Five Star Pieces, Quotes, SoundBites, and Columnists from the world press; Crop Circle Diary; Conversation tracks -- plus Monthly Reports and Updates sent to listmembers through 12/31/02
TheConversation.org had its start when 9/11 dictated that we were in a new world. At this threshold moment for humanity, when we must choose wisely to avoid what could be our annihilation, this site is dedicated to tracking the emerging intelligence that we need for our very survival, and to conversation in which that intelligence can be forged.
Let those who see beyond the idea of force imposing world order, to where we look to heal the causes of despair, meet here.
Society deals primarily with cosmetic change, no matter how threatened the world is. But, the way we think got us into the mess we are in, and, unless we grapple with paradigm change, it's fingers in the dike. For this column, send your thoughts about what outside the box ideas might contribute to setting us on a better course.
Look at this chilling story by the great British journalist, George Monbiot, about the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. It concludes:
"...we have to stop calling it climate change. Using 'climate change' to describe events like this, with their devastating implications for global food security, water supplies and human settlements, is like describing a foreign invasion as an unexpected visit, or bombs as unwanted deliveries. It's a ridiculously neutral term for the biggest potential catastrophe humankind has ever encountered. I think we should call it 'climate breakdown.'"
If we knew that without intervention the world would end at a finite date, humanity would dramatically scratch its collective head. Short of a deadline to save ourselves, what could we do that might change our course? Here are some of my thoughts.
1. My #1 idea is to investigate the crop circle phenomenon. If we knew there was other intelligence, which the circles indicate, we would be one humanity in relation to 'the other,’ working together to solve planetary problems.
2. Florida’s St. Petersburg Times asked, "How Would You Fix the Economy?" Here's one answer:
Patriotic Retirement: There's about 40 million people over 50 in the work force; pay them $1 million apiece severance with stipulations:
1) They leave their jobs. Forty million job openings - Unemployment fixed.
2) They buy NEW American cars. Forty million cars ordered - Auto Industry fixed.
3) They either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - Housing Crisis fixed.
Much cheaper than the trillions being ineffectively spent on the financial industry…
3. Promote a change of paradigm where getting the most money as the primary goal would be replaced by doing the most good.
4. Make a brilliant ad campaign: "Whoever Does the Most Good Wins!"
5. Have revered states people look out from TV and address the human core in everyone, urging us to think as a planet to solve the challenges we face.
6. Call for a truce worldwide, where wars end -- via inducements, including a clean slate for everyone. Even terrorists. Promise everyone universal health care, universal education and job training, and whatever it would take to give everyone the fundamentals of a decent life. Pay for it with military budgets.
7. Give ecstasy to people we want info from -- turn evil people into heart-connected ones.
8. Use plants for vision, a la shamans who use psychedelic substances for guidance.
9. Convene a new Twilight Club. "The Twilight Club was an organization founded in the late 19th century, with the intention to counter the moral decline by bolstering up the spiritual and ethical awareness of the society. Illustrious members were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herbert Spencer, Walt Whitman, Andrew Carnegie, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Mark Twain...From this club, service clubs such as the Rotary Club and the Lions evolved at a later stage."
A spiritual group that’s supportive of crop circles and of my movie made the front page of the local section of the LA Times ! It will give you a warm feeling to read the article:
This nicely written piece tells about how the Aetherius Society, given that “Mountains have long been associated with holiness,” led one of itsperiodic pilgrimages to the top of Mount Baldy, where “participants of different faiths prayed and meditated together.” In the article, people talked about the fact that they weren’t there to support the Society, but because it’s so good for the faiths to come together. Right on! Paul Nugent, a transplanted Brit who heads the Los Angeles branch of this worldwide organization, is the narrator in my film of a re-creation of a story about the circles that appeared in 1880, in Nature, the English journal I wrote about in the last post. He led the pilgrimage, and the LA Times piece ends with a quote from him:
“I think to get 100 people all the way up there on the mountain is a good showing. But I think that more than that, the energy and the atmosphere was very collaborative and it was uplifting. … You just feel good afterward. You feel pure. You feel as if you’ve done something just good. Basic goodness.”
You can click through from the article to the website for the Aetherius Society, a group founded in 1955 by George King, a Western Master of Yoga, who died in 1997. For “10 years, he practiced this ancient science [of yoga] for 8 – 12 hours a day until his mastery of terrestrial phenomena and of his mind made him a ‘Knower.’ ” He actually became a conduit for extraterrestrial intelligence, hence the interest the Aetherius Society has in crop circles.
