Symbiotic Age Book Introduction Part 3

Book Introduction Part 3

Welcome to the Symbiotic Age Book!

If you are new, please visit the TABLE OF CONTENTS HERE and catch up on your reading!

You are now in Introduction Part 3. Here are all the posts from the Introduction:

• Read Book Introduction Part 1

• Read Book Introduction Part 2

• Read Book Introduction Part 3

Trying to figure out Where This is All Going? Read an overview of the Symbiotic Culture Strategy.

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Transcendent Virtues and the Culture of Connection

My experience building community for over forty years has shown me that it is possible to grow beyond the Culture of Separation to create a mutually beneficial Culture of Connection.

It requires activating, cultivating, and embedding the virtues in new network nodes of intersection throughout each community.

It was the Transcendent Virtues that emanated from Cosmic Love (through a Buddhist lens) that provided the foundation for Dr. Ariyaratne’s Sarvodaya national “ecosystem” network of 5,000 regional economies, as well as our symbiotic networks in San Diego and Reno — allowing all of these endeavors to thrive inside of, and in parallel to the Culture of Separation.

In other words, these are interdependent networks operating independently of established institutional structures.

This book will share practical lessons for building local communities and economic networks that create well-being and agency from the grassroots up.

More importantly, though, you will learn about how individuals can embody universal Virtues and extend this spiritual power through the nodes of intersection by connecting across organizational silos, lifting all boats in a local region, especially those people on the margins of society.

The foundation for this local and global transformation can be found in one heartening truth:

We humans share, across religions, all cultures — even modern, civic, secular culture — universal Virtues that reflect the Cosmic Love that mystical visionaries like St. Maximus identified as the Source of all things.

This “garden of Virtues” -- that our group in Reno discovered for ourselves when we launched our Conscious Community Network-- holds the key to enhancing the quality of our lives and building flourishing communities.

And we don’t need to create new philosophies, a new theology, academic studies, or costly infrastructure to make it happen. The Ancient Blueprint is available freely to all and can unite the positive realizations of all previous historical worldview stages into joint action.

In a practical sense, this means that people from different political or religious perspectives, even different economic classes, can find a common home working together with a unifying worldview, acting in concert for the common good. 

We need to open our hearts to activate the Virtues more fully in each of us and cultivate the network that extends the good to all of us. 

That means emerging from our familiar tribes and safe silos, moving beyond our differences and narrow identities, and focusing on our shared aspirations and mutual benefit (which is, incidentally, the definition of “symbiosis” as applied to human society).

I call the approach to connect people and leaders across their silos Symbiotic Kinship. This term expresses the need to extend our sense of Kinship, usually reserved for members of our tribe/silo, to others we consciously collaborate with for mutual benefit.

 Albert Einstein recognized this need as well. He said a human being …

 “… experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — an optical delusion of his consciousness … a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion.”

Symbiotic Kinship means uniting citizens and their organizations at the grassroots voluntarily in the spirit of Cosmic Love because – as you will learn reading this book – it is a reality-tested way for us to transform the Culture of Separation.

Given the crisis/opportunity we now face as a civilization and a species, it’s “all hands on deck” to unite above all the divides currently being used against us.

Today, within any local community, people, nonprofits and religious groups, businesses, local governments, and local movements are already stepping up in response to our multiple crises. As I have reached out to existing networks that seek to address what is in front of us, I’ve been heartened to find a growing awareness that a fundamentally new level of collaboration is required.

I see these functional and well-meaning individuals, groups, and networks as threads of a tapestry that has yet to be woven. 

 Weaving a whole-cloth movement that includes and transcends separate silos is the task at hand.

What is uniquely transformational about Symbiotic Networks is that instead of being another silo competing with other well-meaning projects, they are a CONTEXT, an infrastructure to bring forth the worthy work already being done throughout the community. It’s a delivery system for “connecting and weaving the good.”

Okay, you are probably wondering — other than a vision of spirit, virtues, connection, and local community — what are the practical reasons people connect? This book will describe how Sarvodaya brought people together to satisfy ten basic community needs and how our Reno group developed our list of twelve community building blocks.

