Context

Since 2000 I have immersed myself in Integral theory and practice, starting with the works of Ken Wilber, following all the Spiral Dynamics Integral trainings, then starting to apply it to organisational and societal change processes as a self-proclaimed “Evolutionary Change Facilitator”. Through our company Engage! we have engaged organisations from multinational corporations through to small NGOs, school and local communities. In that process I have of course come to learn of and respect many others out there who are thinking and working from an Integral perspective, whether they use that title or not.

From around 2005, I started coming across and slowly exploring the world of sacred geometry and energy in its broadest sense. The books started to fill up the shelves. Then last summer (2007), following a trip to Avebury in the south of England (the location of the biggest stone circle on the planet and said to be the planet’s belly-button to the galaxy), I felt a strong call to give this all more explicit attention, particularly the field of earth energy. I knew that know I had start tuning in to what this all meant and what its implications were for me, my life and my work.

However, my agenda was full for the next four months, so I decided to keep it empty from February this year (2008), and explore what this new phase had to offer. As ever, when one creates space and holds a certain vibration around it, things started to move – rapidly. Without going into details of the journey here, I feel I now a fairly good sense of the basics of sacred geometry and energetics. As well as the books, I have spent time with Marko Pogacnik and Richard Leviton, and will be spending a few days with Drunvalo Melchizedek in September. This August I attended the first Integral Theory in Action conference, and coming back felt a strong need to see if I could connect up these two worlds. Wilber doesn’t explicitly mention sacred geometry in any of his works, as far as I can see. This is what this paper is about. We’ll see where it goes…

 

Holons and Holarchies

The essence of the relationship seems to lie in the concept of holons and holarchies, as originally developed by Arthur Koestler and taken up by Wilber. In its core, it is about parts and wholes. The definition of a holon is something that is a part and whole, and the assumption is that everything is a holon – so everything is both a whole in its own right and part of a bigger whole. Holons then arrange themselves in holarchies, examples being atoms-molecules-cells-multicellular organisms, or letters-words-sentences-paragraphs. So each new level transcends and includes previous levels. This also happens in interior dimensions, where new levels of individual and collective development also transcend and include previous levels.

BOX ON HOLONS ETC

Sacred geometry seems to me to be in its core about the relationship between parts and wholes. In the world of matter and nature, many studies have been carried out into these relationships. One of the seminal works in this area was The Power of Limits, Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art and Architecture (Doczi, 1981). Doczi looks for example at plants, crafts, calendars, animals and philosophies, and discovers the same essential proportional harmonies.  He coins a term to describe the pattern that he finds - “dinergy, the energy-creating process that transforms discrepancies into harmonies by allowing differences to complement each other” (p3). This is a perfect definition of an Integral process, and could well be used to describe what Wilber has done in his great body of work over the years.

In the physical world, these part-whole relationships are easy to measure. The basic composition of “dinergic” relationships is the “golden section, a uniquely reciprocal relationship between two unequal parts of a whole, in which the small part stands in the same proportion to the large part as the large part stands to the whole”  (p2). The relationship is known in mathematics as Phi, an irrational number with no end (close to 5/8). This relationship manifests in a “golden rectangle” (also known as a Pythagorean rectangle) of 5x8 proportions, it creates a certain spiralling form and plays out in the Fibonnaci series of numbers. When organic matter grows, it grows according to these proportions. Doczi reports on many studies that show how people naturally prefer forms in which the parts are in this nature of relationship with each other.

BOX ON PHI ETC

 

Postulate

So I believe that what we have in the golden mean is a mathematical description of the most adequate relationship between parts in a greater whole. In Integral language, this would mean the most ideal proportions in a holarchy. Now, as we can see in Box 2, the Phi number gets more subtle and precise as we move down the Fibonnaci sequence, and never ends. My postulate would be that this is a description of the growing depth and span of a holarchy. So the more levels of holon that transcend and include previous holons in a holarchy, the more refined and naturally supportive of life the relationships between the parts and wholes in the holarchy become. And as we know, it’s turtles all the way up and down…

GRAPHIC???

