Consciousness Seminars planning thread

@achronon, @johnnydavis54, @patanswer, @Geoffreyjen_Edwards, @care_save, and anyone else who would be interested:

The idea has come up in various threads to organize a series of seminars, similar to the Sloterdijk-Spheres reading group (and the Gebser reading prior), but open to exploring more diverse topics, authors, books, ideas, or other cultural occasions (e.g., drama, film, poetry) as part of a process collegial and collaborate inquiry.

It’s also been expressed that we should proceed with some urgency with respect to actual currents of consciousness in the world. How does one read in a fascist time? As voraciously as possible, it’s been said. How might we transmute these currents (if not counteract, where necessary, and within ourselves) for beneficial effect?

To proceed, we need to schedule at least a preliminary conference, which can serve as an opportunity to dialogue about our desired outcomes and respective interests, as well as bandwidth and availability. To get that ball rolling…I’ve created a Doodle poll with my personal availability for the next few weeks.

https://doodle.com/poll/cbxzgi5rvddac6s2

I’ve left out Thursdays (Trumpocalypse already scheduled, Spheres calls previously penciled in) and weekends (family time for me), although I’m open to occasional weekend events in the long run, especially if this allows people to participate whose schedule doesn’t allow during the week.

Part of the complexity will be time zone coordination. In the past, we’ve have readers from across the US, as well as Europe (CET) and sometimes Australia or New Zealand. We’ll just have to do our best to find a sweet spot when most can make it.

Let’s use this Doodle only to schedule a PRELIMINARY call. If we can find a time for this when all the principal participants are available, then we can follow up to find a suitable regular time, or some way to cycle or alternate, or even discover a ‘time-free’ approach that resolves the dilemma.

Please :heart: this post if this approach works for you, and if not, please comment below.

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Thanks again, Marco, for applying your organizational skills to this effort! I’m looking forward to these new developments.

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I posted a comment in the Doodle poll; I hope it’s visible.

Just in case it isn’t, I’d like to reiterate that whatever time is best for the most participants is the best time, period. There will no doubt be pre- and post-meeting threads that can be worked asynchronously.

The world may have become a village, but it’s not all in the same time zone.

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I have been feeling nonplussed, or perhaps flummoxed, by the executive challenge of scheduling, calendar-coordination, and time-management across the framings of global time zones, personal responsibilities, and other life commitments. I usually put a certain amount of faith in the 4th dimension to work itself out; but I’m also aware that at a certain point one has to concretize the flux of intensities for the sake of timely existence—or nothing happens!

The basic problem we have, in our small group (as microcosm), is that, during the week, some people can make events early in the day (from my perspective), and others only later (likewise). Weekends are out of bounds for me—in my role as an organizer—because on a weekly cycle, Saturday and Sunday are the days when I most naturally gravitate toward family activities and local events. I imagine it’s the same for other parents or providers; though for other people, weekends might be ideal for participating in online events. That said, I could and would certainly participate in weekend dialogues in the Cosmosphere, organized by others, at least occasionally. My wife goes to church with the girls somewhat regularly on Sunday mornings, for example; that would be a beautiful time for me for a consciousness seminar. I just couldn’t dedicate the days prior (Thursday-Saturday) to organizing or preparing for these events, either logistically or in terms of my energy circulation.

During the week, it’s a different story. I am here for Cosmos, and eager to dedicate my time, energy, love, care, and attention to organizing, facilitating, and contributing to worthwhile, stimulating, and ultimately ecstatic (in that “well-tempered” manner referred to by Mr. Sloterdijk) (infinite) conversations…as long as others desire to participate in kind. Of course, there’s that little matter of ‘earning a living’—but as with the 4th dimension, I’m trusting that the puzzle will resolve. (Maybe in the 5th Density.) Practically speaking, however, I will continue to have client projects to tend until the co-op is funded, and may occasionally bow out of a given event to keep (or catch) up with paying work. But I believe the following is a reasonable approximation of what I can offer at this time:

Tuesday, 12 pm Mountain time / weekly
“Cosmos Café” – open dialogue with guests, or live podcasts…

Thursday, 6 pm Mountain time / weekly
[Metapsychosis / Infinite Conversations - various] - reading groups, seminars, movie club, etc.

I know I’ve tried to do something similar in the past, with a weekly standing time, but I think the mistake I made is that I committed to being there even if no one else showed up, which was wonderful when people surprised me, but ended up wasting time if no one was there. So now I just want to make myself generally available at these times for scheduled conversations, with rotating facilitation and leadership as will emerge organically.

I will also establish a few other “open office hours” during the week for specific purposes, e.g., editorial or tech support—but that’s for another topic. Finally, as I’ve mentioned before, I am setting up an appointment scheduler integrated with Zoom so that Cosmos members can reserve a meeting room for their own self-organized events.

