Marilyn Hamilton's Blog

Sometimes life delivers a tiny sign that hums with meaning.
Recently, my housemate Judy found a new £1 coin — freshly minted for 2023 — celebrating the humble honey bee. On one side, the portrait of King Charles III; on the other, the intricate design of bees gathering around a honeycomb.

What caught our attention about this coin, though, was something unexpected: the King’s crown was missing. Where the royal crown usually appears behind his head, there was only smooth metal — an apparent minting error that may make this coin rare.

And yet, even before we looked up its potential value, it already felt precious — a synchronicity linking our everyday life with the larger pattern of nature’s intelligences.

The Bee as Teacher

For those of us in the Findhorn community, and especially within the Integral City Honeybee Tribe, the bee has long been a symbol of cooperation, right relationship, and service.
Bees remind us that wealth arises not from hoarding but from pollination — from giving freely and receiving in balance. Their hive is a living city of purpose, with every role essential to the wellbeing of the whole.

How fitting, then, that in this first series of coins bearing King Charles’s image, the Royal Mint chose the Bee — a creature embodying both work and devotion, “Work as Love in Action” in its purest form.

The Missing Crown

In our case, the missing crown seems almost poetic. Perhaps it whispers that true kingship – or kinship – or tribal source — is shared, not worn. The hive has no single ruler; it thrives through the collective intelligences of thousands working as one.

Could it be that this “error” carries an evolutionary message — that leadership in our times is transforming from domination to co-creation, from hierarchy to holarchy?
Perhaps this tiny £1 coin is inviting us to notice the new currency of care: connection, cooperation, and contribution.

A Small Coin, A Great Reminder

Whether or not our coin turns out to be a collector’s rarity, it has already done its real work — reminding us to look with curiosity and gratitude at the signs that appear in our path.
Sometimes, a coin found in the change purse can affirm a lifetime of learning:

that every act of care for the hive adds to the wealth of the world.

Thank you, King Charles III — and thank you, Bees — for keeping the crown light, the honey flowing, and the message clear:
Community is the true currency of the realm.

At IEC 2025, Said Dawlabani stood once again at the crossroads of history and evolution. Known for his work with Spiral Dynamics integral and as author of Second Sapiens (for which I was honoured to write the foreword) and Memenomics, Dawlabani invited us to see today’s upheavals as part of a profound life cycle shift. He named it the Great Obsolescence: the unraveling of three mega-systems — the post-WWII order, the digital economy, and Earth’s climate stability — colliding in a chaos crucible.

With characteristic clarity, Said Dawlabani mapped how the decline of institutions and the disruption of digital platforms have left us vulnerable to manipulation, oligarchic control, and war. From Project 2025 in the United States to shifting alliances in the Middle East, he showed how (Spiral Dynamics i) Red and Orange values dominate when blue governance thins, hollowing democracy into what he called a “zombie state.” Yet, even here, he reminded us that endings are thresholds: decay makes way for something new.

This is where Dawlabani’s vision resonates deeply with AQtivating Soul Power. Both perspectives agree that the turbulence of our times is not merely collapse, but also invitation. Spiral Dynamics integral names the movement into second-tier consciousness, where Turquoise capacities of global governance and Gaian science become essential. Soul Power recognizes the same evolutionary moment as a call to awaken the Heart of humanity — to shift from fear and domination into compassion, coherence, and regeneration.

Together, these lenses reveal the paradox of our age: exponential crises demand exponential responses. Dawlabani sees the need for speed and scale in planetary governance; AQtivating Soul Power insists that such governance can only endure if rooted in Soul, where wisdom, compassion, and wholeness guide collective choices.

The Great Obsolescence Meets AQtivating Soul Power: War, Politics, and Ecology

Aligning with Dawlabani regarding the metacrises that cities face – where institutions are challenged to be effective when they are being run with business models that are not regenerative and thus breakdown wholeness, Integral City seeks technology that is in service to life – that can deepen heart connections and repair separation.

Autocracy, domination and war disconnect cities from Soul Power – and amplify fear while destroying compassion and unity. Dawlabani diagnoses the structural manipulation in the USA politics (e.g. Project 2025 and growing threat of oligarchic control), while through his own Middle Eastern heritage and life connections sees the all too familiar Shia crescent in Iran, Israel’s collapse to the right while wars everywhere are re-setting systems (not the least because of new technologies using AI and drones that have changed the face and increased the precision ferocity of war).

With politics and war trashing city Soul Power, the climate itself seems also to be taking revenge. Dawlabani cites the science of natural degradation – that Rockström’s “Planetary Boundaries” all too clearly reveal – with the crossing of 6 out of the 9 planetary boundaries now a reality.

While Integral City uses the insights garnered from the Integral City Intelligences powered by AI – seeing their connections to the Soul Power (of Beauty Truth and Goodness) – the awakening of natural (nature-infused) intelligences invites the resacralization of human relationships with Gaia. We ask if our planetary crises are overpowering even the exponential capacity of love-based change?

Dawlabani calls forth the second-tier capacities of Spiral Dynamics integral – sketching out Turquoise governance – which would enable global coordination, alignment with ever-expanding speed and scale (instead of being overpowered by it) and connecting the natural intelligence that Integral City points to in  the collective coherence of Soul Powered communities.

Death of Institutions, Birth of Wholeness: Dawlabani’s Second Sapiens and the Soul’s Call

As Dawlabani warned, linear change is no longer an option. The planetary boundaries are breached, institutions are faltering, and technology races ahead of wisdom. Yet this very chaos crucible can be the womb of transformation. When Spiral Dynamics integral’ Turquoise vision meets the awakened Heart of Soul Power, we glimpse a path where exponential change does align with exponential love.

