Economics, Separation, and
the Healing Force of Love

The linear character of the modern economy is obviously unsustainable, because both resources and the earth's capacity to absorb waste are finite. The modern economy therefore represents an outright denial of humanity's participation in nature, and embodies a belief that the laws of nature do not apply to us.
– Charles Eisenstein

As the Federal Reserve contemplates a third round of Quantitative Easing (think printing more money) and funnels dollars to the Wall Street bankers that are already giving themselves billions in bonuses, Main Street faces escalating inflation and higher costs of living. Reported unemployment in California and Nevada is at 14%, but estimated real unemployment is likely twice that and many of those finding work receive a fraction of their former salaries. The G20, formerly the G8, of the “new world economic order” are still unwilling to acknowledge that our economy is structurally unsound and beyond repair. A system, which is built on continuous growth in a world of finite resources, is a recipe for environmental destruction and societal collapse... But, even less obvious is the fundamental Cartesian misconception that our minds are separate from our bodies and that we are separate from each other and nature herself. This is the primary driver of our economic system, and our worldview, which sees all of nature as merely a resource for our infinite consumption. The resulting destruction, delusion, and denial that permeate our culture are the product of this basic misconception.

Charles Eisenstein, author of The Ascent of Humanity, portrays the illusion of “separation, from ourselves, from nature, and from each other, as an engine of suffering and the cause of the multiple crises facing the planet” today. It is hard to see separation as a myth or illusion when I am over here in this body and you are over there. But, for the past century, research in science and physics have been deepening the realization that we are all intimately interconnected. We breathe the same air, depend on the earth’s soil, climate and water to nourish us and we are discovering the many ways that our actions effect the whole. It is time to wake up and recognize our connection with all things. We have been locked into an old story that continually reinforces our sense of separation. But a new evolutionary story of an interconnected self is emerging, which is a more accurate and empowering depiction of what has been unfolding for the past 14 billion years. This new story is all-inclusive; it is a story of you and me, rather than you or me. It is a story that connects our gifts with our needs, our hearts with our minds, and our actions with the future of life on earth.

You never change something by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
– Buckminster Fuller

Read the entire letter from Michael here.

Moving Meditation News

Presence with Bella and Michael

Enroll online here.
(Early registration deadline is extended to March 28th.)

Upcoming Events

See Jane Do: Passion Into Action

Friday & Saturday, April 29 & 30, Holiday Inn Express, 121 Bank Street, Grass Valley, CA featuring special guests Nina Simons of Bioneers, Marie Wilson of the White House Project, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Kathy LeMay and many more. Join today’s leading women’s speakers and activists at See Jane Do’s 2nd Annual Passion Into Action: A Women’s Conference. See Jane Do will host world renowned speakers and over a dozen workshop leaders on self development, green living, health & wellness, leadership and the value of you.

For more information: www.seejanedo.com

New Podcasts

Click here to view the Podcasts page, and to listen to the following podcasts:

Ram Dass - Be Love Now: The Path of the Heart
click to listen

Ram Dass is one of America’s most beloved spiritual figures. He has made his mark on the world giving teachings and promoting loving service, harmonious business practices, and conscious care for the dying. His spirit has been a guiding light for four generations, carrying millions along on the journey, helping free them from their bonds as he has worked his way through his own. www.ramdass.org

Jean Bolen and Elisa Parker: Urgent Message from Mother
click to listen

Jean Shinoda Bolen, M. D, is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, and an internationally known author and speaker who draws from spiritual, feminist, Jungian, medical and personal wellsprings of experience. Her books include The Tao of Psychology, Goddesses in Everywoman, Gods in Everyman, Close to the Bone, The Millionth Circle, and Urgent Message from Mother. She was a recipient of the Institute for Health and Healings' Pioneers in Art, Science, and the Soul of Healing Award. She was in two acclaimed documentaries, the Academy-Award winning anti-nuclear proliferation film Women—For America, For the World, and the Canadian Film Board's Goddess Remembered. www.jeanshinodabolen.com

