How does it feel to see yourself as an "error" in the system? When you try out over 40 jobs and you fit into none? From system error to futurist, Ali Mahlodji discovered his sense of purpose in the midst of his life's difficulties. Having zigzagged his way from refugee to technology entrepreneur and CEO to global thought leader, he helps children and at-risk persons navigate the multiple paths to a sense of purpose in an uncertain world and often amid difficult circumstances. And he does so...

"Every person - every place is a map to somewhere else." - Michael Nye Alejandro went hungry as a child and describes hunger as a "lion in your stomach that wants to be fed." Christine became a mother at 15 and expresses her hopes to "build a home across the street from my parents." Taylor reflects on her brother who lives with mental illness: "The great thing about him is he is always creative," and, "Unfair things that people shouldn't say are 'crazy' and 'are you retarded?'" What these...

Stephen Lewis, a social catalyst of community transformation and healing, was shaped by the classroom and medicine making activities that existed within his grandparents' kitchen. Without a college education, Stephen's grandparents held degrees in the practice of hospitality, leadership formation, and business. They were wise elders, farmers, food alchemists, educators, and community healers who imparted wisdom about life, the Sacred, and responsibility to family, friends, and neighbors who...

"All bodies are radiant but not all radiance is visible: stars radiate visible light; planets and donkeys and couches radiate infrared waves. (If your couch is emitting visible light GET UP IMMEDIATELY!)" -- Amy Leach Everything is visibly illuminated under Amy Leach's virtuosic pen. Whether she's writing about beavers, migratory birds, mesquite trees, or the moon, to read her words is to see things in a new light. To see in things a new light. And to find your mind being woken up, your...

"We must remember we are exhaustible. We need renewal. Silence, quietude, time alone, naturally gives that. Then we can come back in to serve others in small ways. That we do. Then we take time for renewal. Jesus, the Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi and all the great sages recognize the importance of connection with others to serve, then step back from that into quietness, then renewal, and then serve. This is the great rhythm of life." Christopher Titmuss, a former hippie turned Theravada Buddhist...

**Note: This is a special experiential and participatory workshop. The movements will entail sitting or working on the floor. Please wear comfortable clothing and find a quiet, carpeted or lightly padded area. What allows painful events to continue affecting us over time? How can we transform our relationship to these events, to reduce their traumatic impact? These are the questions Breema Bodywork teachers Angela Porter, MFT, and Alexandra Johnson, MD, will explore in a special...

*** This will be an interactive workshop that is two hours, not the customary 90 minutes. See the description below for more details. To Mayuka Yamazaki, a high-level business executive who sits on the boards of three Japanese public companies, ikebana -- the ancient Japanese art of floral creations -- is not just about arranging flowers. It is about attuning to the wisdom and beauty of nature to become more whole. A master of the art form, she launched an initiative in 2017 called IKERU to...

As a seven-year-old living in Shiraz, Iran, Ari Honarvar stood on the rooftop of her home with her family one night, a "simmering terror brewing in her belly." Beholding the sky, she was aware that their electricity was just shut off, warning of an imminent attack. Missiles shot across the darkness. Sirens blared throughout the streets. Then, from a neighboring rooftop, Ari bore witness to a different kind of explosion: Even if, from the sky, poison befalls all, I'm still sweetness wrapped...

Chris Hoffman, a lifelong humanitarian serving in crisis situations in dozens of countries around the world, realized after nearly two decades of intense work in the field that humanitarians often do more harm than good - largely because they themselves are "not well". Being passionate individuals who move from crisis to crisis, country to country, in short-term stints on behalf of international organizations, humanitarians often are suffering from the trauma they already embody as well as...

In July 2021, Neil Douglas-Klotz gave an inspiring Awakin Call: Breathing life into words, prayers, and scriptures. A renowned teacher, scholar, author, and musician who specializes in the native traditions and ancient Semitic languages of the Middle East, Douglas-Klotz shared with this Awakin community his personal discovery of what he calls the “Aramaic Jesus” — or Jesus before the religion of Christianity — and guided some moving meditations in Jesus’s original words and sounds. Now he...

"Pay attention to your attention." Amishi P. Jha came to her pathbreaking work studying the neuroscience of mindfulness and attention when, as a young professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, she lost feeling in her teeth. She had been grinding them as a profound stress response to burnout from her responsibilities as a wife, mother, and tenure-track professor. Knowing from her academic work that the brain can change, she told herself at the start of summer,...

**Please note the special day for this event — the call falls on Monday, instead of our usual Saturday time. “The key to creating health,” says Dr. Mark Hyman, “is figuring out the cause of the problem and then providing the right conditions for the body and soul to thrive. It isn’t taking another medication.” Whether he’s in a gray suit or hospital scrubs, Mark Hyman, MD, is often carrying in his pockets a pack of walnuts, coconut butter, turkey jerky, or some other nutrient-dense snack....

David Rothenberg is a writer, philosopher, ecologist, and musician, speaking out for nature in all aspects of his diverse work. He investigates the musicality of animals and the role of nature in philosophy, with a particular interest in understanding other species by making music with them. As a professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, he “teaches engineers nonquantifiable things.” He is also an acclaimed composer and jazz clarinetist known for his...

