TED Finds Deepak Chopra's Lost Talk

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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As discussed, one of Deepak Chopra's criticisms of TED's censorship referred to his own talk, in which he rebutted Richard Dawkins in 2002. He apparently shamed Chris Anderson into retrieving it from the vault of hidden ideas. He has posted it, but in "the naughty corner" like Graham Hancock's and Rupert Sheldrake's talks. As with those, it's in an unembeddable format. It also comes complete with snark and insulting framing about its "misleading" science. But at least we get to hear it and I now have. I also forced myself to sit through the Dawkins talk he was responding to, which can be found here. It's actually titled "Militant Atheism." Wow.

Chopra's write-up on the restoration of the talk is here. His talk turns out to be mystical in orientation, arguing that where science is failing is in viewing the universe as separate from the observer. His quote of Krishnamurti thoroughly won me over.

A Christian fundamentalist was once conversing with the noted India spiritual teacher, J. Krishnamurti.

"The more I listen to you, the more convinced I am that you must be an atheist," the fundamentalist said.

"I used to be an atheist," Krishnamurti replied, "until I realized that I was God."

The fundamentalist was shocked. "Are you denying the divinity of Jesus Christ?"

Krishnamurti shrugged. "I've never denied anyone their divinity. Why would I do it to Jesus Christ?"

That the audience laughed at this anecdote while militant atheists scowled, seeing an imminent danger to sanity, reason, science, and public safety, shows how far apart two worldviews can be. But I persist in believing that an expanded science will take consciousness into account, including higher consciousness. Until it does, our common goal, to understand the nature of reality, will never be reached. A universe that we aren't participating in makes no sense, and our participation takes place at the level of consciousness, nowhere else.

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Good Witch, Bad Witch?

Witches, vampires, werewolves, and the living dead appear in our dreams, nightmares, and fairy tales. They also appear in our journeys and as manifestations of illness in shamanic healing. Are they real or are they our imagination? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores humanity's timeless bad guys and the slippery terrain of those things that are not physically manifest, yet are present and profoundly affect our physical well-being when come into our world. It is important that we understand why and how these characters exist in the first place. And what calls them to us and how do we protect ourselves. As with all encounters with shadowy figures, whether in our dreams or journeys, we must have the courage to look within. When we find that figure within ourselves we must also have the heart to engage it. For in that ancient bad guy is the medicine for our own healing and the revelation of our True Self.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Perspectives on Evil from Hancock and Levy

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Graham Hancock on Good and Evil

It's hard not to be at least a little preoccupied with evil right now. There's no escape from images played over and over of the carnage in Boston. The explosions there were quickly followed by one in West Texas -- a horrible accident that was, all the same, replete with strange echoes of past violence. It was close to Waco and handled by Waco authorities... and the ATF. It was effectively a massive fertilizer bomb. (The second largest terrorist attack in US history, the Oklahoma City bombing, utilized a fertilizer bomb. It took place on the second anniversary of the Waco Siege by the ATF which also ended tragically and which, along with Ruby Ridge, was Timothy McVeigh's stated justification.)

The horror was magnified by the bungling of media organs that seem to have devolved into self-parody. In their mad quest for the big scoop, they rushed to judgment against any "dark skinned" or swarthy male who had the misfortune of being caught on camera. And somehow, they also managed to implicate Zooey Deschanel. It's a bad time to have an unusual name, apparently. For good measure, Reuters also reported the death of one George Soros in very exaggerated fashion -- nothing to do with the Boston bombing, but seriously, what is going on with the press?!

What we're witnessing is a massive freak-out and I don't really feel like participating. I've been largely avoiding media assaults on my senses. I've barely been online and when I've watched television, I've pointedly avoided most news. But in an action that I'm determined to take as a personal slight, NBC preempted "Grimm" on Friday with more of their endless, masturbatory coverage. There's simply no escape. And maybe there's an even more important message in that.

Perhaps what we should all be asking ourselves right now is what this massive eruption of the shadow is telling us about ourselves. Like many sensitives, I suspect, I felt this coming for weeks -- that "disturbance in the force" that left me cranky, tired, depleted, and somehow "out of phase" with myself and my environment. There are still aches and pains and a sensation in the center of my chest that would be hard to describe.

A while ago I posted an interview with Paul Levy on Wetiko, one of a number of Native American terms for the expression of the collective shadow. His second book on the topic, Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil, pubbed in January. I highly recommend listening to his recent interview with Christina Pratt. Links to various listening options can be found here.

Of TED, Militant Atheists, and the Revenge of Woo

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The controversy over TED's censorious nature just refuses to die. Over the past week, Deepak Chopra stepped into the fray and incorporated the voices of a number of credentialed scientists who aren't as easy to dismiss. Chris Anderson was forced to defend himself once again and in the very public forum of The Huffington Post. And once again, he didn't come off real well.