Elisa Parker is the co-founder, producer and host of See Jane Do. Elisa reports for KVMR and has produced and hosted various radio and television programs that inform, engage and entertain the listener. As a professional speaker, host and facilitator Elisa captures the magic of the story in each of us. Elisa holds years of experience in working with cutting edge organizations in order to reach their highest potential and unleash the talents of their team leaders and staff. She has organized and managed high profile conferences for ICLEI bringing elected officials together to discuss environmental solutions and managed an event team for conferences in San Francisco for up to 40,000 attendees. www.seejanedo.com

The Real Story on Cell Phones and Cell Towers
click to listen

Special interviews with documentary film maker Talal Jabari, and researcher Dr. Kerry Crofton, on cell phones, cell towers and EMFs. Find out what mainstream media isn't telling you!Learn the real health implications for you and your children — even if you aren't using a cell phone, you are being affected.

Kerry Crofton, PhD, is a health educator, and the director of Well Being International. Her new book, Wireless Radiation Rescue, is the first to bring together the research and recommendations of the world's leading scientists and clinicians, both for the general public and other health care professionals. Dr. Crofton is a member of the International EMF Alliance, a consortium of leading experts in this field. www.radiationrescue.org

Talal Jabari is a Palestinian/American journalist and film maker. He has covered the escalating global violence for such prominent news sources as BBC World Service, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and Al Ahram Weekly. In 2002, Talal jumped into TV news as an associate producer for CBS News as well as a field producer for the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes. Talal's later became a line producer and production coordinator of an award-winning 5-documentary film series entitled "The Shape of the Future" and produced four episodes for Al Jazeera Documentary Channel's flagship 8-part series: "Israel from Within." His most recent project is the documentary, Full Signal: The Hidden Cost of Cell Phones. http://fullsignalmovie.com

Paul Chappell: Waging Peace
click to listen

Paul Chappel, author of Will War Ever End?: A Soldier's Vision of Peace for the 21st Centruy, graduated from West Point in 2002. He served in the U.S. Army for seven years, having achieved the rank of captain. As Peace Leadership Director for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, he speaks throughout the country on the vital theme of ending war and waging peace. http://paulkchappell.com

Melanie Lenart, Ph.D; Roger Pielke, Jr.; and Jim Miller Ph.D on our Climate and Changing Ecosystem...
click to listen

Melanie Lenart, Ph.D., is an award-winning journalist, environmental scientist and writer specializing in climate change and forests. She has studied forest dynamics in China, Colorado, and Puerto Rico, where she lived during two major hurricanes. She was involved in an Arizona agricultural experiment testing how plants responded to elevated levels of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas responsible for the ongoing warming of the planet. www.melanielenart.com

Roger Pielke, Jr. is a professor of Environmental Studies at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He also has appointments as a Visiting Senior Fellow, Mackinder Programme, London School of Economics and Senior Visiting Fellow at the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University. Pielke is also a Senior Fellow of The Breakthrough Institute, a progressive think tank. His latest book is The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians won't tell you about Global Warming. sciencepolicy.colorado.edu

Jim Miller, PhD is a professor of Climate Modeling and Climate Change at Rutgers University. He is co-editor of "Scientists Debate Gaia: The Next Century". Miller's current work focuses on the effects of climate dynamics on the Arctic and the Tibetan Plateau. He has been involved in PlanSmart New Jersey's Climate Change Report: Protecting New Jersey's Natural Capital. www.newschool.edu

Duane Elgin: Voluntary Simplicity
click to listen

Duane Elgin is an author, speaker, educator, consultant, and media activist. For more than three decades, he has defined the cutting edge in consciousness research, the ecology movement, and future studies. He pioneered the "Voluntary Simplicity" movement with his now classic first book, titled by the same name, published in the 1980s. An updated version is about to be released. www.awakeningearth.org

