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 dreams about justice into living institutions that hold us together” – to honor the dignity of everyone, strong or weak. But as he told an audience on the TEDGlobal stage in 2017, lawyers are not only expensive and out of reach for most – worse, “our profession has shrouded law in a cloak of complexity. Law is like riot gear on a police officer. It's intimidating and impenetrable, and it's hard to tell there's something human underneath.”

In 2011, Vivek founded Namati to demystify the law, facilitate global grassroots-led systems change, and to grow the movement for legal empowerment around the world. Namati and its partners have built cadres of grassroots legal advocates in eight countries. The advocates have worked with more than 65,000 people to protect community lands, enforce environmental law, and secure basic rights to health care and citizenship. Globally, Namati convenes the Legal Empowerment Network, made up of more than 3,000 groups from over 170 countries who are learning from one another and collaborating on common challenges. This community successfully advocated for the inclusion of justice in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, and for the creation of the Legal Empowerment Fund, with a goal of putting $100 million into grassroots justice efforts worldwide.

Though he nearly dropped out of law school after his first year because the law felt disconnected from the problems of ordinary people he had encountered in rural villages the year earlier, Vivek stuck with it and moved to Sierra Leone soon after he graduated, just after the end of a brutal 11-year civil war. Several years before Namati, he co-founded an organization called Timap (which means “stand up”) to help rural Sierra Leoneans address injustice and hold government accountable.

Realizing that a conventional legal aid model would have been unworkable, as there were only 100 lawyers in Sierra Leone (more than 90 of which were in the capital rather than in rural areas), he instead focused on training a frontline of community paralegals in basic law and in tools like mediation, advocacy, education, and organizing. Just like a health care system relies on nurses, midwives, and community health workers in addition to physicians, he saw that justice required community paralegals (sometimes called “barefoot lawyers”) to serve as a bridge to serve the legal needs of communities and “to turn law from an abstraction or a threat into

Vivek Maru -- A Global Movement for Justice: Making Rules and Systems Work for All

***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 being human. As a master of the art, she explains that ikebana is a word derived from the verb ikeru (to bring alive) and hana (flowers), or combined, “letting flowers live.” For over 20 years, Mayuka has been letting flowers live, and most recently, she has brought this practice to help restore wholeness to schools, international organizations, communities, and most notably, corporations.

As a young child in Japan, Mayuka was drawn to “finding beauty in the small changes in nature and its seasons.” When she was 18, she began to learn ikebana as a hobby under Risen Kajikawa, a headmaster of ko-ryu shoreikai, one of the ikebana factions in Japan. After studying economics at Tokyo University and then working as a management consultant, her education took her to the United States, where she would graduate with honors at Georgetown University’s Graduate School of Foreign Service. On the outside, her life trajectory seemed clear. On the inside, however, Mayuka felt lost. 

Some years later, she found herself working at Harvard Business School (HBS) at a fortuitous time. HBS was trying to transform its education system and its new guiding principle was “Knowing, Doing, Being,” emphasizing the need to rebalance the head, hands, and heart. Mayuka realized that the heart, which ought to be her true inner compass, had been largely silenced by her focus on acquiring knowledge and skills. So she set about trying many things, from meditation practices to exploration circles with colleagues. What opened her heart the most was creating things — concrete things — like poems, stories, and paintings. This moved her from consumer to creator, from thinking to being. And one day, she had an epiphany that ikebana — which had begun as a beloved hobby but had over two decades become an art she would master — could be her career.

Ikebana is an art of great subtlety and sophistication. Simple floral arrangements in Japan date back as early as the 7th century, beginning as simple Buddhist temple offerings that symbolized paradise. Today, it is a popular and innovative “living art” that continues to engage the ikebana artist in deep conversation with nature and her energies, equally incorporating the forms and empty space.

In 2017, Mayuka launched an initiative called IKERU, with a vision of bringing the wisdom of ikebana into business and leadership development. Through IKERU, she offers individual and group sessions, inviting people to create ha

Mayuka Yamazaki -- Ikebana: Letting Flowers Live to Restore Wholeness

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 memory,” he recalls.

From that experience, Indian classical music became a fount of his practice. Raghavan is a lifelong student of the arts, whose outlook on life and living is steeped “at the intersection of kindness, spirituality, sensuality, music, flow, and poetry.” The poems of the saints from the spiritual traditions of India have shaped “how I engage with, make sense of and access the world around me.” He strongly believes in the power of the collective kindness of humanity across time and space.

Raghavan is particularly drawn to the classical verses of communities on the margins, on the fringes, the “other’” to the dominant. “They were the alternative, the undercurrent, the subversive,” he says. “This liminal space inhabited by the marginalized saint, the marginalized women from the hereditary artist community, and the marginalized sexual minorities are where my work finds solace, inspiration, and meaning.”

He has been bringing forth the voices and contributions of women mystics, poets, and courtesans whose writings have rarely made their way into the mainstream classical tradition. He sets to music erotic poems by some of these silenced voices, and collaborates with dancers in the art form of Bharatanatyam to bring out visual imagery of their poems. One source describes Raghavan as “a passionate classical musician formally trained in Carnatic music, but highly proficient in other forms too, [who] is taking some steps in ensuring the voice of these amazing and daring women poets of our history does not fade off into oblivion.”

As Raghavan says:


“Through the verses and poems of the saints and the voices of women, I strive for a vanishing present. In 15th-century poet-saint Kabir’s words, I was wounded by the word. In my work, I bring together seemingly disparate idioms/poems/stories across time and space and place them beside each other. I enjoy this juxtaposition as it opens up space to consider a perennial philosophy that is beyond binaries, beyond the constraints of borders or boundaries.”


Raghavan finds immense hope, resilience, love, kindness, and diversity in these voices. “As we grapple with global problems of hate and violence, we need to foreground the marginalized voices to find solutions and solidarity. I strive to be a medium of flowing kindness and desire to be surrounded by kindred spirits in this life pilgrimage.”

