Conscious Evolution can be thought as a transition process for Individuals from Single through TransIndividuals to MetaIndividuals.
Understanding that only an action makes the change, just being an individual is not enough. Subjects are required for the change. From this perspective, Conscious Evolution is a transition from Individual Subjects through Collective Subjects to a Subject of the desired change. In the case of Global Change, a Global Subject.
http://www.integralworld.net/jstewart1.html
John Stewart is Core Member of the Evolution, Complexity and Cognition (ECCO) Research Group, The Free University of Brussels, Belgium. His work on the directionality of evolution and its implications for humanity has been published in a number of key papers in international science journals. He is the author of Evolution's Arrow: The Direction of Evolution and the Future of Humanity (2000) and The Evolutionary Manifesto.
Intentional Evolution
John Stewart
Cooperative teams united by common goals will always have the potential to be more successful than isolated individuals.
A completely new phase in the evolution of life on Earth has begun. It will change everything. In this new phase evolution will be driven intentionally, by humanity. The evolutionary worldview that emerges from an understanding of this role has the potential to transform the nature of human existence.
At present humanity is lost. We don't know what we are doing here. We are without a worldview that can point to our place and purpose in the universe and that can also withstand rational scrutiny.
But this difficult period is coming to an end. The emergence of the new evolutionary worldview is beginning to lift us out of the abyss. The new worldview has a unique capacity to reveal who we are and what we should be doing with our lives. It relies solely on scientific knowledge and reason to identify our critical role in future evolution. The evolutionary worldview can unite us in a great common enterprise, and provide meaning and purpose for human existence.
At the heart of the evolutionary worldview is the fact that evolution has a trajectory—it heads in a particular direction. However, evolution on Earth will not advance beyond a certain point unless it is driven consciously and intentionally. If this transition to intentional evolution does not occur, evolution on this planet will stall, and humanity will not contribute positively to the future evolution of life in the universe—we will be a failed evolutionary experiment.
It is as if evolution is a developmental process. Just as a human embryo is organized to develop through a number of stages to produce an adult, evolution tends to produce a particular sequence of outcomes of increasing complexity. Initially, evolution moves in this direction of its own accord. However, at a particular point evolution will continue to advance only if certain conditions are met: organisms must emerge that awaken to the possibility that they are living in the midst of a developmental process; they must realize that the continued success of the process depends on them; and they must commit to actively moving the process forward.
The emergence of intentional evolutionaries
Across the planet at the beginning of the twenty first century, individuals are emerging who are choosing to dedicate their lives to consciously advancing the evolutionary process. They see that their lives are an important part of the great evolutionary process that has produced the universe and the life within it. They realise that they have a significant role to play in its future evolution.
Redefining themselves within a wider evolutionary perspective is providing meaning and direction to their lives—they no longer see themselves as isolated, self-concerned individuals who live for a short time, then die irrelevantly in a meaningless universe. They know that if evolution is to continue to fulfil its potential, it now must be driven intentionally, and it is their responsibility and destiny to contribute to this.
These individuals are awakening to the understanding that evolution is not an aimless and random process. It is headed in a particular direction. This is very important knowledge—once we understand the direction of evolution, we can identify where we are located along the evolutionary trajectory, discover what the next steps are, and see what they mean for us, as individuals and collectively.
Evolution's Arrow
Where is evolution headed? Contrary to earlier understandings of evolution, an unmistakeable trend is towards greater interdependence and cooperation amongst living processes. It follows that if humans are to advance the evolutionary process on this planet, a major task will be to find more cooperative ways of organising ourselves.
The trend towards increasing cooperation is well illustrated by a short history of the evolution of life on earth. For billions of years after the big bang, the universe expanded rapidly in scale and diversified into a multitude of galaxies, stars, planets and other forms of lifeless matter. The first life that eventually arose on earth was infinitesimal – it was comprised of a few molecular processes. But it did not remain on this tiny scale for long. In the first major development, cooperative groups of molecular processes formed the first simple cells. Then, in a further significant advance, communities of these simple cells formed more complex cells of much greater scale.
A further major evolutionary transition unfolded after many more millions of years. Evolution discovered how to organise cooperative groups of these complex cells into multi-celled organisms such as insects, fish, and eventually mammals. Again the scale of living processes had increased enormously. This trend continued with the emergence of cooperative societies of multi-celled organisms, including bee hives, wolf packs and baboon troops. The pattern was repeated with humans – families joined up to form bands, bands teamed up to form tribes, tribes joined to form agricultural communities, and so on. The largest-scale cooperative organisations of living processes on the planet are now human societies.
This unmistakable trend is the result of many repetitions of a process in which living entities team up to form larger scale cooperatives. Strikingly, the cooperative groups that arise at each step in this sequence become the entities that then team up to form the cooperative groups at the next step in the sequence.
It is easy to see what has driven this long sequence of directional evolution – at every level of organization, cooperative teams united by common goals will always have the potential to be more successful than isolated individuals. It will be the same wherever life arises in the universe. The details will differ, but the direction will be the same – towards unification and cooperation over greater and greater scales.
Life has come a long way on this planet. When it began, individual living processes could do little more than influence events at the scale of molecular processes. But as a result of the successive formation of larger and larger cooperatives, coordinated living processes are now managing and controlling events on the scale of continents. And life appears to be on the threshold of another major evolutionary transition – humanity has the potential to form a unified and inclusive global society in symbiotic relationship with our technologies and with the planet as a whole. In the process, “we” (the whole) will come to manage matter, energy and living processes on a planetary scale. When this global organisation emerges, the scale of cooperative organisation will have increased over a million, billion times since life began.
If humanity is to fulfil its potential in the evolution of life in the universe, this expansion of the scale of cooperative organisation will continue. The global organisation has the potential to expand out into the solar system and beyond. By managing matter, energy and living processes over larger and larger scales, human organisation could eventually achieve the capacity to influence events at the scale of the solar system and galaxy. And the human organisation could repeat the great transitions of its evolutionary past by teaming up with any other societies of living processes that it encounters.
The great potential of the evolutionary process is to eventually produce a unified cooperative organisation of living processes that spans and manages the universe as a whole. The matter of the universe would be infused and organised by life. The universe itself would become a living organism that pursued its own goals and objectives, whatever they might be. In its long climb up from the scale of molecular processes, life will have unified the universe that was blown apart by the big bang.
Increasing intelligence and evolvability
As life increases in scale, a second major trend emerges—it gets better at evolving. Organisms that are more evolvable are better at discovering the adaptive behaviours that enable them to succeed in evolution. They are smarter at finding solutions to adaptive challenges and at finding better ways to achieve their goals.
Initially living processes discover better adaptations by trial and error. They find out which behaviours are most effective by trying them out in practice. Initially this trial and error search occurs across the generations through mutation at the genetic level. An important advance occurs when this gene-based evolution discovers how to produce organisms with the capacity to learn by trial and error during their lives.
In a further major transition, organisms evolve the capacity to form mental representations of their environment and of the impact of alternative behaviours. This enables them to foresee how their environment will respond to their actions. Rather than try out alternative behaviours in practice, they can now test them mentally. They begin to understand how their world works, and how it can be manipulated consciously to achieve their adaptive goals. Evolvability gets another significant boost when organisms develop the capacity to share the knowledge that they use to build their mental representations. Imitation, language, writing and printing are important examples of processes that transmit adaptive knowledge. These processes enable the rapid accumulation of knowledge across generations and the building of more complex mental models.
Eventually organisms with these capacities will develop a theory of evolution—they will acquire the knowledge to build mental models of the evolutionary processes that produced the living processes on their planet, including themselves. For the first time they will have a powerful, science-based story that explains where they have come from, and their place in the unfolding of the universe.
On any planet where life emerges, the trend to increased evolvability is likely to eventually produce organisms who awaken to their evolutionary history and its future possibilities. They will begin to understand the wider-scale evolutionary processes that have produced them and that will govern the future of life on their planet. The organisms will begin to see themselves as having reached a particular stage in an on-going and directional evolutionary process. They will know where evolution is headed, and what they must do if they are to advance evolution on their planet.