Time-freedom is not for the faint of heart! Thanks for working with me on all this; please let me know if my proposal is sensible, or workable, and how it might work for you…


TO DO:

  • Set up shared Cosmos / Infinite Conversations / Metapsychosis calendar [M]
  • Finish set up of Acuity-Zoom integration [M]
  • Documentation on how to join, initiate, plan, run an event using the forum, Zoom, and other tools [could use help on this]
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I hear you, Marco, and maybe we could chunk this down to something more manageable.

I’m a little unclear about what this proposed meeting is for? There may be more than one bifurcation happening. And what does the fourth dimension want to have happen?

I was hoping for a pre-conference conference on the consciousness idea proposed by TJ. Are we talking about the same thing?

Some conversations emerged out of the Bubbles reading that I feel became a different thread. I imagine with the few who responded consistently on the that thread, that we voiced an interest in the seminar idea. That would basically include you, Ed, TJ and myself, who have shown up most often and have expressed this interest many times. A sub group formed. I imagine if we three or four agreed on a plan we could then invite the larger group to participate.

Too many cooks spoil the soup.

Getting three or four of us together should be manageable and since we already have shared a lot already it could be feasible to get us on a conference call to organize this proposal… You may Marco not feel up to this and I understand. You have cast a wider net than I had expected but I sense that you are working on the logistics of a different project.

All manner of thing shall be well…

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Hi Johnny, you’re right, I am thinking about a larger pattern…

That is because the times for the planning meeting are not lining up on the Doodle. Below is the link again. As you can see, there are no times proposed when more than one person is available.

So that’s why I was proposing personally to hold a space on Tuesdays and Thursdays for whatever 4D wants to have happen…

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That sounds good to me. Thanks for the clarification.

I imagine that once we get some continuity going, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, new habits will form, and groups within groups will emerge, and flow back into the continuum, and re-enter the dynamic (w)hole of the Klein bottle, pleasantly surprised by our paradoxes…

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First, thank you Marco for your continuing efforts to pull things together on this and various other projects! I totally get it. (And if you think your kids own your schedule now, I hate to tell you that teen years bring little respite… LOL!)

But anyway, in the spirit of being the change I want to see:
In order for Ed to participate I would think a 9 PM start to be around the latest it would be fair to ask. So minus 6 is 3 PM for John and I (EST) and 1 PM for you. Starting the week of Nov 13th, with enough notice I can arrange time off (half-day or late lunch or whatever) to make any weekday that works for the group.
If this helps, I propose we use the first meeting space to specifically discuss Arthur Young’s The Reflexive Universe. Possible discussion starters:

  • What are the implications if light is indeed “conscious”?
  • What is convincing - or not - about 7? Other aspects of the model?
  • Is the model of decreasing, and then increasing, levels of ‘freedom’ helpful when thinking about the interrelation of consciousness and culture building - or changing - or ‘making’? (i.e., how can a reflexive universe inform a cosmic cooperative? :wink:)
    Something like that…

I’m going to go ahead and start Globes in a few days. I don’t know where we are with that, but Thursday night seems to be a good general meeting time (at least for the continental US). Like John, I think smaller, less formal talks can run parallel to the Spheres discussion without too much interference.

@achronon: I know you won’t be with us on that trip; I will surely miss your “wear your hip boots” guidance! But I think (if you haven’t already) you will find Ingold (Being Alive) to be much clearer in his aim and presentation. He seems postmodern, but I get the sense he is seeking a re-integration at a deeper level. Even if we don’t read the whole thing, I would love to go into Chapter 12 (I think) where he talks about space and place and get everyone’s thoughts. Maybe our second session if the first goes well enough?

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Great! That works for me. And I will get cracking on Young. I have a bias though about the torus. The doughnut doesn’t move me as the Klein bottle does, with its curves and loops, opening us up to the paradoxes of the fourth dimension. However I sense there are deep relationships between these different kinds of topo-dimensions that are worth investigating. And I am very interested in what Young says about Light.

And perhaps these seminars could feedback into the Spheres 2 as does the Klein bottle loop into it’s own surface? I’m sure we can find some overtones and undertones between these texts and our own topological imaginations. The Sphere as I recall is non-orientable.

We are voracious readers. And so were the scholar-practitioners who came before us. I hope that we can dedicate our efforts to preserve and innovate so that the youngsters among us can have a clean start.

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Well, I can tell both of you – @patanswer and @madrush – once you’ve got the kids allegedly managed, grandkids show up … some phenomena are mythic in proportion.

