Seeking the “Holy Grail” - of Community Chapter 10 Part 7
Seeking the “Holy Grail” - of Community Chapter 10 Part 7
From Networked Silos to Universal Symbiotic Kinship
Welcome to the Birthing the Symbiotic Age Book!
NEW here? — please visit the TABLE OF CONTENTS FIRST and catch up!
You are in Chapter 10, Part 7, From Networked Silos to Universal Symbiotic Kinship
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 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 the time to sit and read! Also, find this chapter post and all previous posts as podcast episodes on
Spotify and Apple!
Previously, at the end of Chapter 10, Part 6
A worldview framework based on separation obviously cannot encompass interrelatedness.
Inside this context of one against the other, every individual and organization seeks to maintain its interest, its position, and, in many cases, its supremacy. And, as I suggested earlier in this chapter, even those devoted to good works (including those building beautiful networked siloes) find themselves in competition for resources with others who desire the same.
That has been the nature of our reality and its system logic—a pattern that has gone on for thousands of years, which is why fundamental change is so hard to imagine.
“Nobody who has been drinking old wine wants new.
The old is good, he says.” Luke 5:39
In other words, humans are creatures of habit and comfort.
However, now that this empire is in decline globally and there’s nowhere to run from, survival requires addressing the problem at its source.
Let’s get right to it.
From Networked Silos to Universal Symbiotic Kinship
Faced with wicked, complex, entangled problems at every scale, from local to planetary, we cannot rely on old and obsolete organizational forms to create a new society. We are still using 19th—and 20th-century siloed organizing principles, systems, and structures that, as I’ve maintained throughout this book, are not up to the task of fundamental change.
We cannot continue to ONLY work in isolated silos or even isolated networked silos and imagine that will bring forth a Culture of Connection.
Our urgent work is to create and populate “New Wineskins” through Meta-Networks like Dr. Ari built in Sri Lanka and the Conscious Community Network we
created in Northern Nevada.
Consider as one example the Local Food Systems Network described in Chapter 7, which simultaneously brought value to each silo and brought value out of each one as well. Bridging silos liberates the “frozen assets” or “capital” of a community – spiritual, social, cultural, natural, built, financial, exchange, material, technological, and human resources – bringing not just goods but goodness. Every entity that participates benefits.
Symbiotic Networks open the floodgates so that the “wine” of Love can flow freely through the community via these “New Wineskin Networks” – unimpeded by any traditional organizational structure.
Let me give you a concrete example of how rising above my likes and dislikes and reaching out beyond my comfort zone helped liberate the frozen assets of our entire Northern Nevada region. As I mentioned earlier in the book, one of the ways I addressed my bias against organized religion was to attend every religious service in every denomination imaginable intentionally and to show up on “their turf” – so that my contacts in each group could be inside THEIR comfort zone.
One of those I met this way was the Stake President of the Northern Nevada Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon) community at a “trans-religious” bi-annual luncheon. During our conversation, we discussed how Mormons in the U.S. stored food for times of scarcity or societal breakdown. From there, we discussed how an entire local community could create “food security.”
That conversation became the “seed” for our Local Food System Network. This network significantly enhanced the community’s abundance and well-being. It prevented the farmland surrounding Reno from being developed into parking lots, condos, and strip malls without petitioning the government or involving traditional politics.
Instead, by developing regional “food network consciousness,” connecting all the organizations, businesses, and even local government departments around food self-sufficiency into a “New Wineskin Network,” we indirectly influenced the elected officials to follow the people's newly COHERENT will!
Within six months to a year, politics “followed the people,” ushering in a new era of expanded small farming, organic production, Community-Supportive Agriculture, farmer’s markets, community gardens, backyard farming, food cooperatives, farm-to-table projects, food security systems, and farming hubs. The City of Reno even invested in and helped build the first public farmer’s market downtown as part of urban revitalization!
Were it not for my entering into “Symbiotic Kinship” and stretching beyond the tribes and silos I was comfortable with, none of these community-wide benefits
would ever have happened!
As you may remember, Symbiotic Kinship is an intentional effort to go beyond our tribes and silos to work with others to achieve a shared goal of community revitalization and resilience.
That means emerging from those 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).
It’s an evolutionary extension of our sense of Kinship, usually reserved for members of our tribe/silo, now extended to others we consciously collaborate with.