Dennis Klocek: Climate: The Soul of the Earth
click to listen

Dennis Klocek is director of the Consciousness Studies Program "Goethean Studies" at Rudolf Steiner College in Sacramento CA. Dennis is engaged in research, teaching, and writing in many fields, including weather, gardening, color therapy, meditation and the human organism, embryology, and sensory transformation. His books include Bio-Dynamic Book of Moons, Weather and Cosmology, Drawing from the Book of Nature, Seeking Spirit Vision, and Climate: Soul of the Earth. Dennis also oversees Doc Weather, "a unique website that is based on a climatic technique that interfaces daily weather data from the National Weather Service into a geometrical system that is the result of twenty-four years of experimental work. www.dennisklocek.com

Book of the Month

Wireless Radiation Rescue
By Kerry Crofton, PhD

This is a very important book for all to read and have as a reference. Kerry Crofton (with documentary film-maker Talal Jabari, whose film Full Signal: the hidden Cost of Cell Phones is a must see,) was recently my guest on Conversations. I encourage all of our readers to get informed about this very critical issue that has been called the largest biological experiment ever performed. With four and a half billion cell phone users around the globe it is important to safeguard ourselves and all life from the risks of electro-pollution.

Kerry Crofton’s book gives you an accurate and up to date review of the science, the lack of testing, the health impacts and the reasons why our governments are not protecting us. As Kerry says, “the concern is not just cancer. The heart is electrical in nature so it is vulnerable to electro-magnetic fields. This radiation can be a factor in cardiac symptoms and other medical conditions; it is the greatest medical threat of our time.” This easy to read and well documented reference book goes beyond just cell phones and covers the risks of PDAs, Cordless phones, wireless devices, laptops, monitors, microwave ovens, fluorescent lights, electric/hybrid cars and much more. Most importantly it shows you how you can protect yourself from this radiation.

Articles

Advice From an Accidental Activist

So many of us have good ideas for helping the world. But we tuck our ideas away. I did. I’d tell myself that if the idea were any good someone else would have already done it. That I’m not capable of making a difference. I’d sit on my ideas, get on with my “life,” and then feel angry at the world because the problems I cared about didn’t get solved.

I had that fear of going first.

Then I took my first hapless step into what I call accidental activism. In 2006, I started a project where I lived as environmentally as possible for a year—with my little family, on the ninth floor of an apartment building in the middle of New York City—to attract attention to the world’s environmental, economic, and quality of life crises.

I had no experience as an activist. Yet suddenly my project caught fire.

To read the full article, click here.

Koch Brothers and US Chamber: Polluting Our Earth and Our Democracies

Among other truths made completely clear by the showdown in Wisconsin: the outsized role of the Koch brothers in American politics.

Charles and David, the third and fourth richest men in America, first gained notoriety in the fall, when a remarkable expose by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker showed how they'd funded not only the Tea Party but also the hydra-headed campaign to undermine the science of global warming, all in the service of even more profit for their oil and gas business.The US-based institute's annual State of the World report, published yesterday, calls for a move away from industrial agriculture and discusses small-scale initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa that work towards poverty and hunger relief in an environmentally sustainable way.

To read the full article, click here.

The Birth of the People¹s Party?

Look at the outrage in Madison, Wisconsin. Look at the crowds in DesMoines, Iowa. Look at the demonstrations in Indiana and Ohio and elsewhere around America. Hear what they’re saying: Stop attacking unions. Stop making scapegoats out of public employees. Stop protecting the super-rich from paying their fair share of the taxes needed to keep our schools running. Stop gutting the working middle class.

To read the full article, click here.

Compassion and the Goddess

The seventh chapter of the Vimalakirti Sutra contains a profound teaching about the nature of compassion, and the skillfulness that we gain from the experience of selflessness, which is one of the primary "tastes" of Buddhism, or early teachings of Buddhism: the idea that there is no solid self.

There is also a delightfully funny skit involving once again Shariputra, with his ideas of purity and of the self. Shariputra represents the kind of religious fundamentalism that the Mahayana is breaking away from, so he is the "fall guy" in all these stories.

