Tag Archives: Suzanne Taylor

Ah Sweet Mysteries of Life…

Here’s one of the loveliest comments about the nature of reality that I frequently pass back to people in response to something they’ve said. I swoon for Swimme, whose audio comments I recently posted: Exploding Your Head
Brian Swimme is a wondrous being, who I think has the best perspective on who we are and what we are doing here. His seminal book, The Universe Is a Green Dragon: A Cosmic Creation Story is a must-read for any friend of mine. Click on the title to buy it through Amazon, or get a good deal from me — through PayPal just send $9.00 to suzanne@mightycompanions.org and I’ll send you a copy.

“Albert Einstein once remarked that for the human there is no more powerful feeling than that of the ‘mysterious.’ In fact, he was convinced this feeling for the mysterious was the cradle for all works of science, art, and religion. In light of Einstein’s conviction, one might ask: ‘What is the opposite of a feeling for the mysterious?’ The opposite would be the sense that one understands it all. The opposite would be the feeling that one is in possession of a system that explains all the phenomena in the universe. For such a person, the universe loses its appeal for it becomes something we don’t really need to pay attention to. The universe becomes an exemplification of a theory that one has already understood. No real surprises are possible, only the working out of a logical system through time. When a feeling for the mysterious is lost, one become s vulnerable to the various fundamentalisms plaguing our planet, each one with its passionate certainty that it has all the answers while every other system is just superstition.

“In moments of stress and breakdown, there is a powerful drive in us to acquire answers and explanations. Certainly in our own time when we are dismantling ecosystems around the planet and deconstructing the stable climate upon which our civilization is based, we feel a deep need to know what is real and what is good and how to proceed. This need can become so great we are liable to latch onto one of these simplistic pseudo-explanations just to quell the feelings of fear and doom surfacing in us. What on Earth? does not provide any such simplistic explanations. This restraint is one of its greatest achievements. By insisting that the Crop Circles are beyond any easy explanation, What on Earth? enables us to make peace with living in the ambiguity of not knowing. This ability to live with ambiguity is related to a sense for the mysterious and together these two may be the most important factors for deep creativity to take place. At the very least, we need to realize that an embrace of ambiguity is a form of humility when confronted by the magnificent complexity of nature.

“One of the great benefits of viewing What on Earth? is the feeling one can get of wading into the mysterious. Through its balanced and wide-open approach to the phenomena of Crop Circles, the film has the power to ease us out of some of the prior certainties we might have had. What on Earth? explores and celebrates the fact of the existence of these designs. And as we are guided into this reflection, we find ourselves considering new ideas about the nature of our universe. We begin to imagine that things might be different than we thought. We might even begin to release ourselves from some of the tired explanations lodged into our minds by the media. But most important of all, as we view the film we might even begin to feel stunned by the simple fact that here we are in the midst of this overwhelming mystery, the universe.”
Brian Swimme, mathematical cosmologist specializing in the evolution of the universe

L.A. Event “Aliens Among Us” — including me

Okay, so this title is a bit of a tease. I am a featured presenter in this program on June 16, not one of “them.” (Then again, perhaps the event folks have blown my cover!). If you are in L.A., do come!

Actually, L.A. is the hub of a network of Evolver groups all over the U.S. and beyond, who meet monthly in ‘spores.’ Other cities may be showing some version of my movie, as the L.A. event will.

Here’s what Evolver is all about:

Evolver is a new social network for conscious collaboration. It provides a platform for individuals, communities, and organizations to discover and share the new tools, initiatives, and ideas that will improve our lives and change the world. Evolver promotes sexy sustainability, yoga glamor, and shaman chic.

Are you an evolver? Evolvers are hope fiends and Utopian pragmatists. We see the creative chaos of this time as a great gift and opportunity to rethink, reconnect, and reinvent. Evolvers appreciate pristine mountains, open source economics, and the precocious laughter of small children. Evolvers belong to the regenerative culture of the future, being born here and now.

Cymatics and Crop Circles — no accidents here

That tones that are sounded create complex geometric shapes is fascinating in itself, but this blog post, sent to me by arty photographer extraordinaire Scott Hess, has more. There are crop circles designs here that had to have been “created either by sand on plates or liquids that are subjected to certain sound.”

The site says, “Maybe these crop circles are just accidents of nature in that they form from some invisible sound source.” (That’s followed by this imaginative thought: “Or perhaps they are not accidents but are being made by other than human intelligences to give humanity a key to their own existence.”)

I had to do some thinking about this.

Crop circles definitely aren’t accidents of nature. Many things about the phenomenon indicate intention. Just look at their placement. They never cross a field, as accidental landings would. Some are aimed, like at the precise center of an ancient artifacts, like a Stonehenge. Look at this, where the formation is fitted between three tumuli:

Crop Circle

Well, why wouldn’t the circlemakers get patterns to use this way? It could be another way of helping us realize the circles are coming from an intelligence source — they often feed our symbols back to us, as if to say, “We recognize you.” As I say in my film, “I can picture them scratching whatever passes for their heads,” befuddled at how we don’t get it that they are signaling to us.