The Vibrant Center: A New Consciousness for Our Broken Age

The Vibrant Center is a book for our times. It calls for a sweeping change in the consciousness of our society-from parenting to education to work to religious and spiritual settings to governance-to address the extremism and polarization that is racking our day-to-day lives. The advocacy of leaders and politicians who promote dialogue versus dogma is a must for this change to happen. But in order for such advocacy to be actualized and sustained, it is essential for it to impact households and classrooms, committee rooms and houses of worship as well. Otherwise, we fall far short of the kind of leaders and politicians that can mend our broken lives-marked by divisive ideologies, bitter prejudices, and mounting psychopathology. The Vibrant Center is thus a call to action. It is a manifesto for everyday people who are sick and tired of the mental and physical destructiveness of our age, and who are ready for a more centered approach. This is not the centrism of your grandparents though-it's not a call to a mundane middle or mechanical balance in managing life's challenges. To the contrary, it's a centrism that's dynamic and attuned to circumstance rather than preset orthodoxy; a pivot point that supports choice rather than reactivity, rich possibility rather than narrow prejudices and assumptions. In short, this book advocates for a vibrant center that has rarely been tried among the dominant societies in history, but that has a chance within the frameworks of democratic republics if they could but live up to their aspirations. This is a center that empowers people to be more fully present, open, and discerning across all the major sectors of their lives, and that promotes a live and let live, learn and discern approach to life. In this light, The Vibrant Center is a distillation of centuries of accumulated wisdom. It provides concrete strategies, case examples, and a range of innovative ideas on how our world can shift from fear-based and mechanized to awe-based and vibrant.