Weaving a Non-Dual Civilisation - Part 2: Unveiling the Light
This is part 2 of a 3 part series, exploring the emergence of a non-dual civilisation.
In part 1, we explored the dominance of Shadow in our culture and the patterns that are leading to the devastation of life on Earth.
Today, we will investigate how groups of people could come together and step into a harmonious relationship with Life once more.
This would begin building what I call a Non-Dual Civilisation.
It’s non-dual because it’s a human community that is based upon the deepest wisdom of our spiritual, ecological and mystical traditions and brings it into all areas of life, so that humanity can be a positive force on Planet Earth once more.
It’s a civilisation because we cannot, as some claim, go backwards to a prehistoric, tribal world without technology or agriculture. To respond to the crises of our times, we need governance at a global level. The only path forwards is to properly integrate the advances of humanity into a global, democratic civilisation.
Let’s get back to Tim.
Back to Tim
Tim’s in the gym trying to get ‘#swoleforthesummer’ to feed his insatiable desire to fill the inadequacy of his present moment experience.
Out of the corner of his eye, he notices a flyer on the gym wall.
“Join our Transformative Group and find your life purpose!” it reads.
A part of Tim that has been asleep for many years wakes up and rushes to get in touch with the group.
A few weeks later Tim goes along to an introductory meeting.
Transformative Groups
The group Tim has signed up for, has been working for some time to build what I call a Transformative Culture.
This is a group dedicated to supporting its members to come into right relationship with themselves, each other and Life itself. To individually and collectively return to the flowing river of Life: a wellspring of creativity and Evolution.
To achieve this, they hold themselves to what I call The Shadow Veils the Light Principle. This means that when Shadow shows up in its many forms like suffering, judgement, addiction, pain, conflict and death, the group works to hold it up to the light of awareness, to find the gift within it, and thus transform it into the Light.
It is the Shadow unseen that blocks the flow of Life in ourselves, our relationships and the human race as a whole.
By unveiling the Light, we can become expressions of Love in the world rather than being stuck in unconscious survival patterns that only hurt ourselves and those around us.
Many traditions and modalities have different ways of describing this principle. In processwork: it’s called Riding the Horse Backwards, after a Native American wisdom-trickster who did everything differently i.e. didn’t treat the Shadow as wrong or bad. In alchemy: it’s the search for the philosopher’s stone that can convert base metals (i.e. the Shadow) into gold. For a while, I was calling it The Shimmer Domino Principle because if you imagine flicking a domino super fast, you can’t tell which side is white and which is black, just as when you move towards the Shadow you find the Light and when you move towards the Light you find the Shadow.
The same principle in permaculture is called: The Problem is the Solution Principle. In modern culture, whenever we encounter a problem we treat it as implying that there is something wrong with ourselves, the world or Life herself. We go into a rejection of what is. We scramble around for a way to get away from the problem. You could see the Shadow as simply this problem mindset passed on from person to person and generation to generation.
The alternative is to see that every problem contains its solution. It’s an opportunity for the creative potential of Life to manifest.
For example, if you saw a picture hanging crookedly across the room, you might feel a sense of unease or wrongness but if you stay with it, this feeling contains the solution: walk over there and straighten the picture.
We’ve got a lot of picture straightening to get on with, let me tell you!
Transformative Groups have developed processes, practices and ways of being together that continually support the remembering of this principle.
For example, the group might have a specialised sub-group who can take individuals and collectives through processes when their flow becomes blocked by Shadow. In Indigenous Cultures, these might have been the elders, shamans, witches and medicine people who could support people to break out of their delusions. In one modality, Possibility Management, they are called Evolutionaries. Their job is to notice someone or a group coming out of alignment, being sucked up by the Shadow without consciousness and to support them to return to harmony with themselves, the group and Life.
