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.

Celebrating Our Cities as Power Places of Recalibration in 2022-23

If you want to improve the health of a system, connect it to more of itself”.

Margaret Wheatley

December 21 marks the start of what Integral City calls the Power Quarter (from December 21 to March 20 ). We have seen signs in 2022 that a Transition is emerging because people are discovering connections that make a difference across the street, in their communities, around the world and deep in their souls.

Cities Contain Spiritual Energy

The spiritual qualities and cultures that are revealed in quadrants and levels become integrated when we see the city is a container for spirituality (… that contains the panoply of gods, goddesses and God that have emerged from various spiritual traditions). [This] container is a holonic structure that holds qualities, elements, configurations and other wholes … of Self, Culture, Nature.

Hamilton, M. 2018. Integral City 3.7: Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives. Minneapolis, MN: Amaranth Press,LLC p. 13

Scroll to end of newsletter to access Free Resources.

Integral Cities Upshift: Recalibrating,(Re)Connecting,

Transitioning

I have been observing 2022 as the Year of Transition and the Year of (Re)Connection. But for cities it may well turn out to be the Year of Recalibrating – or at least the Year of the Eve of Recalibrating.

Recalibration is built into the fundamental Integral Intelligence – it occurs as the 4 quadrants upshift from one level of complexity to another.

Recalibration is necessary to consolidate and integrate our new learning – because we don’t just ascend a new step on the staircase of development and everything we have ever known stays the same.

Rather we must reinvent our operating system to benefit from our new learning. This is necessary for effective capacity building for Meshworking – the Intelligence that responds to life conditions by combining the most appropriate operating system with the most appropriate structures.

Recalibrating asks us to learn how to live at a new frequency of life. (Recalibrating is necessary as we traverse the Power scaffold from Power Over, Power With and Power As – whether that be for individuals or for organizations.) But when we do the work, we will be able to look in the mirror as an individual or look at the group or organization as a collective and see that we have responded to the change of life conditions that brought about the transition from one era or one epoch to another. We will see the path that Evolutionary Intelligence has taken.

So, when we look back at 2022 and recognize the transition points and pattern reconnections that have emerged, we may be able to  recognize that our recalibrations were necessary and inevitable in the grand process of change. Recalibrating will open doors to Cities of Peace, to the Unitive Narrative and to Living Cities serving a Living Earth. (Read more here.)

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In 2022, the unexpected return to war in Europe has been a shock of disconnection to generations of Europeans who had thought they would never again witness conflict at this scale on their landscape. The ripple effects of the invasion by Russia into Ukraine have upended energy markets, food distribution, manufacturing costs, quality and cost of living , climate change strategies, regenerative economies and probably most of all, mutual trust and respect between peoples. It has given licence to other rebels (like North Korea and Iran) to test the strength of moral constraints of a range of human ecosystems from COP26 and COP 27, to NATO, to the EU and to the United Nations.

As time moves us from 2022 to 2023 we feel the dissonance of our disconnections, while at the same time we sense a deep longing for the promise of coherence in new and re-connections (if not recalibrations).

For all the lessons of incoherence and uncertainty that Covid 19 has taught us – perhaps one of the most valuable lessons is to watch how the biosphere of the virus has transmuted and transformed to evolve new ways of connecting so that it can survive. Contagion itself has been modified so the severity of symptoms we experience is less, even as the propensity for spreading the virus widens and speeds up. These are hard lessons when viewed as biology through a micro-lens – but may be very fruitful lessons when viewed as metaphors through a macroscopic lens. How can we make peace contagious and even imagine Peace Rooms in our cities?

Does 2022 mark the year when we quietly admit that “something profound has to change?” Have we become ready enough to disconnect from life-destroying behaviours so that we can connect in new ways for actions that support Life, Aliveness and Evolution? (Read more here.)

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Does 2022 mark a Time of Transition on an epoch scale? This year seems not just to be shifting through first order change.

This year seems to have all the indicators of second order change.

Are we living through not just a change of season but the transformation into a different era?

While the traditional media report an unremitting litany of change negatives, tragedies, undoings and threats –  around the world clusters of humans (from small to medium to large groups) are experimenting with how to human well (better, best …) (see the list and click on what they are doing here).

