Our goals are to build community and to collaborate and encourage others to add the cultivation of compassion, kindness, gentleness, interconnection, reflective practices, and Indigenous healing and wisdom practices to curricula and mission statements on our beautiful territory.
We believe that we “who are alive at this time” are called to fall back in love with our forests, oceans, and our own “perfectly imperfect” human nature. We seek to collaborate with all who work in academia and the arts, business and finance, economic policy and politics, healing and medicine, research and science, philosophy, and Indigenous and non-Indigenous Wisdom teaching.
We are overjoyed to learn that cutting-edge scientific research, Indigenous Wisdom Traditions, and our luminous Wisdom Teachings, all teach that we are interconnected in a magnificent web of life.
We review the work of researchers, scholars, and thought leaders working in the field of kindness and compassion. We welcome new contributions …….
We seek collaborators to help synthesize and share new information to transform our culture in ways that will lead to the flourishing of both human and non-human life to the Seventh Generation. We also seek collaborators to pilot and study the impact of integrating this knowledge into any courses and curricula taught in our beautiful land.
We seek collaborations with educators, parents, and community partners who share our interest in teaching, evaluating, and continuously improving teaching skills and tools on the following themes for every course and curriculum taught in our beautiful land.
We seek to create resources and fundraise by developing and selling merchandise that aligns with and furthers our mission.
As the founder of BeCompassionate NL, I believe the innovation needed in 2021 is to learn how to collectively activate our enormous individual and human capacity to be compassionate and kind and to reconnect with our human sisters, brothers, and all nature.
As a disconnected modern, I am awed and inspired by the beautiful examples of compassion for our living earth shown by local artists Megan Samms and Burlington Tooshkenig, creative Kim Todd, founder of Guide to the Good, and many other compassion activists who light up our lives.
Our dominant global culture favors the compartmentalization of every facet of our lives.
To classify, we learn to divide and categorize every aspect of our lives as individuals, communities, and societies. Compartmentalization and structure are essential to maintain order and harmony in our complex world. For example, a skilled neurosurgeon operating alone cannot safely perform heart surgery in modern western hospitals. The neurosurgeon needs to communicate and work well with an entire team. She can provide great compassion and safe patient care by working with her team.
In 2021, we needed to be able to connect and make long-term plans with people who may have very diverse worldviews. Many of us need to relearn how to live in harmony with the natural world. To achieve our compassion-worthy goals, we need to create the shared language, narrative, platforms, and worldviews required to begin, in a healthy interconnected way, solving the complex problems created by our disconnect from nature and other people, as well as the hurt and harm our decisions cause others.
The City of St. John’s well-intentioned efforts to develop a multi-purpose path is one example of the complexity of our challenges. The first plan and others went back to the drawing board. In 2021, when so few of us are ecologically, financially, and scientifically literate, creating inclusion while also serving the needs of nature takes effort, patience, discussion, and engagement. Nationally, the challenge of “Hard Butter” for our bakers and foodies has been traced to the novel practice of adding palm oil to dairy feed in Canada. In choosing to add palm oil to our cattle feed, Canadians failed to show compassion for the devastation we are contributing to the Rain Forests of Indonesia.
Hopefully, in 2021, with support from Patagonia and others, as we continue to address systemic racism, more of us will come to know and recognize the extraordinary courage and sacrifice of the 363 Bishnoi women who were the original tree huggers. These brave villagers sacrificed their lives to defend their trees in the Kesherli massacre, which took place in India in 1730.
Hopefully, with help from Diana Beresford-Kroeger, an Irish Canadian scientist, more of us will fall back in love with trees. Hopefully, like those fantastic Bishnoi women, we moderns will learn to cultivate compassion and (loving) kindness for our remaining boreal forests, and all the beautiful animals, birds, and fish the forests support and protect.
Very helpful for me, Dr. Janice Fitzgerald, our Chief Medical Officer, provides an elevating example of “embodied” compassion, kindness, and science-based leadership. Also, our excellent NL Accord Task Force is a visionary example of democratic engagement.