Chopra's initial volley can be found here. He and his co-authors -- Stuart Hameroff, Menas C. Kafatos, Rudolph E. Tanzi and Neil Theise -- took direct aim at the radical atheist contingent that seeks to suppress, not only theistic religion, but spirituality more broadly. This New Atheism, which has staked a claim on the sciences, refuses to allow any possibility of non-local consciousness to creep into discussions of science.

Freedom of thought is going to win out, and certainly TED must be shocked by the avalanche of disapproval Anderson's letter has met with. The real grievance here isn't about intellectual freedom but the success of militant atheists at quashing anyone who disagrees with them. Their common tactic is scorn, ridicule, and contempt. The most prominent leaders, especially Richard Dawkins, refuse to debate on any serious grounds, and indeed they show almost total ignorance of the cutting-edge biology and physics that has admitted consciousness back into "good science."

Militant atheism is a social/political movement; In no way does it deserve to represent itself as scientific. . . .  Dawkins, who has a close association with TED, gave a TED talk in 2002 where he said the following:

"It may sound as if I am about to preach atheism. I want to reassure you that that's not what I am going to do. In an audience as sophisticated as this one, that would be preaching to the choir. [scattered laughter] No, what I want to urge upon you is militant atheism."

In a society where militant atheism occupies a prestigious niche, disbelief in God is widespread, but it isn't synonymous with science. In his mega-bestseller "The God Delusion," Dawkins proclaims that religion is "the root of all evil." He describes teaching children about religion as "child abuse." He spoke publically on the occasion of a papal visit to London calling for the Pope to be arrested for "crimes against humanity." To propose, as Dawkins does, that science supports such extremist views is an errant misuse of science, if not a form of pseudoscience.

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Breaking the Curse of Evil with Paul Levy

Indigenous people have been tracking a psychic virus for many centuries called "wetiko" in Cree and similar names in other languages. A wetiko is a diabolically wicked person or spirit who terrorizes and cannibalizes others by means of evil acts. Wetiko is a true illness of soul or spirit and is at the root of humanity's inhumanity to itself. And there is no possibility of awakening from this collective nightmare without out awakening first to what is keeping us asleep. Join us this week as author, Paul Levy, and host, Christina Pratt explore a new way of understanding evil from Paul's new book, Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil. What does Wetiko tell us about the true nature of evil? And more importantly what does understanding evil differently allow us to do differently to transform it? Paul is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How are we meeting this extraordinary need today?

This week's guest:
Paul Levy

Paul is a pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, as well as an innovator in the field of dreaming (both night dreams as well as waking dreams). An intense personal trauma in 1981 initiated a life-changing spiritual awakening in which Paul began to recognize the dreamlike nature of reality. Though hospitalized a number of times he was able to extricate himself from the medical and psychiatric establishment altogether so that he could continue his process of self-discovery.

After the trauma of his shamanic break-down/through, Paul developed a unique and creative vehicle to introduce people to the dream-like nature of reality that he calls "The Dreaming Up Process," which is based on the realization that the same dreaming mind that dreams our dreams at night is dreaming our life. He teaches this dreaming up process in "Awakening in the Dream Groups" and assists individuals in his private practice to awaken to the dreamlike nature of reality.

A Tibetan Buddhist practitioner for over 30 years, he has intimately studied with some of the greatest spiritual masters of Tibet and Burma. He is the author of The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis, Wetiko: The Greatest Epidemic Sickness Known to Humanity, and Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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ExTEDx West Hollywood Live Stream ~ Sunday 2:00pm ET ~ UPDATED

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.




Apparently the whole thing is embeddable so it can be viewed from this page. If that doesn't work out, here are the direct links: ExTEDx West Hollywood and Live Stream

UPDATE: This program has been moved to a Vimeo. Details can be found here. 

Self-Deportation from TED?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I was wondering if and when we might start hearing from the other TEDx Whitechapel speakers. In their open letter, discussed here, the Whitechapel team said that a number of the speakers were unhappy with how Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake were treated by TED, but that they had been willing to wait and see how it would all play out. I noticed on my Reality Sandwich feed this morning that at least one of them has now gone public. Charles Eisenstein wants his talk removed and is urging others who are displeased with TED's actions to request the same.

With this in mind, I have a modest proposal that I'd like to extend to anyone who has (as I have) spoken at a TED or TEDx event. I propose that we respectfully request that our videos be taken down from TED-affiliated youtube channels just as Sheldrake's and Hancock's were. One might frame this as an act in solidarity with two fellow speakers who received shabby treatment, but really, I have no ax to grind. I do not want to punish TED, or make them regret their actions, or set them up as the bad guy. It is simply this: TED says it doesn't want to implicitly endorse the views of these men by having them associated with the TED brand. By the same token, I would prefer not to implicitly endorse TED's repudiation of the realm of inquiry those two (and TEDxWestHollywood) represent, by having my "brand" associated with TED.

Pretty straightforward, really.