In scattered seedbeds we are incubating whole new phases of becoming. We seem to be moving from inward-focusing- individual-thriving-beings to outward-focusing – if not outreaching – and collectively emerging swarms of intelligence.

Could this indicate we are maturing from the species stage of competition that brought us to the state, where we finally can open to stages of cooperation and collaboration because the challenges we have created for Earth, biodiversity, climate change, and pandemic have created sufficient dissonance in our life systems that our very survival is at stake?

Dare we recognize that life can be good, optimistic, and even hopeful?

It seems that the people who belong to these enabling practices – even movements – are beginning to notice that we are no longer practicing on our own. Other groups that we can see across the street, across town, in the same bioregion – and even on the other side of the world, resonate with what we are learning, how we are living, and where we are aiming to go.

Is it possible this is not a temporary transition – but one that is gathering enough energy, information and matter to contribute to a quantum shift?

Is our beloved Spaceship Earth – Gaia – waking us up with seeming disasters of climate change, pandemics and war – so that we realize that for the survival of humans and all life, we MUST change?

Is the Sacred Season 2022, the shift-space/time-wave for body, mind, heart and soul to build into a tsunami of epochal change? Are we ready to start the recalibrating learning journey for the next 100 years?

Living Cities: Earth – a Nascent Emergent City Mycellium

In 2022 we recognize the Collaboratory of Living Cities: Earth as it integrates leaders and institutions worldwide in a global initiative that serves cities through their 4 voices and future generations (unto the 7th). The LCE seed team (and growing core team) is facilitating and AQtivating an Overview Effect for all the energies and strategies regenerating Aliveness in cities and ecoregions.

LCE intends to bring a special wave of energy to growing an ecology of city associations that are using new media to share how cities thrive wholistically when connecting to the living, emergent mycellium of Caring for Planet/Place/People/Person.

As the nodes and connective strands in the network of Living Cities: Earth become visible to one another, LCE will make Living Cities the norm for children, families and all the 4 Voices of the city. LCE imagines that trauma and conflict can be resolved in Living City Peace Rooms and Fully Alive Regeneration Hubs.

Living Cities:Earth intends to meet people where they are at, to support humaning well in harmony with all Nature. The collaboratory begins with an Infograph that captures the people and places who sit in the grand question: 

How can who, lead whom, to do what, with what group of people, where, for what purpose?

Read more and view the Infographic here.

Integral City Meshworker of Year 2022: Jude Currivan

Book Preview: The Story of Gaia

The Story of Gaia provides the scientific and spiritual foundations to create a unitive narrative with which all human systems – including their habitats – can resonate. The value of this book is immense – explaining the evolutionary path of our multiple intelligences (as Integral City calls our GPS), our Integral City maps and the Master Code of Care that holographically nests our caring relationships for self, others, place and planet. Currivan’s explanations of genetic evolution may even point to the roots of the seeming universal patterns we have called the 4 Voices of the City (citizens, civic managers, business/innovators, civil society).

The Story of Gaia offers a foundation for appreciating how Gaia has evolved human systems to serve her evolutionary capacities – perhaps as James Lovelock suggested as Gaia’s Reflective Organs? If we truly appreciate the scientific evidence, gathered by Jude Currivan, we would do well to attune to each chapter as she invites us to do throughout the book. With such spiritual awareness we can never doubt the immensity of connections that interrelate humans to the wholeness all life. We have been in-forming for 14 billion years and all our relations (including our cities) will continue to evolve as new chapters to The Story of Gaia.

To connect to more of the book Click Here.

Integral City Constellation Learning Opportunities

The Constellation that has emerged through and around Integral City offers many opportunities for learning, engagement and deepening your practice(s). The table below opens doors that are daring, demanding and delightful. We invite you to push open any and all of the doors that beckon for your next natural step of learning about, with and as an Integral Citizen, Civic Manager, Business/Innovator, 3rd Sector Leader.

Celebrating Our City Power Places of Recalibration in 2022-23

Change? From What? To What?