The chapter begins with Manjusri, the Bodhisattva of wisdom, asking Vimalakirti: "What is the skillful way for Bodhisattvas to regard living beings?" What is the skillful way for us to look at living beings—"us," because I assume we're all Bodhisattvas in disguise. A Bodhisattva is an enlightening being, a being who is there to enlighten self and other. So, what is the skillful way for us to look at living beings?

To read the full article, click here.

A Little Meditation Goes a Long Way: How Mindfulness Changes the Structure of Your Brain

Jason Marsh
Yes! Magazine

I consider myself something of a prospective meditator—meaning that a serious meditation practice is always something I’m about to start… next week.

So for years, I’ve been making a mental note of new studies showing that meditation can literally change our brain structure in ways that might boost concentration, memory, and positive emotions.

To read the full article, click here.

Shoppers Wary of GM Foods Find They're Everywhere

You may not want to eat genetically engineered foods. Chances are, you are eating them anyway.

Genetically modified plants grown from seeds engineered in labs now provide much of the food we eat. Most corn, soybean and cotton crops grown in the United States have been genetically modified to resist pesticides or insects, and corn and soy are common food ingredients.

To read the full article, click here.

Money Pollution: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Darkens the Skies

In Beijing, they celebrate when they have a “blue sky day,” when, that is, the haze clears long enough so that you can actually see the sun. Many days, you can’t even make out the next block.

Washington, by contrast, looks pretty clean: white marble monuments, broad, tree-lined avenues, the beautiful, green spread of the Mall. But its inhabitants -- at least those who vote in Congress -- can’t see any more clearly than the smoke-shrouded residents of Beijing.

To read the full article, click here.

The Coming Global Food Fight

Food prices around the world are surging. Between July of last year and this January alone, the price of wheat has doubled. Indeed, the cost of food has now passed the record levels of 2008, when angry citizens staged huge protests in dozens of countries. Currently, protesters across the Middle East include lowering food prices among their demands. When prices go up even a bit, millions more people starve.

The local organic farmers with whom we have been spending time in the Philippines and elsewhere are less affected by these price swings precisely because they consume much of what they harvest, and they sell the rest to local markets. These farmers have achieved at the household level what Frances Moore Lappé terms “food democracy,” and what the small farmer coalition, Via Campesina, calls “food sovereignty” at a national level.

To read the full article, click here.

GENDER EQUALITY FOR PEACE
Three Men, Three Women

The traditional male role model
If you will Has always been men as “protectors”
Which is now, literally on overkill,
Just look at military spending
And all wars pending...
Though you may be considered mad,
Ask this question,
Just who made of this sacred earth,
A steaming, toxic bachelor pad?

For women the traditional role
Was that of taking care,
From raising children
To seeing to the daily needs
And filling cupboards,
And rumbling stomachs
And brushing hair
If women and men
Ruled as one

You might hear the roll
Of a more compassionate drum
An infusion of global care
Between each beat
Packing concern for earth
And all her species
Instead of heat. Ninety percent of this planet Is under the control
Of exclusive male leadership
What do women get?
To legislate in only seventeer percent of it!
Lets give it a “shot”
Across the male supremacy bough
For the inclusion of women as leaders
In equal numbers to men
Needs to be reintroduced again
We have nothing to lose
And everything to gain.
For the nature of caretaking
Is to confront and ease suffering and pain.

– Jane Evershed

Visit our Website!

Listen to Conversations 24/7
on Internet Radio here!

Download Conversations Shows
Conversations shows are now available to down load from iTunes. It’s easy! Just go to itunes store, and search for Conversations with Michael Stone. You can download shows for free. Enjoy...

Listen live at www.kvmr.org
Tuesdays at 1pm PST

On Giving-Thanks

For it is in giving that we receive.
St. Francis of Assisi

We need your support to continue to provide Conversations, The Well of Light and other up to date information on what is happening in the environmental, spiritual, and social justice arenas. If you get value from these offerings I invite you to support their continuation by funding them. Your contribution makes a difference and so do you. Thank you for being a supporter of Conversations...

