press pretension was made redundant in
an instant ... “Are you very expensive?” A short pause ... “Hmmm no.” We smiled.

From Bolinas to WiserEarth’s Office. What a warm welcome! I meet for

the first time some of the people I've worked with online for so long. I was
invited to join the staff for a meal in San Francisco to celebrate the
completion of their retreat workshop. Before we head off, Peggy takes
me to Paul Hawken's office next door. He is now working with his good
friend Janine Benyus, a Biomimicry Master, on developing and producing
new nature inspired solar panels link. I'm dying to see the factory, alas it's
elsewhere. |
Oh, I feel unashamedly like a
teenage groupie ... I imagine
the whole of this visit as if I'm
about to enter right inside The
11th Hour virtual courtyards,
about to meet many of the
environmental giants featured
there. The term
'environmentalist', though, no
longer does them justice ... I’d
dare say their vision, language
and innovations are facets of
one boundless philanthropy,
marrying the scientific, the
economic, the technological,
the environmental and the
spiritual right on the pulse of
the Shift.

The conference room is

beautiful in its unpretentious
minimal simplicity; a stunning
big table made out of two
heavy, well polished chunks of
solid wood, still encased in the
natural contours of its bark.
As soon as I enter the office Paul Hawken peeps
in the window smiling. I walk with my arm
stretched across the room to shake his hand.
"Oh, I know you, I know all about you, I'm still
Peggy, sparkling with an kept informed here, you know ..." Peggy rushes
unspoiled playful vitality, us out for a photo-shoot.
hands me Paul's book, The
Ecology of Commerce, which
intrigued me for quite a while
as an Artwear-designer
entrepreneur.

Under the table I notice carpet

tiles - yes, Peggy confirms,
they are from Ray Anderson.
Ray, one of the biggest carpet
industrialists, read Paul’s book
and it speared his heart with
such a profound remorse that
he was moved to radically
transform his plant, aiming for
zero carbon emission by 2020.
Now he travels extensively to
talk of the benefits of
sustainable business.

I thank him for all his signed books Blessed

Unrest that Peggy had sent recently to me and
to the Beshara School and invite him to come
and speak at one of the next Self-Knowledge
and Global Responsibility Symposiums. Paul
did not say no.

(Click on the book read inside - the introduction

is highly recommended.)

Below is a quote in reference to the title -

“blessed unrest” on page 9.
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated
through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique ... You have to keep open and aware directly to
the urges
that motivate you. Keep the channel open ... [There is] no satisfaction
whatever
at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest
that
keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the other.”

Martha Graham to Agnes de Mille, Dance to the Piper Full quote

Andy Lipkis began planting trees
to rehabilitate smog and fire-
damaged forests when he was 15
years old. He founded the nonprofit
environmental organization
TreePeople and has served as
president since 1973.
TreePeople staff have gone on to
plant more than two million trees in
the Los Angeles area and have
developed one of the nation’s
“When energy is not used, Lipkis says,
it becomes pollution. And when we are
ill at ease, it is because we are not
using what energizes us: our
adrenaline.
Everybody has a scanner on board and
it's the heart. It's asking 'Where can I
help?' and it gives us the adrenaline so
when we see what needs to be done, we
can respond. We are hard wired for this,
but we have lost the language for it.

largest environmental education
programs. TreePeople works with
government agencies on critical
water issues facing Southern
California. With thousands of
members and volunteers and 45
full-time and part-time staff,
TreePeople is one of the largest
environmental nonprofit
organizations in California. Simply
put, their work is about helping
nature heal our cities.
TreePeople has been an
international guiding light for the
Citizen Forestry Movement. Andy
Lipkis’ programs include airlifting
bare root fruit trees to Africa,
inspiring the planting of one million
trees in L.A. before the 1984
Summer Olympics, numerous
disaster relief efforts during flood
and fire, and many versions of
training that increase citizen
involvement in urban tree planting
and care.
A recent program is T.R.E.E.S. –
Transagency Resources for
Environmental and Economic
Sustainability - demonstrates the
feasibility and facilitates the
implementation of integrated urban
ecosystem management to
increase the health and
sustainability of our cities. Watch
Video
This is nature's gift to us!"
Read Deborah
Phelan’s review
of Andy Lipkis’
presentation and
plenary workshop
at the Bioneers
* Conference.
"Environmentalists often say that we
are the one species the earth could very
well do without. That's so well-accepted
among the people of my tribe that it
seems to go without saying.
"But what if it's not true?
"What if we have been designed,
crafted, fed, modified, and adapted by
the ecosystem (aka Mother Earth), so
that both the human species, and all
other life, can carry on? What if we are
intended to discover and actually
engage capacities that deep down we
know we have, but rarely utilize?
"What if we've been given that special
role all along?
"Imagine how important and how joyful
the taking up of that responsibility
could be, as well as daunting."
 Gary Hirshberg

