excellent long essay on universal core values for world reform, Nichola Torbett,
The Network of Spiritual Progressives 2007.02.14: Rich Murray 2008.07.28
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.htm
Monday, July 28, 2008
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1554
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rmforall/messages/83


Rich Murray rmforall@... 505-501-2298
___________________________________________________


http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/

http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/article.php?story=20061207101937278

Core Vision Posted Wednesday, February 14 2007
by Nichola Torbett, Director of National Programs

Updated information on membership dues to the NSP can be found by going to
www.spiritualprogresives.org

You can join online or contact us at:
The Network of Spiritual Progressives, c/o TIKKUN Magazine
2342 Shattuck Avenue, Suite 1200, Berkeley, CA 94704.
Tel: (510) 644-1200
(call during business hours 9:30 a.m. -5:30 p.m. M-F, Pacific Standard Time).

Email: RabbiLerner@... or generosity@...

Many of us are involved in or greatly admire the accomplishments of social
change movements like the peace movement, the women's movement, the
environmental movement, the movement for economic justice, the civil rights
movement, the gay rights movement, the labor movement, struggles for civil
liberties, and the disability rights movement, to name just a few.

And yet, we believe that these movements have tended to underplay or even deny a
very important dimension of human life -- the spiritual dimension. And this
deficit has limited the potential impact that all these movements could have. It
will take a very different kind of movement -- one founded on and giving central
focus to a spiritual vision -- to create a real alternative to the political
Right, to the fundamentalists (religious and political), and to our society’s
ethos of selfishness, materialism, and cynicism.

We seek to create that alternative. We are a community of people from many
faiths and traditions, called together by the Spiritual Covenant with America
(see www.spiritualprogressives.org ) and its vision of healing and transforming
our world. We include in this call both the outer transformation needed to
achieve social justice, ecological sanity, and world peace, and the inner
healing needed to foster loving relationships, a generous attitude toward the
world and toward others unimpeded by the distortions of our egos. Our movement
will encourage a habit of generosity and trust, and the ability to respond to
the grandeur of creation with awe, wonder and radical amazement.

We are guided in our work by our belief in the principle of solidarity. For some
of us, this principle has spiritual roots in the Jewish commandment to remember
that we were all slaves in Egypt; we believe that we are all harmed by
oppression directed at any group or individual. This is a message which is
common to most of the religious and spiritual traditions of the human race for
the past several thousand years, and is part of the tradition also of many
secular and even "orthodox atheist" groups that came into existence in the past
few hundred years when the religious and spiritual communities that supposedly
were committed to these values actually failed to take them seriously and
became, instead, embedded in economic and political realities that were
oppressive.

We in the Network of Spiritual Progressives use the word "spiritual" to include
all those whose deepest values lead them to challenge the ethos of selfishness
and materialism that has led people into a frantic search for money and power
and away from a life that places love, kindness, generosity, peace,
non-violence, social justice, awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation,
thanksgiving, humility and joy at the center of our lives.

We believe that many of the secular movements that exist in the world today
actually have deep spiritual underpinnings, but often they are themselves
unaware of those foundations, unable or unwilling to articulate them and
sometimes even holding a knee-jerk antagonism to explicit spiritual or religious
language. This antagonism limits their effectiveness, though it derives from
legitimate anger at the way that the language of spirituality and religion has
been sometimes used to justify war, oppression, sexism, racism, homophobia,
ecological indifference, or insensitivity to the suffering of the poor and the
homeless of the world.

Solidarity means that we affirm our responsibility towards each other within our
families, within our nation, and within our spiritual/religious community -- and
also beyond the narrow boundaries of ethnicity, religion, and geography. We
affirm the obligation to actively resist injustice and refuse to take part in it
even when we can't prove that our resistance will produce change. In solidarity
with the oppressed, we wish to see the democratization of economic and political
institutions and a redistribution of wealth so that all people can share equally
and sustainably in the benefits of the planet.

We hope to have the courage -- in the tradition of the Jewish prophets and
interpreters of Torah, in the spirit of Jesus and the early Christian
communities of resistance to Rome, in the spirit of Muhammed, in the spirit of
the activists of the labor & civil rights and feminist and gay rights movements
-- to speak truth to power. The Network of Spiritual Progressives is an
interfaith organization (and welcoming to agnostics and atheists as well).

At the same time, we will challenge the lack of a spiritual dimension in the
agendas of our allies in progressive social change movements. That gap has
allowed the Right to present itself as the force that cares about spiritual
issues. And the Left’s failure to address spirituality has led many to believe
their hunger for a larger framework of meaning and purpose must be separated
from their involvement with social transformation.

Social change activity gets focused on a narrow political agenda that lacks the
depth that can inspire sustained commitment or nourishing involvement. Imagine
an international group of people who would see themselves as allies to each
other in advancing this way of thinking, people who are unashamedly utopian and
willing to fight for their highest ideals, yet unashamedly humble in knowing
that we don't know all that we need to know to do the healing that needs to be
done.

Imagine that this group would help each other in our individual as well as group
activities, affirming what is good and brainstorming with us about how to create
a movement that gives equal priority to our inner lives and to social justice,
that takes loving and caring as serious goals for social healing, and that
rejects the utilitarian and materialistic assumptions of the contemporary world
and actively fosters awe and wonder in its participants. Imagine that you could
be part of creating that.

You can -- by helping us create the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP). The
NSP starts from this fundamental recognition: The sources of external injustice,
suffering, and ecological numbness are to be found not only in economic and
political arrangements, but also in our alienation from one another, in our
inability to experience and recognize ourselves and each other as holy, in our
inability to respond to the call of the universe which bids us to deeper levels
of consciousness and love, and in our inability to overcome our own egos and see
ourselves as part of the Unity of All Being.

We need a spiritual consciousness along with a political consciousness if we are
to heal and transform the world. Some of us in the NSP are atheists or
secularists, some of us belong to traditional religious communities, some of us
are just beginning to work out our relationship to Spirit. But all of us
understand that we need a movement that can address spiritual needs.

It is our contention that social change and inner change go hand in hand. We are
building a movement in which we can talk about love and caring for each other --
and this is the only way we can overcome the old left/right dichotomies and dead
policy debates that fill academic journals, leftie magazines, the insipid
television confrontations between shouting talking heads, the vacuity of so many
of the speeches at leftie anti-war demonstrations, and the rhetoric of elected
officials. For too long these predictable slogans and divisions have paralyzed
American politics and made most of us feel like withdrawing into a purely
personal life.

At this moment, we are particularly excited by and supportive of the upsurge of
social justice activism aimed both at promoting environmental sanity and at
challenging the destructive impact of globalization. But we hope to play a role
in deepening those and other social change movements to integrate into their
core the kind of spiritual awareness that can make it possible for them to reach
a much wider audience and thus be able to actually achieve their social justice
goals.

