As a young lawyer in South Africa, after being thrown out of the train for his skin color, Gandhi spent the night at the train station shivering with cold and intensely struggling with his reaction. Rather curiously, he later called it "the most creative night of my life". A unique kind of "soul force" awoke in him, that would lead him to conclude that "in a gentle way, you can shake the world."

On Jan 13th, you are invited to join us for a "live from the Gandhi Ashram" stream -- featuring a performance by kids studying at the Gandhi Ashram, global luminaries who are attending our "Gandhi 3.0" retreat, inspiring singers and storytellers, alongside a few surprises that aim to ignite this subtle but significant force of compassion. (If you know friends in India who'd like to join in-person, let us know.)

This is part of an encompassing "Gandhi 3.0" retreat, with global leaders exploring the intersection of inner change and external service. If, in times of Gandhi, social action organized in one-to-many formation (one Gandhi and many of us), and if his successor, Vinoba Bhave, built a stronger network by walking across India and cultivating one-to-one connections, what is the 3.0 version of that uprising of collective "soul force"? Perhaps it rises up like a fountain and spreads in many distributed drops around the world.

In this shared context, guest listeners are held with just as much reverence as guest speakers – in the hopes that we can all co-create a collective prayer that is "deepcast" to all life. Among the live listeners will be a nun of 53 years, a farmer from Vietnam, social entrepreneurs from Brazil, an investment banker on Wall Street, global celebrities, an author from Austria, an indigenous elder from Australia, a Hollywood actress, two monks who have taken Bodhisattva vows, story-teller from Kenya, a mystic who works with terminally-ill kids and couple hundred others from wide-ranging sectors of society, all resonating with a simple organizing principle: "We are not merely what we do, but who we become by what we do." That, like Einstein said, if problems can't be solved at the level of consciousness that created them, perhaps we can come together like a flock of starlings and plant seeds for a new field.

Thank you for helping co-create this field of collective emergence. When individuals come together to move beyond the known-unknown spectrum, we start collectively touching the unknowable, the hem of the Infinite. That gentle force can surely move mountains, and perhaps be summoned to respond to the suffering in today's world. Needless to say, your presence would add tremendous value to the collective, and if the past is any precedent, the circle may also add wings to your crucial work of compassion in today's world.