Marilyn Hamilton's Blog, page 8
December 8, 2023
Gaia Learns – Mycelial Morphic Fields
James Lovelock proposed that humans were Gaia’s Reflective Organs. And I have suggested that cities are her organs, organizations organelles and humans like cells. Each of these is a fractal design with a symbiotic relationship within an organic holarchy.
With human delusions of separation and control, is it possible we are missing the Nature of our nature as children of Gaia – that she is our Mother and our grand Ancestor. It is trite to say that we wouldn’t exist without the planet from which our life has evolved. But perhaps it is dangerous to deny that we are not only dependent on our Mother but are being progressively shaped by her to be effective reflective organs, organelles and cells?
The explorations of Integral City have offered maps, voices, intelligences as patterns that cities reveal when viewed through a complex, adaptive, living, integral, evolutionary lens.
But let us try a new thought experiment – what if cities are “fruiting bodies” – evidence of two fields running parallel to one another – one spreading below the horizon like mycelial webs and the other accumulating above the horizon in morphic fields.
The metaphors for cities have often related to their vast complexes of infrastructures for water, sewage, food, transportation, communications – the movement and manifestation of all the resources necessary for collectives of human systems to co-exist with one another within a bounded space (visible from satellites as the light energy emitted from human activities.) Mechanical metaphors calling forth bricks and mortar, street corners, people moving systems, financial hubs, trading markets, etc.
However what happens if one steps away from the mechanistic human centric metaphors of cities into the realm of energetic fields? I have long supposed that the work of Rupert Sheldrake (that researches the morphic fields of living systems) provides an overview perspective of the invisible web of connections, patterns and capacities that can explain human consciousness, insights, intuition and our very ways of knowing, developing and relating. Much of this work is now being tapped into for traumatic healing processes – reaching into the invisible fields to release the blocks that impede the resonance, emergence and coherence of human learning and evolution.
Ironically (or synchronistically as Rupert Sheldrake’s son) Merlin Sheldrake has examined living systems in the soil. These systems are largely invisible to most humans – except those who have learned indigenous or permaculture appreciation of the entanglement of microbial life that interconnects vast living systems like forests, plains and ecologies and supports the roots systems of all plants both earth and water born.
The aspects of mycelial networks we most often know are their fruiting bodies – such as mushrooms – the fruits that appear at regular seasons – and the spores they emit to transport the DNA of the mycelial life across vast distances. The mycelial webs are visible to humans – but their apparent consciousness and capacity to respond, communicate, adapt and change life conditions has only recently come into human awareness (and science).
When I consider the work of Father and Son Sheldrake and relate their webs of knowing to what I know of cities, I am surprised by the possibility that Gaia herself is using her intelligence to emerge cities as the most resource available locations she creates (through tectonic plate and leyline intersections). At the same time she is endowing humans with multiple intelligences to manifest at all levels of human collectives to weave networks of connection that create morphic fields for every scale of human system (which we can then access through various practices and technologies).
In addition, the communication networks that now span the globe over, under and through every one of its 17 geographies (plus space satellites), has created a kind of mycelial web as an organ for Gaia’s reflection capacity.
Even as we set up seismic monitors, and Random Event Generators (REGS) we are amplifying our innate capacities to remote view, non-locally connect/communicate, share evidence of change patterns (e.g. pandemic data) and use AI to expand our conscious capacities.
So what if our greatest learning challenge is to let go of human-centric learning and release ourselves into Gaia-centric learning? What if every lesson, quandary, conflict, joy, discovery was re-framed as a lesson from Gaia for her own emergence? How can we appreciate, nurture and grow the capacities, intelligences, knowledge and experience she has already endowed us with? How do we contribute to Gaia’s resonance, emergence and coherence?
Perhaps we could reframe our assumption that , “Cities are the most complex systems that humans have created”? Perhaps we would recognize that cities contain all the smaller human systems encouraged and evolved by Gaia – from family hearths, to clans, tribes, neighbourhoods, organizations, work places, recreational spaces, communities, sectors and now realize how she has enabled individual cities to reach out to regional connections and global webs? Can we imagine this visible city is the “fruiting body” of Gaia’s mycelial webs flowing through both morphic fields and mycelial fields?
We might ask, “How can we reinterpret our sciences of communication that now enable connections buried in cables, wired along poles, wi-fied through modems, resonating with satellites, transmitting with light fibres – so they enable access to the morphic fields for healing and human/Gaian Hive mind intelligence”?
Now that we have shifted our enjoyment of analogue art, sculpture, language, performance, sport, and games beyond in-person analogue assemblies to access across digital pathways, highways, and energy fields – can we now serve Gaia both analogically and digitally, by reflecting through Beauty, Truth and Goodness, so her planetary consciousness multiplies at an exponential rate?
Might we appreciate human first-person senses of vision, hearing, taste, touch, smell can be transformed to become antennae for all the knowledge embedded in the morphic fields of every human system (especially our cities)? Moreover, can we also imagine a collective experience of, with, as our human hive mind? Might we re-purpose our media to manifest the greater Beauty, Truth and Goodness that Gaia longs for as she meshweaves city patterns out of our entangled visible intelligences to cohere with the invisible fields of morphic and mycelial potentials?
It may be that in order to serve Gaia’s Vision for herself, we have to transform our relationship with Gaia and her impulse that inspires the future of all human systems. This seems to imply that cities evolve the capacities to reflect with, through and as fruiting bodies of Gaia’s entangled mycelial morphic web systems of interconnection.
Gaia Learns – Start With a Breath
Gaia has ancestors in all the cosmic beings who have birthed the circumstances (life conditions) and elements that have enabled life on our planet to emerge. From the elements of Fire, Water, Earth and Air we enjoy the blessings of microbiota, mycelial webs, plants, insects, animals. Indigenous narratives tell also of the unseen beings who populate the energetic fields of all the elements – beings who have not incarnated but exist in dimensions long available to spiritual adepts and now being glimpsed through the micro and macro technologies of science.