Eiesenstein also beautifully articulates the problem with TED's position. (read: the opinions of the super-secret "science board" and the New Atheist special interest group that now dictates TED policy)

TED: A Postmortem... of the Censorship Debacle

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The issue of TED's pulling the Hancock and Sheldrake lectures isn't dead. It's still proliferating through the mainstream press and the blogosphere. But as far as TED is concerned, it's a wrap. They allowed their two weeks of discussion on each lecture and now they'd like everyone to just move along. They declined the opportunity to debate Hancock and Sheldrake, explaining that the discussion pages would suffice. But they also refused to explain their reasoning in those discussions. TED's final summations on the deleted Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake talks a can be found here and here. If only they were satisfying.

Despite the fact that many people called on them to explain their reasons for disavowing the talks -- after crossing out their initial justification -- they never have. You can glean fairly quickly that neither summation addresses the reasons by the fact that they're virtually identical and the talks were on very different subject matter. They're perfunctory and span only a few full paragraphs addressing only two of the "questions raised" in the discussion. Of the vast number of substantive issues discussed, TED chose only to address a couple issues of policy: whether or not consigning the videos to an unembeddable format on its back pages constituted censorship and an explanation of who their science board is without revealing their super-secret identities. We're left to take their word for their number, five, and vaguely described credentials.

While TED is advised by this shadowy body of "working scientists or distinguished science journalists," it is claimed that Chris Anderson's "team" makes the final decision. None of them, however, have seen fit to make their reasoning public. Since the original debacle of Anderson's attempt at explanation which had to be  redacted, they seem to have given up on explanations entirely.

In their more recent cancellation of TEDx West Hollywood's license, no factual justification has been offered. Suzanne Taylor just got a lot of "we're not comfortable with it" and that there were complaints about some of the authors. They refused to specify which speakers and what those complaints were. They just poked around with questions about certain speakers because they were "interested to hear" what was planned. They claimed in their note to the TED community that their "decision was not based on any individual speaker, but our assessment of the overall curatorial direction of the program." How's that for vague?

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Shamanic Journeying: Taking Action

Direct revelation from spirit is a human birthright, but what do we actually do with those messages from spirit? Whether our answers come to us through dreams, meditations, or shamanic journeys we must address how we systematically learn to take action based on this information? “First we must remember that the messages from Spirit are just information, not edicts or commands,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “We are at our best when our actions are informed by the wisdom of spirit and the wisdoms of the heart, body, and mind.” Second, we must remember that often the action needed is simply to get out of our own way. Ultimately, we must learn how to act where we have power and to trust that we need only act in ways that are ours to do. And we must learn to do all of this the while leaving room for the Unknown to enter, recognizing when the game has just been changed, and moving in new ways without fear to make life better than you ever imagined. Join us this week as we continue to explore the common mistakes, misconceptions, and false assumptions made by shamanic journeyers and the remedies to correct them. This show is the final episode of our series called Mastering the Art of Shamanic Journeying.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Further Adventures in a West Memphis Courtroom -- UPDATED

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Judge Victor Hill denied a motion from Pam Hicks (previously Hobbs) and John Mark Byers to see all the evidence in the murder of their sons Stevie Branch and Christopher Byers, as well as Michael Moore. Neither these two plaintiffs nor their attorney Ken Swindle seem very broken up about the decision.

The attorney for Pam Hicks and Mark Byers, the parents of two of the victims, told News Channel 3 that judge’s decision “was not a big deal.”

“They would have like to have had all the evidence. That would have been the icing on the cake. But the ending goal was answering questions,” attorney Ken Swindle said. “The primary reason the parents hired me was to find answers, and they feel like for the first time in 20 years they have answers about what happened in those woods.”

That's because in the process of suing, they were granted partial access to the evidence. The discovery process enabled them to see a letter from Bennie Guy which implicated four men. Both Guy and Billy Stewart, who was referenced in Guy's letter, were interviewed. They claim that they heard confessions from two of the men, then teenagers, who committed the murders.

If this new testimony brings Hicks and Byers any sense of closure, I must assume that means they are convinced that Terry Hobbs and his friend (lover?) David Jacoby spearheaded the murders, because that's what Stewart and Guy claim.

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Money, Power, and Shamanism

What is the relationship between our internal richness and monetary wealth? Money gives us a place to project all of our unresolved issues about our own rank, privilege, and power. And money is a power object imbued with power by its user to make change in the world. How does spirit view money? "Money is not the root of all evil," explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, "People are." Money is a cultural agreement that we can use to help or to harm each other. Seen in this way money is another expression of our energy in the world. Shamanic wisdom from around the globe tells us that money, like all energy, must move to be well. And in that movement we must stay out of the stagnation of greed and scarcity or the agitation of spending more than we have for reasons that do not matter. To remain in right relationship with money we must choose to be accountable for the flow of energy in the interchange of love, knowledge, and work in the physical and nonphysical world with gratitude, responsibility, and reciprocity. In this way we cultivate the internal richness needed to sustain the true power of action in our own lives.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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