I was recently honored by a friend to be included in a post on LinkedIn listing the people they knew that gave them hope for 2024. I am still exploring the utility of that platform so it was just by happenstance the other day (or possibly serendipity1) that I found a note on my account there from one of the other folks listed in that post. We corresponded briefly and decided to have a chat, and in doing a little homework for that upcoming conversation I came across these questions from the work of the Joint US-China Collaboration for Clean Energy.
I was inspired listening to an interview with their founder and decided to indulge them here.
These are the Limitless Challenge Questions to imagine the World.
Imagine the world you would like to live in, what does it look like?
What a welcome and wonderful question! There is so much tension and real pain in the world today, it’s easy to slip into a mindset of minimizing harm or simple triage. When I look into my mind at this question, I’m glad to see that there is in fact an answer living gently, quietly, but vividly along the edges.
It is a world abundant with life. There is a full range of natural ecosystems, species flourish in number and vitality and harmony with these environments. Salmon run thick in the rivers, herds churn and enrich the planes across which they graze, predator species dance their sacred balance of prey. Human beings live in equanimity with their floral, faunal, fungal, and macrobiotic brethren, acting as good neighbors and often stewards in the spaces they share.
The signs of human habitation, homes, gardens, workshops, transportation corridors, etc. are all manifestations of artistry and beauty. The acts of creating and maintaining these spaces are so wisely constructed that they leave no scars upon the environment from which they were brought forth, and in fact by virtue of their conscious integration they perform support services that increase the vitality and well-being of their context.
Humanity flourishes and evolves, recognizing the subjectivity of truth, the priority is always placed on beauty, wisdom, and kindness to others with objectivity always in service to that. Creativity abounds, as does generosity and a boundless inquiry. Infinite paths are there to be explored, but the slightest impact of pollution is as obvious as your toddler falling and skinning their knee, receiving the same immediate care and healing support.
Reverence, understanding, and appreciation of the transcendent mystery, and majesty of being tempers and nurturers, with ever increasing depth the human endeavor through time.
Earth itself abounds as a study of joyfulness, care, and luminous vitality.
Write “I love” statements about things that bring you joy.
I love love in all its forms. I love flowers and the color blue. I love rainbows and dewdrops and eagles soaring high. I love kindness in all its forms. I love time and space and all that it contains. I love conditions defiant of any form. I love light and life and a boundless dance of becoming. I love friendship and dancing, the musical emanations of sound. I love running and wind and swimming and flying and rolling and crawling in the dirt. I love stopping to consider and the fullness that pours in when the heart is open. I love children of all species, and elders too, and the journey between. I love the mysterious present condition of awakening. I love the subtle softness that fills all spaces. I love daylight and dark, stars and supernovas, and the turning in between. I love lists, and the making of lists, and the making of love, and beginnings, and endings…
What are the most important values for being a good citizen?
I find myself wishing to approach this question with some gentle sensitivity as the construct of citizen is so bound up with conventional social borders, and at least in my mind, not generally associated with village scale, but rather larger municipalities and up through nationstate organizations. In this regard, I’m not sure if, or rather how, citizen applies to more intimate community contexts, or to citizens of the globe…
Are lions and tigers and bears, antelope, beaver, and salmon to be considered citizens of our world? How about rivers, forests, and mountainsides?
I’m sure I digress… Inherently I think citizen has to do with relationship, the sacred balances between agency and communion. What does it mean to be a citizen within oneself, in love with another, as a member of a group, a citizen of nature, or of spirit?
Which values indeed? Trust? A sense of hopefulness? Love? A deep embodiment of gratitude and generosity? How about the capacity for calm serenity that allows a clear listening to arise, both to one’s own deep heart desires, and to the concerns and values of others?
I think trust has to do with a sense of security; security in one’s identity, security in one’s intimate familial relations, and security in one’s community. These seem the embodiment of flowing reciprocity in a healthy system. Perhaps there is a mutuality in the arising of “good citizen;” I must care for my social structures, and inherent in that is the demand that I do so in such a way that my social structures themselves engender systemic care for all of life.
Is a child a citizen? Are we all? Is citizenship we grow up into, and later out of? Or does it have more to do with engagement, where the values we explore and give life to evolve in their prominence and priority as we live through various stages of our own evolution within the living container of our community?
In simpler terms, I think care, gentleness, a love of wisdom, and a tending to the flourishing vitality of all those with whom we come in contact, might creep somewhere near the point of what longing it is that I seek to express here.
What qualities do you want to see in a leader?
When I hear this term, “leadership,” I’m always drawn to recall a quote from my friend Venita Ramirez who said one day long ago, “a leader is anyone who leads a life.” In contrasting that to more conventional ideas of leadership and leaders, it seems to me that there are certain qualities that we can have that enrich us in the journey of leading a life, and that it is the degree to which those qualities flourish in abundance within us that gives us those qualities of leadership in collective.