Is it not only the end of obsolete systems — but perhaps the birth of Second Sapiens – the soul-infused humanity we have been waiting to become?

At the Integral European Conference 2025, Dr. Pier Luigi Lattuada invited us into a simple yet radical truth: wholeness is not something to seek — it is already here, always at home. In his keynote on the Triunity Process, he mapped the archetypal patterns of transformation that shape every moment of our lives. His call was both humble and profound: remember silence, attend to the unseen, and awaken to the wholeness that is already happening.

Lattuada described the Triunity archetype (0–1–2–3) as a Rosetta Stone of transformation. Zero represents the void, emptiness, or divine essence. One is individuality — the self that steps onto the stage of life. Two is duality — the field of conflict, polarity, and relationship. Three is integration — the unifying space where opposites are transcended and included in a larger wholeness. This pattern, he suggested, underlies every developmental journey and echoes through spiritual, scientific, and cultural traditions.

With my presentation (and article) AQtivating Soul Power, I have similarly emphasized that transformation emerges when we tune to the deeper field of Source/ Consciousness/Love/Spirit, which is always already present. Just as Lattuada distinguishes between stage and backstage, the visible and the unseen, so too I propose that cities, communities, and individuals thrive when they learn to listen to the backstage guidance of Soul – as the evolutionary manifestation of Spirit (presented in Integral City Map 5). From this Soul (of Beauty, Truth and Goodness) emerges the GPS of Integral City Intelligences that aligns us with coherence, resilience, and evolutionary purpose.

Resonance with AQtivating Soul Power

The resonance between Triunity and Soul Power is striking. Both approaches affirm that integration is not a luxury but a necessity: making the two one, remembering the zero, stepping into the we-space of three. Both remind us that the deepest knowing does not arise from our ego-minds but from being thought by the Self, or in my language, aligning the involutionary current of Source/Spirit with the evolutionary current of Soul Power that is always available when we attune.

When working with cities we are always aware of the wholeness that lies at the heart of “home” – available through the many practices of silence, emptying and mindfulness. Together we are stressing remembering – awakening to what already is.

Both Lattuada and Hamilton draw from archetypal maps – the Triunity of 0-1-2-3 and the 12 Intelligences (GPS) and the 4 voices. These meta-maps offer guides for transformation – patterns that guide growth (while not confusing the map with the territory of the unseen, always, already present.

These maps guide developmental journeys that reveal the states of maturity (ego/child, ethno/self-power; world/critical awareness; and kosmocentric consciousness/alchemical spirituality). At the same time both journeys embrace shadows, wounds, thresholds as portals to new potential.

Such Field awareness shows up in both explorations as visible – before the curtain/veil – and invisible – behind the curtain/veil. These are scintillating awarenesses of coherence and evolutionary impulse that arise through both manifest and subtle dimensions.

I particularly like Lattuada’s perspective “I am thought by the Self” – as it reveals the intimate relationship between Soul self/ and Source Self – which lies at the core of AQ (all Quadrants, Levels, Lines, Types of Wilber’s AQAL model). But it so simply and profoundly moves us beyond simple objective awareness into transpersonal knowing (out beyond the fields of right and wrong).

The exploration and explanation of integration through the progression of 0-1-2-3 reveals the special powers that arise along this journey – where I sense the balance of the 4 Voices integrates into a whole system – like the sets of intelligences in the GPS. The result? A view of evolutionary coherence that seems natural and vitally accessible.

Finally, the practice that both Lattuada and Hamilton celebrate, revalues the power of silence, dialogue and the mystery of the alchemical experience of the evolutionary impulse. All of this underlies the Soul Power that every fractal level of the city yearns towards.

Being Thought by the Self: Transcognition and the Power of Soul

In his teaching, Lattuada names his higher order of knowing transcognition — the shift from “I think” to “I am thought by the Self.” In my framing, this is the very essence of AQtivating Soul Power: opening to the wisdom (and Power) that flows through us, AS us, not merely from us. When we recognize that wholeness is already here, that the archetypal process is already in motion, our task becomes simpler and deeper — to surrender, to align, and to participate.

The Triunity Process and AQtivating Soul Power, both call us to a life where wholeness is remembered and enacted in every moment. Whether in our inner practice, our relationships, or the living systems of our cities, we are invited to hold the zero, one, two, and three together — silence, self, duality, and integration.

In doing so, we discover not only that we are always at home, but that the Soul of the world is already moving through us – as us – guiding us into the integral age.

At the 2025 Integral European Conference, Tomas Björkman reminded us that humanity is standing at a bifurcation point — facing breakdown, oppression, or breakthrough. Through the Inner Development Goals (IDGs), he calls for a global narrative shift: to recognize that solving the great crises of our time requires cultivating inner capacities as much as external solutions. Listening to his vision, I recognized a deep resonance with my own work on AQtivating Soul Power: both approaches insist that inner awakening is not a luxury, but the foundation of collective survival and flourishing.

Tomas Björkman asks, what if the Sustainable Development Goals cannot be reached without an equally ambitious set of Inner Development Goals? Björkman has built a framework that translates the language of integral development into accessible, measurable skills — empathy, sense-making, long-term vision. His project is pragmatic, corporate-friendly, and globally scaling. My work on AQtivating Soul Power approaches the same challenge from another angle — by awakening the evolutionary impulse within us and our cities, activating the 12 intelligences of the Human Hive. Together, these perspectives suggest that humanity’s future depends on weaving skill with soul, practice with purpose, inner growth with outer wholeness.