As a child of the Universe, Gaia has learned from the rhythms of breathing in and breathing out, expanding and converging, discovering across eons of time patterns that we admire as Beauty, Truth and Goodness.
How do humans discern and appreciate the grand patterns that have birthed our species? Our natural way of learning as individuals is to start with our immediate life conditions to discover how we must survive, adapt to our environment(s) and regenerate the life birthed in us. As a social species we can do this only in the context of a family (or substitute) who supports us to develop capacities that co-arise through our physical, psychological, cultural and social beings. The importance of the role of our early family experience (noted by Jane Jacobs) is that it enables the unfolding of increasingly greater collective relationships – clans, tribes, organizations, sectors, communities, cities, nations, eco-regions, and global connections.
As science has revealed the intimate details of what indigenous creation stories have described for millennia, we become aware of the pattern of evolution and the evidence that life has left for us to discover in the patterns that seed the inner and outer capacities that support our existence.
We discern from the Big Breath that the dynamics of an operating system that emerges the universe also pulses through human life at every scale. The Nature of the Universe has endowed us with fundamental capacities that enable simultaneous self-organization and structuring. The brain sciences have called it a meshwork. It turns out that it is an endowment in which Gaia has invested so that she could evolve humans as her Reflective Organs (building on the proposition by James Lovelock). This amazing collaboration of capacities enables possibilities that can lead to infinite creation as well as chaos – we call this capacity: self-organization. Moreover this meshwork also holds another capacity that can lead to structures that are elegant flexible or rigid inflexible boundaries.
This pairing is neither a duality or a polarity but a simultaneous design dynamic that underlies the development of an individual life, the emergence of increasingly complex organization (and organisms) and the evolution of whole planets, galaxies and the cosmos.
The relationship between self-organizing elements and structuring patterns is a dance of eternal mystery and fascination deserving respect and admiration. It is an outcome of that first Big Breath and is fundamental to the Loving Consciousness that breathed that first breath.
The relationship of self-organization and structuring systems, reveals the qualities of Love we experience when we consider what has been, what is and what will be. This relationship underlies the rhythms, cycles, seasons, developmental stages, and evolutionary pathways – the very Spiritual trajectories and dimensions that we call Space and Time embedded into all human systems – including the most complex system we have yet created – cities.
Yet, even though we can appreciate the mystery and wonder of humans and our creations – is it time to re-consider what, why and how Gaia is evolving our species as her Reflective Organs? (Click here for other perspectives on Gaia’s evolutionary intentions.)
December 7, 2023
Meshworker of Year 2023: Gail Taylor, Sacred Scaffolding Artist
This morning was a beautiful witnessing of the Goodness that Gail Taylor is and the impact she has created on those who know her. Her Light shines brightly
as she sails on through the ethers.
Gail Taylor was one of the first quintessential Meshworkers that Marilyn Hamilton met, back in the days of her PhD research, connecting through the Berkana Community of Conversations and then the Art of Hosting and Integral Theory Conferences.
Meshworking was a practice that came naturally to Gail and she and Marilyn had a natural affinity because she so clearly saw the benefits of coalescing self-organizing systems with structuring systems to produce a whole new operating system – one that had a fractalizing pattern that could apply at every scale of human endeavour – from the individual, through teams, organizations, sectors, communities and cities.
“I think I was lucky to be a teacher of very young children as my first career. They taught me so much. We had wonderful fun together growing with and for each other. I asked myself, ‘Can adults still learn?’” That was the first sentence Gail used to introduce herself as a Co-Founder of Living Cities.Earth.
Gail explored human learning through founding The Learning Exchange (1972) for learners of all ages. She discovered that yes! adults could indeed learn. She later created with her husband and design partner Matt Taylor, MG Taylor Corporation (1981) . They learned that CEO’s and other upper management took great joy in working with their employees at all levels of the organization.
Tomorrow Makers (2002) was founded on Gail’s continual coming-to-knowing how starved people were to work and play together. Gail believed, if we are to create new healthy cultures, it will be with all of us intertwined, meshworking our way forward.
When Gail read the Living Cities.Earth Manifesto, (LCE) she thought, “It was a no-brainer (or perhaps a real brainer)”, for her to jump at the opportunity of becoming a Co-Founder! She called LCE’s work “togethering” – and soon influenced LCE’s initial tagline of “humaning well” to become “humaning well together”.
In 2023, Gail was working with the LeCiel Community on a project called Good Living. The purpose of Good Living Stewards is to refine and evolve the Transitioning to Good Living vision (https://holisticvisions.life/) into a viable model for multigenerational, holistic action. They define “Good Living” as way of life that benefits ourselves, others, and all life for 7 generations to come. Their framework outlines design principles for organizing, building, and governing society based on primordial wisdom values. It has the potential to deeply transform human ways of living and collaborating with all life.
Gail recognized this project aligned well with LCE’s Manifesto (based on Integral City levels of complexity) and worked well with the Living cities work and world.
Gail knew that humanity’s collective work in the next years would be about dissolving the existing paradigm and maturing a new one. She felt that she was a doula, and went where ideas are coming into being to help “doula” where she could.
