Equinotes are published periodically drawing on the Archives of Integral City’s Reflective Organ Newsletter, Blogs, Books and Website. The perspectives of Equinotes weave across: Planet, People, Place and Power.

The theme of this issue is: Practising the Intelligences of Peace…

Peace is an intelligence we can cultivate together.

At the March Equinox, light and dark come into balance — reminding us that peace is not the absence of difference, but the capacity to hold it with awareness. This week, across our Ecovillage Findhorn community, we have been invited not only to think about peace, but to practise it — in our listening, in our relationships, and in the way we show up to life.

In this edition of Equinotes, exploring Peace, we’ve borrowed the heart of community expressed through the Civil Society/3rd Sector .

Over the years, Integral City has explored peace as a living process in the Human Hive — learning to hold polarities, cultivating collective intelligence, and growing our capacity for coherence.

In this Equinox moment, we return to these insights through one new powerful invitation and three practices.

The invitation comes from Judy McAllister’s call to BE PEACE. Judy reminds us that peace is not something we wait for — it is something we embody.

At noon today, many of us paused to practise “being peace” together — a simple act that ripples far beyond the moment.

The three Practices for the Human Hive can be explored through these archive portals:

1️⃣ Integral City Map 1: Loving the Polarities in the City (2013) What fascinates me about Map 1 is that it depicts the many Polarity Patterns in the city and reveals how the interplay of opposites in the city naturally creates energies that arise from the tensions between the poles.

2️⃣ Beehive: Biomimicry Patterns for Integral Cities (2015) It appears that the honey bees have devised a true metabolic economy that actually catalyzes and supports an integrated dynamically peaceful ecology following the rules of complexity.

3️⃣ Celebrating the City Has Evolutionary Impact (2016) Let’s create City Day to celebrate our cities … It has the possibility of connecting silos, stovepipes and solitudes to co-create peace in the city.

May this Equinox invite us not only to seek peace — but to practise the intelligences of peace in ourselves, our communities, and our cities.

Scroll to end of Equinotes to access Free Resources, MetaBlogs 2013-2025.

Who is/are Civil Society? (3rd Sector)

Civil Society (or 3rd Sector) represents the “we” and “heart” of the city. Our typical Civil Society represents cooperatives, foundations, institutes, not-for-profits, NGO’s and other agencies who have invested in the cultural and social capital of the city. They have been created by city fathers and mothers who want to leave a legacy for future generations. At the same time our city leaders are often recognized in our sectors for making plans, implementing strategies and achieving goals….

An active Civil Society is an indication of a progressive and Healthy City and can provide benchmarks for city improvement. Civil Society Executive Directors and staff are inevitably motivated by similar drives and strive to implement and deliver the visions of Civil Society Boards, Steering Committees and citizen grassroots groups.

At the same time, Civil Society is becoming aware that financial asset accumulation is not the sole measure of our success. Quality of life, the development of community, and the recognition of social capital are all gaining in importance to Civil Society. Increasingly sensitive to the gaps that separate the haves and have-nots, we are creating new agendas for social change. We seek ways and means to integrate both heart and mind to create a Healthy City.

Click here to find out more about how Civil Society can:

BE PEACE

By Guest Contributor, Judy McAllister

“Be the change you want to see happen.”

During my first year of living and working in the Findhorn Foundation … [an oft recited part of a meditation that] stayed with me in the 48 years since [ is]:

See Light, Send Light, Be Light

See Love, Send Love Be Love

To those I would add:

See Peace

Send Peace

Be Peace

It is that final line that holds the essence of the invitation now being extended to you. Of late I have had cause to remember the Silent Minute instigated by Wellesley Tudor Pole in 1940 as London was experiencing sustained bombing. The call was simple. Every night at 9pm – as Big Ben sounded its chimes – the populace of the UK was invited to join in a minute of silence. Eventually the BBC broadcast those chimes, so the call went far beyond London. At the end of the war German soldiers spoke of some secret weapon that the British used that they could never quite identify, they simply knew it had something to do with Big Ben.

The Silent Minute, as it was/is known, continues to this day. … I invite you to join many of us in the community …, in holding a minute of silence at 12 noon every day. The only task for one whole minute is to BE PEACE. Not to pray for it. Not to wish for it. Not to send it somewhere it may be needed. Simply BE PEACE.

