The Great Turning Institute

The Soulforce Practice

 

 

 

What flows through your mind sculpts your brain. Thus you can use your mind to change your brain for the better – which will benefit your whole being, and every other person whose life you touch. 

Neuroscientists Drs. Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius

 

 

 If only we can overcome cruelty to human and animal, with love and compassion, we shall stand at the threshold of a new era in human moral and spiritual evolution – and realize, at last, our most unique quality: humanity.

Dr. Jane Goodall

 

 All religious share a common root, which is limitless compassion.  They emphasize human improvement, love, respect for others, and compassion for the suffering of others.  In so far as love is essential to every religion, we could say that love is a universal religion.  But the various techniques and methods for developing love differ widely between traditions. ... Since there are so many different types of people, with a range of tendencies and inclinations, it is quite fitting that there are differences between religions.          

 The Dalai Lama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

 

We Vote With Our Lives

 

The Soulforce Practice is based upon four insights form our great souls:

 

First, the Dalai Lama’s says that our world is a “spiritual democracy,” meaning that the world we see around us is the total accumulation of all the thoughts and actions of our planet’s inhabitants: Each person helps to shape the future through our ripple effect.  We vote with our lives for the world we want through the sum of all of our thoughts and actions - through our relationships to each other and to the Earth.

 

Second, Mahatma Gandhi teaches that the means are the end in the making – and thus we can only attain a more just, peaceful world through just and peaceful means or create more green, sustainable planet by living in ways that respect nature.  Thus, as Gandhi said, each of us is called to become the change you want for our world. Gandhi developed a method he called “satyagraha” meaning soul-force or love-force - taking responsibility to live the transformation needed to heal and illumine our world. 

 

Third, Dr. Jane Goodall, says we must transform our old beliefs that we humans are separate from and have dominion over nature to the recognition that we share kinship with all life and it is our responsibility to be stewards of the Earth.  Ecology recognizes that humans are part of nature and interdependent with all other life forms. If we want human civilization to survive, we must protect the diversity of other species.

 

Fourth, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. declares that our goal is to create the Beloved Community on Earth, and this requires we make both an inward change in the quality of our soul and an outward change in the quantity of our compassionate action.  He inspired us with the great dream of equality for all God’s children and the unyielding faith that humankind will overcome and make it to the Promised Land.  Like Gandhi, Dr. King affirms that the power of love (soul-force) will free self and humanity. As tens of millions begin to think and act with mindfulness and compassion, our culture will move toward sustainable values, these values shifts will be adopted by opinion leaders in the media, business, and politics and become codified in the laws of the country.

 

 

Launching The Soulforce Practice

 The Soulforce Practice is about both the inner shift in the quality of our soul and the outer shift in the quantity of our compassionate action.  It is both realizing the light within you and taking personal leadership for a more compassionate self and world. The Soulforce Practice offers a a way out of our life-threatening trance of ego and calls us to come together across the many groups committed to living with respect for self, others and all life to help ignite the Great Transformation needed to transform humanity and restore Earth.

 

Our goal is to inspire and facilitate an ever-expanding network of people and groups that are committed to living the Soulforce Practice for a more compassionate and sustainable world.  Toward this end in 2013-2014, we are now teaching and promoting Dr. Craig Schindler’s new book, REVOLUTION OF THE SPIRIT: Touching Heaven, Healing Earth; and we conducted the first Wisdom Intensive: Personal Leadership for a More Compassionate Self & World

 

The great souls across traditions have been to the mountaintop and seen a coming time of justice and lasting peace, and have declared that each of us can help to realize that Great Dream through embodying the power of love.  In 1906 Mahatma Gandhi coined the word, satyagraha (soul-force) meaning the power of love-truth-soul. His goal was to help free both Indians from being oppressed and the British from being oppressors. As Gandhi said: “When the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.”  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. declared that soul-force was the most powerful method to attain equal rights for all and to create the Beloved Community. The Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela all affirm that soul-force can transform our lives and our world. Jane Goodall, Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, Betty Williams in Ireland, Maya Angelou and others have affirmed that the voice of women has a special soul-force in the struggle for a nonviolent and sustainable world.

 

The Soulforce Practice is based upon both our enduring wisdom and emerging neuroscience. It offers methods to transform self and humanity and to live the global ethic -- treating self, others and the Earth with the respect you want to be treated.  Neuroscientists have established that whatever we do with regularity creates new pathways in our brain.  Thus by practicing what we want to become, we can evolve ourselves with intention toward the increased mindfulness, empathy and compassionate leadership needed to transform self and world.  Many studies show that the practices of mindfulness and centering prayer, altruism and kindness, meditation and gratitude - contribute to elevating our experience of wellbeing, happiness, and true fulfillment.