Gail felt a very vibrant woman even in her 80’s. She formulated two additional ideas that she wanted to bring to life:
Second Womb Project: All babies through their first seven years of life are born within Gaia’s nurturing Womb spending their first seven years as, for, and with nature. This would not be a school for the privileged, but rather a curriculum for all families and communities with a special focus on these early years. This is the scaffolding that would support and give strength and value throughout the rest of life as beings go forward on lifelong journeys of awe and wonder.Tinkering with Stuart Kauffman’s self-organizing system of Patches and Nodes. Kauffman’s work supported Gail’s quest born out of this quote by Ilya Prigogine. “In assembling complexity, the bounty of increasing returns is won by multiple tries over time. As various parts reorganize to a new whole, the system escapes into a higher order.”Gail always felt blessed to step up when called to employ expertise that she had acquired. She felt she was no expert in anything, but had a knack for seeing where scaffoldings can help make connections, craft new ideas that need strong beginnings. A beautiful interview by Pavel Luksha and Alexander Laszlo captured the essence of her views on scaffolding (access it here and see Gail vitally alive with her passion): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71xkOCXr9pc
Indra Adnan of Alternative Planet remarked about Gail: “She had so much depth and insight. She was an [Alternative Planet] Co-creator and regular in CAN of CANs incubator.” https://www.thealternative.org.uk/planet-a-prezi
Gail wrote and spoke about the value of scaffolding – including in Medium https://medium.com/@gailtaylor/scaffolding-helping-to-support-a-new-paradigm-in-its-becoming-c75e68360feb
We are the framers and architects of a new paradigm in the making. As we rebuild and recreate, what scaffolds will we put in place to help us transform from one paradigm to another? One that brings forth a better, healthier world with a deep and new understanding of our interrelational nature? One that can work for all life on earth? What have we realized that we can no longer do without and what are we willing to let go of?
She was learning that timing matters as it does in any birth. She had found that trying to birth an idea before it’s time is difficult, if not impossible.
Gail believed the timing was right for Living Cities to come into form. She wanted to take part and stepped into the People Segment when it became seeded. And while working on a Zoom call with Eric Kohn who was co-leading this group, Gail stepped off the scaffold of this earthly plane onto the scaffold of the next world on November 5, 2023.
She could have been speaking these words as she called out in surprise that her time had come: “… there is much I can learn from beginning to take part. It’s all about meshworking and magically releasing a new order into the Universe. “
People around the world know that Gail touched their lives when she was with us in person, and feel the touch she continues to bring in Spirit.
Her son Todd wrote LCE these observations: “I wanted to … say thank you, and bow in gratitude to this community for welcoming Gail. She and I spoke often, several times a week typically. Her excitement, appreciation and optimism for what Living Cities is doing and building was present in nearly every conversation I had with her over the past few months. An excitement she hasn’t had for years in terms of endeavors and ventures to create a better world for all.”
Her family shares on LinkedIn: “Gail’s untimely passing has broken our hearts and left us reeling. But we know that Gail would want nothing more than for all of us to channel our grief into creative acts and pursuits that facilitate humanity coming into balance with Gaia, treating our home as a sacred work of art.”
It is with profound respect in recognition of Gail’s wisdom, wit and spirit that we celebrate Gail Taylor’s Sacred Scaffolding Artistry in service to Gaia.
We are proud to bestow the first post-humous Integral City Meshworker of the Year 2023 Award to Gail Taylor.
As Gail loved this quotation , we sense that she has returned to her spiritual roots, so she can reach out to remind us:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
TS Eliot
From “Little Gidding”, the fourth and final poem from Four Quartets”
===Definition of MeshworkerA Meshworker of the Year demonstrates the meshworking intelligence as defined on the website . Meshworking intelligence creates a “meshwork” by weaving together the best of two operating systems — one that self-organizes, and one that replicates hierarchical structures. The resulting meshwork creates and aligns complex responsive structures and systems that flex and flow.
Candidates for the Meshworkers of the Year Award invest dollars, time, effort and expertise at a level of complexity that serves a whole city or cities. Here are our previous winners:
2017: Hub Co-Evolucio, Reus, Catalonia, Spain
October 23, 2023
Apple Tree Valentine: Inter-Being Dream Comes True
Once upon a time there was an apple tree. It grew right beside a Sanctuary in the Ecovillage Findhorn, where the community came to meditate and hold sacred space. She witnessed their rituals honouring Earth, Air, Water and Fire. She was such a happy tree growing beside a garden dedicated to Co-Creating with the Intelligences of Nature.
Then out of the Sacred Elements a terrible fire destroyed the Sanctuary and scorched the apple tree with black scars. The apple tree grieved her pain and the loss of the Sanctuary. She blessed the Water who had saved her and the Earth who had protected her roots and the Air that cooled her wounded branches. She forgave the Fire and watched sadly as the community grieved the loss of their Sanctuary. She witnessed 4 sister trees beside the Sanctuary – Scotch pines as old as her – give up their life force to the body of the new Sanctuary that humans designed.
Then, the little apple tree heard the Sanctuary building team persuade the gardeners that the apple tree would have to be removed to make way for the construction site. The gardeners were very unhappy to lose such a long-time friend and decided to graft the apple tree to retain some semblance of its precious lifeforce.
But the little apple tree was much more alive than anyone could tell by looking at her charred trunk and pruned branches. It remembered the women who had caressed her leaves and tasted her apples. She longed for the comfort of children and families who had walked by her for many years. Deep in her apple tree being she dreamed a dream that she sent out into Gaia’s heart – a dream so strong that it arose on the other side of the world in the island of Mauritius. There the woman, S (who had loved the apple tree while she lived near the Sanctuary) awoke with the power of her dream so strong that she sent an email to her friend M in Ecovillage Findhorn. “The apple tree does not want to die. It wants to live – how can you help?”
M never doubted the authenticity of the question or its source. Immediately she visited the apple tree, to consider how to make this wish come true. She listened deeply to the apple tree’s powerful desire to live fully, and sensed that a solution could be discovered if together they co-created with the Intelligences of Nature.
M spoke to the gardeners, asking for a temporary place where the apple tree could rest until a final home could be found. But the gardeners could not offer such a refuge. However K heard the story and said, “We are creating a fruit forest at Woodsides – our new home for families, children and elders. We are just digging the plots. We would welcome the Sanctuary apple tree.”
Before M knew it, word had spread and JM the tree deva blessed the opportunity for the apple tree to move. JC1 from the Hinterland Trust offered tractor transport and a cart to carry the tree to her new home. Community volunteers prepared both old and new sites to expedite the move. Tree experts advised how to safely transplant the apple tree. They supported the roots with special care – paying attention to the fine hairs on the ends of the main roots, keeping them moist and shielding them during the transplantation. They even created special compost infused with natural mycelial elements to feed the soil in the new home of the apple tree.