Metacrises and Paradigm Shift

Björkman sees the interconnected crises that require systemic solutions. Synchronistically like Integral City (influenced by both complexity theory and Meg Wheatley’s Berkana paradigm shift model) we recognize that current life conditions present us with breakdowns that are portals to breakthroughs. With Soul Power, Integral City, calls on humans and our cities to “AQtivate” the deep intelligence that accesses our evolutionary impulse that is the regenerative centre of our “wholeness” (and GPS).

At this turning point of human evolution, Björkman  points to complexity and IDG’s as vital tools for a paradigm shift, while Integral City invokes Soul Power to enlighten its maps, voices and intelligences.

Inner Dimensions as Key to Collective Change

It seems clear that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) can only be manifested by developing the Inner Development Goals (IDG’s). Björkman  suggests that our narratives must shift beyond the outer goals to the practices of community development and policy integration.

Integral City’s GPS of 12 Intelligences resonate with this alignment of inner and outer voices – even cultivating coherence (through practices like the “Islands of Coherence” meditation).

Both thought leaders recognize the foundational qualities that inner development brings to systemic, sustainable change. The combination of intelligence and soul awakening may well enhance the metrics of skills and capacities.

Language and Accessibility

While Björkman  wisely distances himself from both integral jargon including the “green allergy,” he speaks language that is corporate friendly and evidence-based so that he can be heard by audiences who typically ignore or deny SDGs and IDGs.

Perhaps Integral City transgresses too easily into the metaphors from Nature (like bees, hives, cocoons, Soul Power) – while it firmly points to the lessons that biomimicry reflects?

Nevertheless, both IDG and IC approaches build bridges for (diverse) audiences to enter new territory – at least curious about options that open up generative possibilities.

Community as Developmental Crucible

Björkman advocates “deliberately developmental communities” (e.g., Lakefront Stockholm) where change-makers live and grow together.

Integral City, on the other hand, describes Human Hives where carers, curators, and choreographers co-create regenerative systems. IC focus on community coherence and emergent wholeness parallels the deliberatively developmental settlements.

Attractors of the Future

Björkman  asks what happens if we descend into chaos or oppressive techno-feudalism? And responds by calling a “third attractor” society — one more beautiful and complex, even if we can’t yet see its form.

IC points toward Soul Power as the (third) attractor that aligns people, places, and planet in aliveness and evolutionary unfolding.

It seems that both speakers share a vision of an emergent attractor, though framed differently — Björkman  through societal complexity and skill-building, Hamilton through evolutionary spirituality and integral wholeness.

We might say that Björkman is building pragmatic, skill-based entry points for inner development to scale globally. Hamilton is invoking the deeper soul impulse that integrates inner/outer intelligences into evolutionary wholeness. Both approaches are complementary — one offers measurable scaffolding, the other provides evolutionary depth and meaning.

At the 2025 Integral European Conference, Tomas Björkman reminded us that humanity is standing at a bifurcation point — facing breakdown, oppression, or breakthrough. Through the Inner Development Goals (IDGs), he calls for a global narrative shift: to recognize that solving the great crises of our time requires cultivating inner capacities as much as external solutions. Listening to his vision, I recognized a deep resonance with my own work on AQtivating Soul Power: both approaches insist that inner awakening is not a luxury, but the foundation of collective survival and flourishing.

Tomas Björkman asks, what if the Sustainable Development Goals cannot be reached without an equally ambitious set of Inner Development Goals? Björkman has built a framework that translates the language of integral development into accessible, measurable skills — empathy, sense-making, long-term vision. His project is pragmatic, corporate-friendly, and globally scaling. My work on AQtivating Soul Power approaches the same challenge from another angle — by awakening the evolutionary impulse within us and our cities, activating the 12 intelligences of the Human Hive. Together, these perspectives suggest that humanity’s future depends on weaving skill with soul, practice with purpose, inner growth with outer wholeness.

Metacrises and Paradigm Shift

Björkman sees the interconnected crises that require systemic solutions. Synchronistically like Integral City (influenced by both complexity theory and Meg Wheatley’s Berkana paradigm shift model) we recognize that current life conditions present us with breakdowns that are portals to breakthroughs. With Soul Power, Integral City, calls on humans and our cities to “AQtivate” the deep intelligence that accesses our evolutionary impulse that is the regenerative centre of our “wholeness” (and GPS).

At this turning point of human evolution, Björkman  points to complexity and IDG’s as vital tools for a paradigm shift, while Integral City invokes Soul Power to enlighten its maps, voices and intelligences.

Inner Dimensions as Key to Collective Change

It seems clear that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) can only be manifested by developing the Inner Development Goals (IDG’s). Björkman  suggests that our narratives must shift beyond the outer goals to the practices of community development and policy integration.

Integral City’s GPS of 12 Intelligences resonate with this alignment of inner and outer voices – even cultivating coherence (through practices like the “Islands of Coherence” meditation).

Both thought leaders recognize the foundational qualities that inner development brings to systemic, sustainable change. The combination of intelligence and soul awakening may well enhance the metrics of skills and capacities.

Language and Accessibility

While Björkman  wisely distances himself from both integral jargon including the “green allergy,” he speaks language that is corporate friendly and evidence-based so that he can be heard by audiences who typically ignore or deny SDGs and IDGs.

Perhaps Integral City transgresses too easily into the metaphors from Nature (like bees, hives, cocoons, Soul Power) – while it firmly points to the lessons that biomimicry reflects?

Nevertheless, both IDG and IC approaches build bridges for (diverse) audiences to enter new territory – at least curious about options that open up generative possibilities.

Community as Developmental Crucible

Björkman advocates “deliberately developmental communities” (e.g., Lakefront Stockholm) where change-makers live and grow together.

