“If you want to find your way, you must become lost. The idea that we can just will our way into the kind of world we want is naive and sometimes even destructive, as the resilience of colonial imperialism demonstrates. The idea that we can just draft in a letter and design our way out of trouble, reduces invisiblizes and dismisses the role that the non-human, the more than human, the ancestral, the microbial, the gastronomical the ecological has, and the forces that impinge and shape the human.” Bayo Akomolafe
E106 – TRUST, INTERBEING AND SACRED SANCTUARIES with Bayo Akomolafe, Charles Eisenstein and Manish Jain
PLAYING IN THE WILD FIELDS OF TRUST
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About this interview:
What can we do to honour those that hold the world together?“If you want to find your way, you must become lost. The idea that we can just will our way into the kind of world we want is naive and sometimes even destructive, as the resilience of colonial imperialism demonstrates. The idea that we can just draft in a letter and design our way out of trouble, reduces invisiblizes and dismisses the role that the non-human, the more than human, the ancestral, the microbial, the gastronomical the ecological has, and the forces that impinge and shape the human.” Bayo Akomolafe
Amisha brings together Manish Jain (E39), an un-educator, giftivist, writer and co-founder of the Unschooling movement in India, Bayo Akomolafe (E13), a poet, philosopher, psychologist, professor and curator of the Emergence Network and Charles Eisenstein (E98) a social philosopher, author and public speaker; three leading thinkers and visionaries seeking to understand and shape the fabric of our earthly communities in new ways.
In this life-affirming conversation, they share their observations and insights of what is unfolding in their respective cultures during the current season of change. As invisible ‘secrets’, rituals, and mythologies that bind or polarise our communities are revealed, they invite us to the exploration of how we might change our worldviews relating to death, education, power dynamics, and trust.
They talk about how with care for community, village economies, and mutual aid, we may form life experiences that counteract our sense of separation and the fragile hostile global systems we have constructed.
They reveal our current transformation as an opportunity to ask new questions about how we hope to shape this moment and how we might grow new fields of trust honouring the exponential possibilities we could seed. Their heart-led approaches encourage us to envision these possibilities as sacred sanctuaries where we might encounter things that are greater than ourselves. Their deep bond of brotherhood invites our spirit of playfulness to seek out wilder forms of thinking and education, wilder forms of coalitions, and wilder forms of communication and change to shape new patterns of interbeing.
This podcast was part of The Future Is Beautiful LIVE, which took place on 13th June 2020 called ‘Interbeing in this now’.
“When you start to build fields of trust with people, so many things we thought were not possible, become all of a sudden possible.” ~Manish Jain
Bayo Akomolafe is a poet, philosopher, psychologist, professor and chief-curator of the Emergence Network. He curates this earth-wide project for the re-calibration of our ability to respond to civilisational crisis – a project framed within a feminist ethos and inspired by indigenous cosmologies. Bayo has authored books such as ‘These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home’ and co-authored ‘We Will Tell Our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak!’.
Bayo hopes to inspire a diffractive network of sharing – a slowing down, an ethics of entanglement, an activism of inquiry, a ‘politics of surprise’…one that does not treat the crises of our times as exterior to ‘us’ or the ‘solutions’ that conventional activism offers as discrete or separate from the problems that we seek to nullify.
He is currently hosting a course ‘We Will Dance with Mountains: Let us Make Sanctuary’, a ceremonial inquiry, collective sense-making, and prophetic exile where we might unlearn mastery, become fugitive, and slow down in times of urgency.
Charles Eisenstein is a social philosopher, public speaker and author who examines the unspoken narratives that direct our society and our lives. His work covers a wide range of topics, including the history of human civilization, consciousness, economics, spirituality, interdependence, ecology, and how myth and story influence culture. He is the author of The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible, Sacred Economics, and The Ascent of Humanity.
Charles was Amisha’s first guest on The Future is Beautiful, where they spoke of Awakening, Courage and Climate Change. His most recent essay The Coronation and The Conspiracy Myth provides us with insights into the current season of global transformation.
Manish Jain is an un-educator, giftivist, inter-cosmosvision facilitator, filmmaker, urban organic farmer, slow food chef, compassionate clown, writer, organic intellectual, masti yogi and co-founder of the Unschooling movement. He is deeply committed to regenerating our diverse knowledge systems and cultural imaginations.
He has served for the past 20 years as Coordinator and Co-Founder of Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development based in Udaipur, India and is co-founder of the Swaraj University,Creativity Adda, Learning Societies Unconference, Walkouts-Walkon network, and Udaipur as a Learning City in India. He is a featured speaker/advisory member of the Economics of Happiness network for localisation.
He recently helped to launch the Ecoversities Network. He has edited several books on Vimukt Shiksha (liberating learning) on themes such as learning societies, unlearning, gift culture, community media, and tools for deep dialogue.
To find out more about Bayo’s work visit bayoakomolafe.net
To find out more about Charles’ work visit charleseisenstein.org
To find out more about Manish’s work visit schoolingtheworld.org
To connect or work with Amisha, visit amisha.co.uk
Resources and links from this episode:
- Bayo Akomolafe Course – ‘We Will Dance with Mountains: Let us Make Sanctuary’
- Bayo Amokolafe – Emergence Network
- Manish Jain – Shikshantar
- James Baldwin x William Buckley debate 1969
- James Hillman – Student of Carl Jung & Founder of Archetypal Psychology Books
- Achille Mbembe – Necro-Politics Book
- Francis Weller
- Listen to Manish Jain // E39 – Freedom from the Shackles of Education
- Listen to Charles Eisenstein // E98 – What Happens to The World Happens to Ourselves
- Listen to Charles Eisenstein // E1 – Love as an Ecological Act
- Listen to Bayo Akomolafe // E13 – These Times Are Urgent, Let Us Slow Down
Connect more with us:
- Beautiful Leadership mentoring
- Amisha’s One-to-One sessions
- Amisha’s book – INTUITION
- all that we are membership
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