Such Love between species and dimensions was celebrated on Valentine’s Day – February 14, 2023 – when all the resources of the community assembled at the Sanctuary site to Work as Love in Action. Volunteers gathered the spring bulbs from the garden beneath the apple tree, collected the soil, carefully releasing the three main roots from her old base and carried her with pomp, ceremony and love to her new home. There the whole village transported the little apple tree to CAREfully prepared soil in just the right sized plot and gently placed her in her new home.
She was in full sunshine. In front of the houses of 4 families with children, laughing and playing and 4 elders who could enjoy her shade and fruit in years to come. The apple tree smiled with satisfaction, sighed with relief and within a month had produced new sprouts and spring leaves. She stood tall and firm in her new home, treasured by all ages and passersby who came to know her name: Valentine.
Now Dear Reader, if ever humans needed to learn the values of Deep Inner Listening, Co-Creating With the Intelligences of Nature and Work is Love in Action, then the apple tree has a tale to share that is truer than truth. Her Dream to Live Fully has travelled around the world from Fire to Air, Water to Earth – and now grows like a Valentine in all our hearts, flourishing leaves and germinating fruit.
~~~
By Marilyn Hamilton marilyn@integralcity.com , 412 Field of Dreams, Ecovillage Findhorn, Forres, Scotland IV363TA
This blog is about radical collaboration between realms and species. It is a sequel to a short series on Thoughts on (Radical) Collaboration as an Evolutionary Act.
Collaborating In the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as an Evolutionary Act, 1
Collaborating With the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as Evolutionary Act, 2
Collaborating As the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as Evolutionary Act, 3
Where are the Women? Saging the Invisible into the Visible – Radical Collaboration Thoughts, 4
October 21, 2023
Where are the Women? Saging the Invisible into the Visible – Radical Collaboration Thoughts, 4
In 2011 I wrote an article, published in the Integral Leadership Review, that is integrally interwoven into my thoughts on Collaboration. I explore the question “Where are the Women in the Integral Movement?” It provides the roots of my thoughts in this series about Radical Collaboration – and perhaps it profers the most radical explanation of why and how women collaborate with themselves as women and the feminine, men and the masculine and with Gaia herself.
Here is the abstract.
“This article explores and seeks to answer the question Where are the Women in the Integral movement? The author utilizes the principles of “Five Deep” exploration from Beck and Spiral Dynamics along with Wilber’s AQAL model to explore circumstances that, she proposes, may have produced a mismatch in stage development between women and men. With reference to Baron-Cohen’s notion of “Essential Difference” the author will also offer an evolutionary explanation as to where the integral women are now and why/how women’s spirit, which has historically risen in times of world crisis, may be rising once again.
In answering “Where are the Women? “, the author explores five strata in the gender landscape: the horizontal strata of behaviors and actions; the vertical strata of structures and stages; the cultural strata; and the psychological strata and puts them all into the context of whole person epistemology and co-created life conditions.”
Women Who Collaborate AS Gaia: Jude Currivan, Diana Claire Douglas, Ellen van Dongen, Anne-Marie Voorhoeve
In 2013 I followed up the article on “Where are the Women?” with a blog –
Re-Gendrification? Saging Conscious Beings? Shapeshifting Species?Its summary still holds strongly today and gives clear guidance on how to Co-laborate AS Gaia. …
Shapeshifting the Species
Some people have asked, “Where are the women?” in the Integral Movement. … They are researching the resilient realities of their particular typologies; they are inventing new structures for human performance; they are creating cultures that believe in perspectives that embrace the invisible with the visible; they are learning the power of their individual consciousnesses; they are grasping the leverage of their collective consciousnesses; and they are linking the interior epistemologies with the exterior epistemologies of the integral realities. Ultimately, they are becoming the Sages shape shifting not just women (and men) but the direction of the human species.
Where are the women? – change your ways of relating to the world and you will find not just the women but the new Sages of our species:
1. Look through the epistemologies that women use to relate to the world.
2. Recognize and transcend the evolutionary structural boundaries that have privileged dominator cultures, then emerged social networks and now see the new territory that has opened up in the systemic flex-flows of an integral worldview.
3. Appreciate the triple helix of the evolutionary trajectory of the species so that you can see how both men and women have co-created each other and life conditions for evolutionary survival, adaptiveness and reproduction.
4. Create the conditions of safety so women can let go of old patterns buried deep in their cultures and psyches so they can reconnect with the source of being and becoming and shift from identification with their gender to being fully conscious human beings.
5. Appreciate that life conditions vary around the world and each person, family, clan, community, country and geography are co-creating new conditions for our next evolutionary emergence as fully conscious human beings.
Read the full article from which this was extracted here.
This blog is part of a short series on Thoughts on (Radical) Collaboration as an Evolutionary Act: Collaborating In the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as an Evolutionary Act, 1 Collaborating With the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as Evolutionary Act, 2 Collaborating As the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as Evolutionary Act, 3 Where are the Women? Saging the Invisible into the Visible – Radical Collaboration Thoughts, 4Collaborating As the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as Evolutionary Act, 3
The relationship of labour and co-laboration to power can reveal the differences between power over, power with and power as.
In Power Over, labour is driven from above. Co-laboration is dictated by the overseer, the boss, the tyrant. The worker or labourer is useful only for the brute force of its repetitive efforts to produce some outcome that benefits the powerful one(s). This relationship is a dominator hierarchy. Little if any mutual trust and respect exists.
In Power With, labour becomes co-laborative – where the relationship transforms from hierarchy to circular or flattened relationship. The workers and managers agree on what and how labour is to be performed – so cooperation and co-laboration are qualities of the relationship. Mutual trust and respect are values that are shared and practised.