An elder from Mumbai recently told him, “tum toh duniya ke ho”

Balakrishnan Raghavan -- Belonging to the World: Voicing Sacred Poetry of the Marginalized

"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 the heels of a rapid succession of deep losses in her early 30s. “I’ve buried a lover, a brother, a son,” she writes early on in the collection.

Poetry allowed her to become “intimate with world and life, down to the marrow.” In the process, it enabled her to lay to bed some of the grief, freeing her to go to the edge of discovering joy and pleasure once again – at the place where grief and pleasure live together, in the body. Poet Naomi Shihab Nye says, “Her poems strike deeply, balancing profound loss and new finding, employing a clear eye, a way of being richly alive with appetite and gusto, and a gift of distilling experience to find its shining core.”  

Poetic explorations of the ecstatic joy of the body and of somatic experience helped Laméris to move beyond grief. “Poetry is the body’s bright wailing against its limits,” she wrote in the title poem of her second collection, Bonfire Opera (U. Pittsburgh Press 2020). According to Colleen J. McElroy, “there is something waiting to be said, something to be revealed, as each poem draws us onward like a bird trying ‘to escape… throwing itself, again and again, against the stained glass.’ The bird and the ‘ghost child’ call out to each of us to ‘begin again.’"

And “begin again” Laméris seeks to do through her poetry. “There was something really powerful about how loss operated in my life …. And so the process of beginning again is really a daily process. […]How do I begin again, how do I in a way become innocent again. So I think that’s the ongoing life story.” She believes a poem isn’t done until it’s changed her somehow. “I don’t want to be exactly the same person I was when I start out to write the poem.” She might write and re-write a poem for 10 years, because she is dedicated “to seeing where the poems will bring me” in terms of actually changing her life.

Laméris has said that all writers tend to have the same irritant in their life – an irritant that underlies multiple works. She describes her own irritant as grief – which she experienced again and again – leading her to contemplate: how do you deal with loss? She sees herself “as someone who lost my innocence early. Who faced the death of a child, my brother’s suicide, a difficult childhood.”

Against that irritant of cascading grief is her solace – beauty, and being a creature in a body. “Now I put my faith in what is unfinished. Off-center. A kind of

Danusha Laméris -- Beginning Again: Poetry as Somatic Experience & Intimacy With the Marrow of Life

“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 life and career when interviewing hundreds of people from a broad spectrum of religious and non-religious backgrounds, he discovered that nearly all of them could recall an outdoor experience they perceived as spiritual or sublime. “Nature awakens a sense of awe at the mystery of life, a sense of wonder, a sense of humility in the face of something so much bigger than we are,” says Harper. “A sense of appreciation and of gratitude. Sometimes a sense of fear — a healthy recognition that we’re not the center of the universe.”

Harper, an Episcopal priest, is Executive Director of GreenFaith, an international interfaith and multi-faith environmental organization that conducts education and advocacy, and provides environmental sustainability services, to faith-based groups. GreenFaith uses the power of religious networks to help people from diverse backgrounds put their belief into action for the Earth. It works with houses of worship, religious schools, and people of all faiths to help them become better environmental stewards. It believes in addressing environmental issues holistically and is committed to being a one-stop shop for the resources and tools religious institutions need to engage environmental issues and become religious-environmental leaders.

An award-winning spiritual writer and nationally-recognized preacher on the environment, Harper teaches and speaks about the moral, spiritual basis for environmental stewardship and justice. He seeks to tap and activate the values base of the religious sector in ways profound and practical to curb wasteful consumerism and set faith-based communities on a track to environmental stewardship—in practice as well as in belief.

And yet Harper resists the platitudes and bromides that some religious communities cite about generalized care for God’s creation. “Very powerful vested interests maintained the status quo,” he says, “and polite conversation and periodic references to the Bible were not going to dismantle the system. It was going to take people really confronting centers of power and calling them out in ways that a lot of religious people feel uncomfortable with.”

Noting that specific targeted actions – rather than generalized moral exhortations – create change, he notes that “the only way that a status quo gets changed is through moral discomfort; [religious leaders have] got to be willing to be instruments of moral discomfort.” And so he writes about

Fletcher Harper -- Beyond Politeness: Activating Moral Discomfort and Spiritual Communities for the Earth

“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 Africa.

Iya's passion is to cultivate intergenerational healing by connecting intuitive ancestral practices with modern neurobiology. A culturalist and historical trauma specialist certified in the western tradition, as well as a certified Adverse Childhood Experiences Trainer and an organizational consultant, she is a descendant of a long line of traditional healers from West Africa, a Chief in the Village of Ouidah, and a High Priestess in the Yoruba tradition.

Iya’s search for her individual and cultural identity formed in her childhood while growing up in New York. She was deeply drawn to the rituals observed among her Jewish friends and neighbors – from their ceremonies and traditions, their holidays, to the Yiddish language spoken in their homes. She began to wonder why her Black community had such a different trajectory; why was the history of the Holocaust widely known, but not the stories of enslavement of her ancestors? She sensed that a connection to one’s history and to ancestral land would help communities be resilient and overcome adversity.

Setting off to travel alone in her late teens, Iya visited more than 30 countries to understand other cultures. She has proceeded to live abroad in five countries and to experience different spiritual environments – from China, where she practiced Buddhist meditation in a Shaolin Temple; to Myanmar, India, where she stayed at a Hindu ashram; to the Navajo Nation and the Gila River Indian Community, where she engaged in service; and briefly to France.

Significant immersion in her ancestral village of Ouidah, Benin Republic, has deepened over nearly three decades. Iya has relearned how to live as an indigenous woman and now practices the Yoruba tradition in her day-to-day life among the egalitarian, indigenous people of Arizona. “Relentlessly, I pursued the truth about our enslavement,” she has said. “I received my birthright of ritual, ceremony and initiation. My greatest gift has been relearning how to live as an indigenous woman, in egalitarian society, as a wife and mother.”

