Translator: Rhonda Jacobs Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
So I am just - I'm, like, ridiculously excited to be here -
TEDxWaldenPond, how rich is that?
How exciting - Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts,
the birthplace of so many amazing, historical
and social movements of our time.
You know, I think about the Patriot Minute Men
from Lexington and from Concord,
men and women who were so willing to stand for what they believed in
and to stand for their ideals
that they were willing to give their lives for it.
It's really profound when you think about that.
And then, fast forward 70 more year beyond that
and right here in the woods at Walden Pond,
the birthplace, really the birthplace of the Transcendentalist movement -
that radical notion that there's a oneness or a unity
between God, man, nature.
This is a place that's rife with social and intellectual movements;
and I have a belief:
I believe that those of us who are here tonight,
participating and enjoying this event, TEDxWaldenPond,
are another era of ushering in a new world of what's possible in our communities.
And here's the thing, guys:
I believe what's possible is that each and every one of us
can begin being responsible
for the creation of conscious communities.
So what do I mean by that, "conscious communities"?
You know, I looked up - I went to TED.com
and searched the key word for "consciousness"
before I did my talk,
because I know that that word is used in radically different ways
in the fields of science or medicine or philosophy or spirituality,
that word has a lot of different meanings, what it means for someone to be conscious.
And I really highly don't recommend
if ever you want to do a TED Talk some day,
that you go to TED.com for your information
because what you'll find are a vast array of incredibly intelligent people
doing fabulous oratories on the topic that you are preparing to speak for.
(Laughter)
Not a good idea.
Anyway, so let me tell you how I'm going to use the word for the phrase
"consciousness" or "conscious" as I talk about conscious communities.
I'm going to use it from a metaphysical orientation
to mean the field inside of which one lives and moves and has their being
that is made up through our beliefs, our thoughts, our perceptions
and our ways of being.
Consciousness is not that which you can see,
but what gives rise to seeing.
Not what you are seeing, but how you are seeing.
And then this word "communities."
I love the Latin root word of the word "community,"
it means - "communitas" - the Latin root word communitas.
"Com" meaning "with,"
and "muni" meaning shared experiences that link us together,
and "tatis" meaning small or intimate.
So you see inside of that definition that our conscious communities,
our intimate groups, inside of which we are sharing our experiences,
linking together in our experiences, through that which we believe,
that which gives us meaning and purpose.
I believe that the participation and the experience
inside of conscious communities
is one inside of which your highest sense of self
is mirrored back to you, and you can see yourself in other people.
And in fact, there are communities
inside of which your vulnerabilities are protected,
and your strengths are celebrated.
I'm blessed to participate in a wonderful conscious community in my own life,
just to use an example of this.
I'm a member of a 12-person Master Mind group,
and a Master Mind group could loosely be defined
as a spiritually-oriented goals group.
It's a group of 12 women that get together every other week
and talk about what we're up to, what our goals are, what our plans are,
and what we're dealing with in our lives,
and then to get feedback from the other members,
and also to hold one another in prayer.
So while that is a really lovely experience in conscious community,
what makes this group more unique, I believe, and more interesting,
is that we are 12 women from 11 different communities,
three different countries,
seven of whom are black,
five are white, a handful are gay, the rest are straight,
two are married, two are mothers, one is a single mom.
So you can see we don't really share any demographic similarity whatsoever,
we come from all fields of professional endeavor,
from music and the arts, corporate America,
the nonprofit sector, business owners.
So we come from every single area of life and walks of life,
but what links us together, what binds us together,
is our shared belief and our shared perception
in the power of like minds coming together to raise one another up.
You know, I'm really passionate, and proud,
that TED took on this global initiative today.
Today, October 13th, 2012 is the day that TED took on a global initiative
to talk about what's possible in our communities around the world.
And I think that's really an important question
because in many ways, our communities are failing us,
aren't they?
Look at just a couple statistics to back that up.
A wonderful TED Talk by Dr. Brené Brown
from her research at the University of Houston,
her talk on vulnerability.
She teaches that we are the most overweight,
over-medicated and addicted generation in history.
Thanks Brené.
(Laughs)
I really could have lived my whole life
without ever really knowing that fact about our generation.
Even more troubling statistic about our younger generation,
ages 15 to 24.
The number one disability in that age group
is depression and substance abuse.
Mental illness, the number one disability.
And then lastly, also about our younger generation,
that same age group, the second and third leading causes of death
in that generation, in that age group, is homicide and suicide.
So I believe that what these numbers represent
are largely -
a failure of our community that they represent,
largely have to do with a lack of belonging,
a lack of meaning,
a lack of being connected to something greater than yourself.
And in fact, a lack of sense that my life matters,
that I am intimately connected to a group of people around me
that mirror back to me my greatest sense of self.
The 19th century philosopher Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist,
wrote about this quite eloquently.
He coined the phrase "anomie"
to talk about the discontented sense of alienation
that people in communities feel when they are disengaged,
when the communities have had a loss of focus on meaning and on values.
Durkheim wrote about that in response to the industrial revolution
back in the 19th century, and he said that he believed
that the shift from the communal good and the communal experience
to the individual striving, egoic strivings of people
are what gave rise to this rise of anomie, this lack of belonging, lack of meaning,
lack of purpose.