These principles are also mirrored in Eastern Traditions with their focus on non-duality. They argue that we are stuck in a dualistic world of right and wrong, good and bad but if we can just be with bare awareness itself, the non-duality of things will be revealed. When an individual lives from this place, their suffering ceases because they no longer reject their experience. What would a collective or all of humanity living from this realisation look like?
Well, let’s first get back to Tim, then we can slowly build up to the non-dual collective.
Tim’s Transformation
Tim arrives at his first meeting the following week and is warmly welcomed.
But of course, it doesn’t take long for Tim’s shit to begin to surface. He’s barely been in the group 5 minutes but because he’s so disconnected from himself, his compulsion to prove his superiority through Social Influence quickly comes into play.
Thankfully Sophie, one of the Evolutionaries I mentioned earlier, sees Tim’s disconnection and rather than rejecting or isolating him from the group, offers him a process to begin connecting to himself and working through his issues. She has developed so much trust that behind anyone’s Shadow behaviours there is gold, that she’s not even triggered by Tim’s posturing.
The process proves her right because behind Tim’s Shadow was his experience of not being valued or loved as a child. Tim manages to find this feeling of self-love within himself and see’s the Social Influence for what it is: a protection, a covering and not really him.
Whilst, Tim doesn’t change overnight, every time some of his Shadow comes up, he is supported to process it.
Slowly through time, he can come more and more from his True Self rather than his Shadow and this has drastic effects on his behaviour in all his aspects: Consciousness, Intellect, Heart, Body and Breath.
Whilst the model I explored in the first post was one I developed myself, the model I will now explore comes from a modality called sublimewe whose creator is Sarasvathi Cee.
Saras calls the experience of being in contact with one’s True Self Inner Connection. It is having some of your awareness on awareness itself. This connection contains a knowing that you are not the isolated Self but instead a boundless Being. Gurdjieff called this the ‘Awake’ state that could be reached through a process of Self-Remembering — not losing contact with who you really are. Many Eastern traditions have their own terminology for this. In Hinduism, it’s being connected to Purusha not [_P_rakriti](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Prak%E1%B9%9Bti). In Buddhism, it’s Atman. In mystical Christianity, it’s Christ Consciousness. I could go on but hopefully, you get it!
In this state, Tim has the experience of enoughness or adequacy. That his experience itself provides everything he needs, he doesn’t need to look elsewhere. He doesn’t need to protect himself anymore. His priority becomes giving back in honour of the beauty he has been given. Through time he can let the layers of his Shadow fall away.
When he does this, his intellect becomes a place for Cognitive Excellence where his stories and theories about reality can be objective because they are not caught up in his ego’s need to defend itself. When reality changes, his map changes. He knows that the map is not the territory. In Buddhism, this is described as seeing the Emptiness of his stories. That whatever stories he creates are not inherently true — they are just stories. Daniel Thorson describes the state of mind when Emptiness has been seen as Liquid Mind, which captures the flowing, alive, ever-changing exploration and creation that is possible in an unblocked Intellect. When Tim is connected to himself, his stories, though not absolutely true, serve to bring more Love and Beauty into the world rather than serving his own protection and saving face.
His heart becomes a source of Heart Knowledge where his feelings contain information about what he most cares about, as well as the energy to create his fantasies in the world. Tim’s no longer trying to avoid his feelings and emotions by numbing himself, instead, he’s staying present with them to allow them to reveal their gifts. You could think of his Heart as a pattern-matching machine. It’s been storing up all of the patterns of experiences of his life and is ready to bring all this knowledge to bear in the present moment. It might reveal itself in the form of an image or a dream of what he really wants. Deep in his heart, is what Bill Plotkin calls his mythopoetic identity, this is an image, metaphor or story that makes the experiences of his life make sense and reveals the unique gift he has to offer the world based upon them.