Through her cultural and spiritual leadership, Iya has mediated familial disputes and provided guidance for culturally appropriate transformative justice action. Iya has brought an understanding of how culture and neurobiology impact the way in which humans think, feel, emote and relate from a variety of perspectives. She applies these insights to Historical Trauma training; Cultural Competence analysis; P

Iya Affo -- Reculturing, Re-Membering, and Relearning for Collective Healing

“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 agendas, not the common good. And while many of us pin our hopes on technology to solve the world’s problems, which we have largely caused, Nikos insists that “the solution to our problems is not a technological one, because … it’s a spiritual [issue].”

To grow spiritually, we need to open ourselves up to learning, and Nikos embodies the drive to achieve such growth through meaningful experiences, an eco-literate mindset, and consistent practice. Wisdom is a practice, as is love, and both are forms of each other, and manifestations of true understanding. But today, he laments, we tend to seek knowledge, not wisdom. Yet by acquiring, clinging to, and then teaching such fragments of knowledge, “we marginalise and distance ourselves from the very thing we are ultimately chasing: wisdom, meaning, purpose, and learning that will reconnect us to the sacred.” Fragmented knowledge is dangerous. According to Nikos, it’s like “we’re running around with a torch and think we have the sun in our hand.”

Nikos himself has practiced many things, having worked as a professional dance teacher and blackjack player, a negotiation trainer, a consultant for Fortune 500 companies, and an Alexander Technique teacher. Having pioneered wisdom-based learning at San Francisco State University and University of California, Santa Cruz, he left academia to become a consulting philosopher, educator, and Co-Director of the Haumea Ecoliteracy Programme. He also has a podcast called Dangerous Wisdom, the name inspired by Buddha’s advice to handle his teachings with the same care as a venomous snake.

Today, Nikos works as a consulting philosopher rooted in the ancient Greek orientation – as well as a friendly, neighborhood soul doctor, mentor, permaculture designer, and artist – applying the most powerful, holistic teachings of the wisdom traditions that influenced people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Quoting Epicurus, he says “Vain is the word of the philosopher that heals no suffering.” And so drawing from the arts and sciences, he helps professionals from all walks of life learn to think the way nature works and reconnect with the philosophical traditions of the world. Humility is a good starting point, knowing what you don’t know. In his experience, top performers are so committed, so hungry, they always want to learn more, from any source, and their willingness to learn makes them humble.

Nikos, too, is humble, being a serious “student of h

Nikos Patedakis -- Dangerous Wisdom: Unveiling our Collective Insanity with an Awakened Heart

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 write an article together and pitched some ideas, the very last one being on silence. The editor of the Harvard Business Review wrote back and said, “Write about silence. Thanks.” So in 2017 they wrote an article called “The Busier You Are, The More You Need Quiet Time.” It went viral and became HBR’s most shared article in recent years, translated into a few languages.

So Leigh and Justin stepped back and thought, “What is this telling us?” Though they still hadn't met in person, they decided to write a book together. “Golden: The Power of Silence in a World of Noise” is the result of that inspiration and five-year-long subsequent collaboration.

In Golden, Justin and Leigh explore the meaning of silence in a wide range of contexts—from the West Wing of the White House to San Quentin’s death row; from Ivy League brain research laboratories to underground psychedelic circles; from the temperate rainforests of Olympic National Park to the main stage at a heavy metal festival. Though their original article focused largely on auditory silence, Golden looks more broadly at noise—auditory, informational, and internal—not just in our ears, but also on our screens and in our heads. The second part of the book is a field guide to getting beyond the noise. Drawing on lessons from neuroscience, business, spirituality, politics, and the arts, Justin and Leigh explore why auditory, informational, and internal silence is essential for physical health, mental clarity, ecological sustainability, and vibrant community.

Justin and Leigh see “silence as a pathway to compassion, to empathy, and to insight as well. Stepping back into deep silence—even sharing that silence as we think through these issues—really allows for novel thinking to emerge.” Silence counteracts “the ethic of performing constantly, to be able to tune into what’s true,” Justin says. It allows for discernment. According to Justin:


Sometimes the word silence can have a connotation of complicity or complacency around what’s wrong. Sometimes we hear culturally that even silence is violence. And we respect this notion: it’s something we write about with great appreciation in the book, but our contention is that so much of the apathy in the world right now isn’t born of silence—it’s born of noise. When we’re caught up in paying attention to Instagram “likes,” gossip, career jockeying, and whatever else it might be, all that noise makes it di

Leigh Marz & Justin Zorn -- The Power of Silence in a World of Noise

ldquo;It is not what music does,rdquo; writes Christine Stevens, ldquo;it is what music undoes.rdquo;

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 anbsp;mesmerizing odenbsp;to the moon.nbsp;A certified naturalist, poet, and music therapist who has worked globally with survivors of trauma, war, and disasters, Christine was now preparing for her annual vision questmdash;alone for four days, fasting, and silent.

Deeply connected with music and nature since a young age, Christine grew up in an ldquo;outdoorsy family,rdquo; adored her grandfatherrsquo;s tree farm, and learned to play the piano and saxophone. Up until high school, however, she felt alone whenever she performed music. Then one day, she volunteered in a classroom of autistic children. They joined her in playing music together. And it was there that she discovered her life calling, going on to receive two master#39;s degreesmdash;one in music therapy, the other in social work.nbsp;

Although her current work is comprised in large part by drumming (Upbeat Drum Circles), it wasnrsquo;t easy at first. ldquo;I thought I had no sense of rhythm at all,rdquo; Christine reflects. ldquo;I almost failed the percussion class in college.rdquo; But she stumbled into a drum circle while attending a music conference and immediately felt transformed by the energy. She learned to play congas and improvise freely. Inspired by the ease of handling drums, their spiritual depth, and historical significance, Christine became a ldquo;musical ambassador of peace,rdquo; bringing their healing potential to communities touched by significant trauma: Columbine High School, Ground Zero after 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Most recently, she worked with Iraqi refugees and created the first drum circle training program in northern Iraq.

