Course on Voluntary Simplicity

Voluntary Simplicity is a five-session discussion guide for the workplace, community or faith center, university or home. This course addresses the distractions of modern society that keep us from caring for ourselves, our relationships, and our environment.

Topics Covered:
1. The Meaning of Simplicity: The concept of simplicity, as a religious practice or philosophy of life, has a long history. Both inner simplicity and outer simplicity are involved. What are some common misconceptions about a simple life?

2. Living More with Less: Accumulating material possessions is part of the American Dream. For some, the dream has become a nightmare. When do material possessions add meaning to our lives and when do they detract?

3. Making a Living: A growing number of people wish to resolve the conflict between the desire to make and spend money and the desire for a simple life. Why is that so difficult in our culture?

4. Do You Have the Time?: In modern society, our minds are focused on the "busyness" of the day, our current problems, and our future challenges. Are there alternatives to the fast pace of our mainstream culture?

5. Living Simply and Sustainably: There are countless practical benefits in moving toward simplicity and sustainability. What steps can be taken to move toward a life simple in means, rich in ends?

A Special Message from Sharon Gannon

As Michael Franti sings, "Everyone addicted to the same nicotine, everyone addicted to the same gasoline...everyone addicted to a technicolor screen, everybody tryin' to get their hands on the same green..."

"The question now that each one of us should be asking ourselves is can we free ourselves of our addictions-addictions to all the stuff that has come to constitute our precious lifestyle, a way of life that poses terrible risks to the future of life on Earth. Can we live without things like shopping malls, cars, planes, nuclear power plants, oil drilling, fast food and factory farms? Do we have the courage and creativity to find a new way to live that doesn't destroy the planet and ourselves in the process? Can we be that truthful, that exposed? Can we live that naked?"

"The times we are living in now may well be the prophesized apocalypse. Apocalypse means "to uncover. " An apocalypse may be just what we need right now to help reveal to us our great potential-what is underneath all the artifice, the trappings and pretense. If we could use the recent so-called catastrophes as a way to wake up and examine our way of life and thus begin to sort through and find only what is essential and then be brave enough to let go of all of the unnecessary wants we have conditioned ourselves to identify with. Are we ready for that kind of fierce awakening to the knowledge of our true selves? Would we be able to recognize ourselves, naked without the familiar trappings of culture, without our addictions to all the stuff? Perhaps if we were willing to try to overcome our greed, we could discover our ultimate destiny."

"The eternal truth that burns inside of each soul is joy, happiness, love. It is our essential nature, it is what everyone longs for, and it is our destiny. We may have been looking for it in external things, but it can never be found in things. It has always been available to anyone who wants to look deeply inside, but to be able to do that we will have to take off our clothes and let go of whatever it is that has been covering and obscuring our true heart for so long. We will have to embrace the Apocalypse."    -Sharon Gannon, co-founder of Jivamukti Yoga