You are like a candle. Imagine you are sending light out all around you. All your words, thoughts and actions are going in many directions. If you say something kind, your kind words go in many directions, and you yourself go with them. We are ...transforming and continuing in a different form at every moment.
– Thich Nhat Hanh

Stephanie Van Hook joins Conversations

I am very pleased to present a new member of the Conversations Team. Stephanie Van Hook will be joining me as a co-host. She will be working with me as a producer and broadcaster. In addition to our regular shows she will be assisting me in keeping track of the youth activist movement and expanding our focus on the growing nonviolence movement.

Stephanie has recently returned from being a Peace Corps volunteer serving in Benin, Africa. Her interests in nonviolence and reconciliation have intersected with activists and academics working for nonviolent social change in the global peace and justice community. She serves on the board of the Peace and Justice Studies Association for issues related to women and gender; is adjunct faculty at Portland State University; and spends the rest of her time serving as co-Director of The Metta Center for Nonviolence. www.mettacenter.org

Upcoming Shows on Conversations

March 29th
John Jeavons: Grow More Vegetables with Biointensive Gardening
John Jeavons is the Executive Director of Ecology Action of the Mid-Peninsula. He is known internationally as the leading researcher and method developer, teacher, and consultant for the small-scale, sustainable agricultural method known as GROW BIOINTENSIVE mini-farming. He is the author of the best-selling book How to Grow More Vegetables, Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine. He has authored, co-authored or edited over 30 publications on this high-yielding, resource-conserving Biointensive approach, including a five-part, peer reviewed article that appeared in The Journal of Sustainable Agriculture. Jeavon’s food-raising methods are being used in 141 countries and by such organizations as UNICEF, Save the Children, and the Peace Corps. www.johnjeavons.info

Thursday March 31st at Noon:
Special Show on Gender Equality and Reconciliation with Warren Farrell, Elisa Parker and Michael Stone

The future of humanity will be decided not by relations between nations, but by relations between women and men.
– D.H. Lawrence

Dr. Warren Farrell's books on male-female issues have made contributions in twelve fields. They include two award-winning international best- sellers, Why Men Are The Way They Are plus The Myth of Male Power. His most recent books are Father and Child Reunion, and Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say. His research on Father and Child Reunion, finding what is optimal for children of divorce, has led to his doing expert witness work in child custody cases. Dr. Farrell is the only man in the US elected three times to the Board of Directors of the National Organization for Women in New York City. www.warrenfarrell.org

Elisa Parker is the co-founder, producer and host of the award winning program See Jane Do. As a social change organization, See Jane Do redefines media for women and the power of story to create positive change. Serving as an activist for women, social justice, and the environment, Elisa’s work takes her around the world to discover and share the extraordinary stories and solutions in each of us. Elisa reports for KVMR and has produced and hosted various radio and television programs that inform, engage and entertain the listener. Elisa also holds years of experience in working with cutting edge organizations in order to reach their highest potential and unleash the talents of their team leaders and staff. She holds a BA in Communications and a MA in Organization Development. Elisa lives in the Sierra Foothills with her husband and two daughters. www.seejanedo.com

Michael Stone is the host and producer of KVMR’s award winning Conversations, which brings you leading edge thinkers, authors and activists in the areas of Environmental Restoration, Social Justice, Evolutionary Cosmology and Spiritual Fulfillment. Prior to starting Conversations he was the founder and director of Mastery of Management International (MMI), an international Organizational Development Consulting firm whose purpose was to “bring heart and meaning into the world of work”. Michael also leads moving meditation classes and workshops based on the work of Gabrielle Roth. Michael is an active member of Bioneers and the Pachamama Alliance and many other environmental and social justice organizations.
www.AreWeListening.net

