Today we are going to be combining paradox, evolving language, and contextual “warm data. “ Combining is the title of Nora Bateson’s latest book, and Embracing Paradox, Evolving Language is Lisa Maroski’s latest offering. They will be our two guests, and I am tingling with anticipation. What are we going to talk about? I don’t know. We are going to “pick the flowers, pee in the bushes, throw the stones, watch the clouds, sleep in the shade, and eat the fruit” and then see what happens. We are going to explore the depth of this magnificent, interconnected world. The only thing we know is that the map is not the territory; the name is not the thing named. We know that all the things we typically separate into their own domain – the ecological, biological, economic, philosophical, and educational are really interconnected. But how? What is the pattern that connects these all together? Join us for this special edition of the Circle for Original Thinking with our guests Lisa Maroski and Nora Bateson.

Nora Bateson is an award-winning filmmaker, artist, international lecturer, research designer, author, and president of the International Bateson Institute. She is the founder and creator of the concept of “Warm Data” and the practices of the Warm Date Lab and People Need People online. Nora wrote, directed, and produced the documentary An Ecology of Mind: A Daughters’ Portrait of Gregory Bateson. Her work brings tougher the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of patterns in the ecology of living systems. She is the author of Small Arcs of Larger Circles (Triarchy Press, 2016) and Combining (2023).

L.E. Maroski is the author of the novel The One that Is Both (2006) and the Nautilus award-winning book Embracing Paradox, evolving Language: Expressing the Unity and Complexity of Integral Consciousness (2026). She combines the fields of psychology, philosophy, linguistics and evolutionary consciousness into her work, building on her study of philosophy and psychology at Bryn Mawr College, where Ashok Gangadean was one of her professors. She is a long-time member of the Jean Gebser Society and CG Jung Society.

Love can never be fully defined, but it opens the heart and evokes wholeness, as does the natural world, which is radically diverse. Today, we are blessed to have with us two people who not only possess strong intellects, but also have real world experience in nature. Their track record of doing good works in the world reveals their good heart. I invited these gentlemen in part because I have just released a book on Original Love: The Timeless Source of Wholeness, and I am excited to engage in dialogue with them on the subject of Love and the Wholeness of Nature.

Thomas Rain Crowe is the author of many books, most recently New Natives: Becoming Indigenous in a Time of Crisis and Transition, and most famously, his award-winning Zoro’s Field, a partial tribute to Henry David Thoreau, documenting Rain Crowe’s own retreat into the Appalachian woods. An internationally recognized author, editor, and translator of more than thirty books, he became known first for being a member of the San Francisco Beat Generation of poets and creative folks living out there in the 1970s before returning to his native western North Carolina community and founding New Native Press. He has belonged to and worked with many environmental organizations. He is also a translator of some of the more renowned Sufi mystical poets, such as Hafiz and Kabir. Although not usually in his bios, I know he also resonates with the work of Meher Baba, another mystic explorer of love.

Don Trent Jacobs (also known as Wahinkpe Topa, or Four Arrows, is a professor of educational leadership at Fielding Graduate, is a made relative of the Oglala Lakota and member of the Medicine Horse Tiospaye. He is a pipe carrier, having fulfilled his Sun Dance vows while living on the Pine Ridge reservation and serving as director of education at Oglala Lakota College. Author of many books, including Restoring the Kinship Worldview and Teaching Virtues, both of which I have read, and numerous scholarly articles covering diverse topics in decolonization, counterhegemonic democracy, and Indigeneity. He has been endorsed by people like Gregory Cajete, Daniel Wildcat, Vandana Shiva, Bill McKibben. Thom Hartmann, and others, and is the recipient of a Martin Springer Institute Moral Courage Award for his activism on behalf of American Indians.

Glenn Aparicio Parry's latest book Original Love was published on February 13, 2026 and is available wherever books or ebooks are sold.

“Life and love are inseparable from each other,” said Meher Baba. Love, humanity, nature, and consciousness have co-evolved together. Long ago, humanity was one with love, one with all of creation, then we separated, and ever since, we have been trying to merge with the Beloved. We developed rituals and ceremonies that brought us back into wholeness, but when these magical ceremonies decreased in power, we developed stories to foster our connection. The era of great myths began in goddess cultures, where the Divine feminine Face of God was most prominent. The Great Goddess was comfortable in all the realms: in the heavens, on Earth, and in the dark mysteries of the underworld. But with the rise of gods and heroes around the middle of the Bronze age, the masculine principle became elevated, and the feminine became suppressed and marginalized. While this has resulted in some important scientific innovation, it has also caused imbalances both to our world soul (Anima Mundi) and to the individual psyches of humanity. “What we are experiencing is tantamount to a shamanic dismemberment. We need to dismember in order to remember; we need to put ourselves back together again in ways that are healthy and whole. We are compelled to reconstruct the whole out of what has been torn apart; we are being called to dig deeper into our psyche. When we go deep, we find Indigenous and feminine wisdom—and original love— buried in the depths of our unconscious.”

Today, we will freely discuss how we can recover and redeem the perennial wisdom of Original love, as well the wisdom of Indigenous peoples and the Divine feminine. We will also welcome whatever else wants to come forward into this sacred dialogue with our esteemed guests Anne Baring and James O’Dea.

Anne Baring, who I was first introduced to by some of my most treasured women friends, has for the past half century been doing her utmost to recover and redeem the Feminine Face of God, initially inspired by a powerful dream she had (which she can share if she wishes today). A Jungian analyst, Anne is the author or co-author of nine books, including The Myth of the Goddess (with Jules Cashford), The Birds Who Flew Beyond Time (with Andrew Harvey) , The Divine Feminine (with Seilla Elworhty, and more recently The Dream of The Cosmos: A Quest for the Soul, and Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God.

James O’Dea, who is the first person I gave my newly completed draft of a manuscript for Original Love to, is, similar to Anne, a long-term advocate for the awakening of soul, former president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, the director of the Washington office of Amnesty International and the president of the Seva Foundation, and also the author of several important books, including Cultivating Peace, The Conscious Activist: Where Activism meets Mysticism, Soul Awakening Practice, and more recently some books with visionary artist Marika Popovits.

Glenn Aparicio Parry's latest book Original Love was published on February 13, 2026 and is available wherever books or ebooks are sold.