It is an interesting and also kind of strange experience to be reading this book while also reading Yuval Harari's Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow. Who are you? You are a separate individual among other separate individuals in a universe that is separate from you as well.” More importantly, it provides a glimpse of a more beautiful world – in the sense of both the outside world and the world we construct through the stories we tell ourselves. Our systems of money, politics, energy, medicine, education, and more are no longer delivering the benefits they once did (or seemed to). Their Utopian promise, so inspiring a century ago, recedes further every year. Millions of us know this; more and more, we hardly bother to pretend otherwise. Yet we seem helpless to change, helpless even to stop participating in industrial civilization’s rush over the cliff” I call it the Story of the World or the Story of the People—a matrix of narratives, agreements, and symbolic systems that comprises the answers our culture offers to life’s most basic questions: Who am I? Why do things happen? What is the purpose of life? What is human nature? What is sacred? Who are we as a people? Where did we come from and where are we going?”

When I read Charles Eisenstein I felt as if I had just put on an extraordinarily clear, lucid, morally honest set of glasses. I see my outer and inner worlds in penetrating detail. He isn’t just describing a possible world. He is helping us find our way to it.”The most direct way to disrupt the Story of Separation at its foundation is to give someone an experience of nonseparation. An act of generosity, forgiveness, attention, truth, or unconditional acceptance offers a counterexample to the worldview of separation.” On the collective level the same is true. As we awaken to the interconnectedness of all our systems, we see that we cannot change, for example, our energy technologies without changing the economic system that supports them. We learn as well that all of our external institutions reflect our basic perceptions of the world, our invisible ideologies and belief systems. In that sense, we can say that the ecological crisis—like all our crises—is a spiritual crisis. By that I mean it goes all the way to the bottom, encompassing all aspects of our humanity. When one goes through a series of initiations like this into the new story, he or she becomes strong in it. Being strong in it, one can hold that story open for other people. Even if someone cannot, in a moment of crisis or when facing their own initiation, believe in the Story of Interbeing, a strong, initiated person can believe it for them, holding that possibility open until they are ready to step into it. With each initiation we become stronger carriers, and our words and actions become part of that story’s telling. The More Beautiful World offers a refreshing and confronting take on the wrongness in the world and where it truly comes from. In between the old and the new there is an empty space. It is a time when the lessons and learnings of the old story are integrated. Only when that work has been done is the old story really complete. Then, there is nothing, the pregnant emptiness from which all being arises. Returning to essence, we regain the ability to act from essence. Returning to the space between stories, we can choose from freedom and not from habit.”

This summer, while helping to run a workshop on social entrepreneurship, I met a young Mexican migrant called Roberto. By coincidence Roberto had landed upon three core themes for a good life: A Life of Purpose, Healthy Relationships with Others and Respectful Interaction with Nature. The resonance with what I’d been encountering rang clear as a bell. Who are we as a people? We are a special kind of animal, the apex of evolution, possessing brains that allow the cultural as well as the genetic transfer of information. We are unique in having (in the religious view) a soul or (in the scientific view) a rational mind. In our mechanical universe we alone possess consciousness and the wherewithal to mold the world according to our design. The only limit to our ability to do so is that amount of force we can harness and the precision with which we can apply it. The more we are able to do so, the better off we are in this indifferent or hostile universe, the more comfortable and secure. Behind the fog of helplessness of the question “Will we make it?” is a gateway to our power to choose and to create. Because written on its threshold is another question, the real question: “Who am I?”Our answers to these questions also come from stories we tell ourselves about the nature of reality.

Another reason why we could say that all the effective action toward a more beautiful world comes from “Who am I?” is that that question implies another: “Who are you?” In other words, we see others through the same lens as we see ourselves. Seeing others as interbeings who desire deeply to give and be of service, we will engage them accordingly, holding the space for them to see themselves that way too. If on the other hand we see them as selfish and separate, we will engage them accordingly, applying the tactics of force, and pushing them toward a story in which they are alone in a hostile universe. That humanity is meant to join fully the tribe of all life on Earth, offering our uniquely human gifts toward the well-being and development of the whole. When we experience this paradigm shift and start to see the world from a new perspective it will help us feel that somehow everything is going to be alright. To appreciate, from nuanced and subtle to the more striking beauty that is all around us every day. One day, someone recommended a book to me. It was called “The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible” by Charles Eisenstein.Please don’t think that you “have to write a book about it” for your experiences to have a large effect. The book may come, the peacebuilding project documentary might come, but usually there must first be a latency, a time of doing something for its own sake, a time of inward focus on the goal and not the “meta” goal.” If any of the excerpts below resonate with you, I highly recommend reading the book for yourself. This short video serves as an unofficial trailer for the book

We are following an invisible path, learning from each other how to follow it. As we do that, and as we learn to see its subtle markings, the path becomes visible. Absent a map, and in the very early stages of a new story, we can only follow our intuition at each choice point, guided by our heart-compass, not knowing how our turnings will add up to the destination.” The science is beginning to confirm what we have intuitively known all along: we are greater than what we have been told. We are not just a skin-encapsulated ego, a soul encased in flesh. We are each other and we are the world.”The more beautiful world I inhabit accords with Charles Eisenstein’s vision: a world where we embrace the shadow and give it name so that the healing can begin. Take this book and let it seep into your very being.” I was caught up in the cynicism and paralysis that comes from dwelling on the seemingly insurmountable challenges facing humanity. In Eisenstein's conception, the self is an illusion because basically all and everything is interconnected. He calls this the Story of Interbeing. This also leads him to question for example linear causality and to believe in a bunch of weird things (water memory, morphic fields, etc.) The first step in creating change, then, is to receive a vision that feels true. The second step is to heal the wounds and doubts that that vision illuminates. Without doing that, we will be conflicted, simultaneously enacting both the new story and the old one that accompanies the wounds. The third step is to bow into service to that which wants to be born. This process is not linear. Usually, the vision comes more and more into focus as we heal the doubts that obscure it; that, in turn, allows us to enter more deeply into its service. Deeper service, in turn, brings up new dimensions of the vision along with deeper wounds. The path of service is a path of self-realization.” Once upon a time a great tribe of people lived in a world far away from ours. Whether far away in space, or in time, or even outside of time, we do not know. They lived in a state of enchantment and joy that few of us today dare to believe could exist, except in those exceptional peak experiences when we glimpse the true potential of life and mind.