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.

As the prime author, Spirit was a guiding energy that revealed the 12 Integral City Intelligences, 4 Voices, Master/Gaia Code and made the astonishing connections between the living systems of the species homo sapiens sapiens with the species apis mellifera that suggested the reality of the “human hive”. Spirit was behind every idea, each word and all the chapters of Books 1 and 2. Yet, as many readers pointed out, although Spirit was a major actor in Book 2’s first chapters describing the “Knowing Field”, Spirit was not explicitly honored with its own chapter. So, in this third book I share my thoughts on how Spirit is waking up the human hive through the involutionary and evolutionary cycle that manifests care in our cities through beauty, goodness and truth.

Hamilton, M. 2018. Integral City 3.7: Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia’s Human Hives. Minneapolis, MN: Amaranth Press,LLC p.1

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Gaia Breathes, Gaia Learns, Gaia Fruits

Our universe started with a Big Breath (not a Big Bang) – so affirms cosmologist, Jude Currivan, author of The Story of Gaia.

And from that breath released over 14 billion years ago, in-formation has guided matter and energy to manifest all life – including this planet and all she has created.

Gaia has ancestors in all the cosmic beings who have birthed the circumstances (life conditions) and elements that have enabled life on our planet to emerge. From the elements of Fire, Water, Earth and Air we enjoy the blessings of microbiota, mycelial webs, plants, insects, animals. Indigenous narratives tell also of the unseen beings who populate the energetic fields of all the elements – beings who have not incarnated but exist in dimensions long available to spiritual adepts and now being glimpsed through the micro and macro technologies of science.

As a child of the Universe, Gaia has learned from the rhythms of breathing in and breathing out, expanding and converging, discovering across eons of time patterns that we admire as Beauty, Truth and Goodness.

How do humans discern and appreciate the grand patterns that have birthed our species? (Click to read more here.)

Might we change our assumptions that cities have been created by humans? Perhaps they have been evolved by Gaia as organs to enable consciousness at a scale that upshifts Gaia’s intelligence?

Humans as a relatively young species have imagined that we control the world. If we are in service to Gaia, it must be we who create capacities that have value. But what if we reversed this story of origination and manifestation and considered that Gaia herself has evolved us and all our human artefacts?

James Lovelock proposed that humans were Gaia’s Reflective Organs. And I have suggested that cities are her organs, organizations are her organelles and humans are her cells. Each of these is a fractal design with a symbiotic relationship within an organic holarchy.

With human delusions of separation and control, is it possible we are missing the Nature of our nature as children of Gaia – that she is our Mother and our grand Ancestor. It is trite to say that we wouldn’t exist without the planet from which our life has evolved. But perhaps it is dangerous to deny that we are not only dependent on our Mother but are being progressively shaped by her to be effective reflective organs, organelles and cells?

The explorations of Integral City have offered maps, voices, intelligences as patterns that cities reveal when viewed through a complex, adaptive, living, integral, evolutionary lens.

But let us try a new thought experiment – what if cities are “fruiting bodies” – evidence of two fields running parallel to one another – one spreading below the horizon like mycelial webs and the other accumulating above the horizon in morphic fields.

The metaphors for cities have often related to their vast complexes of infrastructures for water, sewage, food, transportation, communications – the movement and manifestation of all the resources necessary for collectives of human systems to co-exist with one another within a bounded space (visible from satellites as the light energy emitted from human activities.) Mechanical metaphors calling forth bricks and mortar, street corners, people moving systems, financial hubs, trading markets, etc.

However what happens if one steps away from the mechanistic human centric metaphors of cities into the realm of energetic fields? (Click to read full article here.)

Gaia Amplifies Intelligences in the Integral City

… the qualities of the amplified intelligences we see emerging in the city are tetra+-arising with impacts in all the AQAL quadrants regardless of how you parse them – integral mindsets: subjective, intersubjective, objective, interobjective; or Gaia’s reflective organs: person, people, place, planet; or City Voices: Citizen, Civil Society/3^rd Sector, Civic Managers, Business/Innovators.

These intelligence capacities may be manifesting the qualities of the Kosmic Mind – and call us to not only consider the trajectory of capacity development from ego to ethno to regional to planet, but to consider the quantum leap from Patrick Geddes’ Think Local/Act Global to Currivan’s proposition: Think Cosmic, Feel Global, Act Local – a more wholistic evolutionary reframing. …

As the VUCA world has demanded that we gain capacities that enable cities (and all their sub-wholes of individuals, families, neighbourhoods, workplaces, communities (Map 2)) as complex adaptive living systems to expand their intelligences, it is natural – not artificial – that the GPS of city intelligences evolutionarily matures….

Whatever name we give it, this intelligence is ALIVE and it calls us to be more of who we have been in an AQAL way. Clare Graves would point to our life conditions and the dissonance they are causing in our lives – necessitating learning on a scale and at a speed that has never been necessary or possible before….

