How We Love The People We Love Posted by Aabha Gupta, May 11 2018 [During January's Gandhi 3.0 Retreat, Meghna hosted a special guest Awakin Circle, where Mandy Len Catron, Gary Zukav, Linda Francis, and Karma Lekshe spoke on "spiritual partnership". In 2015, Mandy authored a viral NY Times article on 'how to fall in love with anyone,' and she just published a book on the topic. Below are her insightful remarks on love. This was originally posted on Feb 13, 2018.] I am going to talk about spirituality and partnerships, and I am going to focus more on the partnership side of things and specifically on romantic relationships. But I'm hoping that what I'm going to talk about will extend in interesting ways into other kinds of love relationships that are not necessarily romantic. And hopefully that will resonate with what the other speakers are going to talk about tonight. As a little background, I grew up in rural Appalachia, Virginia, in the United States. ... Read Full Story

Planting Seeds For First Kindful Kids Circle In London! Posted by Trishna Shah, May 10 2018 “While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.” -- Angela Schwindt We are so excited to be planting seeds to come together with families for the first ever Kindful Kids Circle hosted by the London ServiceSpace community! One of our first "family-oriented" experiments in ServiceSpace started as a newsletter back in 2011 and more recently has been rippling into offline community gatherings like Awakin Kids Circles in CA and in Surat, Mindful Parenting Calls, Kindful Kids events and Conscious Mama's Circles! It's been so beautiful to watch this all unfold and I've been quietly holding onto an intention in my heart to pay forward this love and inspiration to families here in London for the past couple of years. My daughters are always wondering why they can't come to a retreat or stay up late at night for Awakin Circles, so ... Read Full Story

Soil, Soul, Society One-day Retreat On Earth Day - A Posted by Chi Phan, May 08 2018 When Shamash told me that about a retreat with Nipun after our two-day conference in London, I did not imagine that we would host it. Our responsibility emerged about two weeks before the day, right as our own work for the conference was taking up every spare moment we had. It didn't seem possible that we could organise a "proper" Awakin Retreat the way we had seen it done, but we trusted that somehow things would work out. A gathering of this nature was always about flow and co-creation anyway (so we told ourselves). The theme: The first thing I did was to reach out to those I knew could help us "anchor" the event. Shamash himself did not even know what anchoring was, so we certainly needed help! One of these conversations led me to learn that we were having our event on Earth Day, the largest global environmental event. Bang, ... Read Full Story

KindSpring Weekly: Spotlight On Kindness: Celebrating Posted by Ameeta Martin, May 08 2018 Latest issue of 'KindSpring Weekly' newsletter is themed Spotlight On Kindness: Celebrating Mothers. One of the greatest lessons (and hallmarks) of motherhood is selflessness. This is often evident in the animal kingdom as mothers instinctively protect their young and will even sacrifice themselves if need be. Selflessness is not a trait reserved only for mothers, but one that we should all aspire to embody more often. Let's honor our mothers this week by passing on their gift of love. - Ameeta

The Person Behind The Person Posted by Ashima Goyal, May 07 2018 At the most recent Awakin circle in Vienna, Nipun shared his journey through a childhood experience when he was touched by a selfless act of kindness by a stranger. He shares it with so much life in the words and I can only attempt to recount it here: Once during their family trip to India, he met up with his kindergarten friend. They were both now these 14 year old boys now and his friend wanted to show him his new bike and take him for a ride. As they were going on the road filled with potholes, Nipun felt uneasy in the stomach and finally they had to stop for him to throw up on the side of the road. Just then a stranger with a small bag saw them. He went to a nearby stall, asked for a knife, took out a lemon from his bag and gave Nipun ... Read Full Story