The innovation I seek to champion in 2022 is to open our local Overton Window to embrace the cultivation of compassion, democracy, ecological literacy, relative equality, inclusion, and a deep connection to people, animals, birds, fish, trees, and all things living on our planet.
The resources I use daily for personal inspiration include reading and watching videos on the compassion-focused approach of Jesuit priest Greg Boyle.
Dr. Gabriel Maté consistently inspires and teaches me through his books and YouTube talks.
I also love compassion-focused videos of animal rescues. Here is one I found on March 14, 2021. I searched under swans.
Compassionomics is a beautiful and rapidly evolving field new to me and a constant source of inspiration. The list of outstanding Buddhist teachers with many extraordinary mentors, peers, and teachers in the growing Compassion Cultivation Training community is extended. I hope to write more about these exceptional teachers in blog posts.
My secondary goal is to collaborate with others to envision what a more compassionate, kinder, inclusive, relatively equal ecologically and technologically advanced society may look and how to transfigure ourselves and our community to create a brighter future for all. Also, researching whether cultivating different types of compassion will help us address our incredibly complex challenges. In healthcare, the study of “Compassionomics” is very relevant.
Karen Armstrong, a British author, and scholar, used the $100,000 she won for her Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) talk in 2008 to initiate a global discussion on compassion. Through an open access process, 100,000 people from 100 countries shared their ideas on the heart. A Council for Conscience was created. Over 2,000,000 people signed a Charter for Compassion.
I invite you to sign the Charter for Compassion.
As a grateful new Canadian, I am saddened about the terrible genocide and suffering experienced by many of the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island since the beginning of European colonization over five centuries ago. I am learning about the suffering of an estimated 16,000,000 Africans forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean and enslaved. I am learning about the ongoing Truth and Reconciliation process; efforts to revive, study and speak First Nations languages; restorative justice, and the decolonization of our institutions. I am also learning of the tragic destruction of so much of 90% of Nature by human activities and actions.
In 2022, I feel we are all also called to extend compassion to all forms of life in our beautiful land and the living planet. COVID-19 makes it abundantly clear that we are all interconnected. Rapid progress in developing vaccines against COVID-19 demonstrates how much we can achieve when local, national, and global communities work together.
During this pandemic, I have become increasingly aware of how our global economy, fuelled by a model of endless war and continued industrialization of farming, fishing, forestry, and transportation, has led to the loss of 70 percent of animals, birds, and fish, in Canada and globally, over the past 70 years. The global choice of the Gross National and Gross Domestic Products as our measures of economic progress have led to dangerous levels of climate change, loss of biodiversity, chemical and plastic pollution, and human inequality. In 2022, we must contribute to creating an ecologically advanced civilization. In this excellent summary, with great compassion, Jeremy Lent gives us an overview of what we need to change as individuals and as societies to achieve our goals. Kate Raworth, a leading economist, has taken the time to show everyone how to think like a 21st-century economist.
In 2022, we know Canada was founded during gender inequality, deep systemic racism, and discrimination. Post-pandemic, we need to rebuild better. We are challenged to transform ourselves and our society, to become more compassionate, kind, and mindful of the suffering of nonhuman life around us.
As compassion-focused activists, we set our intention to work in solidarity to accept our human imperfections and co-create more equal, inclusive, ecologically and technologically advanced societies. This transformation needs to occur locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. We each have a role to play.
To avoid overwhelm, it is wise to start by cultivating self-compassion and compassionate empathy. Some compassion researchers state that cultivating compassion, kindness, and connection with others will bring us joy.
The global response to the song, Jerusalema, gives me hope that we can create compassion and experience joy.
In this video, Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood manifest compassion, community, and joy.
Compassion is discussed in the following links:
Reflections on Compassion, Dr. James Doty, Neurosurgeon and Founder, Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. Learn More
Reflections on Compassion, created by students incarcerated at Angola prison, Louisiana, as a gift to their teacher, Laura Martin, and introduced by Dr. Thupten Jinpa.
What self-compassion is and how to begin to cultivate our capacity for self-compassion. Dr. Kristin Neff, Researching the Benefits of Cultivating Self-Compassion.
How to be a good parent, Dr. Gabor Maté, Canadian Physician, Author, and Compassion Advocate.