His body becomes a place of Body Wisdom. It knows what it needs to be healthy and has an intuitive sense of how, who and what can fulfil these needs. Instead of spending his time in Addictive Patterns, he nourishes his body through conscious food, rest, touch and play. In Possibility Management, the Body is divided into a physical body and an energetic body. It’s in the energetic body where distinctions are stored. Having a distinction is the intuitive knowing of the difference between two things. We have a distinction between red and pink. The most important distinctions highlight the difference between what is Shadow and what is not. When they are integrated into a person’s energetic body they become like an inner scaffolding or matrix, that prevents a person from getting hooked when one of their Shadow parts comes up because they have the distinction to see it for what it really is. This also allows them to hold space for others as Sophie kindly demonstrated earlier. They can use their embodied wisdom to set boundaries to prevent others from bringing their Shadow shit to the group, thus holding space for the deepest and most meaningful aspects of each person to emerge.
When all these parts are working in unison together, Tim has an experience of life energy powered by his Breath moving through him and out into the world. Saras calls this his Breath Powered Speaking. When someone gives a passionate speech about what they really care about, you can sense that their voice is charged with life energy and meaning. This allows them to bring the things they most care about into the world. And to share them with others in a way that is inspired by the beauty they have seen in the thing, rather than a sense of being right or wrong or being superior which just ends up shutting the other person down. They can stand up in the collective and say: “This is important!” with sincerity and strength to boot. In Possibility Management this is often called Dragon Speaking. How much more of a difference could a group of activists have, if they went onto the streets connected to the dragon within?
Here is a diagram of the full model of an individual in a Transformative Group:
Facets of the Transformative Group
When a group of people who are supporting each other to live from a place of Inner Connection come together: a whole different set of collective possibilities emerge. It’s not that they will always have Inner Connection, quite the opposite, they’ll go through periods of being triggered with each other and thinking that something is wrong. However, if they have enough support, each of these periods can provide the exact learnings the group needs to grow and mature, so they can handle these moments better in the future. Often, we think of these conflicts as blockages in a groups movement towards their vision. Instead, they are an integral part of that movement.
Similarly to the first article, I am going to look at the different aspects of the collective and see how they manifest in their non-dual forms.
In the intellect, the group has an Ecological Intentionality. When you feel like your very experience is nourishing you, this creates the desire to give back. What else is there to do but give? This means that any strategy that the group comes up with to meet their needs, comes from a desire to be of service and to give to Life. In game theory, this is described as the ‘Omni-Win’ choice. This means that the groups’ strategies are in service not just to the individual, the group or to the other but to all of Life. If some aspect of Life is not considered in a particular plan, then someone in the group will get triggered, and through this process, a contribution will form from their Shadow that will allow what they are holding to be incorporated into the groups’ plans. At the level of Being or Life, there is no conflict. Everyone’s needs can be met and integrated.
In Tantra, there is the idea that our deepest desires are not in conflict with each other or with anyone else. If we can live from the place of those desires then we can experience all things and all life as mattering. Everything inside everyone, and every being is important. This is the Everything Matters Principle, which is another manifestation of non-duality. Our minds want to split everything up into categories of good and bad. Useful, not useful. Important, not important. What if nothing is good and nothing is bad but everything matters. And when we take this stand, a whole other reality opens before us. As Forrest Landry artfully pronounces, “Heaven opens to those who know all is sacred. Hell imprisons all who think that nothing is.”
How is the group going to get down to what really matters for themselves and others? Well in the heart, the group practices Empathic Inquiry which is a natural outcome of Inner Connection. When you are present and connected, curiosity about the mysterious Other naturally arises, as well as a longing to more fully know and be with them. Practically, it means that in their relationships they try to tease out what is most important to the other person. What do they care about so much that it makes their hearts burst open with love and their soul throb with a longing for more of that which they desire in the world? Empathic Inquiry supports each of them to live from their deepest loves and to bring that love as a contribution to each other and to the world.
