In 2018, the World Goodwill Seminars in London, Geneva and New York focused on the theme In Resonance with the Living Earth. Over two days, speakers from diverse backgrounds shared their experiences and insights on how humanity can bring itself more into resonant harmony with the other kingdoms of nature, both spiritual and material. The positive significance of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as practical guidelines for humanity to become a more responsible steward of the animal and plant life and the minerals of the planet, received special attention at the meeting held in UN Headquarters in Geneva.
Hylozoism – an unusual word for an ancient concept: that all matter is alive. When we take this thought seriously, then the idea emerges of the Earth itself being alive, and the life of our species being an integral part of this great Life. And we can expand the thought still further, seeing humanity as an active participant in a Kosmos thrilling with the energy of Life, evolving purposefully towards states of increasing perfection. This vision has always been part of the ageless wisdom tradition, and is also held, in varying degree, by a number of religious faiths.
As noted in New York, it is humanity’s responsibility to help raise the vibration of the lower kingdoms, through sympathetic resonance, as part of this Kosmic perfecting process. Unfortunately, over the last few centuries, we have been neglecting this responsibility, and the results of this neglect are now imperilling our own survival.
Recognition of this fact, and intelligent, compassionate responses to it, informed the presentations at the meetings. In Geneva, the key importance of the will qualified by good was recognised, and it was observed that as “the dynamic energy of the soul, will can lead us to realise our purpose based on a fraternal vision of humanity. It is then that competition will give way to collaboration, and sharing will offset any selfish attitude.”
If we ponder how the future of our relationships with other beings might look, we could conceive of it as a vast collective meditation upon other beings as co-participants in the great web of life. If the mentally focused insights of a more patient and humble science can blend with the heart-filled connection with other beings that has always been available, then a truer cooperation among the various kingdoms of nature, mineral, vegetable, animal, human and spiritual, can arise. In this future, where diversity of form and function is not just accepted but celebrated, we should be able to develop ways to sense and cooperate with evolutionary purpose.
One Theme, Three Locations, Many Presenters
In order to contain the material within the space of one issue, this year we have opted to give a short extract from each speaker’s presentation, staying as close as possible to their original words, so that their energy will hopefully be conveyed. As previously, there is biographical information and a link to the full video of each presenter in the article.
Vita De Waal reflects on the importance of sound as a harmonising element and how this was already recognised in ancient times in the design of sacred spaces.
Jeremy Dunning-Davies warns of the danger of placing too much faith in mathematics as a guide to understanding the physical universe.
Marco emphasises the importance of international cooperation, and how cooperation can challenge us to radically shift our perspective.
María Crehuet Wennberg notes the need to bring an end to our obsession with economic growth, and to build a new culture based on personal responsibility and interdependence.
Giles Hutchins shares his thoughts on how to learn from living systems, and use these insights to help build healthier systems and organisations which are life-enhancing.
René Longet explains the emergence of the key concept of sustainable development.
Jen Morgan considers the ways in which diversity, a central aspect of living systems, can strengthen groups and societies.
May East points out the interdependence of the SDGs, and speaks about the next step on from sustainable development, the regenerative approach, which designs for evolution.
Takeo Inamura & Takeshi Muranaka discuss how their objective in creating a card game based on the SDGs is to help individuals recognise the interdependence of the goals, and their own personal responsibility in helping meet the goals.
Mary Stewart Adams invites us to reflect on the wider cosmic relationship of humanity with the starry heavens and how this connects with our responsibilities to the natural and spiritual world.
In Resonance with the Living Earth – Past, Present but... what about the Future?
Vita de Waal is the founder and director of the Foundation for GAIA and the NGO Alliance on Global Concerns. She chairs two NGO Forums working with UN programmes and is on the Board of an ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Places of Religion and Ritual. Video at worldgoodwill.org/video#vw
Everything in our three dimensional universe is subjected to movement. All movement generates sound and resonance which has oscillations, waves, frequencies, speed and direction. Movement can create turbulences, currents, orbits, time, sound, harmonies, rhythms, colours, diversity, continents, regions, root races, seasons, days, nights, and everything in between. Movement can be upward or downwards, inner, outwards, spiral clockwise or counter clockwise, be yin, yang, hot, cold, light, dark, creative, separative, generative, degenerative, attraction, opposition, birth, decay, sickness, health etc.