Evolutionary consciousness
On any planet where life reaches this stage, some individuals will begin to undergo a critical shift in consciousness. Increasingly they will cease to experience themselves primarily as isolated and self-concerned individuals. Instead, they will begin to see and experience themselves as participants and actors in the great evolutionary process on their planet. The object of their self-reflection will change. When they think of themselves, they will tend to see themselves as-part-of-the-evolutionary-process. Their conscious participation in evolution will increasingly become the source of value and meaning in their lives. Key realisations that will contribute to this shift in consciousness are:
- a life dedicated to the pursuit of narrow desires and pleasures cannot be worthwhile. They will see that their desires are evolution's way of programming them to be adaptive and successful in past environments. In many cases their desires and pleasures no longer serve evolution's interests – they often produce behaviour that is now maladaptive, and motivate actions that will undermine rather than advance the evolutionary process;
- they have the opportunity to be conscious participants in the evolutionary processes that will shape the future of life on their planet. They can play an important role in the actualisation of the next great steps in evolution;
- the successful future evolution of life on their planet depends on their conscious participation. Unlike past great evolutionary transformations, the steps to a unified and sustainable planetary society and beyond are too complex to be discovered by trial and error. They will be achieved only through the conscious efforts of organisms, and not otherwise. Conscious organisms will need to envision the planetary society and design strategies to get there. If it is left to chance, it will not happen – in the past, chance took millions of years and many false starts to produce cooperative organizations such as complex cells;
- their actions can have meaning and purpose insofar as they are relevant to the wider evolutionary process. To the extent that their actions can contribute positively to evolution, they are meaningful to a larger process outside themselves that has been unfolding long before they were born, and that will continue long after they die;
- the evolutionary perspective therefore provides them with an answer to the great existential question that confronts all conscious individuals: What should I do with my life?
- their awakening to the evolutionary perspective and the awakening of others like them is itself a critically important evolutionary event on their planet.
One way of experiencing the significance of such a shift in consciousness is to think and feel your way into the following scenario:
Imagine that you are one of a community of conscious cells amongst a larger population of unconscious cells. Initially you understand your existence as being about doing the things that cells do, interacting with other cells and pursuing typical cellular goals and interests. But then you begin to discover that the moment to moment activities and interactions that occupy your time are part of much larger processes and patterns. As you accumulate more knowledge you begin to realise that these larger processes are directional and are leading somewhere. This culminates in a sudden epiphany when you realise that you and the other cells are part of a developmental process that is directed at producing a complex, multi-cellular organism.
But the peak of your evolutionary epiphany is yet to come. It occurs when you see that your realisation that you are part of a developmental process has a key role in the successful unfolding of the process itself. You discover that the developmental process is organised in such a way that its successful completion depends on you and the other members of your community having this realisation – it depends on your community of cells becoming aware of the nature of the developmental process, and consciously acting in ways that advance the process. You understand that without the emergence of cells that become conscious of this process and that use this awareness to guide their actions, the developmental process will fail. Your realisation brings you to a fundamental choice: you can decide to intentionally dedicate your existence to advancing the developmental process, and assisting its successful completion; or you can continue to live out your limited cellular existence as you did before, pursuing narrow cellular interests, but now knowing that your existence will amount to nothing in the broader scheme of things.
On any planet that reaches this stage, the emergence of individuals who undergo such a shift in consciousness can be understood as the evolutionary process on the planet becoming aware of itself. Through these individuals, the evolutionary process develops capacities for self-reflection, self-knowledge, and foresight. It will use these abilities to continually redesign itself and to accelerate its own advancement.
Transcendence of our biological and cultural past
Individuals that embrace the evolutionary perspective will set out to align their personal goals with evolutionary objectives. They will attempt to free themselves from pre-existing motivations and needs that conflict with evolutionary goals. They know that this will be essential if their species is to continue to contribute to the advancement of the evolutionary process – the organisms that play a significant role in the future evolution of life in the universe will not be those that continue to stay on the planet on which they emerge, masturbating stone-age desires forever.
Freedom from pre-existing goals will not be achieved easily in the case of motivations and needs that have been deeply entrenched by their biological and cultural past. The individuals will seek techniques and practices – and join together in groups—that enable them to go beyond these pre-existing goals. From our current human perspective, they will attempt to develop the capacity to transcend their egos, grounding themselves increasingly in the realities and imperatives of evolution. Individuals who succeed in doing so will be able to direct consciousness to wherever it can be most effective in contributing to the advancement of the evolutionary process. The enormous creativity of consciousness will no longer be wasted on the pursuit of self-centred desires and needs established by past evolution.
Individuals that develop the psychological capacity to transcend these motivations and needs will actualise a further major transition in evolvability. They will be self-evolving beings—organisms that have the ability to adapt in whatever directions are necessary to advance the evolutionary process, unrestricted by their biological and social past. Groups, organizations, communities and societies will undergo similar transformations which enable them to transcend the constraints of their history and culture.
Individuals and groups that embrace the evolutionary perspective will also work to encourage all other groups within society to reframe their goals and mission statements to align them with evolutionary objectives. Social, political, governmental and economic organisations will begin to re-evaluate their activities and goals to ensure they are consistent with the advancement of the evolutionary process.
Working towards a unified and evolvable global society
As more and more individuals and groups make this transition to an evolutionary perspective, a wave of evolutionary activism will emerge, directed at the unification of living processes on the planet to form a cooperative planetary society.
Humanity has reached this major evolutionary threshold. The next great step in social evolution on earth is the formation of a unified, sustainable and creative global society. On earth, individuals and groups are beginning to emerge who have decided to consciously contribute to the evolutionary process by doing what they can to actualise such a global society. They are energised by the realisation that their evolutionary awakening and activism is part of a significant evolutionary transition on earth.
Humanity will draw on its evolutionary history to see how to build a cooperative and unified global society. As we have noted, evolution has repeatedly organised self-interested entities into new cooperative wholes. Evolution shows us how cooperation can be organised without individuals having to submerge their own interests or to fundamentally change their natures. Humans will not have to become saintlike—a cooperative global society can be achieved without people having to sacrifice or suppress their self-interest.
Evolution produces cooperation by instituting forms of social organisation that align the interests of individuals with the interests of the collective. Drawing on these evolutionary exa nmples, humanity can institute forms of organisation at the global scale that will align the interests of citizens, corporations, and nations with the interests of the global society.
Entities at all levels will feel the impact of their actions on others and on the collective – they will benefit whenever they benefit the global society, and they will be harmed whenever they harm the collective. Pollution and war will no longer pay. Pursuit of self interest alone will lead all participants in the global society to act cooperatively and in the interests of the global society. All participants will treat the other as self because any impact they have on the other will have a comparable impact on them.
In the past, the emergence of new cooperative organisations gave rise to an explosion of diversity and differentiation within the new organisations. This will be repeated at the global scale. The new forms of social organisation will also enhance the evolvability of our existing forms of government. Government will be replaced with far more intelligent and adaptable processes that utilise the dynamism, creativity and energy of properly managed markets. Like effective markets, the new governance processes will harness a diversity of perspectives to solve adaptive challenges.
Whenever larger-scale cooperatives have emerged previously in evolution, they have undergone a process of individuation. Each cooperative becomes more integrated, co-ordinated, and able to act as a cohesive individual. The unified global society can be expected to follow a similar evolutionary path. It will progressively develop internal processes that enable it to act, adapt and relate as a coherent whole – eventually the planet will be able to speak with one voice. For the first time, there will be an entity that other planetary societies could relate to and interact with. There will be an entity at the same level as other planetary societies. If earth is successful in reaching this level, a new universe of possibilities and experiences will open up to humankind.
Notes:
For further technical justification of the existence of an evolutionary trend towards increasing cooperation (including references to relevant scientific publications) see my book Evolution's Arrow: the direction of evolution and the future of humanity. It is online at http://users.tpg.com.au/users/jes999/EvArrow.htm
For more technical detail on the future evolution of consciousness (including comprehensive references) see Stewart, J. E. (2007) The future evolution of consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 14, No. 8, Pp. 58-92. Also see ECCO Working Paper No. 10 of 2006 which is an earlier version of this publication. It is online at http://cogprints.org/5270/1/Consciousness-Evolution.pdf
For a less technical article about the evolutionary role of spiritual development, see The evolutionary significance of spiritual development. It was originally published in the September 2003 issue of the online journal Metanexus. The article is online at http://users.tpg.com.au/users/jes999/HumNat.htm
We Are Not the Enemy! Thoughts on Habits and the Challenge of "Enlightenment"
Laszlo goes on to offer suggestions for "’curating the conditions for emergence’ along pathways of thrivability that are life affirming, future creating and opportunity increasing”— suggestions for how we can develop a “systemic framework of relational intelligence that consciously nurtures super-coherence in our societal systems, and coherence at the individual level of our psycho-emotional selves” to work within ourselves and together to become Homo Sapiens cosmicus (or, in the language of my stories, Integrating Adults, both individually and as a culture).
