Flash Collaboration Process

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or how Thrivability: A Collabortive Sketch happened.

People have asked: How did you get that done? So, I’ll tell you.

First and foremost, I lucked out. I worked with amazing, generous, patient, inspired, and brilliant people. 70 of them. I wish I could have included more, and yet, it is too much already.

Two of my advisors suggested the project to me in December of 2009. Mid-January, I had enough of a sense of it to put out a request to my advisors for contributions. As pieces came in, I became more bold. I joke that I am a compulsive recruiter. Really, I think it is an energy high of positive feedback loops. That drove me — even more — to want to honor what people contributed and nail our March 15 launch date at SXSW.

Here are my answers to some of the specific questions I have been asked.

What worked well with your book project?

  • Using social media to create buzz, encourage participation, and share thanks
  • Being a dictator about form, process, topics to cover, and who participates
  • Hand-holding those who get writer’s block

What challenges did you face?

  • Getting 70 people to all be on their precise task in a short time period
  • Getting people to meet their deadlines (even though it was all volunteer)
  • Scope creep – the book doubled in size from original intention for it – which I think made it too big to digest whole

How did you manage so many contributors? Deadlines/workflow/editing?

  • Used a modified personal kanban – each person/topic was a post-it note on a wall indicating (by wall placement) what they had done or needed to do
  • Put deadlines 2 weeks before I really needed them, so the slips would be okay (shhhh, keep that secret!)
  • Put everything into a google doc as it came in.
  • Didn’t let them edit each other’s pieces (although I did share samples of existing contributions to new contributors to give them a feel for what was there)
  • Note: I have been an editor for 15 years or so. I am used to the process of idea->draft->edit->revise->final->design->publish. I edited each as they came in. I brought in help for second/third pair of eyes. Only a few had major re-writes and a few went way over the 500 word limit.

How, if at all, did you incentivise contributions (and also people working to deadlines)?

  • Seeded it for momentum. The first contribution came in 2 hours after I asked the initial group (my ring of a dozen advisors). I tweeted my thanks.
    People were motivated, I think, by:

    • Social relationships (they all know me or someone else involved)
    • Uplifting concept (mission is bigger than me or you and aspirational)
    • Peer influence (who else had or was going to contribute)
    • It is possible people thought that being in the book would help with their visibility, but I think that wasn’t a real motivator (in hindsight).
    • People were asked to speak to something they know super well and feel “alive” about, so I suspect/hope they felt it was an “opportunity” to give voice to something vital in themselves.
  • Made it easy to be involved – just get me your 500 or less words. I will do the rest.
  • Made it clear what needed to happen and by when. There were no “ifs, ands, or buts” about it. No threats. No complaints. And an open door for anyone struggling with it.

What advice would you give to anyone thinking of crowdsourcing a book about sustainability?

  • If it is an ebook – keep it SHORT
  • Be firm in your structure and allow people to be creative and alive in the container you provide
  • Ask for small contributions that seem easy to achieve
  • Stick to a short window from request – draft – response – final – design – approval to publication
  • Don’t over-explain the process. What is the least they need to know about what is happening behind the scenes?
  • Consider how you want to manage copyright (we have a copyright on the collection – with each individual holding copyright on their specific piece)
  • Think of it as curation – you are creating a larger work by placing individual works in relation to each other, just as one would with an art exhibit of many artists. There is a grace to making that work well and be cohesive as a whole. (That would be a whole other conversation here)
  • Get multiple opinions on your draft and final draft so that you can find out if that piece that doesn’t strike your fancy is super compelling to someone else (and vice versa). Be careful not to let that feedback overly homogenize things – squeezing the voice and authenticity out of it
It is easy for a collectively written piece to:
    • Get diluted by having too many editors or an unclear vision/purpose
    • Seem like a random hodge podge (be sure to create cohesion through form/argument/story or something!)
    • Have an inconsistent standard or threshold of quality (especially when people volunteer, it is easy to simply be grateful for whatever they offer – but don’t. If they want to be involved, they want it to be good. So handhold folks if you have to – until it meets a high standard.)

How will you solve those challenges?

What questions do you still have? And what answers do you have for collaborations you have worked on?

Thrivability: A Collaborative Sketch

View more presentations from Jean Russell.

Social Innovation in Practice at cosi10

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Note, I am a cosi10 event host in Chicago. I offer my perspective on the cosi10 global event developments.

