Elisabet Sahtouris – who wrote the Foreword to Edition 2 of Book 1, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the human hive – contends that humans have evolved the 3rd great leap for evolutionary complexity.

The first happened with the emergence of nucleated cells, the second came with the emergence of multi-celled creatures, and the third is cities. She points out that each of these cycles goes through similar growth phases from youthful competition to mature cooperation and trans-unit collaboration.

As humans are able to gain “overview” insights from space and understory images through the microscope, we are starting to see that we have a role to play in service to each other and all life. Necessarily, we are coming to understand what most indigenous worldviews have taught for millennia – that humans have not only impressive adaptive capacities – but that we need to recognize that we must adapt equally impressive response-abilities in service to each other, our habitats and the planet.

If we can now use science to support what spiritual systems have taught for so long – that we are not just ON Earth – but have been evolved WITH other beings on Earth. In fact, our very substance shows us we ARE Earth. AS Earth we must learn to respect the lineage of our ancestry. If we cannot comprehend our vital and inextricable relationship to Earth, then we are destined to forget how energy and life flows through us.

If Gaia has evolved us for her purposes as Gaia’s Reflective Organs, then we must RE-MEMBER ourselves as interdependent with the whole ecology of living systems (seen and unseen) with which we have evolved.

What is preventing us from recognizing and daily affirming our belongingness to Gaia is becoming a series of entrenched blockages that are showing up in Earth life as deep shadows. Humans are experiencing them as a quadrivium of traumas.

Upper Left Quadrant – holds psychological trauma of mental dis-ease, depression

Upper Right Quadrant – holds biological trauma of zoonotic dis-eases like covid19, Ebola, HIV/Aids

Lower Left Quadrant – holds cultural trauma of racial tensions and injustices

Lower Right Quadrant – holds systems trauma of climate change, and resource depletion

If Gaia has invented us for a life-giving purpose now is the time for us to name, claim and re-frame the dissonances we have created by ignoring her calling and intentions. If cities are to serve as Gaia’s Reflective Organs, we must call all our Intelligences together to evolve out of our blocked spaces into a new space-time-heart flow that is based on Gaia’s respect and care for life.

This blog series is an inquiry into Right-Sizing Cities.

The series includes: