Marilyn Hamilton's Blog, page 42
March 3, 2018
Right Move vs Next Move Overview
I am at the stage of my move from Canada to Scotland, where small doubts, hidden concerns and niggling worries creep into my daily thoughts.
I wonder (privately to myself), “Did I make the right move?”
Of course, it is too early to tell. I just have to trust the process of following the calling, seeing how many details have easily fallen into place and take those indicators as a trajectory of signs that I am on the right track.
When I am tempted to move on or move over from the destination I have set to re-settle in Findhorn Eco-Village, I am reminded that the most enlightened view may come from the Overview.
I must move my consciousness to a planetary perspective – to remember that Findhorn’s motto of “Love in Action” is also partnered with two other principles: “Co-creation with Nature” and “Deep Inner Listening”.
Those principles have no doubt inspired my own deep inner listening to the calling to live in Findhorn. And those principles have attracted Integral City to relocate here so that it has a receptive environment to reframe cities as natural human hives, full of intelligence, evolving as Gaia’s Reflective Organs.
It is this combination of Findhorn’s and Integral City’s planet-centric purposes that remind me that this Move is contained in an Overview of a whole series of moves, in service to a planet of cities who are evolving to serve as Gaia’s Reflective Organ System.
So, this move is just the first move. That puts it into perspective. Then there will be a next move. And a next move. Together, they will all be the right moves of a whole series of moves. That is the Overview that I must remind myself as we move forward.
This blog series on moving includes:
Moving Recalibrates Place Making & Place Caring
Blessed Move-ablity
For those of us who pride ourselves on being effective change agents, movability is assumed to be easily attainable.
But the ability to move can demand more that we may contemplate until we are in the midst of the move itself. Then I might hear myself saying, “I never realized moving would involve THIS!!”
A good case in point is my recent move from Abbotsford Canada to Findhorn Scotland.
I moved FROM a small wealthy city in a rich agriculture zone on the 49th parallel, in a temperate climate in Canada.
I moved TO a small sustainable eco-village in the dunes of the northern sea on the 59th parallel, in a northern climate in Scotland.
How do I negotiate the move FROM comfort and ease TO sustainability challenges on a remote Scottish peninsula?
The first and core ability that enabled the move came from my commitment to purpose: “As a whole hearted and holy hearted fully conscious human being”, I was prepared to be obedient to spiritual guidance that called for the move. So, the ability to say Yes, came from an inner conviction. I had the added incentive derived from my radical optimism to expect that I could “joyfully and creatively wake up the human hive as Gaia’s Reflective Organ” more effectively when located in Findhorn than in Abbotsford.
The second ability that enabled such a radical move arose from my newly independent life as a single woman (widow) with relatively good health (albeit commencing my 7th decade). With no direct dependents, I am free to make decisions that entail some risk that others might not be able to tolerate.
The third enabler arose from the cultural and historical relationship between Canada and Scotland. In fact, closer to home, I had in my own family provenance, two grand parents born in the UK (including one in Scotland). Thus, I had ancestor roots that entitled me to make the move if I were willing to pay into the visa and health service agreements to enable a social services bridge between the two countries.
The fourth factor that enabled move-ability was the two countries that I wished to bridge, were both democracies that permitted me the freedom to move. They had the systems in place that allowed for transport, housing marketability (to sell existing accommodations in Canada and locate new ones in Scotland) and financial portability (for currency conversions and wealth management).
If I consider only these four factors, I can see that the ability to move could have been seriously undermined if any one of them were not in place. Given that all four factors are actively supporting me, I can appreciate that move-ability has been marked by ease that would not be available to others without such strong co-existing enablers in place.
I stand both seriously amazed and deeply grateful that my ability to make this major move has been marked by blessings arising from the four realities of awareness, behaviours, cultures and systems.
This blog series on moving includes:
Moving Recalibrates Place Making & Place Caring
Moving Recalibrates Place Making & Place Caring
Place Making
As I set up a new home here in Findhorn Scotland, I notice the actions it takes to make a place comfortable, workable, effective, functional. It tends to focus on the physical container, the artefacts that equip and furnish it, the operational systems we so often take for granted (heat, light, power, water, waste management). These days it also includes the elements of communication – with computer and phone linkages, postal services and currency transfers.
As I enter the Place Making functions of the Findhorn Eco-Village I notice that I must make many adjustments in space and time that I hadn’t contemplated. In my new home, the space is not only shared with housemates (whereas in Canada I lived on my own), but the eco-house is part of a co-housing cluster within the eco-village – so we negotiate with our neighbours the use of laundry facilities, common rooms/library/kitchen, gardens, composting and recycling disciplines. I am much more aware of the responsibility and impact of my daily choices and behaviors on my neighbours.
