YES I FEEL IN THE SEEING A
NAKEDNESS…
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Not sure I should be replying! Because alas I haven’t been an active part of this conversation…
But I did feel among your beautiful “star points” something missing…an explicit
rooting/grounding in Earth/Body/Non-human realms which feed and support us
comic humans everywhere and every instant, yes?
Thanks for letting me but in here… 
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That is a good, um, point, Maía
It’s not butting in for me at all, I appreciate the reply.
I don’t have a great immediate answer, but I will ponder it…
I have been thinking of the center of the star as the Integral Heart. Could the Integral Heart be the place where Earth, Body, and non-human realms/beings find a home?
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Maybe a heart with roots? That way the more-than-human beings and Earth are implied?
I know, easier said than done!
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Well, let’s all bring our visions and visionary sensibilities to the party—let them mix and mingle, combine and recombine—and see what arises in the morning? Maybe the Star is inside the Heart, which has roots like a Tree, which branch out and connect through variegated dense mycelial networks underground with the squirmy worms… I am curious about how we develop a shared language to describe the common (yet differently experienced and conceived) field that we are conjuring.
How do we formalize something while keeping it alive? (I.e., not killing the spirit.)
Let there be cooperative poetry, I say. Let the Cosmos celebrate our unique differences of vision in communion—could a harmonizing of heterogeneity produce a shared sharable vision out of itself?
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Yes! This is THE question everywhere we look, isn’t it?
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Above is the recording from the previous Tuesday. Marco and Doug have about twenty minutes of check-ins, twenty minutes of examining this list of topics (one of many lists that are floating around in our heads and on paper somewhere) and about twenty minutes with third eyes and ears to possible directions for Cosmos. Feedback and feed-forward appreciated @Ariadne and @Michael_Stumpf and @johnnydavis54 and others with eyes and ears on these words . . . what is on your list of todo’s and issues; desires and dreams for the Cosmos? The stars are aligning on this side of the universee.
The seasons of change are alighting upon us. The sessions we share change and change alike. I like what you are drumming up for us, little drummer boys and girls.
Do you see what we see?
A star, a star
Starting in our minds
And integrating in our hearts
Do you hear what we hear?
A song, a song
Visionary sensibilites
cooperative poetries
night wind, little lamb, shepherd boy, king, child
I am imagining too the inner layer of the subtle bodies, formalized into chakral energies yet flowing throughout and emitted into the ethers and permitted into heterogenous harmonies.
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I am meeting Seth today to work with Clean Language and the Tetrads. In the meantime I will review carefully in the next few days your approach on this zoom call and make a few critical remarks as you have requested feedback. I’m not clear yet on what kind of feedback that you guys want or how you want to receive it. I don’t think written communication is the most effective. So, I reahearse some rough thoughts. Are we extending the private body or the group/social body? I admit that I’m a bit confused by this conversation and why it is made public. Where do you want me to direct my attention?
I already have done with Doug a session with Lisa in which I labored mightily to make a coherent contribution. That effort has yet to come to fruition. There has been no wide spread acceptance or change of practice that has occurred that I am aware of. I heard Marco express a desired outcome at the last Cafe. That’s a good sign. My theater experience taught me that if I don’t know what my character wants the scene will have no life. That is an aesthetic principle I have tried to cultivate here. I m not worried that the world will not rise tomorrow if none of this happens. Its how you play the infinite game.
I attempted with Doug to do something different with Lisa but it seems to have vanished into air, into thin air. That session was a dynamic reference point that I would like to point to. I would invite you both to review it and reflect upon that exercise. That session is a style of doing feedback that I want to become more grounded in the behavoiral repetoire of participants here. But that is my desired outcome. I’m not sure if that is something others want to develop.
Feedback is a skill and I am careful not to offer it unless I am clear about what kind of feedback and at what depth the participants want to go. Giving feedback is a lot of work and will it stick? Or will it just descend into more chat? I sense that the communications here are ready to enter a maturation phase. There are lots of obstacles, yet, to overcome.
I’m not sure or certain of anything. The subtle magic carpet ride has crashed into a weird, wireless bandwidth. And that is a good place for me to be, on the ground, with dirty feet. Panentheistic dreamer that I am, I promote a grounded ecstasy.
So I share with you my doubts and disappointment first. I also imagine if I could find the focus that there are lots of emeralds and rubies sparkling in the mud which look like broken beer bottles and are ignored.
