Mindstreaming was created by myself, Craig Mollins, the author of the site. I am currently traveling, but my home base is in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada where I also maintain a private Structural Integration practice. Check here to see my Structural Integration website.
Mindstreaming Background
This website is the first offering from an aspiring new world changer. It began as a personal exploration and evolved into what you see today. The vista from here is wide open. Let’s see where it goes.
I was born and raised in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, the twin city to Halifax on the east coast of Canada. Since 1982 I’ve been a student of Buddhist meditation, which like most spiritual traditions has at its core the aspiration to help people and make the world a better place. As I began to study and meditate, this aspiration soon became part of my purpose, and I set up my life pursuits and activities with this as a sort of background guiding system.
Naivety and Disappointment
Along with my aspirations for helping out was a belief that we would “save the world.” I believed that all the people who wanted things to be better would one day succeed, and we would eventually see a widespread wave of global goodness.
With the terrorist attacks in the U.S. in 2001 and the unfolding of world events following, my belief was shattered. During that time I became disheartened and lost hope for humanity. I realize that doesn’t sound very ‘Buddhist’, but I became overwhelmed with how bad things were, and it felt pointless to hold on to a vision that no longer seemed possible. So instead I decided to just try to make the best of the situation by enjoying life, being kind to others, and doing what I could in small ways.
Looking Deeper
Then in 2006 I went through some life changes and entered a period of intense sadness about the state of humanity and the future of our life on planet earth. For several months I found myself crying a lot; simply walking down the street and seeing the pain in people’s faces made me cry.
I would go home at night after work, and sit there thinking about our world, feeling overwhelmed by the pain and suffering we are perpetuating and how the whole world seems to be going to hell. I could see future generations and the nightmare we were creating for them by not living on this planet with more intelligence and care.
As I felt all this pain, I made a decision to do something about it. I thought, “I have to try and make a difference, I can’t just sit by and watch the whole thing slowly fall apart.”
I got on the internet and started to look around. I took a new interest in world politics, history, business, and economics. And as I read and searched, I became increasingly enamored with the internet and the wealth of information and interesting things going on there.
New Ideas
I entered a period of creative exuberance. With the support of a new found friend “insomnia” I stayed up sometimes all night, surfing the web, reading, writing, and conceiving web projects. I lost count of how many ideas I came up with and how many domain names I purchased. But then each new idea unfolded into the next, and on it went for several months.
One of the outcomes of all this activity was that I learned that their is no shortage of solutions for changing the world. With every click of the mouse one finds web site after web site of organizations innovating ways to change things for the better. It’s awesome and inspiring to see the amount the amount of world changing activity going on.
But as I surfed and read I began to wonder, “Why aren’t the vast majority of us putting these solutions into action? If the solutions are so prolific and so readily available, why aren’t we doing it?” It wasn’t long before I concluded that there is a widespread lack of will to uplift the world. I realize this is no big insight, but it struck me more poignantly at that time.
A World Changing Thought
When I reached this point it felt like a huge wall. I couldn’t see a way forward other than to keep working at it in small steps, hoping some miraculous global shift would occur. But then I had a thought I had never had before. I had a new thought, one that would open up vast possibilities.
I had the thought, “Wait a minute. Deep in our hearts everyone wants a better world, and if we all want the same thing, then it must be possible for us to have that.”
For many years I have believed that every human being on this planet wants to live in a world free of warfare, where we can enjoy life, and where we can raise our children with confidence that they too will be able to enjoy life and the beauty of the world.
My unique thought was that if we all share this same aspiration, we should be able to achieve that, in fact it should be relatively easy.
If Enough People Decide that it is Possible to Save the World, We Will be Able to Do it
I then pondered the question of, “Why then do we not have peace on earth even though it’s the very thing we all want?” I came to the conclusion that it’s simply our thinking that gets in our way. In particular we think it’s not possible to have peace on this earth, and so for the most part we don’t even try.
But IT IS possible, and the only thing stopping us is this widespread belief that it’s not. Simply realizing this would change everything.
I finally conceived that if we could help massive numbers of people realize that peace on earth is possible, we could achieve it. Thus the Mindstreaming vision was born.