Place Caring
This heightened awareness of collective action, opens me up to aspects of Place Caring. I recognize that my worldviews (newly arrived from across the world) may inspire different perspectives and values than people I interact with throughout the day. I must honour, for instance, how people say Grace before each meal; or how they take responsibility for collective caring of houseplants, celebrate each others’ birthdays or hold the tensions of stress they experience from family and jobs.
I sense daily that the circles of care can span from individual considerations, to household decisions, to co-housing interpersonal relationships, to eco-village governance guidelines, to planetary awareness.
Recalibration
Thus, moving necessitates the recalibration of both Place Making and Place Caring in our lives. It reminds us that the quality of life in our places really only comes fully alive when we correlate both Caring and Making – in other words embrace the Consciousness and Culture of Place Caring with the Behaviors and Systems of Place Making. This meshes together the strength of all 4 Quadrants and all 4 Voices of the eco-village (and reminds me that the scale of the eco-village makes this even more powerful than the larger scale of the city).
This blog series on moving includes:
Moving Recalibrates Place Making & Place Caring
February 22, 2018
Moving as Action Learning
Much of my academic interests and Integral City work has involved the principles of Action Learning (Action Inquiry, Action Research).
So, with this life-move from Canada to Scotland, I am naturally curious how those principles apply to my situation.
As I have written previously, Be Still, Be Moved, Repeat is a life-practice model that has simplicity embedded in its complexity.
Maybe it is also possible to take this “short cycle” and think of it in terms of Action Learning?
On the entry of part 1 (What?), the Be Still could include observing and planning. The 2nd part (So What?) of Be Moved could include Acting and Applying.
Then a repeat of Be Still (Now What?) could include Reflection and Debriefing.
And the repeat of Be Moved could be to move to the next cycle of the Action Learning model seeking greater depths of What/So What/Now What.
That would look like this for me:
What happened? Consider the sacred experience of scattering ashes and hearing the “what if you lived here?” message; check out the options.
So What? Act on the options. Dispose of Possessions. Find a place to stay to check out new territory. Buy a plane ticket. Fly there.
Now What? Settle in. Test assumptions. Make new relationships. Seek opportunities to manifest Soul work. Reflect. Debrief.
Repeat.
Yes, moving is an Action Learning experience, if I remain awake to the stages of What/So What/Now What. And remember that they are intimately tied to the sacred practice of Be Still. Be Moved. Repeat.
In fact, it is the message I sang at Taizé singing this morning, shared by Findhorn Co-Founder Eileen Caddy: Be Still, And Know, that I AM God.
This blog series on moving includes:
Moving: A VUCA Adventure
To move is to act. In response to a stimulus. Or in response to an intention.
My moving here to Findhorn, Scotland has been for many of my friends and acquaintances a conundrum. They could not easily understand why I would move away from the comforts of home and all things familiar.
But for the adventurous spirit in me, perhaps that predictability of my life was the very stimulus to move? I couldn’t feel aligned with the energies of stability, certainty and the known. I have always been attracted to change, surprise and stepping outside the boundaries of the familiar world.
My inspiration for this move certainly came from honouring the adventure in another’s spirit – namely, my husband’s desire to “play” the 18th hole of Royal Dornoch Golf Course one more time. Without listening to that sacred request that moved me across the world, I would not have been present to the 2nd whisper that asked, “what if you lived here?” Was the implication of that question to be near the place of Peter’s deepest desires, or to be close by in Findhorn, where my own soul work (of waking up the human hive as Gaia’s Reflective Organ) awaits its next phase? Or maybe it was both?
At the moment, I don’t yet know. But the move has given me a new appreciation that adventure for me can lie in the conditions that many others in the world shun or attempt to quell – namely, the impact of VUCA that engulfs us everywhere – Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity.
When you consider the influence of VUCA on an adventurous spirit like mine, then you can see it as a positive impact for moving. One to be enjoyed and not dreaded.
This blog series on moving includes:
February 21, 2018
Moving: an AQAL Affair
Moving – Stilling – Repeating – that is the simple recipe for motility of the most basic cellular forms that started life on earth.
Much of my earlier life was impacted by moving schools, cities, neighbourhoods, companies, sectors and communities. Only in the last 3 decades have I enjoyed the stability of living in the same geography. That form of “stilling” has allowed me to accrue knowledge, perspectives and practices that have evolved into Integral City worldviews. Staying “still” in one place has enabled the focus and accumulation of resources – not “wasted” on the efforts required by moving.
