The Passionate Citizen Intensive by Rabbi Michael Lerner and Cat Zavis

We will share the difference between a so-called “liberal” worldview and a “spiritually progressive” one and why it’s important to bring spiritual values of love, kindness, generosity and caring into discussions of political rights and economic entitlements – to see each other as embodiments of the sacred and respond to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement. We will focus on the environmental crisis and movement and see how to approach this issue from a spiritually progressive worldview and how that differs from both liberal and conservative worldviews.

Focus Issue of the Week:
The Environmental Crisis That Will Affect All of Us

We march by the hundreds of thousands in the streets, vote in favor of GMO labeling, challenge coal and fracking in our communities, and sign petition after petition to stop the Keystone Pipeline and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and, nonetheless, environmental devastation continues unabated. We try to do our part by recycling, buying local and creating local gardens, yet there is no comprehensive strategy to tackle these problems. This week we’ll explore tools and strategies needed to build a united movement that can effectively challenge the corporate and political elite in this country and around the world.

In this module you’ll:

• Gain the skills to integrate a spiritually progressive worldview in environmental advocacy work.
• Learn why social change efforts are not as effective as they could be and what you can do to turn that around.
• Develop an understanding of the importance of advocating for a worldview and systemic changes while working on local or particular issues.

In this session, we will share a worldview grounded in spiritual and ethical values and discuss the importance of articulating those values explicitly in social change and political work. Instead of simply seeing the political and social change landscape through the lens of political rights and economic entitlements, you will come to understand deeper, underlying core principles that can help build a movement to unite people across differences and speak to their core needs.

Focus Issue of the Week:
Black Lives Matter, and Poverty and Economic Inequality

Ferguson, Staten Island, Baltimore, Oakland – look around and you’ll see, bursting into public awareness, a deep crisis that has been there for many decades. However, it only appears in public consciousness when something as drastic as a race riot or the overt murder of an unarmed black man makes it impossible for the media to bury the story entirely. In our first Focus Issue, we will discuss these topics and explore how we can approach these issues from a spiritually progressive perspective.

In this module, you’ll:

• Understand how to activate the power of visioning rather than just protest.
• See how to work more effectively across partisan divides.
• Overcome limiting beliefs about what is possible when you share a vision.

During the third week, we will focus on understanding and moving beyond our own resistances to create the world we want. We’ll ask: What messages did we receive as children and adults that interfere with our ability to actually stand for the highest values and create that which we desire for ourselves and the world? When you can identify these inner and outer resistances with clarity, you discover how to overcome those messages and help others to do so as well. We’ll learn how to quiet the voice within that tells us we have to be “realistic” when what we really want is to be idealistic.

Focus Issue of the Week:
What’s the Matter with Politics as Usual

In this section, we will share a spiritually progressive vision that is different from what you’re hearing from both liberal and conservative leaders. We will use, as examples, the current political realities in the U.S. – what the Clintons and Obamas could have done, but did not, and what progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and other progressives (or even possibly YOU) could say and do to support and inspire the public in new ways that existing social change movements or liberal/progressive candidates have yet to introduce.

In this module, you’ll

• Learn how requiring ourselves to be realistic hinders our ability to both see and advocate for the world we actually want and limits our effectiveness to transform the world and its systems.
• Gain clarity as to why people consistently vote against their own economic interests and the deeper underlying needs that must be addressed to inspire people from all walks of life (regardless of religion, political party, class or race).
• Understand the internal psychological/emotional, intellectual/ideological and spiritual resistances to believing a world of love and justice is possible.

Global capitalist values have permeated all segments of our society so that everything has a price but nothing has a value and we are trapped in cycles of over-consumption, depression, alienation, debt and loneliness. We will explore how capitalism has become a religion of its own and has resulted in a breakdown of families, morals, communities and the ability to create meaningful, lasting and trusting relationships. Capitalism has led us to believe that we live in a meritocracy where if you do not “succeed” (i.e., earn a certain amount of money or have a certain amount of power) it is your own fault. This leads to self-blaming tendencies. We will unpack this phenomenon and help you shift from self-blaming to understanding how the marketplace and social structures in which we live impact your “success.”

Focus Issue of the Week:
The Elephant in the Room – Global Capitalism

Through this week’s Focus Issue, you’ll learn how your potential involvement with policy initiatives could contribute to healing the damage of current oppressive systems – while restoring democracy and generosity to our social, political and economic institutions so that they begin to reflect love and justice.

In this module, you’ll:

• Familiarize yourself with the vast scale of ways that global capitalism affects both our internal and external lives.
• Uncover the psychological implications that capitalist society has had on the way that you relate to yourself and others.
• Unpack the idea that capitalism, as the status quo, is the only world order possible and envision a new one, which prioritizes a new bottom line.

It is critical that activists, social change agents and social change movements learn how to engage with themselves, their leaders and those perceived to be on the other side with compassion and empathy. Too often we demonize those in our movements and those on the other side rather than try to compassionately and empathically understand where they may be coming from. This demonization undermines our effectiveness and perhaps even more importantly results in a movement that fails to embody the values and principles we are striving to create in a transformed world. To cultivate compassion we’ll practice empathic listening and expression.

Focus Issue of the Week:
Law as a Healing Profession

Lawyers are taught in law school how to argue either side of an issue and our legal system is based on an adversarial process rather than on a restorative process. What would our world look like if we actually focused on healing the harms and wrongs rather than punishment? What if contracts were grounded in shared values of caring for each other and the planet instead of ensuring the greatest profit regardless of the cost to humans or the planet? We will look at how to transform our legal system from one that focuses on individuality and transactions to one that supports community, connection, caring and relationships.