In the three dimensions which we inhabit, change is the norm, change is law, because there is sound and movement all the time. Therefore, if we want to stop something, keep something as it is or was, that is completely unnatural.
Adolf Zeising wrote in 1854 of a universal law... in which is contained the ground-principle of all forms... in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form. In that sense, for him, the human form was the pinnacle of this coming together.
The human dimension is important. While there is a unit in time, it is how we use it. Take the monkshood plant (aconite) that can be used to heal but in too large a dose can kill, or sound itself, which can be used to heal or to torture. Free will is a human prerogative and the use of it determines if we use this in harmony , in resonance, with universal law or not.
It is said that Pythagoras pondered for several years upon the laws governing consonance and dissonance. Since it seems that there are immutable constants in all of reality, there must be immutable laws that govern these. Therefore, to Pythagoras, music was related to the divine science of mathematics, its harmonies regulated by mathematical proportions.
The basic belief that geometry, proportion, mathematical ratios and harmonics were found in music was already known by ancient civilizations and used in the building of prehistoric sites. This re‑discovery has opened up a new field of study, archaeo‑acoustics, which analyses the acoustic properties and use of ancient megalithic sites and Neolithic caves.
The prehistoric El Castillo cave in Spain was already used by hominids 40,800 years ago. Sound was recorded within this cave at a position where individuals would have observed the ritual by a shaman. Subsequent analyses identified a frequency‑dependent amplification of recorded sound intensity for frequencies approaching 100 Hz, with the greatest effect observed at 108 and 110 Hz. This frequency range around 110Hz stimulates a certain electrical brain rhythm associated with intuition, creativity, holistic processing and inducing a state of meditation and tends to induce trance‑like states.
Pythagoras created his musical scale starting with note A that resonates at the frequency of 111Hz. Recent findings of MRI research shows that the brain switches off the prefrontal cortex, deactivating the language centre, and temporarily switches from left to right-sided dominance. Today, mindfulness meditations are not only used for relaxation but also for healing and a study showed a lengthening of telomeres (strands of DNA) that tend to shorten with age, leaving chromosomes vulnerable to deterioration. Telomeres are shorter in people with chronic disease and high stress and longer in young, healthy people. Researchers correlate a lengthening of telomeres with meditation.
Archaeo‑acoustics show that sound at Newgrange in Ireland which was built during the Neolithic period more than 5,200 years ago and the 5,000 year‑old Hypogeum in Malta resonate both at 111 Hz. Bone analysis on location showed the Maltese to be a healthy population. It is likely that many more discoveries will be made about living in resonance with our Living Earth!
What’s Wrong with our Present-Day Scientific Thinking?
Jeremy Dunning-Davies is a retired senior lecturer of Hull University in the departments of mathematics and physics. Video at worldgoodwill.org/video#jd
I initially went to University to do pure mathematics but became more interested in Applied Mathematics. As a young research student I remember a Professor giving me a problem to look at which I took home and really worked at, neatly underlining the final answer in red. I brought it in the following day very pleased with myself and gave it to him. He studied it for a while and then suddenly looked up and said “This is fine but what does it mean physically?” I was completely taken aback. He said “What’s the use of a mathematical equation if you don’t know what it means physically?” This was a turning point for me and I think it summarizes what’s wrong with a lot of modern day science where the focus is on trying to make physics fit the mathematics rather than the other way around.
The problem goes back quite some time. In the 19th Century, most activity in physics was going in the direction of electromagnetism. People like JJ Thompson were all working on it, and we had a theory of Relativity by Lorentz that included the ether. Then came Einstein’s papers of 1905 on Special Relativity although nobody took much notice at the time. However, around 1920 his work suddenly came into vogue and Lorentz’s theory was pushed into the background. At this point, science suddenly dispensed with the ether and you could no longer mention it. Then the problems began.
Recently, the CIA released one or two documents containing material possibly linked with Nikola Tesla. I’ve got together with Rich Norman, Scientific Advisor of Thunder Energies Corporation in Florida, and we’ve been talking about an ether in connection with this newly released work and there seem to be possibilities that we can rewrite at least some results without recourse to quantum mechanical ideas by simply using the properties of an ether. It seems you just don’t need quantum mechanics, which is a lovely theory even if people are a bit uneasy about some areas of it. Einstein of course, was very worried about quantum mechanics right to the end of his life.