But now I have made a radical move of country, city, community and lifestyle. Pulling up my roots as an individual in Canada to return to the roots of my ancestors in Scotland gives me a whole new perspective on life. Ironically, I could not have attained this opportunity either by remaining in the petrie dish of my ancestors’ comfort zones – nor by remaining in the familiar life conditions of my adult life.
It is as if I have reached a stage of life where moving was not an option if I wanted to progress my development in any (and every) realm; be that be biological, psychological, cultural or structural. This radical move has uprooted all my assumptions and demands new attention and intention on every level.
Moving, by definition, shifts the being from a static environment to one of change. Moving has impelled the direction of evolution that has not only emerged life from single celled life systems to our most complex life systems of human beings but has been the impetus for the trajectory of learning that has accompanied that evolution.
Across the billions of years this evolution has occurred, moving has been the behavior that has expanded the reach of living systems horizontally from home base to ever larger expanses of territory. And as this expanse of territory has increased, life conditions have complexified so we have moved in vertical directions in order learn our way into new relationships and spheres of influence. Moving has moved us from the family hearth to tribal clans to dominator hierarchies to ordered realms to strategic organizations to social networks to ecological systems to a veritable global embrace.
Moving is my inevitable destiny as individual and part of the collectives where I find myself. Now, in Findhorn Scotland I am noticing this individual is being stretched through challenged assumptions about physical comforts (how do I dress myself to stay warm in a northern seashore climate?); psychological differences (how do I differentiate my elder views from my millennial housemate’s? ); cultural surprises (how can I accommodate my omnivorous cooking styles to those of vegan housemates?); infrastructural shifts (how do I learn the public transit system now that I no longer own a car?); and environmental disconnects (who knew that spring flowers would already be blooming in mid February on the 59th parallel?).
Moving is always an AQAL affair – involving all quadrants, all levels, all types, all lines. When you make a radical move like I have just done from Canada to Scotland, you cannot take these conditions for granted. You are reminded that moving lies at the core of change and one must be mindful to be awake to its integral impacts. Moving effectively calls forth care for person, people, place and planet. (Funny that sounds just like the Master Code!! – because of course it is.)
The series includes:
Moving: an AQAL Affair
February 19, 2018
Be Moved
Be moved.
Be still.
Repeat.
Last year (2017) I was moved to write a series of blogs on the journey of grief I was experiencing on the death of my husband, Peter.
I was moved, by his last wishes, to return to Scotland (north of Inverness) to Royal Dornoch Golf Course and scatter his ashes on the 18th hole. It was a ritual full of signs and wonders – from a Canada Geese flyover to a buddha on the beach. It was a time when I was deeply moved and deeply stilled.
I never expected that the last injunction “Repeat” would so change my life. But before I left Scotland in March 2017, I was standing in Findhorn Ecopark (south of Inverness), at the window of the bungalow named “Genesis” and heard a still small voice ask, “What if you lived here?” I was both startled by the question – and moved to find stillness to listen to its intention. Over the last year, through cycles of stillness and movement, the question repeated itself to me with quiet persistence.
A year later (February 2018) I find myself moved once more – not just to listen – but moved (body, mind, heart and soul) into a different landscape.
For I have moved myself, my household (such as it now is) and Integral City endeavours from the west coast of Canada to Findhorn, Scotland – the UK’s oldest ecovillage – back to the location where the question posed itself “What if you lived here?”
This is a place where it is possible to be both moved and be still as a way of life. This morning I enacted those injunctions in 2 simple practices that are start the Findhorn daily community cycle: Taize’ singing and Sanctuary meditation. I look forward to repeating these practices on a daily basis as a natural part of the routine of living here.
It is a simple beginning to a phase change that embraces me as an individual, my new community, my calling to serve Integral City and the wellbeing of Gaia.
Be moved.
Be still.
Repeat.
This simple practice reminds me how to enact the Master Code of Care at the start of each day: to care for self (with intention to listen deeply), to care for others (by singing gratitudes and praise in many languages), to care for place (by walking on the land in the early morning) and planet (by opening to the embrace of Divine presence).
This blog series explores the hidden dimensions of moving.
The series includes:
Be Moved
January 5, 2018
Integral City Meta Blog 2017
Here is the Integral City 2016 Meta Blog. It connects the 4 Voices of the Integral City to the Planet, People, Place and Power that energized us in 2017.
