Being Green – Consciousness and the Environment

Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.  I’m going to take a slightly different tack this week (and some people might think I’ve gone off track completely) but if you have a wander through the 14 different post categories on our site you’ll find that we cover scientific topics in some and more esoteric topics such as poetry and spirituality in others.  In truth, however, our lives are a blend of both and we make no effort to separate or distinguish our spiritual lives from our day-to-day existence.

Having said that, in this post I’m not going to be covering the topic of religion per se, but rather what some might refer to as esoteric sciences.  And no, that’s not a contradiction in terms.  Skeptics aside, there have been and continue to be a number of people who are working to combine the fields of science (quantum physics, for example) with fields such as parasychology and different spiritual traditions.  If I was going to pick two names off the top of my head I’d probably go with Dr. Fred Alan Wolf and Dr. Dean Radin, but there are many more, people like Lynne McTaggart or Dr. Marilyn Schlitz, current director of the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

So, if you’re scratching your head wondering what any of this has to do with living a ‘green’ lifestyle, it’s because I wanted to add in a little bit of background before announcing something that I heard about today.  There’s a conference coming up this fall (October 15-17, with intensives Oct. 14 & 18) in San Rafael, CA called the Bioneers Conference.  A total of 163 speakers will be covering topics such as “Architecting the Future“, “Achieving a Clean and Just Energy“, “Leading-Edge Climate Initiative: You Can Get There From Here“, “Perspectives on Protecting Wildlands: From Natural Heritage to Ecosystem Services“, “The Environment and Its Relationship to Equity and the Economy“, “Consciousness: The Missing Piece in the Sustainability Puzzle?“, “Everybody’s Planet, Everybody’s Movement: Why Equity Is An Environmental Issue and Environment is an Equity Issue“, “Ecopsychology Emerging” and “Breaking Down the Walls: The Future of Education with Earth in Mind“. Those are just a few random examples. It looks to be a power-packed few days!

Okay, the links for this week include:

Okay, that’s it for now. Have a great week!
Mike.

P.S. This is from Dean Radin’s book, “The Conscious Universe“:

In science, the acceptance of new ideas follows a predictable, four-stage sequence. In Stage 1, skeptics confidently proclaim that the idea is impossible because it violates the Laws of Science. This stage can last from years to centuries, depending on how much the idea challenges conventional wisdom. In Stage 2, skeptics reluctantly concede that the idea is possible, but it is not very interesting and the claimed effects are extremely weak. Stage 3 begins when the mainstream realizes that the idea is not only important, but its effects are much stronger and more pervasive than previously imagined. Stage 4 is achieved when the same critics who used to disavow any interest in the idea begin to proclaim that they thought of it first. Eventually, no one remembers that the idea was once considered a dangerous heresy.

The idea discussed in this book is in the midst of the most important and the most difficult of the four transitions – from Stage 1 into Stage 2. While the idea itself is ancient, it has taken more than a century to conclusively demonstrate it in accordance with rigorous, scientific standards. This demonstration has accelerated Stage 2 acceptance, and Stage 3 can already be glimpsed on the horizon.

The idea is that those compelling, perplexing and sometimes profound human experiences known as “psychic phenomena” are real.

This will come as no surprise to most of the world’s population, because the majority already believes in psychic phenomena. But over the past few years, something new has propelled us beyond old debates over personal beliefs. The reality of psychic phenomena is now no longer based solely upon faith, or wishful thinking, or absorbing anecdotes. It is not even based upon the results of a few scientific experiments. Instead, we know that these phenomena exist because of new ways of evaluating massive amounts of scientific evidence collected over a century by scores of researchers.

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