Integral City, on the other hand, describes Human Hives where carers, curators, and choreographers co-create regenerative systems. IC focus on community coherence and emergent wholeness parallels the deliberatively developmental settlements.

Attractors of the Future

Björkman  asks what happens if we descend into chaos or oppressive techno-feudalism? And responds by calling a “third attractor” society — one more beautiful and complex, even if we can’t yet see its form.

IC points toward Soul Power as the (third) attractor that aligns people, places, and planet in aliveness and evolutionary unfolding.

It seems that both speakers share a vision of an emergent attractor, though framed differently — Björkman  through societal complexity and skill-building, Hamilton through evolutionary spirituality and integral wholeness.

We might say that Björkman is building pragmatic, skill-based entry points for inner development to scale globally. Hamilton is invoking the deeper soul impulse that integrates inner/outer intelligences into evolutionary wholeness. Both approaches are complementary — one offers measurable scaffolding, the other provides evolutionary depth and meaning.

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: Cracks Where the Light Gets In: From Collapse to Coherence

September 2025 Equinotes are drawn from these publications:

As we enter this Equinox, the world feels fragile — stretched by war, climate extremes, and fraying trust in institutions. Yet, as Leonard Cohen reminded us, “there is a crack in everything — that’s how the light gets in.” The cracks in our systems may look like collapse, but they also offer us luminous doorways into coherence.

In this edition of Equinotes, we’ve borrowed the lenses of the Civic Managers and gathered writings from across time that speak to this paradox:

Civic Managers the Brain of the City 

Colony Collapse for the Human Hive or Cracks Where the Light Gets In? (2011) explores how breakdowns in natural and human systems can open possibilities for breakthrough.

Detroit: An Eerie Picture of a Whole City in its Last Stage of Lifecycle (2011) offers a sobering mirror of urban decline, and the invitation to re-imagine cycles of life, death, and renewal.

Archipelagos of Calm (2023) envisions islands of stillness and coherence amidst turbulence — refuges where the soul of the city can be restored.

Connecting Integrally to Community in the 21C: Spiritually, Socially, Politically (2023) reflects on how our connections — spiritual, social, and political — weave coherence across the cracks of our fragmented world.

Together, these voices remind us that coherence does not arise in spite of fragility — it is born through it. The cracks we fear may in fact be the very openings through which light enters, guiding us toward new coherence and fresh patterns of aliveness in our collective life.

–

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

A Civic Manager is like the “brain” of the city. Civic Managers (CM) include senior leaders in the city hall, the healthcare system, the justice system, the school system, and the library system. With interlocking responsibilities, a Civic Manager creates conditions for the city to run effectively. The purpose of civic management is to establish and maintain order, knowledge and safety in the city. Sometimes like air traffic controllers, other times like engineers and some days like systems designers, a Civic Manager needs training and experience to coordinate city planning, engineering, economic development, transportation, waste and water management, coordinating energy supplies, street maintenance, cultural and social planning, emergency and medical services, animal/human interface management and ecological/sustainability strategy. A Civic Manager sets and/or subscribes to building standards, maintenance schedules, city official agendas and town hall meetings. Traditionally, CM’s have been organized in chains of command for the purposes of responsibility and accountability. Now a CM needs to meshwork these hierarchies with relationships across multiple sectors and stakeholders. CM’s can use their authority to create meshworks of appropriate functions, skills and capacities, able to perform across disciplines with reliability even in very complex situations.

Click here to find out more about how the Civic Manager can:Develop Leadership CapacitiesNegotiate DiversityMeshwork Effectively With Elected Officials, Staff, Agencies and OthersPlan Strategically for the Global Village Colony Collapse for Human Hive orCracks Where Light Gets In?Colony collapse disorder  (CCD) for the honey bee has been giving me warning signs to look at the equivalent possibility for the human hive. Three stories from this week’s news offer some strong “weak signals” that may be indications of onset of the human hive’s CCD in America.

The Tucson shooting of Gabrielle Giffords (reported National Post January 2011) and many others are shocking the system of human hives across the United States. The occurrence is challenging all parties to look at how they speak and make meaning from each others’ communications. It is asking parents to consider how they raise their kids, how schools and universities educate them, how communities nurture and support them, how the justice system protects them, how the political system represents them – or not. It is asking kids to think about what are ” right relationships” with their parents, elders and authorities. It is confronting the responsibilities of all roles for the safety and protection of daily life in the human hive – by conformity enforcers, diversity generators, resource allocators and inner judges alike. Everyone is looking at how they relate to all those basic roles in the human hive.

The very word “right” is being recalibrated into a new “appropriateness”.

Click here to read the full Thought Piece published January 14, 2011.

Detroit An Eerie Picture of a Whole City – in Last Stage of LifecycleDetroit in ruins:

The Photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre

In downtown Detroit, the streets are lined with abandoned hotels and swimming pools, ruined movie houses and schools, all evidence of the motor city’s painful decline. The photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre capture what remains of a once-great city – and hint at the wider story of post-industrial America.

[This is an eerie story by Sean O’Hagan of the Observer, Jan. 2, 2011 that is a commentary on a new photo-journalism book by Marchand and Meffre. What struck me was how it chronicled the lifecycle of a city in its death-throes. This describes a chronic despair that goes beyond what is still arising from the acute disaster that struck New Orleans – because Detroit’s situation is like society has abandonned the city as if it were a chronically ill parent in a Dickensian old age institution.  It is a stark reminder that the most fantastic investments in brick and mortar, do not a city make — it is the breath of consciousness and culture that brings the marble and glass artefacts and art to life.  Despite the dark shadow of this story, the last paragraph (copied below) offers a glimmer for future re-birth. For the full story click on “Detroit in Ruins” above.]