As a member of an integrative research team, she has published multiple studies on the scientific benefits of group drumming, including research that showed an increase in immunity and T-cells in participants of drum circles. Her book, Music Medicine: The Science and Spirit of Healing Yourself With Sound, goes deeper into music as a healing modality and teaches a paradigm of music that integrates the four directions and four elements with the four dimensions of the human being.nbsp;

When it comes to spiritual background and beliefs, Christine is a self-described ldquo;smogasbordian.rdquo; She has been influenced by The Soul Saving Station for Every Nation, the Quakers, the Sufi lineage of Hazrat Inayat Khan, and the Agape International Spiritual Center in Los Angelesmdash;the latter in which her co-leading of the Drum Ministry has ldquo;really helped [her] cons

Christine Stevens -- Drumming Up Spirit in Nature and Communities

ldquo;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.rdquo;

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 worldrsquo;s leading musicalnbsp;talent to raise awareness and mobilize youth to engage in nonviolent action.

Called quot;Mr. Human Rightsquot; bynbsp;U.S. News and World Report, Jack fornbsp;over 60 yearsnbsp;hasnbsp;exponentially raised the visibility of human rights and inspired activism among youth and ordinary citizens. He has been described as having quot;helped move the topic of human rights from closed-door diplomatic negotiations to widespread awareness, public debate, and direct citizen action.quot; Through creative use of media and enlistment of world-class rock performers, Jack has bridged art and activism with the ultimate mission to defend the rights of humanity everywhere.

Jack saw first-hand the power of music to inspire and galvanize while in South Africa during the freedom struggle. As director of the Peace Corps in Lesotho from 1977 to 1981, he witnessed people singing protest songs in the streets and was struck by the power of music to activate and empower a community. This vibrancy stayed with him long after the streets emptied, even pastnbsp;when the event detailsnbsp;faded from memory. ldquo;The music brought the crowds together, and the music carried their message with more strength than words.rdquo; Jack came to the realization that artists ndash; musicians, writers, performers ndash; can benbsp;uniquely effective activists and activators, givennbsp;their ability to reach wide audiences and to ldquo;capture and convey the emotional state of society and question what is right and what is wrong.rdquo;

Following his timenbsp;with the Peace Corps, Jack became director of Amnesty International, USA, where he would lead the organization for twelve years through unprecedented growth and a complete overhaul. He experimented with and introduced to the world a new tool innbsp;human rights activismnbsp;ndash; organizingnbsp;musical events to raise awareness about human rights, including concert tours with U2, The Police, Peter Gabriel, Bruce Springsteen, Tracy Chapman, and many other musicians. In the month following the first benefit concert tour that Jack produced with Amnesty, membership increased by 45,000. Concert-goers were asked to send appeals for freedom on behalf of six prisoners of conscience, and two were released soon after.

In 1994, Jack fulfilled his dream to create ldquo;a one-person organization that could be effective as a medium-sized human rights group with a lot less money,rdquo; with the Human Rights Action Center. HRAC devoted over a decade to suppo

Jack Healey -- Activating Conscience, Arts and Music On Behalf of Global Human Rights

ldquo;Haleh Liza Gaforirsquo;s ecstatic and piercing translation has lifted a veil, bringing Rumi closer into the quick of our present. Each poem is a divine invitation. Free your mind. Drown in love.rdquo; mdash;V (formerly Eve Ensler)



With black curls twirling across her shoulders, Haleh Liza Gafori mdash; a poet, translator, vocalist, and educator mdash; stands on a stage, performs a poem of Ruminbsp;that she translated into English, then bursts into song in Persian. As her voice echoes across the room, she evokes the divine ecstasy and vision this great mystic poet is known fornbsp;mdash; expressing in an intimate manner entirely her own. For well over a decade, Gaforinbsp;has inspirited and taught the poetry of Persian poets across various universities, festivals, museums, and institutions.

A bicultural woman of Persian descent raised in New York, Gaforirsquo;s ears are highly attuned to both American poetry and the Persian text. As a child, she listened to her parents recite Rumirsquo;s Persian poetry. ldquo;Itrsquo;s very common for Iranians to memorize poetry,rdquo; she explains, saying she would hear these words but not quite understand. Butnbsp;the energy the lines carried, and their effects on the listeners made an early, indelible imprint on her.nbsp;

As an adult, she began reading Rumi in English. ldquo;It was interesting that American translators kind of pointed me back to my roots,quot; she says. For Gafori, Rumirsquo;s words offer ancient wisdom pertinent to our current time: What do his poems tell us about ego death, compassion, greed, generosity, selflessness, soul, and the cultivation of ecstasy? What is his liberating take on death?

Then she began singing in Persian, and eventually, translating these same poems. ldquo;As someone who can look at the Persian and look at the English,rdquo; she reflects, ldquo;one can see, oh, we don#39;t have these lines here, we#39;re missing these lines, or wow, this is a great, well done translation here, or oh my God, what in the world was happening here? It#39;s a mixture. It#39;s a mixed bag.rdquo;

Her new book, Gold, is a fresh selection and translation of Rumirsquo;s poems mdash; its title a reference to Rumi and other Sufi poets being alchemists, transforming mental states and feeling states into ldquo;the deepest love, the deepest generosity, the most expansive consciousness that we can touch, the ecstatic.rdquo; Former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets Marilyn Hacker describes Gold as ldquo;the work of someone who is at once an acute and enamored reader of the original Farsi text, a dedicated miner of context and backstory, and, best of all, a marvelous poet in English.rdquo;

Gafori explains that the book is a collection sourced from the Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi, a sprawling text of over 40,000 verses. Each poem here had to be cut from this endless cloth, reshuffled, styled with modern enjambments, and, finally, translated. Perhaps itrsquo;s more accurate to think of G

Haleh Liza Gafori -- The Alchemy of Love: Translating Rumi and Timeless Poetry

ldquo;If your heart is broken, I urge you not to waste it.rdquo; ndash; Sarika Jain

In 2012,nbsp;Sarika Jain was living a life similar to that of her clients today: she was a ldquo;smart, professional, go-getterrdquo; woman on Wall Street seeking to find love. But after a broken engagement that left her heartbroken and disillusioned with life, she realized she needed deeper, spiritual healing. ldquo;It was time to let go of all the things I thought I knew about love, dating, and relationships, and begin anbsp;powerful new inner journey of profound healing and transformation,rdquo; she realized.