Planetary CoEvolution
CoEvolution
In conceptualising the dynamics of change, Laszlo and Raskin use concepts like ‘punctuated equilibrium’ to describe movements from dynamic equilibrium states, turbulence and bi-furcation points to new system states (Laszlo, 2001, p. 172; Raskin, 2002). Their frameworks correspond with systems theories, complex adaptive systems, and complexity research, where the evolutionary branching model is used (Gunderson, 2002). Agency in this respect can be seen as humanity’s wise intervention and skilful action when faced with planetary (tipping) points of turbulence, ‘bifurcation points’, and critical thresholds (Raskin, 2006). Such authors argue for requisite consciousness toward planetary sensitivity in understanding potential tipping points in the planetary system we live in as a species, for example Spratt and Sutton’s discussion on potential climate change induced tipping points (Spratt, 2008 ). In this context, agency implies co-evolution (Hubbard, 1983), expressed as wise or unwise co-evolution within the ecological contexts of the species. The future is expressed as a vision of human co-evolution in and with an evolving Earth (transcending anthropocentrism) and the development of planetary consciousness.
...
The past is not seen through the lens of history so much as through evolutionary science (corresponding with the fields of biology, anthropology, and geology). Biological and cultural evolution are seen as foundational processes (with their correspondingly long time frames). Laszlo, for example, argues humanity is shifting from a 10,000 year phase of ‘extensive evolution’ where the species moved in physical space to inhabit and conquer the entire planet, with ecological limits triggering an ‘intensive’ phase of evolution typified by the ‘development of mind and consciousness and greater depth in the grounding of community life and inter-community relations’ (Laszlo, 2001, p. 111). He argues we have experienced transformations of human culture from mythos (mythic consciousness), to theos (theistic consciousness), logos (rational consciousness) and now to an emerging holos (holistic consciousness) (Laszlo, 2001). Generally, the evolutionary view of time is grand. In considering human sustainability, Tonn writes:
Co-intelligence, Collective Intelligence, and Conscious Evolution
After years of promoting CDCs and wise democracy, I was exposed to the idea that we are a newly conscious manifestation of the 13.7 billion year evolutionary process. In a profound moment of realization, I saw that all the cointelligent processes and factors I had been talking about for 15 years were tools for bringing increased consciousness—intelligence, wisdom, intentionality, choice, awareness, etc.—to our collective efforts to improve our shared circumstances. They were, in fact, manifestations of the increasing consciousness evident in the evolutionary process. The fact that these cointelligent processes could help us consciously deal with the 21st century’s extinction-level issues (nuclear war, extreme climate change, rampantly destructive technologies, emerging diseases, etc.) made it even clearer that we were dealing with conscious evolution. If we survive this century with flying colors, we will be a very different civilization than we are now—that is, we will have evolved, as a family of cultures, into more co-intelligent forms.
The realization that our efforts to enhance our co-intelligence were basically us being conscious evolution, led me to shift my inquiry into “What evolutionary dynamics can inform our efforts to consciously evolve our culture and social systems?” This research is underway at the time of this writing, and this conscious evolutionary perspective now informs everything I do. That is the outline of the history of my life’s work. Along the way, my natural impulse as a philosopher has been to gather together all the ideas, dynamics, and tools I can find within this realm, to categorize them, and to create overarching theory and vision that show how they can relate and be applied together to address social and environmental challenges. As part of that, I did a variety of analytic breakdowns of collective intelligence, a few of which I offer below. Others can be explored through http://tinyurl.com/2n6sqk.
https://www.co-intelligence.org/Evolution.html
Conscious Evolution
Evolution is happening right now in and around us. It is influenced by all that we do and don't do, and all that we are and are not. Whether we are aware of it or not, we have a lot to do with how evolution unfolds, especially right here on Earth.
Recent offspring in life's 13.7 billion years of cosmic, planetary, biological and social evolution, we are on the leading edge of the evolutionary process. We share that emergent edge with everything else in the universe. (From an evolutionary perspective, "everything else in the universe" is actually better described by that scientifically accurate Native American phrase "all our relations.")
Evolution has given us a special kind of consciousness, one that creates -- and is thoroughly conditioned by -- our languages, cultures, stories, and built environments. This consciousness and its companion social systems and technologies have awesome power to shape the world. We are just beginning to grow into a mature way of manifesting it in the world.
Part of that maturing process is learning the dynamics through which evolution does its transformational work. Understanding those dynamics, we can apply them -- intentionally and wisely -- to transform ourselves and our social systems.
To the extent we do this, we are evolution -- or at least one significant facet of it -- becoming conscious of itself. Across many domains of society, life and spirituality, we are in the process of birthing ourselves as conscious evolution.
The unconsciousness with which we have been evolving as a civilization is taking us rapidly toward collective extinction -- following in the footsteps of the vast majority of "failed experiments" (extinct species) in Earth's history -- and taking many more with us. This century's evolutionary challenge -- to become a civilization capable of conscious evolution -- is not only what can "save" us, but also one of the most significant evolutionary leaps in human history.
All the crises of our age are manifestations of our challenge to consciously evolve. Co-intelligent conversation and democracy are fundamental to successfully transforming these crises into evolutionary breakthroughs.
Those of us who are coming to understand and welcome this challenge to become conscious evolutionary agents are discovering new sources of inspiration and meaning in it, and find ourselves working in community with truly remarkable companions.
Something is Emerging - brief notes on conscious evolution
Learning to Be Evolution - includes 8 examples of evolutionary guidance
The Evolutionary Worldview - offering a 1-page description of the Great Story of evolution, some guidances for evolutionary action, and description of how the sacred evolutionary perspective relates to other religious traditions
Becoming Evolution's Conscious Weavers
The Evolutionary Role of Conversation
The Evolutionary Role of Citizen Deliberation
Consciousness takes us beyond avoidable force, waste, and risk
What is Consciousness?
Feedback, Social Power, and the Evolution of Social Systems
Democracy and the evolution of societal intelligence
Building a Wise Democracy as Crises Emerge
Crisis and Evolutionary Leverage in Philanthropy (doc) - also applicable to other evolutionary agentry
Learning from Our Evolutionary Past Into Our Evolutionary Future
Does Compassion Need to Evolve?
The Evolution of Genes and Meaning
A Movement for the Conscious Evolution of Social Systems
Four Dimensions of Change, and One Integration
http://www.collective-evolution.com/about-us/
Emergence of Collective Consciousness should be counted from the moment of Self-Awareness of a team or other Collective as a Collective Subject. Collective Subject is not only capable of distinguishing itself from other groups / Collective Subjects but also capable of coordinated collective actions and Conscious Evolution. Conscious evolution is a turning point from evolution to the self-governed Development of Collective Consciousness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscious_evolution
Conscious evolution refers to the ability of the human species to choose what the species Homo sapiens becomes in the future, based on recent advancements in science, medicine, technology, psychology, sociology, and spirituality. Most leading thinkers in this area have focused on the conscious evolution of how we think, live, organize ourselves, work together, and address issues, rather than to biological evolution.
The idea of conscious evolution is not a specific theory, but it has loose connections to integral theory, Spiral Dynamics, and noosphere thought. It is also sometimes connected to the theory of the global brain or collective consciousness. One of the earliest uses of the phrase "conscious evolution" may be that of Mary Parker Follett in 1918: "Conscious evolution means giving less and less place to herd instinct and more to the group imperative. We are emerging from our gregarious condition and are now to enter on the rational way of living by scanning our relations to one another, instead of bluntly feeling them, and so adjusting them that unimpeded progress on this higher plane is secured." (The New State, p. 91)
Writers and thinkers on conscious evolution include Erich Jantsch, Teilhard de Chardin, Jonas Salk, Ervin Laszlo, Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, Bela H. Banathy, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Andrew Cohen, and others. Tobias Tripler made some important contributions in his widely appraised treatise "Common Sense and other Things Mankind has not yet achieved", Fnord, 1991.
Conscious evolution suggests that now that humanity is conscious of its history and of how things evolve (evolutionary consciousness), and given the rapid pace of change in society and culture, humanity can (and should) choose advancement through co-operation, co-creation and sustainable practices over self-destruction through separateness. competition, and ecological devastation.
http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Conscious_Evolution
Description
Jordan Greenhall:
"The two phenomena of “consciousness” and “evolution” are, in themselves, notoriously difficult to get our arms around. Conjoining them into a single idea seems doomed to confusion. Fortunately, we don’t have to make a strong claim as to the fundamentals of either consciousness or evolution to carve out a meaning for Conscious Evolution.