It follows the traditions of:
Integral City Meta Blog 2016
Integral City Meta Blog 2015
Integral City Meta Blog 2014
Integral City Meta Blog 2013
1. Equinox/Solstice Newsletters – Integral City Reflective Organ
Integral City Reflective Organ – April 2017: Prototypes for a Planet of Integral Cities
Integral City Reflective Organ – June Solstice 2017: Optimizing Collective Intelligence, Inquiry & Impact
Integral City Reflective Organ – September Equinox 2017: Architecting Around Crisis & Sustainability to Aliveness in the Human Hive
Integral City Reflective Organ – Winter 2017: Power to Move
2. Cities of the Year 2017: 3 Russian City Associations
Read the Cities of the Year 2017 blog here.
3. Meshworkers of the Year 2017:Hub CoEvolucio, Reus, Catalonia, Spain
Read the full story of Meshworkers of the Year 2017 here.
4. Integral City Series Book 2 Released: Integral City Inquiry & Action: Designing Impact for the Human Hive
Urban planners get new tool for building sustainable, smart cities
Integral City, Climate Change Inquiry, Action & Impact
5. Tamarack’s Collective Impact 3.0 Conference: Integral City Placecaring & Placemaking Tools for the Human Hive
Imagine Durant Impact Models Placecaring & Placemaking in the Human Hive
Integral City Tools Connect Outer Space to Inner Space
What is Your Role in the Human Hive?
Collective Change: Roles of AQtivator & Integrator
Integral City Designs for Collective Impact
Stories Bring Collective Impact Alive: Create an Outcome Feedback Loop
Collective Impact is Inspired by Early Win like Nowa Oka Trail
Collective Impact Calls Forth Long Term Horizons
Collective Impact Aligns Strategic Planning with Placecaring & Placemaking KSF’s
6. Integral City Community of Practice
Individual and Collective Leaderships for a World in Transition
Co-Creating the Cities of the Future, Now – Reus, Catalonia, Nov 17-18 2017
Living Cities Russia – Interview with Co-Founder Lev Gordon
7. Sustainable Development
Placecaring and Placemaking for Sustainable Development Goals
Beyond Sustainable Development to Living Fully Alive
Integral City’s 5 Maps & Links to Pattern Dynamics
Map 1: The Four Quadrant Eight Level Map of Reality – this relates to PD Polarity Patterns
Map 2: The Nested Holarchy of City Systems – this relates to PD Creativity Patterns
Map 3: The Scalar Fractal Relationship of Micro-Meso-Macro Human Systems – this relates to PD Exchange Patterns
Map 4: The Complex Adaptive Structures of Change – this relates to PD Structure Patterns
Map 5: Spirituality in the Human Hive – this relates to PD Source Patterns
8. Principles of Living Systems
In this blog series examining Sahtouris’ Principles of Livings Systems, we:
outline the Principles of Living Systems
propose a sequence of activities that cities can undertake to create Innovation Ecosystems
consider the Integral City Intelligences that emerge from the Principles
recognize the roots of the Principles in the Master Code of Caring
align the Principles, Intelligences, Master Code and Activities for Innovation Ecosystems
9. Science of Cities
Confessions of a Science of Cities Junky
Comparing Integral City & Scale – Fractal Patterns
Holarchies and Scales in a Science of Cities
Why the Science of Cities Must Include Subjective and Intersubjective Data Along With Objective and Interobjective Data
From Holons to Social Holons in a Science of Integral Cities
10. Book Reviews
Ed. Gunnlaugson & Brabant: Cohering the Integral City We-Space: A Resource for Catalyzing Gaia’s Reflective Organ
Integral City Chapter: Cohering the Integral We-Space,
Richard Florida: New Urban Crisis – Plurality Analysis Needs Wholistic Integral City Frame
11. Guest Blogs
Guest Bloggers from the Integral City Community of Practice explore how each is living the practices of Placecaring & Placemaking. The series includes:
Marilyn Hamilton Integral City Community Practise Placecaring and Placemaking
Ellen Van Donger: Finding Bearings about Place
Cherie Beck: Relationship to Place
Alia Aurami: Finding the Right Place
Joan Arnott: How is Your City Your Habitat?
Diana Claire Douglas: Searching for our Right Place
Anne-Marie Voorhoeve: Post Script: Sorting into Birth Order as Right Place
Beth Sanders: From Home Base to New Place and Back Again
Diana Claire Douglas: Engaging Change through Whole-self and Whole-systems Exploration
Gail Hochachka: Making Sense of Trump’s Exit from the Paris Accord
Graeme Taylor: A Realistic (Holistic) Approach to Climate Mitigation
Elisabet Sahtouris: A Tale of Cities & Cells: Our Human Evolutionary Agenda
12. Miscellaneous
Integral City: Pictograph
Short Story: Hop on Board, Find Seat 14C: FULLY ALIVE
The Personal and Universal Experience of Grief – a Series of Blogs:
Circles of Compassion Seize the Day, Size the World
Blessings of Grief: Darkness & Dissonance
Surviving Identity Crisis with Buoyancy of Care
Adapt: Re-calibrate. Re-story. Re-work. Re-act. Swarm
Rediscovering Aliveness from Grieving: The Third Win
Integral City Reflective Organ – Winter 2017- 2018: Power to Move
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.
