Seven Core Values

Thanks for sharing Tap! I've been reflecting on 'abundance' myself over this last period in my life and am finding that there is some potential for miscommunication around that word. To me, abundance refers to abundance of love, time, patience, giving, and most basic of necessities. However, it does not mean abundance of trees to cut down, people to exploit, oil to process, etc. I'm finding that sometimes 'abundance' is confused with 'wasteful' and/or 'insensitive to natural environment.' thought that reflection may by helpful as you socialize these values :)

Appreciate the post, Tapan. And I also wanted to alert "us" about the nature of the path we have traveled so far. Having gone through endless meetings, discussion, dialogues, camp fires etc in my last job, I got really, really tired of visioning, creating shared values etc. Coming into a ServiceSpace gathering used to feel like fish returning to water. I noticed that most ServiceSpace related efforts were amazingly organic and had a bring-things-on-demand or install-on-first-use kind of approach. This included explicit talk around values too. When Nipun asked me redo the first smile card design as the original was low-res, he explained to me about the project as a "prank" and that's it. There was no talk about values, vision etc. Yet, Smile Cards project grew to have all the seven core [...]

Ragu, love your point and thanks for holding that voice. Birju, I've been meaning to do a blog post on consumption, conservation and contribution. Its quite clear that consumption is indulgent, but the distinction between conservation and contribution is interesting. Conservation says, "Let's not be wasteful." But what if the opportunity cost is purifying the mind? That is to say, what if by wasting something, I'm growing in generosity? Or its more frequent counterpart: what if by conserving something, my mind is becoming stingy? I think there's a conservation that comes from a scarcity mindset; it tries to make a moral argument of protecting nature (for instance) and being less wasteful, but it just feels like a beautified facade for being cheap. When conservation comes from a s [...]

I was considering Birjus comment too, until Nipuns thoughtful reply made complete sense. I thought of an ice cream analogy. If you think the ice cream is about to run out, you will often eat as fast as possible, hoping to get more then the next guy. I think this is a trap a lot of people fall into. On the other hand, if the ice cream is endless (think of the possibilities!), then you are free to eat slowly and savor every spoon!

Nipun and Tap, appreciate the reflections. I guess this is where skillful means come in. From my experience, hard for me to generalize conservation frequently coupled with more stingy minds. In many cases, costs are higher to go conservation route, at least in the individual short run. Although this may be a comment made by a stingy mind! Looking forward to that blog post :)

These seven core values are very much like those used in healing methods of any sort that are truly worthy of the name. This is because such a large proportion of human suffering is caused by encounters with people and societal structures that serve to negate these conditions. Qualities such as empathy, transparency, equality, freedom and trust, when used in the service of helping others, are the basis of the 'person-centred' principles of healing as outlined by the great psychologist and psychotherapist Carl Rogers, and of any other method of healing (such as my own method of hands-on healing, outlined here) that hopes to restore health in the broadest sense. Human well-being, as those who have developed ServiceSpace well understand, depends on more than material well-being alone, although it is surprising how many material problems are readily solved in the context of empathy and justice.