And let’s remember the secret sauce, or in this case, secret sauces that give us the inner capacity, capability, and power to enter into Symbiotic Kinship:
The “secret sauce” that brings new wine and builds new wineskins are the Transcendent Virtues lived and practiced in our lives and the world, and as an equally important second step, extended to the greater community through Symbiotic Networks.
The Virtues inspire and enable people to collaborate, cooperate, and seek unity – even as we cultivate and celebrate our individuality and pursue our own “work of heart.”
Symbiotic Networks offer an infrastructure to make those Virtues tangible through promoting and proliferating mutual benefit and creating a safe and sacred space for community members to unite and collaborate beyond their differences.
Instead of extracting wealth from a community, Symbiotic Networks RELEASE and then SHARE this wealth by re-circulating it and bringing forth “new wealth” in the form of the “frozen assets” I’ve referred to—the good that is already happening, the good that individuals want to do, and the good which is needed by the community but is stifled and thwarted by competition, the “divide and rule” governance systems, and the perception of scarcity.
As the Symbiotic Culture DNA we introduced in Chapter 8 indicates, it begins with the individual connecting with the Transcendent and unifying with the community around the singular common purpose of “uniting the Cosmos in Love.” Guided by the principles that flow from that purpose, we take the next step of bringing the transcendent Virtues to the world through our words, actions, and existing networks we already inhabit.
That, in and of itself, is building the Culture of Connection.
And …for those who are called to the work, another step is required to break through into a New Creation – identifying the needs in whatever communities we are a part of and then helping build the “delivery system,” Symbiotic Networks, such as a Local Food System – the new interstitial “tissue” that connects existing networked silos.
This new way of living requires a radical shift in perspective
from self-serving to self-giving love.
Once this shift is made, and once individuals experience what it feels like to be swimming in a sea of trust, faith, mutual benefit, and mutual regard, the old “skins” with their worldly battlefields become less important to us as we embrace the “new wineskin” networks of Symbiotic Culture.
Consider how different it must have felt for the Pastor and the Pagan or the Imam and the Rabbi to collaborate around a common interest. Or the “rival” restauranteurs who became friends. Or the tens of thousands of people who participated in our neighbor-to-neighbor campaign, who not only felt themselves part of something “bigger” but experienced the tangible benefits of radical collaboration in their daily lives.
This, in contrast to trying to put the new wine of Symbiotic Culture, of intentional mutual benefit into the stale and unyielding container of the me-vs.-you battlefield.
Here is the new wineskin, the new container, for a new way of living, as I see it:
The Symbiotic Network is a fractal of the Ancient Blueprint—a new architecture …context …container …, and operating system … for our community life that supports the infusion of the power of Love through continually expanding network nodes of intersection.
This network NEVER becomes a separate formal structure but weaves existing structures and extends to include more.
It’s a new community FUNCTION and ROLE.
This new organizing system that brings siloes together to collaborate and cooperate for mutual benefit reflects an idea we introduced in Chapter 2 – Cultural Symbiogenesis. Symbiogenesis, “becoming by living and being together,” describes how single-cell organisms combine into multi-cellular ones to thrive in a changing environment.
That is where human society today can adopt a new way of being and living – individual silos, still maintaining “sovereignty,” voluntarily becoming part of a larger network-centric organism to facilitate mutual well-being and “thrival” of the entire society.
Even those identifying as “creationists” can appreciate this transformation as the spiritual evolution needed for Jesus’ words and teachings to take hold in what the Buddhist Dr. Ariyaratne called “a critical mass of spiritual consciousness.”
Are we beginning to see a pattern here?
Fundamental as “entry-level” to this new way of living is recognizing that there IS an Ancient Blueprint that includes and transcends religion, spirituality, and ethical humanism. It negates none but extends that inner “spiritual consciousness” into outer practice.
To summarize:
The breakthrough we seek is accessing the Transcendent in ourselves first, then bringing the power of that Love into “new wineskin networks” in each community, starting where we are.
It does not take the majority of the planet or your community to begin. It only takes one person with a HEART of Love to start.
And YOU could be that person.
So, what does it take to cultivate that “heart of love” required to build these new wineskin networks?