There are three different facets of the concept:
- That the subject of evolution has moved from the bio/morphological level (i.e., changes in bodies) to the neuro/cognitive (i.e., changes in behaviours, practices, concepts, theories, ideas, etc.). Because human beings can so profoundly impact our enviroment and because we can so profoundly change with different “software,” the primary driver of our fitness has moved from the “hardware” into the “software” layer. This is closely linked to so-called “cultural evolution.”
- Because we can be conscious of our own software, consciousness can be conscious of and have agency in its own evolution. We can and quite likely must be aware of and deliberate about the evolution of our software.
- Because evolution is something that we can be aware of, it becomes a subject of consciousness. Consciousness can be conscious of evolution and deploy all of its capacities on evolution. Which is to say that evolution is no longer an unknown force operating on the world. It is increasingly becoming a subject of knowledge.
These three aspects combined are what is implied in the concept of “conscious evolution” and it is their intense overlap that is at the very center of the concept." (https://medium.com/deep-code/conscious-evolution-c974e5415045#.aaljzvmcf)
https://medium.com/deep-code/conscious-evolution-c974e5415045
Jordan Greenhall
Sep 21, 2014
Conscious Evolution
I would like to propose that the concept of “conscious evolution” be taken seriously. The concept emerged in the “spiritualist” community hearkening back to Pierre Tielhard de Jardin and perhaps through to Henri Bergson’s “creative evolution.” Alongside most spiritual and/or “metaphysical” notions, it is largely dismissed by more serious thinkers as at best “just words” and at worst, a dangerously fuzzy headed distraction from reality.
I propose an alternative view. Firstly that the concept identifies a real phenomenon in the world. Secondly, that this phenomenon is actionable and important. Thirdly, that this phenomenon might in fact be the most important place for us to focus our energies.
First: What is “Conscious Evolution”?
The two phenomena of “consciousness” and “evolution” are, in themselves, notoriously difficult to get our arms around. Conjoining them into a single idea seems doomed to confusion. Fortunately, we don’t have to make a strong claim as to the fundamentals of either consciousness or evolution to carve out a meaning for Conscious Evolution.
There are three different facets of the concept:
- That the subject of evolution has moved from the bio/morphological level (i.e., changes in bodies) to the neuro/cognitive (i.e., changes in behaviours, practices, concepts, theories, ideas, etc.). Because human beings can so profoundly impact our enviroment and because we can so profoundly change with different “software,” the primary driver of our fitness has moved from the “hardware” into the “software” layer. This is closely linked to so-called “cultural evolution.”
- Because we can be conscious of our own software, consciousness can be conscious of and have agency in its own evolution. We can and quite likely must be aware of and deliberate about the evolution of our software.
- Because evolution is something that we can be aware of, it becomes a subject of consciousness. Consciousness can be conscious of evolution and deploy all of its capacities on evolution. Which is to say that evolution is no longer an unknown force operating on the world. It is increasingly becoming a subject of knowledge.
These three aspects combined are what is implied in the concept of “conscious evolution” and it is their intense overlap that is at the very center of the concept.
See Also
http://awakenedlifeproject.org/en/blog/what-conscious-evolution#
What is Conscious Evolution?
Submitted by petebampton on Tue, 02/14/2012 - 13:34
To understand what Conscious Evolution, or Evolutionary Spirituality, is we first of all have to discover the truth of unity. What does that mean? It means that through some experience, intuition, path or practice we have arrived at the conviction that, at the deepest, most fundamental level of who we are, we human beings are all ONE. Indeed the entire explosion of Life is ONE miraculous and mysterious and interconnected Whole, regardless of how fragmented and chaotic it (and we!) may seem.
This realization, to whatever degree we have experienced or intuited it, fills us with profound peace, radiant inspiration and the joyous release of existential tension. Even if it is only a temporary glimpse, if we are sincere, something changes forever at the core of our being. Even if we fall away from it, somewhere we will never forget it. We recognize that our individual self-sense is synonymous with something unthinkably vast and immeasurably GOOD (or if you like GOD!) just as the wave is one with the ocean. We could call this the realization of Being—the knowing of being at One with the eternal transcendent mystery behind all manifestation. The Buddha called it the “Unborn” and the popular contemporary sage Eckhart Tolle calls it the “Power of Now”.
So another way of wording this is that we become aware that who we ultimately are is not a separate individual with a distinct personal history and cultural background, but Consciousness or Spirit itself. Then our unique personal history and cultural background is seen as being a relative part of who we are.
In the realm of the purely transcendent reality beyond time and creation, Consciousness or Spirit is utterly full and complete and never changes. It is the realization of this Absolute truth that has been traditionally called Enlightenment. It is the end of suffering and the realization of Freedom from the world and the illusory fears and desires of the separate ego. From this dimension the manifestation of Life, and the whole Universe, is often seen as a divine play without any inherent purpose.
Some great sages have even gone as far as to say that not only are the fears and desires of the separate ego an illusion, but that the entire created Universe is all illusion! Hence the sages, and the monks, nuns, sadhus and sannasyins after them, headed to the mountains, forests, the desert or the monastery or ashram to seek union in the great Beyond…an after worldly Heaven in the West or a transcendent Nirvana in the East. And there are plenty of spiritual seekers still seeking with that orientation in the world today...
Of course many spiritual traditions, like Tibetan Buddhism and the more genuine expressions of Christianity, emphasise the importance of compassion and healing the sufferings of the world, but the overarching context is still usually one of viewing the world as "a wheel of birth and death" or "fallen" and hence the spiritual dimension is still essentially transcendent and timeless.
But there is another face to Consciousness, which brings me to the second aspect of what "Conscious Evolution" means. It has to do with the world of form, of creation, of you and I as walking, talking, individuated embodied human beings. Because in the world of form, time and becoming, whether the data is coming from direct spiritual experience or the emerging discoveries of science and cosmology, Consciousness clearly evolves. And hence the meaning and expression of self-realization or spiritual enlightenment in this world evolves as we evolve.
Some will say that’s heresy or ridiculous…How can Enlightenment or Consciousness evolve? How can a no-thing that is timeless and transcendent develop?
Well it can and does evolve because the Source of who we all are is not only the perfect peace of unmanifest Consciousness, it is also the creative fire of manifest Consciousness in all its glorious and chaotic polarity and multiplicity, which, as we far as we know, has taken quantum leaps from the Big Bang of pure Energy to Matter to Life to Mind in a stupendous process of cosmic evolution that appears to be, well, going somewhere...
So did transcendent Consciousness, or the “Mind of God” (which if we are convinced that we are "all One" is our very own Self), decide to create an evolving Universe just so that we could grind our way, over 14 billion years. more or less, of groping trial and error from amoeba, to dinosaur to chimpanzee, towards the eventual realization in human form that the whole process that produced us is one big illusion with no purpose whatsoever and the only way to find spiritual freedom is to get out of here by transcending time, form and world???
I don’t think so.
In the time of Buddha and the ancient sages, when the nature of life was thought to be a cyclical process that was going nowhere and hence was fundamentally “suffering”, that may have been the highest, and therefore most liberating, truth. But in the 21st century, with all we now know about the intelligence and directionality that is driving the whole process of creation, that posture ultimately amounts to a form of nihilism. Why? Because it values transcendence over immanence, Being over Becoming. Because it is the abandonment of the very creative force that moulded us, through aeons of very arduous work, to the point where we can now, finally, take responsibility for the continuation of the Process.
What Process? The Process of Divine Evolution!
What does this mean? It means that Homo sapiens, as we currently know it, is not the “endpoint” but that maybe we are just getting started on the next stage of our evolutionary unfolding! Perhaps we are in fact a "transitional species" as India´s great evolutionary mystic Sri Aurobindo said? Maybe some of us are finally waking up to who we really are as we rise from the slumber and mistaken identity of ego consciousness, not only into the Great Timeless Beyond, but right here and now as individuated flesh and blood infused with the aspiring urge of Spirit-in-Action!
So Conscious Evolution or Evolutionary Spirituality, means that we have first become conscious, to a significant degree, that we are ONE and not the separate ego. But the journey has in no way ended there. We have chosen not to rest in our spirituality or “transcendence of the world”. Why? Because we have also become conscious that our individuated self, when fundamentally freed from the grip of the fears and desires of the ego, is here as an agent of a vast, creative process of Divine Evolution that cares deeply about actualizing our as-yet-unmanifest potential right here on Planet Earth.
