By Pamela Boyce Simms “That’s good enough to try,” “It’s good enough for experimentation,” are phrases often heard in organizations…

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Renee Descartes’ declaration in 1637, “I think, therefore I am,”  powerfully aligned Western thought with the form-identified “avatar* ego” for the centuries that would follow. Yet we are fundamentally NOT the ego which is an amalgam of meticulously maintained, habitual thoughts ruled by fear.  We are the awareness — the vast consciousness which is one with the larger field of universal intelligence behind the avatar-ego.

We think approximately 70,000 thoughts per day. We can choose to let these thoughts ride roughshod over us and align us with the limited ego. Or we can come to understand our minds and consciously, intentionally train it to serve our own growth and the evolution of our society.

Most people don’t understand the purpose of the human mind as a tool. Like Descartes we deify the mind with its limited reality-frame, and indulge its incessant fear-driven discursive thought. We thereby inadvertently cause ourselves and others a great deal of unnecessary suffering. 

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There is a plethora of excellent Quaker and resonant material in use around mysticism, quantum science, contemplation, and the revitalization of Quakerism. There are as many pathways toward the goal of “being love” in service to the planet as there are Quaker Friends.

Therefore members of the Quaker Pathways Forward – Rekindling the Fire of Fox community-of-practice are enthusiastically encouraged to avail themselves of the publications, programs, curriculum, retreats, training, and study guides which enhance spiritual deepening. These are “supports to our practice” – tools that help to purposefully focus intent.

Some seminal offerings are listed herein.

By Marisol Cortez
Cross-posted from Deceleration
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We had gotten wind of this talk at a meeting on climate organizing in San Antonio, where we had picked up a flyer describing Boyce Simms as “an engaged Eco-Buddhist” who “works to transform anger and despair into compassion toward neighbors, communities, and the environment.” Given Deceleration‘s concern not just with questions of climate justice but with the affective (or inner/emotional) work required to sustain effective action in the face of mounting climate and social crises, we were intrigued.

By Pamela Boyce Simms
Cross Posted from Resilience.org @ The Postcarbon Institute
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Once upon a time, as climate change accelerated in the 21st century, the recognition that everyone was in the same boat with a hole at the bottom jolted some of your ancestors awake. Quaker, Buddhist, and Unitarian Universalist environmental activists quietly and methodically gathered an eclectic group of allies into an intentional circle that embraced marginalized populations, and scores of grassroots organizations throughout the African Diaspora.

By Pamela Boyce Simms
Quaker Pathways Forward
Seminal, Henry Cadbury
FELLOWSHIP PAPER
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Friends it’s time to shed the vestiges of outworn caterpillar thinking. Our planet faces an existential crisis. Climate change, resource depletion, and income disparity are now hastened by an unhinged political landscape, and we are racing toward the edge of a cliff!
Throughout history Quakers have repeatedly held and activated the equivalent of transformational “imaginal cells” which have triggered metamorphoses in American social norms and behavior.