To do so we must talk at a far deeper level than merely repeating or reframing
the traditional leftist demands for economic and political rights. While we
support those demands and thus welcome any advances that provide adequate food,
clothing, shelter, health care, child care, and other basic rights, we also
believe that these will only be won on a global level when the social change
movements are able to address the spiritual consequences of the triumph of
corporate globalization: a society-wide depression and repression of what we can
variously call the life-force, eros, God-energy or Spirit.

Please note that this is very different from those who talk about spiritual
politics but actually mean only this: that it would be politically advantageous
and opportune to take the traditional liberal agenda and dress it up with some
spiritual or “values” language. So they take the existing liberal/left agenda,
with its primary focus on social justice, inclusion of those who have been left
out, economic redistribution, and peace -- and then they find some Biblical
quotes to bolster the case for the pre-existing liberal/progressive agenda. We
support all that, but our movement goes much deeper. We don’t believe that the
liberal agenda can be won simply by reframing it in spiritual language.

For a large section of the American public, the primary source of pain in their
lives is not about economic deprivation or non-inclusion, but about the way that
the ethos of selfishness and materialism plays out in their personal lives and
in the lives of people around them in ways that are destructive and feel
terrible. They can’t stand being part of the manipulative, narrowly utilitarian
way people treat each other and themselves and the earth. They want a framework
of meaning to their lives and to the lives of those around them that speaks of
higher meaning to life, shows a path to a life that is not only about maximizing
money but about maximizing a meaningful life -- in short, they want and need a
politics of meaning, and need a meaning-oriented movement that can counter the
spiritual depression that surrounds them.

Don’t confuse this with those who simply are trying to put some Biblical quotes
in front of the same old Democratic Party or liberal agenda -- we are seeking a
much deeper change. Our challenge is not only to the Right -- but also to the
liberals and progressives, to the Greens and the Democrats, who have not allowed
themselves to get beyond their knee-jerk antagonism to religion and
spirituality, and whose openness to religious or spiritual people is only
utilitarian and does not include a willingness to learn about the actual
dimensions of the spiritual deprivation which is endemic to the way global
capitalism functions today, and the ways that it generates a global emotional
depression.

This spiritual depression and emotional repression that suffuse contemporary
life are the near-universal responses to the globalization of a
self-congratulatory individualism, obsessive materialism, and consumption -- all
provided as compensation for the meaninglessness of our present-day culture. The
one-dimensional technocratic consciousness, speed-up of work, perception that we
have "no time" to do what we really believe in, and our inability to recognize
others in terms that go beyond what they can do for us to advance our own
agendas as rational maximizers of self-interest -- all these combine to create
human beings who, if they don’t explode in violence or self-destructive alcohol
and drug abuse, find themselves in varying degrees of disconnection to their
inner selves, their feelings, and their capacities to be loving towards others
and responding to the universe with joy.

In contrast to this, we encourage an engagement with the Sacred, an Emancipatory
Spirituality which affirms pleasure and joy and the recognition that "there is
enough," a replacement of postmodernist self-alienation with a renewal of Being
based on awe, wonder and radical amazement at the mystery of the universe and
the mystery of every human being on the planet as a manifestation of the sacred.
Our economic, social and political institutions need to be replaced and
rethought not only because they are unjust, but because they foster a
consciousness that keeps us from connecting to the deepest truths of the
universe and make it harder for us to recognize each other as fully free, fully
conscious, self-creating, loving beings. In this sense, the globalization of
Spirit is the antidote to the globalization of Capital.

We reach out for a spiritual dimension not as a replacement for, but as a
deepening, of our understanding of social action, and not as a replacement for
but a deepening of our understanding of informed science. Our spirituality does
not reject the value of rational thought nor does it suspend scientific inquiry.

Why is it that people who live in the advanced industrial societies of North
America, Europe and Japan, the richest societies that history has ever known,
believe we "can’t afford" to share what we have with the rest of the world so as
to eliminate poverty, hunger and homelessness? It is partly because of our
collective paranoia that no one will be there for us if we should ever really
need their help that leads us to think our only security lies in endless
accumulation, to protect our isolated self-interest in face of a deep inner
certainty that others can’t be counted on. And partly because we have a deep
emptiness inside and we have come to believe that only material goods can fill
it. We buy things to buy happiness, to compensate ourselves for the alienated
work, the disconnection from each other, and the estrangement from our own inner
selves that constitute the texture of our daily lives.

In our spiritually impoverished world, acquiring ever more things provides an
illusion of fulfillment -- and a replacement for the deep connection with each
other and to the spiritual realities of the universe for which we both hunger
and simultaneously deny to ourselves (lest we re-experience the pain and
disappointment we had at earlier points in our lives when we allowed ourselves
to be vulnerable and then failed to receive the loving and recognition we needed
but didn’t fully get).

In addition, almost every child in our culture gets strong messages to focus
attention on that which can be useful, and away from the spiritual dimension
which has no "practical application." Indeed, this message has been so deeply
ingrained in many of us that we instinctively shy away from the spiritual realm
as though it were as dirty as not being toilet trained. We fear that were we to
acknowledge to ourselves or others that we actually wish for connection with
that which cannot be used or made practical, cannot be subject to empirical
observation or turned into a commodity or something that will make us more
attractive or salable on the job or relationship marketplace, we would subject
us to ridicule and humiliation.

Fearful that we will experience that pain once again, we often build strong
external walls to keep us out of touch with this deep yearning for connection to
each other and to the universe. Instead of drawing on our own inner resources,
we too often find ourselves looking to the media-dominated mass culture for
fulfillment and reassurance that our scaled-down sense of possibility is "what
everybody else is doing" and hence "the only possible path for us too." The
media is one of the many institutions that speeds up time -- protecting us from
the quiet moments in which we might doubt the whole way our lives our being
lived.

Instead of finding our own pace, we find ourselves rushing about, seeking
machines and gadgets that make things go faster, becoming accustomed to media
and technology which speed the pace while “shallow-ing” the intellectual and
emotional level of our daily consciousness. We learn to forget the past and
focus only on the new while devaluing the old, which leads to decreasing
literacy and an increasing difficulty in following a complex discussion,
sustaining a long-term relationship, or committing to social goals that can't be
accomplished immediately.

Sadly, our social institutions only reinforce this materialist view. Our
institutions provide us with the illusion of permanency (pretending we won’t
die) and the illusion that the "real world" is the world of power and wealth.
Compound this with the patriarchal assumption that we should be tough and ignore
our feelings, and we are left with a "common sense" that dismisses the relevance
of our inner lives. We are told that spirituality should be left in the home,
relegated to the weekend, kept separate from the pragmatic decisions that should
shape politics and the business world.

