With Chapter Three, Coming from Gratitude, we enter the spiral by starting with gratitude. Going much further than just counting our blessings, the oldest earth wisdom traditions identify thanksgiving as key to our survival. Through this we express our profound awareness of interdependence and recognition that without soil, plants and many other aspects of our natural world, we have no foundation in life. More modern traditions within psychology identify gratitude as a key to resilience, protector of mood and antidote to materialism. By deepening our experience and expression of gratitude we build a strong starting point to face the disturbing realities addressed in the next chapter, Honoring Our Pain for the World.

Chapter Four, Honoring Our Pain for the World, reframes anguish for our world as a ‘call to adventure’ that inspires us to get started on the road of the Great Turning. Drawing parallels with the ‘hitting bottom’ of addictions recovery, it describes how the experience of distress can open up motivational energy and determination. Wanting to do something, however, is just the start. We need to build our capacity to act, and the next part of the book helps us do this through four empowering shifts in perception. We describe these as the ‘four discoveries’: a wider sense of self, a different kind of power, a richer experience of community and a larger view of time.