Exercises to find peace, to experience it, exist in most, if not all, traditions and pathways. One minute is usually not sufficient to do the practice! However, we have all had moments of it in our lives. …Using memory and imagination we can take ourselves back into that moment and bring it alive again. When we do that – all the sensations and good vibes that moment held come into the now. For a minute we can hold it, expand it, radiate it, ground it, be it. We can BE PEACE – wherever we are, whatever we are in the midst of.

If we do this, each in our own time zone at noon, we create a wave traveling around our planet – eventually passing over, through, in and under every square cm – or inch if you prefer – of our world. With each passing day we’d strengthen the wave and grow the presence of PEACE. It will have its effect.

Each of us can do this: commitment, a minute and a memory is all that is needed. Along with a willingness to perhaps look a bit silly if noon finds us in the aisle of the local supermarket! If you would like to participate you are welcome to use this link to set as a daily reminder on your device. You’ll hear the resonant sound of a meditation bowl from our community.

Click here to read the full invitation to BE PEACE published March 19, 2026.

Integral City Map 1: Love the Polarities of Peace

Integral City how do I map thee? Let me count the ways that polarities describe the diversities of Peace… starting with Map 1.

The Polarities in the city that can be traced in Map 1 follow spectrums with directions that can be anchored horizontally, vertically and diagonally. They represent Perspectives, Realities and Worldviews – all of them impact how we manifest and respond to Peace. Here is just one way we can simply name them, just experimenting with one directional anchor for each set.

Perspectives (vertical)

I vs WE
IT vs ITS

Realities (horizontal)

Intentional vs Bio-physical
Cultural vs Social

Worldviews/Values Systems (diagonal – 8 Levels in each quadrant)

Objective Integral vs Intersubjective Integral
Subjective Post-Post Modern vs Interobjective Post-Post Modern

… Map 1 reveals a richly polarized system where opposites both require one another to strengthen their own anchor of expression and also constantly change one another in order for the whole city system to survive. If you love the possibilities that emerge from the polarities of the city, Map 1 shows the evolutionarily adaptable opposites that give a whole new meaning to “pole dance” at a city scale.

Click here to read the full article published February 7, 2013.

Beehive Biomimicry for Smart Peaceful Cities

Some years ago I was introduced to the biomimicry magic of the beehive and was fascinated to learn that apis mellifera – the honey bee – has figured out a system that enables Smart behavior that not only produces energy for the functioning of the hive – but Resilient inter-ecological action that enables renewable resources for the entire eco-region of the hive – helping it to thrive in dynamic Peace.

Paleo-biologist, Howard Bloom, describes these four roles of the bee hive in terms of systems performance that is modulated by what many are now calling the “hive mind”. Like all Smart Cities the bees have developed code that communicates resource data – like modern millennials they prefer a dance-rap code to a digital or spoken mode. They choreograph their Big Data information on a figure 8 design at the door of the hive. Like all Resilient Cities, the bees have measured their Eco footprint and figured out how much energy a hive of about 50000 bees needs to produce for survival – about 20 kg of honey per year.

Click here to find out more about How Biomimicry teaches us patterns for Reslient Peace, published September 3. 2015.

Celebrate the City for Peace

City celebration is an act of Peace-ful appreciation. Like the methodology of appreciative inquiry it will open up a process of discovering who and what the city can celebrate, dreaming what is possible, designing the celebration and implementing the design. Such an act of multi-stakeholder engagement will point the city system into an appreciative direction which will raise the levels of awareness about the assets, benefits and capitals in the city.

Such a City Celebration may be the next step for humans to becoming peacefully city centric. The act of co-creating cultural consciousness will encourage city-zens to own the city through witnessing its value. Such action will not only take back city heritage but may allow City-Zens to claim it for the first time.

This city scale of appreciation could then act as a springboard for larger scales of appreciation and peace at the eco-region and global levels. Perhaps, city celebration can act as a super-ordinate goal that will engender coherence at a scale most people can relate to. And in so doing we may mature the capacity of the human species into more vibrant effectiveness as Gaia’s Reflective Organ for Care and Peace.

Click here to read full blog published September 16, 2016.