The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

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North Atlantic Books, Nov 5, 2013 - Body, Mind & Spirit - 288 pages
As seen on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday

A beacon of hope in the face of our current world crises, this uplifting book demonstrates how embracing our interconnectedness is key to world transformation

In a time of social and ecological crisis, what can we as individuals do to make the world a better place? This inspirational and thought-provoking book serves as an empowering antidote to the cynicism, frustration, paralysis, and overwhelm so many of us are feeling, replacing it with a grounding reminder of what’s true: we are all connected, and our small, personal choices bear unsuspected transformational power. By fully embracing and practicing this principle of interconnectedness—called interbeing—we become more effective agents of change and have a stronger positive influence on the world.

Throughout the book, Eisenstein relates real-life stories showing how small, individual acts of courage, kindness, and self-trust can change our culture’s guiding narrative of separation, which, he shows, has generated the present planetary crisis. He brings to conscious awareness a deep wisdom we all innately know: until we get ourselves in order, any action we take—no matter how good our intentions—will ultimately be wrong-headed and wrong-hearted. Above all, Eisenstein invites us to embrace a radically different understanding of cause and effect, sounding a clarion call to surrender our old worldview of separation, so that we can finally create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

With chapters covering separation, interbeing, despair, hope, pain, pleasure, consciousness, and many more, the book invites us to let the old Story of Separation fall away so that we can stand firmly in a Story of Interbeing.
 

Contents

Separation Breakdown
3
Interbeing
15
Cynicism
22
Insanity
28
Force
32
Science
37
Climate
45
Despair
52
Struggle
140
Pain
147
Pleasure
152
Judgment 16
161
Hate
167
Righteousness
172
Psychopathy
180
Evil
191

Hope
57
Morphogenesis
61
Naiveté
76
Spirit
81
Orthodoxy
88
Newness
95
Urgency I
102
Scarcity IoS Doing
116
Attention
126
Story
212
Disruption
219
Miracle
234
Truth
240
Consciousness
250
Destiny
255
Initiation
263
About the Author
273
Copyright

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About the author (2013)

Charles Eisenstein is a speaker and writer focusing on themes of civilization, consciousness, money, and human cultural evolution. His viral short films and essays online have established him as a genre-defying social philosopher and countercultural intellectual. Eisenstein graduated from Yale University in 1989 with a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy and spent the next ten years as a Chinese–English translator. The author of Sacred Economics and, Ascent of Humanity, he currently lives in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania.

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