Seeking the “Holy Grail” - of Community Building Chapter 10 Part 4
Lessons Learned -- Towards a New Way of Living
Welcome to the Birthing the Symbiotic Age Book!
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You are in Chapter 10, Part 4, Seeking the “Holy Grail” of Community Building -
Lessons Learned -- Towards a New Way of Living
Chapter 10 posts:
The Greatest Obstacle to a New Way of Living — The De-Platforming of God
Breakthrough to a New Creation … New Wine in New WineSkin Networks
Are you trying to figure out where this is All Going? Read an overview of the Symbiotic Culture Strategy, which embodies the Transcendent through the nodes of intersection within local, grassroots-empowered community networks.
Voice-overs are now at the top of my posts for anyone who doesn’t have the time to sit and read! Also, find this chapter post and all previous posts as podcast episodes on
Spotify and Apple! (Note that I just saw after publishing that there are some audio glitches and challenges. I will have to redo the voiceover.)
Previously, at the end of Chapter 10, Part 3
I like to imagine that every individual has in them a “work of heart” – a unique expression and gift that is theirs to give to the world, that so often goes unexpressed because of our embeddedness in the Culture of Separation, where just about everything is given a dollar value. When discussing symbiotic networks liberating “frozen assets” from a community, these are not just financial or material assets but human assets.
In a field of intentional mutual benefit, individuals are more likely to realize their full potential. In modeling the art of community convening, I now recognize another purpose. And that is to inspire everyone to make their lives a beautiful “work of art.”
Imagine a community of purposeful people on an adventure of discovery, bringing their unique gifts to a symbiotic community that is Uniting the Cosmos in Love and bringing that which has been separated back together.
That would indeed be a new way of living.
Lessons Learned — Towards a New Way of Living
The benefits were undeniable for those of us who participated in the Connections Gatherings. Most seemed to instinctively recognize that anyone doing community weaver work “out there” must balance it with spiritual nourishment “in here.’"
Truly, these gatherings were a refuge for “spiritual refugees.”
Unlike Sri Lanka, where the Buddhist spiritual perspective was “built-in,” we in Reno, or the West for that matter, had no overarching spiritual principle to unite us other than our desire to connect and amplify the good in our community. Remember, we launched these groups on the heels of our success with the Local Food Network, a campaign that continued to grow and gain momentum.
The idea for the Connections Gatherings grew out of the same 2006 Valentine’s Day meeting that sparked our quest to identify the principles and Virtues that unite us and our neighbor-to-neighbor campaign.
However, in the months and years that followed, the Connections Gatherings absorbed more and more of our energy, and we subtly began to see populating those groups as the “thing” – as evidenced by our decision to discontinue the Festival because it wasn’t serving as a “feeder system” for the Gatherings.
As more of our “bandwidth” went to populating and proliferating the Connections Gatherings, after several years, our focus got diverted away from building additional symbiotic networks around the other common needs.
In retrospect, I see that our early campaigns to address tangible community needs—like local businesses, local food, neighbors, and arts and culture—had far more impact on building a Conscious Community (Culture of Connection) than merely
talking about it in Connections Gatherings.
Yet, the Connections Gatherings succeeded in a very important way, as we sought not just to build additional networks but also to build the foundation for a truly “new way of living”—with a new mind and a new heart. We used our “hands” as well, primarily to address community needs identified by our participants.
Those hands did not continue to build new networks, largely because of the lessons we had yet to learn. When we launched the Gatherings, two key understandings hadn’t quite come on our radar.
First, I don’t think we fully appreciated how the Culture of Separation marginalized our communal spiritual life — “de-platforming” the Transcendent in the public sphere.
Second, we hadn’t identified the power of the Ancient Blueprint as a functional pattern in human life, exemplified by Jesus’ prescription to “Love God and Love Others” as the foundation for community life.
However, intrinsically, we must have known its power since our Connections Gatherings affirmed and solidified this foundational principle, first by connecting participants with the Transcendent (however they perceived or defined it – many as God and others as a Higher Power or Awareness) and secondly, by connecting them to one another.
What it didn’t do was fully extend that love to the larger community in the form of new Symbiotic Networks.
We’ll get to that.
Now, it’s true that the people attracted to these groups were seeking spiritual fellowship — me included — so the groups were most definitely filling a need. My intention was to help people cultivate their individual connection with the Transcendent and practice the Virtues in their lives while we built broader symbiotic networks.
I thought this would naturally inspire the individuals in our Connections Gatherings to build an even broader regional network of Symbiotic Networks, what I later called a Network Commons, that would include every one of the 12 community needs we had identified, described in Chapter 8.
That didn’t happen.
Most participants stayed focused on their own spiritual growth and supported one another around the specific projects they were passionate about. For most, that seemed to be enough.
Perhaps the greatest value we got from our Connections Gatherings were the lessons we learned that we could use today to build a Symbiotic Culture, Community, and Networks — with a Symbiotic Society as the network Heart I will describe at the end of this chapter.
LESSON # 1:
INSIDE THE CULTURE OF SEPARATION, SILOS “NATURALLY” EMERGE.
In retrospect, it’s remarkable to me how “organically” our Symbiotic Networks got formed and spread. When you truly come from Love, things come naturally, without much effort or “force.” We seemed to be intuitively guided each step of the way.
However, over the many years after we had launched our Connections Gatherings to seed new networks, we encountered several unanticipated obstacles that limited these Gatherings’ impact on the greater community.
I would like to share the hidden practical and cultural influences that continually drive all of us to be divided into silos and even siloed networks.
A. Bandwidth
Because our prior Symbiotic Networks seemed to emerge and grow “organically,” I don’t think we recognized that the Connection Gatherings would require a greater capacity.
Even though the Local Living Economy, Conscious Community, and Food System Networks had already been built and were humming along, these campaigns still required some of our focus. We had also started our Neighbor Network, which now had the mainstream support of the two rival newspapers in town, plus local radio and TV.
We also initiated the previously mentioned Celebration Festival, which addressed the “Arts and Culture” domain, and did so for two years. So, our collective plate was full of Festivals and Gatherings.
We had plenty going on managing what we already created.
B. Because of the limited bandwidth to launch new networks, we focused on individual siloed projects.
Being “at capacity” for new Symbiotic Networks, the Connections Gatherings ended up supporting individual members with projects that benefitted the community – like the rooftop garden atop the homeless shelter. These projects did good and felt good, but they didn’t build multi-nodal Symbiotic Networks, just more beautiful silos.
Without seeing it at the time—and given the bandwidth issue—focusing on these worthy individual projects diverted us from our fundamental purpose of being an ongoing connectivity-building network capable of catalyzing new networks.
We forgot the previous lesson discussed in Chapter 7 on forming the Local Food System Network. As you may remember, before launching our Local Food System Network, someone suggested we do a community garden.
Instinctively, I took exception to that approach because I recognized that we didn’t need one more siloed food-related project—but a Local Food System Network that would become a community catalyst, amplifying the intentional mutual benefit of all the food enterprises and projects already happening in the local region.
Had we shifted our focus to building a siloed project such as a community garden or starting a Community Supportive Agriculture (CSA) project as worthy stand-alone endeavors, the Conscious Community Network would have devolved into just another smorgasbord of well-intentioned ventures.
Instead, we followed our instincts and created a “meta-network” around local food production and consumption, a broader community CONTEXT that ended up benefitting every participating beautiful silo and naturally sparking others to create MANY community gardens and MANY CSA projects as part of our larger network. In fact, the number of CSAs increased from a handful to more than 10 over a five-year period.
Even though we knew this in principle and practice, we got sidetracked by supporting individuals in their own siloed projects.
C. Without realizing it, Connections Gatherings became a new “networked silo”!
Having already created four viable Symbiotic Networks, we instinctively focused on cultivating the inner resources to create more of them. We also called our Connections Gatherings “weaver groups” because we saw ourselves weaving the threads of individual siloes into “whole cloth” networks like the buy local, local food, and neighborhood ones.
Our focus was on practicing Virtues, individually and collectively – and our participants applied their energy to projects they were passionate about. These projects, as we already said, were all separate silos — and the Gatherings helped connect them to each other.
While the previous Symbiotic Networks continued to thrive, paradoxically, our weaver groups didn’t weave any new ones — it seems that the Connections Gatherings didn’t extend
connectivity in the same way as Symbiotic Network building.
Instead, Connections Gatherings unwittingly fostered a new “siloed network.”
A silo network of organizations, while a step in the right direction, is really just one more beautiful “silo of siloes” in competition with other networked silos within the Culture of Separation. They are not “radically inclusive.”
The reason — inside the Culture of Separation, it’s “natural” to gather with others (our Tribes) who think the same way – for example, regenerative organizations, Christian organizations, or political organizations. Other types of networked silos are those composed of people and groups who share a desire to solve a specific issue, such as homelessness, overcoming polarization, hunger, racism, poverty, or climate change.
Here's the problem.
