Marilyn Hamilton's Blog, page 38

Diana Claire Douglas: Meshworker of the Year 2018

Diana Claire Douglas is the Integral City Meshworker 2018.

Diana Claire Douglas is a Systemic facilitator, coach and consultant, founder of Knowing Field Designs, artist and writer.

She is internationally certified as an Organizational Constellation Work facilitator through the Bert Hellinger Institute of the Netherlands. As an adult educator, she has facilitated groups for over 30 years. In service of humanity’s awakening, she has been tuning into the Knowing Field and constellating since 2009.

Diana Claire describes Systemic Constellation Work as a philosophy, a body of teachings, and an experiential and embodied process used to explore questions or issues, to test propositions and to design with the emerging future. She has contributed to the emergence of a new branch of Systemic Constellation Work which has evolved from Family Constellation Work and Organizational Constellation Work. Along with other facilitators from around the world she is constellating for the collective – providing societal-issue constellations, social-justice constellations, community constellations, nature constellations, city constellations and more!

Diana Claire has researched and developed Constellating for the Collective primarily with the core team of Integral City, and the core team of THC-The Hague Center for Global Governance, Innovation and Emergence.

Diana Claire explains, how we enter the collective field through Systemic Constellation Work. She notes, that all Life is embedded in fields of information and energy. All Life is embedded in fields of consciousness. We humans access these fields, consciously and unconsciously. We are able to consciously enter the collective field through all branches (such as Family and Organization) of Systemic Constellation Work. In Constellations for the Collective, the intention is to begin in the collective field for the purpose of shifting patterns in consciousness.

Participants include individuals ready to move beyond their own personal concerns to serving the collective; leaders of visionary organizations; organizations ready to evolve; social justice groups; citizens involved with community/city concerns; facilitators of systemic constellation work (expanding from family + organizational constellations)

As lead constellator, for Integral City and THC, in the last few years Diana Claire has been grounding Constellating for the Collective through “on-life” monthly gatherings, retreats, workshops and “on-line” meetings. She has developed a simple method of connecting people into systemic constellations so that the representatives and witnesses in the constellation can be co-located locally or anywhere around the world. (This is described in Chapters 1 and 2 of the Integral City Book 2.)

Following is a list of constellations she has facilitated related to major systemic topics that challenge collectives around the world:

1. Climate change:

“What does the force we call climate change want humanity to know at this time?”
“Given the extreme events happening right now – wildfires in BC, earthquake in Mexico today rocking Mexico City, Hurricane Maria slamming Caribbean now…and the previous information from constellations that the rescuer (R) is blocking change, what is the relationship now between Global Healing, the rescuer and the force we call climate change?”
” What is the relationship between Mother Earth, the threats to existence, and humanity?”

2. Human impact on the environment:

“Testing whether our human-designed project on reconciliation (this could be any project) is in alignment with the Creator: walking the project back through all the orders of nature to the Creator.” Based on teachings as learned through Indigenous author Lynn Gehl, Claiming Anishinaabe, what can humanity learn when we listen our right place in the order of creation — we came last?
“Water is speaking, are we listening?” Constellating for the Collective gives an opportunity for all elements to give voice and for humanity to listen.
“How do we settlers — with Western mindsets — come to respect Indigenous Peoples?” Shifting Western mindsets to an Indigenous understanding that All Life is Sacred may awaken our capacity to respond to climate change.

3. What can we “do”?

Becoming Sacred Activists: Planting Love

“What does the Spirit of the Ottawa River Watershed wish us to know about its relationship with nuclear waste at the Chalk River Nuclear site?” The proposed nuclear dump site is an example of how the Western mindset is so out of alignment with the well-being of All-Life. The site of a now-closed , public nuclear facility, a private consortium has proposed to clean up the site by erecting a building above ground, on a fault line, 1 km from the Ottawa River — which is the human drinking water source for several million people. A group of social activists wondered what could we do? The process of the constellation showed the impact of bringing Love into the Field — shifting the awareness of the elements represented and shifting the consciousness of the participants. Activism is now sacred activism.

Big Community Constellation

In 2018, Diana Claire was part of the planning and facilitation team for the Big Community Constellation at the Integral European Conference 2018 (IEC2018) in Hungary. There 400 conference attendees participated in constellating “Restoring Peace in Europe.”

Conscious Witness Project

For the past several years, Diana Claire (along with Anne-Marie Voorhoeve from THC and other colleagues) has been co-creating the research and real-world implementation for The Conscious Witness Project. At the IEC2018 she co-created and co-presented a poster summarizing their work on the Conscious Witness research.

The Conscious Witness Project is a phenomenological research project which accesses the Knowing Field through the process of Systemic Constellation Work in order to become aware of our impact when we are witnessing — whether in a small circle of participants in a workshop or local, national and global events. After many constellations the research team has observed that the impact of the Conscious Witness is to initiate healing movements in the Field. Their experiments continue.

Publications

Diana Claire’s work in the constellation field is published in The Knowing Field International Journal, the Integral Leadership Review,  and included as chapters in two books: Marilyn Hamilton and collaborators, Integral City: Inquiry and Action: Designing Impact for the Human Hive, Integral Publishers, 2017  and ed: Michael Brabant and Olen Gunnlaugson, Cohering the Integral We Space: Engaging Collective Emergence, Wisdom and Healing in Groups, 2016.

Diana Claire lives in Ottawa, Canada with her partner and is the happy grandmother of two.

Integral City is proud to award Diana Claire Douglas, Meshworker of the Year 2018.

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Definition of Meshworker

A Meshworker of the Year demonstrates the meshworking intelligence as defined on the website .  Meshworking intelligence creates a “meshwork” by weaving together the best of two operating systems — one that self-organizes, and one that replicates hierarchical structures. The resulting meshwork creates and aligns complex responsive structures and systems that flex and flow.

Candidates for the Meshworkers of the Year Award invest dollars, time, effort and expertise at a level of complexity that serves a whole city or cities. Here are our previous winners:

2017: Hub Co-Evolucio, Reus, Catalonia, Spain

2016: Morel Fourman, Gaiasoft,Africa

  2015: Imagine Durant, USA

2014: Team ARGO, Russia

2013: Populus, Canada

Integral City Reflective Organ – December Solstice 2018: Reframing Complex Challenges with the Power to Change

This newsletter is published quarterly using a cycle of perspectives on the Integral City viewed from: Planet, People, Place and Power. The theme of this issue is Power.

Spiritual Energy is a Container

The spiritual qualities and cultures that are revealed in quadrants and levels become integrated when we see the city is a container for spirituality (and therefore a boundary that contains the panoply of gods, goddesses and God that have emerged from various spiritual traditions). The difference between a container and a quality, is that the container is a holonic structure that holds qualities, elements, configurations and other wholes. Spiritual containers in the city can be considered in three key scales

Self

Culture

Nature

Hamilton, M. 2018. Integral City 3.7: Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives. Minneapolis, MN: Amaranth Press,LLC. p. 13

Scroll to end of newsletter to access Free Resources.

Powering Conscious Change in the Human Hive

This month, COP24 rejected the latest IPCC report commissioned by the UN. It is difficult not to be stunned by this refusal to take action based on scientific evidence. What don’t we want to see? What do we refuse to hear? What words stop before being spoken?

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Is the world paying attention to the IPCC scientists who revised their estimates on the expectations of climate change impacts (as a report to COP24)? If, as they say, we have 12 years or less to make a difference in response to not just an inconvenient truth but a life-changing threat, how do we imagine ourselves at that time? Do we dread that we might be dead? Is that why we refuse to picture, facing our children or grandchildren 20 years from now? What would we say, when they ask, “What did you do when you got the news?”

Even the IPCC itself suffers from internal differences of opinion. Apparently, the hard scientists are so focused on the objective and interobjective outcomes of climate science forecasts, that they pay scant heed to the subjective and intersubjective involvements that can make a difference on a wide-spread scale.

What if they are ALL right but partial (as Ken Wilber might suggest)? What if we took on all the perspectives from a meta-view? Could we honour every partial view and begin to recognize that only when they are embraced as a whole, can we grasp:

The full implications of climate change from (inter)objective/(inter)subjective Points of View.
Climate change is not homogenous – the locations of extreme climate at the poles and the equator suffer greater extremes of climate change consequences.
All extreme climate conditions are accelerating their manifest impacts and causing consequences across the globe (check the records on average climate temperature, hurricanes, floods, tsunamis, etc.).
The inter- and intra-systemic nature of climate change is a pan-global affair. It involves cooperation and collaboration with all people, places, ecologies and the Planet. The usual responses of throwing money, technology and resources at “the problem(s)” are not the solution(s).
Cities feel like the places hardest hit on our planet, because that is where most people live and that is where most human-centred change is located. What if we could ask other life forms/realms about the changes to the globe that impact them? Extinction Rebellion never started with humans; it just became voiced when it became an anthropocentric condition.
Climate change is natural, evolutionary and not outside us, but involves us as intimate elements of the global system.