April 5th
Lily Yeh: Inspiration and Community Building
Lily Yeh is an internationally celebrated artist and award-winning founder and former executive and artistic director of the Village of Arts and Humanities. Since 1986, with the help of neighborhood children and adults, Yeh has built the Village from an abandoned lot into an organization and a community. She has infused the Village with her own artistic sensitivity and vision, collaborating with other artists and community residents to create a place that brings art into both the physical space and daily rhythms of life. Expanding beyond North Philadelphia, Yeh's work has taken her to communities around the world. www.barefootartists.org

April 12th
Noah Levine: Practices for Spiritual Revolutionaries
Noah Levine, the author of Dharma Punx, is a Buddhist teacher, counselor, and writer who moved from a life of addiction and crime to one of service. He has been practicing Buddhist meditation since 1988, was trained as a teacher by Jack Kornfield, and leads meditation groups and workshops nationally as well as in Juvenile halls and prisons. Levin has helped thousands of young people find freedom from suffering and self-destruction. www.dharmapunx.com

April 19th
Charles Eisenstein, Zoe Alowan & Bill Kauth: Alternative Economies for Changing Times
Professor, lecturer and workshop leader Charles Eisenstein is the Author of The Ascent of Humanity and the upcoming Sacred Economics, and two influential essays on money: Money and the Crisis of Civilization and Money and The Turning of Age A faculty member of Goddard College, he speaks and writes about civilization, economics, and the evolution of human consciousness. www.ascentofhumanity.com

Zoe Alowan has been actively engaged in sacred art for many decades. As a painter, sculptor, dancer and storyteller, her work explores transformation and healing. Her life is about reclaiming essence wisdom. She utilizes the inspiration of the divine feminine, humor, song and ritual movement as ways of celebrating wholeness. She has taught at Esalen and Naropa Institute, facilitates women’s groups, singing circles as well as intuitive process painting retreats.

Bill Kauth was working as a psychotherapist and business consultant in 1984 when he conceived and co-founded the New Warrior Training Adventure, presented by the ManKind Project to nearly 50,000 men in 40 centers in 8 countries around the world. He is the author of A Circle of Men: The Original Manual for Men’s Support Groups. As a social inventor over the last two decades, Bill also co-founded the Spiritual Warrior, Inner King Trainings and the Warrior-Monk training retreats.

April 26th
Joanna Macy: On War and Peace
Buddhist Scholar, Systems Theorist, Ecologist, Teacher, and Activist. Joanna addresses the reasons for the grief, fear, sadness, uncertainty, and numbness that prevail in modern life and keeps bringing attention back to what is sacred and true: the wondrously interconnected and intelligent web of life. Joanna is just returning from a 3-month meditation. For more go to www.joannamacy.net

May 3rd
Hank Wesselman, Ph.D.: Ancestral Wisdom from a Hawaiian Shaman
Research paleoanthropologist Hank Wesselman is one of those rare cutting edge scientists who truly walks between the worlds. He has spent much of his life working among traditional tribal peoples, primarily in Africa and Polynesia. For the past 30 years, he has conducted research with an international group of scientists, exploring eastern Africa's Great Rift Valley in search of answers to the mystery of human origins. He is also a shaman in training, now in the 20th year of his apprenticeship. He is the author of many books including his latest, The Bowl of Light. www.sharedwisdom.com

May 10th
Will Tuttle, Ph.D.: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony
Will Tuttle, Ph.D. is a professional pianist, composer, and teacher. For the past fifteen years he has presented at progressive churches, vegetarian and human potential conferences, and intentional communities throughout the country. He trained in Korea as a Zen Buddhist monk and has worked extensively in Tai Chi, yoga, mediation, intuition development, and spiritual healing. He is the author of The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony. willtuttle.com

May 17th
Special Pledge Drive show noon – 2pm
Noon-1pm – Rabbi Michael Lerner: Healing America’s Political and Spiritual Crisis
Rabbi Michael Lerner is an internationally renowned social theorist, theologian, psychotherapist, and the editor of Tikkun magazine. He earned a PhD in philosophy from UC Berkeley, and in clinical psychology from the Wright Institute. Lerner is rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue, San Francisco and Berkeley. Rabbi Lerner's most recent book The Left Hand of God: Healing America's Political and Spiritual Crisis addresses the central mystery of contemporary politics. www.tikkun.org

