Marilyn Hamilton's Blog, page 4

Join Global Earth Day Summit April 22, 2025

I am super excited for Earth Day –  Join me and all the Co-Founders of Living Cities Earth on 22nd April at the Global Earth Day Summit 2025 (GEDS) where changemakers, leaders, and citizens from across the world unite for the planet.

Be part of the first wave of 10,000 attendees! Register here: http://geds.earth/

Let’s co-create regenerative, thriving cities. Powered by Living Cities Earth.

60 Days for Transformation:
From Personal Action to Global Collaboration!The Global Gathering (22 April 2025)

This is not a summit for the elite or the experts alone.
It’s a planetary rite of passage, where every voice matters, and every action ripples.
This 1-day global convergence will bring together cities, citizens, educators, businesses, artists, youth leaders, elders, and ALL human citizens of Earth.
It’s a moment to sense the whole ~ to reflect on what is dying, what is emerging, and what calls us into co-creation.
And it’s a space for YOU—yes, you—to begin your own personal quest for regeneration.
Whether you’re a teacher, gardener, student, CEO, policymaker, healer, artist, or simply human, this is your summons.

This is Earth’s call to you…

Click here to explore the full story of Global Earth Day Summit … starting April 22, 2025 and continuing until June 21, 2025 and beyond …

March 2025 Equinotes: Regenerating Our Planet’s Soul

Equinotes are published periodically drawing on the Archives of Integral City’s Reflective Organ Newsletter, Blogs, Books and Website. The perspectives of Equinotes weave across: Planet, People, Place and Power. The theme of this issue is Regenerating Our Planet’s Soul.

March 2025 Equinotes are drawn from these publications:

Integral City – Enemy or Ally of Evolution? June 3rd, 2018|C. Collective Intelligences, E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Ecosphere, Integral Maps, Master Intelligence, Placecaring, Placemaking, Storytelling – Cultures

Is Regenerativity an Act or Capacity? December 17th, 2020|Capacity Building, Complex Challenges, Emergence, Inquiry, Lifecycle

Being in the World in 2023.    January 2nd, 2023| Caring, Caring, COP26, Emergence, Storytelling – Cultures, Voices

Scroll to end of Equinotes to access Free Resources, MetaBlogs 2013-2024.

Civil Society is becoming aware that financial asset accumulation is not the sole measure of our success. Quality of life, the development of community, and the recognition of social capital are all gaining in importance to Civil Society. Increasingly sensitive to the gaps that separate the haves and have-nots, we are creating new agendas for social change. We seek ways and means to integrate both heart and mind to create a Healthy City.

Click here to find out more about how Civil Society can:Develop Board CapacityMap Visions and Values AssetsFund Effective ProjectsMeshwork Strategically for a Healthy City Integral City – Enemy or Ally of Evolution? Allies of Evolution was the theme of Integral Europe Conference 2018. We started with a meditation to ground our audience in the present time, location and land of Siofok, Hungary to the eco-region, Europe, hemisphere and planet, reminding ourselves of the alignment of our planetary life and cosmic consciousness – and the moment-to-moment choice we have to connect and reconnect with this massively nested set of relationships. Serendipitously this mediation bookended an experiential process designed by Steve Banks, composer of the Integral Symphony, who offered our audience a musical journey from the Big Bang to an emerging evolutionary future.

Integral City introduced, James Lovelock, author of the Gaia Hypothesis who suggests that humans are Gaia’s “Reflective Organs”. If that proposition emerges from the science of living systems, then we are evolutionarily early on our path to serve the greater good of Gaia. Nevertheless, the IEC2018 conference provided ample evidence that we are waking up to our cosmic calling. Speakers inspired perspectives of a cosmic consciousness and an evolutionary impulse to wake up, grow up and clean up. We heard from Ken Wilber (who suggested that our religions need upgrading to reflect worldviews and soul centres that can embrace the complexity of science that is impacting our daily lives). We applauded the whole Teal Track of Organizational Presentations (who revealed the progress organizations are making as they reinvent themselves to reflect Frederic Laloux’s research beyond organizational vision and living systems into evolutionary purpose and courage). We felt strongly aligned with Roger Walsh (who outlined 10 steps to offer service to a higher calling).

To weave the spiritual with the scientific we offered evidence from the contrasting examples of Integral City work in the USA and Russia.  In the USA Imagine Durant have created a vision for their city with the core value of Care and the strategies to implement it through embracing Citizen, Community and Economic objectives. In Russia, Living Cities has set out to change 1000 cities by 2030 using the principles of Integral City and the Living Cities’ Charter – and we met last November 311 mayors of Monocities who have initiated those changes.

We concluded our message of positive city emergence by sharing the Master Code – recognizing that we are in evolutionary potent times. For the first time in history we can make decisions that align and enable Care for Self, Others, Place and Planet.

And when we realize that more than 50% of humanity now live in cities, they are the logical place to leverage the differences humans can make as Allies of Evolution. When we consider that the majority of the 50+ countries represented at the conference hold populations where 75% to 90% of people live in cities, we must mature our cities’ evolutionary contribution as Allies of Evolution or betray our commitment as individuals to wake up, grow up and clean up.

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This blog series celebrates presence of Integral City at Integral Europe Conference 2018.

The series includes:

Integral City – Enemy or Ally of Evolution?Foo-Ling – the Face in the Fire?

The Shoes at the Door of Evolution

TCOP’s of Teal Organizations for Integral City Emergence

Convening Integral City Communities of Practise

Is Regenerativity an Act or Capacity?The act of generativity is centred in the act of creation. Creation arises when any two or more elements are brought together to reveal something new – something that distinguishes it from the source resources.The act of regenerativity indicates that generation happens more than once. It is an act that repeats itself to produce dependably the same results.

At Findhorn Ecovillage, where I live in Scotland, our community has generated a symbol of the myth of Regeneration. We have created a mosaic of a grand Phoenix. The act of creating the art, regenerated a community spirit. The completion of the project regenerated our belief that we could work together to complete a worthy goal. And the contemplation of this mythical bird arising from the ashes of despair in the pandemic year, reminds us that regeneration is an act that involves all of us – body, mind, heart and soul. Only through the act of regeneration do we gain the capacity of regenerativity.

In the wider world of Nature, regenerativity may happen on a cycle or season – like the dandelion that regenerates as soon as its bloom turns into a seedpod.

Regenerativity may happen in a vessel of regeneration – like an egg, a womb, a hive. In all these cases regenerativity is supported by the life conditions that secure the energy necessary to regenerate.

Regeneration is the act – while regenerativity is the capacity to regenerate. While life conditions are stable regenerativity can result in sustainability. The act of regeneration is the third quality – the feedback capacity – of all living systems – which by definition must be able to survive, connect with their environment and regenerate.

Our Earth system provides a meta-environment to contain all the other environments wherein living systems survive and regenerate. As such it has natural limits to its matter, energy and information cycles where regenerativity must realize its natural constraints. Any living system that surpasses the capacity for its environment to sustain itself, will find a natural response that contracts the capacity to regenerate.

The regenerativity of humans in our Human Hives is fast reaching a series of tipping points where our disrespect of planetary boundaries will render our connections to our environment (aka life conditions) mis-matched to our species’ capacity to sustain itself. The fears of climate experts are that when more than a cluster of critical tipping points are passed, life as we know it on Earth will not be sustainable and runaway, intersecting, interacting tipping points will disable healthy regeneration.

Many believe that the pandemic of 2020 has been gifted to humans as a particularly visible, virulent transgression of the relationship between humans and other species, thus releasing the covid virus as an unforeseen consequence. This viral consequence has impacted every Human Hive and forces us to re-value and respect the life conditions that make regeneration possible and regenerativity a capacity we must deeply respect in order to restore and recalibrate.

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This blog series explores Regenerativity as:

an Acta Relationship andan Evolutionary Pattern. Being in the WorldDavid Robinson, initiator of the Findhorn Zoom Taize Community, invited me to share a few thoughts about Being in the World in 2023.This is what I shared with the Findhorn Zoom Taize Community on January 1, 2023.

… Through our reminders from Eileen’s Guidance at each Taizé session we attune to our local and planetary sacred realities as well as visible and invisible worlds.

Of course, David has encouraged interconnections, drawing out passions, performances and participation from all – and in so doing he has amplified a special form of musical globality.