Click here to read the full article published January 15, 2011.

Archipelagos of Calm

Islands of Calm Meditations, on Saturday mornings started on Zoom and continue on Zoom so that we can ripple calm out from Findhorn across the world every week.

From the original disturbance to our systems starting with Covid threats and lockdown isolations, we have become aware how life conditions in the world can impact us as close as the family we live with or friends we walk with or workers we create with. Or change that ripples through our communities, hedgerows, food gardens or tree guardians. Or we can feel the trauma of wars far away or earthquakes across the world. Or climate-change weather turning places we know into flood zones, burning infernos or tornado alleys.

David Spangler proposed that finding an Island of Calm in ourselves, creates the capacity to influence 1000 other people. With the challenges we face in such a turbulent world we have asked ourselves – is this practice what the world still needs? And, in true Findhornian fashion, we found instruction from Eileen that assures us our practice has merit. Eileen says:

There is a tremendous amount you can do to help [the world] by the work you do on the inner in radiating Love and Light … this work which is being done on the inner is simply tremendous. lt is holding the whole world in balance, so never cease, never let up in any way but carry on faithfully. (Eileen’s Guidance, Dec. 30)

Click here to find out more about the Islands of Calm Meditation published February 21 , 2023.

Connecting Integrally to Community in the 21C: Spiritually, Socially, PoliticallyThis was a series of blogs inspired by the Edinburgh International Centre for Sustainability and Peace, 2023 Forum: Connecting with Community in the 21st Centure: Spiritual, Social, Policy Perspectives. This was delivered by Marilyn Hamilton, March 1, 2023.

We have always believed “If you want to improve the health of a system connect it to more of itself.” This session will disclose the infinite but strategic ways you can nurture communities in the 21st century to connect to more of themselves.

Connecting Communities has been central to the evolutionary impulses that created Integral City Meshworks and is now growing Living Cities: Earth.

From the start we defined community as “a journey to wholeness for a group of people.”

In the last 2 decades our research has explored how to serve and influence communities of interest, communities of culture, communities of living, communities of practice and communities of Nature – online, in ecovillages and in cities and their ecoregions.

Let me share some examples of these community emergences from the Findhorn Ecovillage where I live.

Click here to find out more about the series of blogs published March 5 , 2023.

Explore Integral City Archive of Newsletters, Blogs, MetaBlogs:

Bonus: Findhorn as Beacon & Lighthouse Blog Series

Bonus Integral Europe Conference 2025: Dr. Karen O’Brien and Fractals of Soul Power: Weaving Change Across Scales

Bonus Integral Europe Conference 2025: Dr. Elke Fein – Wholeness in Politics, Wholeness in Cities

Integral City Archives

March 2025, Equinotes: Regenerating Our Planet’s Soul

December 2024, Reflective Organ: Soul Power as Beauty, Truth, Goodness

September 2024 Equinotes: Placecaring & Placemaking Capacities

June 2024 Reflective Organ: Ecovillage, City, 4th Voice

March 2023 Equi-Notes: Roots of City Peace in Joy, Happiness and Care

Integral City Meta Blog 2024

Integral City Meta Blog 2023

Integral City Meta Blog 2022

Integral City Meta Blog 2021

Integral City Meta Blog 2020

Integral City Meta Blog 2019

Integral City Meta Blog 2018

Integral City Meta Blog 2017

Integral City Meta Blog 2016

Integral City Meta Blog 2015

Integral City Meta Blog 2014

Integral City Meta Blog 2013

.fusion-fullwidth.fusion-builder-row-2 { overflow:visible; }

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: Cracks Where the Light Gets In: From Collapse to Coherence

September 2025 Equinotes are drawn from these publications:

As we enter this Equinox, the world feels fragile — stretched by war, climate extremes, and fraying trust in institutions. Yet, as Leonard Cohen reminded us, “there is a crack in everything — that’s how the light gets in.” The cracks in our systems may look like collapse, but they also offer us luminous doorways into coherence.

In this edition of Equinotes, I’ve gathered writings from across time that speak to this paradox:

Colony Collapse for the Human Hive or Cracks Where the Light Gets In? (2011) explores how breakdowns in natural and human systems can open possibilities for breakthrough.

Detroit: An Eerie Picture of a Whole City in its Last Stage of Lifecycle (2011) offers a sobering mirror of urban decline, and the invitation to re-imagine cycles of life, death, and renewal.

Archipelagos of Calm (2023) envisions islands of stillness and coherence amidst turbulence — refuges where the soul of the city can be restored.

Connecting Integrally to Community in the 21C: Spiritually, Socially, Politically (2023) reflects on how our connections — spiritual, social, and political — weave coherence across the cracks of our fragmented world.

Together, these voices remind us that coherence does not arise in spite of fragility — it is born through it. The cracks we fear may in fact be the very openings through which light enters, guiding us toward new coherence and fresh patterns of aliveness in our collective life.

–

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

Colony Collapse for Human Hive or Cracks Where Light Gets In?Colony collapse disorder  (CCD) for the honey bee has been giving me warning signs to look at the equivalent possibility for the human hive. Three stories from this week’s news offer some strong “weak signals” that may be indications of onset of the human hive’s CCD in America.

