This newsletter is published quarterly using a cycle of perspectives on the Integral City viewed from: Planet, People, Place and Power. The theme of this issue is Power.

On a never-ending quest within an ecology of Integral influences, I consider spirituality to be a universal life force that cycles through existence as an involutionary and evolutionary impulse. The first stage of the cycle, called involution, originates at the non-dual “source” that lies at the center of existence where it descends from the invisible to the visible; from the immanent to that which is presenced; from the unmanifest to the manifest. The second stage of the cycle, called evolution, attracts all creation back to source so that it ascends from the manifest to the source; from the visible to the invisible; from gross physical bodies to subtle energetic bodies to causal energetic bodies to non-dual source. Spirituality is not outside of city creation but embedded in it as the source, field and resource of its core.

Hamilton, M. (2018). Integral City 3.7: Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives. Minneapolis, MN: Amaranth Press,LLC p. 10; Map 5

Scroll to end of newsletter to access Free Resources.

Integral City Ecosystem:

10 Years Incubating Gaia’s Human Hives

10 years ago, Integral City sponsored our first major outreach project after the publication of the Book 1 in the Integral City book series (2008, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive).

We called our online initiative Integral City 2.0 Online Conference or ELab 2012 for short. Before Zoom was ubiquitous, we used the Meeting Maestro platform to design and deliver a 30-day online lab. Each of 4 weeks featured 3 of the Intelligences explored in Book 1, interviewing Thought Leaders, Designers and Practitioners related to each Intelligence.

You can find the details of the conference proceedings in these (free downloadable) publications of A Radically Optimistic Inquiry into Operating System 2.0.

Executive Summary(85 pages)
Interviews Appendices A1-12(659 pages)
Harvest Weeks 1-4 / Days 1-12 / Appendix A13(32 Pages)

We remember with affection and appreciation (and not a little awe at our hutzpah) the doors that we opened at that time, introducing the world to the Thought Leaders, Designers and Practitioners of Integral City’s 12 Intelligences.

We could never have succeeded with this endeavour without the team that gathered to co-create this conference.

It is heart-warming to report that the majority of that team has remained together as Gaia’s Human Hive Integrators – affectionately shortened to DG’s – the Divine Gaians and our invaluable Constellation Team. We have convened monthly for more than 10 years holding the space for Integral City to incubate and mature our various callings to be shared, supported, nurtured and appreciated.

At the end of 2021 when the post COP26 world is still gasping and grasping for ways to respond and reverse Code Red, our DG’s have good reason to celebrate a growing lineage of Care, Complexity and Capacity for Gaia’s Human Hives. So many manifestations have come from our relationships to Integral City and one another. This powerful team has founded organizations and websites, authored books, blogs and videos, created games and spawned their own communities of practice. (Not surprisingly, 4 of these talented co-creators have been honoured as Integral City Meshworkers of the Year – Beth Sanders, Diana Claire Douglas, Ellen van Dongen, Anne-Marie Voorhoev.) As a result, it appears that we have co-created the conditions for an Ecosystem of Integral City Practice.

(For the full editorial and description of the work of our Constellation Team click here.)

In this sacred season it is a wonderful time to rejoice in the dance of integration and differentiation that flows through our Integral City DG’s and the ecosystem that is emerging.

The inspiring mystery of how we DGs continue to flow and impact each other and the world, augurs well for our intention to create Integral Cities as Gaia’s City Regeneration Hubs (the next stage arising from our Schooling for a Planet of Integral Cities).

I can sense the Overlighting Evolutionary Impulse (that lies at the centre of our Integral City GPS) calling us together into a global garden seeded by many co-creative expressions of local and trans-global manifestations. We are incubating a whole seedbed of organs (Gaia’s Reflective Organs!) reading and willing to collaborate with other regenerative ecosystems.

We invite you to celebrate the Integral City breakthroughs from 2021 – click on the links in the full editorial. Appreciate the many ways we have lived into our Master Code of Care in the Meta Blog 2021. Then follow us down the many paths to the future we are tracking on all the Integral City Maps as we walk, run, fly and attune to the wellbeing of Gaia’s Human Hives.