True to her later advice, she didnrsquo;t waste her heartbreak. She embarked on a journey of self-love and true self-acceptance. That journey took her through, among other things, Awakin meditation circles, where she would meet the man who eventually became her life partner, Krishan Patel. She didnrsquo;t stop at just marrying her life partner, but also crossed a bigger milestone: ldquo;marrying onersquo;s own self.rdquo;

Through her work of self-transformation, she came across the great leaders of history. What was their relationship with self-doubt? ldquo;They take a leap of faith in themselves,rdquo; Sarika observed, leading her to do just that for herself. From a well settled career as a management consultant, Sarika Jain decided to take a leap of faith and follow her dream: inspiring women to live the lives theyrsquo;ve dreamed of - experiencing profound love, success and fulfillment. Sarika is a love, relationship and dating coach and the author of an upcoming book, The 90 Day Soulmate Plan: Get Out of Your Own Way and Attract the Higher Love You Deserve.

While a quick reaction about love coaching may feel like itrsquo;s about making oneself more appealingnbsp;to attractnbsp;the partner of onersquo;s dreams, Sarikarsquo;s entire focus is on inner transformation. She has applied a deeply psycho-spiritual lens in the realm of personal relationships. How do we cultivate ourselves to be joyful and complete? How do we heal the wounds of incompleteness and the grief of unresolved heartbreaks and past hurts? Instead of changing oneself to be attractive to another, she focuses on helping people stop getting in the way of their most authentic self. Her unique approach encompasses everything from uncovering relationship patterns and closing onersquo;s ldquo;Ex Filesrdquo; to practicing self-love and mindfulness in relationships. And although her primary early motivation was to help women, her worknbsp;helps both women and men.

Sarika walks the edge of inner transformation, leaning into interpersonal struggles and mining the gold from them. The relatability of her approach, the clarity of her message, and the power of her values has led to some calling her a ldquo;Relationship Sorceress.rdquo;

In her personal life, Sarika focuses on creating a conscious, joyful partnership with Krishan and a healthy home for her two daughters (with a third on the way!) as

Sarika Jain -- Awakening in Relationship to Marry One's Own Deeper, Truer Self

Lissa Rankin, MD, describes herself as a skeptic. She is a Western-trained ob-gyn, linear thinker, and evidence-informed scientist. In the same breath, however, she also describes herself as a mystic mdash; an open-hearted, spiritually alive, empathic healer who has witnessed countless ldquo;miraclesrdquo; of healing and has also experienced them firsthand herself. ldquo;Irsquo;m sort of a unicorn,rdquo; she says. Her private inquiries and outer discoveries have made her an unusual expert in the sometimes opposing worlds of conventional Western medicine and alternative healing.



Rankinrsquo;s awakening began when she was thirty-six, only several years out from residency training. By this point, she was already disillusioned by her profession and ldquo;morally injured,rdquo; leaving the hospital where she worked, and eventually leaving clinical medicine altogether. Personally, she was taking seven prescription drugs for a variety of health conditions her doctors couldnrsquo;t cure, and she feared she wouldnrsquo;t live to forty. So she set off to learn what else might ease suffering when doctors say, ldquo;Wersquo;ve done all we can.rdquo;nbsp;



Since then, Rankin has become a bestselling author, artist, activist, and thought leader in mind-body medicine, dedicated to ldquo;healing health care.rdquo; Having spent equal time practicing and studying in Western medicine as she has in complementary and alternative medicine (fourteen years in each), she is careful not to blindly praise one paradigm over another. ldquo;I found just as much shadow in that world [alternative medicine] as I did in the world of conventional medicine,rdquo; she writes. ldquo;You might say Irsquo;ve been a doe-eyed devotee of both camps, but Irsquo;ve also been disillusioned by bothhellip;both offer gems and garbage. Both can wow us with miracles or horrify us with malpracticehellip;.rdquo;



Her latest explorations, which spanned a decade of deep investigation and culminated in her most recent book, Sacred Medicine: A Doctorrsquo;s Quest to Unravel the Mysteries of Healing, took her from holy mountains, faith healers, and prayer circles to trauma experts, cutting-edge scientists, and leading psychologists. Guiding her were some of her fundamental questions: when it comes to healing from illness and injury, how is it that some people do everything right and stay sick, while others seem to do nothing extraordinary yet fully recover? How does faith healing work, or does it? Can we make ourselves miracle-prone, and if so, how?



In response to the need for more holistically trained doctors and healthcare professionals, Rankin founded the Whole Health Medicine Institute. She also founded the nonprofit organization Heal At Last, a trauma-informed, physician-designed community wellness program modeled after 12 Step programs, that seeks to provide equal access to spiritual practices, as well as the healing of trauma and the ldquo;epidemic of loneliness.rdquo;



She is the aut

Lissa Rankin -- Sacred Medicine and the Mysteries of Healing

ldquo;The wound is the place where light enters you.rdquo; ndash; Rumi nbsp;

At 25, Chloe Zelkha, a community organizer, chaplain and educator for young adults,nbsp;suddenly found herself in the role of a first-time caregiver. Her husband sustained a debilitating injury from a car accident. Soon thereafter, her hale-and-hearty father passed away from an aortic aneurysm. Facing sudden death and dis-ease in her family, everything Chloe had learned from her academic religious studies went from conceptual to lived. From this period of tremendous trial, she emerged with a guiding question: How do we stay wide awake to the precariousness of life in and around us, and also walk in the world unafraid?

