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@ben-bowler
Ben Bowler is the Executive Director and co-founder of Unity Earth, a global network dedicated to fostering interfaith harmony and cross-cultural collaboration. Through Unity Earth, he works to unite diverse spiritual, indigenous, and secular communities in service of peace, sustainability, and the common good.

Follow Your Joy
"Living into that, feeling into that, and celebrating that, it should be fun, it should be something we enjoy. So find, follow your bliss, find your yes, resonate, connect with your community, bring it forth, and go big. Dream big, think big, the planet needs it right now. It needs you right now to be the biggest, most extraordinary version of who you are."

Ask For Higher Guidance
"My purpose is working in multidimensional ways to bring that into being on Earth, like all of us who are here now, deeply called, in a way born into this moment. I'm here, use me. I don't know how it's going to work out, I can't see all of the solutions, but you can. So I'm here, and I say yes. It's time to say yes, it's time to surrender, it's time to say yes, I am here, show me the way, I'm on board, let's go."

Be Courageous
"Human selves are always two steps forward, one step sideways, one step backward, up and down and around, but that whole process, when you're in it, can be incredibly confrontational: the call, the fall, the rise, the grace. When you're in the middle of it, it can be incredibly lonely and incredibly challenging at the deepest soul level. I've experienced that in different ways, and yet when you zoom out and look at it at a larger picture, you can just see grace, beauty, and destiny. That's all you see on the other side of the tapestry. It's messy with all the strings, but you turn it around and you see this extraordinary, beautiful picture."

Take Action
"The challenge is just to start, to take that first step. There is value in not knowing how it goes. There is value in not understanding exactly where it's going to lead. The way that the evolutionary, purposeful universe works is it loves mystery and not knowing. So just leave the house, get in the car, and drive. You never know where you're going to end up, but you've got to get out of your comfort zone. You've got to get out of that safe place where you feel you're in control, because you're not, and that's not taking you where you need to go."

Traveling
"Traveling to Tibet when I was also 12, with my father, my mother, and my sister, and spending three months there with the Chinese and Tibetan cultures, absolutely expanded my suburban consciousness at that time. It just got me so excited about the beauty of the complete wonderments of our diversity and the unity, which transcends and holds it all. To me it was seen through all the diversity of human cultures, the revelatory seeds that have been planted in indigenous spiritual traditions, in the Eastern spiritual traditions, in the Abrahamic revelations, parts of the divine complete wholeness that have been placed in these different traditions."

What Makes You Cry? -
"What makes your hair stand on your arm, what makes you shiver, what makes you weep? There is your purpose. There it is, in finding what really makes our heart expand, tremble, and break. Purpose is when we're secure and safe, yet we're on the edge of something beyond our imagination. So what makes you tremble, what makes you shiver, what makes you weep? Therein you will find your purpose."

Community & Connection
"That has been a step-by-step process, meeting key people and forming friendships in those different communities: my Islamic friends, my Sufi friends, my Baha'i friends, all of the above, my Hindu friends, my yoga devotees, Aboriginal connections to land and country, and progressively developing an increasing understanding and recognition of how infinite, endless, and eternal it all is. That has activated me through friendships, by meeting people at the right time, in different ways, for different events and projects, and just falling in love with humanity has been a huge part of what has brought me to the recognition and realization of how to activate my purpose. I think it's a process, ultimately, of just saying yes, and then that leads to the next thing."

Focus On Something Bigger Than Yourself
"I have discovered my purpose to be facilitating greater spiritual consciousness on the planet, reconnecting our planet to the source of living reality, which is understood by many different names as God, the universe, and life, light, the highest, deepest, most beautiful truth, and that we on the planet became disconnected from that in a variety of different ways through no fault of our own, and yet here we are in a time of reconnection. So I have discovered my purpose to be an anchor for that reconnection and to proclaim the good news that we are connected to the source, that we are children of God, that we are one family, with all of our beauty and diversity."

Life-Changing Event
"That has activated me by being in indigenous communities through my father's work when I was a young boy, 10, 11, 12 years old, being out. Traveling to Tibet when I was also 12, with my father, my mother, and my sister, and spending three months there with the Chinese and Tibetan cultures, absolutely expanded my suburban consciousness at that time. It just got me so excited about the beauty of the complete wonderments of our diversity and the unity, which transcends and holds it all."

Surrender
"Embodying and living into that eternal yes has been the key to unlocking all of these adventures, all of these stories, all of these communities, all of these friendships, and partnerships. It all comes down to a single willingness to say yes. It's not easy being human. There are a lot of challenges, a lot of needs, material, financial, societal. There are many reasons to block the call, and we want to empathize, and yet at the same time, we're called to be courageous. I'm here, use me. I don't know how it's going to work out, I can't see all of the solutions, but you can. So I'm here, and I say yes, and in that moment, the universe changes. Everything changes, everything shifts when somebody steps on that threshold and stands there under the cosmos on the earth and says yes, I am here, use me. If we were to wait for all the traffic lights to go green before we left the house, we'd never leave. Jump in the river of life. Jump in the river of life and have faith that it will carry you, because it will."