In the NSP, we refuse this kind of "realism." We will unashamedly use and learn
from the language and practices of spiritual communities. The spiritual life can
give us a level of mindfulness, focus, and calm so that we can re-center
ourselves and discover what we truly value.

One reason we are proud to have the NSP draw upon the spiritual wisdom of
Judaism is because we think that the spiritual practice of Shabbat, a
twenty-five hour meditation focused on turning our energies from "getting things
done" to a "celebration of all that is," can empower us in the struggle to heal
our planet. This is one example of the kinds of spiritual practices that we
encourage among our members and for the larger world -- even as we say this in a
non-coercive way without implication that you must be doing a particular
spiritual practice to be part of our community.

So too the Biblical idea of a Sabbatical Year for all and the Biblical idea of
Jubilee with its call for a redistribution of land and wealth back to a basic
equality once every fifty years provide us with inspiration for how to learn
from the wisdom of sacred texts.

Although our organization will speak at times in the name of the best in the
Jewish tradition, we will also honor all major spiritual traditions represented
in our membership. We are a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-spiritual
community -- and we believe that there are many paths to spiritual truth, and we
want to honor all of those which are open to an Emancipatory Spirituality as
presented in TIKKUN magazine. So we draw upon the richness of Christianity,
Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, spiritual truths from indigenous peoples and from the
often ignored spiritual wisdom of women.

We do not believe that every particularistic tradition must be totally left
behind in some new globalized spiritual mush. While we support the attempts
within existing religious and spiritual traditions to renew their foundations,
we do not seek a spiritual melting pot but a world in which plurality and
difference can be respected, even as we affirm the Unity of All Being, the
interconnectedness of all with all.

At the same time, we will challenge reactionary spirituality that privileges one
group above all others while demeaning those who are not part of the group. We
will challenge forms of spirituality which seek to impose racist, sexist, or
homophobic values. And we will challenge forms of spirituality which lead people
into quietism or a de facto accommodation to a world of oppression. In this and
other respects we want to be clear that we do not embrace a vapid "tolerance"
which refuses to make moral distinctions or a deconstructionist logic which sees
all forms of discourse as little more than strategies for some group or other to
gain power over others. We are not tolerant of religious reactionaries who
manipulate the language of God in the service of an oppressive status quo or to
restore patriarchy and authoritarian forms of government.

Our goal is to build a community of people who share a common
intellectual/spiritual perspective -- an intellectual/spiritual cadre of
activist social healers -- even as they retain their own particular religious
and spiritual practices. We will work together to bring a progressive spiritual
politics into the various arenas in which we work. For example, we will bring
our perspective into existing social change movements in the hopes of
strengthening them and making them more successful. Our task is to support each
other as we bring ideas into the public sphere that are often dismissed as "too
idealistic" or "too spiritual" -- and to help each other sustain a commitment to
a transformative agenda against all the pressures to be "more realistic" and
settle for much less than we actually believe in.

In this work, we see ourselves as fundamentally connected to the thinking being
done in TIKKUN magazine. We connect with all who hope for a real TIKKUN (the
Hebrew word for healing, repair and transformation).

The NSP will not be a traditional organization -- certainly not an organization
that would compete with or take resources away from other social action groups.

We are trying to create something which doesn't have an exact analogue in
contemporary life. The truth of the matter is, many of us are wary of any
organization -- they remain human institutions, susceptible to the ever-present
reality of human frailty. The capacity to under-whelm, frustrate, disappoint,
and madden is common to all human organizations, whether spiritual or secular,
whether on the left or the right or in the middle.

Particularly when people start hoping for a loving reality, we often get so
scared -- because we have been so deeply shaped by the pathogenic belief that we
don't really deserve to be loved -- that we try to prove to ourselves that a
better world isn't really possible. That’s when we find people in our
organizations hurting each other in the name of love, being brutal and lacking
compassion, creating endless fights over theoretical differences, or clinging to
ego at the cost of finding real solidarity with others. We will do what we can
to provide a supportive context, but we will also not hesitate to ask people to
leave our organization who would prefer to fight with each other than to
lovingly support each other. Creating an international community of people who
start with agreement on the points in this document can generate generous
amounts of comradely love and solidarity.

We expect that in the NSP we will find ourselves learning from our dialogue with
each other, having intense conversations, listening to each other's formal
presentations but also, and equally importantly, each other's life experiences
and current struggles. Our community will only be sustainable if it provides
many opportunities to laugh with each other, to meditate or pray together, to
sing and dance together, and to experience each other as sources of surprise,
joy and transcendence. So, our expectation is that this commitment will be fun
and joyous.

If you are interested in joining us, please look over the fundamental principles
printed below. Are they principles you share? If so, please become a dues-paying
member of Tthe NSP (you can join on-line at www.tikkun.org or by calling our
national office at 510 644 1200). And we will contact you to find ways to
integrate you into our growing organization.

1. INTERDEPENDENCE AND ECOLOGICAL SANITY

We are one mutually interdependent human race, and we have a responsibility to
be stewards of the planet and of all other life forms. Our well-being depends on
the well-being of every other human being on the planet and on the well-being of
our environment. It is time to overcome all forms of national, religious, and
ethnic chauvinism. It’s time to realize that it is in our own personal
self-interest to ensure a world in which everyone is invited to be part of
loving, spiritually deep, emotionally satisfying, and materially thriving
communities of their own choice, and to live in a world in which mutual respect
and care are the common sense truths by which we live.

As Americans we can no longer worry only about what is "best for America," as
Jews we can no longer worry only about what is "best for the Jews," as
Christians we can no longer worry only about what is "best for the Christians,"
etc. We need to see ourselves as manifestations of Spirit -- the unfolding of
the love and goodness of the universe as it becomes conscious through us. The
world is entering a new period in which this understanding of ourselves as
fundamentally aligned with all other human beings on the planet becomes the
prerequisite for building a global political and economic movement capable of
challenging corporate power and saving the planet from ecological destruction.

To recognize our mutual interdependence does not require us to abandon cultural
difference. We reject the view that says that real peace can only be achieved if
everyone is alike, part of a leveling universal culture fostered by a
melting-pot of preexisting cultures.

We do not seek to obliterate all differences, but to build a multi-cultural
world based on mutual recognition and respect for difference. The world is
better served by a diversity of religious, ethnic and cultural traditions --
each of which has learned to respect and honor this diversity and to divest
itself of those elements in its tradition that lead to hatred or the demeaning
of others. Our responsibility to the planet requires us to make dramatic
transformations in our patterns of production and consumption. We must:

Take all necessary steps to halt and reverse global warming (really, global
scorching). Encourage graceful simplicity in living. We must commit to sharing
the resources of this planet equally with all six billion other human beings
while also committing ourselves to the planet’s ecological sustainability. This
commitment requires that we alter our notions of private property in ways that
give adequate attention to the needs of the whole, rather than approaching the
world first and foremost from the standpoint of our individual rights without
sensitivity to the needs of others.