I am fascinated by fractals. The consistency from layer to layer. The persistence of an inner integrity. There is something about the perfection of it that creates tranquility and trust even in complex environments.

COSI10 feels fractal to me. We are doing social innovation to help social innovators. Innovation, to me, means prototyping and iterating with what works, refining and improving. And social doesn’t, to me, simply mean it involves people. To me, it means people are participating.

There is one more quality central to COSI10, and that is transparency. There is a value to push power and choice to the edges. To enable the edges to do so, they require information. So there is an effort to make visible the inner workings of the process. Which I hope to contribute to here in this post.

Earlier this week, several of us on the organizing team including Pallavi from India, Matt from Denver, Jean from Chicago, Antoine from Brussels, and Christina Jordan our global events coordinator, chatted over skype. We changed the dates for some of the events in the COSI10 series. We had been working with a serial view of events happening over several months. We hear that one of the benefits of COSI10 is connecting globally with other COSI10 events (as well as connecting locally with social innovators). So we moved the dates to be much closer to happening at once. We hope to see you November 5-8 at an event near you!

We came to this decision as a group, reviewing where we are and what we feel will most make our regional events and the whole of COSI10 successful for participants. We had been at one of those stuck spots. We were not where we wanted to be. What would get us there? So we said, “Let’s together discuss honestly where we are and do something else (possibly anything else). What would serve our purpose and deliver on our commitment?”

Voila! Amazing to feel the energy shift in the group, generating energy and enthusiasm. This has cascaded into a whole series of transformations:

  • Project management of multiple events at different times was complex and we didn’t have clear accountability or expectations set. Now timelines are universal and expectations stated clearly.
  • Responsibility for collective success seemed to have been pressed harder onto earlier events, and now responsibility for our success is shared by all more equally.
  • Giving space to name what was not working (without blame) gave us a chance to get the feedback we needed to make significant changes (instead of incremental ones). Now our communication efforts are crucially clearer and more useful.

I hope we are doing what the COSI10 events will do for participants – connecting, getting around and over hurdles, iterating to be better and better. I hope we catalyze greater agility and resilience for social innovators.

Clarity works magic on enthusiasm. And this adjustment and the clarity it brings brought a whole new level to our excitement around COSI10. We hope you will join us. Together we can build alliances, engage in structured collaboration, and evolve our social innovation sector. Check out our revised description and register before the early bird discount ends October 1!

Jean Russell
founder of Thrivable
cross posted at COSI10

Collaboration Mixing Board

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This morning I read a RT from @jhagel:

Open source trumps crowdsource – by @cdgramshttp://bit.ly/bIn1at

And an idea that has been bubbling in the back of my head came to the surface begging to be set free. Collaboration and Cooperation are complex processes. Setting up them as rivals diminishes the value each provide us. One is not better than another as much as one may be more or less appropriate for a particular issue. And there are a bunch of knobs and dials to adjust based on what we have to put into the system and what we would like to have as output.

My initial “Mixing Board” points to several of these knobs and dials and some of the measures we might watch. I hope you will consider these and contribute to a revised version that holds greater rigor and collective wisdom. 🙂 Collaborate with me!

CollaborationSThis is the basic mixer. We have 3 areas: the Dials – things that feel measurable and adjustable, the Knobs – things that feel like a spectrum, and the Lights – things that we can sense but probably not directly adjust.

The Dials:

  • # of contributors (5 people, 25, 100, 1000, 10000, etc)
  • # of beneficiaries (5 people, 25, 100, 1000, 10000, etc)
  • degree of facilitation/quality control (none, light-handed, moderated, tight, regulated)
    1. none – for example – the ability to co-create the internet approaches NO facilitation and NO quality control.
    2. light-handed – co-creating youtube is light-handed (as is most major social media space) with very simple rules.. and very little quality control
    3. moderated – wikipedia has a process for including content, a system for elevating reputation, and a fairly advanced peer produced quality control system and standards
    4. tight – most blogs (from harvard business blogs to Daily Kos) where several people have permission to add posts (the comment option might be handled lightly to not at all however) and the quality control is high (even if the quality is not high – the control of it is)
    5. regulated – let’s talk wall street stats or sports numbers collecting on websites – there is regulation about the information to control the quality and the facilitation is more in the realm of bureaucracy
  • feedback loops – do stakeholders/creators have ways of getting feedback on the collaborations? For example, couchsurfing ratings. I presume that collaborations in which people know they are successful via tight feedback loops encourage more collaboration. This is simply my assumption. 🙂