Because the fact is we do care really, don´t we? We know it just does not make sense to only transcend the world anymore. The world is calling for our engagement, our commitment, our Love, as we face the chaotic and challenging rite of passage into a higher stage of our unfolding. We are being called to a spiritual activism in which the totality of who we all are in the 21st century is embraced and integrated.
Another very direct way to arrive at the same place is to simply let in the fact that we are living in a time of unprecedented evolutionary crisis. And if we look deep enough we will see that the crisis is one of consciousness. Why? Because it is an undeniable fact that the vast majority of human beings are embedded in ego consciousness and primarily motivated by self-interest and it is this that is the cause of all our “problems”, from the personal to the global.
Once we let this in we start to get a signal: Evolve or Die! Conscious Evolution simply means that one is an open receiver for that signal (i.e. not in avoidance of the truth) and one is committed to change. What change? A change of consciousness. We discover this fullness of liberation when we begin seeing and experiencing ourselves, not as a merely a separate personality living out “my” small life, but as a Universal citizen or expression of the ONE Life (or Uni-Verse) that wants to evolve so that ONE Life will AWAKEN and become manifest on Earth. And that in turn will automatically radiate outward in positive change in one actions, relationships and hence in the wider world. What more can any of us do than that? What greater purpose could there be for human life?
So Conscious Evolution is the discovery that spiritual freedom is no longer found only in the bliss of timeless Being; it is found also in the ecstatic urgency of evolutionary Becoming. And it is the wholehearted embrace of the latter dimension especially that is so essential if anything (including us!) is going to truly change for the better.
Peter Bampton
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Conscious Evolution: The Next Stage of Human Development
Posted on July 12, 2015 | Views: 3693
by Barbara Marx Hubbard: Abstract: Conscious evolution is emerging in our generation because humanity has gained the powers of
codestruction of our world, or the cocreation of immeasurable futures. The purpose of conscious evolution is to learn how to be responsible for the ethical guidance of evolution. This new world view arises out of three new conditions: the new cosmology, the new crises, and our new capacities, leading toward a macroshift.
The Foundation for Conscious Evolution is formed to discover and offer a new developmental path to the next stage of human evolution. It offers three projects to serve this purpose: Gateway to Our Conscious Evolution, a 6 month on line educational program; the development of a conscious evolution community in Santa Barbara, and the formation of a “Peace Room” on the web and in localities to scan for, map, connect and communicate what is working to heal and evolve our world.
Key words: co- evolution, co-creation, community, synergy, vision.
PART I: CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION
The human species is facing a great transition from one stage of evolution to the next. In our generation, Homo sapiens sapiens has gained unprecedented technological and social power to either destroy this world as we know it, or to cocreate an immeasurable future. We stand at a threshold, and it has become clear that if we continue to use our new powers in the same state of conscious in which we created them, we can wreck greater havoc upon ourselves and the other species of Earth. But if we use our new powers wisely, we will transcend the current human condition, not only solving our problems but participating in the cocreation of futures that are chosen, open-ended, and ever-evolving.
The human species is facing a great transition from one stage of evolution to the next. In our generation, Homo sapiens sapiens has gained unprecedented technological and social power to either destroy this world as we know it, or to cocreate an immeasurable future. We stand at a threshold, and it has become clear that if we continue to use our new powers in the same state of conscious in which we created them, we can wreck greater havoc upon ourselves and the other species of Earth. But if we use our new powers wisely, we will transcend the current human condition, not only solving our problems but participating in the cocreation of futures that are chosen, open-ended, and ever-evolving.
The necessity to learn how to evolve consciously is actually an evolutionary imperative that has taken us by surprise. The fact is, through our advanced understanding of nature, we have suddenly gained radical new powers, the magnitude of which we used to attribute to our gods. But we are not prepared to act as gods!
Eric Chaisson writes of the impact and responsibility of these new powers when he points out that the “emergence of technologically intelligent life on Earth, and perhaps elsewhere, heralds a whole new era, a Life Era. Why? Because technology, for all its pitfalls, enables life to begin to control matter, much as matter evolved to control radiative energy more than 10 billion years ago….The implications of our newly gained power over matter are nothing short of cosmic….As sentient beings we are currently beginning to exert a weighty influence in the establishment of a “universal life” with all its attendant features, not least of which potentially include species immortality and cosmic consciousness” (Chaisson, 1988).
Drawn forth by this evolutionary condition of unparalleled danger and opportunity, a new world view is arising, one that has the potential of offering a set of ideas, tools, and capacities—a new memetic code—that can serve our species to navigate through this transition. It is called conscious evolution.
One of my favorite definitions of conscious evolution was given by Prof. A. Harris Stone in a personal conversation: “Conscious evolution can be seen as an awakening of the ‘memory’ that resides in a synthesis of human knowing—spiritual, social and scientific—joined in the effort to discover the inherent evolutionary design, a design which we strive to manifest through ethical choice and creative action.”
As Jonas Salk put it: “Conscious evolution will emerge from the evolutionary of consciousness and the consciousness of evolution” (Salk, 1983). Bela H. Banathy says simply: “Conscious evolution enables us to use the creative power of our minds to guide our systems and our society toward the fulfillment of their potential” (Banathy, 1996).
Conscious evolution as a world view began to emerge in the latter half of the 20th century because of scientific, social, and technological ability that have given us the power to affect the evolution of life on Earth. There is a large and growing body of evolutionary knowledge in almost every field, and many key evolutionary thinkers and activists are at work, such as Bela Banathy (Banathy, 2000); David Bohm (Bohm, 1980); Eric Chaisson (Chaisson, 1987); Riane Eisler (Eisler, 1987); D. Elgin (Elgin, 1993); E. Jantsch (Jantsch, 1975); Ervin Laszlo (E. Laszlo, 2000, 1994); Brian Swimme (Swimme 1992); P. Russell (Russell, 1995 ); B Bruteau (Bruteau,1997); Jean Houston (Houston, 2000); and Ken Wilber (Wilber,1995). The list is growing, however there is not yet a definable field called conscious evolution to coordinate all the separate growing-edge insights to direct our immense new powers toward the common good.
The purpose of this meta-discipline, this discipline of disciplines, is to learn how to be responsible for the ethical guidance of evolution. It is a quest to understand the processes of developmental change, to identify inherent values for the purpose of learning how to cooperate with these processes to foster positive futures, both near term and long range (Hubbard, 1998).
The world view of conscious evolution can provide a new context for education, transcending the separation of disciplines through a whole systems approach, orienting and guiding us toward meaningful vocations and life purpose. Conscious evolution reveals to us that here is an emerging developmental path which we can deliberately enter upon in the greatest learning experiment since the advent of language.
Why Conscious Evolution Now?
It is important to realize how new the concept of conscious evolution is. This newness explains why it has not yet, in general, been incorporated into our academic, political, and religious world views.
There are three new elements vital to conscious evolution. I call them the 3 C’s, namely, the new Cosmology, the new Crises, and the new Capacities (Hubbard, 1998).
The first is the new Cosmology. We recognize now that the universe originated mysteriously through a singularity, an emergence, not fully understood, that it has been evolving for billions of years, and is still evolving now through us as well as throughout the entire cosmos. Brian Swimme has said: “During the modern period, we have moved from that dominant spatial mode of consciousness, where time is experienced in ever-renewing seasonal cycle, to a dominant time-developmental mode of consciousness, where time is experienced as an evolutionary sequence of irreversible transformations” (Swimme, Berry, 1992).
The discovery of cosmogenesis gives rise to an evolutionary consciousness that is requisite to the practice of conscious evolution. We recognize that the universe has a history and a direction, and therefore, so do we. Awareness of cosmogenesis reinforces our own impulse to evolve in history, not purely as a metaphysical event, or happening in an after world. This awareness helps us see the future not as more of the same, but as potentially radically new, self-transcending, fulfilling our age-old yearning for our own transformation. For we see, in witnessing the billions of years, that evolution is continually self-transcending, manifesting the rise of consciousness and freedom through an ever more complex order, and we see that we are part of that story.
Yet we also see that the future is a contingency, not an inevitability. Most of the species that ever existed on our planet are now extinct. Our future depends on us, ever more so, as we gain the powers which can lead us down the paths of destruction or cocreativity. The new cosmology sets the context for faith in the possibility of long range positive futures, and helps us formulate visions of ideal futures and work toward them.