What are the strategies we have brought to the climate change table? Prof. Karen O’Brien, a social scientist with IPCC for 25+ years points out that 3 major response dimensions are available:

Technology/technical quantitative changes to the external world.
Political/governance changes to (all levels of) the governments of the world.
Personal/individual/collective changes to the mindsets and behaviours of citizens.

As it turns out, each dimension O’Brien names is larger than the preceding one. In fact, the largest that transcends and includes the other two is the dimension of individual and collective behaviours and mindsets. We already know that when all three dimensions align around common purposes, they can make globally impacting change in significant numbers of people’s lives.

But do we remember that each of the changes we have effected at global scale, has started with individuals who have committed to make a change in their own lives? By commitment through personal example, political activism and redirected funding, a courageous few have repeatedly demonstrated how to create global change. We can look back and see that the waves of world-changing initiatives began around someone’s kitchen table for such issues as these:

Reducing/eliminating airborne pollution in key cities and clearing the air.
Reducing, reusing, recycling material household waste and converting them into resources.
Implementing the use of seat belts in cars and saving lives.
Reducing/ceasing tobacco smoking and extending lives.

Thus, we know that the power of embracing personal consciousness coupled with individual behaviour change translates into the power to influence. This power of “ordinary people” to influence change translates into the political sphere through our votes and activism aimed at the politicians we need to pass the legislation that implements the scientific research that is widely available to all – and not just secreted in expert laboratories. This is a power-filled supply chain that can make the differences that improvs life conditions for all people (and all life).

At the same time, we can see through these examples of past successes, that they even they are not yet applied in a globally even way (despite generations of experience in the parts of the world where they started). Nevertheless, this tension of unequal application, in turn is translating into a whole new enactment of ethics, justice and collective wisdom. We see the rise of eco-justice to respond to ecocide; universal rights for all people and all life; expectations for health and education for all people. (All this on the 70th Anniversary Year of the UN’s adoption of the Bill of Human Rights.)

Such change on a global scale, is necessarily evolutionary. When we look back on the changes, we see the stages that such changes evolved through. (The move through the holarchies of individual, family, neighbourhood, workplace, community, city, nation to global adoption.) Now that we have the capacity for an overview of life on our planet from space,  we can even see that the evolution of the life we all value (albeit in different [evolutionary] ways) has emerged from the building blocks of life we seek on other planets, star systems and galaxies.

While all these outward gazes are powerful and worldview changing, it is only because we have an equal and precedent capacity for the inward gaze that enables the possibility for outer climate change because we have experienced inner climate change.

This is the proposition that Prof. Karen O’Brien and her cChange team have framed into the cChallenge so that we can all discover the enormity and impact of these truths.

At Findhorn Community we are stepping into the cChallenge to discover how the power of consciousness can change our Human Hive. (See story following). We challenge the rest of the World to step up to the cChange that can turn around our Human Hives (and all the ecologies they touch) this next decade.

Climate Change: Think Rationally  Connect Politically   Act Personally

Inspiring us with a framework of globally reviewed science, intergovernmental agreements  and personal commitment to change, the research of Prof. Karen O’Brien and her cCHANGE team from University of Oslo are introducing to many communities in Scandinavia the cCHALLENGE. Beginning in January 2019, the Findhorn Community in Scotland will join the experiment. The Findhorn Innovation Research & Education CIC along with Integral City issued an invitation:

F.I.R.E. up your New Year’s and make a difference with your resolutions for 2019.

We started with an information session on December 2, 2018 so everyone could learn how to participate in a 30-day experiment to chart a path to conscious climate change, starting January 8, 2019. We hoped for 8-15 volunteers – but the challenge was so contagious we found 30!!

Read more here.

8 Powerful Practices for Mystical Journeys

by Jean Houston (with reference to Evelyn Underhill)

For four days in December 2018, in Jean Houston’s Oregon mountain top home, Jean and Peggy Rubin, her long time teaching associate mentored seekers on all that they know about the important transformations required for the mystic journey.