First Voice Newfoundland and Labrador
A moment of Compassion An interview with Dr. Thupten Jinpa, do nothing podcast, hosted by Robe Dube.
My wish: the Charter for Compassion A TED talk by Karen Armstrong.
We need to ensure everyone has access to healthy food, especially young people wishing to have children, pregnant women, babies, children, all who are ill and vulnerable, and ideally, everyone living in our province.
We need to ensure everyone is safe and protected from the elements.
In 2021 we knew a lot about optimal care of human babies and children.
We know the brains of human babies grow 50 percent in the first nine months.
Individual families and many cultures have always encouraged authoritative and nurturing parenting.
However, many parents and cultures abuse and oppress their children to “strengthen” their children.
Hence, some parents, cultures, and subcultures abuse and oppress children with what we now know to be an incorrect perspective that abuse, emotional distancing, and cruelty will “purify and strengthen” children.
This appallingly misguided view of parenting has been championed by artists, clergy, creatives, elites, pediatricians, philosophers, horrifically misguided scientists, storytellers, and theologians.
This has contributed significantly to our current catastrophic levels of unhealed intergenerational trauma and has normalized the cruel insanity of warfare.
Self- Acceptance means accepting that we are all perfectly imperfect.
We are all born with different abilities, aptitudes, and personalities.
Our current hyper-competitive culture only values a tiny proportion of us.
Hiding our natural strengths and weaknesses to compete is very stressful.
Cultivating Self-Kindness and Self-Compassion improves our quality of life.
Developing a Growth Mind-Set helps us grow and to learn.
Keeping Calm and Carrying on is extremely useful in a crisis.
To heal and reconcile takes commitment, time, and effort.
The Benefits of Cultivating and Practicing Embodiment and Reflection.
The Attitudes and Skills we need to cultivate to co-create peace and joy.
Humans are relational beings, and we have a strong need to belong.
Community is critically essential. Very few of us thrive as hermits.
The quality and quantity of our relationships are crucial to our health. This link does not work and needs a new link
Our relationships shift between partnership and domination.
Partnership-focused relationships help us thrive.
Our foundational relationships are within our family of origin.
Relationships between women and men and gender minorities
Relationships between different sectors of the economy.
Our relationship with language and narrative.
As human beings and members of human families, we all experience suffering.
As vulnerable individuals and groups, some of us suffer far more than others.
Our dominant culture encourages many of us to deny and ignore suffering.
Collectively, we need to hit pause and take time to heal and start over.
The Benefits of Cultivating Non-Violent Communication (NVC). The link does not work.
Research shows as many as 40 percent of Canadians experience or witness domestic violence.
The Kaiser Permanente-CDC, Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, shows conclusively that many people experiencing abuse and neglect in childhood will have an increased risk of chronic illness throughout their lifetime.
Research suggests many of us engage in risky health behaviors to avoid our pain.
Many of us disconnect from ourselves and our pain to function in the short term.
Long-term, unaddressed trauma may contribute to high rates of chronic illness.
Parents, physicians, and clergy who advocate for abuse, harsh judgment, emotional detachment, and rigidity to prepare babies and children for life create disconnected adults prone to illness.
Western-trained therapists are beginning to learn how to heal individuals, families, and communities from traumatic stress.
Our minds and bodies are indivisible. Dualism, especially Cartesian dualism, is an outmoded and unhelpful system of thinking.
A small proportion of people carry out the most heinous crimes, torture, and genocide.
The pain and suffering a handful of sociopaths can cause for other people and animals is horrendous. To protect everyone, it is critically important to identify, monitor, and limit the impact of serial rapists, torturers, and murderers.
As a culture and a society, we must invest in preventing child abuse and domestic and partner violence and address these antisocial cultural, and social challenges as universally as we handle COVID-19.
Animal abuse and torture must be addressed. There is a strong link between animal abuse and suffering and the serial killing of human beings.
We need to discuss, research, and study how best to avoid giving power to “strong,” authoritarian” leaders who incite violence against ‘The Other,” which leads to genocide.
We need to study how contagious kindness and compassion, cruelty, and abuse are.
