The Heart-Centered Way of Symbiotic Culture, Chapter 12, Part 2

From Siloed Systems to Sacred Networks

Welcome to the Birthing the Symbiotic Age Book!

NEW here? — please visit the TABLE OF CONTENTS FIRST and catch up!

You are in Chapter 12, Part 2, The Heart-Centered Path to Symbiotic Culture: from siloed systems to sacred networks — Re-Villaging Begins at Home

Chapter 12 posts:

• The Story Behind the Story

• Re-Villaging Begins at Home

• Sarvodaya, Revisited -- Coming Full Circle

• How a Parallel Society Strategy Addresses Crisis

• Living in Truth: Building a Parallel Polis Within a Spiritually Hostile Regime

• The Ancient Blueprint – A Missing Piece Hiding in Plain Sight

• I Write the Book, the Book Writes Me
  
  Are you trying to figure out where this is All Going? Read Building Bridges to a New World — embodying 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 time to sit and read! You can also find this chapter post and all previous posts as podcast episodes on Spotify and Apple!

Previously from Chapter 12, Part 1

Before I resume the story of my own personal “re-villaging” process, I want to reiterate another realization I uncovered as the writing unfolded: something hidden in plain sight, obscured by the Culture of Separation.

Billions of individuals are already practicing mutual benefit, and millions of organizations worldwide are doing their best to “Connect the Good.” These have been operating as “single-cell organisms” and can only now become a “super-organism” that can turn upside down the economic and political power pyramid.

Without realizing it, these individuals and communities have been practicing “re-villaging,” instinctively seeing that ordinary people “on the ground” are the foundation of a “from-the-ground-up” movement that will firmly establish a parallel Culture of Connection that can bring forth a worldwide network of village economies.

Our task is to interconnect the emerging “islands of coherence” and weave these
into a whole-cloth movement.

This chapter will describe my journey over the past seven years and discuss how we can apply and practice Symbiotic Culture in our lives, communities, groups, and networks.

Re-Villaging Begins at Home

In Chapter 9, I introduced the idea of “re-villaging” as a way to emerge from our Culture of Separation with new “village sensibilities” — extending our sense of Symbiotic Kinship and Love beyond our families to our neighbors and beyond to the world.

For me, the opposite was true as well.

I needed to channel much of the energy I had devoted to the community for over fifteen years back into my family life.

The re-villaging process ultimately necessitates a healthy balance among individual, family, and community well-being.

I am reminded of my forty years of community work, during which I met countless individuals utterly dedicated to causes like peace, social justice, environmentalism, and other issues related to transforming society. And yet, their personal lives were in disarray. Some were unable to make a sustainable living.

Others neglected their health or relationships. This is not uncommon in the Culture of Separation, where, for example, there seems to be such a disconnect between “making a living” and “making a meaningful life.”

Throughout the years, I spearheaded the Reno networks, managed a full-time business, and raised a son as a single father. Let’s get real.

Anyone looking to apply the ideas in this book to their communities will encounter this balance issue, which is even more challenging in society today than it was
fifteen or twenty years ago.

As the gap between rich and poor has widened, and as we deal with escalating polarization and distrust, the stress levels of just living a “normal” life start to hit the red zone. That’s why cultivating Virtues in our personal lives must be the foundation of any such work, lest we project our difficulties onto others. Even with those Virtues as a foundational resource, we all go through transitions in life.

I dealt with these internal challenges and changes by, once again, getting down on my knees and asking Jesus for guidance and understanding, figuratively and literally.

I don’t subscribe to the idea that praying is about achieving a particular outcome or asking for something as if God were a magic genie. Instead, surrendering and asking for help is about regaining the right understanding of reality and gaining a deeper view of what is happening in yourself and your situation.

My life began to change when I shifted my focus from the local community to expanding our networks on a broader scale. As a facilitator for the regional networks, I established the tone with my leadership. However, when I became deeply involved in OneSphera, I ironically disconnected from my community life in Reno.

Even without my ongoing participation, the Reno networks continued to radiate benefit. The Local Economy Network had such an impact that it developed into a buy-local “brand.” The State of Nevada also incorporated the concept of “We Think Local.”

The Local Food System Network, having catalyzed or strengthened a public farmers market, community-supported agriculture initiatives, community gardens, backyard farming networks, food cooperatives, and much more, didn’t sustain itself as an ongoing symbiotic network. It did continue to operate, but without sustained “symbiotic space-holding,” it lost focus.

The Neighbor-to-Neighbor movements continued to ripple out in mutual benefit throughout the region, but I couldn’t track them.

I hadn’t created a transition plan, and while groups continued to meet and “Connect the Good” on the ground, the infrastructure gave way to multiple scattered clusters. For example, when I approached a few of the super-connectors about how to keep the momentum going, they responded positively and, in the next breath, suggested that their organization be in charge. That is how relentless the cultural mindset of “I, me, mine” is!

In retrospect, I realize that leadership is required, especially within
distributed community networks.

That leadership is not necessarily the charismatic rah-rah-rah we imagine when we think of a leader, but rather the quiet “servant” leadership from behind and underneath, much more like tending the fire than being the one to spark a movement.