Integral theory postulates that as a new level of holon emerges it re-arranges the relationships on the levels below, making the holons at that level more functional and bringing them closer to their true purpose and identity, thus enabling them to both be more refined and “agentic”, as well as contributing more effectively to the greater whole, and more “communal”. This would fit the idea of the parts and wholes coming into a more life-supporting relationship with each other, closer to Phi.

To take a simple example – when cells are transcended and included by the container of a molecule, they re-arrange themselves into more specific functions, held by the molecule. They go through another major transformation into greater differentiation and functionality as a cell container emerges to wrap around the molecules, and the same happens to the molecules. And a next step of greater integration and differentiation occurs as the multi-cellular organism emerges.

 

Implications and Investigations

So what? Great question.

There are many further tracks I could take this, making links into the various dimensions of sacred geometry such as the platonic solids, flower of life, energy generation, and looking at that that all tells us about the dynamics of holarchies. However for now I would just like to put this postulate out there and see what feedback it generates.

I have also primarily focused on the exterior perspectives above, as that is where most of the research and writing around sacred geometry has happened. I have a hunch that the same thing works in the interior dimensions (individual holarchies of development, and collective holarchies of fields of relationship). Maybe one day we will actually be able to measure the different energy fields that emerge as these interior fields develop – in fact, we probably already can. Then we could explore whether the resonance of those holarchy fields also matches a golden section proportion – without of course reducing the interior experience to an exterior number.

Why is this relevant to Integral theory? It will add a currently missing dimension, namely a more specific understanding of the dynamics and relationships between parts and wholes in a holarchy.

Why is this relevant to Sacred Geometry? It will locate this wisdom in a well-developed, broader theoretical field, and enable it to see its place in the bigger whole – releasing it by limiting it. This will contribute to taking it beyond what is often perceived to be a new-agey and vague esoteric domain, into a more rigorous and embracing intellectual as well as experiential dialogue – giving it more credence and sharpening our understanding in the process.

So – let me know what you think so far, any connections you see with existing writings, and any questions you think it would be cool to explore.

 

18.08.08

 

The level of our commitment is the measure of our freedom

We are all perfectly imperfect

Just a quick note that the latest issue of the Integral Leadership Review is profiling integral activity in the Netherlands, headed up by the Center for Human Emergence here. Check it out!

We've been through an intense few weeks! Following on from the "releasing our claims" session and energetic dissolution of the Board mentioned in the last blog, we spent two days with Brian and Tom on holacracy, and an afternoon with Terry Patten from the Integral Institute.

When wondering whether to write this, I doubted because of the lack of clarity I had about exactly what I was going to write - but then remembered that that is the beauty of blogging - I can just tell the story and see how it unfolds... 

There is a place of stillness from which everything is possible.
It is the moment before the Big Bang and it is still present and accessible now.

OK, here we go. Feels like the start of a whole new domain of practice...

The first book I wrote was called "Evolutionary Leadership" (currently out in Dutch and looking for publishers in English and other languages), and focused on what an integral approach to facilitating emergence into integral evolutionary consciousness in self, culture and organisation might look like. It focused on the emerging second curve in this graphic:


The book synthesised Wilber, Spiral Dynamics, Theory U, Laszlo, Art of Hosting, Peter Senge etc.

During our recent Art of Hosting Integral in the Netherlands, the following thought crystallised, which had been hovering in the background for a while:

The manner in which our dying paradigms, behaviours and systems are let go of is going to have a major impact on the quality of the space in which the new grows.

When an apple is not picked,  it falls to the ground and rots, fertilising the soil and potentially seeding a new apple tree.