Then we have The Knobs or Spectrums:

  • cooperation – from collective to collaborative (to what degree are people creating/generating through interaction with each other? Is it the number who show up or the output of their engagement with each other? CarrotMobs are about the number (collective) and team sports are about the combined output and interaction (collaborative).
  • granularity – from single output to many outputs that can be added together. A single output could be a logo design or a designed t-shirt… where an additive output is something like Linux – composed of hundreds or even thousands of pieces where individual authorship of the granule still allows for collective production of a larger work.
  • governance – from benevolent dictator to consensus, who manages the collaboration? An individual, a leadership circle, a revolving/evolving group, or full consensus of all involved, etc.
  • field – from commons to market – what does the output create in total? Does it create a market for individuals to succeed (or fail) within or a commons for all to share?

Finally we have The Lights – given the settings of the Knobs and Dials, what can we sense?

  • emergent – does the collaboration create the conditions for emergence? To what degree?
  • creative – does the collaboration enable creative effort or stifle it?
  • quality – does the collaboration produce high quality results/outputs? (by whose definition?)
  • resourceful – does it optimally engage the resources of those collaborating?
  • beneficial – does it create benefits? (one could ask for who?)
  • speed – how long does the collaboration take?
  • adaptable – how able is the collaboration to make adjustments in response to the environtment
  • scalable – can the collaboration expand? to what degree? (not that scaling is always ideal! it isn’t!)

Catastrophe Thinking

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I am pretty sure my entire life has been lived under the hovering cloud of the apocalypse. Sure there were moments of possibility – the fall of the wall, the election of Obama, the end of apartheid in South Africa. But mostly the global events we hear about focus on the end of civilization as we know it, albeit in small chunks at a time. It is still framed as disaster…. we are losing what we had and aren’t moving into a better world (except in small isolated ways). From AIDS to Bird Flu, from Rwanda genocide to Sudan and Burma, nuclear proliferation, the Gulf Coast disaster 2.0 (and Katrina as 1.0), Haiti (and so many other earthquakes, mud slides, volcanoes, and other weather/geological disasters for humans) – plus economic crisis and climate change, the extinction of so many species, and the war on terror (which just grows fear and terror) all converge – even for those of us who don’t watch the news. There is overpopulation, sex slaves, and child mortality issues as well as deforestation, crumbling infrastructure, and coach potatoes living in suburban nightmares. There are activists working cancer into their bodies with their martyr-like dedication. There are those in sedated near oblivion – zombie-living. There are hedonic wealth-seekers facing doom with greed and opulence. This is the story of crumbling and disintegration. Our globalized post-modern world tumbling through catastrophes.

We tell this story, and we have been telling this story, for my whole life. And the fear-mongering started long before I was born – the the cold war threatening nuclear annihilation for half a century.

I am tired of this story. I am tired of seeing faces worn down with the contraction of fear. I am weary of the negativity and desperation driving people to hate, divide, hoard, and fight. I am sick of finding out my government is justifying killing people in order to obtain more resources (because, I guess, we are in such a state of lack!).

We victimize ourselves, and in that suffering, we victimize others with our trauma.

Enough. Put it down. Don’t believe the hype. Don’t fight for a world you already gave up on.

Look for the flower emerging in the sidewalk – life pressing through without complaint or blame to assert its urge for sunlight. Nature is incredibly resilient and adaptive. Work within the world we have to co-create the world we want. Focus on what is going well and right, and encourage more of it. Breathe and be the serenity prayer.

Do not deny the brutal facts before us, but know that you see those facts through a filter of the story you are telling yourself (and others) about the world. You can transform that story and see those facts in a fresh light – from a different vantage point. Turn on the thrivability light, and recognize that life gives rise to more life. Never before in human history have we known a greater wealth of possibility.

After three days in Philadelphia discussing philanthropy and philanthropic strategies for transformation, I feel deeply convinced and inspired by a model I can see of thrivable philanthropy. Gerard calls it evolutionary philanthropy, and there might be some subtle distinctions. However, let me explain. And then I hope it will be more clear why our stories about our world could shift to transform our experience of it and the world itself.