Throughout my involvement with the Symbiotic Networks in Reno, I stood for the principles and practices that made the network a scaffold rather than a stand-alone silo. In my absence, however, there was no “fire-tender,” no one so dedicated to the concept that, even without any official title or role, would work behind the scenes to see that the network survived and thrived.

Perhaps had I recognized this role as necessary for transition, I would have found the natural “successors” who could have sustained our success. Not only didn’t I create a transition plan for our local networks, but I also didn’t create one for myself.

My personal “re-villaging” process was sweeping me up, and I didn’t fully see it.

I got married in 2015. A few years before, in 2012, I sold my hyperbaric business and shifted to building a hyperbaric consulting business. One of the things I felt strongly about as I helped build the Symbiotic Networks in Reno was that convening these networks shouldn’t require the time, money, or paid staff that would be required in a formal organization.

After all, there is no organizational infrastructure, no building to rent, and no employees, lawyers, accountants, or, for that matter, janitors. As with most of the other super-connectors, my networking work was above and beyond my work in the business world, a way of giving “forward” to the community through service.

We’ve heard it so often. I want to “give back” to the community. Well, that would infer I’ve taken something from it, right? In a symbiotic culture of mutual benefit, giving and taking are a simultaneous act. That’s why I say, “give forward”.

These life changes — marriage and a new business — forced me to focus more on my life and connect that life to the “village” I sought to empower. Like Gandhi’s concept of swadeshi, “fixing the world” begins with building the spiritual, financial, and social capability first to care for ourselves, then our immediate family. This is not selfishness, it’s responsibility! If we don’t care for our own “business,” we are externalizing our care to someone else — just as certain businesses externalize pollution costs by passing it on to the general public.

Both Gandhi and Dr. Ari were clear about this. Responsibility radiates from us to our families, neighborhoods, communities, etc. This is fractal self-governance. If we are incapable of governing ourselves, how can we govern others, and how can we expect the institutions of society to operate with integrity?

Newly married, my number one priority became providing for my family, so community engagement had to be put into a new context. This is as it should be. This kind of balance doesn’t just show up overnight. It took me five years to build my consulting business and train my son to run it. That gave me more time to focus on my re-villaging as I began to imagine the book you are reading now.

Put another way, I had to “reinhabit” myself to restore my ability to be of service. That’s why the Virtues are such a critical foundation.

Compassion, wisdom, generosity, and service go together because together, they give our lives spiritual focus and balance. I like to think of these Virtues operating in concert as a harmonious symphony.

Looking back, it seems I was receiving a practical life lesson on the concept St. Augustine taught in his 426 AD work, De Doctrina Christiana, about Ordo Amoris—the Order of Love, a hierarchy that prioritizes love appropriately.

Remember how, throughout this book, I have described the Constellation of Virtues—a Virtuous Circle whose purpose is to unify and bring order to our personality? This process allows us to shift from self-serving love to self-giving love, aligning our affections in an ordered way.

I was re-aligning my priorities to God, self, family, neighbor, and community, and extended into the world. I am still in this ongoing reorientation!

So, in my business endeavors, I need to not only do what it takes to sustain and grow my business but also do it in a way that is congruent with the Virtues I espouse. This is particularly true when there is a setback or disappointment. I may not have much control over those external events, but I am responsible for how I respond.

A Change of “Heart,” a Change of Place

This re-villaging process — making a new connection with the world and our community in parallel with the Culture of Separation — is something we will all have to do, whether we recognize it now or not. Cultivating balance is fundamental for those wishing to build a Symbiotic Society.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, life changes — marriage, divorce, children, a death in the family, a change in employment, financial or health issues, etc. — will happen. They will all factor into how and how much you choose to be involved in building a symbiotic community.

Meanwhile, I had a successful medical business, had married, and bought a home, yet I was still unclear about the next steps in my life’s work. My company, now run by my son, had given me a certain level of financial freedom—but to do what?

The turning point could have been “following my heart,” but not in the
way you would think!

I had a flare-up of atrial fibrillation, a scary fluctuation in heart rate that, on the one hand, felt like a panic attack and, on the other, left me drained and unable to do the simplest exercise. In June 2019, after my atrial fibrillation wasn’t responding to medication, I decided to do a procedure called a cardiac “ablation,” where they go into your heart and “shut down” the electrical impulses causing the heart to beat erratically.

The procedure did indeed change my heartbeat — only this time, it left me with an atrial flutter, a symptom as distressing as the first one.

In response to that symptom, I had another procedure, cardioversion, where electric shocks are administered through electrodes attached to your chest. It was during that procedure that I “died.” My heart stopped for a full four minutes, and the doctors had to massage my heart to get it beating again physically.

And while I didn’t see a light or a tunnel during this brief “near-death” experience, I did see the light in a more practical sense.

The impact of “dying” imprinted me with a renewed sense of urgency about sharing what I had learned in my 50-year spiritual journey and 40+-year journey of discovering what works to build community.

What kind of impact did I want to have in my remaining time?