Amazingly, Empathic Inquiry works with any behaviour. However, violently someone is showing up, there is always some element of truth that wants to move through them. This can be inquired into to discover something that they Love, which can then become a contribution to the group. In Nonviolent Communication, this is called the Tragic Expressions of Unmet Needs Principle. This means that whatever violence someone is displaying, underneath it is an unmet need that they have in common with all of humanity. Empathic Inquiry supports people to be in touch with that need inside of the violent strategy, so they can find healthier ways of getting it met.
We could build a whole democracy based on Empathic Inquiry using our technological skills not to influence and control but instead to aid the flow and integration of information about what people care about. Empathic Inquiry could be weaved into every aspect of our lives together. It could work to build the Listening Society advocated by the metamodernist movement. What would a world look if there was enough support for everyone to find and manifest their deepest desires?
Through time, Empathic Inquiry supports a group vision to emerge. This is an integration of each of the member’s deepest visions for their lives. What they realise over time is that having each other’s support and moving towards their visions together, makes them far more likely to become a reality. So long to modern culture’s solo, greasy pole climbing, entrepreneurs.
In the collective body, the physical creations of the group are Energised Infrastructure. Everything they build and create in the material world is alive. It could be the meals they eat in the evening and the kitchen they keep stocked to support them. It’s all energised by the energy of Life found within their deepest needs and desires and captured in their collective vision. Every action is a fresh creation in the moment. Addictive Patterns are gradually moved beyond, so that conscious choice can prevail. In a For the Wild podcast with Gopal Dayaneni, he described a shift from capital being in charge of human beings to capital being in service to humans. Our capital projects and infrastructure can be in service not just to all human beings, but to all of Life.
What also grows through time in the group is Community Consciousness. This comes in two forms. Firstly, it is an awareness of what is really going on in our collective space. Who is suffering and needs support, who is drifting out of alignment? Sophie, gave us a good example of this in her awareness of Tim’s Shadow coming into play. Another example, is our growing awareness of the ecological emergency and of the strife and oppression of different groups which show that even now, we are developing this quality. It supports us to really know what is going on in our world, not so that we can blame and judge others or go into a rejection of Life but so we can take responsibility for the deepest pains of our time, which are the places where our responses can have the most meaning and impact.
Secondly, another form of Community Consciousness is a group consciousness emerging. This is a Being that encompasses the totality of the group. In moments, members of the group have the experience that they are fulfilling a role in a greater organism. That there are moments when it is their turn to speak up as part of that Being. That when others are speaking there is a felt sense that they are speaking for the collective. That there is really no separation between. This goes even further towards a felt sense of being a part of the entire Being of humanity. Or of Gaia as a whole. Or as taking their place in the choreographed dance of Life. This is the awakening of collective consciousness captured in the phrase: “The next Buddha will be a Sangha (community/group)”.
The final aspect is the collective breath. This is how more and more Life emerges in the group. And how as the group interacts with others, they are likewise more and more brought into a harmonious relationship with Life. Saras calls this Mem-ethical Integration where the things that are necessary for Life to flourish spread from person to person. In contrast with the Shadow Flow described in my first article, you can imagine this as the flow of Life pulsing through the organism of the group and into the wider world. A meme is a unit of something a Being knows is important. We could divide this up into two types of meme: values which capture the various qualities of Life and principles which capture the structure of Life. If you split the qualities of Life through a prism, you get a panoply of different values. If you explore the Logos of Life, or its structure, you find Life principles which elucidate how to live in harmony with Life. Mem-ethical Integration is the spread of these values and principles through the collective.
Let’s get practical! Suppose someone in Tim’s group wants to chop down part of a communal forest to start one of their projects growing lovely organic vegetables because they dream of giving them to the community. Tim, who as we are about to discover has a deep connection to nature, would probably get triggered by this. Instead of this triggering leading to a group breaking conflict, it is seen by the group as an opportunity for contribution. It might take some Evolutionary processes to get there but eventually, they would come out with a plan that integrates both Tim’s nature-loving wishes and those of the organic farmer. Perhaps they create a forest garden that can produce vegetables and be a huge ecosystem for many forms of life. This is an example of how the meme of the value of the natural world spreads through the group over time.