The Tucson shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and many others are shocking the system of human hives across the United States. The occurrence is challenging all parties to look at how they speak and make meaning from each others’ communications. It is asking parents to consider how they raise their kids, how schools and universities educate them, how communities nurture and support them, how the justice system protects them, how the political system represents them – or not. It is asking kids to think about what are ” right relationships” with their parents, elders and authorities. It is confronting the responsibilities of all roles for the safety and protection of daily life in the human hive – by conformity enforcers, diversity generators, resource allocators and inner judges alike. Everyone is looking at how they relate to all those basic roles in the human hive.

The very word “right” is being recalibrated into a new “appropriateness”.

Click here to read the full Thought Piece published January 14, 2011.

Detroit An Eerie Picture of a Whole City – in Last Stage of LifecycleDetroit in ruins:

The Photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre

In downtown Detroit, the streets are lined with abandoned hotels and swimming pools, ruined movie houses and schools, all evidence of the motor city’s painful decline. The photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre capture what remains of a once-great city – and hint at the wider story of post-industrial America.

[This is an eerie story by Sean O’Hagan of the Observer, Jan. 2, 2011 that is a commentary on a new photo-journalism book by Marchand and Meffre. What struck me was how it chronicled the lifecycle of a city in its death-throes. This describes a chronic despair that goes beyond what is still arising from the acute disaster that struck New Orleans – because Detroit’s situation is like society has abandonned the city as if it were a chronically ill parent in a Dickensian old age institution.  It is a stark reminder that the most fantastic investments in brick and mortar, do not a city make — it is the breath of consciousness and culture that brings the marble and glass artefacts and art to life.  Despite the dark shadow of this story, the last paragraph (copied below) offers a glimmer for future re-birth. For the full story click on “Detroit in Ruins” above.]

Click here to read the full article published January 15, 2011.

Archipelagos of Calm

Islands of Calm Meditations, on Saturday mornings started on Zoom and continue on Zoom so that we can ripple calm out from Findhorn across the world every week.

From the original disturbance to our systems starting with Covid threats and lockdown isolations, we have become aware how life conditions in the world can impact us as close as the family we live with or friends we walk with or workers we create with. Or change that ripples through our communities, hedgerows, food gardens or tree guardians. Or we can feel the trauma of wars far away or earthquakes across the world. Or climate-change weather turning places we know into flood zones, burning infernos or tornado alleys.

David Spangler proposed that finding an Island of Calm in ourselves, creates the capacity to influence 1000 other people. With the challenges we face in such a turbulent world we have asked ourselves – is this practice what the world still needs? And, in true Findhornian fashion, we found instruction from Eileen that assures us our practice has merit. Eileen says:

There is a tremendous amount you can do to help [the world] by the work you do on the inner in radiating Love and Light … this work which is being done on the inner is simply tremendous. lt is holding the whole world in balance, so never cease, never let up in any way but carry on faithfully. (Eileen’s Guidance, Dec. 30)

Click here to find out more about the Islands of Calm Meditation published February 21 , 2023.

Connecting Integrally to Community in the 21C: Spiritually, Socially, PoliticallyThis was a series of blogs inspired by the Edinburgh International Centre for Sustainability and Peace, 2023 Forum: Connecting with Community in the 21st Centure: Spiritual, Social, Policy Perspectives. This was delivered by Marilyn Hamilton, March 1, 2023.

We have always believed “If you want to improve the health of a system connect it to more of itself.” This session will disclose the infinite but strategic ways you can nurture communities in the 21st century to connect to more of themselves.

Connecting Communities has been central to the evolutionary impulses that created Integral City Meshworks and is now growing Living Cities: Earth.

From the start we defined community as “a journey to wholeness for a group of people.”

In the last 2 decades our research has explored how to serve and influence communities of interest, communities of culture, communities of living, communities of practice and communities of Nature – online, in ecovillages and in cities and their ecoregions.

Let me share some examples of these community emergences from the Findhorn Ecovillage where I live.

Click here to find out more about the series of blogs published March 5 , 2023.

Explore Integral City Archive of Newsletters, Blogs, MetaBlogs:

Bonus: Findhorn as Beacon & Lighthouse Blog Series

Bonus Integral Europe Conference 2025: Dr. Karen O’Brien and Fractals of Soul Power: Weaving Change Across Scales

Bonus Integral Europe Conference 2025: Dr. Elke Fein – Wholeness in Politics, Wholeness in Cities

Integral City Archives

March 2025, Equinotes: Regenerating Our Planet’s Soul

December 2024, Reflective Organ: Soul Power as Beauty, Truth, Goodness

September 2024 Equinotes: Placecaring & Placemaking Capacities

June 2024 Reflective Organ: Ecovillage, City, 4th Voice

March 2023 Equi-Notes: Roots of City Peace in Joy, Happiness and Care

Integral City Meta Blog 2024

Integral City Meta Blog 2023

Integral City Meta Blog 2022

Integral City Meta Blog 2021

Integral City Meta Blog 2020

Integral City Meta Blog 2019

Integral City Meta Blog 2018

Integral City Meta Blog 2017

Integral City Meta Blog 2016

Integral City Meta Blog 2015

Integral City Meta Blog 2014

Integral City Meta Blog 2013

.fusion-fullwidth.fusion-builder-row-1 { overflow:visible; }

At IEC 2025, the theme of Finding Wholeness for an Integral Age rang through many contributions. Among them, Dr. Elke Fein’s keynote on Wholeness in Politics and my own workshop on AQtivating Soul Power for Cities in Metacrisis revealed strikingly parallel paths. One spoke the language of politics, the other the language of cities. Both pointed to fragmentation, crisis, and the urgent call to reconnect with wholeness.

Elke Fein (author of  book exploring Integral Politics)  reminded us that politics-as-usual—partisan, competitive, modern—is not only incapable of solving planetary crises but has itself become part of the problem. What is missing, she argued, is the meta-perspective that integral practice brings: the capacity to see ourselves, to include neglected voices, to listen deeply to resistance, and to surf the polarities of democracy with courage.