Adopt a new attitude of caring toward animals and other life forms, and a
recognition that stewardship implies responsibility to take all necessary steps
to preserve the diversity and integrity of life forms on this planet, to the
greatest extent possible consistent with protecting human life (we don't
"respect" the "rights" of cancer or forms of life that are aggressively
destructive to human beings).

Exercise extreme caution in the uses of biotechnology. We should immediately
remove the profit motive and ensure that all significant decisions are made
within a context of democratic control. A new sense of humility should govern
any decision that might potentially alter the biosphere or the genetic
structures of plants, animals or humans. Science must be harnessed to serve the
highest values of the human race, not the profit-motives of corporations or the
military needs of governments.

Commit ourselves to Ethical Consumption or what the Jewish Renewal movement
calls eco-kashrut, (building on the traditional Jewish concern with the origins
of the food we eat as a tool to actualize the environmentalism of our
tradition). Ethical Consumption requires that all purchasing decisions,
including but not limited to those necessary for physical sustenance, be made in
a way that has the least negative environmental impact. We hope to enlist many
people in religious and spiritual communities to participate in the formulation
of standards and the ongoing observance of ethical consumption.

Ethical Consumption is a direction for our communal aspiration, but in this area
as in every other we are super-careful to not let our ideals become a club to
beat each other up with (as in "you own an SUV so you can’t be part of our
movement" or "you have too big a house" or "you shouldn’t take vacations"). As
in all things, spiritual balance is critical: recognizing a direction for our
energies, but being compassionate and tolerant of the different paces at which
people move toward that goal. Tolerant to individuals -- but not tolerant toward
social and corporate policies that are environmentally destructive. Not tolerant
of societal decisions like opposing sensible constraints on ozone destroying
emissions and not tolerant of environmentally hazardous global trade accords.

2. A NEW BOTTOM LINE IN OUR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

Productivity and efficiency must no longer be judged solely by the degree to
which any corporation or institution maximizes profits or power, but also by the
degree to which a corporation, school, government institution, or social
practice tends to :
support ethical, spiritual, and ecological sensitivity and to promote the
sustainability of our environment;
support human beings to be loving, caring and capable of sustaining long-term
loving relationships;
promote the well-being of everyone on the planet;
help people overcome a narrow utilitarian attitude toward each other or toward
the universe and encourages them instead to see other people in a
non-utilitarian way, and to view the physical world not primarily as something
that can be used for human purposes but also through the lens of awe and wonder
at the grandeur of creation.

Beyond all definitions of efficiency and productivity, we seek to shape a
society in which there is time not only to Do and to Make but there is time also
to Be and to Love -- time for family, community, and spiritual exploration.

We want this New Bottom Line brought into all aspects of our public life, so
that we can begin to reshape our schools and hospitals, our government, our
professions, our media in ways that encourage people to see each other as
fundamentally valuable and deserving of love and caring. We reject the notion
that values should be kept out of public life, and instead seek to champion the
values articulated in this statement, and to encourage social change that would
foster these values throughout the society.

So, for example, we want schools to be assessed as successful or as failures not
only to the extent that they produce students who can read and write but also to
the extent that they tend to foster caring human beings who are ethically and
ecologically sensitive, who excel at taking care of others and at developing
their own inner resources, and who have developed the capacity to respond to the
universe with awe and wonder.

We want corporate charters to be dependent on their ability to prove a history
of social responsibility as measured by an Ethical Impact Report. We want all of
our economic and social institutions to be judged successful to the extent that
they foster caring and respect for all peoples and for the planet. While some of
the direction for this thinking has already been developed in Rabbi Michael
Lerner’s book Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul, we
believe that a full vision can best emerge when people in their own workplaces
and professions can form consciousness raising small groups which will develop
concrete and detailed answer to the question: “What would this workplace or
profession look like if it did in fact have a ‘New Bottom Line’ like that called
for by The Tikkun Community -- and how do we begin to take the first steps to
struggle for that new bottom line, both in our own workplace and by uniting with
others in other workplace and professions to seek
support for these changes?” This conversation will become a central task of
people in building a new spiritual politics in the coming decades.

There are some who believe that the New Bottom Line we seek can be instituted
inside corporations and within the evolving framework of global capital. There
are others who believe that it will take a whole new economic system to get a
New Bottom Line. We welcome both within our organization -- our commitment is to
this New Bottom Line, and encourage anyone who is serious about struggling for
that New Bottom Line to be part of our organization as long as they don’t
sacrifice that struggle to “realism” (which is a way of saying, that they don’t
give up the struggle in order to accommodate to the power of the capitalist
system as currently constituted). What matters to us is what happens when the
decisions are actually being made: what are the criteria being used? If, in the
heat of decision making, the decision makers put the development of loving and
caring human beings above the maximization of profits, if hey consistently use
the criteria of our New Bottom Line specified above (n
ot just in their language but in the actuality of their considerations and
deliberations), we don’t care what you call the name of the economic system that
is using these criteria or who formally owns the stocks in those companies.

3. SUPPORTING THE STRUGGLES FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AND PEACE

We are committed to the efforts to create peace and social justice throughout
the world. We insist that hunger and poverty can be eliminated -- and that this
be given a very high priority in allocating our taxes. We support the struggles
for adequate health care and access to medicine, for child care and elder care,
and for other fundamental human rights including the right of working people to
meaningful work with a living wage, the right to organize in defense of their
own interests, the protection of children from exploitation, and the end to all
forms of slavery, forced labor, and sweatshops.

We support efforts to give primacy to ecological and social justice concerns in
all global economic arrangements. We align ourselves with the efforts to
challenge the kind of globalization that is being forged by the world's elites
of wealth and power. We stand in strong opposition to the use of torture or
violence, and all forms of abuse (physical, sexual, and emotional) and insist
that children be treated with respect and nonviolence. We call for an end to
imprisoning drug users and for the creation of a sane drug policy that mixes
prevention and treatment with a recognition that some of the psychedelic drugs
currently illegal have positive medical and/or psychological benefits and should
be made responsibly available rather than having their use criminalized. We
oppose the War on Drugs and its use as an instrument of assault against young
African Americans (jailing them for use of drugs that whites also use without
facing similar penalties) and as an excuse to intervene in Colom
bia and other countries.

We support disarmament both on an international level and on a societal level.
We support the enforcement of international human rights. And we support efforts
to create an international peace force to intervene with techniques of
nonviolence to prevent wars and violence. But we insist that peace depends also
on economic security and feelings of respect and open-heartedness toward "the
Other," and that these need to be an intrinsic part of our conception of
international assistance and aid. We join with the Jubilee 2000 in calling for a
worldwide agreement to abolish all third world debt and instead call for a
guarantee that loans in the future will go directly to the development of
education, training, health care, and housing of the people in recipient
countries. And we support massive funding from the Western world to fight AIDS,
poverty, homelessness, and inadequate education and health care.

