Coming to our Senses

Imagine a world where wealth means more than the size of your bank balance, where what you give is more important than what you can take, where you can live well offering your gifts to your community rather than just ‘making a living’.  Inez Aponte explains how, as a facilitator, she has been applying ideas that many of us have recently been learning about from people like Charles Eisenstein and Jonathan Dawson.

In my role as facilitator I often ask tricky but pertinent questions such as ‘What is it we really need to thrive?’ and ‘What gets in the way of making sustained changes?’ (Coming to our senses). Thinkers such as Charles Eisenstein whose course I recently attended at Schumacher College are asking these same questions and offering paradigm shifting solutions (Sacred Economics).

I have been linking his work and that of other radical thinkers into a number of Transition avenues recently.

Transition Streets – Once the solar panels are up and the loft is insulated and the car share is in place…where to go next? Earlier this year I ran three sessions do go further on aspects of Inner Transition to complement what Transition Streets did so brilliantly and the pilot group took to it like a fish to water.  In the comfort of someone’s living room we explored ideas such as fundamental human needs, the morality of the market, how change happens (or doesn’t) and the gift economy. Currently I am in discussion with TTT to see how we might offer this to other groups.

Big Green Canoe - we offer ‘leadership for resiliency’ training which explores these ideas with business groups and young people by offering alternatives to a growth based economic model and creating a space to re-connect physically with the earth.   This brings new and deeper dimensions and meanings to people exploring or implementing sustainability initiatives and strategies. For young people it gives them a stronger basis from which they can grow into adults who will be guided by both their minds and their hearts to create a just and sustainable world where all life can prosper.

It is these young people - our future leaders - who will make this vision possible by engaging with these ideas now as they develop their thinking about the world we live in.

Following a visit by a French delegation led by political science researchers earlier this year, we have been asked to deliver in October a programme sponsored by a French water company for masters students studying Green Political Theory.  This tailor made course will include Gaia theory with Stephan Harding and economics for transition with Jonathan Dawson.

REconomy Project –  I’ll be doing a public talk exploring what should be at the heart of our economy  as part of the REconomy awareness raising programme.  For more information, please sign up to the REconomy newsletter.

Inez Aponte