“If you knew she could feel, you would stop,” says Charles Eisenstein about the living Earth.

We met at the Climate Change and Consciousness CCC19 conference at Findhorn Scotland. Charles made it very clear in his plenary keynote, workshop and new book “Climate” that he agreed with James Lovelock that Earth was a living system. As such the planet has organs that keep her in balance from the lungs of the Amazon Forests to the temperature regulator of the Greenland Glaciers.

Although Charles seemed reluctant to recognize cities as Gaia’s “reflective organs” (my intuition from Lovelock’s contentions that humans have evolved to add value to the Earth as her “reflective organs”), he agreed that cities were important and would continue – albeit probably in reduced size (and possibley number?).

As I considered the value that cities add to the climate change action equation, I was reminded to return to the 12 Intelligences Discovery Tool, that I had developed to map observations of the city through the lens of the 12 Intelligences.

This is a tool I have used with my clients like Durant, as well as during Beyond Resilient Trainings to map capacities of Trainees and for taking readings of prototype communities like Findhorn.

In fact, I used the CCC19 conference as the context to review the effectiviness of  the Integral City 12 Intelligences and assessed how the CCC19 experience demonstrated the value of the set of “rules” that support each intelligence.

The assessments with comments follow.

In summary, I think we could say that the Contexting Intelligences of Ecosphere, Emergence, Integral and Living were not surprisingly demonstrated the highest ratings.

Individual Intelligences and Collective Intelligences varied depending on knowledge, age and willingness to attend to “Inner Climate” along with “Outer Climate”.

The Strategic Intelligences of Inquiry, Meshworking and Navigating were lowest rated – as the inquiry, action and impact that people were seeking were not well aligned or coherent.

Finally the Evolutionary Intelligence had high awareness but only moderate willingness to demonstrate.

The Discovery Assessment presented below can give Cities places, processes and practical directions for action and impact related to Climate Change and Consciousness – and might offer Charles Eisenstein a more detailed lens to consider cities as Gaia’s Reflective Organs.