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I would encourage people not to give up on their longer-term dreams because we will get there… but, maybe don’t put specific dates on it.” Dr Tim Sharp, chief happiness officer at the Happiness Institute Neither complacent optimism nor resigned pessimism has power to motivate us; they don’t generate a hunger for learning or provoke our best response. We are in no way prophesying or predicting or compelling the future by this kind of imaging, any more than we are compelling the future when we pray. The enactment of the future depends on what we do, how we individually and collectively respond to what we envision.” Ecophilosopher Joanna Macy, PhD, is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. A respected voice in the movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she interweaves her scholarship with five decades of activism. As the root teacher of the Work That Reconnects, she has created a groundbreaking theoretical framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application. Chris Johnstone is a medical doctor, author, trainer and coach who worked for nearly twenty years as an addictions specialist in the UK National Health Service. A former Senior Teaching Fellow at Bristol University Medical School, he trains health professionals in behavioral medicine and gives courses exploring the psychological dimensions of planetary crisis.
The Great Turning: emergence of new and creative human responses, it is about the epochal transition from an industrial society committed to economic growth to a life-sustaining society committed to the healing and recovery of our world. To build active hope we use “The Work That Reconnects” - a way to connect and reconnect with each other and our world.
Active Hope is a practice. Like tai chi or gardening, it is something we do rather than have. It is a process we can apply to any situation, and it involves three key steps. First, we take in a clear view of reality; second, we identify what we hope for in terms of the direction we’d like things to move in or the values we’d like to see expressed; and third, we take steps to move ourselves or our situation in that direction.
When people coordinate their actions through a collective thinking process, we can think of this as “distributed intelligence.” Grief and Joy on a Planet in Crisis: Joanna Macy on the Best Time To Be Alive – TWOII podcast - 2021 Coming from gratitude helps build a context of trust and psychological buoyancy that supports us to face difficult realities in the second phase. Shift in Consciousness: our wellspring of caring compassion can be nurtured and developed. We can deepen our sense of belonging in the world. They are meeting exactly one hundred years ago today to try to understand, with their limited mentality, the ways their “experts” are containing the poison fire.While the video-based trainings won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, we’ve had a great initial response to the course – with over a thousand people taking part so far, and hundreds engaged each week. A survey of those starting the course shows that more than half are either new to the spiral or unfamiliar with it, while over a quarter are very familiar, including some who are experienced facilitators. One of these, Vincent Brown, wrote: Decolonization is identified as a key element in the shift in consciousness integral to the Great Turning
There’s something else we’d like to bring in alongside this difficult starting point. It is a recognition that when we’re at our most exasperated, we can sometimes surprise ourselves. We might discover strengths we never knew we had or experience degrees of aliveness we’d not even suspected were available to us. This is a time to reach out and find new allies, as well as to discard forms of thinking and behavior that have led us astray. In a process known as adversity activated development, our very act of facing the mess we’re in can help us discover a more enlivening sense of what our lives are about, what we’re here to do, and what we’re truly capable of.
Chapter 2: Trusting the Spiral
The concept of emergence is liberating because it frees us from the need to see the results of our actions. In the Buddhist tradition, bodhichitta is seen as something very precious, something to treasure and protect. If you've appreciated what you've gained from the body of work associated with Active Hope, and you'd like to help pass on similar benefits to others, please support our work by donating to fund free places on this course, and to help us develop more courses.
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