Blessings for the next stage
Meeting the Dalai Lama, our Kosmos Journal special issue, podcasts & events!
Dear friends,
I hope these holidays have been an opportunity to simply be with your loved ones and relax as I did after an intense end of the year and before a very promising 2024.
I would like to share with the you some of the last blessings of 2023 that are paving the way for the next stage of this work, in particular the launching of the French translation of Politics of Being - Politique de l’Etre - to be published by Robert Laffont on February 1, 2024. You can preorder it on different platforms via this link.
We have also been working on setting up a new Francophone newsletter! Please subscribe to it to receive updates in French and about activities in the Francophone world.
Meeting the Dalai Lama
A very special and deeply transformative blessing has been from the Dalai Lama who received our group in his home in Dharamsala, India on November 8th. I am very grateful to Sofia Stil-Rever and Khoa Nguyen for convening this loveforce seminar including this audience with his holiness. The seminar included teachings every morning by Samdhong Rinpoche, a Bhuddist monk and former prime minister of Tibet, who blessed and praised my book, which I offered to him for his birthday on the first day of the seminar. It is hard to describe what happened to me and my wife during that week. We felt we received so much energy that we had a hard time landing back in France and I did fall slightly ill on my way back, so integration was definitely not easy.
During this last trip to India weI slept at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Delhi. As always when we visit, I bought a few books. In one of them, I found by chance this very aligned quote by Sri Aurobindo’. His writings have been very influential to the Politics of Being:
My wife and I did notice in that space, a new overemphasis on nationalistic ideas of Sri Aurobindo, something that was not there a decade ago when I last slept there, an evolution which a friend of mine in Auroville coincidentally said to me. This is happening in the context of Prime Minister Modi’s nationalistic leadership, whose messages (see an example here), in particular as president of the G20, were everywhere on the streets. As a friend told me “he is very much speaking like you”, and I thought it was indeed a promising sign in the sense that it shows that this language can be desirable, though implementation is another story !
Kosmos Journal special issue on the Politics of Being
Another significant recent written resource for Politics of Being is our Kosmos Journal special issue, featuring an interview of Christiana Figueres by Emelina Corrales, as well as contributions of Thomas Hübl, Arthur Dahl, Gary Malkin, May East, and Grandmother Ejna Jean Fleury.
Podcasts & Events
Career and Spirituality conversations with Julie Pône
I also had the privilege of joining Julie Pône for an episode of her career and spirituality conversations, in which I was able to share about how my spiritual and professional journey have converged in the elaboration and promotion of a Politics of Being.
Here are some highlights from our inspiring conversation: The Forest as a Career guide, Politics of Being pitch.
No BS spiritual book club
Finally, Sandie Sedgbeer asked me what my favorite ten spiritual books are. This throw-back was a great opportunity to recap my own inner journey, which I described through this list, which Sandie and I discussed in this interview. It includes "The Art of Dreaming" by Carlos Castaneda, "The Synthesis of Yoga" by Sri Aurobindo, or "Love Letters to the Earth" by Thich Nhat Hanh. I am also talking to her on Thursday Jan 18th at 6 pm CET (noon ET) about the Politics of Being. You can follow up live on her youtube channel.
The Great Upshift book launch
At the end of the year I also participated in the online launch of the Great Upshift book, along with other wonderful contributors such as Ervin Lazlo, David Lorimer, Gregg Braden, Charles Eisentein, Satish Kumar, and many others.
Here you can see the video about Politics of Being in this context, as well as comprehensive recordings of the event from day 1 and day 2.
Conversations on the World as it should be
Much more is coming including heading to Indiana in February for this inter-religious event “conversations on the world as it should be” organized by the Ansari Institute at the University of Notre Dame. Stay tuned !
In peace and gratitude,
Thomas