I first wrote about the 12 Intelligences for cities in Book 1: Integral City, Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive (described on the website here ) . They are embedded in the Integral City Global Positioning System (GPS) – clustered into 5 Sets of intelligences that are pictured as bezels on the GPS Finder: Contexting, Strategic, Individual, Collective, Evolutionary. …

By examining the Integral City Intelligences in syntony with other open system analyses, like the Chopra Artificial Intelligence Set we create a scaffold for applauding, nourishing and encouraging the amplification of all Intelligences. We also open an inquiry into how Integral City Intelligences will be amplified by many other expansive living intelligences that are arriving from the discoveries of the Intergalactic Telescopes, Hadron Collider and Deep Evolutionary Cosmologies (like Jude Currivan’s The Story of Gaia).

As we use the GPS tool/metaphor in this expanded way, we are essentially recalibrating it from an analogue through a digital to a quantum GPS.

And this gives us Power way beyond domination of self/other/places/planet or even expressed as co-creating with self/other/places/planet. It gives us Power to co-exist AS self/other/places/planet. We learn deeply we are part of Nature. And Life asks us to continue to Evolve and Amplify so that Aliveness is a benefit for all Life, seen and unseen.

(Click here to read the full article.)

Integral City Network of Year 2023: Global Ecovillage Network

Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) is Integral City Network of the Year 2023.

The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) catalyzes communities for a regenerative world. GEN is a growing network of regenerative communities and initiatives that bridge cultures, countries, and continents.

GEN builds bridges between the 4+1 Voices of the City – that GEN names as policy-makers, governments, NGOs, academics, entrepreneurs, activists, community networks and ecologically-minded individuals across the globe in order to develop strategies for a global transition to resilient communities and cultures.

GEN’s International Purpose is to link and support ecovillages, educate the world about them, and grow the regenerative movement – to inspire, scale and facilitate communities and people from all walks of life to become active participants in the transition to a resilient and regenerative human presence on Earth.

GEN’s International role is to provide global platforms, voice and coordination to help the network achieve its vision and mission.

Vision

The Global Ecovillage Network envisions a world of empowered citizens and communities, designing and implementing their own pathways to a sustainable future, and building bridges of hope and international solidarity.

Mission

To innovate, catalyze, educate and advocate in global partnership with ecovillages and all those dedicated to the shift to a regenerative world.

Goals

To advance the education of individuals from all walks of life by sharing the experience and best practices gained from the networks of ecovillages and sustainable communities worldwide.
To advance human rights, conflict resolution, and reconciliation by empowering local communities to interact globally, while promoting a culture of mutual acceptance and respect, effective communications, and cross-cultural outreach.
To advance environmental protection globally by serving as a think tank, incubator, international partner organization, and catalyst for projects that expedite the shift to sustainable and resilient lifestyles.
To advance citizen and community participation in local decision-making, influencing policy-makers, and educating the public, to accelerate the transition to sustainable living.

GEN’s Last Decade of Service to Local Communities

Over the past ten years the Global Ecovillage Network has developed a transformative package or suite of programmes, tools and resources that assists local communities in transitioning to a fully sustainable, regenerative and climate resilient future. This includes a range of courses and webinars focusing on:

GEN’s Climate Resiliency Community of Practice. For the past year and a half the Global Ecovillage Network has been engaged in a global process, with 20 participating ecovillage communities, from all of the continents to determine what we can do to prepare for and create Climate Resiliency as humanity moves ever closer to planetary breakdown and faces an increasing frequency and severity of multiple climate disasters – many of which are already impacting our communities and people all over the planet. We have developed a full set of tools, resources, and planning processes that can be used by all local communities to transition rapidly towards climate resiliency at: www.ecovillage.org/resilience
A set of Regenerative Development Aims or Goals. These are based upon the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals but focus more specifically on community based approaches going beyond sustainability to transitioning to regenerative development. This set of targets and goals can be used with GEN’s Ecovillage Impact Assessment for addressing climate change. at: https://ecovillage.org/sustainable-development-the-ecovillage-way

Congratulations to Global Ecovillage Network, Integral City Network of the Year 2023.

Integral City Meshworker of Year 2023: Gail Taylor

Gail Taylor

Gail Taylor was one of the first quintessential Meshworkers that Marilyn Hamilton met, back in the days of her PhD research, connecting through the Berkana Community of Conversations and then the Art of Hosting and Integral Theory Conferences.

Meshworking was a practice that came naturally to Gail and she and Marilyn had a natural affinity because she so clearly saw the benefits of coalescing self-organizing systems with structuring systems to produce a whole new operating system – one that had a fractalizing pattern that could apply at every scale of human endeavour – from the individual, through teams, organizations, sectors, communities and cities.

“I think I was lucky to be a teacher of very young children as my first career. They taught me so much. We had wonderful fun together growing with and for each other. I asked myself, ‘Can adults still learn?’” That was the first sentence Gail used to introduce herself as a Co-Founder of Living Cities.Earth.