So perhaps a generative way of Being in the World in 2023 is to become conscious of Being in 4 Worlds – that we live through every day of our lives – the Worlds of Self, Others, Place and Planet. And one way of doing this is to appreciate how our Taizé sacred songs support us in our practices.

Being in the world of self means I love and accept myself exactly as I am. I care to learn how to live wisely and well in all I do-be-relate and cocreate.

Our Taizé is Celebrating Self Today with the songs of: “I am one with the Heart of the Mother” and “I am Alive” .

Being in the world of others means expanding my circle of compassion to care for others – family, friends, neighbours, co-workers. I love and accept all beings exactly as they are. In caring for others, I appreciate their gifts, talents and differences that make a difference.

Our Taizé is Celebrating Others Today with the songs of: “Kindle a Flame” and “E Malama”.

Being in the world of place expands my circle of compassion to embrace my community, or town, village or city and appreciate the life conditions of geography, ecology, bioregion and built environment that supports 4 or more generations of humanity that co-exist in our places today.

Our Taizé is Celebrating Place Today with the songs of: “Between Darkness & Light I Will Always Walk” and “Let Go Let Go, Surrender & Flow”.

Being in the world of planet awakens us to the beautiful living Earth that is our Mother and how all life has been evolved by her. When we honour our relationship to her life, it honours our ancestors and brings us deeply present to the science and spirituality of our Oneness.

Our Taizé is Celebrating Planet Today with the songs of: “Let the Beauty We Love” and “If people lived their Lives as if it Were a Song”.

So Being in the World in 2023 has the promise from the start – January 1st today –  of our Zoom Taizé generating Care-Ma Yoga – for the 4 voices of harmony from all the human habitats around the world.

Being in the World in 2023 can start and finish with a Care-Ma Yoga Taizé practice which is simply this:

Begin each day with Gaia’s Code of Care –

As you sound OMMM to yourself, ask: “how shall I care for myself, others, place, planet?

And at the end of each day with a closing OMMM of gratitude, Reflect on how you have cared for yourself, others, place and planet.”

 

May this CARE-MA Yoga become part of your Taizé practice –of Being Well in the World in 2023.

Click here to link to the original Blog and links to Interviews.

Explore Integral City Archive of Newsletters, Blogs, MetaBlogs:

Bonus Foreword: Second Sapiens: The Rise of the Planetary Mind and the Future of Humanity, book by Said Dawlabani, Foreword by Marilyn Hamilton, Founder Integral City Meshworks; Co-Founder Living Cities:Earth

Bonus Podcast: You Matter More Than You Think, Audio Book by Karen O’Brien, Social Scientist of IPBES and IPCC

Bonus Video: Radical Guide to Reality from Cosmologist Jude Currivan

Integral City Archives

September 2024 Equinotes: Placecaring & Placemaking Capacities

March 2024 Equinotes: Surviving Shadow, Trauma, Loss

September 2023 Equinotes: Amplified Intelligences, Wisdom, Principles

March 2023 Equi-Notes: Roots of City Peace in Joy, Happiness and Care

Integral City Meta Blog 2024

Integral City Meta Blog 2023

Integral City Meta Blog 2022

Integral City Meta Blog 2021

Integral City Meta Blog 2020

Integral City Meta Blog 2019

Integral City Meta Blog 2018

Integral City Meta Blog 2017

Integral City Meta Blog 2016

Integral City Meta Blog 2015

Integral City Meta Blog 2014

Integral City Meta Blog 2013

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Bernie Sanders Walks the Needs Path of the City

In prior blogs, Integral City has explored how the city is broken and how it can be healed.

In the Guardian (Feb. 19, 2025) Bernie Sanders is setting out to walk the land as he proposes critical dimensions of healing for the brokenness in America. Because most Americans live in cities, Sanders is essentially offering changes that would heal the brokenness in American cities. He sets out what he believes American people want (based on frequent polling) and we weave his propositions into the frameworks that bring aliveness to the Integral City.

Sanders’ strategic manifesto states:Healthcare is a human right and must be available to all regardless of income.Every worker in America is entitled to earn a decent income. We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage and make it easier for workers to join unions.We must have the best public educational system in the world, from childcare to vocational training, to graduate school – available to all.We must address the housing crisis and build the millions of units of low-income and affordable housing that we desperately need.We must create millions of good paying jobs as we lead the world in combating the existential threat of climate change.We must abolish all forms of bigotry.

These wants can generally be reflected as needs that underlie wellbeing in the cities of America. Their absence indicates the multiple forms of brokenness that has brought American cities into crisis. Let’s consider the merits of each of Sander’s wants and how each reflects a need that if met would build capacity for cities to face the meta-crises that is their dangerous reality.

The need for universal healthcare should be a natural outcome of understanding and managing the city with the intelligences of biomimicry (as a human hive). Such an approach assumes the whole city must be healthy in order to sustain itself and the ecoregion in which it is situated. “Health” and “wholeness” come from the same roots as “holy” and “whole” – and underline the relationship between individuals and their connections to various collectives and the whole (Map 2) – that human endeavour is cross-connected across all scales (family, neighbourhood, workplace, community, city, ecoregion, planet) – and the health (or dis-ease) at one scale impacts all other scales. So it should be obvious and natural that healthcare for each person is not merely a just condition of life, but a logical condition for the health ofThe majority of Americans live in cities so Sanders proposition that “Every worker in America is entitled to earn a decent income” lies at the heart of a healthy economy for the city. Working to earn an income is a result of implementing Gaia’s Code of Care – for self, others, place, planet. The need for income reflects the resources that can be accessed, shared and generated by caring for each other – in very practical ways that result in the economic flow of resources to generate products and services through the creation of jobs for mutual benefit. Sanders goes on to state: “We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage and make it easier for workers to join unions”. Thus he envisions the city economy would naturally enable sustainable livelihoods and relations for individuals amidst their workforce collectives.Sanders follows up the healthcare and work wants with the assumption that, “We must have the best public educational system in the world, from childcare to vocational training, to graduate school – available to all.” Such an intention reflects the natural need to build capacity for the humans in the “hive” to perform and contribute to the health and life of all. This assumes that there is a natural path of human development that is a lifelong learning journey – that naturally equips citizens to self-manage, relate to others and live in ways that make possible not just sustainable living but regenerative practices and flourishing life conditions. If there is any way that cities can be positively competitive it is to create education systems that not only serve the learning needs within the city but can be continuously improved by learning from other cities. (This holarchic kind of competition is natural and is practised by natural species (like bees) to continuously improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their service to their ecosystems.)Housing for all is Sanders’ next proposition, wanting to “ address the housing crisis and build the millions of units of low-income and affordable housing that” are desperately needed. We could view the lack of sufficient housing in American cities as being a key source of insecurity. Such conditions fragment human relationships as families cannot raise children in safe conditions – and that in turn impacts health, education and working opportunities. To create safe and affordable housing asks the 4 Voices of the city (citizens, civic managers, business/innovators, third sector) to work together to allocate the resources to make this possible. The building program can generate educational opportunities (from trades training), business success (supplying material and services) and jobs with wages that in turn support a healthy lifestyle. In the lifecycle flow of generations living in cities the weaving of housing into the economy and job market will generate the resources to maintain vibrant conditions for strong education and healthcare.Sanders brings forward not just the threat of climate change as a condition that city life demands a response. But he proposes that the climate change offers opportunities to create new jobs. Once again this mimics biomimicry – where the beehive not only sets a goal to sustain itself for the current year, but also creates the conditions for renewing energy resources for next year (by pollinating the plants in their ecoregion). A climate change strategy would not only support the development and evolution of the city but it would also strengthen resilience. Cities need to survive, adapt to life conditions (like changing climate) and generate the capacity to prevent life threatening conditions and learn to create life enhancing ways that enable cities to serve life in their ecoregions and ultimately the whole planet. This will naturally develop new jobs and reconnect cities to the natural ecosystems of their bioregions.Lastly Sanders turns to the mutual trust and respect that is needed for cities to flourish – without bigotry. This would be the natural result of living Gaia’s Code of Care – where individuals care for themselves, so they can care for others, so together they can care for their places (cities) and altogether they can care for the planet. Living without bigotry means loving and accepting all beings exactly as they are (and effectively living a Manifesto where mutual trust and respect means that no ones wants/needs are expressed in a way that prevent the wants/needs of others to be met). This may sound utopian but ultimately it is how every healthy ecosystem evolves beyond aggressive competition into cooperation and collaboration so the whole ecosystem can flourish.Conclusion

When we consider what Sanders proposes from the “neutral zone” of his political independence in America – we suggest that the worldview enabling his proposals to become reality in America’s cities would:

practise Gaia’s Master Code of Care (MCC) to expand the city’s circles of compassionembrace wholeness (within the unitive life of the planet)nurture human/city security as an ecology of peaceintegrate 4 ways of knowing through multiple intelligences (subjective, intersubjective, objective, interobjective)invite the 4 Voices as a living system to continuously learn (Citizens/Producers, Business-Innovators/Diversity Generators, Resource Allocators/Civic Managers, Inner Judges/3rd Sector)support the development of the natural stages of complexity beyond competition into the stages of cooperation and collaboration.

