Some time ago I had this great idea to shift consciousness. It would be called the Kindness Campaign and would be delivered via bumper stickers with a corresponding website. You would go to the site and take a pledge of kindness. Not unlike Thich Nhat Hahn’s inspired pledge of nonviolence called the Manifesto 2000 (or unlike the Pledge of Sufficiency being developed by the Global Sufficiency Network). There would be resources about the power of kindness, and eventually practices and a search engine to find practitioners that would help deal with whatever was in the way of being kind. (Remember those bumper stickers, Random Acts of Kindness and how it became part of the popular vernacular?) Kindness is a core principal across most major religions: Love Thy Neighbor, Do Unto Others. It was an idea – and invitation – I thought everyone could relate to.

I wanted to start a movement you see. Some paradigm shifting, easy to relate to idea that would go viral (Now, my inbox is cluttered with this kind of stuff!) Then came another idea, the Curiosity Movement. Lacked the alliteration of the “k” sound, but I realized I was looking for movement – shifting context – not just behavior. My thinking was that curiosity was an antidote to the limitations of uninvestigated assumptions that caused our behaviors. With the rigor of asking questions, being curious, we could begin to unveil what motivated us to think, do and desire what we did. How else, I thought could we jump paradigms, but to see and admit that our realities were compilations of our interpretations of realities, through uninvestigated filters. Everything we experience, and say “that’s just the way it is,” is just that, an outcome of some assumption we have not considered the validity of. (Plus, “that’s just the way it is” is a Scarcity Myth as defined by Lynne Twist in The Soul of Money, 2000.)

All of this existed in my mind. I knew I wanted to be part of something bigger than myself, something that could move people towards choices that would naturally solve the big, complex problems of our world. I knew I didn’t quite have it though, so I never attempted manifestation. Nor did I really know how.

Then I discovered the Sufficiency Conversation. Or, more precisely, it discovered me. It is not so much a campaign, (though many campaigns are born from, supported by or supporting the work of ushering in the mindset of Sufficiency – for example, check out Four Years. Go. campaign). It is indeed more like a movement, a movement like some others, and one that began from a conversation about the sense of enoughness. I don’t hear it called a movement much by those who talk about it, not yet. But it is.

The Sufficiency Movement addresses today’s problems, not from the problem point of view (like my Kindness Campaign that was, in essence, working from the assumption that people were wrong for ever acting mean and that they should be kinder – to the earth, to the people around them, and to themselves). But, instead, it is a reminder of what is and was and will be – that we are enough, that we have enough and that we do enough.

This is a radical idea. A radical remembering of our core nature of love, of connection, and of trust, and it is a practice. Sufficiency is at the very least a shedding of the scarcity paradigm that has us enslaved to money, buying stuff we don’t need, excessive behaviors and neglecting the vital assets of our communities from infrastructure to children to marginal populations.

The movement I am privileged to be a part of is the manifestation of decades of thinking, by folks in the Global North and the Global South, individuals and communities, high profile leaders and lesser known folks. This radical idea is happening; it is a growing context in which more and more people grow curious about and make a pledge to devote their life to through their work, their parenting, their buying and their being. It is the antidote to the insanity of the scarcity paradigm that currently dominates and that is destroying our economies, our environment and the social fabric in which we depend.

For me this is a dream come true, and I invite you to join us.

Come to the Global Sufficiency Summit on April 10th & 11th in Cambridge, MA.