So what are those qualities that one wishes to see in a leader, or more specifically, that I wish to see in a leader…?
When I start the list, I think I begin with listening. The ability for the leader, even before listening, to be still within themselves, to allow emergent quiet into which listening can arise, seems deeply important.
Listening, or even perception really, what is the degree of the leader’s capacity to perceive, and not just the degree, but the degree in a plurality of dimension and domain. What is the container into which that perception arises, is the leader deeply clear in themselves, or do those perceptions meet with the tumultuous waves of a strong, reactive, turbulent personality. These things seem to matter — can the world pass into this leader “as it is,” and when it does, does that flow become laminar, able to be pointed skillfully in discrete instances of moment and pressure, or does it simply soak everything in its field, and what is the quality of that wetness if it does?
To me this is not a simple question, not at least in the terms of thinking of it like “the five most important qualities of a leader.” Instead, it is a precious question that I like to live into, and better still, continue to subject myself to its dialogics. I imagine that leadership takes on different qualities at different scales and diversity of context, fluency in many different qualities likely coming into play with increasing complexity as those contexts compound and evolve.
I’m intrigued by at least a few models that I think suggest approaches to perceiving qualities in general from which I would seek wisdom in discerning those qualities against which we might measure leadership in one context or another. Essentially I’m excited by the living vital dynamic of this inquiry. Anyone who leads a life lives an ongoing experimental humanity in what it means to be a leader. That, to me, is a sacred endeavor.
In what ways do you connect with others and nature?
This question feels paradoxically important, and like a trick at the same time. I’m recalling a signpost I saw on a bulletin board once quoting the following, “Disciple: how shall I treat others? Guru: there are no others.”
Like leadership, above, I think this emergent reciprocitive space of connection arises like a fountain spring from the quietness within bubbling up through a sense of perception, and a pouring out, through the heart, of full feeling. Nature surrounds me, I am that, it wells up through me, embodies itself as me, and pours back in cycles of bubbling, playful becoming.
To paraphrase, there are no others that are not part of that cyclical fullness and flowing abundance. To connect with others and with nature, is simply an orientation of mind that realizes the joyfulness of that diversity in oneness.
I look to the stone on my desk, to the tree in the corner of the office, to the shrubs and trees and sky and clouds and cars and other passersby outside. I listen to the sounds of my friend moving in the other room, the crows lurking about on the house next door, to dried flowers, coffee in the cup, anticipations of meetings to come, and I feel gratitude for these things.
As I meet these moments I seek to offer some generosity of spirit, some willingness to act, some gentle patience and presence to realize and celebrate what is.
Who in your life inspires you, and why?
This is a fun question, and in the interest of playfulness I’ll keep this a little closer to convention than may have been some of my previous responses…
I am inspired in little moments of time by nearly anyone in my life when I observe people showing those undeniable glimmers of their very best self. Little acts of kindness, self disclosing vulnerability, joyfulness and excitement for some little piece of life’s pleasures, these things shine through, often in a smile or some glance that whispers, “this is truth.”
But I digress, please allow me to point your attention to a few people in the world (a list, by no means exhaustive) whose engagement with life splits fuel onto the fires of my heart calls me forward towards that strange attractor of my own “best self.” So that I do not prattle on for hours listing countless amazing beings that I am privileged to feel as kin, I’ll select also by those whose work might be more accessible on and susceptible to a global scale…
Katie Teague — I have the privilege of having met Katie just moments before one of her major life transformations. We were enrolled in one of the early cohorts of the Pacific Integral GTC program and somewhere in the first half of that Katie decided to leave behind her psychotherapy practice and grounded life in a beautiful wooded island estate and set off afresh into the wild world.
Paring down to little more than a handbag, she set off for the bay area and a four-month deep dive intensive film school program. From there, camera in hand and passion in heart she ventured forth to discover and ultimately create her first documentary film, Money and Life.
Since I have known her, Katie has kept her heart raw and spirit close to the ground where she can be guided by the gentle pulse of our mother Earth as she turns through this era of transformation in her being. Katie has been on numerous formal and/or otherwise spiritually compelled quests for vision, and today continues to share her sacred sight through the art of her medium, and the gifts of her path to others.
When I turn my spirit eyes towards Katie, I see a beautiful yet humble human soul, standing grounded on the earth, hair tasseled by the windy sky, and hands offering a creative generosity that reminds me to be always grateful for this precious human life.
Feisal Alibhai — in the grand scheme of things, I haven’t known Faisal for long. I’ve had the privilege of going a little deep on just a handful of occasions with him and to witness the integrity of his meeting his own transformational process, vulnerable, heart open, and with cheerful and wise abandon.