In addition to learning about mystics who have gone before us, and what Quantum Physics has to say about mystic union, participants learned eight powerful practices that will serve them all their life. Jean explains that she has been inspired in part, by the work of Evelyn Underhill’s great work, Mysticism.

The Eight Practices are:

1.      The Awakening, is the remembrance of who we are and why we are here; the insight into Reality itself. It brings with it answers, solutions, new ways of seeing, doing and being. Best of all it contains the impetus to follow through and bring these answers into the world and time.

2.      The Purification, is the process of honing and refining, of de-conditioning the self from the habits and patterns that keep us in a state of illusion and forgetfulness.

3.      The Illumination, is the state of awareness in which you find beauty, connectivity and meaning everywhere, with luminosity infusing everyday experiences. We learn the many ways of bringing great intention, cosmic purpose and new patterns into our own space and time.

4.      The Voices and Visions, is the expansion of sensory knowing into new ways of perceiving information, insights, purpose and wisdom.

5.      The Contemplation, teaches practices to cultivate the inner life and learn the language of the Meta Consciousness. Teachings and practices are drawn from spiritual traditions from around the world.

6.      The Ecstasy, is the moment when the fullness of Being meets he body and psyche of the mystic. In this state, joy flows through every cell like a powerful river of love.

7.      The Dark Night of the Soul, is the encounter of the larger Reality with everyday existence. This process corresponds to the Dark Night of our planet that we are experiencing daily. You’ll learn new practices for transforming the personal and collective wounding into faith, resilience, hope and action.

8.      The Union, is the process in which the limits of culture and habit are transcended by the Infinite Self. It is through this expansion that we experience our destiny. The identity of the self transforms into the Self, and an indomitable source of energy, creativity and flow.

It is Jean and Peggy’s hope that readers will discover the Brilliance, creativity and possibilities that arise from this mystic journey and translate it into positive action for yourselves and for all you love.

Systemic Constellation Work Bridges Power of Knowing Field

Holding place for Diana Claire/Anne-Marie on SCW

Upcoming Events for Integral City


Beyond Smart: Integral City Practices, Tools & Maps
For Practitioners. (2 Days, Findhorn, Scotland, April 27-30, 2019)

This 2-day course introduces “practitioners” to just the basics of the Integral City model. You will learn the framework of practices, tools and maps that reveal the common patterns that impact the lives of individuals, organizations and communities within your city. This short course explores three powerful images animating Integral City systems – the integral map, the meshwork and the human hive. You will learn from your own situations and each other how the toolkit guides you beyond models for Urban Ecovillages and Traditional, Smart and Resilient Cities.

MORE INFO






Beyond Resilient: Integral City Inquiry Action & Impact
For Catalysts. (4 Days, Findhorn, Scotland, May 1-4, 2019)

This 4-day course is for “catalysts” to explore inquiry and action that inspires productive impact for reinventing today’s cities for the future. You will interact with the 4+1 Voices of the Integral City (Business, Local Government, Civil Society and Citizens, plus actors from other regional cities) to identify strategic possibilities. Integral City introduces you to new ways to think about, act in, relate to and reinvent the city as a Human Hive. Through placecaring and placemaking, we invite you to discover the unique contributions you make to its aliveness. We believe the future of cities will emerge not just from the bottom up through Smart City Technology or the top down through Resilient approaches – but from the integrated actions of the 4+1 Voices in all the cities in your eco-region, as you reinvent your Human Hives.   MORE INFO

Beyond Complexity: Integral City Care Context & Capacity

For Meshworkers. (4 Days, Findhorn, Scotland, Sept. 14-18, 2019)

This 4-day course is for “meshworkers” to imagine how to reframe simplicity on the other side of complexity in the Integral City – or Human Hive. You will join graduates of prior training to build on the Integral City practitioner and catalyst competencies to apply new skills to a live case study. You will look at the city through the lenses of Care, Contexting and Capacity Building. You will view the city as a complex, adaptive living innovation eco-system, where the internal and external connections amongst the 4+1 voices of the city (Citizens, Civil Society, City/Institutional Managers, Business/Innovators (and other cities) enable conditions for thriving today. You will seek to align intra-city and inter-regional collaborations through caring for people, contexting for place and capacity building for purpose. This course introduces the practices of “meshworking”, so that practitioners who work with individual organizations and catalysts who build bridges between organizations can engage with the city as a whole.  MORE INFO

