In the spring of 1997, we committed ourselves to a thorough exploration of three questions: how to live at peace with others, how to live at peace with ourselves, and how to reconcile our lives with our deepest values.

While these questions seemed simple enough, they were anything but easy to answer. Each of them led to other questions and more questions still. More and more it seemed that our internal struggles were merely personal versions of struggles that were being played out in the world at large.

It wasn't very easy to hold our minds on the reality of how we humans have chosen to treat this wonderful Earth, the animals, and each other. And having made a commitment to define our values and live by them, we felt overwhelmed by a combination of our own internal resistance and the sheer magnitude of change needed to achieve social and ecological balance on our planet.

After a time, a new clarity and inner strength began to emerge. Much of this new strength came from having contact with people and organizations that seemed to be on to a well-kept secret: it is far more effective to foster a movement toward wholeness and happiness than it is to struggle directly against the causes of our fragmentation and sorrow.

We saw that those we admired had each made an unblinking appraisal of the current state of affairs, come up with a practical vision of how that state of affairs could be peacefully transformed, and then done the hard work of embodying that vision in their thoughts, words, and deeds. By doing so, it seemed that they not only changed their own lives, but also touched the hearts of many others. As liked-minded people gathered together around them,  ideas, energy, and resources were pooled, making possible heretofore unimaginable achievements.

Observing this pattern in the lives of others inspired us to look more closely at the patterns of our own. Our most meaningful experiences had always involved connections with those who were service-oriented and heart-centered, those who had a special commitment to kindness and living with compassion toward others, those who wanted more than anything to make a difference.

We could see that these themes had always been present in our lives--even in the formative years of childhood. It was as if we had been asleep to some basic truth about ourselves, and had suddenly snapped awake.