In fact, Durkheim taught
that one of the most important principles for human beings,
one of our most important tasks of our humanity,
is to grow in consciousness, to transcend the day-to-day, the everydayness,
the day-to-day struggles that we go through,
the ordinariness of our lives,
to transcend that to the experience of what he called "the sacred."
Experiencing the sacred, the sense of oneness and peace and connection
that one has the opportunity to explore.
You know, Durkheim wrote about those things
at the advent of the industrial era, and I have to wonder,
what would it be like if he were alive today, in the information age?
When each and every one of us is so always constantly plugged in,
and yet so very rarely actually genuinely connected.
So I believe that there is a new era upon us,
a new era of possibility -
that there's a fabric of meaning that we can begin to connect with in our lives.
I love the words of a contemporary American philosopher,
his name is Jacob Needleman, and he says that we are a culture
that is awash in material good and yet impoverished with time.
Impoverished with meaningful time,
time that feeds the soul,
and stimulates the mind,
and opens up the heart.
So we are a culture awash in material good but impoverished with time.
So as we look at this opportunity now - I know everyone is so busy,
you know, everybody's got things going on.
But what we do because we're so busy is we look to something "out here"
to feed us,
and to nurture us, and to perhaps give us pleasure,
or maybe even to numb our pain
rather than looking within to give us our sense of meaning,
our sense of purpose,
our happiness, our satisfaction, our connection.
But you know, I'm not really talking to you just about ideas and concepts,
I'm really talking to you about my own life.
Fifteen years ago, I was one of those people that I just described to you,
the most overweight, over-medicated people of our time.
(Laughs) No, I wasn't that,
but I was one of those people that was just always busy,
working a full-time job, starting a business,
playing sports, taking classes, teaching workshops,
I was just always on the run, and going, and doing this, and doing that.
I was so busy, in fact, and out all the time,
that my landlord used to say to me,
"Jackie, I think you rent this apartment so your cat has some place to live."
And that was my experience in life until things started to happen to my body
that I didn't quite understand.
I started actually breaking down
and having all kinds of illnesses and injuries
that I a) didn't understand, and b) weren't really feeling very well.
So I took it upon myself, I've got to get this figured out,
and I decided I would go both the traditional medicine
and the complementary medicine route,
and my primary care physician did some tests and figured out,
and he said,
"Jackie, you know, it looks like your adrenal system is really overtaxed,
overloaded and perhaps even shutting down,
you need to slow down, you need to get some rest.
But my beloved acupuncturist wasn't quite as gentle and kind -
this wise old man looked at me and said,
"Jackie, look, I know you've got a lot going on in your life,
but here's the thing:
If you keep living the way that you're living,
and doing what you're doing,
you're probably not going to live very long.
Here's the thing - you have a lot of energy,
but you have the life force energy, the vitality, the life force chi
of an 80-year-old woman."
Well, let me tell you, that got my attention.
And I recognized that I really needed to go within,
and rather than continuing to live my life through external means
and what was going to bring me satisfaction or achievement or success -
and it was all good, I was not an unhappy person -
I had to go within
to find not "what" there is for me to do but "who" is there for me to be.
What is my "why"?
That bring us to really the fundamental question of my talk.
How do we begin creating conscious communities
in a largely unconscious world?
And I believe that good question, as with all good questions,
can't be answered in the head,
they must be felt in the heart.
So I want to invite you to envision with me now,
to take that question into your heart,
and imagine what our world will be like when we all start making the shift
from external conditions and what we're doing "out there"
to consciousness and how we're experiencing ourselves "in here."
Rather than the mind-numbing busyness that dizzies our days,
so we go from one thing to another to another,
to actually shift, to ask that pertinent question:
What is it that I'm here to do?
Right here at Walden Pond, Thorough, in his book "Nature," wrote
"Men lead lives of quiet desperation,
and so many of them die with their songs still in them."
The question for you to answer as you shift from circumstance to consciousness
is: What's the song of my heart?
And how will I deliver it in this world?
And as you make that shift,
you'll find you can't do that unless you make this next important shift,
and that is this:
Moving from this frantic busyness and overwhelm
to a sense of presence,
being fully present in the now moment.
Recognizing that no matter how much you have to do in the world,
all that there ever really is to do is what you are doing
right here, right now.
And when you make that shift,
it immediately gives rise to the third shift
that I believe we need to make as a culture,
and that is that we need to shift from this sense of alienated disconnect
to this sense of oneness and unity.
It is who we are.
It is what we've come here to do,
come here to experience.
This sense, going back to the Transcendentalists,
this radical notion that we are all one:
God, nature and humanity.
So I believe that those of us here tonight at TEDxWaldenPond
and those of us in the TED community world wide,
as we come together and make this agreement
that that is what we are here for -
See folks, it doesn't take all of us, it just takes enough of us
to have that impact on our culture,
have that impact on the consciousness that we all are,
to make this shift to begin ushering in a new world of possibility
for our lives and for the world around us.
That's my mission, it's my promise,
it's my passion,
and I hope that each and every one of you will join me.
Thank you.
(Cheers) (Applause)