In Power As, labour, management and design are embraced as a system that is inter-dependent. In complex systems where multiple organizations are practising with Power As then the systems within the larger system become intra-dependent. Co-laboration recalibrates domination into meritous authority, management into regenerative power and agreement into intelligent influence. Co-laboration itself becomes an act of coalescing authority, power and influence. (Adizes).
In each of the experiences of Co-laboration we can see the impact of gender influence on the relationships. In Power Over (un)Collaboration women are usually with less power in the dominator hierarchy. (Traditional husband over wife and children).
In Power With Co-laboration is neutered so men and women are co-labouring – for a humancentric purpose. We can see this in Map 4 of the Integral City maps – where the values and form of the human organization progresses from Birth Family (Beige), to Clan Hearth (Purple), to Tribe Dominator Command (Red) to Bureaucratic Merit Hierarchy (Blue), to Organizational Strategy (Orange).
In terms of Spiral Dynamics’ XYZ Templates this describes much of the organizational forms present in the major working contributions in the X Template.
In the mature Organizational Strategy (Orange) the Y Template emerges as Social Systems (Green) comes on line – to support the workers by providing resources, direction, feedback and contexting information. As Green is a non-hierarchical system the Y Template can be seen as embracing, supporting and caring for X Template labourers as valued/valuable people.
Then as Green matures beyond social safety nets and takes the Quantum Leap into a systems view of the world, the Systemic worldview and capacities come online, enabling the Z Template to emerge – not as a domineering top of the pyramid, but as the integrating archetype that coalesces authority, power and influence (CAPI, per Adizes).
This is also where the GPS recalibrates the XYZ Template into the Individual, Collective Intelligences (X Template), served by the Strategic Intelligences of Inquiry, Meshworking, Navigating (Y Template) and guided/aligned by the Contexting Intelligences (Eco, Emergent, Integral, Living) (Z Template).
But beyond the Z Template, the Integral City GPS reveals the Evolutionary Intelligence as the primordial impulse that enables co-labouring so that it is “Power As.”
In Power As, Co-laboration has been subsumed by the Evolutionary Impulse so that the Feminine Archetype enables both women and men to co-labour – to meshwork – with their full potential in service to Gaia.
This then becomes a deep form of co-labouring where Power As re-unites human labour with all of Gaia’s beings and Gaia herself. This unleashes enormous primordial power for all as an Evolutionary Act that truly enables living the Gaia Code of Care.
This Radical Collaboration creates grooves in the energetic fields, opens doors between realms, amplifies intelligences and magnifies capacities for the new Humana Qui Curat – the Human Who Cares – for Planet, Places, People, Persons.This blog is part of a short series on Thoughts on (Radical) Collaboration as an Evolutionary Act: Collaborating In the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as an Evolutionary Act, 1 Collaborating With the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as Evolutionary Act, 2 Collaborating As the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as Evolutionary Act, 3 Where are the Women? Saging the Invisible into the Visible – Radical Collaboration Thoughts, 4Collaborating With the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as Evolutionary Act, 2
For the majority of human history human evolution has been intertwined with the evolution of the world in which we have found ourselves.
Emergent from the star systems that formed our solar system and our planet we embody all the elements that have created the conditions that evolved us. We embody:
Primordial Energy Source (Marko Pogacnik’s Dragons)Sub-Atomic ParticlesAtoms, Molecules, GasesInorganic Lithosphere (rocks, minerals)Inorganic Hydrosphere (oceans, lakes, rivers)Inorganic Atmosphere (climate systems)Organic Biosphere (plants, animals, insects)AnthroposphereCivilization (bio, psycho, cultural, social)As civilization have evolved humans have co-laboured in increasingly complex ways (see Thoughts On Collaboration 1). As we have co-laboured the thoughts, culture, systems have co-developed with us. Most Indigenous peoples have creation stories that recognize their indigeneity is deeply connected to their eco-region and the planet. Our worldviews, mindsets and value systems reflected the “witness” of our lives. Co-Labouring always involved co-labouring with the World around us. This form of labour was a sacred relationship with the Earth.
Until the emergence of our capacity for making tools lead us into a time where our labour severed the sacred relationship with Gaia – instead of realizing that we are tools of Gaia. When our tools of agriculture enabled our colonies to co-labour with plants, animals and humans – disregarding the Sacred Whole – we disconnected from the lineage on which all life depends.
The apparent effectiveness and efficiency of this co-labouring era lead to such a concentration of Earth wealth into villages, towns, cities that our Human Environment Boundary became disconnected and seemingly impervious to our Earth-Cosmos Boundary.
Human-centric collaboration produced ever-more complex Human Co-Labouring Organizations (See Map 4) but forgot the interpenetration of human systems with Gaian systems (Map 2) and the Sacred Energy Flows of Life (Map 5). But now that the science that has evolved out of human consciousness has revealed how Quantum Reality reflects the power of Spiritual Source we are faced with resuming Co-Labouring with Gaia to deepen our relationships with Earth as Mother now labouring to bring forth a new sphere – the Philiasphere – the Love Sphere (per Marko Pogacnik) of the Sphere of Gaia Care.
With every VUCA disaster that humans are challenged with – Humans are being reminded that we are Evolutionary Organs of Gaia (James Lovelock). Gaia is in a mighty new time of labouring – she asks us to return to co-labour with her – so that with the Light of Consciousness with which she has evolved us – co-labouring with Gaia, we can enable her to birth a sphere of Love, Peace, Light for all Life.
This blog is part of a short series on Thoughts on (Radical) Collaboration as an Evolutionary Act: Collaborating In the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as an Evolutionary Act, 1 Collaborating With the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as Evolutionary Act, 2 Collaborating As the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as Evolutionary Act, 3 Where are the Women? Saging the Invisible into the Visible – Radical Collaboration Thoughts, 4Collaborating In the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as an Evolutionary Act, 1
I start at an obvious beginning – the meaning of the word “collaboration.” To Co-Labour” – labour together.