Let’s call charity the work that we do to address immediate needs of others who can not, for whatever reason, care for themselves. It is as if you are standing on a riverbank, see a baby floating downstream, and you rush out to save the drowning child. Only, there are not enough people pulling drowning babies from the river, and the babies have suffered from being in the river. Our hearts break open. Some savvy volunteer wonders aloud – “who is tossing babies in this river?” And a crew of helpers decide to go upstream to find the cause. And they discover a system out of balance allowing babies to land in the river. They decide to change the system and set up programs to help mothers and advocate for social justice. We call this social change and social justice work. Still, babies are floating down the river. The philanthropist supporting this work starts to wonder – huh, what impact is my giving having? I want babies to stop ending up in the river – this is madness! And the social justice worker says – well, we think we have decreased the number of babies in the river, but this is a complex adaptive system so I can’t name all the causes and effects! I can’t clearly attribute your dollars having saved babies without acknowledging other programs and the dynamic changes in the system in which our town operates, babies are born, the economy shifts, and nature takes her course. We might have even changed our baby counting practices in a way that changed how many babies we can account for, which skewed the numbers giving an artificial bump. But we are not sure.

Then a thinker stands up and says – it is the very culture and beliefs in which we operate that give rise to these systems that aren’t taking care of all these babies. And the philanthropist has to choose now – either fund better metrics to know whether there is an impact… or fund cultural shift. And there are still babies in the river, and everyone’s hearts break open knowing it and seeing it. And they are sad.

Transforming culture takes longer, it is harder to measure, the complex dynamic system of it all makes it next to impossible to attribute agency clearly. And, it is where the greatest possibility for creating a culture that ever more deeply transforms itself, cares for each other and the whole, and enables the world we want.

Change your story.

Asymptotic Understanding

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What I learned from mystical language: In Search of Truth in a World of Language
It struck me in philosophy class. Ancient Philosophy. The year was 1993. Bang, how do you solve Zeno’s paradox? Hmmm, what is wrong with most philosophical questions? It came again in the course on knowing. A priori, A posteriori. Humbug.
We construct these arguments and logic with a language we created. It is meant to point to the world, but it is not a direct correlation with the world. Language is not bound to the same logic as the universe. If it was, we would not have A Wrinkle in Time or even the whole genre of Magical Realism. And yet, we play with this language, pointing toward a world we can’t really gain direct access to (it is always mediated through our senses and filtered through our culture… always and already. Inescapable).
And we can get some sort of post-modern laughter from it, sometimes slightly uncomfortable and disturbed laughter, and other times hilarious gaiety. Sure. However, unlike the laws of math or physics which strongly intend to accurately portray the world, language is not created to do so. It is not bounded, tied, strapped on to the world as it is. Instead language is the arrow we throw at what we sense and feel, the metaphors we use to describe experience, the expression of our creativity, and the communication medium of some of our emotions.
What can I know? Hmmm, answering that question means I have to answer the question “what do these words even mean?” I may describe something or make an assertion, but I can’t mistake that map for the territory. I am simply pointing toward and can never point directly at… My location isn’t fixed, the thing described isn’t fixed, and the relationship between the two isn’t fixed.
In graduate school, my first course was Language and Negativity. We studied a bit about mystical language. In particular the book Mystical Languages of Unsaying by Michael Sells. To know God by saying what he is not is to talk apophatically. To assert and then remove the assertion. God is all knowing, but he is not all knowing, he is more than that. We point toward the thing and then acknowledge it is not that thing at all, it is beyond that. It is something we can’t even point at directly. And really, this is how language works in relation to the world. We can point toward the world, but we can never surely say the world IS that or DOES that or PERFORMS that way. It seems as if…. From all that we know, it seems like the case that…. Transcend your paradigms of explanation.
Where does this leave us? Living in paradox? Living with approximation? Truth as the most useful thing we can understand and communicate. Does this mean we should rest, dejected and surely wrong about our approximations? No, just as Bonjour argued that while we might be brains in a vat, it is highly improbable that we are; it is highly probable that we are pointing ever closer to the thing we really mean to approach. Asymptotically. We strive for ever more accurate approximations. Always understanding that the truth is likely between or beyond our language.

or What I learned from mystical language: In Search of Truth in a World of Language

It struck me in philosophy class. Ancient Philosophy. The year was 1993. Bang, how do you solve Zeno’s dichotomy paradox? Hmmm, what is wrong with most philosophical questions? It came again in the course on knowing. A priori, A posteriori. Humbug.

We construct these arguments and logic with a language we created. It is meant to point to the world, but it is not a direct correlation with the world. Language is not bound to the same logic as the universe. If it was, we would not have A Wrinkle in Time or even the whole genre of Magical Realism. And yet, we play with this language, pointing toward a world we can’t really gain direct access to (it is always mediated through our senses and filtered through our culture… always and already. Inescapable).

