{"id":52,"date":"2010-12-17T10:30:54","date_gmt":"2010-12-17T10:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/insweetcompany\/2010\/12\/the-spirit-of-goodness.html"},"modified":"2010-12-17T10:30:54","modified_gmt":"2010-12-17T10:30:54","slug":"the-spirit-of-goodness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2010\/12\/the-spirit-of-goodness.html","title":{"rendered":"The Spirit of Goodness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>&#8220;I believe there is an evolutionary movement towards love in the universe, a self-organizing process around love that&#8217;s moving us toward what we call higher levels of consciousness.&#8221;<\/i> &#8212; Riane Eisler, IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE<\/p>\n<p>Call me a Pollyanna, but I believe in Goodness. The manifestation of virtue &#8212; our individual trove of good thoughts and deeds and the goodness we amass <i>en masse<\/i> &#8212; seeds the future, sets invisible forces in motion that actually, eventually take form. Whether we call these arrangements good luck or good karma, miracles or answered prayers, or whether we feel we just happen to be in the right place at the right time, that such experiences exist, that the expression of virtue manifests in our lives, is proof that Goodness has a life of its own. <\/p>\n<p>Neuroscience tell us that specific areas of our brain twinkle like Christmas lights when we feel positive emotions, that repetitive &#8220;twinkling&#8221; deepens these grooves and creates compatible grooves in our neural neighborhoods. Joy breeds joy. Metaphysics tells us that the principle of karma follows this same pattern: What goes around, comes round. While it is essential we that repair our broken world, it is fundamental that we blueprint Goodness in our minds.<br \/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br \/>When good thoughts are hard to come by, to keep the ball rolling in my favor, I call up vintage memories, &#8220;borrow&#8221; from a stash of joy and goodwill, and reconfigure the present moment in the same way I &#8220;borrow&#8221; from my past each time I relieve a mistake, only in reverse. If our thoughts, for good or for ill, direct our lives. I want to stay on the sunny side of the street for as long as I can!<\/p>\n<p>The holidays are ripe with opportunities to both create and borrow Goodness. The heart of the world opens a titch; we taste something special in the air. Or we don&#8217;t. We smile more. Or we don&#8217;t. We gather. Or we don&#8217;t. Either way, invisible forces become visible. Either way, it&#8217;s the right place, the right time to blueprint Goodness. To seed the future.<\/p>\n<p>Your thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I believe there is an evolutionary movement towards love in the universe, a self-organizing process around love that&#8217;s moving us toward what we call higher levels of consciousness.&#8221; &#8212; Riane Eisler, IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE Call me a Pollyanna, but I believe in Goodness. The manifestation of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":231,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-transformation","category-the-greater-good","category-womens-spirituality"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Spirit of Goodness - In Sweet Company<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2010\/12\/the-spirit-of-goodness.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Spirit of Goodness - In Sweet Company\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;I believe there is an evolutionary movement towards love in the universe, a self-organizing process around love that&#8217;s moving us toward what we call higher levels of consciousness.&#8221; &#8212; Riane Eisler, IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE Call me a Pollyanna, but I believe in Goodness. The manifestation of&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2010\/12\/the-spirit-of-goodness.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"In Sweet Company\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-12-17T10:30:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Margaret Wolff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Spirit of Goodness - In Sweet Company","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2010\/12\/the-spirit-of-goodness.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Spirit of Goodness - In Sweet Company","og_description":"&#8220;I believe there is an evolutionary movement towards love in the universe, a self-organizing process around love that&#8217;s moving us toward what we call higher levels of consciousness.&#8221; &#8212; Riane Eisler, IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE Call me a Pollyanna, but I believe in Goodness. The manifestation of&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2010\/12\/the-spirit-of-goodness.html","og_site_name":"In Sweet Company","article_published_time":"2010-12-17T10:30:54+00:00","author":"Margaret Wolff","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2010\/12\/the-spirit-of-goodness.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2010\/12\/the-spirit-of-goodness.html","name":"The Spirit of Goodness - In Sweet Company","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-12-17T10:30:54+00:00","dateModified":"2010-12-17T10:30:54+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/#\/schema\/person\/9e1d77d12de19dd0d4fbc84d1f7fc52a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2010\/12\/the-spirit-of-goodness.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2010\/12\/the-spirit-of-goodness.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2010\/12\/the-spirit-of-goodness.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Spirit of Goodness"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/","name":"In Sweet Company","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Margaret Wolff","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/#\/schema\/person\/9e1d77d12de19dd0d4fbc84d1f7fc52a","name":"Margaret Wolff","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/673\/67331f0571f27a0987e8cbfde3e832b4x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/673\/67331f0571f27a0987e8cbfde3e832b4x96.jpg","caption":"Margaret Wolff"},"description":"Margaret Wolff has a gift of luring people into becoming who they really are. She speaks and writes about things women care about: how to make our lives and our work be about what we value most; how to navigate challenge and change; how to live with integrity and grace, to look at error in ourselves and others in a forgiving way and view life as an invitation to transform ourselves into instruments for the Greater Good. \"I laughed, I cried, I was silent, I cheered. Most of all, I loved.\" Spoken by a woman at In Sweet Company Retreat, these words express what women experience when Margaret engages them in dynamic, soul-searching conversations about their lives. Margaret holds degrees in art therapy, psychosynthesis, and leadership and human behavior. Her work takes her to universities, to conferences and retreat settings, to living rooms and board rooms -- wherever women gather. Her articles, essays, and stories are featured in numerous magazines; her women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spirituality retreats are held throughout the U.S. Margaret\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last book, In \"Sweet Company: Conversations With Extraordinary Women About Living a Spiritual Life\" (Jossey Bass), is a collection of intimate conversations she had with 14 famous women of various ages, faiths, and backgrounds about how their spirituality nourishes them and serves as a steady compass for their decision-making. Olympia Dukakis, Riane Eisler, Zainab Salbi, Margaret Wheatley, Sri Daya Mata, Lauren Artress, and other women artists, activists, religious leaders, and visionary thinkers shared their lives with her. 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