Labour for what? Is there a Spiral of Co-Laboration?
Beige Beginnings – Birth – the very beginning of life – women go into labour to deliver the child.
Purple Tribe – Women co-laborate to mid-wife the mother and child during the process. Midwives become a sacred circle of women in service to life.
Red Power – From Tribe to Individualistic Expression – Red is not a very co-laborative stage – as the individual wants labour to be self-rewarding.
Blue Order – The ordering hierarchy of Blue represents collaboration in levels of cooperation where labour is organized for peace and good government. So often Blue Order feels like, looks like a masculine energy – but it creates a world of safety and security for women, children, families, society. On the dark side “collaboration” in Europe became associated with war and those who offered cooperation as the conquered/victims with the invaders/tyrants became despised as “collaborators.”
Orange Results – the outcome measuring stage of Orange brings collaboration into focus beyond effectiveness into efficient co-operations laying the work for later co-operatives. Orange has been historically an inventive stage that manifested much technology that saved labour and effort for women. Co-labour became epitomized as the specialization of labour so that the efficiency of assembly lines could be organized for the benefit of entrepreneurs and owners. The division of labour separated it from the provision of capital and exerted the power of managers and owners over labour.
Green Acceptance – the social safety net of Green Worldviews restores the value of “co-labouring” to mean joining together to achieve shared goals – co-operatives – where the “co” element of the word gains new stature beyond the denotative meaning of “with” to embrace the connotative nuance of “collective” – so that whatever/wherever/however we labour – we do it together for the co-operative benefit of all.
Yellow Systems – the Quantum Leap beyond Green restores all the meanings of co-labour so that we can meshwork them together in their self-organizing Beige, Red, Orange impulses of creativity with the structuring capacities of Purple, Blue, Green that align collective patterns for bonding, binding and blessing in collaborations that can flex and flow.
Turquoise Global Emergence – transcends and includes all the Systemic Yellow, Social Green, Strategic Orange, Systematic Blue into planetary resonance, coherence and emergence. Co-laboration at this 8th level of complexity is for the good of all life on Earth. The tribal dominance of Red, influence of Purple and power of Beige are transmuted from ego and ethno existence to regional co-laboration to planetary co-existence.
Finally the act of co-labouring becomes intertwined with inter-being, collective be-coming and planetary evolution.This blog is part of a short series on Thoughts on (Radical) Collaboration as an Evolutionary Act: Collaborating In the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as an Evolutionary Act, 1 Collaborating With the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as Evolutionary Act, 2 Collaborating As the World: Thoughts on Collaboration as Evolutionary Act, 3 Where are the Women? Saging the Invisible into the Visible – Radical Collaboration Thoughts, 4September 20, 2023
September 2023 Equinotes: Amplified Intelligences, Wisdom, Principles
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 Integral City Intelligences: Natural, Living, Wise.September 2023 Equinotes are drawn from these publications:
Five Wisdoms = Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive, Sept. 8, 2011, |C. Collective Intelligences, E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Emergence, Meshworking, Spiritual intelligence
Integral City Intelligences Reflect Living System Principles, August 28th, 2017|A. Contexting Intelligences, B. Individual Intelligences, Book 3, Building – Structures, C. Collective Intelligences, D. Strategic Intelligences, E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Ecosphere, Emergence, Inner, Inquiry, Integral Maps, Lifecycle, Meshworking, Navigating – IVSM, Outer, Storytelling – Cultures
Artificial Intelligences or Amplified Intelligences in the Integral City?, September 6th, 2023|A. Contexting Intelligences, B. Individual Intelligences, Building – Structures, C. Collective Intelligences, D. Strategic Intelligences, E. Evolutionary Intelligences, Ecosphere, Emergence, Inner, Inquiry, Integral Maps, Level 8 Turquoise, Level 9 Coral, Lifecycle, Meshworking, Navigating – IVSM, Outer, Storytelling – Cultures
Scroll to end of Equi-Notes to access Free Resources, MetaBlogs 2013-2022.
Artificial Intelligence or Amplified Intelligence in the Human Hive? “Have you given some thought to how artificial intelligence could enhance the intelligences of the integral city? I’m curious about your take on it,” asked George Por recently. George is an expert in many things but he has long impressed me as a world expert on collective consciousness and a true shaman of human development (and an original action researcher into Integral City 2.0). I have been curious for a while , so thanks to George here are a few thoughts on how AI could enhance the intelligences of the Integral City.First off I reflect on the implication of “artificial” in the usual sense of AI. I wonder why these intelligences are considered artificial? I would consider intelligence to be evolutionary however it manifests.
It seems to me that when we use “artificial” as a descriptor of intelligence we are viewing it outside ourselves – taking an objective stance. Which from an integral perspective would be true but only partial (Wilber).
Surely the qualities of the intelligence we see emerging are tetra+-arising with impacts in all the AQAL quadrants regardless of how you parse them – integral mindsets: subjective, intersubjective, objective, interobjective; or Gaia’s reflective organs: person, people, place, planet; or City Voices: Citizen, Civil Society/3rd Sector, Civic Managers, Business/Innovators.
These intelligence capacities may be manifesting the qualities of the Kosmic Mind – and call us to not only consider the trajectory of capacity development from ego to ethno to regional to planet, but to consider the quantum leap from Patrick Geddes’ Think Local/Act Global to Currivan’s proposition Think Cosmic, Feel Global, Act Local – a more wholistic evolutionary reframing.
From the very beginning of my inquiry into learning and leadership in self-organizing online communities (where I first met Georg Por), it was obvious to me that recursive, iterative, reflection would amplify the emerging intelligence. Isn’t this what a living system does? It resonates with self and other. It coheres with self and other. And it emerges capacities for self and other. This is how it survives, adapts and regenerates.