Here is a diagram of the full model of a non-dual civilisation:
Tim’s Contribution
Back to Tim!
The Empathic Inquiry of the group works its magic on Tim and through time he gets more and more in touch with himself, what he desires and what he’s mostly deeply longing to bring into the world.
Many traditions and modalities have described this deepest offering in different ways. In the group practice called sublimewe that I’ve been working with, we call it his life purpose i.e. what he came to Earth to contribute. In Possibility Management it is called your Archetypal Lineage which stresses that it is your place within the village that you inherit from previous generations. Eco-psychologist Bill Plotkin calls it your soul, which for him is about your ecological niche, i.e. the place that you fill not just in the human village but in the more-than-human world.
The discovery of his life purpose comes about through a supported confrontation with Tim’s Shadow and especially his trauma. He realises that the very ways in which he was hurt growing up by his parents and by modern culture provide him with particular gifts and possibilities for helping others. This is another example of the Shadow veils the Light Principle, that our deepest wounds and sufferings present our greatest opportunities for contributing towards others, creating a better world and giving back to Life.
When Tim was a child, when he would express his wild, indigenous self his parents would get angry and shut him down. This created a great pain in Tim where he suppressed and subconsciously hated these parts of himself. But when he rediscovers them, his joy is so big and the opportunity for him to take others through the same journey presents itself. It is so core to his identity, what else would he want to contribute? He realises that finally, his life makes sense! His purpose is to support others in connecting with their wild selves and coming into communion with the natural world through practices of bushcraft and foraging.
Whilst he starts as part of the main Transformational Group, once he has been brought into the culture and discovered his life purpose, the next logical step is for him to go create his own more specific group and welcome others.
So he rounds up a few fellows and creates a Transformational Group focused around wild self-expression, nature connection and bushcraft. They share so much in common that they can go on exquisite discovery journeys together where they explore and research what it truly means for people to re-embody their wild, indigenous selves and how they can best facilitate this in others.
Tim find himself doing his most meaningful work, radiating an aliveness and joy that is infectious and brings other people along with him into finding their own purpose and manifesting it together in the world.
An Integrated Inner and Outer Work Path
Tim following the Path of his Life Purpose means following a unique integrated inner and outer work path. This is a core commitment of a Transformational Group which sees the non-duality and lack of separation between our inner and outer worlds.
Many spiritual traditions have focused primarily on purifying the inner world of the individual. Many activist groups, on the other hand, have focused primarily on challenging the toxic systems in the outer world that we live within.
Neither of these approaches is enough to respond to our situation, as they each have their blind-spots.
The activists ignore the importance of doing the inner work to bring their visions into the world in a responsible, compassionate way rather than from a place of blame, shame and judgement. Often, it is ego squabbles, power-games and dominant culture conditioning that comes up between activists that prevent change from happening. How can we create a new world without challenging the modern culture patterns within us?
The spiritualists, on the other hand, ignore the fact that we live in a system and culture that dictates our every move, that gave us the very trauma in the first place that they are trying to move beyond. It’s like focusing on healing a wound when the violence that caused the wound is still happening. All aspects of our culture and system make spiritual progress harder. How is somebody supposed to find the time to meditate when they are working 80 hours a week to put food on the table and keep the lights on. Is it just a middle class privilege that makes us think that the spiritual path could be the answer?
There are some groups out there who have realised the need for both. In Extinction Rebellion, for example, there was a slogan that the aim was to ‘get the meditators in the lock ons (activist tools for blocking roads) and the activists on the cushion (spiritualist tools for seeking enlightenment)’.
However, in these groups inner and outer work remain separate. Whilst, they might argue that both are important and that one should spend time doing both they are still two separate paths. The duality between the inner and the outer world remains intact.
What would it mean to truly integrate inner and outer work?