Win Economics: Restoring Natural Order

as if People and the Planet Really Mattered

Read inside the book

Ausubel’s introduction of Gary who spoke on the first day.

“The converging crisis of climate change, water scarcity, energy

consumption and public health, are conspiring to create a full on
global food crisis. At the same time a food revolution is well
underway. The challenge is to create a food system that provides
high quality nutrition while using fewer resources, creating more
jobs and restoring natural capital. Food that’s fair and affordable,
and a system that can sustain itself with finite resources in a full “This last year we actually bo
world. our one billion pound of milk
Organic Vally. Our milk purch
alone this year will support o
Then, how do we take that to scale for nearly 7 billion mouths to 180.000 acres of organic farm
feed when today, only about 2% of food’s systems meet these What that means is just milk
criteria? Greening the food’s system is not only a gain changer, it Over 9 million pounds of syn
can create millions of new emerald green jobs. So how do we do nitrogen fertilizer will now no
it? That question has motivated Gary Hirshberg for 30 years to needed. Over 450 million dru
become one of the world’s authentically visionary food treatments to animals are no
entrepreneur. to be needed. We’ll avoid ove
12.000 pounds of insecticide
herbicides not needed.”
As CEO of Stonyfield Farm, the world’s largest organic yogurt
company that he started about 27 years ago, he’s used the
company to transform business and serve as an educational and
political megaphone for organics and healthy food and farming.
Gary Hirshberg, Bioneers 15 O
2010

Watch video

When Gary and his wife Meg started Stonyfield in 1983 in their New Hampshire
back yard, it was a seven-cow organic farming school. Today it has $330 million in
annual sales. Gary achieved his goal building a model that environmentally and
socially responsible business can also be profitable. And a good example of that
too, is that Stonyfield buys all of its milk from Organic Vally - which is fantastic!

Gary’s working at very large scales from inside the food system as Managing
Director of Stonyfield Europe, which is a joint venture with France’ group Danone.
Gary is working in every strategic space that he can plant himself in. He works
with the White House and Federal Government on policy. He collaborates with
green insurance companies to prove that a healthy diet and lifestyle cut costs and
are good for business. He speaks constantly with a message of hope and
practical change, and he works in his beloved New England on the politics of
climate change.

As a sustainability activist for over 33 years, Gary formerly served as Executive

Director of the now legendary New Alchemy Institute that helped kick-start the
entire organic agriculture, acriculture and renewable energy movements.”
Kenny Ausubel Bioneers October 15th 2010

Jane Goodall, PhD,

DBE, began her landmark
study of chimpanzees in
what is now Tanzania in
1960 under the
mentorship of famed
anthro- pologist and
paleontologist Dr. Louis
Leakey. Her work at
Gombe Stream would
become the foundation of
future primatological
research and redefine the
relationship between
humans and animals.

"Every individual counts,

In 1977, Dr. Goodall
established the Jane every individual has a role to play,
Goodall Institute (JGI), every individual makes a difference."
which continues the
Gombe research and is a
global leader in the effort
to protect chimpanzees Dr. Jane Goodall was Bioneers last speaker receiving at the end
and their habitats. Today, the biggest standing ovation. She surprised everyone by starting
her talk with a chimpanzee morning greeting screams. She now
the Institute is widely travels 300 days a year and says the benefits of her work far
recognized for outweighs her own carbon footprint. She continually urges her
establishing innovative, audiences to recognize their personal responsibility and ability to
community-centered effect change. She speaks about the threats facing chimpanzees,
other environmental crises, and her reasons for hope that
conservation and
humankind will solve the problems it has imposed on our planet.
development programs in
Africa, and Jane
Goodall's Roots &
Shoots, JGI's global
environmental and
humanitarian youth
network, which has
almost 150,000 members
in 110 countries.