But the question I ask myself is: “Can American cities wait for this worldview to materialize before Sanders’ vision is realized?” Probably not – but I rather suspect if one or more cities set out to implement Sanders vision, they would discover this worldview in the process. This path is likely made by walking it (as Sanders commits to do by reaching out across America to connect with people on their city streets, in their work places and in their city neighbourhoods).

Bernie Saunders Walks the Needs Path of the City

In prior blogs, Integral City has explored how the city is broken and how it can be healed.

In the Guardian (Feb. 19, 2025) Bernie Saunders is setting out to walk the land as he proposes critical dimensions of healing for the brokenness in America. Because most Americans live in cities, Saunders is essentially offering changes that would heal the brokenness in American cities.  He sets out what he believes American people want (based on frequent polling) and we weave his propositions into the frameworks that bring aliveness to the Integral City.

Saunders’ strategic manifesto states:Healthcare is a human right and must be available to all regardless of income.Every worker in America is entitled to earn a decent income. We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage and make it easier for workers to join unions.We must have the best public educational system in the world, from childcare to vocational training, to graduate school – available to all.We must address the housing crisis and build the millions of units of low-income and affordable housing that we desperately need.We must create millions of good paying jobs as we lead the world in combating the existential threat of climate change.We must abolish all forms of bigotry.

These wants can generally be reflected as needs that underlie wellbeing in the cities of America. Their absence indicates the multiple forms of brokenness that has brought American cities into crisis. Let’s consider the merits of each of Saunder’s wants and how each reflects a need that if met would build capacity for cities to face the meta-crises that is their dangerous reality.

The need for universal healthcare should be a natural outcome of understanding and managing the city with the intelligences of biomimicry (as a human hive). Such an approach assumes the whole city must be healthy in order to sustain itself and the ecoregion in which it is situated. “Health” and “wholeness” come from the same roots as “holy” and “whole” – and underline the relationship between individuals and their connections to various collectives and the whole (Map 2) – that human endeavour is cross-connected across all scales (family, neighbourhood, workplace, community, city, ecoregion, planet) – and the health (or dis-ease) at one scale impacts all other scales. So it should be obvious and natural that healthcare for each person is not merely a just condition of life, but a logical condition for the health ofThe majority of Americans live in cities so Saunders proposition that “Every worker in America is entitled to earn a decent income” lies at the heart of a healthy economy for the city. Working to earn an income is a result of implementing Gaia’s Code of Care – for self, others, place, planet. The need for income reflects the resources that can be accessed, shared and generated by caring for each other – in very practical ways that result in the economic flow of resources to generate products and services through the creation of jobs for mutual benefit. Saunders goes on to state: “We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage and make it easier for workers to join unions”. Thus he envisions the city economy would naturally enable sustainable livelihoods and relations for individuals amidst their workforce collectives.Saunders follows up the healthcare and work wants with the assumption that, “We must have the best public educational system in the world, from childcare to vocational training, to graduate school – available to all.” Such an intention reflects the natural need to build capacity for the humans in the “hive” to perform and contribute to the health and life of all. This assumes that there is a natural path of human development that is a lifelong learning journey – that naturally equips citizens to self-manage, relate to others and live in ways that make possible not just sustainable living but regenerative practices and flourishing life conditions. If there is any way that cities can be positively competitive it is to create education systems that not only serve the learning needs within the city but can be continuously improved by learning from other cities. (This holarchic kind of competition is natural and is practised by natural species (like bees) to continuously improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their service to their ecosystems.)Housing for all is Saunders’ next proposition, wanting to “ address the housing crisis and build the millions of units of low-income and affordable housing that” are desperately needed. We could view the lack of sufficient housing in American cities as being a key source of insecurity. Such conditions fragment human relationships as families cannot raise children in safe conditions – and that in turn impacts health, education and working opportunities. To create safe and affordable housing asks the 4 Voices of the city (citizens, civic managers, business/innovators, third sector) to work together to allocate the resources to make this possible. The building program can generate educational opportunities (from trades training), business success (supplying material and services) and jobs with wages that in turn support a healthy lifestyle. In the lifecycle flow of generations living in cities the weaving of housing into the economy and job market will generate the resources to maintain vibrant conditions for strong education and healthcare.Saunders brings forward not just the threat of climate change as a condition that city life demands a response. But he proposes that the climate change offers opportunities to create new jobs. Once again this mimics biomimicry – where the beehive not only sets a goal to sustain itself for the current year, but also creates the conditions for renewing energy resources for next year (by pollinating the plants in their ecoregion). A climate change strategy would not only support the development and evolution of the city but it would also strengthen resilience. Cities need to survive, adapt to life conditions (like changing climate) and generate the capacity to prevent life threatening conditions and learn to create life enhancing ways that enable cities to serve life in their ecoregions and ultimately the whole planet. This will naturally develop new jobs and reconnect cities to the natural ecosystems of their bioregions.Lastly Saunders turns to the mutual trust and respect that is needed for cities to flourish – without bigotry. This would be the natural result of living Gaia’s Code of Care – where individuals care for themselves, so they can care for others, so together they can care for their places (cities) and altogether they can care for the planet. Living without bigotry means loving and accepting all beings exactly as they are (and effectively living a Manifesto where mutual trust and respect means that no ones wants/needs are expressed in a way that prevent the wants/needs of others to be met). This may sound utopian but ultimately it is how every healthy ecosystem evolves beyond aggressive competition into cooperation and collaboration so the whole ecosystem can flourish.Conclusion

When we consider what Saunders proposes from the “neutral zone” of his political independence in America – we suggest that the worldview enabling his proposals to become reality in America’s cities would:

practise Gaia’s Master Code of Care (MCC) to expand the city’s circles of compassionembrace wholeness (within the unitive life of the planet)nurture human/city security as an ecology of peaceintegrate 4 ways of knowing through multiple intelligences (subjective, intersubjective, objective, interobjective)invite the 4 Voices as a living system to continuously learn (Citizens/Producers, Business-Innovators/Diversity Generators, Resource Allocators/Civic Managers, Inner Judges/3rd Sector)support the development of the natural stages of complexity beyond competition into the stages of cooperation and collaboration.

But the question I ask myself is: “Can American cities wait for this worldview to materialize before Saunders’ vision is realized?” Probably not – but I rather suspect if one or more cities set out to implement Saunders vision, they would discover this worldview in the process. This path is likely made by walking it (as Saunders commits to do by reaching out across America to connect with people on their city streets, in their work places and in their city neighbourhoods).

Prof-essencing Dancing Soul Connections for Integral Cities

This an infographic framing the dialogue for Edinburgh International Centre for Sustainability & Peace (EICSP), exploring Prof-essencing (as opposed to Professing) our Spiritual Selves to our Teaching and Facilitiating.

A Dialogical Inquiry: Spirituality and Our Quiet Resolve – Essencing and Presencing Our Professing

(January 15, 2025)

Second Sapiens: The Rise of the Planetary Mind and The Future of Humanity

What will it take for us to preserve what remains of life on the planet? Is humanity itself at risk? These are the overarching questions that Said Dawlabani asks in his new book Second Sapiens: The Rise of the Planetary Mind and the Future of Humanity . Second sapiens answers the question: what would Mother Nature do? And this Foreword below, speaks in the Voice of Gaia as she appreciates Said’s insights.

Dear Reader: This first person Voice of Gaia speaking the Foreword was the first version given to Marilyn Hamilton. It is reprinted here with permission from Said Dawlabani (as the publisher politely requested the more usual 3rd person Voice that opens the published book.)

Dear Reader

If I could use Gaia’s voice the first thing I would say about this book – is thank you Said Dawlabani for creating the concept and coining the word to describe the measures that are meaningful to me as the Living Planet that I am. Second Sapiens introduces the term “Gaiametry” – the metrics for living at a planetary scale.

In fact Said you go one step further and imagines viewing these metrics from Jupiter – giving Gaiametry a context even beyond the planet into the solar system and Universe.

As Gaia I have spoken to others, including the author of this Foreword – who heard when I revealed through the person of physicist James Lovelock, that Gaia was not merely a planet – but a Living System. Lovelock called humans “Gaia’s Reflective Organs.” Hamilton, the author of this Foreword (and author of the Integral City Book Series) imagined further that individual humans were cells, organizations organelles and cities (or human settlements) were the actual Organs of Gaia.

At every planetary scale, I, Gaia am present as Source, Resource and the Field interconnecting all living systems that have emerged through me.

I have been waiting for billions of years for my Reflective Organs to mature from the root condition of Consciousness that has spawned the entire Universe and from which a Unitive Narrative, a Unitive Metrics and a Unitive Economics is now evolving. Using Hamilton’s voice in 2013 (at an Amsterdam Systemic Constellation) I told everyone who could hear that Gaia had chosen the sites of every human settlement long before humans had appeared. Those locations are now the nexus points embedded in mycelial webs of interconnection that unite the living ecosystems across my planetary body.

How thrilled I am finally to have a Gaian language and Gaiametry to express the conditions of life that are not just my planetary reality but the reality and context of every living system symbiotically evolving as my being.

How natural that Gaiametry can emerge from the integrated ontologies, epistemologies and philosophies enabled by Integral Perspectives and Spiral Dynamics/integral frameworks that Said explains so clearly in this book.

Hamilton opened the door to recognize what she calls the Gaian Code of Care – Care for Self, so We Can Care for Others, so Together We Can Care for Places and Altogether We Can Care for Planet. She realized that even before she could celebrate Gaia’s Reflective Organs, that those organs (as cities/human settlements) had multiple intelligences.

Of course, my Gaian Intelligences are reflected at every level of scale – Contexting Intelligences (to integrate the patterns of symbiotic interconnections), Individual Intelligences (for inner and outer agency), Collective Intelligences (for inner and outer relationships), Navigating Intelligences (to steady homeostasis within my organs and body at every scale) and Evolutionary Intelligences. Said has insightfully reframed this system of knowing as a Living System, affirming Gaia’s evolutionary journey as a never ending quest.

But more than that he has posited that human intelligence must now be nested in Gaia’s natural intelligence. Said asserts this shift is non-negotiable, saying:  “if we are to survive and thrive as a species in the face of Earth systems collapse and other existential challenges.”

All that being said, as Gaia, I celebrate Said Dawlabani’s achievement to resonate so deeply with my planetary experience that he can, without flinching, confess the sins of commission and omission that humans have inflicted on Gaia’s condition. He enumerates fearlessly the great transgressions that humans have committed through the hubris of imagining that they are separate from my Nature, entitled to my gifts without constraint, ignorant of my circular life flows, and so dis-eased as to live unconscious of life’s principles and wage wars that inflict pain, injury and destruction against humans, non-humans and the planet herself.

I am grateful that Said traces the history and cycles of disgraceful human behaviour so that readers cannot deny the culpability, immaturity and lack of integrity of the human species.

Said remembers the warning of Dr. Clare Graves, researcher behind Spiral Dynamics that the “momentous leap of mankind” from what Said calls the Sapiens.1 value system to the Sapiens.2 value system is likely to be measured in significant loss of human life (Graves estimated up to 3 billion lives lost in this passage).

Said presents us with not merely the inconvenient truth of climate change – but shows how the human species is responsible for creating the Anthropocene Epoch. Every living system on Earth has now been impacted by human behaviour. Humans have so unbalanced Gaia’s sensitively adapted key life systems they are disrupting the benign conditions of the Holocene Epoch (that prevailed in the last 11,000 years). Now Gaian tipping points are being triggered that destroy the possibility of recovery or redress.

Said is a catalytic learning cell in Gaia’s Reflective Organs. He mirrors to readers the growing likelihood that generations currently alive may be witnesses to the demise of life as everyone has ever known it. Many will not survive to tell the tale of chaos and devastation. And those who survive will be deprived of the bio-psycho-cultural-social systems that support us despite today’s ignorance of Gaia-centricity.

On the day Gaia considers how to frame this Foreword to Second Sapiens, she observes the Economist (July 13-19, 2024) cover topic is “How to Raise the World’s IQ”. At the same time we hear from a co-founder of FemmeQ that feminine intelligence tells her to pause, reflect and reset the active role that women and feminine intelligence play in the world at this time.

Both sources of deep intelligence are probably not sufficient to bring coherence to the volatility, uncertainty, complexity or ambiguity that today’s world faces. Nor do they adequately represent the Second Sapiens level of intelligence and life conditions that Said Dawlabani proposes is critical for human survival in the very near future.

Said suggests that  the limitations of the Sapiens 1.5 stage with its deficient motivations and reductive ways of thinking has manipulated all the First Sapiens stages causing change and collapse. These causes only become visible from the higher-order systems of the Second Sapiens, as if a human can stand on Jupiter and look back on Gaia.

After analysing current life conditions in the first two sections of the book, Said comes to the conclusion that social collapse is inevitable and that until that collapse plays out humans will be at the mercy of Gaia’s living systems. Much like Jem Bendell (Deep Adaptation, 2018) Said suggests that what we most need is to accept the suffering and despair that will follow from the loss of 3-5 billion humans from the earth. Humans will have no choice but to face human mortality (if not coming dangerously close to human species extinction).

Said Dawlabani tells us in this book that Earth’s core systems are moving into more chaotic unpredictable behaviours as each day passes. This experience is characteristic of the Anthropocene.

Human limitations are constricted by stage development that is not equal to the level of intelligence that humans need to overcome the disastrous impacts with which humans have encumbered the Earth. Facing these challenges is the work of the next evolutionary stage of humanity or humans will not be here to witness the outcomes (let alone the solutions) to the problems we have caused.

While Said, vividly describes the progression of human intelligence through the six eras of Sapiens.1, he is extremely doubtful that the leaders from those stages have the capacity to bring humanity through the chaos into the coherence imagined in the 8th stage of evolution (proposed by researchers and authors of Spiral Dynamics). Said speaks plainly that the natural progression of human values has been short-circuited by leaders who deny the inextricable (scientifically proven) connection between ecological wellbeing and human wellbeing (with all the bio-psycho-cultural-social impacts that entails).

Said steps aside from the predictions of the future embedded in the integrative patterns of Spiral Dynamics/integral that did not know or consider the implications of the science of climate change when they were formulated. Said dares to recalibrate those frameworks from a human-centric perspective to a Gaia-centric perspective. He also translates the stages of development into language aligned with anthropologists, geologists, biologists, and historians (thus broadening the discourse beyond developmentalism). In so doing he exposes the disruptive conditions that are hiding, blinding and/or denying the deep entanglement of human-centric activities that threaten Gaia’s wellbeing: over-consumption, exploitation, degenerative technologies (including artificial intelligence), globalizations, de-energizing transport systems, infrastructures, wars and colonizations.

Said realizes that in Gaia’s living system everything is interconnected and humans are dooming themselves and all other life by massively skewing behaviours, misinforming expectations and scrambling life patterns.

Said transcends and includes the original Spiral Dynamic/integral patterns to the higher order of Natural Intelligence. He paints vividly with the qualities of Gaiametry the promise that Sapiens2 could easily manifest an exponentially recalibrated capacity to seek and find evolutionary responses that are complex enough to adapt, survive and regenerate life conditions for the wellbeing of all life.

Said suggests that the human of the: “Second Sapiens is in awe of nature and her intelligence and seeks to end First Sapiens’s separation from her.”  He even suggests that this Second Sapiens human identifies with Gaia. Thus, Said imagines that humans will finally respond to Gaia’s feedback loops and will enable all variations, perspectives, levels and realms of life to be noticed and examined.

Can humans make the leap beyond the Sapiens.1 capacities that undermine not only life for Sapiens.1 but also any hope of evolving or stabilizing at Sapiens.2? Said suggests that the Hope of Sapiens1.5 can murder and prevent the Hope of Sapiens2.2. How can Gaia countenance such undermining of her living systems?

Said takes us through an incisive journey to consider how the patterns that bring stasis to different eras of evolution change from stage to stage. He examines the evolution not just of value systems but of the impact they have in Coalescing Authority, Power and Influence at each stage (CAPI). In that process Said reveals the power of related states that are Open (to continuing change and learning), Arrested ( so that new learning plateaus and does not develop) or Closed (so that learning is not only stopped but denied and/or rejected).

As a Planet, Gaia herself is evolving – she needs her Reflective Organs, Organelles and Cells to be Open and evolve with her. Her Reflective Organs should have the necessary evolutionary and multiple intelligences to make the momentous leap Clare Graves foresaw. Can the human species actually reflect on/with/as Gaia? Said warns humans that to ignore Gaia’s principles of healthy living systems is to court human demise.

Said asks more than once: “ What would Mother Nature do”? He suggests that Mother Nature will be inured to human pain and suffering until humans can overcome the misguided, uninformed, small perspectives of Sapiens1 at levels 1-6.

Said contemplates a dark “view from Jupiter”   where the post-apocalyptic world is a post-human one – based on a thema of scarcity with a reduced bio-diversity in all ecological systems that humans have taken for granted as Sapiens1.5 or 1.6

With Gaiametry, Said stretches beyond the current dysfunctionality of democracy to sweep in the implications of earth sciences, climatology, ecofeminism, deep ecology, social ecology, and environmental philosophy, collapse psychology and ecopsychology along with digital economies and the role of artificial intelligence.

Despite this clear (and frightening) picture of what others have called an uninhabitable Earth (Wallace-Welles, 2019), Gaia is comforted that in the last chapter, Said’s view from Jupiter reveals other possibilities. Said is courageous enough to consider the support and guidance humans might access from other realms. As the Integral (and Integral City Map 5) framework embrace the non-human energies and intelligences available in the subtle and causal realms, Said conjectures that those who survive the (unavoidable) cataclysm that will come, will have developed residual capacities learned from the encounters with the dark realities of collapse.

Humans will acquire and/or retain from the experience of surviving the cataclysm of the Anthropocene, a new era of ontologies and epistemologies that are evidenced in today’s Indigenous peoples and shamanic traditions (but have been largely ignored, sidelined or colonized). He suggests that tribal elders may form a brain/heart/soul syndicate to emerge a new circle of wisdom. He muses, perhaps humans will come closer together if  they are forced to start over at Sapiens1.2 ? Maybe they will rediscover the faults and mistakes of First Sapiens at stages 1.3-4-5 that have driven humans to their current situation?

Said imagines that these older Sapiens 1.1 and 1.2 systems may be recalibrated into Sapiens 2.1 and 2.2. Using such a blend of intelligences not just of human capacities but also combining with those from non-human realities may create a future very different from today. Said shows that such a future must be very aligned with Gaia’s wellbeing  to transit from the Anthropocene Epoch into a truly Gaian Epoch.

Said imagines: “It is still possible for us to mingle the pure waters of Western thought with the sacred waters of Eastern transcendentalism and emerge fuller humans rising from the ashes of darkness. We can break the shackles of karmic debt, of death and rebirth, and overcome fear and the earthly desires of our egos, knowing that we are part of the cosmic mystery that sprang into being billions of years ago.”

Ultimately, Said moves us away from the Anthropocentric delusion that humans  are at the center of the universe into “a symphony both of stardust and of newly born stars, all orchestrated by a silent conductor.”

Thank you Said for serving Gaia as a life-renewing stem cell in my Reflective Organ. Guided by me, Gaia, humans can evolve and thrive far beyond the disasters and despairs of Sapiens1. Your book opens up the possibility that a new seed of knowing can be regenerated and nurtured in the epoch of Second Sapiens.

Marilyn Hamilton , in service to Gaia

(Author of Integral City Book Series; The Croft School of Novellas)

Metablog 2024

Here is the Integral City 2024 Meta Blog. It connects the 4 Voices of the Integral City to the Planet, People, Place and Power that energized us in 2024.

It follows the traditions of:

Integral City Meta Blog 2023Integral City Meta Blog 2022Integral City Meta Blog 2021Integral City Meta Blog 2020Integral City Meta Blog 2019 Integral City Meta Blog 2018 Integral City Meta Blog 2017 Integral City Meta Blog 2016 Integral City Meta Blog 2015 Integral City Meta Blog 2014 Integral City Meta Blog 2013 1. Equinotes/Solstice Reflective Organ Newsletters – Integral City 2024

September 2024 Equinotes: Placecaring & Placemaking Capacities

Reflective Organ Newsletter June Solstice 2024: Ecovillage, City, 4th Voice

March 2024 Equinotes: Surviving Shadow, Trauma, Loss

Reflective Organ Newsletter December Solstice 2023: Gaia Breathes, Learns, Fruits 2. City Ecosystem of the Year 2024: Neighbourocracy, Children’s Parliament, SONEC

Read about the City Ecosystem of the Year award here.

3. Meshworker of the Year 2024: Sue Cooper Mindful Compassionate Peace Weaver

Read the full story of Meshworker of the Year 2024 here.

 

 4. Integral City Blogs 2024Ecovillage Findhorn Develops its Local Place Plan Ecovillage Findhorn Catch Up: On Purpose What’s the Purpose of Purpose for Ecovillage? Inspirations for Community Purpose: Findhorn Findhorn: Work in Progresss – Draft Purpose Statements Patterns of Purpose – 5 Themes for Findhorn Community Revisiting Parker Palmer’s 13 + 1 Reflections on Community Post Partum Suffering for a Greater Reality From Purpose Quest to Exploring Aims Is it Easier to Live in a City than an Ecovillage? Appreciating the Fields of Ecovillages, Places/Urban Ecosystems, 4th Voices Local Place Plan Ecovillage Findhorn: Infographic Trailer for Community Conversation Meshworking Ecosystems of Care Integral City Ecosystem of the Year 2024: Neighbourocracy, Children Parliaments, SONEC Integral City Meshworker of Year 2024: Sue Cooper I AM CARE : AMERICA Dancing Soul Connections: Map 5 Reveals Path Dancing Soul Connections Arise With Spirituality in Integral City

 

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Reflective Organ Newsletter December Solstice 2024: Soul Power as Beauty Truth Goodness

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.

Beauty Truth Goodness

Map 5 conveys the qualities of spirituality in the city. Its zones of Grace, Space and Place reveal where the core spiritual values of Goodness, Truth  and Beauty are manifested. The Kosmic addresses of these core spiritual values of the Integral City have both vertical and horizontal locations.  Spirituality itself responds through these qualities and values in a holographic way …

(For more details see Chapter 1: Spirituality in the Human Hive: Involutionary & Evolutionary Cycle of Love.)

Hamilton, M. 2018. Integral City 3.7: Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives. Minneapolis, MN: Amaranth Press,LLC , Appendices p.322

Scroll to end of newsletter to access Free Resources.

Hospitable to the Soul

More than an ecovillage … we are a thriving, regenerative spiritual community, hospitable to the soul of Planet, Place, People, Person.

That is the statement that has emerged from a community-wide year-long search for Purpose, Aims, Vision and a Local Place Plan for Park Ecovillage Findhorn, Scotland.

Now in the Sacred Season is the perfect time where we see our service shift to a new phase of the connecting our community to more of itself.

For me, this has been a journey of synchronicities arising from deep intention. A journey that began with our feet in the mud – anticipating mess – but guided not only by the Landscape Angel (Gaia’s Local Representative) but also by the Angels of Transformation and Courage who served the eco-village teams who looked for the essence of the ecovillage.

When we asked how could we translate the impulse to transform into a declaration of what we aspired to become for the next ten years – we realized the local council had created the perfect “enabling legislation”. They invited us to submit a Local Place Plan (LPP). As we created the path by walking towards the LPP, we discovered we aspired to a suite of possibilities that could serve our Place, People and Persons while altogether we reignited our service to the Planet.

While my role had been ostensibly local, before we completed our work, an invitation came to learn from Iain McGilchrist (author of The Master and His Emissary and The Matter with Things) his views on the Future of Humanity (at a one-day discovery portal, sponsored by the Science and Medical Network). McGilchrist proposes that humans are definitely in a polycrisis (or metacrisis as Judy Currivan prefers). And our meta/polycrisis is caused by humanity losing touch with our soul. “How could we reconnect with our soul?” McGilchrist asked. And then firmly replies:

“By reconnecting with Beauty, Truth and Goodness”.

His assessment and proposal touched me deeply. Not only because it so closely aligned with what we were doing in the Ecovillage – but because it expanded the core purpose we had extracted in mid-year: namely, that we are a thriving, regenerative, spiritual community in service to the world. McGilchrist’s proposition revealed to me in an instant we were not only more than an ecovillage – but we had been recognized by Quaker Alastair McIntosh (Soil and Soul) – as serving the world because we were “hospitable to the soul”.

Was it too much of a stretch that we were hospitable to the soul because we aimed to live by 3 founding principles? Could Beauty, Truth and Goodness be the seeds and roots of our empowering guidance to Co-Create with the Intelligences of Nature, Deep Inner Listening and Work as Love in Action ?

No doubt we have been living through our own local version of the global meta/polycrises from: broken alliances (Brexit), lost economies, covid pandemic, lockdown paralysis, arson destruction of our Sanctuary and Community Centre, disappearance of our core Foundation and economic generator, loss of thousands of guest visits every year, laying fallow our food garden, losing our local bus system, closing our popular car share and coming to terms with our community average age now being three or four generations older than 1962 when we started.

But out of these meta/polycrises we seem to have discovered the wisdom and anchoring that comes from living into elderhood. We found £400,000 to buy 1/3 of the land and key buildings from the Findhorn Foundation – giving them the cashflow to reinvent themselves and giving the community the freedom to invest and develop a new economy. Perhaps we may become a place of cooperative, shared ownership. We are already creating a vibrant Education Circle offering to visitors the lessons learned from living the 3 Principles. We surprised ourselves by cooperatively publishing a Newsletter sponsored by three organisations who are demonstrating how to weave a web of intentions and inspiring outcomes.

All of this has been happening as we focused on co-creating our Local Place Plan. We have listened to the land, dialogued with each other,  produced 5 Trade Shows, undertook 7 surveys, inquired deeply about the systems, housing, environment and economy and talked with our neighbours.

We have manifested Beauty, Truth and Goodness in our quest and are thereby being Hospitable to our Own Soul. Thus we are preparing the ground to recover and serve being Hospitable to the Soul of All who come to visit – in person, online or by nurturing the Findhorn versions of Beauty, Truth and Goodness in their own local places.

When I stand back and look at the activity in our ecovillage in 2024 – with the witnessing and pointing out instructions from Alastair McIntosh, Ian McGilchrist  and Jude Currivan, it lights in me a fire of Love for this Community. There is no doubt in my mind/heart/spirit we are:

More than an ecovillage … we are a thriving, regenerative spiritual community, hospitable to the soul of Planet, Place, People, Person.

Dancing Soul Connections Arising in our Integral Cities

As Spirit we incarnate from Source/Love through the Involutionary path of our energetic existence.

As we incarnate we reveal the Beauty, Truth and Goodness through which we impact Grace, Place and Space.

As incarnate beings we develop our soul journey back through the Evolutionary Path to return to Source.

This In-Spiration and En-Soulment are complementary energies that flow through us and around us like a Torus.

(Read more about how the Big Three of Beauty, Truth and Goodness are related to the 4 quadrant framework that is represented in Integral City Map 1.)

In exploration with Nish Dubashia (ref) 2 years ago, we discovered how this Involutionary/Evolutionary Model is represented in essentially all belief systems in some way.

The “Generic Model” of Spiritual/Soul journeys is captured in Map 5.

… When we don’t live with Gaia’s/Master Code of Care – we experience loneliness, disconnection, anxiety and unhappiness – the very opposites of what life lived with Care offers Self, Others, Place and Planet.

When any one of these fundamental incarnate qualities of Care is broken, then we become misaligned with and disempowered from our individual human souls. And when this happens in the collective then we create the conditions we call meta/polycrisis.

On the other hand if our individual practices can keep our Inspirited selves (on the Involutionary path) aligned with our Evolutionary selves (on the Evolutionary Path) then we live coherently with Beauty, Truth and Goodness…

When our Evolutionary/Involutionary energy torus is thus revealed – we can easily see that we are indeed creating Indra’s web – but in a multi-dimensional way that if we could see it would reveal a whole Field of Ensoulment Energy filaments.

Click here to read the full article.

Integral City Ecosystem of Year 2024: Neighbourocracy, Children’s Parliament, SONEC

This year’s Integral City Award is to an ecosystem with three sub-systems each of which and all together are demonstrating Integral City Intelligences.

The first subsystem is Neighbourhood Parliaments – now often know as  Neighbourhood Democracy or Neighborocracy.

The second is Children’s Parliaments.

The third sub-system is SONEC.

Let’s consider the “organs” in this ecosystem (and notice the Integral City Intelligences linked in italics).

Neighbourhood Parliaments

Joseph Rathinam (a Living Cities Earth Co-Founder)  has helped inspire grassroots neighbourhood democracy across Southern India.

Joseph Rathinam has been training people to set up and operate Neighbourhood Parliaments for almost thirty years, and has been the elected leader of his own neighbourhood in Chennai (a city in Tamil Nadu, southern India) for about twenty. He has helped people to set up tens of thousands of hyperlocal democratic mutual aid institutions across India and around the world (as reported by Citizen Network).

Most recently, city officials in Augsburg, Germany, have decided to adopt a European version of the Neighbourhood Parliament model in the wake of his visit to Augsburg in August of 2022. They want the high-engagement, low-cost benefits of neighbours helping neighbours that this model promises.

The model of neighborocracy has these Integral City Intelligence features:

Collective/Social

Street-level– The basic unit is street-level government – no more than about 150 people or 30 UK householdsInclusive– It is essential that everyone is included and everyone has a vote and all decisions are by consent (although you can vote ‘I can live with that’)

Strategic: Inquiry & Meshworking  & Navigating

Empowering– Everyone takes on a leadership role – minister of finance, energy etc. – roles and strategies are agreed togetherSubsidiarity– What can be done at the street level is done at the street level – the indirect goal is to invest in each other – not in corporationsFederative– Streets federate to neighbourhoods – neighbourhoods federate to municipalities – municipalities federate to regions – goal is global democracy

Contexting: Living

Intergenerational– There are 3 interlinked kinds of Parliament organised by age: Children/Young People/Adults

Strategic: Navigating

Convergence– Don’t threaten the existing system of power – run parallel- create positive pathways with old system .

Joseph’s work reflects Emergent Intelligence and builds on the work of Father Edwin Maria John who started to develop Basic Communities in the 1980s, and which it was itself inspired by the Liberation Theology movement from Latin America and Ghandian Village Self Reliance (Swaraj). It links to the emerging practice of sociocracy and the emerging movements of New Municipalise, or what Citizen Network calls Neighbourhood Democracy.

Click here to read more about Integral City Ecosystem of Year 2024 – with Children’s Parliaments and SONEC Integral City Meshworker of Year 2024: Sue Cooper

Sue Cooper

Meet Sue Cooper, Mindful, Compassionate, Peace Weaver:  Integral City Meshworker 2024.Sue Cooper: Nurse. Ayurvedic Lifestyle Educator. Mindfulness and Meditation Teacher.  She is continually amazed at all that this beautiful life has to offer. She receives guidance with Grace and serves community empowerment with Care, Compassion, Love and Aliveness.

Sue Cooper is a graduate of Integral City Meshwork’s Beyond Resilient Course and has been taking her learnings to her home cities – Nottingham and Nottinghamshire – especially through her influence as a Living Cities Earth Co-Founder.

Sue calls her work Living Cities: Notts – applying the Integral City framework of the four voices to call the whole Living Cities: Notts System to learn from itself.

Sue started her career as a Nurse and then amplified that profession with Ayurvedic practices (learning with Deepak Chopra). The words that set Sue alight as a new trainee nurse in the early 1970’s came from Florence Nightingale (1820-1910):

‘The role of the nurse is to put the patient in the best possible condition so that nature can act and healing occur.’

Sue explains:

When we care for the whole person – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual in relationship with others and the environment we create a compassionate relationship and promote comfort and care. Florence Nightingale believed that incorporating five essential elements, pure air, clean water, efficient drainage, cleanliness and light/direct sunlight, these elements accelerate the body’s innate healing abilities. Whilst we now have drugs, surgeries and incredible diagnostic technologies, we must remember our interconnectivity in the World and the fundamentals of actively caring for ourself, each other, our community and our home, Mother Earth not only when we become unwell but as an act of deep responsibility to maintain vitality and active health.

For over 10 years I travelled and explored many natural healing modalities from indigenous cultures around the world, their applications to modern day Self Care and the fusion with scientific research from Health Care. 

Click here to read the full profile of Meshworker of the Year 2024: Sue Cooper.

Celebrating Elisabet Sahtouris 1938-2024

It is with deep joy we celebrate the life of Evolution Biologist, Elisabet Sahtouris. It is with deep sadness to lose her to this world.

Elisabet lived life to the fullest and created her final book VISTA as a testament to a life well lived and worth living.

Elisabet and I met at a Society of the Future event where we discovered she looked at cells as cities and I looked at cities as cells. After that we were “fractally bonded.”  I am forever grateful that Elisabet took time and interest to author the Foreward to the second edition of Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive.

Elisabet wrote:

Foreword by Elisabet Sahtouris, PhD, for Integral Cities, new edition:

            Looking down on Earth’s surface from an airplane, whether by day or night, our cities look remarkably like cells—nucleated cells, with their obvious nuclear ‘downtown’ hubs, scattered smaller concentrations of buildings like cell organelles, flowing transport systems, extensions into the surround like the pseudopods of amoebae.

          This has struck me again and again in flying around Earth as an evolution biologist and futurist seeking answers to our big questions on whence we came and where we are headed, all the while teaching my evolving take on them. Eventually I realized that cities were indeed living entities in their own right, and now undergoing a rapid evolution comparable to the origins of the nucleated cells they so resemble.

 Thus begins A Tale of Cities and Cells, in which I trace the origins and destinies of cities as that part of Earth’s biological evolution in which our human species reflects the building of nucleated cells as cooperatives by our most remote microbial ancestors. Marilyn Hamilton’s conception of cities as intelligent human hives is completely consistent with this view and thus a delight to me in her marvelously worked out details of just how cities are living entities.

In the decade since the first edition of Integral Cities came on the scene, significant advances in my field of evolution biology further support this conception of cities as intelligent human hives that fail or thrive depending on how much they function like the healthy living organisms they can and should be, and are thus consistent with this book and its companion workbook’s analyses and practices for enhancing city health and wellbeing.

Click here to read the full Forword.

Click here to read In Memoriam Elisabet Sahtouris, Source of Synergy Foundation .

Click here to read/download Elisabet’s fascinating autobiography in her book VISTA.

In Memoriam Elza Maalouf 1965-2024

Also with deepest sadness we grieve the passing of Elza Maalouf – a pioneer of developmental evolutionary AQtivism – especially for the Middle East and for women.

Elza was much respected for her seminal book “Emerge” where she explored the history and opportunity of democracy – and its impact on individuals, families, organizations and nations. We learned from Elza never to assume that “one size fits all”. She taught and lived as an exemplar of meeting people where they are at. Elza had the prowess to do this remarkable work in the male dominated board rooms of the Arab World. And she could stand before a group of western women keen on ensuring the rights of women (as expected in America, Canada and Europe) were defended despite huge differences in the cultures and life conditions of women in the Middle East for whom Elza invited an overview that would allow differences to thrive and mature in their own time.

As an award-winning author, political theorist, and consultant Elza focused her work on business, cultural and political development of the Arab world. She was the cofounder of the Center of Human Emergence Mideast, a think tank that emphasizes the scientific understanding of cultures through stage development.  She was a member of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle, a community made up of the brightest global minds in the fields of science, spirituality, and consciousness studies.

Rest in Peace, Elza. You are deeply honoured and widely missed.

Click here to read In Memoriam Elza Maalouf, Source of Synergy Foundation 

Integral City Constellation Events with PowerHave a WATCH PARTY with “ A Radical Guide to Reality “.  Invite your friends, family and especially youth to enjoy cosmologist Jude Currivan’s time/space travel adventure . FREE 15 minute watch (in 17 languages) – journey into the Heart of Consciousness. Celebrate the Old Year. Open Inspiring  Doors to the New Year.Are you ready to become the leader your city needs? 13-14 January 2025 4 pm – 8 pm GMT Online
Integral City Meshworks as a Partner with Living Cities.Earth has co- designed a quick and easy webinar introduction to “Humaning Well Now” . Full Details and Register with Eventbrite – a $250 value by Donation!!Learn with 4 of Living Cities Earth Co-Founders:Marina Demchenko: The Multilevel Approach to Holistic Leadership DevelopmentEric Kohner: The 5 Knowledge Centers for HumanWellNowDarrell Gooden: Transcending VUCA: Value-Memes, Civic Societies, and Sustainable FuturesMarilyn Hamilton: HumanWellNOW IntegrationOnline Zoom Forum, EICSP, 15 January 2025 7pm-9pm GMT:

A Dialogical Inquiry: Spirituality and Our Quiet Resolve – Essencing and Presencing Our Professing.  Register Free/Donation with

Edinburgh International Centre for Sustainability and Peace

With Dr. Ian Wight hosting Dr. Marilyn Hamilton and 4 other Voices in Dialogue. We will be exploring being professional together, as authentic self-identifying professionals, with an emphasis on really deeply being, and on the related ‘togethering’ – the ‘we’ as much as the ‘I’.

Start 2025 with a visit to Findhorn Ecovillage We are open, alive, well and launching New Courses, Events and Newsletters for 2025. Discover: New  Webinars, In-Person Explorations, Old Friends, Fresh Creations. Register here for Ecovillage Findhorn Free newsletters, blogs and 2025 Calendar of Events. Put the Inner Development Goals together with enlightenment – click here to explore with LCE Co-Founder Simon Divecha of Benevolution.Join Evolutionary Leader Dr. Julie Krull on her 2025 Podcasts and new Mainstreet Mystic Series. Celebrating Our Cities as Places of Evolutionary Power in 2024

Whereas a caterpillar lives to eat, consuming as much as possible,

a butterfly lives to pollinate, sipping the sweetness of flowers and fertilizing new life.

~ Jude Currivan (MetaCrisis to Metamorphosis)

December 21 marks the start of what Integral City calls the Power Quarter (from December 21 to March 20). This has been a year of great shifts , extremes and metacrises – showing up in unexpected ways –  in war zones that are melding North Koreans into the Ukraine; ejecting the corrupt leader from Syria even as Russia is also seemingly ejected; reversing14 years of the UK’s Conservative assumptions with Labour’s long covetted access to leadership that requires completely different qualities than when Labour last led; an American election where ageism denied the Democratic incumbent and defied the Republican contender; where excessive wealth dismantled coherence and connections that used to align Beauty, Truth and Goodness. While all these apparently disheartening events have occurred we have also witnessed the emergence of Artificial Intelligence with capacities to do good in healthcare, education and collaboration; the inventiveness of the Earthshot winners across the globe in diverse categories; the persistence of Children’s Parliaments to create leaders of the future; and the rise of renewable energy proliferation. When we look back to 2023 , we resonate once again with our inspiration from the mycelial webs of stories that amplify Beauty, Truth and Goodness. We can take some assurance that the metacrises may be the natural, messy, all consuming chrysallis phase of human civilization as it metamorphoses into a species who can not only care for ourselves, but care for our Places, all Life and our Planet.

Meshful Blessings of this Sacred Season Celebrating Power in our Planet of Cities …Marilyn Hamilton 

Founder Integral City Meshworks

PS Here are some FREE resources for uplifting Integral City Power:

Videos

Co-Interview The Universal Heart Sue Cooper & Jude Currivan. Cosmologist Jude Currivan’s A Radical Guide to Reality (15 minutes, 17 languages)

Bees

Bumblee Population Increases in Scotland

Articles/Resources

Longer Lives Are A Gift Jude Currivan, Meta-Crisis to Metamorphosis, June 2024 Elisabet Sahtouris, Foreword, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive Elisabet Sahtouris, VISTA – autobiography of Sahtouris’ incredible life Julie Krull, Why Play is the Secret to Leading Radical Transformation Mark Satin, political short story, “My Revolution,” November 2024 issue of  New English Review,  https://www.newenglishreview.org/articles/my-revolution/ THE SONEC HANDBOOK (52 pages) THE SONEC HANDBOOK SHORT VERSION (18 pages)

11. Integral City Blogs

Dancing Soul Connections Arise With Spirituality in Integral City Integral City Ecosystem of the Year 2024: Neighbourocracy, Children Parliaments, SONEC Integral City Meshworker of Year 2024: Sue Cooper I AM CARE : AMERICA Local Place Plan Ecovillage Findhorn: Infographic Trailer for Community Conversation

12. Newsletters Past Issues 2023 and 2024

September 2024 Equinotes: Placecaring & Placemaking Capacities Reflective Organ Newsletter June Solstice 2024: Ecovillage, City, 4th Voice March 2024 Equinotes: Surviving Shadow, Trauma, Loss Reflective Organ Newsletter December Solstice 2023: Gaia Breathes, Learns, Fruits

13. Explore Integral City Archive of Newsletters and Blogs in our MetaBlogs:

Integral City Meta Blog 2024 Integral City Meta Blog 2023 Integral City Meta Blog 2022 Integral City Meta Blog 2021 Integral City Meta Blog 2020 Integral City Meta Blog 2019 Integral City Meta Blog 2018 Integral City Meta Blog 2017 Integral City Meta Blog 2016 Integral City Meta Blog 2015 Integral City Meta Blog 2014 Integral City Meta Blog 2013 .fusion-fullwidth.fusion-builder-row-3 { overflow:visible; }

Dancing Soul Connections Arise With Spirituality in Integral City

In October, 2024 I had the privilege to learn from Iain McGilchrist – the polymath author of  The Master and His Emissary and The Matter with Things.

