Charles Eisenstein Quotes
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It's not like activist work is a nice add-on to what's really important, the spiritual work. The two are inseparable and it goes both ways. Many people are hardcore activists for decades, and they encounter burnout, futility, or a feeling of imbalance. Sometimes they need to go so far as to drop their activism and go on a spiritual journey. They're realizing that all the stuff they're trying to change in the world isn't just out there in the world. It's in them, too. And as long as they're blind to what's in them, they're going to continually re-create it in all that they do.
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We in the richest societies have too many calories even as we starve for beautiful, fresh food; we have overly large houses but lack spaces that truly embody our individuality and connectedness; media surround us everywhere while we starve for authentic communication. We are offered entertainment every second of the day but lack the chance to play. In the ubiquitous world of money, we hunger for all that is intimate, personal and unique.
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When everything is subject to money, then the scarcity of money makes everything scarce, including the basis of human life and happiness. Such is the life of the slave—one whose actions are compelled by threat to survival. Perhaps the deepest indication of our slavery is the monetization of time.
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Each experience of love nudges us toward the Story of Interbeing, because it only fits into that story and defies the logic of Separation.
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How do we change the world? Change the story.
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When do you manipulate others for your own advantage? When I notice myself doing it, usually it is when I am feeling insecure.
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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.
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Are the problems of the world caused by bad people who need to be crushed? Or do people do bad things when they are in a certain situation? If it is the latter, then we can go around crushing the villains for another thousand years and nothing will change.
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Traditional spirituality often made pleasure, joy, good feelings. the things to overcome. It said you couldn't just indulge in your desires; that would be selfish. Anyone who has been in a spiritual community recognizes the dangers of this kind of joyless spirituality, where everything is somber and heavy and serious. We recognize that as kind of a trap, a false path.
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Are you going to divest in the banks and pension funds? Plenty of people are willing to invest in stock of those companies. You can argue that when a lot of people divest, it makes the stock price artificially low, which makes their price-to-earnings ratio more favorable, which makes it a better investment for the people who don't give a damn - - and is it really going to change corporate behavior? It begins to create a climate of antagonistic opinion, the result might be that the corporate executives will retreat even more into their own selfjustifying narratives.
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Even if we profess to be non-judgmental, there's an inherent judgmentality and hierarchy in which the spiritual person, the conscious person, the mindful person, is more developed than the typical truck driver or waitress or heroin addict. This is a red flag, another problem built into the concept of spirituality. The truth is that every person you meet is in some way more developed than you are, and that the multiple modes of development that a human being can pursue require the whole of humanity to pursue. We're in this together. Enlightenment is a collective effort.
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The discoveries of the last couple decades are showing that properties of a self do actually inhere in matter, that matter seems to have properties of self-organization and life, even intelligence, consciousness. I can't say that science has proved these things, but it at least suggests the possibility. As we re-invest the world with sacredness, "spiritual" comes to mean something very different. If only a human being has these qualities, then spiritual work is inner. It's all about your own consciousness.
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When any of us meet someone who rejects dominant norms and values, we feel a little less crazy for doing the same. Any act of rebellion or non-participation, even on a very small scale, is therefore a political act.
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Even the most thorough change happens once choice at a time
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Love is the felt experience of connection to another being. An economist says 'more for you is less for me.' But the lover knows that more of you is more for me too. If you love somebody their happiness is your happiness. Their pain is your pain. Your sense of self expands to include other beings. This shift of consciousness is universal in everybody, 99% and 1%.
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I can't give a formula for how to spread joy, but I know that the source of the joy is one's own joy, and that that is not distinct from pleasure and fulfillment of desires. So I ask: What makes me feel alive? What is the expression of my inner wild? What would really feel good? What if what makes me feel alive leads me toward the deeper joys, which are found in generosity and service, in creating things that are beautiful to me? Maybe the world needs more of that. How many petroleum company executives are doing their work because it's beautiful to them? Not very many, I bet.
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A miracle is an invitation into a new story.
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The gift economy represents a shift from consumption to contribution, transaction to trust, scarcity to abundance and isolation to community.
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When both sides of a controversy revel in the defeat and humiliation of the other side, in fact they are on the same side: the side of war.
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I think the term "interbeing" has cropped up in a lot of places. It's in the atmosphere, because it's just so true, and the time for that truth to be revealed to mass society is here. It's like in those French bakeries where they don't need to add yeast to the dough, because the yeast is so ambient in the air that the dough gets quickened whether or not you add yeast to it. Many people, even without doing a whole lot of study and reading, are coming to the same kinds of conclusions and perceptions about the world as I am.
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Enlightenment is a group activity.
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Contemporaneous with the financial crisis we have an ecological crisis and a health crisis. They are intimately interlinked. We cannot convert much more of the earth into money, or much more of our health into money, before the basis of life itself is threatened.
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I'm not prescribing non-doing as a universal response to our problems. Sometimes, something obviously needs to be done. And we retreat into a spiritual or meditative state that we fancy up by calling it mindfulness, but really it's an unhealthy detachment and a shrinking back from life. But culturally, it's much more common to be trapped in habits of reaction, whether on a systemic level or on a personal level. That's where the non-doing comes in, which is something that we don't really have room for. I think that it's something we need to embrace as part of the creative process.
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A revolution that leaves our conceptualization of self and world intact cannot bring other than temporary, superficial change. Only a much deeper revolution, a reconceiving of who we are, can reverse the crises of our age.