We are committed to advancing the struggles of women in all spheres of life for
full equality. Women’s experience and wisdom must become a shaping force as we
build a more liberatory and more nurturing culture and work world. We support
the struggles of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people who seek
full equality, respect, and opportunity to live their lives without being bound
to traditional ideas about gender and sexuality. We see the oppression of gender
as inextricably linked to the oppression that takes place within the categories
of race and class, so we support those who are seeking to build healing in all
three realms simultaneously.

We call upon the United States to move toward an honest recognition and
repentance for slavery, for post-slavery segregation, and for the long history
of oppression and racism toward peoples of color, most particularly with regard
to African Americans but also including its treatment of people from Mexico,
Central and South America, its treatment of Japanese, Chinese and other Pacific
Island immigrants, and its treatment of American Indians. In this regard a
society-wide strategy must include education of the entire population on the
realities of how racism functions in our society, as well as an honest and
serious plan to provide a meaningful rectification of this history of oppression
(which may include, for example, reparations to African Americans and to Native
Americans). Similarly, we call for reparations and rights of return (where doing
so would not cause even greater levels of suffering) for all populations around
the world who have been forced from their homes by war and
oppression (we think particularly of the people of Central Africa, the people of
Chechnya, the people of Tibet, and tens of millions of other refugees around the
world). Where reparations or return are not the best means to rectify past
oppression without creating new forms of dislocation and oppression, we commit
to other strategies to provide rectification -- and these must not only be
economic, but involve public and systematic atonement on the part of societies
that have materially benefited from the misuse of or oppression of others. This
same principle should be applied in matters of class oppression as well as
racial oppression.

We don't seek here to list all forms of oppression which must end -- that
laundry list concept of politics usually leads nowhere. So we will resist the
efforts of some to join our community and spend their time adding new issues to
our list of oppression and claiming that somehow we are oppressing someone or
some group if we didn’t mention them at this point. That kind of discourse is
usually a way to avoid taking any of these principles seriously, by spending all
of one’s time debating them.

On the other hand, we do at least want to give special attention in this
founding statement to what has become a particularly egregious focus of
right-wing energy: the assault on gays and lesbians. TIKKUN magazine has long
championed the transformation of Jewish practices that demean queers or that
limit marriage to heterosexual unions. The NSP will oppose all use of state
power, in the United States, Canada, England, Israel and other countries both,
to disadvantage queer relationships or to limit marriage or family to
traditional heterosexual forms. We honor those who are developing what they call
a "queer politics" that forces all of us to rethink gender relationships, even
while rejecting any attempts to privilege any one approach as "the politically
correct way" for sexual life. Our community also affirms support and honor to
heterosexuality as an equally valid form of family and marriage. We seek to
create a society which is supportive of families and of people making and sust
aining long-term loving commitments, and we will do our best to support people
to work through the inevitable difficulties that emerge in all loving
relationships. And we also will provide emotional support to those who have
chosen to remain single or who have chosen communal forms of living. For those
who are single but don't wish to be, we believe that a community of caring
people should give time and attention to helping such people find appropriate
partners of whatever gender they seek, rather than abandoning them to face the
problem of finding a partner as a kind of lone entrepreneur in a marketplace of
relationships. Similarly, we will give warm welcome to bisexuals and those who
are cross-gendered.

We also want to emphasize the central importance we give to creating a loving
and spiritually rich environment for children, recognizing their right to have
education that is stimulating and meaningful, to be involved in loving and
caring relationships, and to be introduced to the spiritual practices and social
transformation movements that can enrich their lives. In part, this means
learning from our children, trusting them, and giving them opportunities to
shape their own paths. In part, this means that we have an obligation to impart
to the young (and not just our own children) all that we have learned about the
joys and excitements of life, the joys and excitement of intellectual activity
and the life of the mind, the joy of learning skills and disciplines. We have a
responsibility to keep children from inflicting lasting hurt on themselves or
others. Within that context of responsibility, we also wish to affirm pleasure,
not only for ourselves but also for our children, as an
important aspect of life. Similarly, we wish to create contexts for them to
learn the wisdom of our elders, the wisdom and great knowledge accumulated in
science and humanities. We also need to provide forms of support that show them
respect and caring, affirm their right to deepen their own knowledge, affirm
their right to pleasure and sexual and spiritual fulfillment, and provide
opportunities to use their creativity in service to the community.

4. PEACE, JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION FOR ISRAEL AND PALESTINE

We are committed to full and complete reconciliation between Israel and the
Palestinian people within the context of social justice for the Palestinians and
security for Israel. We call upon Israel to end the Occupation, to return
settlers to the pre-1967 borders of Israel (providing them with decent housing),
and to take major (though not total) responsibility for Palestinian refugees. We
oppose Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights and we insist that Israel
adopt a strategy based on open-heartedness toward the Palestinians, repentance
for past misdeeds, reparation, and genuine acknowledgement of the ways that some
Israelis were oppressive, murderous, and oblivious to the legitimate needs of
the Palestinian people. We call for an end to the teachings in Jewish and
Israeli schools and media which demean or demonize the Palestinian people;
instead we seek to replace those with teachings that emphasize the humanity and
goodness of the Palestinian people, Arabs and Muslims.
Although we affirm Israel as a Jewish state side by side with Palestine, we
believe that all non-Jews in Israel, including most importantly Arab or
Palestinian citizens of Israel, should have full civil rights in Israel and
equal economic entitlements to any Israeli who has served in the army.

We call upon the Palestinian people to acknowledge the right of Jews to maintain
their own homeland in the pre-1967 borders of the state of Israel, with Jewish
control over the Jewish section of Jerusalem (including French Hill and Mt.
Scopus and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City) and the Western Wall, and
unimpeded access to the cemetery on the Mount of Olives. We call upon the
Palestinian people to stop acts of terror against Israel and to listen and heed
the growing number of Palestinian voices that are calling for a strategy of
nonviolent civil disobedience We call upon Palestinians to end all teachings in
their schools and media which demean or demonize the Jewish people or Israel and
to replace those with teachings that emphasize the humanity and goodness of the
Jewish people.

We recognize that some Palestinians will respond by pointing out the structural
violence inherent in the presence of the Israeli Occupation and the settlements.
We agree with these points, but still believe that the breakthrough necessary to
free Palestinians from Occupation will only come when the Israeli people feel
enough safety to contemplate arrangements based on trust. Just as Israelis must
demonstrate that they see Palestinians as created in the image of God and
deserving of full respect, so the Palestinians must demonstrate that they see
Israelis as created in the image of God and are deserving of full respect.