First of all, thanks so much to all of you who posted on Yahoo about the crop circle video, getting the word out about my movie. The comments continued to be overwhelmingly critical of the video — but it could be cause it was all of you! Am continuing to try to see if Toyota would follow up cause of how mad people got at them. And look on my blog for how many of you wrote to me — never got so many responses, and, as I’ve said, that was only people who posted directly on the blog. My own person email was swamped. In fact, to get on the blog, where I’d like to put all the comments on all the posts, please do it through the comments boxes at the end of each blog entry, which is the way your remarks can indeed get on the blog site.
Here’s a story from UFO Digest, analyzing a particular crop circle. (Photo by Lucy Pringle of a glyph from 2004.) I pass it along not because I expect non-scientists to pore over what it says, but to show you a typical sort of thing the circles give rise to. Many pieces are written about many circles to describe intelligence that is embedded in them.
People frequently wonder what the message is of the circles, as if they are a giant jigsaw puzzle and we will get the picture when we get all the pieces fitted together. Or that they are something like hieroglyphics, and we’ll get their message when we get everything translated. I don’t think so. My speculation is that each formation is its own bundle of encoded smarts. It’s not about deciphering the master message, but about getting it that some source is trying to get attention to itself. Intelligence, intelligence intelligence pulses at us. I think of the circlemakers scratching whatever passes for the heads in wonderment that we haven’t realized, en masse, that they exist: “We see you, we understand you, we are feeding back evidence. When are you going to get it that that’s what’s going on?”
I was especially impelled to pass on a story about this particular formation because this one has a featured spot in my movie. It was perfect on the ground, with all the stalks laid in a gorgeous carpet, nothing damaged, no evidence of any human tampering. “Yes, there is a real phenomenon,” says Andy Thomas, who is using this perfect glyph in his presentation to a conference audience about the fact that there incontrovertibly is a real phenomenon.
To follow up on the note in the last post about buying the film T-shirt, here’s a 90 second video we did after we made the shirts. I was touched by the things people said, and we use this video as the clincher to sell DVDs on our sale site: http://www.CropCircleMovie.com.
Here’s how we set it up:
We can keep telling you all kinds of great things about this award-winning documentary, but don’t just take our word for it. Watch the video below to find out what those who’ve seen “What On Earth?” have to say…
Someone working with Ilene, who was listening as she and I talked, sent me something afterward that I was so touched by that I am sharing the sweetness.
Hi Suzanne ~
You know, usually Ilene has to prod me to speak up, but I guess you bring out the chatty part of me!
I am looking forward to seeing your movie, and I am so glad to know about your engagement of this phenomenon and the lovely relationship you have to all-things-curious. I am currently contemplating “mystery” from a new angle and imagining re-inventing myself to become a “Mystery Coach.” I’m thinkin’ it’d be a good use of my formal training in Social Work and Coaching, not to mention 30+ years of swimming in mystery myself! I’d like to assist folks in moving past what is known, traversing the fear of the unknown, and teaching the skills of how to be and do what has never been done before.
I mention all this for the purpose of wanting to give substance to my words in saying to you, You inspire a creativity that I feel at a very deep level of my being. Listening to you talk with Ilene today has enlivened my long-time love of crop circles and the mystery of the “Circle-Makers” – as I like to call ‘them’. I am excited as I wonder about the way I might incorporate the Circle-Makers into my teaching/coaching plan – it’d be such a fun platform for demonstrating a practical engagement with mystery.
So I am just wondering out loud here as a tribute to you and how contagious your generous enthusiasm is to those of us who hear what you have to say. Thanks very much for being in the world and doing whatever you do – today, it’s your crop circles work, but with you I imagine your enthusiasm is all-pervasive!
Cheers!
Deki Fox
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
It was lively in the chat room during the show, and here’s something I loved from someone there: “Crop circles are something we can SEE, TOUCH and let the mind puzzle over while the heart opens to the mystery they are.”
And here’s a bit of chat room transcript. Ilene and I were talking about the natives in South America, with no concept of ships, not recognizing them in their harbors when the white man came to the New World:
DD: The shamans/holy men of the tribe caught the vision/meaning of the ships on the horizon and told stories that made sense to the natives until they could then understand what they were seeing.
DD: Suzanne is our current-day shaman with regards to the crop circles!
Ilene: don’t understand what you’re saying with that one, DD
DD: The shamans did ‘work’ until the ‘people’ could make sense of what they saw.