*** Please note the special day for this event -- the call falls on Sunday, instead of our usual Saturday time.  When Zachary Shore was a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, he called his parents to tell them he was dropping out. Legally blind by age 16, his vision had continued to deteriorate, and he found himself socially isolated, fearful, and debilitated by eye strain. After an encounter on campus with a fellow blind student who had just returned from a solo excursion with...

We are living with a global epidemic of injustice, but we've been choosing to ignore it.  More than 25 years ago, Vivek Maru told his grandmother that he wanted to go to law school. “Grandma didn't pause,” he recounted. “She said to me, ‘Lawyer is liar.’” Though he went on to fulfill that desire, Vivek soon realized that his grandmother wasn’t entirely wrong. Vivek came to see that “something about law and lawyers has gone wrong.” Law is “supposed to be the language we use to translate our...

***Please note the special time for this event, to accommodate the time zone of our guest and other Asia-based participants. “In order to let flowers live, we need to calm ourselves and empty our mind — otherwise, we cannot listen to what flowers tell us.”  To Mayuka Yamazaki, a high-level business executive, ikebana — the ancient Japanese art of floral creations — is not just about arranging flowers. It is about attuning to the wisdom and beauty of nature and enriching our experience of...

When he was ten years old, Balakrishnan Raghavan was moved to tears listening to a centuries-old Tamil hymn about Lord Shiva, sung by musician M S Subbulakshmi.  “I was wailing. Subbulakshmi’s voice soaring high and low, calling out to that divine-beloved, the voice of the poet who lived hundreds of years before us, the fierceness of their devotion, the ultimate surrender of the devotee, the madness of love, the pathos of separation, and the anticipation of union; all of this is etched in my...

"What's gone / is not quite gone, but lingers./ Not the language, but the bones / of the language.  Not the beloved, / but the dark bed the beloved makes / inside our bodies."  -- Danusha Laméris Danusha Laméris’s poems have been called “wise, direct, and fearless” (American poet Dorianne Laux). She began writing poetry, as she believes many people do, from a place of heartbreak, and not knowing what to do with it. Her first book of poems, The Moons of August (Autumn House, 2014), came on...

“There’s no spiritual life that does not involve, does not start, intimately and inescapably, with the Earth.” The Rev. Fletcher Harper believes that he felt God while mourning his father’s death on a solo camping trip in Montana. A violent hailstorm struck one night, and he sought shelter in the lee of a rock. “At about three in the morning, I felt this deep sense of well-being,” he recalls. “I realized that I was going to be OK. I thought, ‘I can move on with my life now.’” Later in his...

“You are the cumulative expression of all your ancestors.” When Iya Affo meets someone, she instinctively looks for the best in that person, a seed in them that can be nurtured. To nurture others is a high calling for Iya, whose deepest identity is as Mother and Healer. Her African name, Wekenon, means Mother of the Universe, and her title, Iya, signifies Holy Mother. Both were bestowed on her in a traditional ceremony on the soil of her ancestral home in the Benin Republic of West...

“Wisdom is dangerous. Love and beauty are too. Our culture has kept us away from them, and must do so to perpetuate the insanity we see all around us.” Mankind has lost its way, which is why we now have plastic in our blood, lead in our bones, iron and mercury in our brains, says Nikos Patedakis, a philosopher on a mission to nudge us back onto the path of wisdom, where all of human endeavor is of service to life. The problem is that much human activity today serves narrow interests and...

Silence isn’t just the absence of noise. It’s a presence that brings us energy, clarity, and deeper connection. A few years ago, Leigh Marz, a leadership coach, dance teacher, and confessed naturalist, met Justin Talbot Zorn, a policymaker, meditation teacher, and writer, through the introduction of a mutual friend. Though their meetings were entirely online, they hit it off professionally right away, “geeking out on all sorts of things” that they wanted to do in the world. They decided to...

“Post capitalist philanthropy is a paradox in terms. A paradox is the appropriate starting place for the complex, entangled, messy context we find ourselves in as a species.” This is how long-time activists, political strategists, and “accidental philanthropy advisors” Alnoor Ladha and Lynn Murphy start their forthcoming book on Post Capitalist Philanthropy. The authors take us on a journey from the history of wealth accumulation to the current logic of late-stage capitalism – and ultimately...

“It is not what music does,” writes Christine Stevens, “it is what music undoes.” In July 2022, as a crimson supermoon lit up the sky in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, Christine Stevens sat afloat in a kayak, beholding the still, alpine waters of Jenny Lake and attuning to the wisdom offered by the natural world. When the time was ripe, she reached into her backpack, took out the wooden flute that usually accompanies her, and played a mesmerizing ode to the moon. A certified naturalist,...

“Music generates energy. If we attach music to our message, it will help create the interest and excitement that is necessary to move people out of inertia and into activism.” How does an individual, moved by spirit and conscience, begin to stand up against systemic human rights violations around the world? For Jack Healey, a former Franciscan priest and pioneering head of the Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Action Center, it is by harnessing the world’s leading musical talent to raise...