Infinite Conversations

Douglas Prater is an author, musician, media engineer, and designer of audio tracks that offer support for meditation, flow states, and personal development. In this episode, we discuss how audio brainwave entrainment technology can be used to cultivate consciousness, creativity, and mental health, especially when used in the context of a holistic or integral practice. We specifically discuss Doug’s latest creation, Stealing Flow, a suite of tracks designed to support the creative cycle by inducing phase-appropriate flow states. The conversation includes an overview of the major brainwave states and their correlates in inner experience, and how Stealing Flow works with these states. Doug and Marco share notes on how they’ve personally used meditation and brainwave tech as part of their creative process, and Doug talks about his recent sci-fi and romance writing, as well as his upcoming book about Harry Potter and Buddhism! Episode page: https://www.infiniteconversations.fm/episode/stealing-flow-using-audio

In this outtake from Infinite Conversations LIVE, Greg Thomas and Ed Mahood talk about the life and literary legacy of Albert Murray, whose Collected Essays & Memoirs were published by the Library of America in 2016. We discuss Murray's ideas on Omni-American identity, culture and race, and his conception of "antagonistic cooperation," which gives us the Blues Hero, who faces adversity with improvisation, artfulness, and affirmation of life. We explore how Murray's thought is especially relevant in our political moment, and how leaders in business and other areas can learn from the example of the "Jazz break," where the performers slay the dragon of entropy and chaos with superior style. Music includes Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, playing "Bird's Blues," and a recording of "Cherokee" by Clifford Brown. Recorded: 2017-06-20 More episodes & join the conversation at www.infiniteconversations.fm.

In Part 2 of their talk, Caroline and Marco continue exploring the relation between meditation and embodied experience. Can meditation can help transmute the karma that comes with the development of abstract thinking and the rise of civilization? Caroline argues that the expansion of the notion of the individual I, which may have once conferred advantage, is now massively maladaptive on a planetary scale. The two also discuss art and artists and how a sensitivity to raw experience is needed to hear the voices drowned out by our hyper-development. How might we enter into a more indigenous relationship with the Earth? Caroline proposes that sustainability is a crisis of how we organize concepts and project them onto the world, and that a more conceptually elegant and empathetic orientation, which can be cultivated through Buddhist practice, is essential to restoring health and clarity. --- Music by Chris Zabriskie. (CC) BY 4.0. http://www.chriszabriskie.com/ And by Nina Simone.

In this episode, Marco and Caroline formulate their responses to the Buddhist Geeks podcast episode "Secularizing Buddhist Ethics" with Vincent Horn and Stephen Batchelor. Caroline explains how her understanding of the ways consciousness materially evolves in complex systems—via Douglas Hofstadter of Godel, Escher, Bach and Maturana/Varela's Santiago School Theory of Cognition—intersects profoundly with her understanding of Buddhism. Caroline has been practicing and studying Buddhism since having a discrete transcendental experience in 2010. In this lively "inter-view," Marco and Caroline explore the notion of treating any and every body as though they are you; the problematic aspects of the "you are not your body" teaching in Eastern mystic tradition; and the potential for realizing "heaven on Earth" through particular actionable frameworks of relating to one another. --- Music by Chris Zabriskie. (CC) BY 4.0. http://www.chriszabriskie.com/ 

John Davis and Marco V Morelli discuss who could benefit from Clean Language training, and John attempts to help Marco understand how Clean Language could help writers and artists develop richer metaphorical landscapes. John also relates his experiences as a counselor and activist during the AIDS crisis, and touches on how psychic and paranormal experiences have informed his creative writing. --- Music by Chris Zabriskie. (CC) BY 4.0. http://www.chriszabriskie.com/ 

Jenn Zahrt and host Marco V Morelli discuss a series of Jenn’s poems recently published in Metapsychosisjournal under the titles “Dialogues with the Inscrutable” and “There is a Hydrogen Bomb on Your Raspberry Eyelid.” Jenn reads the following poem during our talk…. Hesitation polish in the squalor harbor resting making festive nesting in between the wave caressing the possessive grave infesting active action proton turning with a burning fervent feeling growing sky go forth abide along a blow torch thigh inside a scorching flyer in the blaring sound completion mound retrieval fairy ovum life deletion in cohesion holding restive festing evil --- Music by Chris Zabriskie. (CC) BY 4.0. http://www.chriszabriskie.com/ 