And we can get some sort of post-modern laughter from it: sometimes slightly uncomfortable and disturbed laughter and other times hilarious gaiety. Sure. However, unlike the laws of physics which strongly intend to accurately portray the world, language is not created to do so. It is not bounded, tied, strapped on to the world as it is. Instead language is the arrow we throw at what we sense and feel, the metaphors we use to describe experience, the expression of our creativity, and the communication medium of some of our emotions.

What can I know? Hmmm, answering that question means I have to answer the question “what do these words even mean?” I may describe something or make an assertion, but I can’t mistake that map for the territory. I am simply pointing toward and can never point directly at… My location isn’t fixed, the thing described isn’t fixed, and the relationship between the two isn’t fixed.

In graduate school, my first course was Language and Negativity. We studied a bit about mystical language. In particular the book Mystical Languages of Unsaying by Michael Sells. To know God by saying what he is not is to talk apophatically. To assert and then remove the assertion: God is all knowing, but he is not all knowing, he is more than that. We point toward the thing and then acknowledge it is not that thing–it is beyond that. It is something we can’t even point at directly. And really, this is how language works in relation to the world. We can point toward the world, but we can never surely say the world IS that or DOES that or PERFORMS that way. It seems as if…. From all that we know, it seems like the case that…. Transcend your paradigms of explanation. They are already and always formed through a fallible language of approximation.

Where does this leave us? Living in paradox? Living with approximation? Truth as the most useful thing we can understand and communicate. Does this mean we should rest, dejected and surely wrong about our approximations? No, just as Lawrence BonJour argued that while we might be brains in a vat, it is highly improbable that we are; it is highly probable that we are pointing ever closer to the thing we really mean to approach. Asymptotically. We strive for ever more accurate approximations. Always understanding that the truth is likely between or beyond our language.

Motherhood

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Happy Mother’s Day!

Friday I attended a little performance my daughter and her class did for the mothers. It was, of course, truly heartwarming to see my daughter perform. She loves to sing, and she emanates pride in herself. However, these songs and poems often felt odd to me. One piece talked about Mom being someone who makes cookies. Huh, when was the last time we made cookies together. Sure, we do it sometimes, but this is not what I think motherhood is about. To me motherhood is about deeply loving someone no matter what for who they are at every level in every nook of their being. My children fascinate me. I try to let go of my ideas of who they might become and allow them to be just who they are.

That is not to say that I do not try to shape and guide them. My service to them is to equip them in ways that will serve them and our society (since these things are intricately linked) over the long haul. I try to hold this as a conversation between their being or nature and the way the world appears to work to me. This has nothing to do with the sugar in cookies, right?

My job as their mother is to give them love and support as they navigate the world. As their mother, I strive to empower them with the knowledge, savvy, and joy to move with grace through a complex world.

And you may wonder why this is my approach to mothering… well, because in so many ways, this is what my mother did for me. She had a light hand in my daily activity, offered adoring love and yet held high standards, modeled grace, and she trusted me to navigate my world. Sure, at times she would intervene explaining what she could intuit from a situation. However, most of the time, she let me explore on my own: explore nature, people, myself, our library, my spirituality, and my life path. She and I see two different worlds when we look out from our hazel eyes, and I am sure my children will perceive a world I can’t know from their hazel eyes. She let me inhabit my world, and in turn I try to let my children inhabit their world and their lives fully. And may we each and all serve and co-create a world the future generations can explore too.

To my mother on this mother’s day, for her amazing elegance and grace in navigating her world and preparing me to navigate mine. She already has an abundance of flowers. This gift of care for Mama Lucy and the children she cares for feels like something that my mother will really appreciate with her huge heart. If you would like to create a heart space for an amazing and inspiring mother in your life, please visit http://www.tomamawithlove.org.

Wand of Gratitude

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Between Jerry sending me the book “The Gift of Thanks: The Roots and Rituals of Gratitude” and David Rose saying “wand of gratitude” I have to embrace my role as a freaky gratitude fairy. And I want a wand! Not that I think some magic dust will make everything alright. It won’t. Not that I think the right snap of my wrist dancing the wand will make something transport to the world of Harry Potter. No, I want the wand because it acts as an anchor.  An object that can remind me (and others) that gratitude is part of the alchemy of connection.