It means that they are not treated as separate domains. Inner and outer work are weaved into each other in one path to contribute to the emergence of a non-dual civilisation. Imagine a thread that each individual is following on the path. And a thread that the group is following. For some periods on each thread, the main focus needs to be inner work. And for some periods it’s outer work.
For example, say a group realised that because of their shared family illnesses caused by smog, their purpose was to raise awareness around issues of pollution and its effects through non violent direct action. Whilst an admirable aim, inevitably disagreements would quickly appear in the group about how to make the action happen. These disagreements might turn personal, factions might develop vying for ‘power’. These disagreements are a block in the thread of the group where inner work is necessary. This is where you might call in the Evolutionaries, we discussed earlier, who would be able to support the group in turning the ‘problem’ of the conflict into new creativity and life.
Through time these experiences would connect the group more and more with the non-duality of all things. That whatever Shadow, difficulty or suffering comes up in the group can be transformed into beauty and meaning.
This path would allow groups of people to ongoingly bring more and more of what they care about into the world.
Creating Networked Groups Beyond Duality
Whilst Tim is fixated on his quest to support people in returning to their wildness, many other groups form, each focused on bringing a transformative culture to a different aspects of life.
Different people’s life experiences mean that it makes sense for them to work on different things. In modern culture, we are always looking to find the one and only solution to any problem. In a Transformative Culture, every solution, like every individual is unique and the differences are not only accepted but eventually come to be embraced and welcomed.
These groups are networked together, all giving their contributions to the collective and receiving the contributions of others. This brings enormous network effects.
What has prevented networked groups like this from forming in the past?
Well, in our dominant culture, when we get in conflict with each other, each side in the conflict is usually taking one side of a duality. This split prevents us working together and leads to increasing faction-alisation.
Groups building a non-dual civilisation know that in experience itself, the duality they are arguing about does not really exist. This allows them to use it as a creative tension in and between groups.
They can let go and allow the relational field to guide them in how much emphasis to put on particular aspects. We’ve already seen one example of this in the duality between inner and outer work.
Another similar duality that is bound to arise is between bottom up organising which is more associated with the anarchist tradition and attempts to change policy and governance from the top-down which is more associated with communism.
Ghandi attempted both of these two aspects. First was his constructive program, to build at alternative structures at the bottom i.e. the systems and processes that embody the world we want to see. Second, was his obstructive program which focuses on preventing the destruction caused by our current oppressive systems.
This duality would provide a healthy tension between the varying groups in the network. The aim would be to integrate the two poles so that the constructive can support the obstructive and vice versa. I see the obstructive as clearing out and protecting the space in which the flowers of the constructive program can blossom. And the constructive as providing the solid roots for a tree that can block modern culture’s destruction. The Zapatista Movement is a good example of this integration.
Some people, because of their life experience, would naturally want to work on one end of the poles. The beauty of a Transformative Culture is that they would be supported to bring their Heart Knowledge without judgement by others who might find something else important. They’d be able to express the full life of it to the group without claiming to know best. Through time, the Mem-ethical Integration would allow everyone to see the value of each other’s contributions and to find ways for them to build on each other.
At the moment, the progressive movement is in an endless cycle of division and separation. Embodying a Transformative Culture would allow us to turn this around and begin integrating each other’s viewpoints once more, supporting us to build collective power despite our differences.
Rebuilding the Commons
Once a network of groups has formed, it can begin to rebuild the stores of value that make our lives meaningful and support the flourishing of all beings.
Let’s check back in with a few of our forms of capital from the last post.
The group would begin to rebuild Living Capital in everything they do, as well as preventing ongoing destruction. This would flow naturally out of the Ecological Intentionality of the group, since every choice they make would include the needs of nature and thus support the deepening of biodiversity across the planet. This would work towards ameliorating the Climate and Ecological Crisis. I imagine local and global projects to re-wild large areas of the planet and to shift our food production into a harmonious relationship with eco-systems.