Our work on the ether and electromagnetism is in harmony with Wal Thornhill and the Electric Universe movement. This group stresses the importance of electromagnetic fields and electric currents present in space, which takes us back to the Scandinavian scientist Kristian Birkeland who used to go out and observe the northern lights and then conduct his own experiments. These were called the Terella experiments and he could actually recreate the aurora in a scaled down form in his laboratory.
Birkeland came up with the theory of how the sun and the earth are linked through a flow of charged particles. But at the same time a British geophysicist, Sydney Chapman, came up with a lovely mathematical theory whose conclusions were the exact opposite of what Birkeland’s experiments showed. Birkeland’s work was totally dismissed in favour of this mathematical theory. It was only in the 70’s that they were able to verify that in fact Birkeland was correct and Chapman wrong. A fact that has never really been made public. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is happening all the time.
The electric universe movement is coming up with explanations of phenomena that orthodox astrophysicists cannot explain but which they seem reluctant to discuss. However, there’s lot of research going on at NASA now that links up with Electric Universe theory. And it may surprise you to know that General Relativity is not used very much at all. Organisations like NASA use Newtonian mechanics – they don’t need supposed corrections from General Relativity. So is General Relativity correct? Is it necessary? It’s a lovely theory. Relativity is what I loved best in my final year as an undergraduate at university but why was I attracted to it? Put simply, I loved the beautiful mathematics!
With Special Relativity, not only did Einstein get rid of the ether, but because he used this mathematical transformation called the Lorentz Transformation, he brought in all those peculiar anomalies such as the Twin Paradox, Time Dilation etc., and yet if look at the work of James Paul Wesley, an American theoretical physicist, you don’t need the Lorentz transformation. If you just accept that E =mc2 which is an experimentally provable result, you can derive theoretically every useful result that comes from Special Relativity. I know this because I’ve done it. Wesley is a name not known to many though.
I don’t want to decry mathematics. It has its place, but when you study physical phenomena – maths should be secondary to the physics – you use it as a tool. No more; no less. A result from maths that makes a prediction should be examined observationally and/or experimentally to see if it matches up with the physics: – the maths shouldn’t dictate! You don’t force some physical phenomena that has been witnessed to conform to some mathematics that has been dreamt up in separate circumstances.
So if you ask me what’s wrong with science today I would say too often the physical end result is being made to link up with some theory rather than the theory being secondary to the physics of the situation. There are plenty of examples – I’ve just mentioned a few. Beautiful mathematics in isolation from physical reality is the thing from which we really have to get away.
International Cooperation: an added bonus, a duty, a necessity or an unstoppable natural tendency?
Marco has worked for over twenty years in international service organizations, in the field and at headquarters. Video at worldgoodwill.org/video#mr
We all have experienced those moments in life when we need to make sense of things in our own world. Those moments are indeed quite interesting. And we know that we cannot make sense of things all the time. To be successful we need to have that urge, the moment needs to be ripe.
When we make sense of things, we give them focus, purpose and direction. We give them meaning both as pieces and as a collective. It is quite an important moment of synthesis. Normally a cycle closes and a new one opens. It is a foundational moment.
It seems to me that this is one of those moments, but on a planetary scale.
Over the past 73 years a few spectacular and unprecedented things have happened:
- the forging of a planetary plan based on an agreement, i.e. based on an expressed manifestation of will – that is the UN Charter and the SDGs;
- an incredible development of international law to address complex issues, as the basis of the existing world order;
- the number of sovereign states has almost tripled;
- the number of associations and private entities and companies has exponentially grown;
My impression is that over the past 73 years there has been, and is still happening, an explosion of will! Let alone the fact that from 2.5 billion we have now become over 7.6 billion and growing – that's a lot of individual wills to engage with! A lot of will and thus force at disposal!
That is not a small thing.
The world has become, to say it with the political scientists – multipolar. A multiplicity of centres of will, active and pursuing their interests.
This may mean that traditional ways to use will, exercise will, may no longer be applicable, nor useful.