A second reason for the newness of conscious evolution is our new Crises. We are facing a set of complex and rapidly escalating crises in our world which could render the human species extinct. There are no experts to guide us in the great transition from a high technology species destroying its own environment toward a coevolutionary species capable of developing and manifesting an ethical, evolutionary agenda. The set of crises can be interpreted as “evolutionary drivers” on a planetary scale, forcing us to gain evolutionary consciousness and practice conscious evolution, or to suffer degradation and self destruction.
The third great new factor in the advent of conscious evolution is our new Capacities. These capacities reside in our advancing technologies, such as biotechnology, nuclear power, nanotechnology, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, space development, as well as new social technologies that offer us methods of greater cooperation, synergy, and evolutionary design through systems thinking and organizational application. The “noosphere,” a term used for the thinking layer of Earth by Teilhard de Chardin (De Chardin, 1955), is maturing rapidly as a “superorganism” combining our collective consciousness and capacities (Stock,1993). As individuals, we are not much different physically than we were 2000 years ago, but the noosphere is radically empowered. Our new technological and social capacities are already transforming the material world, including our own bodies.
If we learn ethical evolution, combining evolutionary consciousness, conscious evolution and evolutionary design capacities, as Eric Chaisson said, we stand at the beginning of “universal life,” a term of unknown, undefined potential (Chaisson, 1987).
From the perspective of conscious evolution, activated by these three new conditions—the new cosmology, the new crises, and our new capacities—we see ourselves as a cross over generation from one phase of evolution to the next.
We are undergoing what Ervin Laszlo calls a macroshift, which he defines as “a bifurcation in the evolutionary dynamic of a society—in our interacting and interdependent world, it is a bifurcation of human civilization in its quasi totality…..The chaotic state is not an unordered, random state but one where even immeasurably small fluctuations produce measurable, macroscopic effects…When a human society reaches the limits of its stability, it becomes supersensitive and is highly responsive to the smallest fluctuation…Then the system responds even to subtle changes in values, beliefs, worldviews, and aspiration” (Laszlo, 2001).
The stakes are high. There are no experts. The time is short. The question is: What do we need to know to practice self- and social-evolution? What constitutes a new developmental path that can take us through this great transition to the actual “other side” of the evolutionary leap?
We might ask: How can we meet the four conditions set by Bela H. Banathy to give a hopeful direction to our evolution, which are: “1) the development of evolutionary consciousness; 2) the attainment of a will of conscious evolution; 3) the acquisition of evolutionary competence through evolutionary learning; and 4) the activation of evolutionary competence in creating an evolutionary vision as a guiding image of the future” (Banathy, 1996).
PART II: THE ACTIVATION OF CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION: THE WORK OF THE FOUNDATION OF CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION
The Foundation for Conscious Evolution has been formed to respond to this epochal set of questions, and is creating a new context for an inclusive developmental path to the next stage of human evolution. To initiate this developmental path, the Foundation is engaged in three main projects which are offered through The Center for Conscious Evolution web site (see References). These are:
PROJECT ONE: The Gateway to our Conscious Evolutionis the beginning of an evolutionary education system designed to empower people to become conscious cocreators of their own futures in alignment with the patterns of evolution.
PROJECT TWO: The Development of a Conscious Evolution Community in Santa Barbara, California, is dedicated to designing a synergetic social system which will liberate each person to give their gift for the good of the self and the whole community, and serves as a template for other future-creating communities that are working for a more direct and synergetic democracy.
PROJECT THREE: The Formation of a “Peace Room”(on the web and in localities) to identify, map, connect and communicate what is working toward a compassionate and creative world. The first Global Peace Room is on the Center for Conscious Evolution web site, and the first local Peace Room is being initiated by the Santa Barbara Conscious Evolution community.
Each of these three interrelated projects is described in more detail below, showing how they contribute to the formation of a new developmental path in our human evolution.
PROJECT ONE: The Gateway to Our Conscious Evolution
The Gateway to Our Conscious Evolution. is a six month, on-line educational program that covers seven great themes or portals that anyone would need to know to practice self and social evolution. The seven portals take participants from an understanding of the nature of the universe through personal, relational, vocational, and social evolution to a vision of him or herself “on the other side” of the evolutionary jump. Gateway connects participants with a living web of people, projects, ideas, and partners now transforming the world. Participants are encouraged to find their unique vocation and to connect that creativity with teammates and evolving needs within society.
As of this writing, over 500 people in the United States, Canada, South America, England and South Africa are field-testing the Gateway on the Internet and in small groups, preparing it to be introduced to the larger public in the fall of 2002. Approximately 20 “Gateway Guides” are taking the course, enrolling and guiding their own group of students on the Gateway,They will certified teachers of conscious evolution.
Gateway is the beginning of a school for conscious evolution. It fosters evolutionary consciousness and invites participants throughout the world to form conscious evolution communities and to connect the positive in their own localities. Gateway offers an early “map” of our cosmic evolution from the origin of creation to the present and beyond, seeing ourselves participating in the next turn of the spiral of evolution, unfolding through seven portals which are described below.
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Diagram of the 7 Portals
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Portal One: The Whole Story. The underlying context for conscious evolution springs from new views of the nature of the universe that scientifically explore the possibility that our cosmos is not a fragmented and lifeless machine, but is instead a unified living system that is self-organizing, continuously self-maintaining, self-renewing, and self-transcending (Elgin, 2000).
Portal 2: The Emergence of the Cocreative Person: A New Self Image. From this perspective a compelling new self image of an evolving human emerges. Based on new views of the nature of the universe and cosmogenesis, we discover there is an implicate order—pattern, generative force, syntropic tendency, transcendent and dynamic reality, whatever name we call it—toward more harmonious order that is generating in us our own motivation to evolve. We are the universe in person. No longer aliens alone in a cosmic void, we experience ourselves to be vital expressions of the living universe. We place ourselves in the story, as integral elements of the story, as expressions of the whole process of creation. Our deepest aspirations and yearnings are interpreted as the evolutionary impulse personified in, or even more accurate, as each of us.
In Portal 2, we seek to make the internal shift within ourselves from egoic personalities to essential, connected selves, and learn to become cocreative with the process of evolution (Almaas, 1986 ) (Hubbard, 2001).
Portal 3: Cocreative Relationship. Cocreative relationships are the working out of the Golden Rule to love one another as ourselves. It is the ethic of all great traditions normalized and practiced as a social necessity. Riane Eisler describes this change in relationship as the shift from the dominator to the partnership model, from forced ranking to linking by affinity (Eisler, 2000).
There are countless support groups of all kinds forming throughout the world. In Portal 3 we practice forming “resonant cores” to stabilize our identity at the essential self level, learning compassionate listening, forgiveness, love, harmony (Anderson, Roske, 2001). It is soon discovered, as resonance and affirmation deepen, that our creativity is stimulated in the field of appreciation and encouragement. We long to express life purpose in partnership with others who need our unique creativity as we need theirs. Resonant cores dedicated to personal growth tend towards cocreative vocational cores, dedicated to discovering and manifesting life purpose, while being the change we want to see in the world. The developmental path continues to unfold.
Portal 4: Cocreative Vocation. Cocreative Vocation is the life purpose of the individual expressed and manifested in such a way that it evolves the person and serves the world. It is the “golden bridge” from our inner work to outer manifestation, the vital impulse that carries the evolving human toward maturity in the world through chosen work. Vocation is the life pulse that urges us to procreate becoming the creative impulse that drives us to cocreate through expression of our life callings. In the conditions of love and safety, the great drives of self preservation and self-reproduction extend into the desire for self expression, self actualization and self transcendence. The higher human values are cultivated naturally.
The Gateway is developing a data-base where participants can place their vocational profiles, state their goals, needs and resources, and be facilitated by the computer in finding one another. As the data-base grows, anyone anywhere in the world can put in their own purpose and be empowered to connect and cocreate with others, fostering a renaissance of human creativity.
The outlines of the developmental path emerge. It begins with our understanding of the Whole Story, unfolds through the emerging person, blossoms through cocreative relationships, grows through cocreative vocation, and comes into form through communities of social pioneers who hold the “whole in their hearts” as they learn to do their part in the cocreation of their world.