Narmada Parikrama: Pilgrimage Of Generosity Posted by Trupti Pandya, May 07 2018 As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a great sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow- A. C. Benson Word of mouth caused a snowball effect where 36 people ranging from the age of 7 to 70 years decided to say yes to a half a day walking pilgrimage on the banks of Narmada river. What all of us experienced was the generosity of Mother Nature and local people staying along the banks of Narmada river who served complete strangers wholeheartedly. I realized that the more you trust and surrender, the more generosity you experience. River Narmada which along its course of 1740 km originating from Amarkantak flows westwards into the Arabian Sea. The belt that we walked is the only place, where it flows ‘Northwards’ and so it is called as ‘Uttarvahi Narmada'. 'Chaitra' month in the Hindu calendar is considered to be auspicious for doing this ... Read Full Story

Buying Ice Cream For 4 Wet Guys In Saffon Robes Posted by Bonnie Rose, May 06 2018 [I just received a really touching email from Sue, who attends our Church, titled 'How I Ended Up Buying Ice Cream for 4 Wet Guys in Saffon Robes'. Right? Sue's a great writer, occasional actress, speech coach, co-director of our High Spirits (fun) Ministry, Heart Sewing fan, and all around beautiful person. Most recently, she quietly collected and distributed over 700 books ("word capital') to a local jail. Her email really speaks to the contagious energy of good brought to us by ServiceSpace. Thank you!] Today I had the day off and the world was my oyster. I had been reading some of your blog posts and thinking about ServiceSpace and your India trip, and how it had all affected us in so many ways. I thought "I should do an act of kindness." I went down to the harbor to get my planner in order for the next few months. I ... Read Full Story

Every Encounter Is An Opportunity To "Do The Work" Posted by Chi Phan, May 06 2018 It was the third time Fatima came to clean my flat. It was a hot day and the door to my patio, which had been closed on previous occasions, was open. "I have swept the outside as well so that you could sit out there in the sun" I was touched. What a kind person she was. I had not even thought about asking her to do that. The previous time Fatima had told me about a difficult client who kept changing the booking last minute, for which Fatima had had to reschedule with me a few times. I had told her that she needed to put down firm booking rules. I also told her that she did not have to put up with the rudeness from this other lady. She had agreed with me but as it turned out, she could not say no to unreasonable demands from this person. Not because ... Read Full Story

Meditation And Tea In Mississippi Begins ... Posted by Eileen S, May 05 2018 Meditation and Tea in Mississippi begins a second year! Our small group continues to shine our tiny light in the rural south of America. We have explored different ways of being together including walking meditations outside as darkness settles, lying on our backs observing the stars become visible as the full moon creeps up over the tree line, and exploring satsumas, cilantro and flowers with all five senses. Sometimes it is a challenge to hold my guiding idea that opening the circle is most important...not how many people join it on any given evening. And then, walking down my drive through the trees returning from one of our evenings, I am captivated by the tiny lights of the fireflies blinking on and off. Each light so small. And at the same time, with enough perspective, a whole universe of lights making the darkness welcoming and beautiful. Shine On Each and Every One of You...I know you are all out there!

Yesterday I Hosted An Awakin Circle ... Posted by BURCU , May 03 2018 Yesterday I hosted an Awakin Circle in Izmir-Turkey. I'd like to thank Aslınur and Marian for inviting me to their AC in İstanbul which gave me the inspiration, the courage to imitate one where I live... It is the space where feel at home, at peace and harmony. I love to cook for someone, I love to serve, I love to sit in circle and I LOVE to sit in silence together with people. With this enthusiasm I couldn't wait for a long time and I just decided to make the call even if It was a little last minute but it still worked well. Since November we were coming together every wednesday for meditation and a cup of soup; we didn't know about "awakin" and wednesday meditations, it happened spontaneously... We have practice of way of council and meditation, I mean there was already a field for this service. Thanks to ... Read Full Story

Awakin RAK - April 2018 Posted by Pooja Zaveri, May 03 2018 We began our fourth session this week on Sunday and it was a wonderful evening at Neelam auntie's house. We had our one hour of silence and this was then followed by passage reading which was Recyling Karmic Trash. It was so reflective and everyone was able to connect how we absorb all the negative emotions around us and start reacting rather than recyling this trash of emotions which is about people whom you may not even know. Then we had an hour long discussion on which different events, activities we could get involved with and how we can go around to increase our services to the community. Lots of ideas, examples were discussed. This was followed by a delicious meal and and an heart full of gratitude for the wonderful hosts of this circle which we had. I was also able to bring my mom for this month's session and she loved it. Till then, Keep Smiling

A Laugh With This Being Posted by Anuj Pandey, May 02 2018 [A powerful story shared by Nisha at last week's Awakin Circle in Santa Clara, where the weekly passage (read by Donna!) was on 'Recycling Karmic Trash'.] Hi, my name is Nisha. An example that comes to mind for me is we were at a two-day community retreat in London. (We're visiting from London, and this is our first time to be at the Awakin Circle here. It's quite a blessing to be here). So, part of that day-long retreat was that everyone got a gift bag that volunteers had put together, and each person had to go out into the streets and find a homeless person to give this bag. Now Anil, who's my husband, drives to work and he couldn't find a homeless person. On my commute to work, there were loads of homeless people. So I took this bag and went off to work. But, I just couldn't find any ... Read Full Story

London Circle With Satish Kumar And Nipun Posted by Trishna Shah, May 01 2018 Over the last few years, the ServiceSpace London community has been blossoming in many different ways with all kinds of Awakin Circles, retreats, local kindness events, Karma Kitchens, conferences and more -- laddered by a committed group of local anchors. Last Friday, this group of ladders came together for a rich deep-dive circle with Satish Kumar and Nipun. Our intention was simply to embark on a journey together as a community of noble friends, who can nourish and inspire each others' journeys of service in different ways and put our hearts together to pay it forward to others. In that spirit, ahead of the circle, we offered a few readings as seeds for our conversation, which included Make Virtue Viral, Holding Space for People, Gifts of a Servant Leader, The Ripple Effect of You, and Power of One. The sunshine and warm weather graced our beautiful evening as we circled up to ... Read Full Story

A Day Beyond Words At The Service Space Retreat Posted by Alma Gall, May 01 2018 The Service Space retreat on the 27th of April in the "Dreamicon Valley", which is located in the Austrian federal state of "Burgenland", was a truly inspirational day. It was co-created by around 30 participants from diverse backgrounds and places and was filled with lots of love, silence and deep connection in a truly “traumhaft“ (this German word can literally be translated into dreamlike) atmosphere. This is also thanks to our hosts, Kathrin and Ulli, who transformed their "Heuriger", a typical Austrian restaurant, into a wonderful retreat location. We were very honored with Nipun’s second visit to Austria, after the Happier World Conference in London he came all the way to Vienna to join us. Before the retreat we had had two amazing days with several events in Vienna: an Awakin Circle hosted by Christine in a community centre, Vienna’s first Karma Kitchen at the co-learning and co-working space “Markhof” and ... Read Full Story

KindSpring Weekly: Spotlight On Kindness: Kindness - Posted by Ameeta Martin, May 01 2018 Latest issue of 'KindSpring Weekly' newsletter is themed Spotlight On Kindness: Kindness - Pass It On. Almost two dozen KindSpring volunteers have worked joyously, tirelessly, and anonymously, to ship over 75,000 orders of smile cards (literally MILLIONS of cards) to over 150 countries. These cards, intended to accompany a random act of kindness, invite the recipient to pay-it-forward to someone else. Imagine the beautiful ripples these small cards have created! - Ameeta