Join us at our gateways into 2022. As Human Hive incubators, we are co-creating regeneration energies over the next 9 years, for Integral City to change the climate colour of Gaia’s Human Hives from Code Red into Code Green.

Out Beyond the Smart City, Out Beyond the Resilient City … lies the Integral City … there is a Knowing Field … we will meet you there.

Science & Consciousness – What? So What? Now What?

What?

What happens when you accept the invitation to join the Science and Consciousness Conference, November 14-18, 2021, convened by Ubiquity University’s Chief Innovation Officer, Peter Merry and hosted at Broughton Hall Estate, the home for 1000 years (yes one thousand) of the family of Roger Tempest?

…

So What?

I share the details of our amazing 4 day experience so readers can appreciate the fullness and variety of our experience. (For Gina Lazenby’s sharing of her experience check her blog here.)

And now that I am literally one month into the future beyond that time together, I have paused long enough to glean what this might mean to the understanding of the Human Hive Mind in the Integral City?

Certainly the processes that we experienced at the conference were Integral in their design – tapping into the 4 quadrants of I/We/It/Its. Shifting through the complexities of Ego/Ethno/World/Cosmas. Exploring the roles of Giving and Receiving. Dancing in a meshwork of self-organizing creativity and structuring patterns. Living, working, playing, relating simply and mindfully.
I ask, “If we can control consciousness how can we map it with the Integral City 5 Maps. How do we improve our capacity for leading the 4 Voices of the City?”
As I practise the Islands of Calm Meditation with Subtle Activism every Saturday morning at Findhorn – how could I literally track with the REG the influence each of us might be having on 1000 others?
And for Findhorn who would like to track the change in Consciousness that arises from guests studying in situ or at distance (online) how can we borrow what the REGs teach us and have been adapted by Institue of Noetic Sciences (IONS) to measure the impact of their programs? Or by Heartmath Institute to invite in the global practice of attuning our frequencies to the Earth’s own frequency?
How will becoming conscious of our frequency show humans how we impact, influence and improve the Earth that we recognize as our Mother? How can attunement become something more than wishful hope but be recognized (like Mindfulness is now) as a practise of coherence and wellbeing?
I think that organizations like Integral City and Findhorn Foundation could use these metrics generated by REG to provide the evidence of our impact on people, place and planet -giving us feedback as we live the Master Code of Care. All these scales of life are impacted by collective consciousness – that is WYRD and Wonderful.
I also think this opens us up to a whole new taxonomy of epistemologies and invites us to research into other ways of knowing like Systemic Constellation Work – (and The Hague Centres’ Institute for Field Research into the Knowing Field – represented at the conference by Drs. Anne-Marie Voorhoeve.)

Click here to read the full blog and find out the direction Integral City will take in pursuit of Now What?

Integral City Region of Year 2021: Urban Arena Europe

UrbanA 4 Key Sets Unlock 17 Sustainable and Just City Intelligences

Urban Arena Europe believes that sustainability and justice go hand in hand. Their initiative over the last 3 years collected news and resources on how to create cities that are both sustainable and just. They aimed to support and provide tools for decision-makers, administrators, activists, and other city-makers in their work towards an equal, inclusive, and sustainable future.

They created a platform based on the work done by the EU-funded UrbanA project. UrbanA is a community of individuals and organizations committed to transformative change across Europe.

Resonating with Integral City’s Master Code of Care and 5 Maps and 12 Intelligences, that disclose the shape-shifting nature of a city as a living complex adaptive whole system, UrbanA discovered sustainable just cities are:

Honest

Caring

Regenerative (Robust)

Informed

The 17 keys to #SustainableJustCities are grouped under these 4 “sets” on the sustainablejustcities.eu platform. The keys are 17 elements (or intelligences) which have the potential to unlock sustainable and just cities.

Integral City Meshworker of Year 2021: Jim Garrison

Jim Garrison is the Founder and President of Ubiquity University and producer of Humanity Rising. His passion and the purpose of Humanity Rising is to create a historical gathering of great minds and hearts responding to the pandemic “as a crisis not to be wasted”.