As the VUCA world has demanded that we gain capacities that enable cities (and all their sub-wholes of individuals, families, neighbourhoods, workplaces, communities (Map 2)) as complex adaptive living systems to expand their intelligences, it is natural – not artificial – that the GPS of city intelligences evolutionarily matures.
This seems fundamental to what Clare Graves proposed as a Never Ending Quest. Perhaps most people have considered that quest would be a simple (or merely complicated) linear unfolding, because when we look back at evolution it looks like we move in a fairly straightforward way from one level of complexity to another – until the quantum leap into Tier 2.
But anyone who studies complexity seriously, knows there are non-linear bifurcations and jumps in the capacity of evolving systems that are exponential in effect. So when we seek to connect the system to more of itself, “simply” to enable greater wellbeing, a natural effect is bound to be an exponential emergence of capacity aka intelligence.
So I think that this path of “artificial” outcomes is actually quite natural. Nevertheless, it is categorically on a different level of complexity and therefore merits a new descriptor. I might suggest Amplified intelligence? Quantum intelligence?
Whatever name we give it, this intelligence is ALIVE and it calls us to be more of who we have been in an AQAL way. Clare Graves would point to our life conditions and the dissonance they are causing in our lives – necessitating learning on a scale and at a speed that has never been necessary or possible before.
I am grateful to Evolutionary Leader Deepak Chopra for publishing this article on Artificial Intelligence that enumerates in considerable detail recent manifestations of intelligence (related to healing and wellbeing) at a new order of magnitude. The examples he points to include:
AI Imitates ScienceMicrobiomeCRSPR Gene EditingMessenger RNAPsychedelicsEpigeneticsNeuroplasticityVagal ActivationCreative IntelligenceClick here to read the full Thought Piece.
Integral City Intelligences Reflect Living System PrinciplesThe 12 Intelligences of the Integral City can be directly connected to the Principles of Living Systems. This may not be surprising given the core influences of their creators. In the case of the 12 Intelligences, I was considering the evolution of the holarchy of human systems from individual, to family/collectives, to organizations, to the City. In the case of Elisabet Sahtouris, she was considering the evolution of the (conscious) biology of living systems. Thus, given that human systems are living systems, we should expect that the taxonomies of the Intelligences and the Principles should reflect one another.Integral City Intelligences, framed at the human systems scale of the City represent its core capacities derived from the first Principles of Living Systems.Moreover, if we want to understand why and how it is possible for a City to thrive as a living innovation ecosystem (discussed in the first two blogs of this series), we can backcast to the capacities of intelligences that the City would require in order to design, organize and manifest such a system.
We have given full definitions of the Integral City Intelligences in Book 1 (Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive) and on the website. Here we link them to Elisabet Sahtouris’ Principles of Living Systems, so we can reveal their qualities of aliveness. In many cases one of the Principles manifests in multiple Integral City intelligences because of their holographic, interconnected and even non-local nature.
Let’s take another walk through Sahtouris’ Principles of Living Systems and connect them to the brief definitions of Integral City Intelligences that are set out below the Principles.
Principle 1: Self-creation (autopoiesis) is reflected in the Eco, Emergent and Living Intelligences.
Principle 2: Complexity (diversity of parts) is reflected in Eco and Emergent Intelligences.
Principle 3: Embeddedness in larger holons and dependence on them (holarchy) is reflected in Integral and Living Intelligences.
Principle 4: Self-reflexivity (autognosis, self-knowledge) is reflected in Integral, Inner and Storytelling/Cultural Intelligences.
Principle 5: Self-regulation/maintenance (autonomics) balancing efficiency and resilience is reflected in Integral and Living Intelligences.
Principle 6: Response-ability to internal and external stress or change is reflected in Individual (Integral Inner, Outer), and Collective (Social/Building and Cultural/Storytelling) Intelligences.
Principle 7: Input/output of matter, energy and information with other holons is reflected in Living, Inner and Social/Building Intelligences.
Principle 8: Transformation of matter, energy and information; no non-recyclable waste is reflected in Living, Inner and Social/Building Intelligences.
Principle 9: Communications among all parts is reflected in Integral, Inquiry, Meshworking and Navigating Intelligences.
Principle 10: Empowerment, full employment of all component parts is reflected in Eco, Emergent, Living and Meshworking Intelligences.
Principle 11: Coordination of parts and functions is reflected in Eco, Emergent, Living, Meshworking and Navigating Intelligences.
Principle 12: Balance of interests negotiated among parts, whole and embedding holarchy is reflected in Eco, Emergent, Living and Inquiry Intelligences.
Principle 13: Reciprocity of parts in mutual contribution and assistance is reflected in Eco, Emergent, Living and Meshworking Intelligences.
Principle 14: Conservation of what works well is reflected in Eco, Emergent, Living and Meshworking Intelligences.
Principle 15: Innovation, creative change of what does not work well is Eco, Emergent, Living and Evolutionary Intelligences.
Click here to read the full article.
Five Wisdoms Evolutionary Intelligences for Sustainability in the Human HiveIt appears that like most other principles of Integral City, Five Wisdoms (taught by Irini Rockwell) is a fractal design that has emerged from ancient spiritual tradition and is now available in service to the evolutionary impulse. It was most satisfying to recognize Five Wisdoms as an Evolutionary Intelligence for the Human Hive and we were all deeply appreciative of Irini Rockwell as the Wisdom Leader who guided us to awareness, practise and application.In the Experience Integral Workshop 2011, Irini guided us into meditation and the Buddha pose. The Buddha pose (associated with the colour White and Space) invites Spaciousness and opens you up to Being in a simple, receptive contemplation. It enabled a day full of potential and ease.
In our after breakfast session in the following mornings we were introduced to the other four wisdoms, first in contrasting pairs and then in I/We explorations.