We are images on a flat screen. What kind of impact can images on screens have with one another’s subtle bodies? How do images on a screen coordinate to have action impacts on the ground? Collectively, here and elsewhere, we are interiorizing the tech giants schemas and re-perceiving the subtle forms that are moving through the cracks in our Imaginal third eyes and with the ephemeral gestures of our third hands. We are suffering from genre confusion. This is a huge undertaking.
David Lynch, in the clip that was shared, compared TV to film. A film he said has a begining, a middle, and an end. TV has no ending. So, what kind of paradigm will the Digital Age initiate?
Today I will meet with Seth ( whom both of you know) and we will be in a real park, with really real trees, turning red and gold. I will bring, as I always do, paper and crayons. We are working with Clean Language, Clean Space and Mcluhan’s Tetrads. If we come up with something that might be of use to our communiques I will share it.
" Computers are useless. All they can give you are answers."-Picasso
And what happens when shepherd boy grows up?
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A great project, and a superb partner. I appreciate Seth’s youthful wisdom and your depth of insight. Wondering how this will map onto our efforts here and appreciate any artifacts you might bring here.
This is already good feedback. To be honest, reviewing the recording is unnecessary (the feedback I would like is stated next paragraph). I understand the efforts of these recordings have not been made clear. This thread title “Towards the Formalization of Cosmos as a Cooperative” has been hijacked and we are holding the Cosmos ransom, a demand that it come into fruition. “Give us all of your cosmic entities!” “Make technology simple again!” “Let them know our Philosophies and Arts and Spirits!” We have steered from the Vision statement and into a reenvisioning of the whole cosmic shebreath (or shebang if you are into that thing).
I think the feedback we want (or at least I want), is not to review these recordings, which though structured, do not have enough flesh on the bones to be a specimen worthy of deep examination. It is more of a request (at some point) to give direct feedback on the direction of the cooperative. We have done this before and we will do it again and again. You say it best when you request of us to ask and examine: What is working? What is not working? What can we do better? alongside of Marco’s cosmosvision questions: What do you want to have happen? What wants to happen?
I spoke with a friend (also a Friend) who is at the edge of giving up on the Quaker community. I said I relate; I have used the social distancing as a way to wriggle out of the many responsibilities that had been placed upon me in that community; responsibilities that had little results, little appreciation of my hard work. More issues arose from fellow Friends than solutions. He stated there is a minimal viable framework or process for him now and, if it is not met, he is gone. The issues involve race and old, white males with an ancient stance, all too familiar. When we place so much effort into something and the results are a tired story, we desire to seek elsewhere. I do want to add that I am now re’invested’ in the local community here, the closest a KY chap like me can come to a tangible, feet-on-the-ground community that can, on occasion, get shit done.
I greatly appreciated our triad with Lisa and we all exited the conversation with a sense of direction and accomplishment. I do know Lisa, who had health issues at the time, is still wanting to work on her project. And wanting to midwife it here. Yes, a maturation phase. And on the ground, with dirty feet.
Your work with Seth; Marco and his poetic potluck with Heather and other Colorado folk; Michael in the coffee shop taking the latest Cosmic Conversation into the wild world of strange human entities; Maia with her feet in her forest, listening to others read and discuss her artistic creation. Sometimes my boys will wander into my room when in the midst of our conversations, their tiny feet on the carpet, wondering what their daddy is doing. I got to witness my father, couch potato and angry man and social recluse, watch the news and X-Files, occasionally talking about something I do not carry with me in my conscious mind today. My sons will not see me as a computer chair potato man. They will see me sharing my amateur watercolor from the Dreams conversation and decide to make a watercolor of their own. Or they will see me reading and typing and read and type their own worlds.
In Sum: do not give feedback on the recordings. You have already met your screentime for this lifetime and I demand only permanent grime on soles of feet (bare feet on cold ground is just as beneficial and exhilarating as a cold bath/shower . . . during the next freeze try it please!); I demand pointed stars as our wholeheart, piercing the skin like spurs from inside our clumsy bodies, giving us light and grace to move forward, to go forth in this wild, wild Westernalized world.