Whether it was local food, water, and energy systems or strengthening the local economy, housing, education, clean and healthy environment, neighborhood, health and wellness, arts and culture, community safety, etc. — this book will show you how we were able to build what we call symbiotic community networks around many of these needs.

Any organization, group, or individual is welcome, provided they honor the Transcendent (however they characterize it) as a foundation, do their best to practice agreed-upon virtues, focus on what we have in common, and commit to practical work for satisfying shared community needs through mutual benefit.

Here’s good news! 

As Dr. Ari learned in Sri Lanka, and I discovered in impoverished neighborhoods in San Diego and middle-class America Reno, this process doesn’t require academic credentials or enlightened souls.

In all these cases, ordinary people created extraordinary results by making these luminous virtues a common ground of being and way of life. Then, they extended these virtues through symbiotic networks to connect the good.

Although my work emerged from extraordinary experiences, I am not extraordinarily gifted in any way. I am not an expert, an academic researcher, a theologian, or a philosopher. I have no desire to become a “thought leader” or start a new religion or philosophy.

My whole life has been dedicated to seeking the Truth, and in the process, I’ve discovered the distinctions I gladly share with you in this book. Please note — I didn’t INVENT this Universal Ground of Being. It was a discovery.

I’m not seeking to brand any of this or even to build a business. I’m already a successful businessman in the medical industry, and as you will read, I created symbiotic networks in Reno while I was running my business. 

The foundational principles I will share are dear to me, and I hope to you as well. This book is about sharing my life’s calling to ensure that it is practiced coherently and consistent with the principles of mutual benefit.

Hopefully, this work will inspire an expansion of the good works already being done daily by local citizens, nonprofits, Main Street businesses, churches, and local governments — throughout the world.  

Instead of focusing on – and arguing over – philosophical distinctions, we must bring together community resources already addressing common human needs and gently weave them together to connect and multiply the good.

Birth of a Symbiotic Age: A Global Commonwealth of Regional Economies

Imagine a worldwide network of tens of thousands of thriving local economies working internally to build their social and economic cooperation and self-sufficiency capacity.

Imagine the flood of resources, ideas, experiences, capital, and collaborators in each community that are “liberated” when the silos of separation are removed and replaced by what I call a “Network Commons,” benefiting each participant and the whole community.

Imagine a new bottom-up global trading system organically spreading within and between communities at the speed of trust.

Imagine our capacity for personal and community self-governance as we weave together in ever-expanding symbiotic networks … informed and nourished by the Transcendent Ground of Being itself, powered by Cosmic Love, and infused with the passion to bring that heavenly radiance to Earth.

This is not a pipe dream – it’s a dream based on real, on-the-ground, field-tested experience.

The Sarvodaya Movement in Sri Lanka has already built its national network of 5,000 regional communities (through what they call Sarvodaya Societies) and economies — a new Culture of Connection, inverting the usual worldly financial and political power pyramid.

This book will share how they did that and how I learned to translate their approaches in the West.

I’m going to make a bold statement. 

Connecting across silos to weave the good for joint action in local communities could be the next stage in human social and cultural evolution — the breakthrough humanity needs now.

So, how do Sarvodaya’s and Symbiotic Culture concepts spread from one person in one community to a worldwide commonwealth of strong regional economies?

I will share the interior, spiritual developmental process AND the real-world practical network building that involves both “multi-scalar” and “fractal” network evolution.

• Multi-scalar means networks of organizations spread horizontally within a community that can extend upward to national and global levels, with infrastructure to support that.

• Fractal means that there are patterns and universal structures within the Ancient Blueprint that, when embodied in one community, could simultaneously emerge in thousands of communities!
  

By the end of this book, you will have a proven pathway and roadmap to create your own small groups to start consciously weaving a truly expansive tapestry — with the focus on building a new, parallel Culture of Connection as “scaffolding,” a new “Network Commons,” a bridge to a new culture, right alongside the existing Culture of Separation.

A Network Commons represents a community-based collaborative initiative where nonprofits, religious organizations, civic entities, mutual aid and gifting groups, cooperatives, private enterprises, and public resources are intentionally interconnected, shared, and governed by an engaged community of stakeholders. 

It comprises the various interdependent, distributed symbiotic networks engaged in widespread collaboration and embodies a peer-driven production and consumption model.

It encourages local communities to produce and consume local goods, services, and knowledge, which are then linked to self-organized regional marketplaces for the mutual benefit of individuals, organizations, businesses, and the broader community.

Examples include networks that strengthen local systems for food, energy, and water, boost the local economy, and promote and advance endeavors that serve those on the margins of society, including education, housing, arts, culture, spirituality, wellness, and healthy local living environments.

The Ancient Blueprint provides a pattern for building these networks — available to all. I hope this book will inspire you to jump in and make this a reality right where you live — creating the seeds of a parallel society and economy in your region.

To this end, in the last part of the book, I will share a simple group process, a “delivery system,” to deploy the idea throughout a local community. It’s based on an informal structure like Alcoholics Anonymous — in that it’s like a “recovery group.”  

It can be thought of as a cultural recovery group. I call it a Symbiotic Society. This group structure, purpose, and process are based on the proven track record of the successful Sarvodaya Societies, as well as the “Conscious Community Network,” “Weaver Groups,” and “Connections Gatherings” that were created in Reno, Nevada, and described in this book.

So, what are we recovering? It’s not like there was some previous perfect society for us to recover.

Instead, we are recovering the Transcendent (however we think of that) and putting it back into our lives, doing our best to live the agreed-upon virtues that flow from this, and then connecting the “nodes of intersection” (silos) in the organizational, local networks we are already embedded in, starting in our families, neighborhoods, and local region.

The recovery groups will support a personal and community transition towards a Culture of Connection as a new way of living.

And we can start immediately in our own lives and as part of strengthening our immediate family unit — the nucleus of a healthy society and with our neighbors.

I am hopeful that as we come to recognize how the Culture of Separation has divided us and thwarted our fundamental impulse for what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called “beloved community,” the movement that begins within each of us will extend to our families and our neighborhood, our region, and ultimately, the whole world.

As we will learn, this movement is not based on any top-down initiative — by a global authority or even a global movement — nor is it about creating a new separate organization that would become just another silo seeking to survive and compete in the Culture of Separation.

It’s about activating local Network Commons, A NEW CONTEXT, uniting people of goodwill locally, and then connecting EXISTING local community-based organizations, religious organizations, businesses, and local governments that are already doing good works rather than creating a new separate project.

I’ve divided the book into three sections: Formation, Application, and Activation.

Part 1, Formation, is about my life-changing experiences growing up, meeting great teachers, discovering the Ancient Blueprint, and the first attempts to bring heaven to Earth. It describes the early work in two crime-ridden neighborhoods in San Diego, my introduction to Dr. Ari and Sarvodaya, building the first symbiotic network, and what I learned heading up nonprofits in San Diego and Nevada.

Part II, Application, is about taking what I learned during Formation into intentional real-world practice in Reno, Nevada. In this 15-year journey, I helped launch a buy-local network, a local food network, a get-to-know-your-neighbor campaign, and a Culture and Arts Festival. A bit ahead of our time, we even built a digital social network to connect the good. The Symbiotic Networks that developed during this period reflected the Ancient Blueprint and laid the foundation for a truly “virtuous economy” and society.

The final section, Part III Activation, concerns you, the reader. It’s a sober look at the Culture of Separation and a hopeful view of how we all can bring about — dare we say it — Heaven on Earth, which is not a destination but a way of living. It’s about how to nurture a global movement (in each local community) by connecting the existing networks already working in each community that, up until now, have been operating separately. 

A 5-step plan to form and grow community-based groups (Symbiotic Societies) will be outlined. Those groups will be the vehicle to activate Symbiotic Culture, networks, and communities that will grow into a worldwide, decentralized network of regional Network Commons.

It will be the Transcendent luminous Ground of Being that becomes embodied and then released through the millions of people, and existing local organizations and networks, connecting across silos and now spreading through the new networks emerging — co-creating a new story AND reality of a Culture of Connection.

I dedicate this book to that Ancient Lineage and those passionate about extending the lineage into worldly practice today.

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Look for the next Symbiotic Age Book Post in early January 2024 — Chapter 1