Portal 5: Synergetic Community. In the developmental path it is soon obvious that one cannot fully express and manifest unique creativity in chosen work in a world that is dissonant and unreceptive to our vocations. We cannot change large systems, or fix dysfunctional systems. We do what Bela H. Banathy calls for, “transcend and create” through the visioning of the ideal state and then creating design spaces to work toward that state, realizing new potential by building upon unfolded potential.
Banathy writes: “The evolutionary quantum jump, the big change, will happen in our myriads of communities, living and acting all over the evolutionary landscape. They will become the forces of conscious evolution” (Banathy, 2000).These types of new communities may be called “agoras,” named after the 5th century Greek polis, or city-state where direct democracy was initiated. “The New Agoras, the evolutionary design spheres and communities of conscious evolution, will offer us functional contexts of self-guided evolution that are tangible and can be brought to action” (Banathy, 2000).
The focus in Portal 5 is learning how to cocreate synergetic community and linking with others who are doing the same. The Santa Barbara Conscious Evolution community described below in Project 2 is an example of synergetic community-in-formation.
Portal 6: Cocreative Society. Now we come to the most challenging of the seven portals. It is relatively easy to demonstrate our values and aspirations in personal work, in small groups, and even small communities of like-minded pioneers. But how can these smaller activities translate into change at the societal level, when all about us we see dysfunctionalities, threats of environmental collapses, and intolerable suffering of billions of people and other species?
How can we bring into being a Cocreative Society—a world in which each of us is free to do and be our best in harmony and partnership with each other, with nature, and with the enfolded pattern of evolution? What can we do to nudge the bifurcation toward an evolutionary future equal to our spiritual, social and scientific potential?
Nature takes jumps through greater synergy. A key to a social quantum jump is to rapidly increase social synergy, which is the connecting of the countless positive innovations, initiatives and organizations dedicated to healing and evolving our world. To foster a cocreative society, conscious evolutionaries must quickly invent new ways of collaboration and cocreation among the emerging innovations and innovators now actually transforming our world. If we are in a dissipative social system far from equilibrium, in the midst of a macroshift, then the crucial action is to exponentially increase the connectedness and communication among novel and constructive activities. As we invent processes of social synergy, we can facilitate our global system to jump to a higher order. If we can destroy our world in 20-50 years, can we not, in the same timeframe, nudge the flow of evolution at the bifurcation point toward a more complex and harmonious order? I think the answer is yes, we can, and we must.
In Portal 6 the Foundation offers the beginnings of such a new social function. We call it the Peace Room, an evolutionary intervention to foster social synergy, locally and globally, to serve the emergence of the Cocreative Society. Our vision is that our Peace Rooms become more sophisticated than our governmental war rooms, and eventually replace them as we learn that the moral alternative to war is the conscious evolution of humanity. (The “Peace Room,” is described later in Project Three.)
Portal 7: Visions of the Next Stage of Evolution. In 1945, when the United States dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, I asked some questions which have motivated my life. What is the purpose of our new powers that is good? What are positive images of our own future commensurate with these powers? Where is modern civilization going? What is our story? I discovered that no one knew. It was not written anywhere. Science fiction touched upon it. Spiritual visions of another life had magnetized us—the New Jerusalem, paradise, the new heavens and the new Earth—but they were fading due to the new scientific understanding of the processes of creation. The modern world was, and is still, groping between stories and images of its own future. Nihilism, pessimism, alienation, and regressive behaviors of all kinds often fill the gap as we use our vast new powers for over-consumption and over-defense, rather than for evolution and transformation.
In Portal 7, we use our imagination to create a “strange attractor” to draw us forward. We take our stand on “the other side,” not as angels, ghosts, or gods, but as evolving humans, at the next stage of our own evolution, We “image in” our potential future that attracts us, based on imagining what it will be like when everything we know we can do works in harmony with nature and our highest aspirations. We draw our hope and our visions from the transformative power of the great 15 billion year tradition which is pulsing in our blood and bones.
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Diagram of the Mandala of Synergy
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Here we focus on quantum innovations that could transform the world, real new possibilities such as , accessing zero point energy, stabilizing evolutionary consciousness; outer space development, overcoming aging, self-healing, shared contact with other life, etc. These capacities or possibilities lead to radical newness rather than incremental improvement. Seen as a harmonious, emergent whole system, connected at all points, as in a Mandala of Synergy, these quantum potentials offer us the basis for genuine visions of transformation. The mystical and the scientific fuse in evolutionary potentiality of life after this stage of evolution.
As the developmental path unfolds and our visions emerge from the mists of evolutionary consciousness we begin to see thatthe meaning of our new crises is to activate our new potentials, and that the purpose of our power is to foster within ourselves the emergence of a universal humanity, capable of co-evolution with nature and cocreation with spirit.
Once participants are enrolled in the Gateway, they have access to it for life long learning. In Gateway “101” I serve as narrator and senior guide. As we grow, many mini-courses will be developed by master evolutionary teachers and guides until we have a living school for the conscious evolution of humanity.
PROJECT TWO: The Santa Barbara Conscious Evolution Community As An Example of Synergetic Community
To facilitate the anchoring of this world view, and to develop a template for the formation of a conscious evolution community, the Foundation has develop a catalytic set of actions to focus, empower, and accelerate the formation of synergetic community both locally in Santa Barbara, and globally, via the Internet. Our goal is to offer a framework and processes for synergy among communities forming both on line and in localities around the world who share the principles and values of conscious evolution.
The formation of the Santa Barbara Community began with a question in October 1998 that was the catalyst that formed this conscious evolution community. At a speech at City College’s Mind/SuperMind series, I gave a talk on conscious evolution. Then, spontaneously, without any preconceived plan, I asked the enthusiastic audience a question: What would happen if this community in Santa Barbara were to experience its own potential for self- and social-evolution – as a whole community? Would anyone be interested?
One hundred and eighty five people raised their hands and put their names in a box. Everything followed from this question and response.
The “call” to conscious evolution attracts a certain kind of evolutionary personality, one that has been yearning to go beyond his or her current state of development, people who feel out of category. Whether successful or not in their field, they long for a larger context in which to work (Hubbard, 1982). When the world view is expressed as an invitation to participate in self and social evolution with others, there is an immediate and excited response. I believe that if the same question I asked the Santa Barbara community were asked in any community in the developed world, a sizable group would form and want to enter the process of conscious self and social evolution together. In Santa Barbara, our community has grown organically. Below are some of the observations and questions that are arising.
• A key to the self-organizing of a conscious evolution community is people’s longing to give their gift into a receptive whole. A key characteristic of a conscious evolutionary is a yearning to more fully express talent and creativity in meaningful work (Portal 4). Current society hardly offers most of us this opportunity. The design of synergetic community is to emancipate in each person their unique contribution, so that that gift can be given for the sake of the individual and the community as a whole (Portal 5). This yearning serves as a continuing motivation, keeping people cocreating together on behalf of a deep evolutionary motivation that cannot be fulfilled in most of current jobs or functions
“The whole organizes the parts into an evolutionary model” (Banathy, 2000).
As a structure of self-organization we used the “Wheel of Cocreation” which also serves as the structure for the Peace Room.
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Diagram Wheel of Cocreation
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The “Wheel of Cocreation” represents a symbolic overview of what is emerging and life enhancing during this moment of evolution seen as a whole system. Each sector of the Wheel represents a vital function of society at local, regional and global levels. It was an holistic matrix that aided us in our self organization. “Evolution is directed by the innate tendency of the whole to create unity within its parts and synthesize their differences [Lorenz,1977].
Ultimately, each sector is to be filled with initiatives that work in harmony with natural systems and human aspirations.. The invitation to participants from the Foundation was to enter the Wheel based on their vocational attraction, or their desire to create. The Foundation facilitated them to join up with others to form vocational cores dedicated both to stabilizing the inner self (Portal 2), to developing cocreative relationships (Portal 3), and to fulfilling the life purpose of its members in the context of the community, and in service to the larger world (Portal 4).
The key idea here is that every one has a unique “genius code,” just as we have a unique genetic code. When people get “vocationally-aroused,” they desire to express their life purpose. They long to join not their genes to have a baby, but to join their genius to give birth to the greater potential within themselves and to make a difference in the world. This passion toward self-expression and life purpose is one of the magnetic attractors that keeps people involved in the synergetic community building. The Santa Barbara community formed by “vocational affinity” in each sector of the Wheel of Cocreation, and has been meeting in core groups for almost three years as of this writing.