We must study how to defuse and peacefully overcome the politics of bias cultivation, hatred, and division.
We need to study how to recognize and limit the adverse effects of psychopaths and sociopaths within our families, churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, schools, communities, corporations, and institutions.
How Veterans Can Talk to Kids About Cancer
U.S. veterans are at a greater risk of several types of cancer, including mesothelioma, lung cancer, and more. A cancer diagnosis is devastating to family members — especially children and teenagers. However, veterans can learn how to talk to children about their cancer diagnosis to help ease their worries.
We seek to:
Collaborate with all who wish to create abundance for the Seventh Generation by advocating for, educating about, envisioning, and imagining long-term programs and solutions.
Create communities and a society in which all caregivers and parents have the resources and time needed to allow all our babies to be deeply loved and nurtured, to explore, grow, and play safely, and to be protected from abuse, neglect, and exposure to deadly chemicals in plastic toys and body products stored in plastic.
Protect our babies from being programmed to become “Anxiety Prone Productive Consumers.”
Ban all profit-motivated advertising directed at babies, children, and people under 19 years of age and our young parents.
Call on every level of government to tackle pandemic profiteering.
Request our governments to pilot and monitor the introduction of an easily accessible, administered, and monitored Universal Basic Income.
Tackle homelessness, mortgage foreclosures, and spiraling costs of housing.
Tackle Climate Change and plastic pollution.
Decolonize and decarbonize with minimal disruption and harm to all, especially those vulnerable.
Honor and reconcile with our Indigenous people.
Reconcile with the people of Québec.
Create our own local, national, and international version of a Doughnut Economy, as described by Kate Raworth. https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/.
Change how we live and create new policies and laws to interact with kindness and compassion with family, friends, neighbors, and all non-human conscious life on our interconnected living planet.
https://www.ciwf.org.uk/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9qzilI-z7gIVgoTICh1FOQCZEAAYASAAEgLaWfD_BwE
http://markjaccard.blogspot.com/
Encourage, fund, and support family, friends, and neighbors who work in fossil fuel or related industries so they can transition to work in a Green economy. https://www.corporateknights.com/
Encourage, fund, and support each other, our family, friends, and neighbors, as we cultivate maximal kindness and transition to regenerative approaches to our industries producing energy, clothing, electronics, food, healthcare, and shelter. https://advaya.co/events/series/a-journey-home
Encourage and support family, friends, and neighbors to become leaders in cultivating wind energy, Green Wave Agriculture, and biodegradable products. https://www.greenwave.org/
Save wild salmon, trout, cod, and all finned fish.
https://www.saen.org/ https://pages.uoregon.edu/norgaard/pdf/Salmon-Feeds-Our-People-Reed-Norgaard.pdf https://www.raincoast.org/projects/wild-salmon/
Add in the Joy of Wild Salmon Alexandra Morton is a Youtube video
Create abundance for the Seventh Generation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2phg8nOd5E.
We advocate so that:
Western Medicine will recognize the benefits of intentionally and explicitly cultivating kindness and compassion. https://www.compassionomics.com/
Western Medicine will recognize the importance of emotional wellbeing to our health. https://drgabormate.com/topic/mindbody-health/
Western Medicine will begin integrating new data demonstrating that minds, bodies, hearts, and brains are physiologically linked in complex ways.
Being Kind can be developed as a Can Meds Role.
Benefits of self-kindness and self-compassion be added to the curriculum for healthcare professionals.
Health risks of individual and intergenerational trauma, bias, and discrimination be added to the curriculum.
https://www.cmaj.ca/content/192/9/E208
Administrators, clinical, and support staff are evaluated for knowledge and practice of kindness and compassion.
Medical staff bylaws be changed so that prior to suspending a physician without warning, the physician will first be informed of concerns raised by colleagues and staff. Also, that the physician is first offered a full functional, cognitive performance evaluation and medical evaluation. If a health challenge is identified, the physician may then be offered medical leave with care and rehabilitation rather than be suspended without pay.
All patients recommended intensive combination cancer therapy also be offered baseline cognitive performance evaluations, and follow-up evaluations to help guide decision making to manage their responsibilities at home and work during and after treatment.