We witness the challenges that a multipolar society is representing for our conception of democratic government and exercise of power, as it has been developed over the past roughly 2500 years.
That will require, probably, the search of a new paradigm to channel and use constructively all that will energy that is entering into manifestation through the growing numbers of individuals and organisations.
The test we are facing is one of the use of collective will, group will. How to forge a truly collective will out of individual wills.
Is cooperation the tool to find a new paradigm for the collective use of will toward the continued evolution of the planet?
Yet, are we familiar enough with cooperation?
Indeed, how can we expect nations to cooperate if we, as individuals, even well-intended individuals, do not cooperate, or do it with difficulty? How can we expect our nations to cooperate with others if we, as people and citizens, do not give the right guidance to our governments through carefully thought-through and heart-born models and ideas based on our daily testing and divine instinct?
There is a need to speak more about cooperation, and not just as a beautiful thing, but also the challenges it brings to us, as individuals and as groups, in order to identify ways to overcome them.
Cooperation by default goes beyond the consciousness of an individual and requires the individual to cross that border and enter into the other's shoes. It is about entering an unknown space which can be discovered and mapped only together with others... indeed in cooperation with others!
As such cooperation is not necessarily a means to an end... rather a means to discover ends. In other words, it is important to appreciate the difference between: cooperating to get something done vs cooperating for the sake of it in order to allow and then figure out what to get done.
A New Ethical Culture: Values and Alternative Projects for a Finite Planet
María Crehuet Wennberg is responsible for the Energy Policies of the Associació de Micropobles de Catalunya and is vice-president of CMES (Collective for a Sustainable Energy and Social Model). Video at worldgoodwill.org/video#mw
"In the near future the knowledge society will make place for a society of a new ethical culture, a place where we will all be in a position to host the seed of generosity, the only engine capable of positively transforming everything we know."
What do we need to become that new society? Where are we now?
In mid-September, European scientists and politicians met in Brussels under the headline: Last call. Europe, the time has come to put an end to dependence on growth. These scientists raised the point that: Growth is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve due to falling productivity gains, market saturation and ecological degradation. If the current trend continues, there may be no growth in Europe in a decade. Right now the answer to this problem is to try to activate growth by expanding debt, dismantling environmental regulations, extending working hours, and social cutbacks. This aggressive pursuit of growth at any cost fragments society, creates economic instability, and destroys democracy.
They propose four actions, to start slowing down:
- Set up a special committee in the European Union Parliament on the future of Post-Growth.
- Incorporate alternative indicators in the macroeconomic frameworks of the EU and its member states, indicators that should have greater importance in decision-making processes than those currently held by GDP.
- Transform the Stability and Growth Pact into a Stability and Welfare Pact.
- Create a Ministry for Economic Transition in each of the member states. A new economy that focuses directly on human and ecological well-being could offer a much better future than one that is structurally dependent on economic growth.
There are already many organisations working in this direction. Yet ideas of all these movements that are penetrating the minds of a part of society are also being manipulated by big lobbies taking over the discussion in order to continue selling whatever it may be. It is trendy to do so under labels of ‘ecological’, ‘green’, ‘sustainable’, ‘alternative’... Do we fall into the trap? Do we see the signs that warn us of danger? Or do we continue to drive carelessly and at full speed towards the abyss?
This new culture must change many things – for example:
• the social framework in which we move from a system based on individualism to one based on engaged and active citizens;
• technocracy must give way to real democracy;
• the secrecy that hides so much corrupt behaviour must perish in the face of real transparency;
• the ‘hard’ economy that lives at the expense of the weakest must be replaced by a ‘soft’ economy that knows how to share;
• that attitude of only thinking about this generation needs to make a turn towards a deep respect for the environment and to think that any action has an impact, and that this must be beneficial for many generations (Native Americans said that we should think at least until the 7th generation before deciding on an act);
• we must also rethink globalisation which, although in itself a good idea, has only served to benefit the big lobbies by impoverishing local economies, so we must rethink producing and consuming 0 km products;
• the laws that, necessary in the beginning, have become a rigid corset that oppresses us and that we should learn to accept flexibility, yet being strict at the same time;
• change the monologue of a single actor that is the State for a choral work whose actors are the entire society.
To build that kind of society it is essential that its components, all citizens, be responsible and inter-independent.