We sought to be the change we wanted to see in the world. The Foundation suggested to the vocational core groups that before people move outward toward tasks or projects, they stay together , cultivating resonance, learning compassionate communication, working toward the inner shift from ego to essence, and deepening their sense of purpose before taking action (Portals 2 and 3). It does not suffice to go forth into the world to change something outside oneself, if the inner personality is still driven, separate and addicted. It was necessary to refrain from immediate action to focus first on the humble yet deeply rewarding task of self-evolution. The community became imbued with the possibility that we are experiencing the emergence of the next stage in human evolution within ourselves, personally (Hubbard, 2000).
Tolerance of ambiguity is vital. There is no certain path to synergetic community. Transformation leads to newness, and there are no full scale models of conscious evolution yet. Some individuals could not tolerate this ambiguity, this not knowing exactly what we were doing.
The parts sought to become a whole system. . We met together in monthly Assemblies of the Whole, embryonic gatherings, groping toward the question of how individuals and core groups might actually form together a more comprehensive whole. As the whole attracts the parts, the parts long to become whole. The Foundation for Conscious Evolution served as facilitator and coordinator of this inquiry.
We were becoming an evolutionary learning community. Bela Banathy’s Guided Evolution of Society became a key text. In the text, the whole field of socio-cultural evolution is laid out for the first time. His description of the new agoras, or future-creating communities was precisely what we were doing, intuitively. We had created a design space and were working toward a shared purpose and vision.
A Chaordic Design Group was formed to study Dee Hock’s Chaordic Design methodology and to offer his process to the community. We began the effort to identify shared purpose and principles. “The organization of the future will be the embodiment of community based on shared purpose calling to the higher aspirations of people…” (Hock,1999).
At the same time, a group was formed to study Don Beck’s Spiral Dynamics [Beck,cowan.1996]. Beck fused Clare Graves’ work with the young science of memetics, and more recently Ken Wilber’s All Quadrants/All Levels (Wilber, 2000). Beck identifies various world views that are in fact valuesMEMEs, as a “coding mechanism that inculcates every aspect of society” [Beck,1999]. Beck saw that there is a “new tier” of world views that can integrate all world views, and can help to guide the whole system. He named these Integrative and Holistic world views that “contain the intelligences to macromanage the whole human Spiral. “ We saw the image of what we were aspiring toward as a natural next step in human evolution
Concurrent with the Chaordic Design Team, and the study of Banathy and of Beck, a small core group formed to develop a local Santa Barbara “Peace Room.” Both teams have been working for almost two years.
The Santa Barbara Peace Room Group. The Santa Barbara (SB) Peace Room Group is working with the 12 sector Wheel of Cocreation to organize a first local community Peace Room process. It is the same structure in which the original vocational core groups formed.
An early form of synergetic democracy is emerging. The SB Peace Room Group plan to identify “stewards” for every sector of the Wheel, developing values and criteria for evolutionary innovations in each functional area of society. Concurrently, we will first organize a process of “vocational mingling” for members of the Conscious Evolution Community, where participants in each sector of the wheel share their desire to create, their needs and their resources. We will map our own initiatives, cultivating synergy and cocreativity.
Then, the SB Peace Room group plans to reach out to the larger community to discover important innovators and creators in functional areas of Santa Barbara, inviting them to come together in synergetic events, such as Town Meetings in the Round with local media and Internet coverage, to seek common goals and match needs with resources. For example, a former candidate for mayor will help reach out to other evolutionaries in city government.
Thus, we will facilitate synergy both in our own small community, and in the larger Santa Barbara Community, while spreading the meme of conscious evolution. Furthermore, the SB Peace Room is placed on the Center for Conscious Evolution website, and in the Gateway to Our Conscious Evolution educational on-line course (Portal 5), offering tools and templates to other communities who wish to initiate their own local Peace Room.
How does a conscious evolution community self-govern? Meanwhile, we had to face the question of self-governance. The Foundation had been facilitating and coordinating the Conscious Evolution Community, but there was some question of our role as authority. If the community were to develop and serve as a template for others, we would have to shift our role from coordinators and facilitators to members. The Foundation chose to release the coordinator/facilitator role into the community, inviting them and ourselves to form some sort of self-governing system. A question we faced was: How does authority arise in synergetic community?
As of this writing, a Transition Team has formed, open to all by self-selection, to assist the community in developing some form of Council, or, as someone said, “to form a more perfect union.” Representative democracy must be deepened to a direct, participatory form of democracy. We are learning that we must become self governing, maturing emotionally in order to practice genuine self-government. Through various methods, mainly the open fishbowl, the Chaordic Team, now expanded to about 25 people, is experimenting with how to become a Council.
We have been bogged down as to our decision-making process, seeking to avoid the pitfalls of normal win-lose voting, and the difficulty of agreement by consensus, wherein any person can stall the whole process. We realize that there is a wide body of information innovations in the democratic process, but we have not been ready to do extensive research and application.
Our first step is to learn better methods of dialogue and decision-making. At the moment, we are consulting with Alexander Christakis, to learn his process of “Structured Dialogue.” The key is a facilitated dialogue designed to protect the autonomy and authority of every person within the context of the meaning and complexity of all the members involved. I believe his work is vital to the development of synergetic democracy” (Christakis, 2001).
The current purpose that the Transition Team has offered for the yet-to-be formed Council is: “To facilitate the self-governance of our co-creative community in the realization of its aims and visions.”
As many communities experiment in how to move toward a more direct, harmonious participation in the co-design of our own futures, they will naturally spread throughout the world. Such human-scale communities are islands of new social life in the dysfunctional world. Gradually, I believe they will replicate, just as Bela H. Banathy envisions, a growing network of agoras of all kinds, until at some point, in the not too distant future, they will attract millions who are self-ejecting from dysfunctional jobs and activities that do not nourish the quality and potential of life on Earth. A new kind of society itself will emerge as the next stage in the developmental path.
PROJECT THREE: The Global Peace Room
As a local Peace Room is developing as part of the Santa Barbara community initiative, the Foundation is placing an early model of a “Global Peace Room” on our Center for Conscious Evolution web site to serve as a context and social matrix for a whole system shift toward the next stage of our evolution. The Global Peace Room is the central organizing structure which the Foundation uses to foster social synergy in the emergence of the Cocreative Society (Portal 6). It opens up an arena of social synergy to connect points of positive transformation fostering a social quantum jump toward a future equal to our full potential.
The formation of an evolutionary guidance network. To begin the process at this stage, the Foundation for Conscious Evolution is identifying 25 “evolutionary colleagues” representing each sector of the Wheel of Cocreation, individuals whose life and work are actually successfully transforming some sector of society. Each colleague is networked into their fields, representing not just themselves but many others.
We are inviting the colleagues to form a sustainable, interactive evolutionary information and communication network that will continually inform each other, the Peace Room as whole, and the general public, of what is working, what is breaking down, and what is breaking through. These innovations will be mapped and connected to discover the synergy among the innovating elements. The work of the colleagues will be seen as connected, coherent elements within the evolving whole system, rather than as separate fields and subjects as the current educational system is structured.
Design Team to discover the pattern of the whole and the evolutionary agenda. We will invite a small design team of whole system thinkers to discover the pattern of the whole that is emerging now from what is working. Out of this pattern we seek to identify an Evolutionary Agenda based on what is working to heal and evolve our world.
I host a “Live from the Peace Room” Internet radio show on Wisdom Internet Radio. We intend to expand this communication outreach, eventually to become a planetary media communication system and “operating hub” for the global community of pioneering souls now transforming our world.
Global cocreation facilitated. People all over the world, including, of course, Gateway participants, are invited to place their own projects in the Peace Room on the Internet and in their own community Peace Rooms. Through interactive technologies, we will assist people in finding their partners, in knowing who else is doing the work in their area of the world, what are the best projects in the field, and who might be their teachers, mentors and guides. Participants in Gateway will help build the Global Peace Room as well as placing their own projects within it. The living field of conscious evolution will be made visible and usable.
Thus a new developmental path is unfolding through our collective endeavors. By identifying the deeper patterns of evolution, and connecting creative innovators of our time with people throughout the world who desire to participate more fully we can together cocreate new social systems for conscious evolution.
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Index
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Co-intelligence, Collective Intelligence, and Conscious Evolution
A Movement for the Conscious Evolution of Increasingly Conscious Social Systems
Complexity Rising: From Human Beings to Human Civilization, a Complexity Profile
Towards a Generative Action Research for Influencing Intentional Evolution
The Challenge Before Us: Mastering the Bifurcation of the Humanity-System
Emergence of Global Consciousness and its Impact on the System of Global Governance
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