Jim listens to the Evolutonary Impulse that flows strongly through his being. With Humanity Rising, he has cross-pollinated a whole year of deep insights, intricate interconnections and new relationships across the globe. The energy of these discoveries has attracted the Beauty, Truth and Goodness that Jim natrually amplifies in the fields around him. Jim is a real lifeforce of the Human Hive who cannot deny the Evolutionary Impulse he is called to serve. Gaia is a planet better able to nurture her cities as Gaia’s Reflective Organs because of Jim Garrison.

For personal, professional, intelligent investment in Humanity Rising’s initiatives we are proud to award Jim Garrison, Meshworker of Year, 2021.

Click here for Details.

Book Preview: Whole Systems Design: Inquiries in the Knowing Field

Diana Claire Douglas writes in Chapter 6, Doorways into the Collective of her forthcoming book:

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.

…

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.
I have been part of this core team, which has been called a Community of Practice (ICCOP), since 2012. We meet monthly, if not more often, and as a group, we did many Constellations each year until 2017. We now do Constellations irregularly. Through workshops and trainings, the Community of Practice has grown and expanded to be a system of influence in a variety of locations.
As Marilyn said, “Systemic Constellation Work offers an energetically empowering technology that embraces the non-linear, ambiguous, invisible complexity of the Knowing Field for all those in service to the evolution of the city and the Planet of Cities.”7
And another quotation from Marilyn, “Through inviting in the Knowing Field, this situates the Integral City work in the realm of consciousness. We have found this vital in making accessible the energetic qualities of the city at all scales of human systems . . . the Knowing Field gives insights into the invisible aspects of a city that we believe are continually impacting it through energy, habits, lineages, traumas, and wisdom.”8

To connect to more of the book and download the Chapter 6 Click Here.

Upcoming Integral City & Constellation Events with Power Purpose

Learning Line Up (early 2022)

Integral City and City Nestworks are offering a range of courses in 2022. Marilyn will be teaching through Ubiquity University and Beth will be teaching in our Mighty Network.

(Note: Registration for courses at Ubiquity University is through Ubiquity University. Registration for Mighty Network courses is through “Courses” in the Mighty Network. Links are provided below.)

Cities Rising for a Regenerative World (Ubiquity University)

With its roots in the Humanity Rising 2021 Cities Rising for a Regenerative World, this micro-course focuses on human systems at the scale of the city. We define “city” as the human habitat (or “human hive”) at scales from village to megalopolis, embracing the ecoregion in which the city is located. The inquiry embedded in Cities Rising complements other courses in the BRA/MRA, by highlighting the context–cities–in which most humans live, and the contribution cities can make to a Regenerative World.

This is a 6-hour micro course offered through Ubiquity University. Course details and registration can be found on the course page at Ubiquity University. This is an asynchronous, self-directed course you can take at any time.

Beyond Smart (Ubiquity University)

Beyond Smart introduces “practitioners” to just the basics of the Integral City model. You will learn the framework of practices, tools and maps that reveal the common patterns that impact the lives of individuals, organizations and communities within your city. This short course explores three powerful images animating Integral City systems – the integral map, the meshwork and the human hive. You will learn from your own situations (and other student sharings in the Ubiverse Group) how the toolkit guides you beyond models for Urban Ecovillages and Traditional, Smart and Resilient Cities.

Beyond Smart is a 12-hour micro course offered through Ubiquity University. Course details and registration can be found on the course page at Ubiquity University. This is an asynchronous, self-directed course you can take at any time.

Beyond Resilient (Ubiquity University)

Beyond Resilient enables Practitioners, Catalysts and Meshworkers to build capacitating scaffolds so that cities work for everyone. Participants grow their leadership to serve the city to thrive within the Master Code of Care: Caring for Self, Others, Place, Planet.

This course explores the city as the Human Hive and co-creates the conditions for you to catalyze and explore all the Voices who inhabit your spheres of influence – including family, neighbourhood, workplaces, recreation zones, communities, city, and eco-regions.