Crown Give-a-way Detail II
Creative Commons License photo credit: queenie13

Maybe I will make myself one. I have the craft supplies. 🙂

When I wave this wand of gratitude I want two things to happen:

  1. the gratitude I feel towards someone will be known and felt by any who witness it
  2. the person toward whom I direct the wand will recognize the gratitude they have

Because of these two things, we will recognize the value, tangible and intangible in what we have together and individually. And recognizing that value will make it clear how very precious it is.

I wave my wand of gratitude over you.

Value of Validation

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Immeasurable but still acknowledge-able. Not the difference, because that relates to our currency conversations.

This video makes me laugh and cry. I think back on it fondly and look for it regularly, so I thought I would hold it here – for you and for me.

And hey, you are awesome. Did anyone ever tell you….

Transformation Kit

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Recently I got a late evening call from a good friend. A crisis had emerged. In 5 minutes I packed and headed over. Well, I brought beer, because this friend and I often met for beer and conversation. And I also brought chocolate. A girl knows in times of change, a good bar of high quality organic dark chocolate is a necessity – both for the incredible yumminess of it as well as the chemicals they say it triggers in the brain. I brought nuts. Several kinds. I didn’t know how long our conversation would last. Protein is important. I wanted an easy snack that could act as a supplement or get one over a skipped meal. You get the point – it was a 5 minute grab bag of essentials.

Nurturing is most critical and visibly necessary at moments when our lives take a drastic turn quickly. In truth we can use nurturing all the time. Personally, as someone willing to ride the edge, I have fallen off the edge more than once. I have my little patterns now for recovery, as many of us do. Some of the patterns are about giving into the darkness and despair enough to feel it thoroughly. Some of the patterns have emerged from successful tools I have used for recovering. So, I am thinking about developing something of a Transformation Crisis Nurture Girl Kit.

To nourish the body

  • list of items to have on hand and what each is for
  • list of stretches and other body care ideas and how they help

To nourish the heart

  • activities and exercises to tap into love
  • resources on the heart, love, and friendship

To nourish the mind

  • inquiries and challenges for thinking about situations differently
  • quick reference guide to non-violent communication process

To care for the spirit

  • list of inspirational quotes – the wisdom of those who have passed this threshold before
  • ways to clear space for spiritual reflection

Creative Commons License photo credit: S?ndy

Suffering in transition is a sign of our care and attachment. Having tools at hand for mediating our experience and challenging ourselves to grow and evolve can be invaluable.

What would you want to have in your Crisis Kit? And what do you do – and how are you being – when you or a loved one experience radical transitions?

Experiencing as…

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Last winter I started playing a little game. Call it “I am the universe experiencing itself as…___”

It began after having an awakening where I saw myself as one perspective that the universe has for seeing itself, and holding that as one among gazillions of others. Let us imagine the the universe, or god, or whatever greater consciousness may exist, is using everything created as a way to perceive everything else. Let us be in that perception from a state of non-judgment. No experience is more valuable than any other in this game with our imaginations.

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/trodel/3598596315/

by http://www.flickr.com/photos/trodel/3598596315/

Imagine a rock. A common pebble you find in your walk. What does it experience? How was it formed? How did, over time, it transform into the current shape? What is the experience of time to the rock? A grain of sand. A drop of water? A tree? A piece of petrified forest? A star?

We begin. Number of players: 1 to ? Rules:

  • Begin each turn with “I am the universe experiencing itself as…_____”
  • Fill in the blank at the end.
  • When playing with others, try being radically different in scale or experience, place, or time. Alternately, try surprising your playmates with a completely different angle on the same body. Say, one person fills the blank with _body of a 5 year old boy in Africa_ then the next might say _the bacteria in the boys intestines_ or _his great-great grandmother_.
  • Be creative. You win when you are moved by it. To laughter, to tears, to ahas, or to sleep. 😉

Spots of interest. Note from the perspective of the universe that the experience of death is not a pain felt in the body as pain – it is an experience. There is a slight detachement to what that experience feels like because it is all taken in as information about the experience. Also, all experiences add to the knowledge of the universe, so the experience of being vomit is no less valuable than the experience of being the body of a superstar. This exercise can be (or has been for me) a great leveler. And yet, I don’t think of the world as all being equal. It is different. Apples to oranges. Usually when I describe this, I use the metaphor of my hands. Why would one hand be better than the other? They are different (one being right and one being left). Or the cells in my foot are no less valuable than the cells in my ear.

Try it. See what happens for you. And tell me how it goes for you.