The Brower 2010 Youth Awards

2010 Award Winner

Freya Chay. 15.

A day before the

WiserEarth Editors’
Meeting I join the staff to
attend the Brower Youth
Awards ceremony. I am
so taken by the six
young winners - by their
confidence and
David Brower and the Sierra Club halt the damming eloquence on stage in
of the Grand Canyon Watch
front of a fully packed
auditorium, but above all
with their astonishing
achievements by any
criteria. Only 15 years
old, Freya Chay has
Monumental - David Brower Fights for Wild America.
Watch taken on the federal
government to pass a
legislation to amend a
Senate Bill. Thanks to
her initiative
 homeowners are given
today new incentives to
install clean energy
systems.

WiserEarth Editors 2nd Annual Meeting

From left to right - Bowo, Frank, Deborah, Peggy, Eric, Roseli, Angus, Kerry, Timonie, Michael, Narda, Doudou.
 Somewhat surreal
to see Deborah and Bowo from WiserEarth at the Yiangou’s for dinner. Bowo, WiserEarth’s Online
Community Manager, has been going to the Beshara meetings and study in Jakarta for about a
year now.

Deborah is now friends with the Yiangou’s - talking about meeting regularly for study. Bowo sends
me some photos - saying: “I like this phrase from Wadud: Focus more on what is arising, and how
best to serve it.”

I stay with the Yiangou’s for the last couple of nights of my visit. I met Nick
Yiangou at the Beshara School in Scotland years ago, where we enrolled on the
same course. His gentleness and kindness walk before him ... When Nick
mentioned he had designed his house and made much of its furniture, I smiled
with admiration and great surprise. He got his Master's degree in Transpersonal
Psychology recently, while still working as a senior Web Manager in Adobe. He
has served on the board of the U.S. Beshara Foundation for two decades, as well
as (still) serving as president of the the academic nonprofit U.S. branch of the
‘Muhyyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society’. To cater better for the study groups and
conversation meetings he’d been holding at home for many years, Nick has
redesigned the self-contained multipurpose guest room on the ground floor of his
house.

It was quite serendipitous to find that the society’s annual Symposium this year,
titled ‘Response and Responsibility’, not only resonated in theme but also
coincided with the Bioneers conference. Not expecting this extra bonus, Bowo
and I manage to attend Prof. James Morris’ opening talk and took from it - “Your
response is that which makes you alive.”
Members of the Ibn Arabi Society have been promoting the academic study and
translations of this prolific C12 spiritual master since 1977, publishing books, a
biannual journal and holding annual symposia. They have also conducted a wide
scale search to trace and authenticate Ibn ‘Arabi's old manuscripts in libraries in
the Middle East as it became an urgent task to assure their preservation where
possible, make digital copies and catalog them in their UK Oxford Library.

Esoliteracy - the language of intangible realities and meanings.

The term esoliteracy - from 'esoteric', commentated, published and rendered

meaning hidden or interior - came to
mind as I was writing this. It seems, like
ecoliteracy, esoliteracy certainly reflects
a parallel emergence of rhetoric - using
universal, non dualistic terminology and
methodology to describe the interior
world of the spirit and the incomparable
reality of man.
Though somewhat hesitant, I mentioned
Ibn ‘Arabi here because the importance
and relevance of his metaphysics,
especially to
our time, is second to none. Ibn 'Arabi
(1165 - 1240 AD) has laid down not
only a progressive articulation of a
unified reality and spiritual advance, but
to our modern world in transition he
offers a radically new understanding of
language itself and an insight into it’s
true ‘location’ - the heart.
The term esoliteracy may generally
refer to
the whole body of metaphysical
literature or
teaching (example) that’s being
translated,
into a new comparative language of
oneness, appearing since the 60’s - an
example is the work of the ‘wider
ecumenism’ pioneer, Dom Sylverster
Houedard, link. But we shall see.
Yet the esoteric body of knowledge is
ultimately for an end. As Ibn ‘Arabi
says:
“You should know that the heart is a
polished mirror, that all of it is a face
and that it never rusts … because the
Divine Presence is continually
manifesting Itself, and one could not
imagine any ‘veil’ for that Self-
manifestation.”
To withhold this knowledge, as Peter
Young, Principal of the Beshara School
says, would be “as if we withhold
from an orphan the information of
his inheritance, with the result that
he believes himself condemned to
poverty and despair.” read Peter
Young’s talk: An Education for the
Heart.
 Some thoughts

