Neohumanism

During this course will present the ideas of Neohumanism as core to yogic spirituality- the idea that at the root of the world's conflicts,  political, ecological, cultural, lies something deeper than bad policy or bad leaders. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of who we are. When we contract our sense of identity around something small, our nation, our tribe, our religion, we generate the geo-sentiment, socio-sentiment, and religio-sentiment that divide us from each other and from the living world we are part of. This contraction is not just a political problem. It is a psycho-spiritual one.

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Neohumanism is the response to this contraction. It is the extension of love and care beyond the human, to encompass every animate and inanimate being in the universe. This is not as a moral ideal to strive toward, but as the natural consequence of a self that is genuinely expanding. When we harm the forest, we harm ourselves. When we exclude the stranger, we diminish ourselves. When we extend genuine love to someone we have been taught to see as the other side, we are becoming more fully what we actually are. This expansion is cultivated through inner practice, devotion, meditation, service, and expressed outward as engaged, grounded action in the world. 

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When the circle of our care expands beyond tribe, beyond nation, beyond species, until it encompasses all life as an expression of one living whole, and our action in the world flows naturally from that recognition - this is Neohumanism.