 

Further scientists have established that the tipping point – when a new idea begins to spread like a flame — is ten percent of a population. In 2014 we will launch the Soulforce Gathering “LIT” – Leadership In Transformation.  Each person who joins the Soulforce will obtain a practice partner for regular check-ins.  Our intention is to inspire the first 50 people to be committed to the Soulforce practice by the end of 2014; 500 by 2015 and 5000 by 2016.  This means committing to to live the global ethic and the Eight Wisdom Keys --mindfulness, compassion, stewardship, peacemaking and joyful being. 

 

The Book Revolution of the Spirit : Touching Heaven, Healing Earth is a roadmap for the revolution of the spirit.  It outlines the Soulforce Practice based upon both our enduring wisdom and emerging neuroscience. It offers methods to transform self and humanity and to live the global ethic -- treating self, others and the Earth with the respect you want to be treated.  Neuroscientists have established that whatever we do with regularity creates new pathways in our brain.  Thus by practicing what we want to become, we can evolve ourselves with intention toward the increased mindfulness, empathy and compassionate leadership needed to transform self and world.  Many studies show that the practices of mindfulness and centering prayer, altruism and kindness, meditation and gratitude - contribute to elevating our experience of wellbeing, happiness, and true fulfillment. The book is a call to live your higher purpose for a more compassionate self and world.

 Dr. Craig Schindler’s new book, REVOLUTION OF THE SPIRIT

 

Neuroscience, Meditation And The Brain

We saw evidence of a neurological process that has evolved to allow us humans to transcend material existence and acknowledge and connect with a deeper, more spiritual part of ourselves perceived of as an absolute universal reality that connects us to all that is.” (9)

Dr. Andrew Newberg, neuroscientist

 

In his book, Why God Will Not Go Away, neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Newberg describes how he and his colleague Dr. Eugene d’Aquili measured the brain activity of Tibetan monks in meditation and Franciscan nuns in prayer.  In a study at the University of Pennsylvania, eight Tibetan monks and eight Franciscan nuns, all experienced meditators, were hooked up to a brain scan. The researchers instructed them to begin their meditation and when they reached a peak state, to signal by pulling a chord. The Buddhist monks describe this state as “oneness with existence,” the eight Franciscan nuns described it as “oneness with God.” Yet the brain scans of both groups were virtually identical: a quieting in the orientation part of the brain and high activity in the left pre-frontal cortex associated with no anxiety, wellbeing, and happiness.  The closer one draws to this state – what Dr. Newberg calls “absolute unity being”- the more their descriptions converge: “Buddhists and Hindus and Christians and Jews who have mystical experiences tend to describe the state as ‘everything becomes one.’ “ Just so the brain scans show the same physiological experience is happening in each.  (175

Dr. Craig F. Schindler’s book, Revolution of the Spirit

 

The Global Ethic – Respect For Self, Others, Earth

What ethic, if followed by millions and then hundreds of millions of people, will help create a more sustainable and peaceful future?  How can we all do our part to ignite the Great Transformation needed to secure our future?  If we are honest with ourselves, we already know the answer is found at the heart of the world’s great religions: the simple, yet profound insight that we must treat the other as we would like to be treated.  The golden ethic is a practice that can bring together believers and non-believers, people of faith and of science, spiritual seekers and environmentalists, and people of good will of all traditions. This enlightened ethic requires us to recognize the other person not as an object, but as a soul behind the masks.  When we make this principle the cornerstone of our actions, it illumines our lives.  The widespread, sustained practice of the golden ethic will enable us to create a more just, verdant and peaceful world.

 

In his book Ethics For the New Millennium, the Dalai Lama reflects that in 50 years he will merely be a footnote in history and that most of us now alive will be gone.  So why not while we are here, he asks, live fully with joy and compassion?   Why not wake up while we can?   We are all passing away.  As I wrote these words this week, the noble Nelson Mandela, unbroken by 27 years in prison, liberator of millions of people, a planetary citizen for all humanity, and one of the greatest souls of our era, has died.  As the great souls who have come before us pass away, will you step forward to be a light?  “There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested,” Nelson Mandela declares, “but I would not and could not give myself up to despair.  That way lays defeat and death … It always seems impossible until its done.”