A major distinction between the Culture of Connection and the Culture of Separation concerns inner power vs. external force as a way to get things done. We never used force, coercion, or pressure to build our Reno networks. Everything was purely voluntary and by choice. We built our networks through the power of Love and the self-evident tangible real-world benefits of collaboration.
As I said, our competitive society often promotes Anti-Virtues (for example, Avarice seems more overtly rewarded than Generosity). We are programmed to believe that we have to “push” our offering into what is called (appropriately enough) “the marketplace of ideas”—where worthy ideas are set into competition rather than collaboration.
So, in addition to doing the good work we set out to do, we have to “fight” or “convert” rivals on the “battlefield,” whether we realize this or not. That brings me to a story that exemplifies the “inner power” and character qualities required to do this work successfully.
When I attended the State Funeral in Sri Lanka for Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne in April 2024, one of his relatives asked me a direct question: “How was it possible for one individual such as Dr. Ari to achieve such massive societal change, inspiring millions of people in thousands of communities in Sri Lanka and around the world?”
That’s when I remembered the most poignant moment of my six-month visit to Sri Lanka in 2022. After one of the many lunches I shared with Dr. Ari, I went into the living room where he was resting, and I asked him a very similar question:
“How have you accomplished what so few in world history have achieved—to create a thriving network for mutual benefit where many millions of people have learned to
empower themselves?”
He smiled at me — and left me to answer my question, and the answer came to me almost immediately. When he visited those poor villages, he treated everyone as equals, as human beings. He had no inflated sense of importance; in fact, he had no sense of importance whatsoever.
This is Universal Symbiotic Kinship — intentionally connecting beyond our comfort zone across the divisions and silos that have defined our more limited
sense of “kinship” in modern life.
Dr. Ari demonstrated “spaciousness” by cultivating a pure heart, which made him an empty vessel for higher Love.
This allowed him to be of service and hold a sacred space within the community with no agenda other than his and the community’s mutual awakening.
People could sense that he had no desire for fame, fortune, power over them, or even recognition—his singular purpose was to help and serve. His deep humility allowed him to be one with the people, not a “sage on the stage” telling them what to do.
That spaciousness is what it means to “live” the Ancient Blueprint—it is foundational if we want to see the Inner and Outer Breakthroughs required to grow beyond a Culture of Separation to a Culture of Connection.
I know this is a pretty high bar!
The Ancient Blueprint provides this universal pattern for us to emulate. So, as I reflect on the transformational power of Dr. Ari’s humility, I am reminded of how Jesus was described in Philippians 2:6-8:
“But he made himself of no reputation (emptied himself) and took the form of a servant..."
According to this Biblical passage, Christ "emptied himself" by taking on the form of a “servant.” He emptied himself of selfishness, pride, and self-interest, an example of humility and service to others.
“Self-emptying Love” makes the radically inclusive practice of Love Thy Neighbor possible.
It’s a Love willing to go to any length for others’ sake. Jesus’ life is a profound expression of His self-emptying love for us.
It’s a powerful example of the Love we are called to extend to others.
And …maybe self-emptying is not something to be left to so-called Enlightened ones, Avatars, or even Saints or Saviors?
Consider that we live in a society where we constantly fill ourselves up, yet many feel unfulfilled. Could it be that true “fulfillment” comes from emptying?
Maybe that’s what Jesus meant when he said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” This is from the Beatitudes, introduced in the Sermon on the Mount, representing a radical reorientation of values that turns the world’s conventional wisdom on its head.
Often seen as a "Kingdom Manifesto," the Beatitudes declare a new moral order that prioritizes the Virtues of what I call an Ancient Blueprint over the world's values. They challenged and overturned societal norms and subverted the materialistic ethos of the Roman Empire.
The Beatitudes embody the “upside-down” nature of a new heavenly “Kingdom,” where humility, mercy, and a hunger for righteousness are exalted over
power, wealth, success, and status.
I believe now is the time to take these literally and put them into practice.
They reverse social expectations, challenge conventional living, and subvert power structures, inviting us to live in a way that reflects “on Earth, as it is in Heaven” – what I call a Culture of Connection.
This vision calls for transforming individuals and societies, inviting ALL to participate in the radically inclusive, compassionate, countercultural, and love-based Heaven on Earth. It demands a transformation of the heart (what E.F. Schumacher called “moral reconstruction”) and a reorientation of life toward the virtues of Heaven, resulting in the regeneration of all Living and Human Systems.