Rather than running from grief, Chloe chose to lean into death and dying. She trained as a hospital chaplain at the University of California San Francisco hospitals, offering spiritual care to the ill, the dying, and their families. ldquo;Our death-denying culture,rdquo; she remarks, ldquo;insists that we look away from mortality, look away from pain.rdquo; Instead of the conventional chaplaincy response as ldquo;fixingrdquo; spiritual crises, she stepped into her role as ldquo;more of a student, sitting at the feet of the real masters,rdquo; and understood grieving as a ldquo;courageous act.rdquo;

During her chaplaincy, she realized the paucity of grief programs supporting young adults. So,nbsp;with some friends, she put together ongoing events, like weekend sleepover retreats for young adults who lost a parent, friend or loved one, focusing on peer connection and community mdash; circles of sharing stories, workshops, bonfires, song and silence mdash; instead of clinical care. When the pandemic hit, Chloe responded similarly, cofounding the COVID Grief Network, a mutual aid organization that offers free community and grief support to young adults who lost someone to COVID-19, especially in hopes to heal the isolation.

From a young age, Chloe had been supportednbsp;to feelnbsp;that her ideas mattered mdash; whether in rebounding from setbacks, or actualizing fresh and novel intentions. She attended Ohlone Elementary School in Palo Alto, California, where the project-based, participatory, mixed-age, whole-child pedagogy taught her to relate to her surroundings with curiosity. She kept a ldquo;teaching ideas journalrdquo; and often pitched creative curriculum ideas to her teachers (ldquo;usually unsuccessfully,rdquo; she adds with a chuckle). As she grew, the raucous discussions she initiated at her familyrsquo;s dinner table on teaching and learning would come to incorporate how people unlearn, and eventually, ldquo;how learning spaces can be transformative, even sites of spiritual transformation.rdquo;

Chloersquo;s parents also helped nurture her enterprising spirit. Her father, an Iraqi Jew raised in Iran, emigrated alone to the U.S. when he was 16. An entrepreneur, he would embrace with equal joy the failures and successes of his ventures. Her mothe

Chloe Zelkha -- Song, Soul and Society: Learning, Unlearning and Transforming Grief in Community

quot;Peacemaking is not about making a political commitment, itrsquo;s a commitment to a deep healing of deep traumas. Until we do that we can never do peacemaking.rdquo;



When Sami was just 16, his uncle Mubarak Awad was permanently exiled for taking a leading role in the Palestinian nonviolent resistance movement during the first Intifada. ldquo;That is how dangerous non-violence is,rdquo; says Sami. His parents were refugees, displaced by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Sami watched his own father abused by Israeli authorities. Though Sami ldquo;had every excuse and justification to hate Israelis,rdquo; he did not. In spite of the violence, his mother emphasized the Christian teachings of ldquo;loving your enemiesrdquo; and forgiveness, while his uncle exposed him to the messages of non-violence from Jesus to Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr.



In the late 90s, Sami founded Holy Land Trust (HLT), a non-profit organization in Bethlehem, whose mission is to find peace, justice and understanding for people in this land that is sacred to faith communities the world over. HLT seeks to uncover the root causes and real reasons that people are not seeking and finding peace. The organization engages in deep healing work for the traumamdash;of both Palestinians and Israelismdash;from the existential fears andnbsp;violence that mark their livesnbsp;in the Holy Land. For Sami and HLT, healing the collective traumas that prevent peace is an intense and spiritual process focused on personal transformation and commitment to community. In seeking to create a Holy Land for all, Sami asks: quot;Can I make a decision that is motivated by the future that I seekmdash;not the past that I experience?quot;



In one word, Sami describes himself as an ldquo;activist.rdquo; He is continually plumbing the depths of how real change happens and how true healing occurs. He defines sacred activism as not just sitting and meditating, but engaging in direct action--stopping the violencemdash;in a way that is infused by the mindfulness work and spiritual practices peacebuilders have been engaging in over the past decades.



quot;I now believe that my own liberation as a Palestinian is not only about ending the Israeli military occupation, but also about addressing all aspects of violencemdash;be they political, social, economic or environmental. Nonviolence is not a tactic to be taken out of the box when it seems fit to use. It is a way of life.quot;



Recently, he has been exploring the connection to nature as a peacebuilderrsquo;s guide and a comfortmdash;to find the sacred understanding and messages that come through the elements of water and land. Sami and HLT are working with other partners to explore the intersections of environmental justice, non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation, and sacred activism.



Sami lives outside Bethlehem in the West Bank. He holds a Doctoral Degree in Divinity from the Chicago Theological Seminary, a Masterrsquo;

Sami Awad -- A Holy Land For All: Sacred Activism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

ldquo;Surrendering reminds me that my way is always inferior to the way of life.rdquo; ndash; Anna-Zoeuml; Herr

University was about to start and Anna-Zoeuml; Herr had exhausted her last option for arranging living quarters. Where to turn? For weeks, she had searched the inventory of apartments only to find they had already been filled. Her last option was a listing in a rural area far outside the city limits (and far from the university). After an exhausting trip navigating public transportation, Zoeuml; was dismayed to discover that the apartment was once again no longer available. When she got to the bus stop to head back home, she realized the last bus of the day had already left.

ldquo;God, just tell me what to do,rdquo; she cried, breaking down in tears. ldquo;Thy will be done. I just want what you want for me.rdquo; After a few moments, the thought came to her, ldquo;Go and hitchhike.rdquo; Obedient to the command, she stuck out her thumb and was picked up by a man on his way back into town, who said he could give her a ride. They got to chatting and it turned out this man was a plumber and knew of an apartment that would soon be vacated. It was located right next to the university and the landlord was a friend of his. The man drove Zoeuml; straight to the apartment so she could take a look and meet the landlord and she signed the contract right then.

Such surrender ndash; and trust in God and in humankind ndash; manifests in the diverse threads of her life as an artist, sustainability researcher, and spiritual seeker. ldquo;Surrendering reminds me that my way is always inferior to the way of life,rdquo; she says, as she describes a broken heart that sent her on a 10-month solo adventure of a lifetime hitchhiking through South America at age 19, which experientially confirmed something of humankind#39;s fundamental kindness.