Both sides need to recognize a need for repentance for past deeds that were
hurtful and oppressive. Jews must understand why Palestinians were fearful that
the more highly organized and politically sophisticated Zionist movement that
began to emerge in the period 1920-1948 might lead to the disenfranchisement of
Palestinians, and why Palestinians today feel that "the right to return" to
their homes is no different from the right of return that was at the basis of
Zionism.

Similarly, Palestinians need to acknowledge their own role in helping create the
conflict by their armed resistance to Jewish immigration to Palestine in the
years when Jews were being annihilated or when Jews were stumbling out of the
death camps of Europe.

This is just a sample of the stories we must learn from each other so that we
can build reconciliation of the heart, based on genuine compassion for each
other. Political arrangements cannot be trusted until there is a serious
commitment on both sides to compassionate listening to each other. Its only when
both sides can tell the other side's story with compassion and conviction, and
both sides recognize that in some important respects both sides are wrong and
both sides are right, that we can hope to move to a real reconciliation of the
heart.

All the fancy agreements and all the political maneuvering is secondary to
developing an open-heartedness and generosity in both peoples to the legitimate
needs of the other. We believe an important step in that process is for both
sides to learn how to tell the other other side's narrative in a convincing and
compassionate way. This has been done in part in Rabbi Michael Lerner’s book
Healing Israel/Palestine, and in the works of various Israeli and Palestinian
thinkers who are able to transcend their own community’s demand for proving that
their side is the “righteous victim” and the other side is “the evil oppressor.”

We call upon the United States and other world powers to intervene with all
their influence and economic power both to stop the cycle of violence and to
achieve the creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state in all of the West
Bank and Gaza (minus the most minimal border alterations), an end to the
Occupation, and an end to acts of terror. We will support efforts to convince
the United States to condition aid to Israel on the end of the Occupation. We
call upon the peoples of the world to come to Israel and Palestine and actively
interpose ourselves between the warring sides to provide protection to civilians
on both sides. And we call for all parties to adopt the nonviolent philosophies
and strategies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.

Although we do not support any form of nationalism as an ultimate good, we
understand why, in this historical moment, the Jewish people need a state of our
own. With memories of the murder and genocide of our people still fresh and the
perception that we would have been far less vulnerable had we had a state and an
army -- with the persistence of virulent anti-Semitism in the world today -- the
Jewish people cannot be asked to be the first to voluntarily eliminate the
protections of the nation state. That’s why, at this point in time, the TIKKUN
Community is supporting a two-state rather than a bi-national solution to the
Israel-Palestinian crisis, even though some members of our community believe
that such a bi-national state is the only way to achieve social justice for
Palestinians.

After what Jews have been through, it is not reasonable to expect them to be the
first to give up the protections of an armed state. On the other hand, we see
nationalism as a perverting influence in Jewish life -- and one that must be
overcome. So we do hope Israel will become one of the first 20 percent of
countries of the world to overcome the trappings of national chauvinism,
militarism, and excessive focus on boundaries -- say, for example, after the
United States, Russia, China, Japan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, India, Pakistan,
England, France, Germany, Italy, Egypt, Poland, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Libya,
Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, and South Africa have
pioneered that path by abolishing borders and accomplished full disarmament.
Until then, the Jewish people have a right to their own state, which we hope
will eventually move in the direction of confederation with Palestine and Jordan
for economic and political cooperation.

A state with many Jews in it is not a Jewish state unless it embodies an ethos
of love and justice and becomes a living proof that healing and transformation
is possible. Israel is not yet a Jewish state in this sense, so we will support
the forces that will help it evolve in that direction. To make it possible for
Jewish values of love, justice, and peace to triumph inside its own society, and
to open the possibility that Israelis could rediscover the deep spiritual truths
of Judaism, Israel will have to eliminate all forms of religious control of the
state, end all religious coercion, and allow people to find their own religious
and spiritual path, giving equal rights and treatment to non-Jews.

We oppose all attempts by some sectors of the Orthodox world to use the Israeli
government as a vehicle to impose their own particular perspective about
Judaism, including who is "really" Jewish, what counts as a legitimate wedding,
divorce or conversion, etc. We support instead the fostering of a climate of
mutual tolerance and respect among all sectors of the Jewish people. We reject
all practices which lead to unequal treatment of Palestinians or other
non-Jewish minorities within the State of Israel.

So, when we affirm preserving "the Jewish character" of Israel, we do not mean
merely a demographically Jewish state but a state which lives up to the highest
Jewish values of "love the neighbor," "love the stranger," and "justice, justice
shalt thou pursue." In the short term, the greatest obstacle to the creation of
a state living up to the values of an ethically and spiritually renewed Judaism
are the Occupation, the settlements, and what is described in Michael Lerner's
book Jewish Renewal as the "Settler Judaism" mentality.

Settler Judaism sees the world as always against the Jews, always ready to hurt
us -- and hence rejects universal ethical standards and equates "good" with
"what’s good for the Jews." Similarly, settler Judaism assumes that Jewish
interests can be achieved through the use of power and coercion, the
obliteration of those with whom we disagree, and believes that Jews have some
special right to the Land of Israel that allows them to be insensitive to others
who live there.

The greatest obstacle to Jewish values in Israel as in the United States lies in
the triumph of the ethos of selfishness and materialism. Those who respect
Judaism and wish to see it retain its integrity in a Jewish state must reject
the vision of an Israel which finds its ultimate mission in becoming "the
globalization miracle and new technology and finance headquarters of the Middle
East." Rather, we support those who favor a genuinely Jewish society built on
principles of love, justice, peace, and caring for others, including non-Jewish
others. This path requires rejecting those themes and currents within the Jewish
tradition or interpretations of Jewish history which tend to bring out
chauvinism or a narrow focus on the well being of Jews to the exclusion of
others, and instead renewing Judaism to focus on those parts of the tradition
and Jewish history that bring out in Jews greater empathy for others, and
develop the capacities of Jews as loving, generous, open-hearted and co
mpassionate human beings. And it is this same kind of renewal that we support in
every other religious and spiritual tradition.

5. A SPIRITUAL MOVEMENT

The world we want to see cannot be created solely by external economic and
political changes. We wish to see the democratization of our economic and
political institutions, and a redistribution of wealth so that all people can
share equally in the benefits of this planet. But as we indicated above, the
sources of our worldwide economic and political problems are not solely external
in nature, but reflect also distortions in how we experience ourselves and each
other So work on changing our own inner selves and our ideas about the world is
an important aspect of changing the world -- not a diversion from the healing
that is necessary, but an important component of it.

We need to engage in activity that aims at fostering a new consciousness and the
development of an inner life that is not merely private and individual in
nature, but is rather both social and spiritual in nature -- an inner life that
is also an interconnected life with other human beings and with the Unity of All
Being.