He and I have had very different lives, both in terms of the social strata in which we’ve grown, as well as our geography and religious origins. Almost to the poles of East and West, and North and South. This in all its wonderful implication has, for me, given our friendship a sparkling sense of constant renewal as the view of things I’m able to get from him is often well beyond the reach of my own experience.
Faisal has taken his world-class mind, education and incredible personal journey of working with both the poorest and the wealthiest in the world, forged it in the humanity of his own crucibles of love and health and family, and come out as one of the most exemplar beings of service I have had the privilege to know.
Every encounter for him is deeply personal and he cares; as much for the taxi driver on the street as for the neighbor of a client. Whether he is with you for just a moment in this life, or walking along in tandem and partnership, Faisal exemplifies the precious opportunity that is here with us right now, always and yet fleeting.
Knowing him and appreciating his incredible mind and heart compels me, and makes it that much easier, to strive with confidence towards audacious strategy in meeting the wilds of the world, while never forgetting that compassion which cries for even the unseen ant underfoot.
A.T. Ariyaratne — it’s hard to acknowledge this individual in a way that feels proper, like trying to stare directly into the sun, it may be just better to close one’s eyes and feel the warmth, or turn away and appreciate what it illuminates. Merely mentioning our connection feels dangerously close to a statement of self congratulations, though like the sun, it would be difficult to speak of the light in my life without mentioning his name.
I met Dr. Ari in New York in the late 90s while I was a wild yogi kid. A friend of mine had initiated the trip from previous meetings with him and we were to see him speak at the UN and join he and a small entourage after for meeting and dinner. We hit it off immediately.
Dr. Ari has done as much for loving kindness on earth as probably anyone in the last century. His work building community self-sufficiency and interdependence throughout the country of Sri Lanka for the last 65 years has not only lifted millions from poverty, organized a million people to meditate together for peace, and demonstrated exemplary human humility and diligence in service to life, but he has set up, as well as anyone, perhaps ever, a model to emulate of how to live and grow together in peace and harmony.
I would admire this gentle human from afar, were it not my great privilege to call him friend. As it stands, he inspires me, and why… Not simply for those great deeds, his humble service, but he inspires me because he looks to me in the eye and, without duress, expects me to rise to his example.
… I could go on like this literally for weeks, if not years to offer laudatory statements to those incredible human beings who inspire me every day. Perhaps it is enough in honoring them to suggest that you, dear reader, please notice how truly inspiring are countless people that you know and encounter every day. It is not just great acts that makes a being inspiring, but any moment of connecting to the goodness in our heart.
What experiences are you most grateful for?
I am grateful for the experience of this precious human birth. To be alive with some cognizance of the vast majesty of this kosmos, to have the feeling of a heart that may be impressed by things gentle, small, vast and incomprehensible, or just here, now, what more could one ask for oneself?
For love, for tears of sadness, tears of joy. For rain and sky and life in all its forms.
What do you want your legacy to be?
I had to look up the etymology of this term, legacy. A delegate, or ambassador, someone or something to speak on my behalf when I have gone.
Let me offer a piece of prose I heard once in stead for anything perhaps more personal…
“In the age when life on earth was full, no one paid any special attention to worthy men, nor did they single out the man of ability. Rulers were simply the highest branches on the tree, and the people were like deer in the woods. They were honest and righteous without realizing that they were “doing their duty.” They loved each other and did not know that this was “love of neighbor.” They deceived no one yet they did not know that they were “men to be trusted.” They were reliable and did not know that this was “good faith.” They lived freely together giving and taking, and did not know that they were generous. For this reason their deeds have not been narrated. They made no history.”
~ Chuang Tzu
What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?
There is only one person who could change my behavior by dropping their judgment of me, and that is me.
I have been judging myself less, less harshly, less unkindly, for some years now with increasing gentility. Rather I strive to judge options and circumstances more carefully, careful to ask what ethical questions I may to navigate doing the best that I can.
Perhaps if, one day, I can rise to the inspiration of the Christian admonition to leave judgment to God, maybe then I might have something more to say on the subject.
Make a pledge on how you will change the world.
Yes. I will open the heart of this soul, the soul of this heart, widely, and to the whole world, I will drop obstruction and let that beautiful loving creativity pour through with the wisdom and guidance of the divine.
They say, to change the world, change yourself. What could be more true?
Now, with some humility, perhaps the humility of majesty, I will continue this endeavor to meet the world in such a way, as such a self, as to liberate the confusion that binds and see if we might just, in the next few years help the human species find a new dignity for itself, a new fullness of engagement, where we all can be helped to a path of serving the unspeakable beauty of life in all its forms.
Let it be so.
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I mentioned serendipity because I had also just noted a quote from this person the previous day while watching the keynote speech my friend had given at a conference late last year.
This is what it looks like, thank you: You can see and download the PDF of my book... DTN member, Barbara Williams was kind enough to make this link: https://poemsforparliament.uk/book-kinney/