“The power of love in action: Something happens in the hearts and souls of participants of Constellating for the Collective when we work together in service of a larger purpose for coherence and health of the Whole.”  Diana Clair Douglas

Author Diana Claire Douglas, Meshworker for the Year 2018,  the lead Constellator for Integral City Meshworks and member of Integral City’s Core team will be releasing her new book Whole Systems Design: Inquiries in the Knowing Field in 2022. We are delighted to share an extract from her book, Chapter 6, Doorways into the Collective – which tells the stories of her contributions to both Integral City and The Hague Centre (another luminary of our constellation of Integral City associated organizations arising through the work of Anne-Mare Voorhoeve Meshworker of the Year 2019 also a member of our Core Team.)

Whole Systems Design: Inquiries in the Knowing Field

by Diana Claire Douglas

Chapter 6
Doorways into the Collective

Although I like focusing on Collective Work, I do facilitate all three branches of Systemic Constellation Work.
It took me a while to realize that I could focus on Collective Work no matter which branch of Systemic Constellation Work I was on. Each branch has a doorway into the Collective: Family Constellation Work (with individual clients doing family work) through transgenerational trauma; Organizational Constellation Work through organizations like Integral City and The Hague Center that have Visionary Purposes; and Constellating for the Collective where the starting point is the Collective, and the intention is to shift patterns in collective consciousness towards wholeness and greater Life.

One of the key differences between Constellating for the Collective and the other branches is that Family and Organizational Constellation Work each work with a client, whereas in Constellating for the Collective, no one person is representing the individual or organization as a client. For example, Humanity may be the client, or Society may be the client.

2. Doorways into the Collective: Organizational Constellation Work
A way organizations and institutions move into the Collective Field is through their visions, missions, and responses to societal issues.
Invited to be on the core teams of Integral City3 and The Hague Center4 as lead Constellator, I see that much of my work since 2013 has been to use Constellating for the Collective to guide these Visionary Organizations to take the steps necessary in manifesting their Visions and Purposes. In both these examples, their Purposes are about Humanity (as a collective) contributing to a planetary shift towards Life.
Both Integral City and The Hague Center have experimented with what kind of organization they might be. Marilyn Hamilton, Integral City’s Founder, calls “Integral City Meshworks a Social Enterprise—and its working model is constellating/meshworking.” The Hague Center calls itself “an organ’ization and Co-creative Collective,” and as a legal entity, it is a Foundation in the Netherlands.
The two organizations work closely together, and a few of us are members of both core teams.

Integral City (IC), as an organization, was founded by Marilyn Hamilton. Why cities? In the developed world, 90% of the population is in cities. In the developing world, 50% of the population is in cities. Every threat to Gaia has coalesced in cities. We are at a choice point—to become Gaia’s reflective organ5 or to go extinct as a species.

Integral City is reinventing how cities work. We say, “Out beyond the traditional city, driven by transactional exchanges of the basics of life; out beyond the Smart City, driven by technology and industry; out beyond the Resilient City, driven by ecological and eco-regional inter-dependence; lives the Integral City, driven by the flex and flow of cultures, consciousness, and care.”6An integral city is a whole living system which Marilyn calls the “Human Hive.” As the beehive is for honeybees, the integral city is the collective habitat for the human species.

Click here to download the whole Chapter 6 as a pdf.

Whole Systems Design: Inquiries in the Knowing Field is an inspiring book of stories, conversations, and interviews about serving Life through a powerful process: Constellating for the Collective. Author, Diana Claire Douglas provides hope as well as methods for addressing the many issues we face as a global community in this 21st century. She writes for anyone who wishes to work from a whole systems perspective, honouring the complexity of All-Life.

Opportunities to engage with Diana Claire Douglas include the following:

  • Host Diana Claire with your group or organization
  • Join Training Programs in Constellating for the Collective
  • Become involved with systemic research at The Hague Center for Field Inquiry

Diana Claire Douglas – find out more at these websites: