TRS Foundation

Hope, honesty and integrity are critical qualities as we make our lives, neighborhoods and the global community sustainable in the face of challenges such as climate change, peak oil, pandemic disease, economic downturns, war, natural disasters, etc… our stories need to reflect neither the decadence and degeneracy of nihilism nor the dogma of fundamentalism but the hope and creative energy of activism.

Remaining hopeful, encouraging others and building our capacity to move forward are the critical qualities we can cultivate on an individual and societal level. Taking action can alleviate our feelings of hopelessness, building our capacity to do more and inspire others to do likewise. Taking action with other similarly minded people adds a layer of faith in others also doing the right thing, further building hope.

Honestly assessing your ecological footprint, understanding your need for “stuff” and evaluating your progress will clarify the challenges ahead of you. Creativity is where we spice up and take ownership of our lifestyles and create routines and rituals that are expressions of who we now are.

Compassion can be cultivated by ways of formal meditation, attention and insight.

We need to acknowledge for ourselves our blind and habitual rejection of fear, because it’s fear we’re really afraid of, not the pain of the world. We already know that pain is part of life. What we’re actually afraid of, and what we’re turning away from, is our sense of a lack of capacity to receive it, to bear with pain in a sane way. Pain, JUST IS, and pleasure, JUST IS. not right or wrong. While we don’t usually have a problem with pleasure, except that sometimes we forget ourselves with it, we do have a big problem with pain. It motivates us to do all sorts of things that become additions or other avoidance strategies, which are very wasteful of energy, both inwardly and outwardly.

Compassion can be cultivated. It isn’t helpful to approach compassion or any of these heart matters with the idea of having or not-having it; compassion is a potential in all of us. But it needs to be cultivated. One of the best encouragements for cultivating compassion is to intentionally witness compassionate beings.