Zoeuml;rsquo;s creative endeavors, primarily painting and photography, are embodied experiences of surrender and trust. The creative process is ldquo;a language that speaks to our hearts in a way in which it can listen intently, if we surrender to the process. I try to get to a place of whole-hearted surrender of what I think something should be and allow what wants to come, to emerge.rdquo; The output of her surrender has resulted in solo exhibitions of her work throughout the world.

Surrender is also a quality linked to the cultivation of hope in her work as a researcher and public educator on the climate crisis. Confronted with the often-overwhelming data of despair that depicts the current ecological situation, we face an imperative to acknowledge the bleak outlook while at the same time letting go of the inevitability that this be our future--in order to imagine a different one. Imagination is the key to finding hope and shifting the narrative of an us vs. them approach to nature (and to humanity) to an interconnected, interdependent reality, says Zoeuml;. Just as Zoeuml; practices surrender when standing bef

Anna-Zoë Herr -- Surrendering and Opening to Hope in Times of Crisis

On March 3, 2002, Robi Damelinrsquo;s world shattered. A Palestinian sniper shot and killed ten Israelis, including several soldiers, at a checkpoint near the Palestinian occupied territories. Among those killed wasnbsp;her 28-year-old son, David, an active member of the peace movement. Her heart raw and weeping, Robirsquo;s first words were: ldquo;Do not take revenge in the name of my son.rdquo; Somewhere below the grief, the values of coexistence and tolerance, with which shersquo;d raised her two sons, had been summoned, and she knew even in the acuity of that moment that exacting vengeance would merely fuel the cycle of violence. With the same clear-sightedness, she graced David#39;s grave with a quotation by the Lebanese-American poet Khalil Gibran: quot;The whole earth is my birthplace and all humans are my brothers.rdquo; These words foretold the mission that would soon become her life.



Born in South Africa during apartheid, Robi was raised in a fiercely progressive family who vocally opposed the governmentrsquo;s policies (she described an uncle who defended Nelson Mandela during his first treason trial, and a distant cousin who marched with Mahatma Gandhi against discriminatory policies in South Africa). In 1967, Robi moved to Israel with the hope of ldquo;saving Israelrdquo; during the Six-Day War. But the war had ended, so she volunteered to work in a kibbutz and learned Hebrew. She worked for The Jerusalem Post, got married, and had two sons mdash; Eran and David. She dreaded that they would eventually have to serve time in the army, as was mandatory for anyone in Israel who turned 18.



As Robi ran a public relations firm that worked with companies like National Geographic, the History Channel, and Unilever, David was called to the reserves, which is when tragedy struck. In the wake of Davidrsquo;s death, Robi couldnrsquo;t bear ldquo;business as usualrdquo; and closed down her office. ldquo;It is impossible to describe what it is to lose a child,rdquo; she said. ldquo;Your whole life is totally changed forever. Itrsquo;s not that Irsquo;m not the same person I was. Irsquo;m the same person with a lot of pain. Wherever I go, I carry this with me.rdquo;



This same pain, she realized, was shared by victimsrsquo; families on both sides of the conflict and could be a powerful catalyst for healing together. Three months after Davidrsquo;s death, Robi attended a demonstration and spoke to more than 60,000 people about her son and her hope for Israel to vacate the Palestinian occupied territories. She made an impression upon the Parents Circle ndash; Families Forum, or PCFF, a grassroots organization of some 600 Israeli and Palestinian families who lost loved ones to the conflict, fostering dialogue, mutual understanding, and reconciliation.



ldquo;It took me time to understand,rdquo; she reflected, ldquo;to look at the differences in temperament and culture, and become much less judgmental. I think David was a much more tolerant pe

Robi Damelin -- Resisting Revenge to Embrace Humanity and Peaceful Co-existence

Many years ago, Ethan Hughes and his wife, Sarah, launched a wild experiment in radical simplicity that continues to this day: no electricity, no computers, no use of anything they donrsquo;t make by hand. They use an outhouse, grow their own food, cook in solar ovens, store their canned food in root cellars, and read to their two young daughters by beeswax candlelight. ldquo;Therersquo;s just no reason to do anything that doesnrsquo;t add to your life force,rdquo; Ethan says.

What started as a personalnbsp;experiment has evolved into the Possibility Alliance, annbsp;educational and service community free from fossil fuels that was created by Ethannbsp;and his family to welcome anybody and everybody interested in experiencingnbsp;how to live according to practices vital tonbsp;personal and planetary well-being: radical simplicity, agenda-less service, social activism, inner work and gratitude.nbsp;For Ethan#39;s family, living with radical simplicity is a means for helpingnbsp;unleash their own and others#39; gifts, to reach their spiritual potential and inspire others to do so as well, and to become the most magnanimous vessel of love they can be. Living simply is a way of embodying thenbsp;deep life force possible to all.

Located first in La Plata, Missouri and then in Belfast, Maine, the Possibility Alliance to date has hosted more than fourteen thousand visitors from around the globe, from Congolese refugees to a West Coast rock band, all inspired by their mission. For Ethan, ldquo;The Possibility Alliance is about freeing us from fearrsquo;s grip, about creating resilience and pumping our fists in the air when people say, lsquo;I have this crazy dream.rsquo;rdquo;

Ethanrsquo;s crazy dream started when he was 13, after his father was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver, causing Ethan to question everything. In college, he witnessed firsthand the devastation of an oil spill in Ecuador, watching indigenous people scooping dead animals out of the sludge. Vowing to give up cars and travel only by bike or public transportation, he says, ldquo;My amount of joy, wonder, and love of being alive increased.rdquo;

Soon after college, Ethan unexpectedly inherited $150,000, every penny of which he promptly gave away. After he married Sarah, whom he claims is even more radical than he is, the couple spent 18 months living at the Community of the Ark, a petrol-free activist center in La Borie Noble, France. They concluded that to really embody their dream, to whole-heartedly live out their vision, they would have to create a community from scratch, and even to choose to live well under the poverty line ndash; which they continue to choose to do, in ordernbsp;to be exempt from contributingnbsp;to the war machine via taxation.

