The Conversation

Coming into the New Year I’ve been looking beyond my movie for how to help the situation we are in where we need to uplevel our operating system here on Earth.

Given a worldview in which we are so violent with one another and so abusive to the planet, I deal with the crop circles because they might lead to reconceptualizing ourselves. As the only higher intelligence we have nothing to compare ourselves to, or to rub against, to hone us or to challenge us to become more conscious and more compassionate. If we knew the circles were coming from other intelligence, just from sensing ourselves as one humanity in relation to “the other” we would rethink everything. That ground of being would enable us to work together, giving us our best chances to solve the challenges we face as we run out of resources and heat up this living planet.

So, what more for me now? How else can I help to bring about a change of worldview?

John Stephenson hosts the radio show on which I do Outside the Box segments, and also is a web designer. He’s working on an expansion of my blog site – MAKING SENSE OF THESE TIMES: Inspirations and Amusements Along the Road to the Next Reality. It’s being conceived as a beacon for that next reality.

One thing it will include is brief accounts — writing and videos — of INSTANCES OF INCONTROVERTIBLE KNOWING, where we are taken beyond ordinary reality by someone who has had a breakthrough experience and is articulate about it. I would much appreciate your submissions, and your passing this to anyone you know who might submit.

This is an example, from Mellen-Thomas Benedict:

I found myself in a profound stillness, beyond all silence. I could see or perceive FOREVER, beyond Infinity. I was in the Void. I was in pre-creation, before the Big Bang. I had crossed over the beginning of time/the First Word/the First vibration. I was in the Eye of Creation. I felt as if I was touching the Face of God. It was not a religious feeling. Simply I was at one with Absolute Life and Consciousness. When I say that I could see or perceive forever, I mean that I could experience all of creation generating itself. It was without beginning and without end.

(I did a post about Mellen which includes the highly recommended and well-known piece from which this paragraph is excerpted. Also, at about 50 minutes into John’s latest radio show, dated 1/15/2012, I talk about Mellen’s astonishing account of when he presumably died.)

What would give us the sense of being one humanity, where service to the whole would be the master game? All thoughts for the website or otherwise are welcome.

May we help the world see Earth as part of a greater reality!

I got this email from my friend, Gail Greenberg:

Wow, to all my loved ones, this video really pulled together so many random thoughts and feelings I’ve had. I wanted to share it with you. Watch to the end even if you think you’re not going to be interested. It’s really profound to contemplate.

Well, a big yes from me. Charles Eisenstein seems to be everywhere in my world these days, and what I discover about him gets better and better. I so love this clip. It is such a clear articulation of what we most need that we might think is too far out to achieve, but Charles makes it seem doable. Related to my track, if the crop circles would get us to rethink reality, what Charles is describing is what we could be moving into. Ah bliss!

This is a piece from a feature film in the works about the Occupy movement, called Occupy Wall St – The Revolution is Love. (There’s more about the film and its fundraising efforts, at http://occupylove.org.)

With THRIVE possibly becoming a follow-up cultural phenomenon to The Secret (Elevate is the brilliant distributor for both of these films), there’s stimulating food for thought being served up. Here’s the interesting piece, Thrive: The Story is Wrong but the Spirit is Right, that Charles Eisenstein wrote.

A number of people are sending out must-see emails, while I question what the movie is telling us. It proclains that a global elite is trying to establish a New World Order where we’re headed for a military dictatorship and the elimination of a large percentage of the population. The pre-film buzz was that the film was going to be a bombshell that exposed our darkest secrets, and if the claims the movie makes were substantiated, which they aren’t, indeed it would be making headlines. It’s said that the website fills in any blanks in the movie, but the data there does not validate the movie’s declarations.

What is there to say about all the cheerleading going on? Is there any harm done by a film that is trying to help the world? Well, if you’re looking in the wrong place, even finding what you’re looking for won’t get you anywhere. But then, if controversy about the movie stimulates dialogue in which we deal with big issues, that would be a good thing, and I’d encourage everyone to see this movie so we can have serious conversation about it. Read the Comments on the Charles Eisenstein post for some of that.