J.F. Martel is a writer and filmmaker living in Ottawa, Canada. He is the author of Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice, published by North Atlantic Books. This episode is a companion to J.F.’s essay, “Consciousness in the Aesthetic Imagination,” published in Metapsychosis. In this conversation Marco and J.F. discuss: the paintings of Vermeer and Van Gogh What makes an artwork a “classic” art and artifice the Church of Art (as a “church without walls”) capitalism and alienation panpsychism the untimely and time-free (achronon) art as singularity art as nondual multiplicity art as direct transmission art as a question of “ultimate concern” how religion is made out of art the aesthetics of Catholicism art and communion with the Real the mystery of Being and the originary power of art art and terrorism the Wagnerian vision of art art and the power to shape culture art and the power to shape our intimate lives art as apolitical / amoral art and individuality using the machinery of capitalism to subvert the ma

Part 2. How can organizations support our authentic and meaningful engagement in work we actually care about? How can we value openness, participation, reputation, legitimacy, connectivity, and abundance in the way we work together? How can we can organize in ways that liberate rather than stifle our creative spirit? Social philosopher Bonnitta Roy thinks we need a new kind of organization to meet these challenges. She calls it the Open Participatory Organization. And her Manifesto is the point of departure for this conversation—an example of the kind of work Bonnitta does in real time with people and organizations around the world. To learn more about Bonnitta and her work, visit appassociates.net. --- Music by Chris Zabriskie. (CC) BY 4.0. http://www.chriszabriskie.com/ 

Part 1. How can organizations support our authentic and meaningful engagement in work we actually care about? How can we value openness, participation, reputation, legitimacy, connectivity, and abundance in the way we work together? How can we can organize in ways that liberate rather than stifle our creative spirit? Social philosopher Bonnitta Roy thinks we need a new kind of organization to meet these challenges. She calls it the Open Participatory Organization. And her Manifesto is the point of departure for this conversation—an example of the kind of work Bonnitta does in real time with people and organizations around the world. To learn more about Bonnitta and her work, visit appassociates.net. --- Music by Chris Zabriskie. (CC) BY 4.0. http://www.chriszabriskie.com/ 

What happens when we bring some of the same principles of a meditation or mindfulness practice into our conversations with each other? That is to say, what becomes possible when we become fully present and engaged in the experience of listening, speaking, and relating to others as a dialogical practice? What forms of communion—and even shared purpose—emerge when, yes, we recognize, honor, and work with our differences, yet also go beyond our personal identities to experience presence and meaning through the art of conversation? How could a practice such as “generative dialogue” help people of the different faiths or worldviews reach new levels of intimacy—and how could we experience this sort of intimacy in other cultural contexts, including our social activism as well as our everyday lives? Marco and Trevor discuss Trevor’s recent paper “The Ethics of Presence: New Paths in Interfaith Dialogue.” Music by Chris Zabriskie. (CC) BY 4.0. http://www.chriszabriskie.com/ 

A discussion of Winter of Origins—the #litgeeks book club reading of The Ever-Present Origin, by Jean Gebser—with Jeremy D. Johnson. We explore how a return to literary, philosophical, and spiritual origins could reinvigorate our creativity and communities of thought. Music by Chris Zabriskie. (CC) BY 4.0. http://www.chriszabriskie.com/   

This pilot episode of the Infinite Conversations podcast features the writer, actor, mystic, and activist Mark Binet. It explores the difficult relationship between art, commerce, and activism—asking to what degree contemporary artists are implicated in unjust systems and self-serving motives. Must an artist necessarily oppose power, or can she work with power—especially economic power—to serve noble ends? What might be these ends be? In other words: What are the ethics of aesthetics?Music by Chris Zabriskie. http://www.chriszabriskie.com/