
Nov 13, 2023 At the sacred Mt. Hiei in Japan, Miyagi-san, Yuka, Kotaro, Yuko, Michelle, Don, Pom, and so many others are helping put on a gathering of indigenous wisdom from around the world -- to respond to the unprecedented crises of our world, with a collective heart of service!
Nov 12, 2023 For the last week, bunch of us have been immersed in our local communities across Vietnam, from Awakin Circles to Karma Kitchen to public events, with so much love! Yesterday, we finished a 2-day retreat on a farm 2 hours away from Saigon, with a very diverse range of participants from permaculture farmers to energized urban youth to prominent authors (like Dr. Giang) and inspiring social entrepreneurs (like Jimmy, who has spent decades uplifting street populations) to successful business people to Dean of a 6-thousand student college to some really solid volunteers ... even though few of us didn't speak Vietnamese, we all felt like brothers and sisters by the end of the retreat: The language of love communicates everywhere in the world! :)
Nov 11, 2023 Our friends at Soul Force are hosting an online concert today featuring Jewish, Arab and other musicians coming together for Gaza humanitarian relief benefit. *This Sunday Nov 12th 5pm (PST)* *Peace Now Online Direct Concert Link* (Concert to benefit Doctors without Borders in Gaza.)
Nov 11, 2023 Schumacher Institute announces the Jem Bot: As a curiosity and in tune with the times Jem has created an AI JemBot. You can engage with the ideas and text of the book ‘Breaking Together: a freedom-loving response to collapse‘ with the help of an AI provided by the organisation Service Space. This is one of the first contemporary non-fiction books made available in this way. It is provided with the aim of making the best use of technologies while we still have them. See: https://jembendell.com/jembot/ To access all 80+ bots on ServiceSpace, visit https://ai.servicespace.org
Nov 9, 2023 KarunaNews: The Zero Waste City: What Kiel In Germany Can Teach The World
Nov 6, 2023 Kathrin, a ServiceSpace volunteer in Austria, is serving local projects in Gautemala and was quite moved to see their flavor of 'heartivism' recently. "This journey was all about cultivating peace from the inside out, as I have wittnessed indigenous people saying no to coruption and supression after 300 years in a very peacefull way," said Kathrin. "They recently had elections and very suprisingly a man won, who is supporting the Mayans and their ancient culture a lot. His dad already did as a president 50 years ago helping them coming out of slavery. The other party, which lost, had contested the election result and out of that they started to block the roads. Over some weeks it was like a lockdown situation in certain areas. How the Mayans were blocking the roads deeply touched me." See photos of these very special cermonies for peace below.
Nov 3, 2023 KarunaNews: A Meeting Of Jewish And Muslim Women Gives Me Hope
Nov 2, 2023 Introducing the Spirituality&PracticeBot! The Spirituality&PracticeBot is the newest pilot in a ServiceSpace AI experiment designed to bend the arc of technology toward compassion. The new Bot compiles a wealth of multifaith and interspiritual wisdom from Spirituality & Practice, a platform founded by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, to support spiritual journeys. [...] Spirituality&PracticeBot will answer your questions and create reflections by drawing upon the website’s 65,000 pages of content, including articles about spiritual practices, book reviews and book excerpts, film reviews, spiritual teacher profiles, spiritual quotations from books, a database of 2,000 spiritual practices, and curated content on topics and traditions. With its replies to you, the Bot will also give you several links to the Sources where it found the wisdom. Read more about the Spirituality&PracticeBot here.
Oct 30, 2023 Harvard Medical School pens an article that makes ServiceSpace work: What We Get When We Give Gregory Fricchione, the Mind/Body Medical Institute Professor of Psychiatry at HMS and director of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, describes it as a release of “chemical juice.” When we help others, he says, neurotransmitters flow up in a tight bundle of axons called the medial forebrain bundle through the subcortex with “exit ramps to many of the important structures of the brain” — the fear-conditioning amygdala, the memory-forming hippocampus, and the motivation-moderating medial prefrontal cortex. Numerous other processes may be implicated in the helper’s high, says Fricchione: pain-reducing endogenous opioids, endorphins, and perhaps even the neuromodulating chemicals that make up the endocannabinoid system. Then there’s oxytocin, the so-called affiliation hormone, which has plentiful receptors in the amygdala, where it helps suppress fear and anxiety. [...] Evolution has provided us with the structures and functions that remind us that we survive better by cooperating as a group — not only when we’re seeking social support, but when we’re giving it. “How two people treat each other in one part of the city may relate to how two other people treat each other in another part of the city,” says Christakis, who now directs the Human Nature Lab at Yale University. In other words, he says, “altruism is contagious.” The kindness of individuals cascades, ultimately creating a stronger group that is better equipped to survive. [...] A 2020 American Journal of Preventive Medicine study of nearly thirteen thousand volunteers over age 50 who were assessed over a four-year period revealed that those who spent more than a hundred hours per year volunteering had a 44 percent lower risk of mortality compared to those who did not volunteer, even after controlling for factors like stress, health behaviors, and personality traits. [...] Acts of altruism can also burden the body. Caregiving, for example, can become an immense stressor contributing to myriad health issues. That’s why Post doesn’t think that altruism itself is the best medicine. “It’s not how much you do for others, but the kindness you pour into it,” he adds.
Oct 28, 2023 What a joy to host a Awakin London retreat with Jin Wei and Jin Chuan!