How does love move in your everyday radius?
By Julie Daley
“It is your Spiritual Self who holds the vision for your life – your vision, which includes your path of contribution, how you interact with and give back to your world. Your Spirit is generous; life purpose is communal, not isolated.” Hoffman teacher, Hilary Illick
WHEN YOU’RE SERIOUS ABOUT CHANGE
As graduates, we know the Process is a place where deep change takes place. We know it because we have experienced it within ourselves and then witness how this change moves out into our everyday lives.
We come to the Process when we are serious about making a change in our lives. Right now, our world is in the midst of serious change. Sometimes, it can feel as if there’s no unifying, collective vision for the human race.
At the Process, though, we learn that we are deeply interrelated and that each of us holds a vision – a vision held by our Spiritual Self. What we often can forget is that this vision is communal. We are not meant to live out our vision in isolation. Our vision is generous. We are meant to give to one another.
A COLLECTIVE VISION THAT IS SPIRITUAL IN NATURE
Each person’s vision is a piece of the greater communal vision for the world. As a collective, we must have a collective vision that is spiritual in nature – that is a path of contribution to the world. But how do we each, as Hoffman graduates, help make this global vision a reality?
We do this by living our individual vision that our Spiritual Self has laid out for us and by coming into community with our fellow human beings.
It is your Spiritual Self that reminds you that you are interconnected to all of life and encourages you to connect rather than isolate. It is your Spiritual Self that holds the vision for how you can contribute at this time. And, it is your Spiritual Self guides you to be generous and assume goodwill.
LISTEN AND BE IN CONVERSATION
One of the most important things we must do at this time is to be in conversation – learning to truly listen and learn from each other, especially those whose voices have been historically silenced.
This is one reason we created The Hoffman Podcast: Love’s Everyday Radius. Our podcast is a place of conversation with a wide variety of people who are Hoffman graduates. Our aim is for these conversations to highlight how the virtues that the Process enhances are embodied within each graduate’s own everyday radius.
In creating the podcast, we asked ourselves questions, such as:
How does the Process affect us in the collective sense? Can we have more of a village mindset? What is it to truly listen to people’s hearts? How can we, as Hoffman graduates, be influencers or agents of change? What are we about?
RECIPROCITY, GRATITUDE, & RESPONSIBILITY
Through the work we do at the Process, we strengthen three important qualities.
Reciprocity – a giving and receiving, not in just dollars but in action.
Gratitude – How are you making the world a better place through the change you experienced at the Process? How do you better serve others through the gratitude you feel in your heart?
Responsibility – How does doing the Process change how you view the world, your impact, and your willingness to take responsibility for being part of this active change we seek?
REPAIR OF THE WORLD
While the Process is spiritual in nature and holds no religious doctrine whatsoever, there are spiritual concepts in religious traditions that speak to the heart of the nature of spirituality and what we are facing right now in our world.
The Jewish concept Tikkun Olam (‘repair of the world’) is an aspiration to behave and act constructively and beneficially.
The Tibetan Buddhist tradition’s Bodhisattva Vow similarly focuses on repairing the world through the elimination of human suffering.
Christianity tells us, “You will love your neighbor as yourself.”
In the Muslim tradition, service to humanity is a core part of religious life.
And, many of us know it is common human decency to treat others with respect and care.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION, BUILD COMMUNITY
We hope to encourage more graduates to consider and put into action their vision for their lives; to consider what it means to be a resilient, compassionate, responsible human being in the world today; to open the conversation of how we see ourselves in the world and curiously questioning what our responsibility is to the world at large.
On Hoffman’s Love’s Everyday Radius podcast, now on iTunes, we will be asking bigger questions about self and world. Please give it a listen and let us know what you think. Join the conversation. Join us in making the world a better community.