Gail explored human learning through founding The Learning Exchange (1972) for learners of all ages. She discovered that yes! adults could indeed learn. She later created with her husband and design partner Matt Taylor, MG Taylor Corporation (1981) . They learned that CEO’s and other upper management took great joy in working with their employees at all levels of the organization.

Tomorrow Makers (2002) was founded on Gail’s continual coming-to-knowing how starved people were to work and play together. Gail believed, if we are to create new healthy cultures, it will be with all of us intertwined, meshworking our way forward.

We are proud to award (posthumously) Gail Taylor, Meshworker of Year, 2023.

Click here for Details.

Integral City Constellation Events with Power

Integral City Meshworks’ Team Leader, Ellen van Dongen will be offering to our WhatsApp Group 4+1 Voices a monthly gathering to (re)connect our global family to share, inquire and celebrate. “Family are the relationships that lie at the centre and connect across our Human Hives. We recognize one another because we resonate with shared purpose and intention and we love to gather so we can share stories from all our 4+1 Voices.” Send an email to info@integralcity.com if you’d like to join.

Integral City Meshworks as a Partner with Living Cities.Earth in 2024 will be designing and delivering new trainings.

In the Design Room we have the following resources and courses emerging shape:

- - ALIVE series of courses that explore the fractal patterns of Person, People, Place and Planet – including:
    - Lead ALIVE
    - Organize ALIVE
    - Place ALIVE
    - Planet ALIVE

- - PROFILES for Assessing, Connecting and Collaborating with the 4+1 Voices:
    - - 12 Intelligence Discovery Tour – assessing emergence of 12 Intelligences in your City
      - MeshSCAN – revealing 4 Quadrant Perspectives of your City
      - Inner Key – (developed by Dr. Marina Demchenko/Panorama Studio) revealing Subjective/Intersubjective Profile of your City

For inquiries send an email to info@integralcity.com – and stay tuned through www.livingcities.earth

Celebrating Our Cities as Places of Evolutionary Power in 2023-24

“[Let us rebuild] the world as a work of art for all life.”

~ Matt and Gail Taylor

December 21 marks the start of what Integral City calls the Power Quarter (from December 21 to March 20 ). This has been a turbulent year – marked by the great promises (and threats) of artificial intelligence and the insanity of a new war in the Middle East. We marvel at the discoveries of science and spirituality that heal diseases and recoil at the dis-ease that our disconnections from Nature forbode. We almost gave up on COP28’s capacity for a workable result and celebrate the ironic agreement signed in the nation who is the biggest producer of fossil fuels, to “lessen our dependence on fossil fuels”. We cringe at the increasing prevalence of fake news in many channels, while we finally open the doors to sharing the evidence of our ET moment that extraterrestrials have landed. It is easy to focus only on the dark forces that threaten our lives as Gaia’s Reflective Organs – because the traditional media and politicians control those messages. But in the natural emerging connections of mycelial in-formation webs across the planet and practices that release the traumas locked in our morphic fields, we have a duty to share stories – continuously with each other – about the Goodness, Truth and Beauty that surround us, as evolutionary acts of care. The Power of Stories may be even greater than the Power of Truth to lift us up in service to Gaia’s wellbeing – because humans need stories more than food to stay alive (Barry Lopez).

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

Marilyn Hamilton

Founder Integral City Meshworks

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

COP28 Visual https://sustainabilityunlocked.com/discover/insights/COP28-visual-guide
Findhorn Ecovillage EcoTour www.communityecotour.net
Ecovillages as Spaces of Place-Based Transformative Learning
Ecosystems as Infrastructure – a New Way of Looking at Resilience – Kate Orff https://e360.yale.edu/features/kate-orff-interview
Re-imagining London City Hall as Human Hive? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-london-67665286
Bees – Water Collection Intelligence https://www.beelistener.co.uk/water-collection-by-bees/controlling-water-collection/
King Charles – the Earth does not belong to us https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-67588259
Global Silent Minute December 21, 9 pm GMT – Information:

Global Silent Minute website: www.globalsilentminute.orgFor the story of the Global Silent Minute: https://www.globalsilentminute.org/history-of-the-silent-minute/
Flyers, bookmarks and social media banners for Global Silent Minute https://www.globalsilentminute.org/resources/
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/726040717876690
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SilenceAsAction
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/silenceasaction/

9. Integral City Blogs

10. Newsletters Past Issues 2023 and 2022

Reflective Organ Newsletter December Solstice 2023: Gaia Breathes, Learns, Fruits

Gaia Breathes, Gaia Learns, Gaia Fruits

Our universe started with a Big Breath (not a Big Bang) – so affirms cosmologist, Jude Currivan, author of The Story of Gaia.

And from that breath released over 14 billion years ago, in-formation has guided matter and energy to manifest all life – including this planet and all she has created.

Might we change our assumptions that cities have been created by humans? Perhaps they have been evolved by Gaia as organs to enable consciousness at a scale that upshifts Gaia’s intelligence?

Gaia Amplifies Intelligences in the Integral City