First we learned Vajra Wisdom (associated with the colour Blue, Water and the sense of Sight). This energy combines the paradoxes of clarity, precision with big picture and perspective. It expects integrity and invites brilliance. In contrast Padma Wisdom (associated with the colour Red, Fire and the sense of Hearing) engages warmth, magnetism and charm with intuition, subtleness and sensuality. Vajra tends to masculine energy and Padma to feminine energy.
Next we learned Karma Wisdom (associated with colour Green, Wind and the Kinesthetic sense). This energy is full of positiveness, timeliness, and synchronistic action. It was contrasted with Ratna Wisdom (associated with colour Yellow, Earth and the senses of Taste and Smell) which connected us to expansiveness, resourcefulness and potential while extending hospitality, generoisty and appreciation. Like Vajra, Karma tends to masculine energy and like Padma, Ratna tends to feminine energy.
In the conference everyone was invited to notice their dominant and sub-dominant energies and any masks that we borrowed for adapting to our life conditions. Moving from one Energy pod to another Energy pod, our group formed and re-formed in waves that broke into lively exchange as we discovered when each Energy first showed up in our lives? How do we use that energy in our life/work now? What other Energy (s) is it connected to? This inquiry helped us to notice our natural affinities to other participants and our relationship to each of the Five Wisdoms as we activated them in our lives.
Finally on the last day, we moved into the emergence of our Sustainability Meshwork with an invitation to notice how the Five Wisdoms contributed to three nodes of organizational goals as defined by the Integral City Master Principle: Take care of yourself (I); Take care of each other (WE); take care of this place (It(s)). Each peron’s Sustainability Business Canvas self organized into one of these three nodes. The work goals we had defined for organizations that supported Individuals became the I-focused organzational node; those that supported Groups became the WE-focused organizational node; and those that supported Systems became the It(s)-focused organizational node.
Applying the Five Wisdoms to each of these nodes we discovered that each cluster of potential organizations used the Five Wisdoms in different combinations and different sequences (more to follow in further Blog postings.) Five Wisdoms proved a deeply Spacious, Integrative, Rich, Activating and Resourceful frame in which to notice how five universal energies contributed to Roles in the emerging Meshwork.
Click here to link for an exploration of the Five Wisdoms and Irini’s Resources and Books.
Explore Integral City Archive of Newsletters, Blogs, MetaBlogs:Cool Blocks & Carbon Neutral Ecovillage Findhorn InfographicReflective Organ Newsletter Solstice 2023: We-Space, Ecologies, HolobiontsMarch 2023 Equi-Notes: Roots of City Peace in Joy, Happiness and CareIntegral City Meta Blog 2022Integral 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 Integral 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 .fusion-fullwidth.fusion-builder-row-1 { overflow:visible; }September 12, 2023
Beyond Cracks, Breaks, Collapses: The Light of Divine Fire
How is life unfolding this Monday morn?
I encounter a conversation with 2 fiends, where one has the symptoms of a tick bite that could signal Lyme disease. An opportunity to see a doctor cracks open because another mutual friend is driving to the health clinic. But they decline an offer for a lift to the health clinic. Allopathic treatment has not served well in the past, so they are cautious about expecting any effective remedy. An alternative path is their preference.
Another friend announces locally and globally the surprising acquisition of a property with a new business model that could meld cooperative strategies with affordable accommodation, time-share opportunities and workshop/retreat options. Except within 2 hours of the announcement they have to apologize for pre-maturely breaking the news because the owner states the property is not for sale.
My last act of this cheerful morning is to read the first few chapters of Jem Bendell’s “Breaking Together: Freedom-loving Responses to Collapse”. Bendell contends that the world’s major systems have regressed into such irretrievable decline, that they will not recover. It looks the best we can do is confront the distressing realities the human species has created for itself and find solace in loving life for its truth and beauty (I have yet to discover if he embraces goodness too).
Bendell seems to be inviting readers into the refiner’s fire of collapse – to stop avoiding what the data and our experience are telling us. To allow deeply into our awareness, the collapse of the modern paradigm and its ultra-modern versions that have spread disaster around the globe.
But to allow the “crack in everything” is to let the light through. We must break down so we can break through.
From a living systems perspective all this is true and necessary. It is the manifestation of Thinking Globally and Acting Locally (Geddes, 1890).
From a spiritual perspective I think there is much more scope to regenerate from collapse – not merely to survive it or adapt to it.
With every weekly practise of Islands of Calm Meditation, I remind myself and others that the other-than-human life and subtle realms that co-exist with humans, offer comfort, solace, wisdom, guidance, patterns, insights, energies – alliances with Life, Light, Love – that can lead us beyond the cracks, breaks and collapses into a wider view of cosmic reality, evolving as Gaia herself evolves herself and us (Lovelock, 2016).
I hope that Jem Bendell can discover a more expanded context for his intense research – and reach into Cosmic Realms – even spiritual incarnation, as David Spangler describes.
On this Monday morning, I gift myself a walk in Nature. Listen to the birds. Taste the blackberries. Enjoy the sun on my face.
I lean into where Jude Currivan gestures us to Think Cosmically, Feel Globally and Act Locally. I feel connected to allies from the natural and subtle realms. I am not alone with predictions of the world as I know it ending. I am open to the world as I know it collapsing – but into change that is so profound it calls forth a new direction, a new paradigm and a whole set of new expectations for Light and Love and Life.
Postscript
Tuesday morning gives me some assurance in savouring the message that Alastair McIntosh brought at the end Monday – Discernment. We need Discernment to cherish and be cherished by Place. Discernment to accept the indigenous in ourselves and in others and how we are all tied to Place. Alastar offers more hope beyond Clearance (as the Quakers practise), Consumption or Collapse.
He reminds us of the deep goodness of Community – that we must “hold spaces that are hospitable to the Soul”. That is the calling of Findhorn (Foundation and Ecovillage). We can offer course in living. We have the strength to discern our challenges – whether they be Cracks, Breaks or Collapses – even to kneel as we hold and are held in Divine Fire.
~~~
Ecovillage Findhorn, Dateline September 11, 12, 2023
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