Raising $60,000 to kickstart 30 social innovators

Raising $60,000 to kickstart 30 social innovators.

Cyclone Thane hits Auroville

 After cyclone Thane came to visit us in Auroville check out the boat house where my mom stayed and zozo’s house in Evergreen community!

Here is the picassa link https://picasaweb.google.com/118315825809576091316/CycloneDamages2?feat=flashalbum#5693721660196302530

Fortunately in our new forest (called Udumbu) we are OK, our solar panels intact so we can pump water. It’s just a few months of work clearing up, then re thinking what to do with the land and starting afresh… To be honest we had been hoping for more sunlight so we could grow more vegetables -should be more careful what we wish for.

They estimate 50% of all trees are gone, which would mean roughly 1 million trees ! Anyone who likes sawing is welcome these days.

What used to be the boat house

Follow your bliss

One of Joseph Campbell’s most identifiable, most quoted and arguably most misunderstood sayings was his admonition to “follow your bliss.” He derived this idea from the Upanishads:

Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence:Sat-Chit-Ananda. The word “Sat” means being. “Chit” means consciousness. “Ananda” means bliss or rapture. I thought, “I don’t know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don’t know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being.” I think it worked.

He saw this not merely as a mantra, but as a helpful guide to the individual along the hero journey that each of us walks through life: if you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are—if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.

source: Campbell, Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, edited by Betty Sue Flowers. Doubleday and Co, 1988

At http://www.manifestyourpotential.com they explain that to find your bliss, you need to know how to recognize it. So here are a few of the signs, symptoms and feelings that you experience when you find and follow your bliss …

• your feel at one with the world, as if everything is in its rightful place and all interconnected
• you feel totally alive, as if your body is resonating at a slightly higher frequency
• you eyes light up and you feel like you could spend hours talking about the subjects you love
• you see things more clearly, as if a mist has cleared or a fog has lifted and now you can see more clearly or deeply understand
• you feel totally at home within your skin and so comfortable within yourself that the ideas of who you are fade
• time ceases to exist when you are following your bliss – whether that is researching at home or being on stage
• you feel surrounded by kindred spirits when you find other people who are passionate about the same things
• you have deep, insightful discussions with people you have known only a few minutes
• you experience leaps of insight and the profound understanding of concepts and ideas that go beyond words
• you find yourself creating at an extraordinary level far beyond your normal abilities
• worlds of ideas and knowledge that you never knew existed open up to you
• the world becomes a place where synchronicities start to make sense and form a subtle path pointing you to the things you need to discover
• you find yourself (many times unknowingly) amassing a collection of resources built around your bliss
• you feel the touch of unseen hands guiding you
• you feel like a light deep inside of you has been turned on
• days you follow your bliss start to feel a bit like Christmas morning, making you want to jump out of bed and see what the day holds
• you surprise yourself by the things you say and do because they make you seem much smarter and gifted than you usually think you are

REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE

REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE

Regenerative agriculture increases the natural wealth and productivity of a production system, while producing a harvestable surplus. Soil fertility, water infiltration and retention, (agro)biodiversity and other agro-ecological factors improve from season to season. It also deliberately and as a spin-off regenerates surrounding environments, wildlife and plant diversity. Finally, it targets social and economic community regeneration by investing in vibrant rural economies and cultures.

By contrast, many “sustainable agriculture” efforts aim to reduce the rate at which soil, water and biodiversity depletion takes place: less pesticide, less fertilizers, less irrigation. In the human system: less poverty, less migration, less loss of identity. While valuable, in the long run these simply delay the moment that an agricultural system and community become non-productive.

IT industry: organic server farms?

Greenpeace published a report on the IT industry’s carbon footprint and it’s huge!

Of course they need to transition to 100% renewable energy, but on top of that if we can hook up IT companies with groups of organic farmers we could have a new hybrid value chain: organic server farms!

The carbon is off set by increase in organic matter in the farmers’ soil and both parties benefit. Perhaps WordPress can be the first customer?

Stop the rot

A group of students at MIT have launched a new website called Stop the Rot, to address challenges around food waste in developing countries. Here is a short, 2 minute clip about the concept: vimeo.com/15822912.

They’re doing a pilot  in Paraguay and are likely to come to India next year

spread the word! Stop the rot