My own contribution asked a similar question through the lens of the city: What if the metacrisis in our urban systems is rooted in disconnection from Soul? From war-torn rubble to climate chaos, cities mirror the fractures of our collective psyche. The path forward is Soul Power: practising Gaia’s Code of Care, reconnecting to Beauty, Truth, and Goodness, and remembering our role as Gaia’s Reflective Organs.

Wholeness as remedy

Then we both went into the need for integral politics to be deeper, higher, wider, broader – by exploring and practising deep democracy (one of Fein’s great strengths), finding new ways to access plural perspectives while listening both the 4 Voices of the city (as I frequently remind us, brings the whole city system into the room).

Fein goes another step further and challenges integralists to step into the political ring.

My exploration of Soul Power in cities resonates with my long call that to live in service to Gaia’s wellbeing – as we live well in our cities – we must practise Gaia’s Code of Care. This awareness and embrace of wellbeing for Self, Others, Place and Planet attracts the Big Three dimensions of Beauty, Truth and Goodness. And these frameworks provide the scaffolding that supports and guides practice across holarchic scales.

Polarity work

Fein is fearless in stepping into the arena of polarity work – she admits that politics is much about actually surfing polarities. We must learn by “falling and failing” and picking ourselves back up again to find the ways of aliveness (like we are learning to do at Ecovillage Findhorn – being an example of “trial by life practice” and rejecting any attempts to put us on a pedestal).

Fein notes that Integralists who practice deep democracy, gain the muscle to hold tensions – a willingness to listen and accept resistance as a natural experience on the path to coherence. This dance with polarities is how we co-create coherence.

In cities, I am saying that we must move out beyond fragmentation into a field of integration – where we can meet and honour the 4 Voices and 4 Ways of Knowing. This is the path where our species moves beyond the manipulative roles of competition (as Elisabet Sahtouris used to remind us) into the land of cooperation and collaboration.

Like me, Fein has the courage to hold paradox as a necessary stage of healing politics (especially for Integral Cities particular interests in city politics).

Call to agency

Echoing in many ways, the voice of Karen O’Brien, Elke Fein accepts the need for healthy power that does not abuse people – but rather reclaims the power of responsibility to transform democracy. Fein is effectively pointing out that agency itself generates power and that generates feedback amongst practitioners who are in service to healthy political life in nations and cities.

I point out that every citizen must (re)activate Soul Power to regenerate wellbeing in communities, cities and the planet. (O’Brien points out that our fractal connections give us a natural capacity to ignite this regenerative fire.)

.

You Are Political, You Are Soulful

Placed side by side, Fein’s call for integral politics and my call for Soul-powered cities echo the same heartbeat. Both recognize that wholeness cannot be legislated from the top or engineered from the outside must be cultivated through coherence, deep listening, and shared values that ripple outward across scales.

For politics, that means integralists stepping into the arena, daring to facilitate new spaces of dialogue and coherence, and refusing to remain silent. For cities, it means re-patterning life around care, compassion, and co-creation, so that urban systems once again serve people, places, and planet.

The invitation is clear: we are all political, and we are all soulful. Wholeness asks us to hold both truths, to surf polarities while activating care, and to claim our responsibility in shaping the Integral Age.

The question is no longer whether we have what it takes—Elke Fein reminds us, we already do. The question is: will we choose to use it?

At IEC 2025, the theme of Finding Wholeness for an Integral Age rang through many contributions. Among them, Dr. Elke Fein’s keynote on Wholeness in Politics and my own workshop on AQtivating Soul Power for Cities in Metacrisis revealed strikingly parallel paths. One spoke the language of politics, the other the language of cities. Both pointed to fragmentation, crisis, and the urgent call to reconnect with wholeness.

Elke Fein (author of  book exploring Integral Politics)  reminded us that politics-as-usual—partisan, competitive, modern—is not only incapable of solving planetary crises but has itself become part of the problem. What is missing, she argued, is the meta-perspective that integral practice brings: the capacity to see ourselves, to include neglected voices, to listen deeply to resistance, and to surf the polarities of democracy with courage.

My own contribution asked a similar question through the lens of the city: What if the metacrisis in our urban systems is rooted in disconnection from Soul? From war-torn rubble to climate chaos, cities mirror the fractures of our collective psyche. The path forward is Soul Power: practising Gaia’s Code of Care, reconnecting to Beauty, Truth, and Goodness, and remembering our role as Gaia’s Reflective Organs.

Wholeness as remedy

Then we both went into the need for integral politics to be deeper, higher, wider, broader – by exploring and practising deep democracy (one of Fein’s great strengths), finding new ways to access plural perspectives while listening both the 4 Voices of the city (as I frequently remind us, brings the whole city system into the room).

Fein goes another step further and challenges integralists to step into the political ring.

My exploration of Soul Power in cities resonates with my long call that to live in service to Gaia’s wellbeing – as we live well in our cities – we must practise Gaia’s Code of Care. This awareness and embrace of wellbeing for Self, Others, Place and Planet attracts the Big Three dimensions of Beauty, Truth and Goodness. And these frameworks provide the scaffolding that supports and guides practice across holarchic scales.

Polarity work

Fein is fearless in stepping into the arena of polarity work – she admits that politics is much about actually surfing polarities. We must learn by “falling and failing” and picking ourselves back up again to find the ways of aliveness (like we are learning to do at Ecovillage Findhorn – being an example of “trial by life practice” and rejecting any attempts to put us on a pedestal).