Beyond Resilient is a 12-week macro course offered for credit through Ubiquity University. Course details and registration can be found on the course page at Ubiquity University. There are two options to take this course:

Asynchronously, in a self-directed fashion, any time you like OR
“Live” with Marilyn Hamilton, Beth Sanders and wonderful classmates. (Recommended–so you have the live experience of community. Next live offering will be September to December 2022.)

Islands of Calm for Global Cities – Monthly City Subtle Activism Meditation (lead by Marilyn Hamilton on 3rd Saturday of Month on a rota of different timezones. Check the Mighty Network for the schedule.

The City Nestmaking Series (Mighty Network)

Three 4-week courses that you can take individually or bundle them together.

All courses are four weeks in duration. All course calls are hosted by Beth Sanders on Wednesdays from noon to 1:30 pm Mountain Time.

#1 City Making (starts January 26, 2022 in our Mighty Network)

We do the work we do, whether paid or unpaid, to improve our cities. To make that work count, it is vital to understand that “city building” looks at only half the equation of “city making.”

To register, “Buy” the course in the Mighty Network.

#2 Working with Tension (starts March 2, 2022 in our Mighty Network)

City life puts us on edge, asking us to learn about ourselves and others and our conflicting values in the city. What if we are not supposed to have the same values?

To register, “Buy” the course in the Mighty Network.

#3 Engaging Inquiry (starts on March 30, 2022 in our Mighty Network)

Cultivate your capacity (and your city’s) to foster adaptation, resilience and transition. We’ll explore how inquiry is a means to ensure vital feedback loops that inform city making.

To register, “Buy” the course in the Mighty Network.

Community of Civic Practice (Mighty Network)

The Community of Civic Practice. is a small group coaching experience hosted by Beth Sanders. This is dedicated time for self-awareness, to explore as individuals and as a small group, the people and civic practitioners we are becoming. We will gather to explore the challenges and opportunities we face while receiving and offering support to each other so we can offer our best selves to our communities and cities, whether our work is paid or unpaid.

The course calls are hosted by Beth Sanders on Wednesdays (March 2, 9, 16 and 23, 2022) from 2:00 to 3:30 Mountain Time.

To register, “Buy” the course in the Mighty Network.

Join Marilyn Hamilton/Integral City for periodic zoom interviews Interviews from the Balcony

Join Beth Sanders/Nest City monthly for free zoom Street Corner Visiting – – 8pm BST – 4th Tuesday of the Month.

Adventures in Reinventing Work was inspired by the 2021 Teal Around the World festival, a self-organized group of volunteers including 11 writers and 14 storytellers came together and worked for many months conducting interviews, writing, and co-creating, to bring this book of stories to you and to the benefit of our collective purpose – to create a sustainable, prosperous future that empowers and uplifts everyone.

This book explores the personal journeys of ordinary people who are choosing to create our future. They have no easy models to follow from our past. They are trying to fix the unfixable. They are paving new paths for us to create a sustainable, prosperous, future that empowers and uplifts all of humanity.

This is a book about real personal struggles for answers, explorers who are knee deep in muddy terrains, navigating their way, falling down all the time, and never failing to rise back up. It is a book of hope. It provides guideposts to help us navigate our journey and gives us inspiration to be as brave and bold as we need to be, to reinvent our future.

Ordering information available at: https://www.tealaroundtheworld.com/book

Celebrating Our Cities as Places of Regenerative Power in 2021-22

Gaia – as our life giving mother, has profound wisdom for all of us.

She only uses the energy needed for all she achieves.

She fits form to function with underlying simplicity, exquisite beauty and intricate precision.

She recycles everything and with no waste.

She shares and in-forms her skills locally and globally.

She embodies collaboration throughout her biosphere; appreciating healthy competition and encouraging holarchic cooperation.

She exults in diversity and knows it to imbue resilience and collective genius.

She exists, evolves and thrives within the wholistic limits and emergent opportunities of her planetary gaiasphere.

– And she’s been doing so for more than four billion years”.

Jude Currivan, 2021

December 21 marks the start of what Integral City calls the Power Quarter (from December 21 to March 20 ). This has been a difficult year where we might often have felt power-LESS instead of power-FULL. Covid has returned with a new fast-spreading variant. COP26 seemed a disappointment. Wild weather seems to augur every climate disaster scenario imaginable. Yet, people have come together through Compassionate Cities, Community Action Networks, Kindness Corners and Positively Empowering Kids. What signs of optimism, capacity building and evolutionary adaptation have you noticed in your community? your city? your bioregion? What new opportunities have surprised you in your work, your play, your recreation? Where have keys to cooperation and collaboration that have been hidden now become visible because we are daring to live the change we want to be and see? Visit us on our Integral City Website and Blog or post a comment about your city interests on our Mighty Network.

Meshful Blessings of this Sacred Season Celebrating Power in our Planet of Cities …

Marilyn Hamilton and the Integral City Constellation Corps Team

PS Here are some FREE resources for uplifting Integral City Power:

Ellen van Dongen, Lifemaps 6 Integral City Scenarioshttps://www.lifemaps.nl/lifemaps-for-integral-city/https://www.lifemaps.nl/en/catalogus/becoming-a-global-citizen-in-a-doughnut-economy/
Peter Merry 3-2-1 of Changing the World https://petermerry.org/the3-2-1-of-changing-the-world
Jorge Garza Medium – Humanity at Crossroads – Regeneration https://medium.com/@jorge.garza/humanity-finds-itself-once-again-at-a-crossroads-9505e8713557
Stop Ecocide Progress Report Sept. 2021https://www.stopecocide.earth/campaigns/view-email/C8I8lYjhSeTqpJBpFs7UEy7AvYUFxrKdqdLRPzskXEvIGKgYWV6cqndI8FK3nJp6my_lmSL1MOBtwAd-Hnbh8ud4pW4XiPE1GuJLo7uNxphDpKH_IMoj-YajjPcHjlPEuQ==?ss_source=sscampaigns&ss_campaign_id=61364c64a5f5402de769c60f&ss_email_id=6137b08102fc5e5fd81ea4fd&ss_campaign_name=ECOCIDE%3A+the+network%2C+the+news%2C+the+story&ss_campaign_sent_date=2021-09-07T18%3A34%3A11Z
Charles Landry 9 Free Books+ https://charleslandry.cmail20.com/t/ViewEmail/r/5BCBE1547B7995E72540EF23F30FEDED/74234A5F9E763FF82C69F821C9DCC086
Ash Pachauri – POP Newsletter https://mailchi.mp/a6617dbd8cc5/newsletter-volume-5-issue-5POP previous newsletters: https://thepopmovement.org/pop-newsletters/
Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas September 2021 Volume XII Special Issue full Digest archives.BRAZIL, KENYA, SOUTH AFRICA, NIGERIA & THE US – Julia Rosselli, RioOnWatch (video available directly
Angelika Pohnitzer, Thesis: Be:Longing in the City – Adult Development and Urban Resiliencehttps://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#starred/CllgCHrfSsTXVGRTnZklPgNQjrRTVnVJmTsjCHkDptzFfZDsTVQJpmHhfxRdxzptlzpnGznxjmg?projector=1
YES! Why Public Art is Good for Cities https://www.yesmagazine.org/health-happiness/2021/12/06/public-art-cities?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=YESDaily_20211207&utm_content=YESDaily_20211207+CID_80db5c536531869ae71cf4eb2106562a&utm_source=CM
Bloomberg: Designing for Care https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-04/what-care-means-in-design-planning-and-architecture
Plastic Bank: We are turning plastic into gold by revolutionizing the world’s recycling systems https://plasticbank.com/about/
Integral City Blogs

7. Newsletters Past Issues 2021 and 2020

8. Integral City MetaBlog 2021 – A Synthesis and index of all Integral City Blogs from 2021

Integral City Ecosystem:

10 Years Incubating Gaia’s Human Hives

(For the full editorial and description of the work of our Constellation Team click here.)

Science & Consciousness – What? So What? Now What?

What?

…

So What?

Click here to read the full blog and find out the direction Integral City will take in pursuit of Now What?

Integral City Region of Year 2021: Urban Arena Europe