Don Beck

In this Power Quarter (from December 21 to March 20 ) starting with the winter solstice we awake to a season where we naturally sense Care, Optimism and Possibility. What changes have you noticed that improve your life? What have you let go of that no longer serves? What have you created that energizes your spirit? How have you collaborated so that a new community has emerged? In what small or large ways have cooperation and collaboration turned up in your life?   Visit us on our Integral City Website and Blog or post a comment about your city interests in our sister-site City Makers– Mighty Network.

The Integral City Constellation Corps Team will be shifting its own configuration in 2023 – retiring this formation to make room for new opportunities. We will also be moving this Newsletter from a quarterly to a semi-annual publication. We are grateful that we have been able to serve Integral City and her Reflective Organ for 11 years in this format and look forward to new openings ahead.

We Wish You Meshful Blessings of this Sacred Season Celebrating the Evolutionary Power of our Planet of Cities …

Marilyn Hamilton and the Integral City Constellation Corps Team

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

Videos, Podcasts

1. Video Interview with Spiritual Activist Alastair McIntosh and Perspectiva here
2. Islands of Calm for Cities, Towns, Villages -Meditation, Marilyn Hamilton leads meditation for Peace Week here
3. Menno Lammers/PropTechforGood Interview with Marilyn Hamilton – Recalibrating Cities by Reconnecting With Nature here
4. Impact Hub Research into Ecosystem Patterns – Interview with Tatiana Glad and Ard Horkijk (Synnervate) here
5. Ecosystems in Madrid – English and Spanish here ; and Event Report in Spanish here.
6. Auke van Nimwegen, Values Match – Misinformation in Covid Times/ War Times
   1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTyrOauzP00
   2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFoUoH3_gg0
7. Chris Cook Interview with The Alternative – Non-Domium Sharing
8. Systemic Constellator Website Links
   1. Katherine Curran https://www.mnconstellations.com
   2. Jan Jacob Stam  https://www.janjacobstam.nl
   3. Karl-Heinz Rauscher  https://www.dr-rauscher.de
   4. Bruce Nayowith  http://serviceoflife.info/constellations/csindex.html
   5. Diana Claire Douglas  https://centerforfieldinquiry.org
   6. Knowing Field Designs https://knowingfielddesigns.com
   7. The Hague Center for Global Governance, Innovation, Emergence https://www.thehaguecenter.org

2. Books

1. Henry Metink’s Journey with Wheel Barrow to Paris to make Earth Heritage Site – Book (Dutch)- here
2. Why Relationships Matter – Guardian Books – here

3. Articles

1. Kosmos – Unitive Narrative: A new lens to SDG’s
2. Link to Evolutionary Leaders Edge News – read the update from June here
3. Amsterdam Impact Hub – The Practice of Ecosystem Building
4. EarthWise Newsletter from Dr. Anneloes Smitsman
5. Capital as Force for Good Executive Summary
6. Are human cities driving evolution?
7. Bees at Bus Stops – Turning Bus Shelter Roofs into Gardens
8. Banning Artificial Turf because of forever chemicals
9. The Future of Cities

4. Integral City Blogs

1. 1. Science & Spirit of Commoning Well in Community
   2. Canadians Remember Queen Elizabeth, 1st Nations, Governor General, PM
   3. Alternative Editorial: A New Feel for Power
   4. Book Review: The Story of Gaia
   5. From Master to Meta to Mondo?
   6. Time of Transition, Transmission, Transforming, Transmuting
   7. Meshworker of the Year 2022: Jude Currivan, WholeWorld-View
   8. Re/Dis Connect
   9. Recalibrating
   10. Integral City Global City Collaboration 2022

5. Newsletters Past Issues 2022 and 2021

• Integral City Reflective Organ – September Equinox 2022: Gaia Placecaring System
• Integral City Reflective Organ – June Solstice 2022: Living and Dying for Gen7
• Integral City Reflective Organ – March Equinox 2022: Fact, Fake, Fantasy
• Integral City Reflective Organ – December Solstice 2021: Rejoice, Research, Regenerate

6. Integral City MetaBlog 2022 – A Synthesis and index of all Integral City Blogs from 2022