If you want to catch a glimpse of the Bahá’í vision of the future, you could do worse that look at the Global Mindshift website, whose aim is:

Our purpose is to “contribute to the emerging global community,” and our mission is to “help make the emergence of global community unstoppable.”

(And perhaps you could join the Global Mindshift community - as I have just done).

Mindshifting memes

I want to recommend two mindshifting memes from Global Mindshift.

Adolescence of human race

Growing Up. In this video, futurist Duane Elgin has some very interesting things to say about the maturation of the human race. It seems that 75% of the people he asks about which stage of collective development (infancy, adolescence, adulthood, senior years) they think the human race has reached say “adolescence”

The human journey

The Human Journey uses the three stages of the mythological Hero’s Journey as a lens through which to trace the path of human development and the challenges we humans have to face right now if we and the planet are to survive.

Bahá’í teachings on world future

If you watch these videos you will get a sense of why Bahá’ís are so desperate to share the teachings of Bahá’u'lláh with all and sundry. The videos resonate very closely with the Bahá’í belief that it is time to build a new global civilization and that Bahá’u'lláh’s teachings are exactly the basis for this new civilization, based on unity and justice.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Global Mindshift, Hero’s Journey, global civilization, collective maturity

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

I’ve been hoping to find time to share some stories and thoughts about my experience last weekend on the streets of Hatfield talking to people about the Baha’i Faith.

Unfortunately time has shot past and I’ve been tied up with meetings or urgent things to do and unable to make time to write here. What’s more, times in the coming days when I’d hope to write some posts have now been lost to more meetings!

Intense experiences

Anyway, I will say that the weekend’s experiences were intense: lots of prayer, study, consultation, and then talking to all sorts of people, some receptive to hearing new things, others not. There were times of elation and times of desperation, especially towards the end of a long day on the stump and facing a street of obdurate doors.

There were also some very tender moments. One Gujurati family (all Hindus), whom we would never had met had we not knocked on their door and asked if they would like to learn about the Bahá’í Faith, were open-hearted and welcoming. We met them on Friday, and returned (at their invitation) on Saturday to continue our conversation. Language was a difficulty. Their English needs working on. I am completely ignorant of Gujurati and Hindi. And yet we managed to communicate

Sharing the Baha’i Faith in Gujurati

Last night I sat for a couple of hours in this lovely family’s home and listened to a Bahá’í from London who speaks Gujurati talking with Madhu, one of the family, about the Bahá’í Faith. Madhu read out the introduction to a Gujurati translation of the Hidden Words and had plenty to say in her own language about what she was reading. (Madhu is a person of some capacity, with an LLB and having worked in Gujurat as a counsellor, but she is stuck in a relatively poor household with two young children, and unable to develop and use her potential largely because of the limitations of her language; she is desperate to learn English.)

Learning

What have I learned? It takes me a lot of spiritual preparation to step so far outside my comfort zone - and even then I found knocking on doors and inviting people to take a bit of time to learn about my Faith really quite stressful.

But, doing this brought me (and other Bahá’ís) into contact with people I’d never have met in a month of Sundays in any other way. Many didn’t want to know - and we did not push anything on anyone - but a significant number were very happy to learn about the Bahá’í Faith and have asked to continue these conversations and to find out more.

And I am now committed to working with Madhu and her family as they continue to study the Bahá’í  teachings.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Hindu, Gujurati, prayer, teaching, religion, Hatfield