In this module, you’ll:

• Learn about alternative legal systems and ways to address societal problems that highlight and prioritize community, connection, belonging, healing and restoration rather than punishment and blame.
• Discover how to engage the power of empathy and compassion to heal, transform and repair the world.
• Learn the skills necessary to empathetically listen and hear others and to more deeply listen to and know yourself.

What would your work look like if your profession was grounded in the principles of the New Bottom Line, rather than an emphasis on maximizing profit? How would this transform what we do everyday and how we interact with one another in the workplace? In this session, we will learn how our professional lives can be a launching point for social change if we deliberately transform them to be filled with meaning and purpose. We will discuss how it is both important and possible to dedicate our labor energies toward a world of love and justice. We will share the current work in various professions (law, healthcare, psychology, engineering, and programming and scientists) and develop strategies to create a Professional Task Force of the Network of Spiritual Progressives in your own workplace.

Focus Issue of the Week:
Transforming our Education System

We all know that our public education system is seriously broken. Schools are underfunded, teachers are underpaid, classes are huge and students’ needs are sorely undermet. We will share our visions, ideas and create strategies for engaging people in working to change our educational system so that all students experience school as safe, fun, engaging and challenging, and teachers have the flexibility and freedom to share their talents and gifts in ways that inspire and help build critical thinkers.

In this module, you’ll:

• Understand the internal psychological/emotional, intellectual/ideological and spiritual resistances to believing a world of love and justice is possible.
• Gain a deeper understanding of how and why schools have been structured the way they are and how that structure supports the current economic system.
• Explore what an education system would look like if based on the New Bottom Line.

Sharing difficult messages in the privacy of our homes, with family members or friends can be hard enough, but raising difficult issues and sharing challenging messages in the public context can be even more complex. In this session, we will discuss how to raise the level of political and social change movement conversations from merely focusing on a narrow issue (such as homelessness, hunger, poverty, fracking, climate change) or particular identity (e.g., women, racism, LGBTQ) to put forth a worldview based in solidarity that can unite people working on diverse issues or from diverse perspectives. We will use the skills learned in Module 5 to respond with compassion and empathy – while still promoting our vision and perspective and building a love and justice movement.

Focus Issue of the Week:
A Healthcare System that Can Work for All

We all know that our healthcare system in the U.S. is anything but healthy. Yet there is neither the political will nor sense of people power to transform it. In this section, we will both explore what impedes our capacity to engage in struggles for meaningful change and how we can create a healthcare system that actually works for everyone – patients, doctors, nurses and patient care assistants.

In this module, you’ll:

• Understand how capitalism impacts our capacity in the U.S. to have a healthcare system that works for all.
• Envision a healthcare system that actually prioritizes healing and well-being for all rather than one that prioritizes profit.
• Learn how to contextualize the local, focused issues in the framework of spiritually progressive politics without losing either.

Truly transforming our society so that it works for everyone is not only about doing good deeds like feeding the hungry once a month or providing a shelter for the homeless, it’s about ending hunger and homelessness for everyone… and more. For thousands of years there have been wonderful people who act in kind and generous ways in their personal lives, doing acts of charity, giving money or food to the poor, while nevertheless participating in economic and political structures that are hurtful and oppressive to others. In this session, we will explore how to harness our faith, religion and spirituality to engage in the work of transforming and healing the world. We will learn about the Network of Spiritual Progressives ethos of integrating self-transformation with spiritually-engaged activism.

Focus Issue of the Week:
Religious/Spiritual Communities and Transformative Change Work

In this module, you’ll:

• Reflect on what your own personal spiritual values are and how you can translate those values into a shared goal for all humankind.
• Identify what factors block your ability to live or realize your spiritual values.
• Develop tools to help begin your involvement in spiritual activism.
• Learn what it means to be a spiritual leader.

In this session, you’ll learn about “unrealistic” proposals and how to share them with others in ways that are inspiring and engaging. We will practice bringing the proposals to various political groups, social change organizations, spiritual and religious communities and to families and friends as a way to integrate all the teachings shared in the previous sessions.

Focus Issue of the Week:
Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment (ESRA) to the US Constitution

This week we will look at a specific proposal put forth by the Network of Spiritual Progressives that embodies the values of love, justice, nonviolence, peace and environmental sustainability – seeing each other as embodiments of the sacred and responding to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement.

In this module, you’ll:

• Embody the idea that change is possible and that the reality of a better world is only as unrealistic as we allow it to be.
• Learn how to effectively advocate on behalf of large-scale transformation in a way that will not only seem plausible, but desirable enough for others to want to get involved.
• Explore the ins and outs of the ESRA to discover the tangible steps you can take that will create meaningful, systemic change.

In this session, you’ll learn how to overcome your own inner reluctance to be a “consciousness transformer” and how to respond to the obvious objections that people always come up with – both the rational objections and those based on inner cynicism, powerlessness, and despair about whether we could ever create a world that embodies the spiritual values for which we privately yearn but publicly doubt is really possible.

Focus Issue of the Week:
The Global Marshall Plan (GMP)

This week we will look at a specific proposal put forth by the Network of Spiritual Progressives that embodies the values of love, justice, nonviolence, peace, environmental sustainability – seeing each other as embodiments of the sacred and responding to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement.

In this module, you’ll:

• Learn how to effectively frame this domestic and foreign policy initiative.
• Understand security as a concept of generosity, not as domination.
• Learn how the GMP will shape global consciousness and systems and how doing so can result in meaningful change for the betterment of all.