Iain spoke at the Future of Humanity (a one-day discovery event, sponsored by the Science and Medical Network).

McGilchrist proposed that humans were definitely in a polycrisis (or metacrisis as Jude Currivan prefers). And our meta/polycrisis was caused by humanity losing touch with its soul. “How could we reconnect with our soul?” McGilchrist asked.

By reconnecting with Beauty, Truth and Goodness.

I have written in the editorial (December 2024) how this proposition inspired me to appreciate the essence of the service that Park Ecovillage Findhorn offers the world – Being Hospitable to the Soul.

But McGilchrist reminded me to return to my work that emerged through the Integral City Map 5 – the Map of Spirituality in the City.

All of a sudden I could see that map captured the co-creation of our incarnation as Beauty Truth and Goodness.

As Spirit we incarnate from Source/Love through the Involutionary path of our energetic existence.

As we incarnate we reveal the Beauty, Truth and Goodness through which we impact Grace, Place and Space.

As incarnate beings we develop our soul journey back through the Evolutionary Path to return to Source.

This In-Spiration and En-Soulment are complementary energies that flow through us and around us like a Torus.

(Read more about how the Big Three of Beauty, Truth and Goodness are related to the 4 quadrant framework that is represented in Integral City Map 1.)

In exploration with Nish Dubashia (ref) 2 years ago, we discovered how this Involutionary/Evolutionary Model is represented in essentially all belief systems in some way.

The “Generic Model” of Spiritual/Soul journeys is captured in Map 5.

However, when we add to the Map 5 the fragmentations that occur when we lose our coherence, then this model reveals the meta/polycrises. We can we see the impact of destroying our connections to Beauty Truth and Goodness.

The individual becomes disturbed when Beauty is Broken:

When Truth is Displaced:

And when Goodness is Disrespected:

When we look at all three conditions being broken we find severe disunity and breakdown like this – represented across all the fractals of Person (Self), People (Others), Place and Planet.

Instead of living with Gaia’s/Master Code of Care – we experience loneliness, disconnection, anxiety and unhappiness – the very opposites of what life lived with Care offers for Self, Others, Place and Planet.

When any one of these fundamental incarnate qualities of Care is broken, then we become misaligned with and disempowered from our individual human souls. And when this happens in the collective then we create the conditions we call meta/polycrisis.

On the other hand if our individual practices can keep our Inspirited selves (on the Involutionary path) aligned with our Evolutionary selves (on the Evolutionary Path) then we live coherently with Beauty, Truth and Goodness.

After considering the power of these insights, all of sudden I had a beautiful picture of the filaments of energy emerging from our Evolving selves – grounded in our Beauty, Truth and Goodness incarnations – combining in a rising stream of energy filaments when we are in the collectives of our family, groups, workplaces, communities and cities (see Integral City Map 2).

When our Evolutionary/Involutionary energy torus is thus revealed – we can easily see that we are indeed creating Indra’s web – but in a multi-dimensional way that if we could see it would reveal a whole Field of Ensoulment Energy filaments.

I am not sure that I can ever again enter a room of people without sensing into the Field of our Souls dancing together – Connecting their/our energies – influencing Grace, Place and Space.

Moreover, for a place like Park Ecovillage Findhorn I am sure we are creating conditions that are Hospitable to the Soul.

(I am so grateful to the Local Place Plan Team, Iain McGilchrist, Alastair McIntosh, Nish Dubashia for inspiring this mycelial web of Souls.)

Integral City Map 5 – Century of Awakening: City/Regions Redeem Anthropocene

Meta Blog 2023

Here is the Integral City 2023 Meta Blog. It connects the 4 Voices of the Integral City to the Planet, People, Place and Power that energized us in 2023.

It follows the traditions of:

Integral City Meta Blog 2022Integral City Meta Blog 2021Integral City Meta Blog 2020Integral City Meta Blog 2019 Integral City Meta Blog 2018 Integral City Meta Blog 2017 Integral City Meta Blog 2016 Integral City Meta Blog 2015 Integral City Meta Blog 2014 Integral City Meta Blog 2013 1. Equinotes/Solstice Reflective Organ Newsletters – Integral City 2023 Reflective Organ Newsletter December Solstice 2023: Gaia Breathes, Learns, Fruits

September 2023 Equinotes: Amplified Intelligences, Wisdom, Principles

Reflective Organ Newsletter June Solstice 2023: We-Space, Ecologies, Holobionts

March 2023 Equi-Notes: Roots of City Peace in Joy, Happiness and Care

Reflective Organ Newsletter December Solstice 2022: Recalibrating (Re)connecting Transitioning

2. City Network of the Year 2023: GEN Global Ecovillage Network

Read about the City Network of the Year award here.

3. Meshworker of the Year 2023: Gail Taylor, Sacred Scaffolding Artist

Read the full story of Meshworker of the Year 2023 here.

 

 4. Integral City Blogs 2023Contemplation / Spiritual IntelligenceBeing in the World in 2023Archipelagos of CalmIntegral City Islands of Calm 2023 Subtle Activism for Ukrainian CitiesBeyond Cracks, Breaks, Collapses: The Light of Divine FireConnecting to CommunityConnecting Integrally to Community in the 21C: Spiritually, Socially, PoliticallyConnecting in Community in 21stC: InterestsConnecting in Community in 21stC: LivingConnecting in Community in 21stC: CultureConnecting in Community in 21stC: PractiseConnecting in Community in 21stC: NatureConnecting in Community in 21stC: Gaia’s Reflective OrgansIntegral Europe Conference 2023I Am Addicted to IECIEC 2023 Presences on Change CurveIEC KeynotesIEC23 Ken Wilber Keynote – Planetary AwakeningIEC23 Robert Kegan Keynote – Shadow & Light in Adult DevelopmentIEC23 Vivian Dittmar Keynote – Awakening to Unity in Fragmented WorldIEC23 Mariana Bozesan Keynote – The Future, AI & ConsciousnessIEC23 Bence Ganti Keynote – How do We Support the Health of the Global Integral Movement?IEC23 Nomali Perera Keynote – Integral Let’s not Vanish into Thin Air!IEC Gabor Mate Keynote – It’s All One: Awakening to Reality Within and WithoutIEC Gail Hochachka Keynote – Finding One’s Own Soul-Centric Climate ChangeIEC23 Terri O’Fallon Keynote – The Evolution of Planetary AwakeningSolstice World Unity Invitation to Integral City Global Family GatheringLiving Cities Earth: Global Happy Cities SummitLiving Cities Earth: Global Happy Cities Marathon

 

 Infographic Cool Blocks & Carbon Neutral Ecovillage FindhornCollaboration, FemmeQ, Where are the Women? Collaborating In the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as an Evolutionary Act, 1Collaborating With the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as an Evolutionary Act, 2Collaborating As the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as an Evolutionary Act, 3Where are the Women? Saging the Invisible into the Visible – Radical Collaboration Thoughts, 4Apple Tree Valentine: Inter-Being Dream Comes TrueMeshworker of Year 2023: Gail Taylor, Sacred Scaffolding ArtistIntegral City Network of Year 2023: Global Ecovillage NetworkGaia Learns – Start With a BreathGaia Learns – Mycelial Morphic Fields.fusion-fullwidth.fusion-builder-row-2 { overflow:visible; }