Integral City Book 3 Now Launched

Integral City 3.7: Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives is Book 3 in the Integral City series. Book 3 applies and expands in multiple directions the 12 intelligences described in Book 1, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive and builds on the field work described in Book 2: Integral City Inquiry & Action: Designing Impact for the Human Hive.  Integral City 3.7 considers a series of apparently intractable challenges that all cities face because the world has become so complex that cause and effect are rarely directly linked. The challenges cities face today result from the intertwining impacts of multiple life conditions, perspectives and capacities and can only be addressed by reframing them within an Integral City model that honors the plural realities, recognizes their developmental and evolutionary relationships and does not conflate differences. This third book in our series explores three themes that are eternal practices for designing a collective life that works for all life; namely, Caring, Contexting and Capacity Building. Organized into these three themes, the book starts Part 1: Deepening Care with the “missing chapter” from Integral City Book 1 and adds a new Map (5) – “Spirituality in the Human Hive”. It explains the intimate relationship between Caring Capacity and Carrying Capacity as strategic factors that contribute to sustainable and resilient cities. Part 2: Raising Context makes a persuasive case for the city as both a trigger point and a tipping point for evolution on our Planet of Cities. This Part takes a deep dive into reframing sustainability in evolutionary terms, the curious condition of the invisible city and a metaview of human security. Part 3: Widening Capacity examines the emergence of capacity across a holarchy of human scales: leaders, organizations, systems and city. The book concludes with a synthesis of the relationships between Caring and Contexting as they are expressed in Integral Capacities at multiple scales within the human hive. The book’s generational number “3.7” reminds us of the 7th generation in the future, a time span that many indigenous people consider relevant to contexting and making wise decisions. The dedication to the seventh generation from now activates an “overview effect” that forces us to consider the consequences of our cities’ impact on our living planet, Gaia.

Urban Hub 13: Interventions in Virtual Worlds

Paul van Schaik in his most recent infographic volume 13 of his Urban Hub series, notes that all activities are interventions and though ‘true’ they are always partial. They are stalked by unintended consequences. In order to make any of the ideas, theories, activities, shown in this series of 13 volumes, plus the thousands of other great ideas not included, have a lasting impact we need to understand how they fit within a meta-framework. It is through a meta-framework that we can understand what, when why, where, and how to use each idea and with whom. The meta-framework implicit in these volumes is probably the simplest, covering most of what should be included. The AQAL framework includes the following: An understanding of how objective, subjective, inter-objective and intersubjective domains tetra-mesh. How stages and states of development determine the ‘world’ we ‘see’ and interact with – and how the various lines of development expand with understanding and allow a greater embrace of consciousness, values or mindsets, behaviour, worldviews and systems.

Cosmic Hologram Inspires Unity Conference

Jude Currivan asks us to Think Cosmically, Feel Globally and Act Locally.

At her Unity Conference, held at the House of Lords, London, in November 2018, she joined with Alan Watkins (author of Crowdocracy – see below, and Lord Stone of Black Heath) to invite 200 global experts, practitioners and influencers. This convergence and reconciliation of science and spirituality offered game changing opportunity in how we see ourselves, each other, and our planetary home. It invited us to join together to co-create and transform our collective future. Over the last year, a growing international community of change agents have been linking up to support the wider exploration and dissemination of this empowering message and the initiatives for global change inspired by it. The Unity Conference acted as a vital next step to a larger, and accelerating, movement based on unity awareness and designed to take real action in multiple fields for the benefit of everyone.

The collective wisdom and forward-facing action plans integrated during the day will be followed-on in early 2019, with a strategy to support and facilitate ongoing co-creativity, co-operation and synergistic actions. For more information contact info@integralcity.com and we will connect you with the organizers.

Crowdocracy Decentralises Power & Increases Intelligent Action

Alan Watkins (co-author with Iman Stratenus) of Crowdocracy co-facilitated the Unity Conference with Jude Currivan and Lord Stone of Black Heath in November 2018. Watkins explored how Crowdocracy is a new way governance system where everyone can participate. Explaining how the insights that can arise from the wisdom of crowds, along with technology, Watkins proposed that a revolutionary shift in how we make decisions can impact everyone’s life conditions in an evolutionary way. The (surprising to many) wisdom of crowds arises from:

Diversity of knowledge and opinion
Independence of thought and collaboration
Decentralisation of power
Integration.











Celebrating Planet-of-Cities in the Coming Quarter of 2018

Let the Beauty we Love be what we do. There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.  Rumi

December 21 marks the start of what Integral City calls the Power Quarter (from December 21 to March 20). What power, spiritual pracitice and connections with others release you from hibernation, stillness or contemplation? How is your soul awakened to the power of our Planet of Cities at this time of year? What realms – visible and invisible – come to your side as light shifts to a new season?  We are inspired by and lean into the initiatives that cities and their 4 Voices are mobilizing around the globe – because nations ignore their calls for power, influence and authority .  Visit us on the our Integral City Website and Blog or post a comment about your city interests on our Facebook page.

Meshful Blessings of this Sacred Season for our Planet of Cities from
Marilyn Hamilton and the Integral City Constellation Corps Team
PS Here are some FREE resources for lighting the spiritual flame of Gaia’s Reflective Organ:

1. Website for New Story Hub – Change the World, Change the Story 

2. Jan Jacob Stam, Bert Hellinger Instituut Nederland : At Home Abroad 

… Constellation work and the underlying systemic principles seem to provide us with a kind of universal language beyond the boundaries of words. What a joy, what an opportunity, what a gratitude. …Read stories about Systemic Constellation Work from around the world here.

3. Blogs

Integral City 3.7 – **NEW** Infographics from Urban Hub

Integral City Book 3 Emerges: Reframe Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives
Integral City Book 3 Holarchies: Caring, Contexting, Capacity Building
Spirituality in the Human Hive – Book 3 Adds Missing Chapter
Discover the Invisible City Emerging through Capacity Building, Caring, Contexting
7 Steps to Harness Diversity Generation for Creativity in Integral City 3.7
Beyond Promoting Climate Change & Consciousness: Findhorn Foundation Lives the Change it Wants to See in the World

Dharma Reflections from Findhorn Foundation, Scotland

4 Voices of Taizé: 4 Voices of Integral City
Allelujah Sanctuary!! From Alone with God to Together with God
Can Collective Intelligence Arise Without Collectiveness?
WAVES OF THE SPIRIT  by Auriol of Findhorn

4. Integral City MetaBlog 2018 – A synthesis and index of all Integral City Blogs from 2018.

5. City of the Year 2018 – 6 AIKA – for the collaborative city spirit amongst 6 cities in Finland.

6. Meshworker of the Year Award 2018 – Diana Claire Douglas for Systemic Constellation Work at Integral Europe Conference.

7. Newsletters Past Issues 2018

Integral City Reflective Organ – September Equinox 2018: Wholing, Including, Emerging, Evolving

Integral City Reflective Organ – June Solstice 2018: Evolutionary Allies Placecare & Placemake the Human Hive

Integral City Reflective Organ – March 2018: Eco-Villages, Human Hives and Gaia’s Reflective Organs

Integral City Meta Blog 2017

Beyond Promoting Climate Change & Consciousness: Findhorn Foundation Lives the Change it Wants to See in the World

We are trying an experiment in the Findhorn Foundation and Community. We wanted to engage the greater Findhorn Community with the importance of the upcoming conference on Climate Change & Consciousness 2019.

cCC2019
cCHALLENGE
Think Cosmically  Feel Globally   Act Locally 

Inspired by Prof. Karen O’Brien and her cCHANGE team from University of Oslo, we are re-creating the cCHALLENGE for everyone to participate. Here is our invitation:

F.I.R.E. up your New Year’s and make a difference with your resolutions for 2019.

We started with an information session so everyone could find their Spark of Personal Motivation. Standing in the shoes of creativity we gathered December 2, 2018,  at the Moray Art Centre.

We invited 15-20 Findhornians to participate in a 30-day experiment and chart a path to conscious climate change, starting January 8, 2019.

Here are some of the suggestions we made  – but many people came forward with more challenging suggestions – like engaging a local retailer to go Zero Waste and plastic-free (like a London store recently did.)

Choose one small change that benefits the environment. What you choose is up to you! Here are some examples:


I’ll spend one hour in nature each day.
I’ll raise conversations about climate change with people I meet.
I won’t use screens / electricity after 9pm each night.
I will create a piece of art each day on the subject of climate change.
I’ll only use my legs for transportation.


Commit to your change for 30 days. Your challenge should not be too easy or difficult – it should be a stretch.
Share your experiences, reflections and stories on your profile on CCC19.cchallenge.no and with people around you.
Get support, inspiration and insights from a cCHANGE climate coach along the way.
See experiment report sent to the Findhorn Foundation Climate Change and Consciousness Conference 2019.