The human hive has millions of stories of spiritual service – in many cities representing all the world’s religions. Once these diverse religious practices were described as spiritual paths, but with today’s richness of cultural plurality, we recognize a spiritual ecology (Patten, 2010). The city container is a wonderful convergence vessel where spiritual practices differ, conflict, align and/or grow from one another. The Integral City is becoming a vessel where new kinds of spiritual acceptance bridge, integrate and evolve spiritual practise into something that is becoming Integral or even universal. Patten (2010, p.4) says that, “The new integral evolutionary spirituality both accommodates and resolves the apparent contradictions among the diverse forms of wisdom it integrates. It embraces the paradoxes of theistic and non-theistic spirituality, of 1st-person, 2nd-person, and 3rd-person mysticism.”
Hamilton, M. (2018, in press) Integral City 3.7: Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives, Phoenix, AZ: Integral Publishers, p.59
Integral City 4.0 Invites You to Findhorn, ScotlandIn the last few months we have stepped up the offer that Integral City is making to Gaia’s wellbeing through sharing the practices and processes of Placecaring and Placemaking. These activities not only mark the release of Book 2 in the Integral City series – on Inquiry, Action & Designing Impact for the Human Hive – but also mark a new stage for Integral City’s global activities.
You are invited to amplify your contributions to Gaia’s wellbeing with Integral City’s growing constellation by joining us at Findhorn Scotland, (arriving 4pm) April 10- 14 (departing morning), 2018. Together, as 4 Voices of the City (Business, Citizens, City Managers, Civil Society) we will explore: Integral City 4.0: Co-creating the Future of Cities Now.
This workshop will give us the opportunity to go more deeply into the Integral City frameworks, tools, practices and processes that we have shared with these partner organizations in 2017:
· We have presented twice through the impressive faculties of Tamarack Institute Canada on Collective Impact and the Cities of the Future.
· We have spent a week with the team of Hub Co-Evolucio in Reus and Tarragona, Catalonia, Co-Creating Cities of the Future Now and had the chance to meet city experts from Finland, UK, Catalonia, Italy +++
· As I drafted this invitation, I was in Russia for more than a week working with Living Cities Russia witnessing and catalyzing hundreds of cities awakening across this immense nation (marking a new stage of human Evolution 100 years after an earth-changing revolution). In addition, we were invited to speak twice at Skolkovo to more than 50 city teams and 300 Mayors through the Foundation of Monocities (as well as visiting with practitioners of Integral City principles in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Nizhny Novgorod).
It has been exciting and inspiring spending time with Integral City practitioners and others who sense the power of cities to accelerate our collective intelligence not only with individuals and organizations but on behalf of eco-regions, nations and all of Gaia.
So, we hope you will join the Integral City community of practice and others of like mind/heart/body/spirit in Findhorn. You will get the chance to test-drive a new paradigm for the city that the Russians so keenly recognize can make cities fully Alive. You will receive resources to substantiate the theory and science behind Integral City – plus Action Research designs for practices and processes – and Navigation Tools for aligning resources, designing dashboards and tracking impact. These will enable you to integrate Integral City resources into your own work and apply them with local intelligence in your own human hives.
This opportunity will mark a new location for Integral City in Findhorn, Scotland – the UK’s oldest eco-village, founded on the principles of Love in Action. It is a special place for discovering the sacred relationship that lies at the heart of the Integral City Master Code: caring for self, others, place and planet. Findhorn hasn’t just talked about this learning journey, but has made a path for all of us, by actually walking it for 55 years. Findhorn holds the impulse of the New Story for the Earth. Come join us to write the New Story for the City – our Human Hives in service to all life on Gaia.
You can get all the information on the workshop from the Findhorn website and apply here: Integral City 4.0. We hope you will register early as this event is by invitation from me and is designed for an intimate circle of 30 international participants.
Meshful blessings for 2018!
Marilyn Hamilton
Meshworkers of the Year Award 2017– Hub CoEvolució Reus, Catalonia, SpainHub CoEvolució engaged with the 4+1 Voices of the cities of Reus and Tarragona in Catalonia Spain to co-create an International Congress on Integral Cities.
