The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible QUOTES

21 " The holistic acupuncturist and the sea turtle rescuer may not be able to explain the feeling, 'We are serving the same thing,' but they are. Both are in service to an emerging story of the People that is the defining mythology of a new kind of civilization. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

22 " Each experience of love nudges us toward the Story of Interbeing, because it only fits into that story and defies the logic of Separation. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

23 " The world is on fire! Why am I sitting in front of my computer? It is because I don’t have a fire extinguisher for the world, and there isn’t a global 911 to call. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

24 " The more beautiful world my heart knows is possible is a world with a lot more pleasure: a lot more touch, a lot more lovemaking, a lot more hugging, a lot more deep gazing into each other’s eyes, a lot more fresh-ground tortillas and just-harvested tomatoes still warm from the sun, a lot more singing, a lot more dancing, a lot more timelessness, a lot more beauty in the built environment, a lot more pristine views, a lot more water fresh from the spring. Have you ever tasted real water, springing from the earth after a twenty-year journey through the mountain? None of these pleasures is very far away. None requires any new inventions, nor the subservience of the many to the few. Yet our society is destitute of them all. Our wealth, so-called, is a veil for our poverty, a substitute for what is missing. Because it cannot meet most of our true needs, it is an addictive substitute. No amount can ever be enough. Many of us already see through the superficial substitute pleasures we are offered. They are boring to us, or even revolting. We needn’t sacrifice pleasure to reject them. We need only sacrifice the habit, deeply ingrained, of choosing a lesser pleasure over a greater. Where does this habit come from? It is an essential strand of the world of separation, because most of the tasks that we must do to keep the world-devouring machine operating do not feel very good at all. To keep doing them, we must be trained to deny pleasure. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

25 " You can’t just do whatever you feel like.” “You can’t just do anything you want.” “You have to learn self-restraint.” “You’re only interested in gratifying your desires.” “You don’t care about anything but your own pleasure.” Can you hear the judgmentality in these admonitions? Can you see how they reproduce the mentality of domination that runs our civilization? Goodness comes through conquest. Health comes through conquering bacteria. Agriculture is improved by eliminating pests. Society is made safe by winning the war on crime. On my walk today, students accosted me, asking if I wanted to join the “fight” against pediatric cancer. There are so many fights, crusades, campaigns, so many calls to overcome the enemy by force. No wonder we apply the same strategy to ourselves. Thus it is that the inner devastation of the Western psyche matches exactly the outer devastation it has wreaked upon the planet. Wouldn’t you like to be part of a different kind of revolution? "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

26 " The things we think we want are often substitutes for what we really want, and the pleasures we seek are less than the joy that they distract us from. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

27 " These include the need to express one’s gifts and do meaningful work, the need to love and be loved, the need to be truly seen and heard, and to see and hear other people, the need for connection to nature, the need to play, explore, and have adventures, the need for emotional intimacy, the need to serve something larger than oneself, and the need sometimes to do absolutely nothing and just be. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

28 " Before they are able to enter a new story, most people—and probably most societies as well—must first navigate the passage out of the old. In between the old and the new there is an empty space. It is a time when the lessons and learnings of the old story are integrated. Only when that work has been done is the old story really complete. Then, there is nothing, the pregnant emptiness from which all being arises. Returning to essence, we regain the ability to act from essence. Returning to the space between stories, we can choose from freedom and not from habit. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

29 " To conduct a revolution of love, we must reconnect with the reality of our system and its victims. When we tear away the ideologies, the labels, and the rationalizations, we show ourselves the truth of what we are doing, and conscience awakens. Bearing witness, then, is not a mere tactic; it is indispensable in a revolution of love. If love is the expansion of self to include another, then whatever reveals our connections has the potential to foster love. You cannot love what you do not know. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

30 " If we want to reach them, our articulation of the problem has to avoid ascribing personal evil to them, while also being uncompromising in describing the dynamics of the problem. I cannot offer a formula for how to do this. The right words and strategies arise naturally from compassion: from the understanding that the bankers or whoever do as I would do, were I in their shoes. In other words, compassionate—and effective—words arise from a deeply felt realization of our common humanity. And this is possible only to the extent to which we have applied the same to ourselves. Truly, to be an effective activist requires an equivalent inner activism. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

31 " What is power, after all? Every one of the power elite’s overwhelming advantages—military forces, surveillance systems, crowd control technology, control over the media, and nearly all the money in the world—depends on having people obeying orders and executing an assigned role. This obedience is a matter of shared ideologies, institutional culture, and the legitimacy of the systems in which we play roles. Legitimacy is a matter of collective perception, and we have the power to change people’s perceptions. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

32 " We need to change our habits of thought, belief, and doing as well as change our systems. Each level reinforces the other: Our habits and beliefs form the psychic substructure of our system, which in turn induces in us the corresponding beliefs and habits. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

33 " A Chinese saying describes it well: “As far away as the horizon, and right in front of your face.” You can run toward it forever, run faster and faster, and never get any closer. Only when you stop do you realize you are already there. That is exactly our collective situation right now. All of the solutions to the global crisis are sitting right in front of us, but they are invisible to our collective seeing, existing, as it were, in a different universe. When we are trapped in a story, we can only do the things that that story can recognize. Often we are aware of being trapped (the old story is ending) but don’t have access to any alternative (we haven’t yet inhabited a new story). "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

34 " We have to appeal to what moves us: the love of our beautiful planet. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

35 " We are only able to continue our ravaging of the planet under the cover of pretense. How is it that we as a society take no action, when the awful artifacts of our way of life on this planet lay strewn all around us? How is it that we continue to hurtle toward an obvious abyss? It is only because we have been rendered blind and insensate. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

36 " There is a time to act, and a time to wait, to listen, to observe. Then understanding and clarity can grow. From understanding, action arises that is purposeful, firm, and powerful. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

37 " the rhythm of the phases of action and stillness has an intelligence of its own. If we tune in, we can hear that rhythm, and the organ of perception is the desire, the nudge of excitement or the feeling of flow, of rightness, of alignment. It is a feeling of being alive. To listen to that feeling and to trust it is a profound revolution indeed. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

38 " To condemn what we see as selfish, greedy, egoic, or evil behavior and to seek to suppress it by force without addressing the underlying wound is futile: the pain will always find another expression. Herein lies a key realization of interbeing. It says, “I would do as you do, if I were you. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

39 " The old world falls apart, but the new has not emerged. Everything that once seemed permanent and real is revealed as a kind of hallucination. You don’t know what to think, what to do; you don’t know what anything means anymore. The life trajectory you had plotted out seems absurd, and you can’t imagine another one. Everything is uncertain. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

40 " The procrastination, the laziness, the halfhearted attempts, the going through the motions—all indicate that the old story isn’t motivating you anymore. What once made sense, makes sense no longer. You are beginning to withdraw from that world. Society does its best to persuade you to resist that withdrawal, which, when resisted, is called depression. "

― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible