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.)
Leave A Comment