The Possibility Alliance was established as a 110-acre intentional community in La Plata, Missouri. For 11 years, the Alliance gave free classes in subjects including straw bale building, homesteading, wild edibles, tree pru

Ethan Hughes -- Radical Simplicity as an Act of Disruptive Peacemaking

Rajeev is the CEO ofnbsp;Stewardship Asia Centrenbsp;in Singapore, and Founder President of thenbsp;Leadership Energy Consulting (LEC) Company in Seattle, WA.nbsp;

Author of the Wall Street Journal and Amazon best sellernbsp;Open Source Leadershipnbsp;(McGraw Hill 2017),nbsp;Too Many Bosses, Too Few Leadersnbsp;(Simon amp; Schuster 2011), co-author ofnbsp;Be the Change (McGraw Hill 2014) and a regular writer for Forbes, he is an out-of-the-box thought leader on leadership, change management and corporate governance.nbsp; He has extensive global experience in leadership and organizational consulting, with a particular focus on uncovering personal and organizational ldquo;leadership energy.rdquo;



Rajeevrsquo;s professional roots are in industry. Prior to starting LEC, he was CEO of the Iclif Leadership amp; Governance Centre based in Malaysia.nbsp; Formerly, he has been Chief Learning Officer of both Coca-Cola and Morgan Stanley, and has held senior positions at American Express, HSBC and Goldman Sachs. At Goldman, Rajeev helped found Pine Street ndash; the firmrsquo;s acclaimed leadership academy ndash; and headed Pine Street for Europe and Asia. Before embarking on a career in Executive Development, he was a banker and currency trader. Today, he isnbsp;a sought-after international speaker and has been widely featured in international media platforms from Bloomberg to CNN to Harvard Business Review.

THE BACK STORY

After a high-flying start in a coveted investment banking career, Rajeev felt disillusioned by the prevalent greed and erosion of values in the business world. He noticed the idealism and enthusiasm of hundreds of starry-eyed young professionals quickly give way to cynicism and hopelessness. For him, the inspiration for transformation arrived in the most unusual place -- his father#39;s funeral.nbsp;

At the funeral, I noticed that entire town had come for my parents#39; funeral. Thousands and thousands of people pouring in. I couldn#39;t understand. My father was an accountant, an ordinary citizen, not a very rich person. Why did the whole town come? He#39;s not a leader in the traditional sense -- he#39;s not a Neta, he#39;s not a public servant, he#39;s not ... so why? For the funeral, there was a traffic jam. Nobody could get in. Everyone wanted to pay their respects.

In my grief at the time, I looked around and saw people I hadn#39;t seen for years. I remember seeing an elderly gentleman who carried me in his arms when I was a baby. quot;Uncle, you came all the way?quot; I asked him. He replied, quot;I have come to salute your father. He never had much, but whenever anybody asked him for anything, whatever he had, he gave. There are not many people like that, son.quot; I asked another person the same question. He said, quot;In the sea of corruption that taxation is, your father was one beacon of honesty. Never took a bribe, never gave a bribe, never did anything wrong and I#39;ve come to salute him.quot; I asked a third perso

Rajeev Peshawaria -- Steward Leadership: Between Profits and Purpose

At the age of 21, on a pilgrimage to Israel, Chelan (Shuh-LANNE) Harkin found herself sitting alone in the same cell that some 140 years earlier had confined Baha#39;u#39;llah, the founder of the Baha#39;i faith. The quietude of the barred room was suddenly broken by a voice she took to be the Persian prophet#39;s spirit saying, quot;Let us dance.quot; This unexpected invitation cracked her heart wide open and next thing she remembers was her own voice filling the resonant chamber with joyful song.



A decade later, those three words Harkin heard in that Israeli citadel, would serve as the title of her second collection of mystical poetry, marking just the latest in an on-going series of events which have confirmed for her a playful benevolence at the heart of the universe.

Your smarts, your talents, your good looks ndash;
take off these impediments
and let us dance!

Born and raised in scenic Hood River, Oregon, Harkin#39;s experiments with poetry began early in life. Prior to learning how to write, she would periodically commission her mother to commit her mystical musings to paper. Throughout Harkin#39;s adolescence, a connection with life#39;s big questions, and the crafting of poetry around them, were to come in and out of focus.



Then, an introduction to free verse in high school, and ndash; during a therapy session ndash; her first exposure to the work of the 14th-century Sufi poet Hafez fueled her interest in the power of poetry to transform and alchemize old painful conditioning into beautiful medicine.

Let your words reek of sweat and light
and carry hints
of the toil and deep breath
of your ancestors
and the notes of any song
they stored away to pass down to you.
A poem is where the flint of soul
strikes the stone of trauma
and makes a spark.
The world needs your voice.
Un-sheath your knowing.
You have permission
to say anything.



Harkin#39;s subsequent pursuit of a degree in consciousness studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, was interrupted by the surprise discovery of a brain aneurysm requiring immediate surgery. Rather than shrink from the jarring diagnosis, she welcomed it as a means to accelerate her own encounter with past trauma.



Some weeks after successful surgery, with a shaved head starting to sprout hair again, Harkin committed to writing and sharing a poem every day for a month ndash; regardless of quality. On just the second day, an entire poem came pouring through her without effort or in need of editing. Thereafter, all of her poems have been co-created with an unseen and sometimes overly-prodigious muse.

...each morning before we wrestle the world
and our hearts into the shape of our brains,
look around and say, #39;#39;Wow!#39;#39;
Feed yourself fire.
Scoop up the day entire
like a planet-sized bouquet of marvel
sent by the Universe directly into your arms
and say #39;#39;Wow!#39;#39;...



Thereafter, Harkin continued for a number of years to post poems to Facebook, where most of them

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