Am I satisfied with what I have achieved?

In many ways, I was, but I could also see that my work was incomplete. I began to think about that book I had started in 2006, the one that became the one you’re reading right now, updating it to the present and then offering it to others who also had the vision of building community in this age of societal breakdown.

When you build Symbiotic Communities and Networks in a local region like I did, you are “holding space” for the community. This means that, despite the darkness of separation and a lack of unity, you are stepping up as a vehicle reflecting the Divine Love coming through you so that you can act as a power to hold space and unify your community.

In 2019, I felt my heart open again to my community and the whole planet. Even before the COVID lockdowns and supply chain issues resulting from the Russian-Ukrainian War, I could feel the flare-up of the “anti-virtues” in the world and a sense of having to do battle with the “forces of darkness” as we built the networks to Connect the Good.

I realize this view—that there is a battle between “light” and “darkness” or “good” and “evil” in the world—may sound overly religious to many, but it seems to be the most common-sense way of describing the rise and fall of empires.

I felt I was intuiting this next significant step, so I spoke with my wife Marta about changing our lives—specifically, a radical “to the root” change that would deconstruct our current reality, which for us included our life in Reno.

In the fall of 2019, we discussed selling our home in Reno, liquidating our physical assets, and using that resource to launch us into our next life phase — still without knowing what that was. Maybe you’ve seen this in your own life, but self-reinvention often involves releasing the familiar structures that kept the old life in place.

Then, in 2020, when COVID-19 hit, we put our plans on hold and stuck close to home. However, early in 2021, we sold our house and left Reno, a place that had been my home for 22 years and Marta’s for seven years. With just six suitcases and several boxes of essentials, we cut our ties with Reno and began a journey in what you might call a multi-community, hybrid lifestyle, seeking to serve many communities worldwide.

Our first stop was Hawaii, and we arrived in March 2021. We chose Kauai, the least “urbanized” of the inhabited islands, and rented an apartment on a 3-acre regenerative agriculture farm. The owner had been practicing permaculture for twenty years, and since he was connected to the local food system, it was easy for me to reach out to the community to see what connections emerged.

We got involved with a “food forest” project and connected with an eco-village being planned on 100 acres locally and a retreat center building on 60 acres in North Kohala on the Big Island. Meanwhile, I became involved in the local food network, and Marta, an artist, began looking for ways to serve the local art community.

And yet, with all these promising projects, nothing stuck.

I don’t want to sound too cynical or disparaging here, but what I saw was wealthy, well-meaning people seeking to create utopian enclaves that were “beautiful silos” but silos, nonetheless. While the vision was that these projects would serve as beacons and models for the future, they could not be scaled to address the present-day crises.

Further, there was an inherent conflict between the wealthy Americans moving to northern Kauai and the local community, who could barely afford rent in that marketplace.

Something else about intentional communities: while they may serve as models, particularly as we undergo this process of re-villaging, keep in mind they are still silos. As for scale, I am of the “Three Bears” mindset. Re-villaging at the global, national, and state levels is too big a context. Singular eco-villages and intentional communities are too small. The local region — which could include one or more cities, what we in the States might call county level — is just right.

Re-villaging at the “just right” scale means bringing together the energy of individuals, families, neighborhoods, Main Street businesses, nonprofits, religious organizations, local government, and even intentional communities and eco-villages, all of which become the nucleus of a new Network Commons.

This local, regional Network Commons is not a silo, although each of its components are. As symbiotic society and culture grow, each local region builds its network by connecting across siloed organizations. These natural, geographically regional networks can scale nationally and globally in time.

Back to the story.

After six months in Hawaii, Marta and I decided to spend time with her family in Germany. We stayed in our small apartment near her parents in her hometown, Tuttlingen, southern Germany, and used it as our base in October, November, and December 2021.

We turned our sights to Europe to look for generative projects that could use my expertise. We spent a week in an Austrian alpine valley, where another permaculture farmer had developed a method of using the wastewater from tourist hotels to service greenhouses. This could extend the growing season in the area and provide fresh produce. Since the hotels in the area had 10,000 rooms, this could be a formidable resource.

I spoke with one of the local hoteliers, whose hotel had been operating for 500 years, serving merchants traveling from Italy to Germany. He seemed genuinely excited about reducing reliance on importing food from the outside. This was a very insular community. Although it was in Austria, you had to drive through Germany to get there. He wanted to arrange a meeting with the mayor of the town, an indication that the idea of self-sufficient regional economies could catch on with local communities like these.

I thought about Hawaii, where 90 percent of the food comes from outside. As with many previous colonies, centralized corporate agriculture and monocultures replaced local food crops, removing agricultural wealth and shipping food the natives would otherwise eat overseas.

To a certain extent, this same model, based on extracting wealth rather than preserving and restoring the land, has become nearly universal. In any case, the hotelier at least was interested in this new way, but we left the area before anything firm could develop.

That’s when an intriguing opportunity emerged.

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Stay tuned for Chapter 12, Post 3 … Sarvodaya, Revisited -- Coming Full Circle.

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