Excerpt from Tikkun Olam

This is a short excerpt transcription of one of the many session at the 2006 Mythic Journeys Conference in Atlanta, GA. The panel features DEEPAK CHOPRA, SOBONFU SOME, MICHELLE NUNN & ELLEN KUSHNER. To find out more information and how you can watch the entire video or host your own Tikkun Olam Forum for your group or organization please visit: http://imaginalcellsinc.com/Pages/MythicJourneysEvents.htm

TIKKUN OLAM
ELLEN KUSHNER: What is Tikkun Olam? Olan is “world” and Tikkun is “healing” or “repairing”. The repair work that we all owe the world. It’s a concept that’s extremely popular and alive in modern Judaism. But it refers to something that touches all of us which is the notion that the world is in need of repair and that all of us are here to repair it.
There is also the phrase “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” But what needs repairing and what doesn’t.
Does the world need healing? Is the world in fact not a perfect place that is set up to run so that we live, we die, we grieve, we rejoice, trees grow, air is produced, everything is lovely. But let’s not be ridiculous. We should however, talk about how it is that the world needs healing. Each person sees a slightly different world. Each of us lives in a slightly different world, the world of our own perception, the world of our own social action.


MICHELLE NUNN: If we take a step closer, and look at the realm in which we work and live. Not – Is the world a beautiful place? Do we all holistically understand its glory and its beauty even in the sorrows of the world? From a practical reality, the world needs repairing in many ways.
In our communities we have people living in great poverty and not only poverty materially but poverty in the sense of poverty of spirit. People need connectedness, they are lonely they need companionship. Again, they need connectivity. All of us have broken places. The spirit of service is a reciprocal one, it’s not serving those who are broken and those of us who are serving are whole. It is literally that we also heal ourselves in the process of healing the world.
When you look at the newspapers you can see that there are many broken places, there is war and famine and refugee crisis’ and in fact our world itself is in danger. We now are recognizing environmentally how we’re threatening the world. There is a true call to service, a call to heal the world and we each have that mandate. It’s across all faith traditions. Part of the story of service is part of the mandate for how we live our lives. We also all have the power to make that difference and to heal the world.



SOBONFU SOME: Is the world a beautiful place? Absolutely. I take a look at all of you, I see beauty in you. I see the world outside and there is beauty, even in the confusion, in the grief, in what we would call the ugliest place, there is beauty. Even in poverty there is beauty. I know it’s a contradiction but having grown up in a country where’s there’s poverty, the level of beauty that is in there is the beauty of having enough of nothing. Having one another and of not wondering about the shoes in Target that you’ve never seen or wanting a steak that you’ve never seen. So there is simple beauty in the simplicity of life. There is beauty in the eye of a baby who is born, in the eye of a newborn who just comes with this wonder and yet with so much wisdom at the same time. Our role in the world is to not only notice the beauty but to also see the places where we can make it better, because there are a lot of places where we can make it better. The question is: Why are we not? That question takes us back to the places where things are broken.
In the old days where communities live together and where each one was just who they were and didn’t have to worry about an image or how to perform or be someone that they are not, I believe there was wholeness in that. We all really give from a place of holiness. As we start to move away from this center, from this community and we get into our individual places and not being connected to community , not being connected to our purpose, and not being connected to the communal myth, then the problems start to arise. Who am I? Who am I alone out here in the world? So in that sense there is brokenness in the world and that brokenness is what then makes us sad, cry and can even stir people to a place where they can then start to harm other people. Because I really truly believe that no one ever hurts somebody else unless there is pain, that they are holding and unable to release it.
What do we do for pain of the individual that then channels into this collective pain, this collective web that we call the web of life, or light in the (Dogra?) tradition? That then shoots out and connects to everybody’s light then. Even though you may seem whole that brokenness is going to reach you because there is a collective consciousness that you are capping into. So what can we then do to make that happen? It is a life long question and I really believe that we have chosen to come to this world, not to be tourist, but to really begin to bring that little water of healing that we have brought here, so that we then can begin to share with everyone. As we heal individually, we must heal collectively, like the Dogra phrase “We either all go together or we don’t.”


DEEPAK CHOPRA: It’s very complex. You know I’ve thought about this healing the world for a long time, struggled with it, been depressed about it. Sometimes been optimistic about it, sometimes being totally fatalistic about it, sometimes been apathetic about it and most recently decided that the least we can do is try. The world situation is not good. I mean if you really believe Al Gore and the other environmentalist maybe 10, 15 years from now places like Bangladesh and coastal Florida could disappear off the map of the world. There are even experts saying that in 50 years we could risk our extinction. I’ve talked to really good scientists who say that if insects disappeared from our planet today then in 5 years life would cease on this planet. But if Human Beings disappeared from this planet today then in 5 years life would really flourish.. So the basic question is we are not the most important species. Maybe nature is saying the human experiment didn’t work.

Everything is an interdependent co-rising in our consciousness, that the world actually doesn’t exist out there. We are not in the world, the world is in us. The world is constructed, it’s conceived, and it’s governed in our consciousness. Therefore, before I go fix the world out there I have to ask myself; am I totally non-violent in my life, with my family, my community, my friends, my relationships? If I’m not then I can’t show love if I don’t know love myself. If I want to create peace; am I peaceful to begin with.

The least we can do to fix the world is to create a critical mass of collective intent which, from the tradition I come from says, if you can do three things you might solve the problems of the world; these are Sanskrit words, the first one is Satsung. Satsung is the gathering together and sharing our stories.. Because the world is the story we tell ourselves. It’s our collective story. Our personal story and the world out there is the collective story. So Satsung, to actually change the narrative, change the story.

Simrun which is the second word, says; try to remember who you really are. Engage in some reflection by asking yourselves questions like; Who am I? What is my purpose? What’s my contribution? What are the qualities I display in my relationships? What are the qualities I look in my friends? Who are my heroes? What are my unique skills? How do I express them? That’s an inward thing.

The third component is Sayva which is actually going out and doing something out there which is not about me. If I an engage in changing the narrative, if I can engage in looking at my true being and reflecting on it and if I can go and do something out there that is not about me. Whether it’s about homeless children or helping the environment by planting trees or whatever, if there’s a critical mass of people engaging in this activity then maybe the world will change. If doesn’t then we were a speck of dust in a little junkyard of infinity and so be it.



This forum was one of many that helped shape the documentary Mythic Journeys by Imaginal Cells FilmWorks.

This is an excerpt from The Tikkun Olam session at the 2006 Mythic Journeys Conference. Copyright 2006 Mythic Imagination Institute. May not be transmitted, reprinted or posted without prior written consent.