Another Awakin Circle In Vienna! Posted by Christine Lendorfer, Apr 30 2018 Last year, in September 2017, when Nipun was visiting, Awakin circles started in Vienna. Over the months, we continued the circle every other Tuesday -- although the momentum of the circles did drop. Just when it felt like we needed some inspiration to steer the circles towards its true essence, we had the Nipun's presence again last week! On Wednesday 25th April, close to forty people came together and the same magic transpired, the wisdom was flowing that Nipun keeps spreading wherever he goes, and his unconditional love touched us all. We even had a little angel named Ashima magically land from Romania, and bring great light to our circle: Sitting in silence for one hour was a new idea, and a challenging one, for many friends who meditated for the first time, but in the hour of sharing, they were truly touched by the acceptance, gratefulness, and love they felt. Franz, ... Read Full Story

21 Days Kindness Challenge - A Student's Reflection. Posted by sunita Lama, Apr 30 2018 “Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier” - Mother Teresa Deeply moved by Nipun’s talk in December, on students as leaders of change, Maria, a final year student initiated the 21 Days Kindness Challenge for senior school -- with the hope of cultivating a spirit of community. The student council and staff were in full support to experiment and make the learning environment positive, congenial and a ‘happy’ one. Below is her reflection of the experience. As an introduction to this initiative, the students listened to a talk by a guest speaker who was invited by the student council. She gave an inspiring talk on the power of sharing and had most of the students spontaneously do acts of kindness as soon as she left. Here’s a clip of the note I sent her at the end of the day as an update. The challenge was ... Read Full Story

Karma Kitchen In Vienna! Posted by Hermann Gams, Apr 30 2018 On April 26th, a big community of friends came together to create our first Karma Kitchen in Vienna, Austria! Hosted at Markhof ("Village in a City" experiment) in partnership with Dream Academia, the day was filled with unending joy and co-creation. In the heart of Vienna, Markhof has been a co-working and co-learning space that combines all community needs: learning, working, celebrating and living. It's vision is to create spaces where the WE is more important than the I. Dozens of volunteers, from kids to grandparents created a special atmosphere in a brand new kitchen that was used on that day for the very first time. Ashima flew in from Romania, Carollyne from Netherlands -- and in many ways, it was mini reunion of our time at Karma Kitchen in Auroville last December! In fact, we were also inaugurating the superb kitchen at Markhof. What an auspicious opening! Oh, and the food was absolutely ... Read Full Story

Birthday Smiles For Shiv! Posted by Bradley Stoll, Apr 29 2018 Yesterday afternoon, a crew of folks gathered on the streets of San Francisco yesterday, to do random acts of kindness for Shiv's 23rd birthday! From writing cards to strangers and loved ones, to gifting snacks to passerby, to handing out socks to the homeless, the afternoon was filled with smiles. More stories to come, but here's a few highlights... While offering strangers tangerines, people at first would be suspect that there was some agenda behind it. But as soon as the words, "We're doing random acts of kindness for a friend's birthday" slipped out of our mouths, people's shoulders would lighten and they'd smilingly accept our gifts. One stranger responded, "For an act of kindness, I'll take it!" While walking down a crowded city street, a passerby somewhat pushed one of us in a hurry -- to which the immediate (unintended) reaction from one of us was "Thank you!" It's great to see ... Read Full Story

Labor Of Love: The Art Of Holding Questions!! Posted by Swara Pandya, Apr 29 2018 Last year November we hosted half a day gathering to dive deeper to explore idea of labor of love and understand the many nuances of sustaining it. The intention of this gathering was to really listen to inspiring stories, help each other identify multiple forms of capitals and intelligences that could be hiding in plain sight and build friendships to support each other’s intentions well beyond the gathering. At Servicespace we have always talk about the spectrum and diversity and therefore by nature’s way of designing we had a diverse group come together. The idea was to really hold space for the stories that were to emerge and look at the fruition of such holding. The gathering brought together a diverse group of volunteers and entrepreneurs working on a variety of ideas – from an IITian who decides to give up a lucrative career to a life of self-restraint and spiritual ... Read Full Story