The purpose of the congress was to develop a new way of understanding cities and their potential for transformation, expanding the capacity for individual and collective action. They clearly made visible the evolutionary potential of cities to co-evolve in Catalonia. The success of the congress marked a pinnacle of 4 years of intensive work by the Hub CoEvolució team. Now they see a new horizon for their purpose to co-create wise futures and the guiding strategies for designing projects in service to growing people and the economy wisely.
Integral City is proud to award Hub CoEvolució the Meshworkers of the Year Award, 2017. Click for full story here.
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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:
Integral Cities of the Year 2017: 3 Russian City AssociationsMonocities. Living Cities. Integrated City: These 3 City Associations of Russia offer an inspiring view of Russia striving to thrive. The experience of meeting directly the 319 Mayors of Monocities; the hundreds of members of Living Cities; and the well represented 4 Voices who created the Integrated City Plan for Nizhny Novgorod – all introduced us to a host of people who genuinely care for their cities and the relationships that can bring them fully to life. We are delighted to announce the trio of Russian City Associations as Integral Cities of the Year 2017. Click for the full story here.
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“Integral” is not an ideal for a city, but rather a framework for understanding the city as a human system in service to the wellbeing of the planet – for the purposes of evolving the city as the most complex human system yet created on our planet.
Gaia Orion Creates Connection Between Brush for Change and Spirit of Integral CityIntegral artist, Gaia Orion is exhibiting now in France. In October 2017 she completed an exhibit of her art at the Brush for Change show at the Integral Center in Boulder Colorado. Gaia revealed how her art depicts many aspects of an integral worldview. You can listen personally to her explain her approach on this video (and thanks for the shout out to Integral City who was proud to sponsor her catalog).
Announcing Integral City Series Book 3 In Press:
Integral City 3.7: Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives
We are celebrating the New Year with the delivery to the publishers of the manuscript for Book 3 in the Integral City series. Here is an excerpt from the Introduction that explains how it relates to Books 1 and 2. Watch for publication release dates later in 2018.
What? So What? Now What? this is the Now What book.
In the first book I proposed What is an Integral City? Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive examined the evidence for a new paradigm of the city that is a living human system, complex in its dynamics and evolutionary in its nature. I considered in each chapter an intelligence that applied to the city, presaging James Lovelock’s conjecture that humans are the reflective organ of the living Earth or Gaia. In Book One I intended to offer a developmental point of view, integrating perspectives that recognize the fractal patterns in human systems that repeat and resonate from the smallest individual scale, up through increasing levels of complexity – families, teams, organizations, sectors, communities and cities.
In the second book I explored So what are the ways we can know, act, relate and create in an Integral City? Integral City Inquiry and Action: Designing Impact for the Human Hive described the processes that Integral City practitioners have developed to apply the intelligences to developing the quality of life in the city. From a developmental point of view, in Book Two I differentiated two aspects of the whole that makes up the city; namely, the Placecaring left hand quadrants of the Integral model (consciousness and culture) and the Placemaking right hand quadrants (behaviors and systems/infrastructure). In each chapter I described the processes that the Integral City Team has discovered for engaging people through integrally designed inquiry and action to achieve impact that resonated for self, others, place and planet. At the time of writing Book Two I was really struck with the Pope’s encyclical “Laudato Si” (Francis, 2015) especially the chapter on Integral Ecology as it explored how to embrace human systems in a way that values all the developmental expressions of person, place and planet that coexist in the living city.
In this third book I turn to the question Now what do we do as a result of our evidence, inquiry, action and impact? Integral City 3.7 expands my perspective of change in the human system from the individual city to a planet of cities. As I trace out the implications of an Integral City operating system at a higher, more complex level, I attempt to integrate them from a developmental point of view that even moves beyond the planetary view to the Kosmic view.
Celebrating Power in our Planet-of-Cities in the Coming Quarter of 2018
December 21 marked the start of what Integral City calls the Power Quarter (from December 21 to March 20). What essence or Power do you call forth in your City in this season? What energy field, spirit, connecting rituals, renewing practices, lighten and enlighten you? We share deep We-Spaces and gain inspiration from the creativity of the human spirit to Brush for Change across our planet of cities.
Visit us on the our Integral City Website and Blog or post a comment about your city interests on our Facebook page.
Meshful Blessings for our Planet of Cities from
Marilyn Hamilton and the Integral City Constellation Corps Team
PS Here are some FREE resources for empowering our Planet and the Human Hive:
Integral City MetaBlog 2017 – A synthesis and index of all Integral City Blogs from 2017 (and links to 2016-15-14-13).