Fein notes that Integralists who practice deep democracy, gain the muscle to hold tensions – a willingness to listen and accept resistance as a natural experience on the path to coherence. This dance with polarities is how we co-create coherence.

In cities, I am saying that we must move out beyond fragmentation into a field of integration – where we can meet and honour the 4 Voices and 4 Ways of Knowing. This is the path where our species moves beyond the manipulative roles of competition (as Elisabet Sahtouris used to remind us) into the land of cooperation and collaboration.

Like me, Fein has the courage to hold paradox as a necessary stage of healing politics (especially for Integral Cities particular interests in city politics).

Call to agency

Echoing in many ways, the voice of Karen O’Brien, Elke Fein accepts the need for healthy power that does not abuse people – but rather reclaims the power of responsibility to transform democracy. Fein is effectively pointing out that agency itself generates power and that generates feedback amongst practitioners who are in service to healthy political life in nations and cities.

I point out that every citizen must (re)activate Soul Power to regenerate wellbeing in communities, cities and the planet. (O’Brien points out that our fractal connections give us a natural capacity to ignite this regenerative fire.)

.

You Are Political, You Are Soulful

Placed side by side, Fein’s call for integral politics and my call for Soul-powered cities echo the same heartbeat. Both recognize that wholeness cannot be legislated from the top or engineered from the outside must be cultivated through coherence, deep listening, and shared values that ripple outward across scales.

For politics, that means integralists stepping into the arena, daring to facilitate new spaces of dialogue and coherence, and refusing to remain silent. For cities, it means re-patterning life around care, compassion, and co-creation, so that urban systems once again serve people, places, and planet.

The invitation is clear: we are all political, and we are all soulful. Wholeness asks us to hold both truths, to surf polarities while activating care, and to claim our responsibility in shaping the Integral Age.

The question is no longer whether we have what it takes—Elke Fein reminds us, we already do. The question is: will we choose to use it?

At IEC 2025 we heard many voices exploring how transformation unfolds in the face of our global metacrises. Two perspectives seemed to mirror and amplify each other: Karen O’Brien’s invitation to see ourselves as fractals of change and my own exploration of AQtivating Soul Power for cities in crisis. Though spoken in different idioms, both approaches remind us that the patterns of change are both deeply personal and profoundly collective.

Karen O’Brien described how every individual matters more than they think. Drawing on her decades of climate and social research, she invited us to consider the fractal nature of change — how small shifts at the scale of values, relationships, and intentions replicate outward across families, communities, nations, and systems. Through a quantum lens, she emphasized that we are “walking wave functions of potential,” always patterning and mattering in the moment, whether we acknowledge it or not.

My own contribution asked a parallel question from the perspective of the city as a living system: What if the fundamental cause of urban metacrisis is disconnection from Soul? Using Integral City frameworks, I proposed that reconnecting to Beauty, Truth, and Goodness — and living Gaia’s Master Code of Care — can restore coherence where fragmentation, conflict, and despair now dominate. Cities can heal when they remember their role as Gaia’s Reflective Organs, consciously participating in the evolution of life.

When we place these two lenses side by side, a powerful resonance emerges. Fractals show us how patterns replicate across scales; Soul Power reveals why we must cultivate life-affirming patterns in the first place. Together they invite us to recognize that every individual and every city is a node in a larger murmuration — a living fractal of potential — where the choices we make today ripple outward to shape futures we may never see.

You Matter, Cities Matter
Karen’s exploration of fractals in her book “You Matter More Than You Think” connected the individual capacity to make a difference to the multiple efforts that many individuals acting in workplaces and communities can contribute to their impact in cities.

Revealing how we are all interconnected in repeating patterns of development and evolution – changing in ego, ethno, regional and global fields – fractals of change translate into Soul Power in the quest for wholeness.

Seeing ourselves as more than individuals isolated in the turbulent world of change that confronts us all, gives us the strength to live and work in collectives that can make a difference to how we make decisions, choose behaviours, express our creativity and contribute to systems that generate (and regenerate) aliveness.  This fractal quality of life may be the repeating pattern (DNA even?) that enables not only development on a local scale but evolution on a global – even cosmic – scale.

This can move us from feeling like we are single drops in a massive ocean – seemingly of little importance – to recognizing that the fractal patterns of lifecycles are like wave functions that ripple across and through our daily experiences in family, work, community and city life.

And these ripples of change act as feedback loops that amplify and strengthen our choices and thus our agency in the city and in the world. They become currents and groundswells that can sweep the course of city life forward in a mighty surge. (We are seeing evidence of this as I write, where young people in cities across the world are stepping out in protest to the autocracies who have been suppressing their freedoms.)

Fractals of Soul, Patterns of Care
If Karen O’Brien reminds us that we matter more than we think, the Integral City perspective shows that our cities matter more than we know. They are the habitats where Soul Power can be cultivated and amplified into systems change. Every act of care, every courageous conversation, every fractal pattern of justice or compassion that we seed in the present becomes part of the living architecture of the future.

The invitation, then, is twofold: to recognize ourselves as fractals of change and to see our communities as reflective organs of Gaia. By aligning universal values with Gaia’s Code of Care, we begin to re-pattern fragments into wholeness. By joining the three spheres of transformation with the cycles of Action Research — What, So What, Now What — we can design practices that heal the brokenness of our times.

Looking back, future generations may ask: Did they see their interconnection? Did they act as if they mattered? Did they reawaken the Soul of their cities? Our task is to ensure the answer is yes. Each of us is already a pattern-shifter. Each city is already a murmuration in motion. Together, we can weave fractals of Soul Power strong enough to carry us through collapse into coherence.