Eisenstein has a unique ability to write about what the heart knows to be true, but the mind struggles to articulate. Brilliant and original, with great depth of insight and understanding. The Ascent of Humanity easily ranks with the works of such giants of our age as David Bohm, Julian Jaynes, Jean Gebser, Alfred North Whitehead….” The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible" is essentially about the space we currently occupy between two stories that describe the world/reality. The old story, the Story of Separation, views everything and everyone as separate. In that story, I am separate from the mailman and my cats are separate from the television. The state of the world in 2015 is the result of our species telling itself this story. The new story is the Story of Interbeing, in which everything is related. This is the concept of "everything is one" that we have heard the mystics repeat again and again, and which we see printed on Dr. Bronners Magic Soaps. By telling ourselves a new story, the unthinkable and miraculous will happen.

Loving across enemy lines (within our own inner world or with others) is the most courageous and powerful medicine. This narrative of normal is crumbling on a systemic level too. We live today at a moment of transition between worlds. The institutions that have borne us through the centuries have lost their vitality; only with increasing self-delusion can we pretend they are sustainable. Our systems of money, politics, energy, medicine, education, and more are no longer delivering the benefits they once did (or seemed to). Their Utopian promise, so inspiring a century ago, recedes further every year. Millions of us know this; more and more, we hardly bother to pretend otherwise. Yet we seem helpless to change, helpless even to stop participating in industrial civilization’s rush over the cliff. This is a book summary of The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible by Charles Eisenstein.If any of the excerpts below resonate with you, I highly recommend reading the book for yourself. This short video serves as an unofficial trailer for the book On some level, we all know better. This knowledge seldom finds clear articulation, so instead we express it indirectly through covert and overt rebellion. Addiction, self-sabotage, procrastination, laziness, rage, chronic fatigue, and depression are all ways that we withhold our full participation in the program of life we are offered. When the conscious mind cannot find a reason to say no, the unconscious says no in its own way. More and more of us cannot bear to stay in the “old normal” any longer. If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to yearn for the endless immensity of the sea.”

Given the forest fires, flash floods, rising average temperatures, it’s hard to deny that global warming is here to stay (although I have written elsewhere of the dangers of becoming fixated with this). And finally, Love Anyway. In a world where I may want to close my heart or others are closing their heart… can I Love Anyway? Side note - of course LOVE can look like many different things, it doesn’t mean rolling over / being submissive.) That my being partaken of your being and that of all beings. This goes beyond interdependency -- our very existence is relational.The stories that underpin our society. The stories we construct in our minds. The stories that unite and divide us. The stories that shape reality. Life made sense. If you worked hard you could get good grades, get into a good college, go to grad school or follow some other professional path, and you would be happy. With a few unfortunate exceptions, you would be successful if you obeyed the rules of our society: if you followed the latest medical advice, kept informed by reading the New York Times, got a good education, obeyed the law, made prudent investments, and stayed away from Bad Things like drugs. Sure there were problems, but the scientists and experts were working hard to fix them. Soon a new medical advance, a new law, a new educational technique, would propel the onward improvement of life. My childhood perceptions were part of a narrative I call the Story of the People, in which humanity was destined to create a perfect world through science, reason, and technology: to conquer nature, transcend our animal origins, and engineer a rational society.