As people in positions of power in our established institutions become increasingly aware that the paradigm on which those institutions have been built is largely inadequate to deal with the rapidly evolving and intensifying challenges of the world around us, there are essentially two paths we can take:

1. We contract into a fear of the unknown, digging ourselves into denial, and lashing out around us to fend off anything that may prove to us that which we do not want to accept, holding on to our old ways for dear life (ironically)
2. We relax into the inevitable, and open up to the opportunities that that may offer, letting go of what needs to be let go of, in order to take the next step

It has become clear to me that an essential part of our Work that does not seem to have been given much attention, is to find out how we can best nurture the natural decay of that which wants to die in such a way that it fertilises and seeds the soil for the new, rather than poisoning the soil with toxic sludge (so the descending curve in the graphic above). This is very different to attacking and trying to destroy the old. It will go of its own accord. It comes from a place of deep compassion and concern for the energetic dynamic-balance of the whole.

As our conversation about this unfolded, I was reminded of much of the great work that we have done in supporting individuals in their dying process, and someone put me on to the work of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. She identified five phases that people go through when they know they are going to die, and also that those around them go through in their grief. The five phases are :

1. Denial: The initial stage: "It can't be happening."
2. Anger: "Why ME? It's not fair!" (either referring to God, oneself, or anybody perceived, rightly or wrongly, as "responsible")
3. Bargaining: "Just let me live to see my child(ren) graduate."
4. Depression: "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"
5. Acceptance: "It's going to be OK."

What I am interested in is how these could play out at a collective level. I remember reading an article once where someone said that individuals when they realise they are going to die get very clear about their life. The author pondered if it would help humanity if we woke up to the fact that we were part of the Sixth Great Extinction on this planet and that our survival was far from guaranteed. Would we then collectively get much clearer about our priorities?

I still notice a lot of denial around me in the formal institutions, and until we start to notice the anger I guess it means we're not far beyond that denial. However, when the anger sets in, it may not look very pleasant. So how do we develop the capacity to help those in relevant positions to flow through these stages in such a way that they leave more fertiliser than sludge behind them? Clearly practices such as Tonglen have a role to play at individual level. However I would love to hear from people who have experience of or ideas about nurturing the natural decay of established and outdated institutions and practices, and ways of supporting leadership in this process go through a transcend and include process.

A part of the context for this for me is the approaching Fifth Night of the Galactic Underworld (as per the Mayan Calendar work of Carl Johan Calleman) - the phase that in all previous eras has heralded the collapse of the dominant civilisational form. The main difference being that in this Underworld it will happen over a period of 360 days (starting mid-November) rather than hundreds or thousands of years. All the signs are lining up so significantly that for a pattern-scanner it would be irresponsible to deny the building evidence.

So thoughts, links, references please, on how we might facilitate devolutionary leadership...

The meaning of life is to discover itself

I just wrote this as part of the preparation for our Global SDi/Human Emergence EuroConfab, and thought it might be good to share. This is a core capacity that we are being recognised for in the Netherlands today.

MeshWorks are one of the core products of SDi and Human Emergence practitioners. A MeshWork is a form of next generation network, where different parties are consciously woven together to serve a higher collective Purpose. What a MeshWork can achieve is way beyond anything that any of the individual parties could achieve on their own.

In a MeshWork, special attention is given to what the specific qualities of the different parties are, how their uniqueness can be enhanced and vitalised through their connection to other unique parties. We release a part by limiting it to its specific place in the whole. The combination of alignment behind one higher Purpose, buy-in to a collective set of Principles, and the uplifting of the identity and capacity of each of the parts, creates a powerful dynamic MeshWork that has a clear identity of its own, is diverse in its make-up, and is rapidly responsive and adaptive to the world around it.

Good MeshWorking requires giving attention to an integral combination of Leadership, Culture and Structure, reinforcing each other and strengthening the fabric of effective collaboration. It is the next emerging form as we explore how to organise ourselves to deal with the complex and urgent challenges we face in the world today.