For my two cents, it bothers me when our problems are blamed on some illuminati type force, as if the rest of us would make the world be different if it were up to us. But would we? We all are stuck in complex gears arising from a worldview based on economics, where, to be simplistic about describing our challenging situation, having the most toys is the highest good. In that set-up, ordinary people’s well-being (think 401Ks) depends on maintaining our model, whereby we wouldn’t be so quick to overthrow the status quo if we had the chance.

But, given we are in dangerous water, what could we do to get us to collectively decide to re-steer our ship? It is beyond daunting to think there’s any action that could be taken that would bring about the fundamental change we need, which typically only happens when everything falls apart. But, what might we at least try to do to preclude calamity?

I heard Richard Branson on the Today Show this week. He’s written a book, Screw Business As Usual, that will be out in a few days. He talked about business people needing to shift their policies to what involves doing good for the world. Could that book be a beacon to inspire us to make a game plan to get the world to think differently?

Here are excerpts from the book:

Over the last few decades as I’ve started up one exciting business after another, I have often thought that life and work could not get any better. In writing this book, however, I’ve come to realize that we’ve really been on a dummy run, preparing ourselves for the greatest challenge and opportunity of our lifetime. We’ve a chance to take a shot at really working together to turn upside down the way we approach the challenges we are facing in the world and to look at them in a brand new, entrepreneurial way. Never has there been a more exciting time for all of us to explore this next great frontier where the boundaries between work and higher purpose are merging into one, where doing good really is good for business…I constantly meet a growing army of entrepreneurs around the world, and when they ask me if I have one single message which will help them, I tell them it’s this: doing good can help improve your prospects, your profits and your business; and it can change the world…in our newly interconnected world, no one can any longer ignore the issues we are facing. The best bit is that people are finally starting to realize that it’s not about throwing charity at issues – it’s about working in partnership with people on the front lines to turn those issues into opportunities. Change is happening…It’s a different kind of business book. It’s about revolution. My message is a simple one: business as usual isn’t working. In fact, it’s ‘business as usual’ that’s wrecking our planet. Resources are being used up; the air, the sea, the land – are all heavily polluted. The poor are getting poorer. Many are dying of starvation or because they can’t afford a dollar a day for life-saving medicine. We have to fix it – and fast…Despite this, I wake up in the morning feeling positive. I feel positive because I have a great belief that we – ordinary people everywhere – not only want to do the right thing, but we will do the right thing. We will fix things, not just because we have no choice, but because this life and this world are all we have.

All right!!!!!!!

This is item #2 in column left on my blog – scroll down to Outside the Box Ideas.

Promote a change of paradigm where getting the most money as the primary goal would be replaced by doing the most good. Make a brilliant ad campaign: “Whoever Does the Most Good Wins!”

What do you think? Anyone know Richard Branson? A funder for an ad campaign would be on my Christmas wish list. Any other thoughts are welcome.

In the meantime, I’d  appreciate it if you’d help me get the word out re giving my DVD, the original and a Spanish subtitled version, as Christmas gifts. We’ve slashed prices to make that attractive: http://CropCircleMovie.com. Any shout-outs to tell people about this would be great!

I was chomping at the bit before Occupy Wall Street to have a game to play. Now, I’m gangbusters. It’s the same objective as the occupiers – to make a world that works. I want to be riding that energy with others. What a good time it is to link up.