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The CCC2019 cCHALLENGErs plan to explore a variety of creative and innovative ways to shift the focus of climate change conversations from “climate change” to “conscious change” through individual and collective transformation.

This cCHALLENGE round will engage us all in the Findhorn Foundation Climate Change and Consciousness Conference 2019. Our aim is to BE and DO the cChange the World needs done.  We will send a report of our discoveries as a resource for the conference.

Prof. Karen O’Brien from the University of Oslo and the creator of cCHANGE and the cCHALLENGE plans to attend the conference.

The cCHALLENGE and accompanying research and workshop will be convened and sponsored by Findhorn Innovation Research & Education (F.I.R.E.) in partnership Dr. Marilyn Hamilton, Founder of Integral City Meshworks who is collaborating with Maria Cooper and the Carbon Conversations process.
As New Findhorn Association members, Marilyn and Maria will join the experiment and hold the space for everyone from the wider community of Findhorn Foundation, Findhorn Village, Kinloss and Forres to participate. Maria will provide suggestions from the Carbon Conversations Handbook and will offer several sessions in January, 2019 to give cChallengers ideas to act on.
This project is co-created with cCHANGE, an Oslo-based company founded by University of Oslo Professor Karen O’Brien and Linda Sygna. cCHANGE brings together an interdisciplinary team with world-leading researchers on green transformation, sustainability and change.

7 Steps to Harness Diversity Generation for Creativity in Integral City 3.7

Diversity Generators (DG’s) play a special role in the processes of Creativity in Gaia’s Human Hives. Integral City 3.7 has a special chapter on the DG’s and another on how creativity arises naturally through evolution in the Integral City.

This is a short infographic series to introduce Book 3. The series includes:

Book 3 Emerges: Reframe Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives
Integral City Book 3 Holarchies: Caring, Contexting, Capacity Building
Spirituality in the Human Hive – Book 3 Adds Missing Chapter
Discover the Invisible City Emerging through Capacity Building, Caring Contexting
7 Steps to Harness Diversity Generation for Creativity in Integral City 3.7

Discover the Invisible City Emerging through Capacity Building, Caring, Contexting

Integral City 3.7 explores the Invisible City through Caring (values), Contexting (life conditions) and Capacity Building (at multiple scales). Through these lenses the hidden but very real dynamics of the city can be explored – especially for the “.7” in the title – calling us to make decisions in consideration of the 7th generation from now. This is a lesson we must learn from indigenous peoples.

This is a short infographic series to introduce Book 3. The series includes:

Book 3 Emerges: Reframe Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives
Integral City Book 3 Holarchies: Caring, Contexting, Capacity Building
Spirituality in the Human Hive – Book 3 Adds Missing Chapter
Discover the Invisible City Emerging through Capacity Building, Caring Contexting
7 Steps to Harness Diversity Generation for Creativity in Integral City 3.7

Spirituality in the Human Hive – Book 3 Adds Missing Chapter

Integral City 3 .7: Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives contains the “missing” chapter from earlier books in the series – namely Spirituality in the Human Hive.

This is a short infographic series to introduce Book 3. The series includes:

Book 3 Emerges: Reframe Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives
Integral City Book 3 Holarchies: Caring, Contexting, Capacity Building
Spirituality in the Human Hive – Book 3 Adds Missing Chapter
Discover the Invisible City Emerging through Capacity Building, Caring Contexting
7 Steps to Harness Diversity Generation for Creativity in Integral City 3.7

Integral City Book 3 Holarchies: Caring, Contexting, Capacity Building

Integral City Book 3 is organized into 3 sections that explore intersecting holarchies as a framework for exploring complex challenges in a VUCA world:

Caring
Contexting
Capacity Building

This is a short infographic series to introduce Book 3. The series includes:

Book 3 Emerges: Reframe Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives
Integral City Book 3 Holarchies: Caring, Contexting, Capacity Building
Spirituality in the Human Hive – Book 3 Adds Missing Chapter
Discover the Invisible City Emerging through Capacity Building, Caring Contexting
7 Steps to Harness Diversity Generation for Creativity in Integral City 3.7

Integral City Book 3 Emerges: Reframe Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives

We are delighted to introduce you to the next book in the Integral City series: Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives.

