Novasutras is an emerging eco-spiritual movement, to nurture and uplift one another during these challenging times, as we create a world that works for all people and all species of life on Earth. Novasutras honors both spirituality and science in the quest to understand our existence, open our minds, expand our hearts, and guide us into action.

What We Do & Why

We host online conversations and learning opportunities. We meditate together for global well-being, with online guided Octal Meditations and discussion on the Equinoxes, Solstices, and Cross-Quarters. Novasutras also produce guided meditation recordings, freely available on Insight Timer and our YouTube channel. We support and participate in non-violent actions and educational events to protect, defend and restore the living world and our relationship to it. We encourage the formation of local chapters (like the first one in Santa Cruz, California), where people can gather in celebration and mutual support. We work with student interns to help develop the rising generation of activists. Our blog and newsletters include ideas for other practices to aid in building spiritual resilience while doing the challenging and necessary work we must do on behalf of all life.

By Benjamin Gimmel, BenHur, CC-BY-SA-3.0, from Wikimedia Commons
Novasutras has its roots in deep ecology, watered by mindfulness traditions, and growing up into the world to nurture everyone, stretching forth branches blossoming with enticing ritual and bearing the fruit of care and kindness for all.

The Novasutras movement is an invitation to co-create a spiritual movement the world needs today and for the future. Together, we can conceive a movement that remains adaptable, deeply democratic and egalitarian, open to both science and mysticism, and so beautifully compelling that it can powerfully transform the way humans live together in our biosphere.

Novasutras Core Principles

Nature is sacred.
Change is essential, inevitable and important.
Complexity and maturity emerge from diversity in cooperative relationships.
The beauty of the living world is to be savored, honored, celebrated and protected.

In Novasutras, these principles and values are summarized as

agaya & ubuntu

Learn more…

Novasutras Beginnings

Dr. Michelle Merrill started Novasutras in 2017, as a way to respond to the need for spiritual community centered on the biggest challenge humanity currently faces: how do we help people through the transition from an “Industrial Growth Society” to an “environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfilling human presence on the planet“?

In particular, the intention for Novasutras was to create a spiritual movement that would be welcoming for those who, for various reasons, have not found an established religion or spiritual community that suits their sensibilities. Michelle’s background in anthropology, evolutionary science and sustainability education led her to conclude that there is an unmet need for an egalitarian spiritual movement with scientific sensibilities. This movement would focus on reverence for the living Earth – agaya – and deep recognition of interdependence – ubuntu – as its core principles, harmonizing with Earth’s evolutionary wisdom.

Unlike most activist organizations, Novasutras starts from the intention of inspiring a movement large enough to change the whole paradigm of civilization. We believe that we must change the underlying system: the ideas of our culture that are so fundamental, they go largely unspoken and unchallenged. A spiritual movement can provide people with the kind of new cultural template that will allow for radical changes throughout the system. 

Frequently Asked Questions