Since I’m the farthest out – timewise, that is – let me clarify that I hardly ever get to bed before midnight and I get up at 6:00 every morning just so I can get ready, breakfast and sort my mails and do a few little things before I take the grandson to kindergarten at 7:30. In other words, and seeing that we usually planned for hour-and-a-half sessions, I have no objections to starting even later (up to 10:30 pm my time if that would help any of you guys. Tuesdays are better than Thursdays for me, but Thursdays are fine.

Starting with Young works for me, and I find your discussion starters very suitable for our purposes since they address the key features of Young’s model as they relate to the issues that we find ourselves continually wrestling with (consciousness, matter, intent, action, and more). Knowing the group, I’m sure other “side topics” will arise, especially those that tie in with whatever else any of us may be reading on the side.

No, TJ, I haven’t changed my mind about Globes (or Sloterdijk in general). Given your recommendation of Ingold, I did order Being Alive, but as it has to come from England, it won’t be here till the week of the 13th at the earliest. I’ll give it as open a look as I can muster, knowing full well that I have a lot of postmodern prejudice to overcome. If I get the sense he’s actually saying something, it shouldn’t be a problem. (You see, I’m really old-fashioned when it comes to human interaction: if you’ve got something to say, say it, and I appreciate any speaker/writer who is willing to respect their listener/reader enough to try and be clear about whatever that is.)

As far as I’m concerned, all we need to do is firm up a day and time.

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Awesome. In pencil, then:

Tuesday seems to be ideal, so if Nov 14 works, I can put in for the half-day. The following ‘slots’ work according to the above feedback.
12 PM / 2 PM / 8 PM
1 PM / 3 PM / 9 PM
2 PM / 4 PM / 10 PM

@madrush: The later the better for me to have a chance to get home and set up, but it’s understandable if you want to run it close to the time already dedicated to Cosmos Café. Unless something happens, I shouldn’t be more than 15 minutes late for a 2 PM session. I say you make the final time pick as we still rely on you for the tech side.

Indeed, there are times when time must simply be made! LOL
Thanks, everyone.

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This is great. Thank you, TJ! It looks like the Cosmos Café is open for business. :coffee:

1 / 3 / 9 on Tuesday works well for me, with the first seminar on 11/14 being dedicated to Arthur Young’s Reflexive Universe. Wonderful.

If so, then I think I will schedule Spheres for Thursday evenings—monthly, taking the text in larger chunks till we’re through?—at 6 MT / 8 PT; this time could be more accessible to folks with day jobs in North America. Will follow up specifically on that thread.

And then…next spring/summer, Aurobindo, The Live Divine? That’s an exciting prospect…

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All of that works for me. I trust, Marco, you will send us a reminder the day before as I am not good at keeping track of calendars. I think Globes will be more fun if we have alternate worlds to contrast and compare to it. As Sloterdijk is a bit of a neo-liberal it might be helpful for me to get into the mindset of such a person.

I am much more drawn to the visionaries who work with the Light directly. Aurobindo is a great researcher in that area and I would imagine a group reading of such an advanced person could help us illuminate our current paradoxes.

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Heh, heh, heh … reminds me of a song from my youth: “1-3-9 the goose drank wine / the monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line / the line broke / the monkey got choked / and they all went to heaven in a little row boat.” In my childhood, we were obviously less politically correct and also less concerned about children’s sensibilities. Hardly a wonder I turned out like I did.

At any rate, I’m penciled.

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:+1:Time off approved. Nov 14 is a go on my end.

(I had to table Sri Aurobindo’s The Human Cycle a while back to finish some other stuff, but I fully plan to return. So count me in if/when we get to him as well…)

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I just want to mention @Geoffreyjen_Edwards here, since he entered his availability in the Doodle poll, but may not have seen the latest discussion.

Aw dang it. That would be Nov 15 at 5 or 6 AM in Australia right?..

So I’m unclear what the 1/3/9 means for Tuesdays - what time are we talking about? Tuesday is a bit of a problem for me, as I teach from 18:00 to 21:00 EST - not every week, but on the 7th and the 14th I’m on. Don’t know if that conflicts with your times. Thursday I am not available 15:30 to 16:30 EST, but the rest of the day I am available and I might be able to move the meeting on Thursday afternoon to another time slot if that is a problem. For Sloterdijk, right? For the Reflexive Universe, I haven’t been able to get close to finding time to read it.

That would be 13:00 MST / 15:00 EST / 21:00 CET that we were discussing. Outside the US, the 24-hour clock is more common and less confusing, I find.

The currently planned get-together for the 14th would be at 15:00 EST, which could make it tight for your evening teaching session, and we were going to kick Young around, as I understand it. Even if you haven’t read him, if you had time to sit in, it is not disadvantageous to have someone around who can sanity check what’s being discussed.

It was my understanding that the Sloterdijk sessions would be on Thursdays but just once a month.

OKay, I will do my best to be present for the discussion on the 14th!