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I walk barefoot everyday, on wet grass and find a hill to roll down. I roll around in the dirt. I blindfold myself, and bump into things, pricked by thorns, smelling a sweet minty odor. Cold baths, yes. My knuckles turn white in the cold. We, the invisible, are aware of the dead, the pauper graves, which are underneath, the concrete of New York City. Many afternoons I sit in a graveyard at St. Mark’s Church, at the corner of my block, and feel the barefeet upon a tombstone as I practice tummo, activating the breath of fire. I am a nature mystic in Manhattan. I will let you guys get on with your business. Good luck.
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My feeling about the recordings of my dialogues with Doug is that we are sharing them here in the spirit of transparency, since we are technically discussing “co-op business.” That doesn’t mean anybody is obligated to give them attention, or that we are even in a conducive configuration to receive feedback. But they are here for anyone who would wish to follow the circulatory amblings of our thoughts.
I actually feel like we are only warming up, tuning up our instruments, testing what our cooperative souls might be capable of this time around, what might be different now, since we have had a number of these kinds of conversations over the years; yet now we are moving toward publishing books, making good on promises, fulfilling desires.
For me, one difference is that now, it feels like there are fewer obstacles, there is a window of opportunity—a chance to fly perhaps. I would say the “co-op” aspect is for people who want to do a co-op, which is a particular kind of thing in the world, with its own logics and internal requirements. It is a form of social organization. It is work.
And it is important work, I believe, which I am dedicating my life to, because without the co-op, there is no journal, no forum, no Café, no underground, no Untimely Books, etc. I refuse to be a sole proprietor!
In any event, it’s about time to get on the line… if anyone would like to join us on the spur of the moment, here again is that Zoom link: Launch Meeting - Zoom
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Dear Manhatten Nature Mystic, What a wonderful practice!
I walk in the cold early early morning every day and sometimes lie down on the leafy ground in my corner of the community garden and listen to birdsong, watch them bathing in cold water enthusiastically! I have read scientific articles several times that suggest exposing oneself to the real world (if it’s cold, then, “real” is going to be cold!) instead of remaining in comfy heated rooms is good for our physical health. But I suspect it is (like alignment with light/dark cycles) good for the spirit too.
Interestingly, I too have a St. Mark’s within a couple blocks of my living quarters…also a St. Michael’s All Angels with a labyrinth I have walked at night. But my “temple” is the Earth/Sky, I’m a proud nature mystic, like you.
I am reading (again) Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez…he’s one of my mentors in the natural world-loving human beings. Like you, I love to commune with the dead…
and this time of year is one of my favorite times…for the quiet, non-commercial appreciation of natural colors and changes that remind us to live vividly and playfully!
Many thanks for your contributions, Johnny.
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Like the child in the poem (shepherd, stars,night…) your most fortunate sons will keep the stars and the night and the sheep on the hills in their hearts…
And gracias for finding my feet in forest soil! 
Dark as night bright with stars…
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Thanks, Marco. When you are ready for feedback let me know.
This is sort of-like a double message. Give us feedback but don’t give us feedback and don’t do anymore screentime. I may have misread the intention of your communique and you may have misread mine. I point this out as an example of why I do not think writing( typing) is the best way to deliver feedback. I am not, for example, thinking about Lisa’s project, I’m thinking about the approach the three of us took to giving feedback on her project. That is what I wanted to circulate more widely and that is my effort to put that out on the table. It is not the group/social body that has to accomodate my desired outcome. I have to become more skilled at making the template explicit. Unfortuantely, it is not open to the public scrutiny and so like other efforts here it seems to disappear in the algoriryhmic death ray.
I want to make my feedback relevant to your investigations and you have given me feedback on my feedback even if I don’t quite get it. The positive intention behind objections is what is most vital in these messy grammars of motive. I much prefer a zoom call when giving critical remarks to anyone and it help enormously if the triadic configurtion we engaged with Lisa is at play. The noise is minimized, the work gets a clearer focus, as a third person orientation becomes integrated into the mix.
Thank you for recieving the positive intention behind my meta-commentary.
When I went to the check out, and presented my bag, the masked cashier said," Thank you for helping the earth."
" And thank you," I replied, " for thanking me. That motivates me."
So, keep up the good work, you guys, and if you require feedback from a concerned meta-person feel free to ask.
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This Music came from my affect in regards to Marco’s
Comment about the Stories we tell ourselves…
What a Amazing Gift & Curse when we imprison
ourselves & Forget the Gift comes with a Rewrite/Recreate Ability?
Really like listening to You two Jam with the Electricity in
the Air of this Now Moment Happening Here!
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