“What if the world embodied our highest potential? What would it look
like? As the structures of modern society crumble, is it enough to respond
with the same tired solutions? Or are we being called to question a set of
unexamined assumptions that form the very basis of our civilization?”

A short documentary by The Global Oneness Project, watch

What if the mother of all unexamined assumptions is that ‘I’ exist

autonomously?

During the past two years I’ve noticed greater agreement on two essentials: the
need
to reexamine fundamental assumptions about ourselves and the world, and the
need for
a new mode of knowing our reality (Father Thomas Keating watch), (Peter Young
watch), the oneness of our humanity and our interdependency with the Earth.
With a shift in consciousness necessarily comes a shift in language - beckoning to
be ‘interacted’ equally in being, speech and service. Where the heart may get an
instant fleeting sense of it, the mystery of unity will remain paradoxical - at once
challenging
and promising: If there is only one, all-inclusive and indivisible self-cognizant
being in existence, how could it be known to any one other than itself? Or,
because there is no
one other than the One Self, everyone can and is in progress towards it’s
perspective through their being no other.

Indeed in some of the discussions on WiserEarth, I noticed how radically new the
notion
of ‘One Self’ is, and how bewildering it can be without the rigorous context of
education applied in practice and service. I wondered, as I do now, how can I at
least put it that
‘One Self’ is not just an abstract conceptual idea; that it has a reality which loves
to be known … individually … collectively … globally … ? While this ‘love-to-be-
known’ is not transcended beyond any of the converging aspects of the global
crisis, how can I put it
that One Self is not a new social or religious ideology contrived as a solution
among
many to fix its symptoms or systems?

How can I put it that the One

Self is the same
as myself and yourself and
all-of-the-selves past-
present-future? How can I
put it that One Self is not a
new paradigm with an -ism
requiring the sacrifice of my
unique identity, aptitude,
imperfections, aims or free
will? On the contrary - is a
finger's perception of itself
the same as it's perception
through the all-pervading
vision of the hand, ‘seeing’
itself ‘globally’?
Our future survival on the planet may be, for many, about how well and quickly we
adapt and respond to the inevitable (watch Dr. James Hansen) global climate
destabilization
and mass destruction, and there is that. But dare I say that the very purpose of
our future
is for more than our mere survival? Dare I say it is because our ripening into the
unified field of consciousness has not yet happened collectively? Dare I say that
the above mentioned biggest social movement the world has ever seen (watch), is
ultimately a movement from our next evolutionary phase towards an
unprecedented global shift in perspective?

In my hopeful anticipation of a new universal vernacular, dare I mention the heart-

melting beauty inherent in the act of stepping-in, to stand naked at the Golden
Isthmus - the paradoxical interface of the known and the unknown - uniting the
most extreme of contradictions at the threshold of the coming world?

Photocredits:

San Francisco Golden Gate bridge - by Mumbly Joe

Kenny Ausubel - by Narda
Planet walker John Francis - picasaweb google
Outside WiserEarth office with Peggy and Paul - by Bowo Sulistio
Andy Lipkis -
Gary Hirshberg - from video by Narda
Jane Goodall - by Bowo Sulistio
Brower Awards ceremony - by Bowo Sulistio
Freya Chay - link
WiserEarth Editors’ Annual meeting - by Bowo Sulistio
At the Yiangou’s - by Narda
Leonardo da Vinci, study of a hand
Bookcovers:

Planetwalker - Nationalgeographic.com
Blessed Unrest - google.co.uk/books
Stirring it Up - amazon.com