In short, the political must have a spiritual dimension. This is a dimension of
life which is rarely given attention in social change movements, but it is a
central concern of the NSP.

Among the central building blocks of such a spiritual dimension:

the development of a personal spiritual practice such as meditation or prayer,
the practice of generosity and sharing what we have with others,
compassion toward others and toward oneself,
including the open-hearted acceptance of one's own and other's flaws,
developing the habit of affirming the being of others even when we may disagree
with some of their beliefs or practices,
careful attention to one's speech so as to not say hurtful things towards
others,
joyfulness and the affirmation of pleasure,
treasuring our bodies through conscious eating and exercising (but without
politically correct guilt trips),
the practice of forgiveness and repentance,
giving to give and not to get,
letting go of fantasies that we can control everything,
and recognizing that there is enough and that we are enough.

We are particularly sensitive to the ways that social movements in the past have
used their own ideals as clubs with which to beat up themselves and those who
are not part of the "in" group, so we want to insist that our movement have a
compassionate attitude toward its own members as well as toward those who do not
agree with us, while simultaneously rejecting a mindless moral relativism which
makes everything OK or acceptable. Building this balance between compassion and
striving for transformation requires practical wisdom, and so our movement
rejects the anti-leadership tendencies that have often been associated with
progressive politics and embraces the notion of spiritual leadership based on
inner depth, compassionate understanding, practical wisdom, and a powerful sense
of humor.

WHY CREATE A NEW ORGANIZATION?

There are many organizations doing good work in each of the areas discussed
above, and we intend to support all of them. We especially encourage the
creation and strengthening of truly transnational grassroots movements focused
not only on resisting corporate globalism but on creating a new democratic
"globalization" -- a planetary movement that is not controlled either by
national governments or by corporations. We especially support efforts to
require that corporations serve the public good such as the proposed Social
Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

What does not exist is an organization that brings all these concerns together
within the context of a unified worldview (there are many groups who have
laundry lists of demands, but these demands do not flow from a shared
theoretical perspective). As a result, many people involved in one or another of
the concerns described above don't really recognize themselves as part of a
larger movement for healing and transformation of the planet, don't see these
others as their allies, and don't inject into their own activities a larger
understanding that could deepen their specific important work, the NSP can
provide that larger framework.

We are people who share the basic ideas of an Emancipatory Spirituality as
described in Michael Lerner's Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of
the Soul -- a book which provides our basic framework.

We also see as foundational the writings of
Peter Gabel, particularly as articulated in The Bank Teller and Other Essays on
the Politics of Meaning, Judith Plaskow's Standing Again at Sinai
and Arthur Waskow's Down to Earth Judaism.

We draw upon the wisdom of many teachers, including the work of
Abraham Joshua Heschel and Zalman Schachter Shalomi,
Marcia Prager and Rachel Adler,
Rumi and St. Francis and the Kabbalists,
Susannah Heschel and Lawrence Kushner,
Art Green and Judith Antonelli,
Jerry Mander and David Korten,
Ken Wilber and Jim Wallis,
Thomas Merton and Matthew Fox and Zygmunt Bauman,
Thich Nhat Hanh and The Dalai Lama,
the Ishbitzer Rebbe and Teilhard de Chardin,
Mordecai Kaplan and Adrienne Rich,
Roger Gottlieb and Walter Bruegemann,
and the work of Catholic liberation theologians, feminist theologians, Socially
Engaged Buddhists, and many more.

What the NSP seeks to offer is a vision that positions the quest for economic
and social justice, peace and ecological sanity within the framework of a
spiritual consciousness and a practice of open-heartedness, generosity, caring
for others and outpouring of loving kindness. The NSP is for anyone who shares
the perspective articulated here.

The NSP’s major organizational contribution to the worldwide movement for social
justice and spiritual well-being will be:

To provide a support mechanism for people who wish to bring this new way of
thinking into the world. When people try to do this by themselves, they often
find themselves burning out or becoming "realistic," that is, adjusting to the
frame of reference of the larger society. We will provide support to each other
to remain focused on a larger and more utopian vision.
To do consciousness-raising in the larger world and in social change movements,
so that they can begin to incorporate our perspective and they strengthen their
ability to survive the burnout, cynicism, and despair that often debilitate
those who wish for social change.
To change the intellectual framework within which most Americans view
contemporary social reality and their own possibilities for a fulfilling life.
To provide ongoing education and the development of theory and practice that
could become models for social healing. We do not intend to replace or
duplicate existing social change movements. But there are many arenas even in
those movements where a more coherent worldview, and an organization linking
them intellectually and spiritually would only strengthen rather than detract
from their important work.
To provide a context within which older and seasoned activists and those
involved in social healing in their work can interact with the new and exciting
generation of younger activists -- and both can learn from each other.
To be a national think-tank for social change movements -- a think-tank that can
help them move beyond narrow economistic frameworks and begin to incorporate a
spiritual wisdom and framework both in their conceptualizing the issues they
address and in building a support community for their own activists.
To be an information-gathering network that can provide an alternative to the
polling done by establishment-oriented groups -- and to ask the questions that
reflect a psychological and spiritual sophistication rarely brought to the task
of understanding what is happening in our society.
We see the educational, consciousness-raising, and linking work we do as a
critical contribution to social healing.

We see ourselves as a corps of spiritual transformers -- that is, a cadre of
people who share a fundamentally similar perspective and wish to work more
effectively by supporting each other, learning from each other's experience, and
more deeply internalizing the ideas and ideals we hold. This is one reason why
we place a great deal of emphasis on agreement with the details of this founding
document -- because intellectual coherence is only possible if we start from the
same place.

Like a new kind of non-sectarian spiritual Order, perhaps like the Franciscans
fused with a Hasidic sect fused with the skills of a guild for social change and
maybe even the willingness to commit to taking care of each other that is
manifested by the Jesuits and by Skull and Bones and by some Native American
tribes, we will make a life-long commitment to supporting the people who join
and stay involved in the NSP, and do what we can to make sure that we help them
in any way we can. For some, that may mean helping someone get a job or
promotion, for others it may mean helping someone get the health care they need,
or introducing someone to a life partner, or advancing their literary or
political career, or assisting them in playing a leadership role. The commitment
is based on the recognition that as members of the NSP people are themselves
making a commitment to be involved in using our own talents, skills, and life
energies to promote the kind of healing and transformation envisi
oned in this Core Vision. So of course we are going to want to do everything we
reasonably and morally and legally can do to help each other advance through our
lives, and give each other companionship, love, caring, generosity and
compassion as we face life's challenges from the time we are in college to the
time we may be facing aging and death. It is this kind of commitment to each
other that can only be made real by our own individual actions and which becomes
the ultimate glue to holding together a vanguard of love.