In my own work, I’ve discovered that even the most beautiful, well-intentioned networked silos, in isolation from one another, will not transform the mainstream, mainly because they are still silos – competing with others for resources — and some are on the battlefield fighting other networked silos with a seemingly opposing agenda.
Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not asking anyone to stop doing their good work inside of silos or bringing together like-minded silos into cooperative networks.
The impulse to bring the threads of awakening and functionality together into a whole cloth is a necessary step in what’s emerging.
However, as we will see shortly, the real breakthrough involves not just a new organization but a new network-centric “organism.” The Local Food System Network was not in competition with any other entity but rather provided the scaffolding, the “super-highway” for well-intentioned silos and siloed networks to act coherently, in accord, so that the full benefit of what they have to offer gets released into the community.
The limitations of networked siloes — even those that came from the Connections Gatherings — have become clearer over the past two years.
I can point to more than five global networks that believe they are building THE global network to bring other networks together. Whether they recognize it or not, they’re all in competition with each other.
This is totally understandable in a Culture of Separation.
As long as they are separate organizational networks, they will be perceived as such. I had to learn this through experience.
The work of weaving and amplifying good works needs to take one more step and become “radically inclusive” so we can face our challenges using ALL our resources and connecting ALL THE GOOD available.
D. Other leaders perceived us as a separate silo – triggering an “immune response.”
Because I saw the Connections Gatherings as a vehicle for spreading Symbiotic Culture and networks – something that would help bring silos into fruitful collaboration – I was puzzled when other community leaders perceived us as another well-intentioned project in competition with their own.
At the time, I failed to recognize that any time a formal organizational structure is created inside the Culture of Separation, it is seen as being in competition with other organizational structures. As the Connections Gatherings became our own spiritual and community group, I failed to see that there were so many other groups that looked like they were doing the same thing.
People belonged to churches, synagogues, and mosques or attended events at other spiritual centers. To those gaining spiritual nourishment from one of these, our Connections Gathering might have seemed like a competitor despite our desire to be trans-religious.
Without realizing it, it was seen as another spiritual/community group
— another beautiful silo!
Fast forward to 2013, when I was contacted by an organizer in Florida who wanted me to set up “Connecting the Good” seed groups in three communities. It was the response from the organizer in the region that finally helped me see the light. I was on the verge of booking my flight when she wrote to me and said, “Even though I am very excited about your work and your upcoming visit, I’m having trouble understanding how this is different from the three other spiritual groups I am already attending.”
That’s when I realized, once and for all, that even though my intention for Connections Gatherings was to create “Symbiotic Networks of networks” to connect the good in a community, it was nonetheless being perceived as a separate spiritual silo.
The Connections Gathering meeting on Monday night? Oh, that’s when my Bible study or meditation or yoga group meets!
LESSON # 2.
THE GATHERINGS GOT DISCONNECTED FROM FORMING SYMBIOTIC NETWORKS
Still, the Connections Gatherings were vital and helpful for those involved, and as other communities around the western United States found out about our Conscious Community Network, we began to get requests for training. By 2010, we had four separate local Connections Gatherings in our region, which were held every month.
That year, I invited people from six western states to attend an all-day training session on starting Connections Gatherings (aka Weaver Groups) and becoming “agents of love” in their own communities.
It was hugely successful, and everyone went home enthusiastically raving about the training.
Interestingly, not one of these people ended up creating a Connections Gathering
in their community.
When I re-read the manual I created for the training, the reason why that happened became apparent. The training was about running and proliferating Connections Gatherings, with no particular emphasis on building symbiotic networks!
So while enthusiasm could be maintained, as like-hearted people got to experience for themselves what a Culture of Connection feels like — because the practical purpose behind the Connections Gatherings went unaddressed, the idea failed to take hold “back home” – particularly where the Connections gathering itself would be perceived as just another “thing” competing for time, money, attention, and resources.
We learned that being an “agent of love” wasn’t enough. That agency had to be extended in a tangible, functional way by building multi-nodal Symbiotic Networks to connect the good and liberate the unexpressed goodness in a community.
LESSON # 3: THE ENDEMIC NATURE OF THE CULTURE OF SEPARATION
Perhaps the most profound teaching moment regarding how these Connection Gatherings were perceived as a separate silo came in an offhand comment made by a community leader in Reno. She was a regular attendee at our Connections Gatherings and had benefitted from the connections she had made through all of the symbiotic networks.
“So, Richard,” she said to me. “It seems like you’re building your own empire.”