Human Beings are, of course, also part of Living Capital and the Path that I have laid out would support each person to move towards an inner wholeness that allows them to be a unique expression of their value. Everyone would become a never-ending wellspring of value that flows from them and out into the world. You could see each person like a river. In modern culture the flow of their river (or their life energy) is trapped and diverted into many spill-off channels that simply flow value into the Capitalist Empire. People are out of touch with their well, their source of value, this is what they really care about. As described earlier, Transformative Cultures, would through Empathic Inquiry, support everyone to be more and more in touch with themselves, their uniqueness and what they have to offer. This is the rewilding of the human being. Each person taking up their unique place as the weird and wonderful creatures that they are.
A burgeoning non-dual civilisation would also rebuild Cultural Capital. Rather than a culture that marginalises the many to support the few, their culture would be an expression of the beauty and meaning of the gift of Life that we have received. Situated within such a culture, Life would begin to make more and more sense, bringing an end to the Meaning Crisis that engulfs our world. This could all be achieved without dismissing any of the findings of modern science which could be integrated into our narratives to create stories that weave us back into Life.
In our present culture, division is rife. We see it in the culture wars. We see it in the varying groups whose ideologies force them to live in completely separate realities. The splits between us are deepening and deepening and we are finding it harder and harder to see eye to eye with one another. Through Empathic Inquiry and Mem-ethical Integration, Transformative Groups would slowly work to heal these splits in human-kind. As Jung hypothesised, individual wholeness comes through a process of both integration and differentiation. For groups, at the moment there is only differentiation. A non-dual civilisation would allow a diversity to flourish without compromising our ability to be with each other and see beyond our differences.
Together, we create our reality. A thriving culture would in all of its manifestations of art, music and story be a reminder of the wisdom of how to live in harmony with Life. It would be a medium for the Mem-Ethical Integration of the values and principles of Life. It also wouldn’t forget about any of our cultural heritage. Both our indigenous roots and our religious traditions could be understood through a wider narrative that respected lineages whilst not being bound by them.
A non-dual civilisation would also work to replenish Social Capital through time, thus healing our crisis of alienation and disconnection. Working through the conflicts and differences between us and returning to a sense of love for the other, builds immensely strong relationships where each person can give deeply without the worry of being exploited. Individuals who have developed the wisdom to know what is Shadow and what is not, can intervene in each other’s lives without upset. They can say directly to each other what they are seeing without fear that this will destroy the relationship. We can begin to open our hearts to one another once again. We can begin to be with each other without needing to hide or run away when the going gets tough. People could begin to live in community once more, reaping all the benefits of belonging, shared costs and the blessings of one another’s gifts.
Whilst our present Material Capital is largely extractive and exploitative. A non-dual civilisation, with its Ecological Intentionality, would begin to use our tool-making, technological know-how in service of Life. For example, there might be those who would discover that their purpose is to create an internet that facilitates the spread of life-giving integration, to replace our current attention-grabbing, life-sucking network. More and more of the world could be taken into common ownership. This might begin with people buying land or houses together and holding them in co-operative. But could eventually result in the whole world becoming cooperatively owned.
Weaving the World Together Again
A non-dual civilisation will not be wished into existence or born overnight — it must be weaved. The only place where we can begin this weaving is exactly where we each are today. We have a possibility to take up the tangled knot of our present world that we have inherited, work to pick apart a thread of something we deeply care about and begin to weave it together with others.
We can entangle ourselves once more in relationship with each other, with the trees and the birds and with all of Life. And before you know it, a magnificent tapestry will appear before your eyes. This is the slow, methodical, birthing of the potential for Love and Light within the human species.
And you can play your part.
Here’s part 3 where I explore my narrative for this transition that I call returning to Life.
Many of the ideas in this series came out of my co-creative partnership with Jake Lawy, as well as from the work and models of sublimewe originally created by Sarasvathi Cee as well as my own learnings from the work of Possibility Management, The Diamond Approach and The Soulmaking Dharma. To these people and lineages, I am eternally grateful.