The Key to decoding the Integral City Maps is the Master Code:
- Take Care of Yourself
- Take Care of Each Other
- Take Care of this Place
- Take Care of this Planet
This Key is symbolized with the Integral City Compass which decodes the 12 Intelligences we need to explore Integral City Maps with ever-increasing circles of care.
Each of the five Maps for the Integral City, gives the Map Reader a different territory to explore. Because all the territories are interconnected, the Maps shape-shift from one form to another, leading the Reader through a labyrinth of city patterns, that taken together with the Master Code Compass, cohere into a whole.
City explorers who have taken journeys with the Principles of Living Systems and/or the language of PatternDynamics(TM) start to notice that Integral City Maps and Intelligences belong to this cluster of systems that decode patterns of life.
In the last six blogs, we have explored the language of PatternDynamics(PD) in order to translate its symbols into the language of Integral City Maps. In many ways we could say PD provides six archways (marked by a PD symbol) to the different territories of the city.
In this last blog (of this PD series) we enter the archway to the heart of the city – it’s Source. Here we recognize the territory of City Spirit which we explored in Map 5.
The Source Pattern is foundational to all the other patterns, emerging from evolutionary consciousness: order, identity and purpose.
Like the other PD patterns, the Source Pattern has seven qualities, but as a meta-meta-pattern each of these qualities derives from a marriage of Source with the other 6 PD meta-patterns plus Source itself.
Energy: The Energy Pattern emerges from the conjunction of Source with Rhythm. The Energy Pattern is foundational to the city’s many ways of moving, expressing and evolving. It is evident in the exchanges of Map 3 and the involutionary, evolutionary cycle of Map 5. Energy appears as first cause for the Evolutionary, Integral and Living Intelligences and Emergent result in the experience of Love.
Resource: The Resource pattern is the child of Source and Polarity. In Map 5 Resource is the centre of the city’s Grace, Place and Space and the emergent quality of core values, Beauty, Goodness and Truth. The Resource Pattern reminds us that the city as Gaia’s Reflective Organ adds value to our planet’s evolutionary journey.
Transformity: The Transformity emerges naturally when Source inspires Structure. It is clearly the pattern of Map 4’s spiral of complex organizational structures. Transfomity is a source of hope, reminding us that evolution has been experimenting with 14 billion years of complex transformations, to which human systems, including the city, belong.
Power: The Power Pattern, emanating from the collision of Source and Exchange, represents the Big Bang on Earth. As such it lies in the centre of Map 1 and drives the “prime directive” behind all the cycles in all the other Maps. While Energy is multi-directional, Power is multi-cyclical with a central purpose or centered focus (like the beehive’s 40 pounds of honey). The Power Pattern of the Integral City will eventually produce the city’s purpose. And when 10% of Gaia’s cities discover and start to live into their purpose, we will have a Planet of Cities in service to all life on Earth.
Autopoeisis: The Autopoeisis Pattern “makes itself” from combining Source with Creativity. Building on Transformity and Power, Self-making that is adaptive drives the emergence of the nested holarchy of city systems in Map 2, the emergent capacities in Map 3 and the increased complexity of organizations in Map 4. This pattern recognizes how the city as a human system is constantly making and re-making itself through the grand cycles of Spiritual Sourcing and Re-Sourcing in Map 5.
Pattern: The Pattern Pattern is Source’s grand Dynamic Dance with itself on the Universe’s dance floor. We notice the choreography of patterns in each of Integral City’s Maps. Tracing the Patterns reinforces our appreciation of the miracle that “we get order for free” (1). The PD Book of Patterns, records how Life has chosen to repeat its most productive Patterns at every level of scale in the human systems of the city.
Void: The Void Pattern is Source reflecting on Source. As Source we discover this empty fullness through our meditations, contemplations and other spiritual practices that remind us that we have all evolved from the same Source and will return to the same Source. There is nowhere else to go. Map 5 is a “busy expression” of discovering the Void Pattern in the centre of our Fields of Coherence.
Decoding Integral City Maps, is as simple as accessing the Void through the Source of Source. And as we practise living with the Patterns of Aliveness that dynamically run through the territories of our bio-psycho-cultural-social lives in the Integral City, we expand our Practise of the Master Code, so that we can evolve to be stewards of a fully conscious, sustainable and resilient Planet of Cities.
Reference:
1. Kauffman, S. A. (1993). The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution. New York: Oxford Press.
[…] Autopoeisis Pattern “makes itself” from combining Source with Creativity. Building on Transformity and Power, Self-making that is adaptive drives the […]
I was reflecting (as Gaia’s Reflective Organ is wont to do) that Autopoeisis is a “for better or worse” pattern which as I understand it can foster or impede innnovation.
Could there be value in exploring expressions of the patterns which both facilitate/foster and impede/hinder innovation, evolution, involution, and other processes in Living Systems? Have you or has anyone else done this?