1-2pm – John Perkins: Creating a Sustainable, Just, and Peaceful World
John Perkins is best known for his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, a startling expose of international corruption.   He advised the World Bank, United Nations, IMF, U.S. Treasury Department, Fortune 500 corporations, and countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.  His The Secret History of the American Empire details the clandestine operations that created the world’s first truly global empire. Hoodwinked is a blueprint for a new form of global economics. John is a founder and board member of Dream Change and The Pachamama Alliance. Perkins books on indigenous cultures and transformation, include Shapeshifting, The World Is As You Dream It, Psychonavigation, Spirit of the Shuar, and The Stress-Free Habit. www.johnperkins.org

Conversations airs every Tuesday at 1pm PST on KVMR.
For current shows or more information go to www.AreWeListening.net

Videos

Even The Troops Are Waking Up

Brene Brown: The power of vulnerability

Cutting Public Sector Wages Will Make Recession Worse

How Big Business Subverts Democracy

Empire of US Bases

Annie Leonard: The Story of Citizens United

Conversations on YouTube

Hot Site of the Month

Ascent of Humanity
www.ascentofhumanity.com

Charles Eisenstein is one of the most important thinkers of our time. If you haven't been introduced to his work, please check out his site... Very inspiring and thought provoking!

A Call to Action!

If you think your local radio station would be interested in Conversations programming please contact them and let them know.

Support Conversations with your tax-deductible donation.

Newsletters

If you would like to receive more frequent news and information from the Well of Light, you may subscribe to our blog newsletter.

You may choose what you want to hear about and nothing more or less. All you have to do is choose your specific area of interest from the drop-down menu in the subscription form. Your choices are:

• Moving Meditation
• Conversations on KVMR
• Awaken the Dreamer Symposium
• Quote of the Day
• All

Note: If you sign up for "all categories" or the "quote of the day," you will receive more frequent emails with a beautiful photo and an inspiring quote when Michael is in town.

Click here to subscribe.

Well of Light Seva Team

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
— Mohandas K. Gandhi

Seva is selfless service to a cause you believe will benefit others. It is the willingness to perform any task for a greater cause without prospect of recognition or reward.

Well of Light has many opportunities to serve our community. If you would like to participate on the Well of Light Seva Team please call Michael Stone @ 530.477.7757 or email michael@welloflight.com

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve."
- Albert Schweitzer

Poetry Corner

Loving Humans
For Aung San Suu Kyi

Loving humans
Is tricky
Sometimes
A slap
In the face
Is all you get
For doing it
Just right.

Loving humans is a job
Like any other
Only
More
Bumps
On the way
To work
Which is full on
All the time.

Loving humans
Makes us
Want
To invite
Ourselves to tea
With rancid
Dictators
We think we
Can convince
Of our
Story’s side
While all
They think
About
While
We sit & dream

And how
If only they
Had
Enough tea
Already
Brewed
They could
Waterboard us
To death
With it.

Loving humans
Means
Writing poems & songs
Novels & plays, slogans, chants
& protest signs
Our critics
Want
To stone
Us for
While
We think of
Them
As people
Under different
Circumstances
We might
Be able
To help.

There is
Indeed
A Buddha
In
Every one
Of us
Loving humans
With all
Our clear &
Unmistakable
Reluctance
To evolve
Makes this hard
For most humans
To see.

But not you.

- Alice Walker

Donate to Conversations

Dear Friends,
For the past six years I have been funding Conversations, The Well of Light and other associated projects out of my own pocket and fund raising events. In order to keep this newsletter coming and keep moving towards syndicating Conversations we need your help. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution if you enjoy receiving our monthly newsletter or listening to Conversations.

It’s easy, just click here to visit the Conversations Investors page, or click the button below:

Thank you so much. Your support is greatly appreciated.

Blessings,
michael