At this point, I need to address yet another elephant to join the crowd of beasts in the living room: my use of religious phrases and scripture, such as the Beatitudes I refer to above.
Those of you who are not religious – or not Christian – may feel uncomfortable with this language and may even suspect I have a hidden agenda, that I am railroading you into my religious silo! Hopefully, you’ve read enough of my book to know that even though I am a follower of Jesus and view the Bible as my primary source of wisdom and truth, I’m not “selling” Christianity.
In Symbiotic Culture, traditions don’t compete for “market share”—it’s about Love in Action and learning from one another, heart to heart—not stale intellectual beliefs of ANY kind.
It's not what you believe — or your title, position, or status — it’s WHAT YOU DO and how you display your true character that matters in Symbiotic Culture.
That said, I am doing my best to honor humanity's religious and spiritual legacy, which, as I’ve stated earlier, is our most incredible untapped resource in transforming the Culture of Separation. It’s not about the beliefs, words, or religious identity; it’s about how individuals and communities seek to practice these Virtues in daily life and extend the good beyond the boundaries of their previously limited notion of kinship.
History verifies that the early Christians immersed themselves in this “new way of living” and that history is part of our legacy – the Ancient Blueprint for a New Creation.
This was indeed a counterculture operating inside the empire that “defied” it without opposing it. This way of life undermines the authority of worldly consciousness and all structures that hold and bind us. It challenges our assumptions about the nature of man, the connection between God and human beings, and between human beings and the Living Systems we are a part of.
Both Jesus and Dr. Ari turn the acquisitive, “dominator” impulse of man and societies UPSIDE DOWN and, in the process, turn the world “right-side up.”
Instead of letting the world “fill us up,” they invite us to empty ourselves of our self-preoccupations, worries, and fears and be filled up with something much more significant—the life of the Spirit and Love — a more ABUNDANT life.
Remember, Symbiotic networks are radically different from networked silos in that they are fundamentally about GIVING and RELEASING, not getting. And yet, the more “giving” going on, the more “getting” – without force or leverage.
Instead of attracting resources TO it, Symbiotic Networks focus on liberating resources FROM it —
That is the dual breakthrough—an INNER breakthrough oriented toward self-giving, in the spirit of unselfishness and generosity, AND an OUTER breakthrough that takes form as a new network-centric organism to RELEASE that Power.
This love can overflow THROUGH YOU into the world as service, radiating through new network “nodes of intersection” and grow Heaven on Earth – without any restrictions or barriers.
The truly abundant life requires a radical re-definition of the word “wealth.” True wealth doesn’t come from money, status, achievement, or any measure of worldly success. True value comes from the heart, with the flow of Love, the actual Currency.
And flowing Love through our new wineskin network, more wealth is liberated and circulated. The “wealthiest” individual inside Symbiotic Culture is the one who circulates the most wealth, knowing that in a field of intentional mutual benefit, it will surely return.
This multiplication factor applies, by the way, to organizations as well. Consider all of the networked silos I referred to earlier in the previous post. All those “threads” of love and functionality would benefit from a “whole-cloth movement” that liberates frozen assets from all participating organizations!
So, if you’re building your networked silo, or business, or any other endeavor for the betterment, keep doing it …and …consider the next step – initiating a Symbiotic Network in the communities you are a part of. It is as simple as one conversation leading to another …and another … and another. That is how we built our Symbiotic Networks in Reno, one conversation at a time.
And if you are not the one to initiate Symbiotic Culture in your community—or communities—who do you know in your network who might be?
Only 600,000 individuals worldwide are needed to fractally spread Symbiotic Culture DNA and have it emerge spontaneously in 50,000 communities.
And that “big picture” depends on the “little picture”—individuals practicing and proliferating “Universal Symbiotic Kinship” wherever they are.
To do so involves a dual “recovery program”—recovering FROM the Culture of Separation by recovering our connection TO the Ancient Blueprint. The Symbiotic Society and Symbiotic Circles, which we will introduce in the next section, offer a proven model for doing just that.
What’s next in the concluding Chapter 10, Part 8, Symbiotic Circles As Our Collective “Recovery Group”
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