We see TIKKUN magazine, along with the spiritualprogressives.org website and
Love Embodied e-zine, as the primary vehicle through which we can communicate
with each other about the new thinking and activity that the NSP develops.

So How Do I Get Involved?

There are many ways to be involved in the NSP. We imagine that in a few years
these will be the answers some of us will be giving about what we've been doing
to build the NSP:

Some of us are seeking to bring these ideas into our professional or workplace
contexts and to campaign for a "New Bottom Line."

We are creating groups of like-minded people at our annual meetings of
professional associations, at national conventions of unions and political
parties, or at the national gatherings of our religious communities.

Some of us are business people introducing these ideas into our businesses and
experimenting with new ways to work -- or we are developing communities of
people who infuse their philanthropic activities with this kind of orientation.

Some of us are working in foundations and some of us are working in universities
and some of us are working in media and some of us are working in local churches
and synagogues and mosques, and wherever we are, we are raising the kinds of
issues raised in this founding statement.

Some of us are creating local NSP chapters -- essentially chapters or salons of
the NSP in which we can work to educate people in our local areas about this
perspective and deepen our understanding of our principles in monthly
conversations.

Some of us are participating by talking about these ideas in every context in
which we find ourselves and by convincing others to read TIKKUN magazine

Some of us are students who are seeking to create campus chapters of the NSP.

Some of us are engaged in solidarity work with the Israeli peace movement or in
developing local initiatives to challenge the Occupation. Some of us are
developing teach-ins about Israel-Palestinian peace, and in other ways
challenging the mainstream interpretation of that struggle.

Some of us are bringing these ideas into the anti-globalization, ecological, and
social justice movements or affinity groups of which we are part. Some of us are
trying to do that in the Democratic Party, the Natural Law Party, the Green
Party and other political parties.

Some of us are intellectuals working in academia or in policy institutes or in
media and seeking to foster an understanding of this perspective.

Some of us are artists, poets, writers, musicians and others who will be
participating by using our skills and talents to advance the consciousness
described here.

Some of us are challenging local and national media, insisting that they
recognize the distorted and cynical nature of their presentations, and educating
the public to alternative ways to think about reality. Some of us are retirees
who are making phone calls and writing letters to the media or to neighbors
about these ideas.

Some of us are trying to influence foundations to adopt and support this
perspective. Others of us are involved in fundraising projects to support the
NSP and fund educational work. Some of us are trying to change the way people
think about philanthropy, or the way they use their charitable donations -- so
that they become a force to convince social change movements to incorporate this
broader perspective.

Some of us are working in communities of seniors and developing spiritual
eldering projects to support the ways that retired people can provide spiritual
leadership for the society.

Others are working in schools and pushing for a new bottom line there. Still
others are working to get the Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution on the ballots of local and state elections (requiring corporations
to get a new charter which would only be rewarded if they could prove a history
of social responsibility). Some of us are helping shape a spiritually oriented
political party, while others are working within existing parties.

For all of us, the NSP is a place where we can talk about these ideas and give
each other mutual support for being unequivocally utopian and committed to large
scale TIKKUN olam (transformation of the world). We get this nurturance through
TIKKUN magazine, the spiritualprogressives.org website and email groups, the
Love Embodied e-zine, and through NSP national gatherings.

What will the National Organization Do?

We will hold national conferences/trainings which will be aimed at exploring
more fully the ideas put forward in this statement and applying them to current
social, political and spiritual realities. Meetings of our conference will not
be about passing resolutions or debating policies, but rather about developing
our own inner spiritual resources, thinking through ideas together, and learning
from cutting-edge thinkers, spiritual leaders, social activists and
practitioners of healing and transformation.

We will provide an email discussion groups for those who want daily briefings on
current national happenings and priorities. Right now, we don’t have the
resources for a moderated bulletin board, but that could happen in the future.

We will develop educational material that will help people do organizing around
the national priorities for that year.

We will seek publicity in national and local media to highlight the perspectives
articulated in this founding statement.

We will take public stands on issues that connect to this founding vision and
publicize those stands, organize public gatherings or other events to forward
those ideals, develop a corps of speakers who can speak to these issues,
encourage artists, film and video people, and writers to integrate our
perspective into their works, and find other creative ways to provoke public
discussion of the NSP perspective.

We will assist in the formation of coalitions and partnerships and national
campaigns (including media campaigns) to advance these ideas.

On leadership: Our organization rejects both the anti-leadership tendencies of
some parts of the Left and the Guru/Great Man tendencies of various spiritual
movements. We want to give full and strong support to leadership -- leadership
not chosen on the basis of “representing” either a constituency or a cohort of
the population, but rather a spiritual leadership based on inner depth, wisdom,
deep understanding of the world and of spiritual disciplines, compassionate
understanding, practical wisdom and powerful sense of humor. We seek leaders who
encourage the growth of these qualities and skills in our members.

We are all too familiar with organizations in which concern about democratic
process paralyzes leadership so that they never feel capable of taking creative
action or making public statements for the organization. That’s why we do not
model ourselves on the “consensus building” organizations that predominate today
-- even as we admire the democratic impulse that underlies that practice. Nor do
we accept the leveling that fails to recognize inequalities in levels of
intellectual or spiritual or emotional development among people (based in part
on differences in life experience). There are people among us who know more, or
who have had unique experiences that they can articulate in ways that are
helpful to all of us, and not everyone is in that position. So we want to treat
our leaders and teachers with genuine respect, but not with uncritical
subservience to their views when we disagree.

Not everyone in the NSP agrees with every point in this statement. What they do
agree with is this: that this statement is the foundational position of this
organization, and that insofar as we function within the context of the NSP or
act as its public representatives to the public or to other organizations we
acknowledge ourselves as bound by the approach articulated here. Since our
primary organizational goal is to be a force that will educate others to the
perspective articulated here in this Core Vision, and to the ideas that underlie
it, it is reasonable for us to want people within the organization to really be
enthusiastic about its perspective and for its leaders and spokespeople to share
all of its major points articulated here (but not necessarily all the ways that
these get elaborated in the future).

The NSP is committed to fostering a new consciousness so that we allow ourselves
to know that the most significant and rewarding part of our lives comes through:

Acts of love and generosity

Kindness to humans and animals

Caring for and giving to others without expectation of reward or a “return on
the investment of our time and enegy”

Work that is fulfilling both in its process and in the sense it gives us that we
are contributing to the public good

Awe at the grandeur of creation

The experience of being recognized on the deepest level of our being and
recognizing others in that way

Acknowledging our connection to something larger than ourselves and seeing our
lives in the context of service to the ultimate triumph of love, goodness,
justice and peace.

We hope you join us, and we pray for guidance and wisdom, humor and love as we
build this exciting venture.
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