TED CANCELLED THE LICENSE FOR TEDx WEST HOLLYWOOD AND OUR APRIL 14th EVENT COULD NOT MOVE FORWARD UNDER THEIR AUSPICE. THIS PROGRAM WAS TOO GOOD NOT BE DELIVERED AND WE REGROUPED. READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE.
And watch the 4-minute sizzle reel we produced from what became a cheekier affair after the cancellation:
AFTER LOSING OUR TED-BASED SPONSORSHIP, WE FOOTED THE BILL OURSELVES. ANY HELP VIA A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION TO MIGHTY COMPANIONS, OUR NON-PROFIT, WILL BE APPRECIATED.
PARADE, the magazine-like Sunday insert in the L.A. Times, put out this query, with answers to be delivered to the president after the election:
What’s on your to-do list for the next president? Click here to tell us, and we’ll send your advice to the White House!
Here’s what I wrote:
Try to harness the power of collective thought, where the winner of the election asks everyone to spend a minute in silence, at a designated time each day, to focus on the world being peaceful.
Here are two instances that speak to there being real power for the good in such focusing of collective thought.
1. During World War II, “the idea of a daily moment of united prayer and silence was born, now known as the Silent Minute, and signaled by the chiming and striking of Bib Ben at nine each evening,” when people “were asked to devote one minute of their time to pray for peace and to create a channel between the visible and the invisible worlds through which divine help and inspiration could be received.” “Soon after the end of hostilities in Europe, in 1945, a British Intelligence Officer, whilst interrogating high Nazi officials, asked one of them why he thought Germany had lost the war. This was the reply. ‘During the war you had a secret weapon for which we could find no counter-measure and which we did not understand, but it was very powerful…I believe you called it the Silent Minute.’” The idea, widely held at the time, was that this practice had prevented the invasion of Britain. (From a booklet about the man responsible for this silent minute, entitled, WELLESLEY TUDOR POLE: Appreciation & Valuation.)
2. There are scientific studies that attest to the power of collective thought. See this project, based on the idea that “the healing intention of one person can have a positive effect on another who is at a distance,” from the Institute of Noetic Sciences, founded by astronaut and 6th man to walk on the moon, Edgar Mitchell: . “Over the past thirty years, significant scientific research has been conducted on the potential effectiveness and value of distant healing practices. The practice of distant healing is drawing increased attention as an important component of integral medicine models that blend a range of approaches to health and healing. Many leading health professionals and spiritual leaders believe distant healing practices may significantly expand the capacity to facilitate healing.” “Scientific research projects have studied the effect of distant healing on a numerous disease states, including heart disease, AIDS, cancer, bacterial infections and recovery from surgery…does enhance the healing process across a broad range of disease states.”
One of the speculations of historians is that thought and perhaps sound gave us the pyramids. Our mechanistic culture has cut us off from what is in the ethers, if you will, beyond what can be put under a microscope. Why not try what perhaps our ancestors knew that we have forgotten? Worse that can happen is nothing, while the positive effects could not only achieve specific desired results, but could establish a whole new human capacity.
This is a plea for curiosity in the face of what could be beyond our ken to know — things whose origins could be other dimensions, other times, or other places in the universe. I am asking that we go from arguing about whether or not there are phenomena of mysterious origin, to looking for what might authenticate things as coming from elsewhere.
If we did find intelligent life it would be the biggest news ever to hit humanity. It’s being said that if Curiosity discovers microbial life on Mars, it would change everything. If finding microbial life would be so changeful, the mind boggles at how vitally, fundamentally, and radically impacting the discovery of intelligent life would be.
Copernicus and Galileo were the last to change everything. Monarchies gave way to democracies when Earth was no longer top dog in the cosmos. There’s more to be said about that and about how modern science came from having a shifted cosmic perspective. If readers can educate me, please help me flesh this out.
I see the discovery of other intelligent life seeping into the groundwater of reality and causing a sea change. It would bring the world into a dialogue. We would be one humanity, no sides, trying to figure out what to do in relation to “the other.” And it wouldn’t be one day’s, or one week’s, or one month’s news cycle; it would be forever.
Seeing the game-changer that discovering life would be, it would behoove everyone to cool their skepticism in favor of curiosity, where we examine all possibilities. That includes of course crop circles and UFOs, and also investigations of artifacts found on Earth that can’t be but are. The evidence for a different timeline for intelligent life is staggering. Caves, pyramids, city complexes, some underground and some underwater, all over the world, await examination. Here we are, floating in inconceivable vastness, the product of billions of years of evolution, and instead of looking into the richness of our origins for a greater sense of who we are, we square off against each other. It is insane.
Either technologies and tools were brought here from elsewhere, or we have not accounted for mass extinctions where advanced civilizations totally disappeared and life started from scratch each time, or something else altogether. We are in the realm of mythmaking, and we are in-between stories. But, a heroic spirit remains alive. It is in that spirit that I make this plea.
Placid times, where nobody wants to rock any prosperity boats are behind us in this century of violence. Lots of energy is scrambling for answers. So many good people are out there. How to unite us, to speak from the heart to impact the world? No need for laundry lists of how we squander our paradise. We know that human life is threatened. We’ve got our heads in the sand of this dualistic plane of reality. A changed underpinning, of ourselves as one, could put us in the best position to fix everything. There is no more important pursuit.
If you agree, think with me. How to get this plea to be heard? How to improve it? What to do?
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