I’ve always loved this quote:

Seek, above all for a game worth playing. Such is the advice of the oracle to modern Man. Having found the game, play it with intensity – play as if your life and sanity depended on it. (They do depend on it.)…Though nothing means anything and all roads are marked “no exit,”  yet move as if your movements had some purpose. If life does not seem to offer a game worth playing, then invent one. For it must be clear, even to the most clouded intelligence, that any game is better than no game. – The Master Game by Robert De Ropp

When I created my non-profit I named it Mighty Companions:

Now comes a period of settling down. This is a quiet time, in which the teacher of God rests a while in reasonable peace. Now he consolidates his learning. Now he begins to see the transfer value of what he has learned. Its potential is literally staggering, and the teacher of God is now at the point in his progress at which he sees in it his whole way out. ‘Give up what you do not want, and keep what you do.’ The teacher of God needs this period of respite…when he is ready to go on, he goes with mighty companions beside him. Now he rests a while, and gathers them before going on. He will not go on from here alone. – A Course in Miracles

So, I’m after a new wave of Mighty Companions.

What are the things that can get us to the tipping point, where there is fundamental new thinking going on? What can give new thinking a boost? The crop circles are but one mindblower among others.

I’m checking out whether there’s interest in Los Angeles for face to face engagements.

If you are fans of my movie, this is for you. You need to be willing to be on a team to spread the word about What On Earth?, and to rabble-rouse for other things that could wake the world up to a bigger reality than the one in which we are so violent with one another and abusive to the planet. (See Outside the Box Ideas, column left, for things we might play with.) This time, you have to be savvy about the internet and social media.

The invite to put our heads together is for Sunday, November 6,  3-8 pm, at my house in West Hollywood. Those who’ve come before know that thanks to my housemate, you get treated to delicious food, and that the crop circle phenomenon attracts very interesting people! I’m looking for responses from old buddies, people who’ve come to previous fan events, and friends I haven’t met yet. I’ve missed the pleasure of good company on a somewhat regular basis and hope there’s enough interest to do it again.

Make a Comment on this post to tell me you’d like to come. I screen Comments and unless you have more to say than that you’d like to take part – which I welcome and will post — I’ll just collect the info and won’t post it. If you are someone who wishes you were in L.A. to take part, Comment to tell me that, too. I’ll collect a list for what could develop into an internet branch of The Club of One Heart. And tell me where you live in case there’s enough response to set up live branches.

For more about where I’m coming from, which in essence hasn’t changed for a long time, see my archival site that I put up before the switchover to this format in 2001.

I pledge allegiance to myself,
Which is also all of you
And to the grand idea
Of which we are all a part,
One consciousness,
One intelligence,
Indivisible,
With truth as reality for all.

What can kick us over the edge of this reality into the next one? That’s the worldview where greed is supplanted by compassion as the m. o. We’d all feel for the world and strongly identify with being part of the large whole. Think indigenous tribes – something like that. In fact, we’ve made saints out of those rare characters who embody that perspective. What different dialogues would be taking place if that were the track we were on. Our 24/7 news would be bubbling with how we were making the world work.

Occupy Wall Street is adding a huge burst of energy to what has been building up in the widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo. (Look at this heartwarming aspect of it: We are the 1 percent. We stand with the 99 percent.) The 60s were the beginning, where the Ozzie and Harriet world sprung holes. The human potential movement and our quest for self-awareness came next, as we began to get the idea of how we needed to develop ourselves in the new model that we touched via psychedelics. Psychological awareness of what makes us tick led to spiritual explorations with some of those sainted figures who were the gurus we followed en masse. Spiritual awareness sans figures to worship was in the mix, and carried us beyond homage to outer divinities into recognizing our own. So, here we are, stoked for dealing with the steady march of capitalism where rugged individualism has led to dog eat dog exploitation and we’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

The forces of fundamental change are mysterious and elusive, although progressing cyclically along the lines of the Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis: a worldview becomes unworkable as things that don’t fit in it emerge, until there is a reordering where the unfitting parts get integrated into a new worldview – and the cycle starts again. Antithesis is well along now, and shoving it over to synthesis is the head scratcher. It could spontaneously occur, like the Berlin wall coming down or the Soviet Union collapsing – somehow it “just happens” when the contradictions to the status quo get too great for the center to hold. Are we at that point? Who knows? But anything we can do to evoke the new crystallization is worthy pursuit.

See the next post.