This is a short infographic series to introduce Book 3. The series includes:

Book 3 Emerges: Reframe Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives
Integral City Book 3 Holarchies: Caring, Contexting, Capacity Building
Spirituality in the Human Hive – Book 3 Adds Missing Chapter
Discover the Invisible City Emerging through Capacity Building, Caring Contexting
7 Steps to Harness Diversity Generation for Creativity in Integral City 3.7

WAVES OF THE SPIRIT by Auriol of Findhorn

One of our traditions at Sunday Taizé at Findhorn, is to invite Auriol of Findhorn to read one of her poems. In early November we listed to this beautiful poem, evocative of season, place and the times we are in.

Auriol prefaced her reading with this comment: “Sometimes I grow discouraged when I hear the news. Today I became aware, that cultures (big and small) go in waves – that consoles me.”

WAVES OF THE SPIRIT


Waves and Wind, over the years,
have shaped our beach with their passing:
Piling up stones, deepening channels,
Warmth of the Sun, cold fume of the Moon.
Lifting and levelling groom
Earth and her children.

..








Waves of the Spirit,uplifting and falling,
raise up Stone Circles or Temples to Isis,
A Tree for the Buddha, Chartres Cathedral,
The Shard of London or a Sanctuary for Nature.
Raised to fulfillment as the Spirit calls;
then scatters and levels us, that the new may be born.

..







Leaving us changed – by the passing;
deeper, more conscious.
Still searching for that which tunes and rehallows us:
Truth, Beauty and Good,
           reborn from the Waves.


..
                                                Auriol of Findhorn

This blog series is a set of Dharma Reflections from Findhorn Foundation, Scotland.

4 Voices of Taizé: 4 Voices of Integral City
Allelujah Sanctuary!! From Alone with God to Together with God
Can Collective Intelligence Arise Without Collectiveness?

Can Collective Intelligence Arise Without Collectiveness?

Ever since I embarked on the journey of discovering what an Integral City might mean, I have anticipated that the city would be the site where human collective intelligence is most likely to unfold. Why? Because it is where we are gathered together in collectives – i.e. families, groups, teams, departments, organizations, sectors, neighbourhoods, communities. Indeed, the city as a whole is a meta-collective of all these collectives.

Trying to imagine the impact of these different grouping on one another is what lead me to drawing maps of the city – and why one map was never enough.

Because the dynamics of collectives shapeshift the individuals and elements that make up the city.

But Collective Intelligence arises not just through dynamics – but when those dynamics become coherent and conscious. When the dynamics of individual in the group align with one another for a purpose or to produce an outcome then an awareness of consciousness also arises that becomes like an invisible field that connects everyone. As we come into that field coherence emerges and makes room for another quality to arise, namely resonance. Resonance occurs when we as individuals and groups attune to one another as we share our intentions to manifest an outcome. The sharing of this field reinforces an energy that we share, as we work towards our common goal.

In Findhorn, we recognize this energy as one of three guiding principles: “Work is Love in Action.“ Love itself, is perhaps the most recognizable and shared energy that we can share in our relationships as human beings. It is fundamental to our sense of belonging – to a family, group, collective. And the experience of sharing love is the most cohesive energy that we can experience as we relate with one another in our shared experience.

Therefore, when people ask me how we can experience collective intelligence in the city, I first suggest they become part of a collective that has a purpose. (This could be for volunteering, caregiving, work, or sports.) The next step is to discover how your gifts and talents (what makes your heart sing) can contribute to the shared interests of this collective. Then the third step is to contribute your energetic passions in service to others and this shared goal. In acting and working together to achieve the goal, an experience of collective consciousness will inevitably arise.

How deep, wide, high or clear that experience of collective consciousness will depend on how the collective can bring together its individual capacities, within the context of the shared goal and with the level of care that weaves together all these qualities. When these align with coherence and resonance, then the quality of collective intelligence can be demonstrated. And the more often we repeat this practice, the more likely that collective intelligence will become perpetuated as a quality of our collective experience.

Referring to the last two blogs I wrote about the experiences of Taizé and Sanctuary – they are both collective practices that manifest collective intelligence not only because of their daily repetition but because they are always offered in service to the greatest good of humanity and all sentient life on Gaia. They reinforce for me, the possibility that the collectiveness of a human hive (or city) will create the conditions where collective consciousness has the highest potential to emerge.

This blog series is a set of Dharma Reflections from Findhorn Foundation, Scotland.

4 Voices of Taizé: 4 Voices of Integral City
Allelujah Sanctuary!! From Alone with God to Together with God