Tag Archives: Charles Eisenstein

How can we go from THRIVE to thriving?

December 2, 2011 admin

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!

Crop Circles, This and That

Charles Eisenstein, the New World Order, and THRIVE

November 16, 2011 admin 11 Comments

After making a post that cited an Occupy Wall Street piece that Charles Eisenstein wrote, I went to another piece of his: “Synchronicity, Myth, and the New World Order.”

I got plugged into the kind of long read I usually skim, where not only did I read all of this, I read the many comments on this highly controversial food for thought article.

There is something this took out of the shadows of my consciousness and made clear to me. I’ve always cringed at the idea of some venal power elite that, as Charles says, “explains world events as resulting from the machinations of a powerful, dark cabal of secret organizations comprising the global elite: the banks, wealthy families like the Rockefellers and Rothschilds, non-official organizations like the Bilderburg Council, organized crime, shadowy agencies within the government, secret societies like Skull and Bones and the Freemasons, and so on.” The UFO world, in which I often find myself, is full of such conspiratorial reasoning, which seems unreasonable to me.

I have not been able to think through or articulate my skeptical perspective until now, where Charles makes us look at the bigger picture that’s beyond a black and white polarization — a stance in reality in which we would be positioned to make the changes that we can’t make fighting our way out of paper bags.

Here are a few samples:

“In the war between good and evil, a great weapon of the forces of evil is the notion that there is a war between good and evil.”

“Rather than an evil Illuminati, could that power be money? Some say that a global elite controls humanity via the money system, but could it be that it is rather the money system that controls the global elite? I’m sure many of you have known the feeling of being enslaved to money. The wealthy are not exempt, and indeed, possessing more of it, are even more deeply enslaved to its logic. It is truly an ‘invisible hand,’ a force that ‘makes the world go ’round.’ Moreover, the end toward which money compels us is one of misery and ugliness: the destruction of nature and culture, community and health, and all that is beautiful on earth.”

“Can we overcome dualism, when our language is rife with it? Can we transcend separation, when our language assumes it in its very structure? By their very existence certain words limit us to thoughts that subtly serve the status quo. For example, when I when I say that reality isn’t what we think it is, by using the word ‘is’ I reinforce the very independently-existing reality that I am trying to deny. More generally, as a system of signs, language distances us from the reality it is supposed to represent, allowing us to more easily treat the world as other. Sometimes, during meditation or mystical experience, the veil of language lifts and the richness of the unmediated world is revealed, and along with it the depth of our thralldom.”

“The new story says that the abiding intuition that you have carried perhaps your whole life, and which drew you to conspiracism in the first place, is true. The world is governed by a secret power that holds us in bondage to no good end. But the conspirators are not others, they are we, you and I and everyone. A secret agenda of domination and control has existed in nearly everyone, and a world embodying that agenda has congealed around us, attracted to the dark, reptilian energies we have harbored.”

With the movie, THRIVE, having just exploded online, I wonder about reactions to it. (I was in a focus group a few months ago and helped them get their crop circle info right.) My Inbox has been overflowing with enthusiasts who had seen the trailer before the movie was available, and I wonder, after having seen the film, whether they would be equally enthusiastic.

The stranglehold of the money interests in our world is unarguable. But the film makes a huge leap in asserting that a New World Order is the intent of a powerful elite comprised of the likes of those entities that Charles mentions, in a conspiracy that wants to eliminate a majority of the population and destroy the solvency of the United States as they head us for a one world military dictatorship. A film that points fingers has to do the work of exposure and not just name call, and this movie doesn’t justify its accusations. Hopefully, it will engender conversation that considers the things that Charles wrote about, that helps us to become ever clearer about what is going on and what we can do about it.

I really like Elevate, the high minded auspice behind the push for THRIVE. Play It Forward is their new game, which will be utilized for other movies — maybe mine. I’d be interested to hear back about what people think about this gifting model. If you liked a socially conscious movie very much, would you put out money to send it to others?

Crop Circles, Outside the Box, World Press

A New Radio Gig + Crop Circles and OWS

October 20, 2011 admin 1 Comment

Thanks to John Stephenson, who had me on his weekly radio show, Thresholds Into Other Realms, talking about crop circles, I’ll be doing a segment with him regularly. Outside the Box will be about contemporary occurrences or situations that don’t fit in ordinary reality. As I’m looking to expand my playing field to other things that make us rethink reality, “scratch our heads to open our minds” is the idea.

My introductory Outside the Box is the first half hour of part two from last week:
http://ufo-info.com/show/10162011

John is a sweetie. Here’s his email to me:

Here is the info I posted throughout the web, I talked you up everywhere 🙂

Also, once it airs it’s picked up on ITunes and about 100 different podcasting sites worldwide. Plus we are a featured show on The UFO Paranormal Radio Network, which also is worldwide.

Don’t miss this Sunday’s “Thresholds Into Other Realms.” We are very pleased to announce that the one and only Suzanne Taylor (the Crop Circle Queen) will be starting her new segment on our show this week! It’s called “Outside The Box” and it will cover all the wild, weird, unusual and downright strange news of the world.

Sundays 7:30 pm CST http://www.ufo-info.com

I added this line as a comment:

For those of you who don’t know Suzanne Taylor, here is a little link for you: http://imdb.com/name/nm0853220

Anybody who Likes What On Earth? on Facebook will see posts about future shows: http://Facebook.com/WhatOnEarth.

And for Netflix to carry it, we need more Netflix subscribers to ask for What On Earth? in their queues. Here’s the direct link for the request: http://bit.ly/pbkqgG.

Footnote:

I am so moved by this extraordinary situation of OWS spreading throughout the world. Either the help crop circles can offer for opening people’s minds will be unnecessary, or perhaps it could be more useful than ever. This is a comment I just made on Reality Sandwich to Occupy Wall Street: No Demand is Big Enough, by Charles Eisenstein, and the intelligent comments that followed it.

After all the smarts above me — and I bow to them – as a Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of NYU I have smarts, too, about how crapped up we’ve made the world and about the incredible OWS movement. But how to get it to achieve any objectives? There’s the rub.

The forces of fundamental change are mysterious and elusive, all fitting into that old Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Antithesis is well along now, and how to shove it over to synthesis is the head scratcher. It could just emerge, 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 if there were anything to do to evoke the new crystallization wouldn’t that be wonderful? Of course. So here’s my offering.

If it were ascertained that the crop circle phenomenon is for real and that we are being visited by other intelligence, that could be the peaceful shock and awe that could do it for us. All of a sudden, all human beings would be in relation to an otherness – all of us in one curiosity, buzzing together to make sense of what is greater than we are. Buzzing together, we could rethink everything — a consummation devoutly to be wished for, as Willie the Shakes would have said.

No need to argue here about whether there is a mystery to the phenomenon, which no one can know for sure – am just advocating that attention be paid. There is data to be scrutinized, and making that inquiry could turn out to be a very very good thing to do.