Are you like me, where sometimes, out of the blue, you’re confronting an abyss or whatever you’d call that pit of the stomach feeling of emptiness and futility? Most of the time I stay free of opinion about our situation, one way or the other: it just is so let it be. But there are those moments that are the opposite of the ahas when breakthroughs in ordinary reality expand your awareness. We don’t have a name for these downers – maybe uhohs. And, maybe they’re good for us. Smooth sailing doesn’t get to higher ground and we need a better way for all of us to be here on earth together. It’s a mass sensation of mutuality and caring, like you feel for your family, that we need, where we’d think of the planet as our garden and not our garbage dump, and maybe being ripped from our moorings actually lets the good of human nature, which I’d argue is the basis on which we’re constructed, come through.
Pre-COVID my non-profit, Mighty Companions, produced many salons and other invitational gatherings at my West Hollywood home, and what comes out of this shutdown for me is a push into the bigger world. My podcast was one leap and Zoom is my new good friend where I’m trying different ways for engagements to be meaningful. Lately, it’s to speak to this prompt: “What I’d do if I ran the world…..” That’s not for what needs to change but for what to do to make those changes happen. Strange but true, we are skinny on that inquiry!
Your engagement is welcome.
A Cosmic Conversation with Brian Swimme
A previous SUE Speaks event
Brian Swimme has been my main philosophical squeeze since the late 80s when I read his book, The Universe is a Green Dragon. It’s a “cosmic creation story” of our billions of years of evolution with humanity at the leading edge of the known universe. As good as Brian’s book is, I’m equally enamored with its wonderful author who inspires everyone in his presence with the majesty of the universe and the privilege of being part of it. We did a memorable evening with him at my house a lot of years ago, and when he came to L.A. a few weeks ago to be on a panel and to delivered a keynote address at a local event, I had the pleasure of having him at my house again, where we turned the camera on at a brunch with a few good friends who each read him a favorite passage from Green Dragon to spark our conversation.
Meaningful Conversations with Conscious Elders A previous SUE Speaks event
In conjunction with the Elders Action Network (EAN), this was an event at my house for seniors who are awake to the challenges of our time. It was a chance for them to dialogue with one another to apply the learning of their lifetimes to help make this a kinder, gentler world.
Part 1 | Richard Grossinger Salon
Part 4 | Richard Grossinger Salon
Part 2 | Richard Grossinger Salon
Part 5 | Richard Grossinger Salon
Part 3 | Richard Grossinger Salon
Part 6 | Richard Grossinger Salon
Part 7 | Richard Grossinger Salon
Thinkfest A previous SUE Speaks event with Richard Grossinger
Richard Grossinger, a scholar who has written books on several topics, is the founder of North Atlantic Books, a very successful publishing company, with Random House distribution, which specializes in Mind-Body-Spirit and literary topics. You’re invited to a dialogue with him at my house. My hero, Brian Thomas Swimme (who was in my living room for a dialogue in the 1980s), chair of the Program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at California Institute of Integral Studies, had this to say:
“Richard Grossinger’s new book, The Night Sky, should be heralded as the publishing event of the decade. This is a book that has the power to change your relationship to the universe. I would even say it has the potentiality to participate in the evocation of a new civilization. You should know from the start that it is not an easy read, and I am not referring to the cutting edge science which is all presented with great clarity. In fact, the real difficulty in reading The Night Sky is directly related to its power, for to understand Grossinger’s vision of the universe one needs to open up the soul in ways that have been forgotten, ignored, and even explicitly oppressed by Western civilization for over 400 years now.
PS: Especially if you are from New York and are of an age you’d know about Grossinger’s Hotel, a hotspot north of New York City where I met Richard when I was 18 and he was 8. My husband’s sister, Bunny, Richard’s stepmother, was married to Paul Grossinger, son of the legendary Jenny. A perk for people who come will be the gift of New Moon, Richard’s memoir about his youth and the hotel.
A World Without Work A previous SUE Speaks event
Calling all good people who care about the state of the world! A World Without Work is intended to help spark a sea change in our economic system. Really.
It’s a very big deal for me, with my non-profit, Mighty Companions, funding this so it can be free to participants, and the Psychology Department of Loyola Marymount University sponsoring it. All L.A. people who would like to part of an activist community are very welcome.
Our evening will be built around a talk about the massive shift our economic system will have to make, when, due to advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, and 3D printing, there will not be enough jobs. Our speaker, Prof. Richard Gilbert, who recently produced a conference on the personal and cultural impact of leading edge digital technology, will make our precarious situation clear.
Professor Gilbert will also present his advocacy for guaranteed income as the solution — this already has been on the ballot in Switzerland, while in the U.S. most people don’t even know that a catastrophe looms. Over dessert, we’ll be in small groups for dialogue and then convene for a robust conversation that Rich will anchor. Everything will be filmed and we will push for the edited YouTube product to go viral!
Brother, can you spare a paradigm?
A previous exTEDx event
When TED cancelled my license on the eve of this event, in a retrenchment that started with Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock, this program, that was challenging to the status quo, regrouped under my auspice and at my expense. Little David has been stewing ever since about how to handle this Goliath. [Information about other Sue Speaks Events can be found here.]
My story with TED is a chapter in a tale that involves the cusp we are on between the materialist paradigm that is failing us and the life-sustaining one that is to come. It has to do with the constricting hold the Skeptics have on evolutionary progress, with their tentacles not only into TED but into WIKIPEDIA, too. These are icons of cultural thought and we all are suffering, getting skewed senses of what really matters. Only some “ideas worth spreading” get out at TED, and only some people realize how our understanding is being manipulated.