When the shock of being labeled an “imperialist” wore off, I responded, “Actually, what I’ve discovered is the perfect strategy for undermining empires. If people all over the world came together at the grassroots, reconnected with the Transcendent ground of being, and lived from that loving center, treating one another like a connected family, in Symbiotic Kinship, self-centered and corrupted leadership couldn’t divide and rule them, the way we see happening today.”
I still stand by Symbiotic Culture as a “transforming empire” strategy (let’s call it a pro-living systems approach) because the alternative “solution” being presented by many national and global leaders to handle the overwhelming and interlocking problems we face is top-down — an even more centralized global authority.
That would be nothing more than the Culture of Separation on steroids. Even as we were being forced to march to the same drumbeat, we would still be separated from the web of life and the web of love, from God, Nature, ourselves, and one another.
Inside the Culture of Separation, the idea of an individual building their own empire makes perfect sense. When the public saw me as a visible figure being interviewed, it would be easy to imagine that I was building a personal platform for success and
self-interest.
What other motivation could there be to do this work?
In our current age of materialism, with its decline of basic morality and spirituality, it is hard to imagine someone who doesn’t covet money, material things, self-interest, status, or power and control over others. Fortunately, I had access to a lineage of Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, and Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne, who exemplified the Love, open-heartedness, and “spaciousness” of being in the world.
Inside the Culture of Separation, it’s “natural” to perceive that everyone – regardless of the noble ideas they represent – has a self-serving agenda. So, obviously, promoting the Connections Gatherings must have triggered an “immune response,” an alarm that my work would impinge upon or distract from this individual’s own beautiful silo — when in truth, my intention was to bring all the silos into communication, cooperation, and collaboration.
That shows how endemic siloing is: even while our Connections Gatherings were dedicated to building the symbiotic multi-nodal networks that would lift all boats – the Gatherings were perceived as a separate and competing silo.
In retrospect, I feel compassion for all of the well-intentioned individuals, beautiful projects, and networks seeking to do well inside of—and in spite of—the Culture of Separation, which reinforces the notion of competition with each another and the mindset of scarcity.
From this fundamental faulty belief that “there’s not enough to go around,” every well-meaning project or network is on an invisible battlefield against all the others, fighting for “food” – money and other resources, people, and attention. Having run two nonprofits (the San Diego Food Bank and Nevada Microenterprise Initiative) and two for-profit businesses of my own (including one I am still operating), I can say, “I feel your pain.”
Fortunately, “pain relief” is on its way!
LESSON # 4: SYMBIOTIC NETWORKS TURN COMPETITORS INTO COMPANIONS and COLLEAGUES
Inside the Culture of Separation, competition over “scarce” resources is a “given,” which is why our Symbiotic Networks offered such a stark and welcome contrast.
When we actually brought “competitors” together inside a network for intentional mutual benefit, something interesting and transformative happened – competitors became companions – the essence of mutually beneficial symbiosis.
Consider the outcome of the Local Food Systems Network.
Most restauranteurs previously considered one another rivals, but when they got to know one another, most became friends. Being part of the network, they recognized that they were expanding the marketplace for every restaurant—instead of fighting over crumbs, they were baking a bigger pie.
This transformed view goes further than just economic benefit – which is huge and measurable, as resources get spent over and over inside the community instead of
being extracted out of it.
There is the intangible benefit of connection and “communitas” – the spirit of community
that reflects Adam Smith’s idea of “universal fellow feeling.”
Consider the untold blessings of the connection and collaboration between “the Pagan and the Pastor,” who met at one of our food system meetings, or the Rabbi and Imam, who collaborated to bring Halal foods to the community.
I realize one of the key reasons our networks were so successful is that – it naturally felt good! What a relief to live in a true “sacred space” of a new playing field rather than a battlefield of the old system.
When we move beyond like-minded silos to like-hearted networks – collaboration and cooperation literally break down barriers and open hearts.
People love being part of a purposeful community, especially when the mutual benefit is apparent. One reason our networks worked was that the culture that permeated them was on a field of giving, not taking. Once we experience self-giving love, once it becomes safe to trust in this way, it brings out the best in everyone and clears the barriers to Love. One can then see how self-giving service can return tenfold in unexpected benefits.
As you will see in Part III, we now have a way to create groups that will not only build the Virtues in ourselves (the INNER development) but also use that spiritual fuel and fire to build connectivity networks (the OUTER development) in every one of the 12 areas of community needs – an infrastructure for a truly “new way of living.”
Find out what’s next in “The Greatest Obstacle to a New Way of Living – the “De-Platforming” of God” in Chapter 10, Part 5.
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