Integral City of the Year 2017 – 3 Russian City Associations.
Meshworker of the Year Award 2017 – Hub CoEvolució in Reus, Catalonia, Spain.
Integral City Reflective Organ – Winter 2017: Power to Move
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.
The human hive has millions of stories of spiritual service – in many cities representing all the world’s religions. Once these diverse religious practices were described as spiritual paths, but with today’s richness of cultural plurality, we recognize a spiritual ecology (Patten, 2010). The city container is a wonderful convergence vessel where spiritual practices differ, conflict, align and/or grow from one another. The Integral City is becoming a vessel where new kinds of spiritual acceptance bridge, integrate and evolve spiritual practise into something that is becoming Integral or even universal. Patten (2010, p.4) says that, “The new integral evolutionary spirituality both accommodates and resolves the apparent contradictions among the diverse forms of wisdom it integrates. It embraces the paradoxes of theistic and non-theistic spirituality, of 1st-person, 2nd-person, and 3rd-person mysticism.”
Hamilton, M. (2018, in press) Integral City 3.7: Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives, Phoenix, AZ: Integral Publishers, p.59
Integral City 4.0 Invites You to Findhorn, ScotlandIn the last few months we have stepped up the offer that Integral City is making to Gaia’s wellbeing through sharing the practices and processes of Placecaring and Placemaking. These activities not only mark the release of Book 2 in the Integral City series – on Inquiry, Action & Designing Impact for the Human Hive – but also mark a new stage for Integral City’s global activities.
You are invited to amplify your contributions to Gaia’s wellbeing with Integral City’s growing constellation by joining us at Findhorn Scotland, (arriving 4pm) April 10- 14 (departing morning), 2018. Together, as 4 Voices of the City (Business, Citizens, City Managers, Civil Society) we will explore: Integral City 4.0: Co-creating the Future of Cities Now.
This workshop will give us the opportunity to go more deeply into the Integral City frameworks, tools, practices and processes that we have shared with these partner organizations in 2017:
· We have presented twice through the impressive faculties of Tamarack Institute Canada on Collective Impact and the Cities of the Future.
· We have spent a week with the team of Hub Co-Evolucio in Reus and Tarragona, Catalonia, Co-Creating Cities of the Future Now and had the chance to meet city experts from Finland, UK, Catalonia, Italy +++
· As I drafted this letter, I was in Russia for more than a week working with Living Cities Russia witnessing and catalyzing hundreds of cities awakening across this immense nation (marking a new stage of human Evolution 100 years after an earth-changing revolution). In addition, we were invited to speak twice at Skolkovo to more than 50 city teams and 300 Mayors through the Foundation of Monocities (as well as visiting with practitioners of Integral City principles in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Nizhny Novgorod).
It has been exciting and inspiring spending time with Integral City practitioners and others who sense the power of cities to accelerate our collective intelligence not only with individuals and organizations but on behalf of eco-regions, nations and all of Gaia.
So, we hope you will join the Integral City community of practice and others of like mind/heart/body/spirit in Findhorn. You will get the chance to test-drive a new paradigm for the city that the Russians so keenly recognize can make cities fully Alive. You will receive resources for you to substantiate the theory and science behind Integral City plus Action Research designs for practices and processes and Navigation Tools for aligning resources, designing dashboards and tracking impact. These will enable you to integrate Integral City resources into your own work and apply them with local intelligence in your own human hives.
This opportunity will mark a new location for Integral City in Findhorn, Scotland – the UK’s oldest eco-village, founded on the principles of Love in Action. It is a special place for discovering the sacred relationship that lies at the heart of the Integral City Master Code: caring for self, others, place and planet. Findhorn hasn’t just talked about this learning journey, but has made a path for all of us, by actually walking it for 55 years. Findhorn holds the impulse of the New Story for the Earth. Come join us to write the New Story for the City – our Human Hives in service to all life on Gaia.
You can get all the information on the workshop from the Findhorn website and apply here: Integral City 4.0. We hope you will register early as this event is by invitation from me and is designed for an intimate circle of 30 international participants.
Meshful blessings for 2018!
Marilyn Hamilton
Meshworkers of the Year Award 2017– Hub CoEvolució Reus, Catalonia, SpainHub CoEvolució engaged with the 4+1 Voices of the cities of Reus and Tarragona in Catalonia Spain to co-create an International Congress on Integral Cities.
The purpose of the congress was to develop a new way of understanding cities and their potential for transformation, expanding the capacity for individual and collective action. They clearly made visible the evolutionary potential of cities to co-evolve in Catalonia. The success of the congress marked a pinnacle of 4 years of intensive work by the Hub CoEvolució team. Now they see a new horizon for their purpose to co-create wise futures and the guiding strategies for designing projects in service to growing people and the economy wisely.
Integral City is proud to award Hub CoEvolució the Meshworkers of the Year Award, 2017. Click for full story here.
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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:
Integral Cities of the Year 2017: 3 Russian City AssociationsMonocities. Living Cities. Integrated City: These 3 City Associations of Russia offer an inspiring view of Russia striving to thrive. The experience of meeting directly the 319 Mayors on Monocities; the hundreds of members of Living Cities; and the well represented 4 Voices who created the Integrated City Plan for Nizhny Novgorod – all whom genuinely care for their cities and the relationships that can bring them fully to life we are delighted to announce the trio of Russian City Associations as Integral Cities of the Year 2017. Click for the full story here.
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“Integral” is not an ideal for a city, but rather a framework for understanding the city as a human system in service to the wellbeing of the planet – for the purposes of evolving the city as the most complex human system yet created on our planet.
Gaia Orion Creates Connection Between Brush for Change and Spirit of Integral CityIntegral artist, Gaia Orion is exhibiting now in France. In October 2017 she completed an exhibit of her art at the Brush for Change show at the Integral Center in Boulder Colorado. Gaia revealed how her art depicts many aspects of an integral worldview. You can listen personally to her explain her approach on this video (and thanks for the shout out to Integral City who was proud to sponsor her catalog).
Announcing Integral City Series Book 3 In Press:
Integral City 3.7: Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives
We are celebrating the New Year with the delivery to the publishers of the manuscript for Book 3 in the Integral City series. Here is an excerpt from the Introduction that explains how it relates to Books 1 and 2. Watch for publication release dates later in 2018.
What? So What? Now What? this is the Now What book.
In the first book I proposed What is an Integral City? Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive examined the evidence for a new paradigm of the city that is a living human system, complex in its dynamics and evolutionary in its nature. I considered in each chapter an intelligence that applied to the city, presaging James Lovelock’s conjecture that humans are the reflective organ of the living Earth or Gaia. In Book One I intended to offer a developmental point of view, integrating perspectives that recognize the fractal patterns in human systems that repeat and resonate from the smallest individual scale, up through increasing levels of complexity – families, teams, organizations, sectors, communities and cities.
In the second book I explored So what are the ways we can know, act, relate and create in an Integral City? Integral City Inquiry and Action: Designing Impact for the Human Hive described the processes that Integral City practitioners have developed to apply the intelligences to developing the quality of life in the city. From a developmental point of view, in Book Two I differentiated two aspects of the whole that makes up the city; namely, the Placecaring left hand quadrants of the Integral model (consciousness and culture) and the Placemaking right hand quadrants (behaviors and systems/infrastructure). In each chapter I described the processes that the Integral City Team has discovered for engaging people through integrally designed inquiry and action to achieve impact that resonated for self, others, place and planet. At the time of writing Book Two I was really struck with the Pope’s encyclical “Laudato Si” (Francis, 2015) especially the chapter on Integral Ecology as it explored how to embrace human systems in a way that values all the developmental expressions of person, place and planet that coexist in the living city.
In this third book I turn to the question Now what do we do as a result of our evidence, inquiry, action and impact? Integral City 3.7 expands my perspective of change in the human system from the individual city to a planet of cities. As I trace out the implications of an Integral City operating system at a higher, more complex level, I attempt to integrate them from a developmental point of view that even moves beyond the planetary view to the Kosmic view.
Celebrating Planet-of-Cities in the Coming Quarter of 2017
December 21 marked the start of what Integral City calls the Power Quarter (from December 21 to March 20). What essence or Power do you call forth in your City in this season? What energy field, spirit, connecting rituals, renewing practices, lighten and enlighten you? We share deep We-Spaces and gain inspiration from the creativity of the human spirit to Brush for Change across our planet of cities.
Visit us on the our Integral City Website and Blog or post a comment about your city interests on our Facebook page.
Meshful Blessings for our Planet of Cities from
Marilyn Hamilton and the Integral City Constellation Corps Team
PS Here are some FREE resources for nurturing our Planet and the Human Hive:
Integral City MetaBlog 2017 – A synthesis and index of all Integral City Blogs from 2016.
Integral City of the Year 2017 – 3 Russian City Associations.
Meshworker of the Year Award 2017 – Hub CoEvolució in Reus, Catalonia, Spain.
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