This new culture must be based on individual change, knowing and understanding that no change is really strictly individual: if a person changes, that change ends up influencing the family, the neighbours, the neighbourhood, the municipality, the region, the nation and the Planet, until it reaches the entire Universe.
Nothing is impossible.
Sensing Evolutionary Potential: Co-creating Magnificence with the More-than-Human
Giles Hutchins is a keynote speaker, adviser and executive coach at the fore-front of a [r]evolution in leadership consciousness and organisational development, stimulating head-space and heart-knowing for forward-leaning leaders and organisations to become vibrant, purposeful and future-fit. He is the author of three books, and his latest TEDx talk is entitled [R]evolution: Separateness to Connectedness. He blogs at www.thenatureofbusiness.org Video at worldgoodwill.org/video#gh
There are three levels of learning from nature, three levels of activating the logic of life. The first one is living systems design, (which Jen and Dominic have already explored a little – for example, permaculture). Living systems design involves ways in which we can look at the patterns and life principles that we find within the living systems that we operate in, and apply these to our ways of designing products and processes. So this is biomimicry design, this is permaculture, this is closed-loop economics, circular economy, waste equals food, industrial ecology, biophilic design in our workplaces. There is a lot of really interesting work going on in this area at the moment, lots of innovations, very exciting.
Then there is applying living systems logic to our human cultures and our organisations. This recognises that our organisations aren’t machines, that they are actually living systems. When we can see that there are essential life dynamics that we can apply to our own ways of approaching life, we can see that there is an essential dynamic of divergence – opening up; convergence – bringing together; and out of that tension of the two comes emergence – the way in which we find our flow, the way in which we deal with our evolutionary potential.
So divergence in business is in terms of diversifying: distributing decision-making, decentralising it to empower people to make change happen at the local level, as mentioned by Jen. Also, as Jen said, this involves embracing diversity, but not just diversity of age, creed, culture and gender, which is very important, but also in terms of perceptual horizon – how we see things. This brings in different parts of the system, people from different silos, people from different parts of the stakeholder ecosystem, so the organisational membrane permeates more readily. This increases the relationality of our organisations, making them come alive, moving out of the mechanistic, soul-sapping cultures that we’ve got caught up in.
Now, divergence needs to be balanced with convergence, otherwise the organisation becomes too chaotic, too amorphous. That convergence has traditionally come through power-based hierarchies of control, because of the patriarchal, ego-explosion, scientific management thinking that we talked about earlier. That approach doesn’t help, because it undermines the divergence. So instead, we want convergence to come through a sense of purpose, as Jen discussed. And when we say a sense of purpose, we don’t mean rejigging the mission statement, or putting a new values charter on the wall: we mean deeply developing a resonant sense of purpose within the organisation. Extraordinary things happen when people resonate with the organisational sense of purpose, but for us to deeply resonate, for this sense of purpose to touch our humanity, it means that the organisational sense of purpose has to be, in some way, enhancing life. It needs to be life-affirming, because that is what turns us on. And sociological studies show that it can take as little as ten to fifteen percent of people in the organisation deeply resonating with that sense of purpose for a shift to happen: it becomes easier to let go of those power-based hierarchies of control, and allow more divergent ways of operating to happen. The organisation comes alive, and we find emergence flowing.
Finally, we come to the third level, living systems being…
Human Values and Sustainable Development in the World of Today
René Longet is the President of the Fédération genevoise de coopération, and the vice-president of SIG, specialist on sustainable development. Video at worldgoodwill.org/video#rl
What gives Sustainable Development to us?
In 1987, the notion of Sustainable Development was born: A development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Two concepts are inherently present: 1) the “limitations imposed by the present state of technology and social organization on environmental resources” and by “the ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human activities”; 2) “Sustainable development requires meeting the basic needs of all and extending to all the opportunity to fulfil their aspirations for a better life. A world in which poverty is endemic will always be prone to ecological and other catastrophes.” (http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf § 27)
Economics: We need an inclusive, utility-oriented economy that can nurture the common good. In 2011, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) defined a green economy as: “one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities.” 1
Cultural: Sustainability is finding the right balance between needs and means, being and having, today and tomorrow, North and South, humanity and nature. We need to modify the concept of progress, become involved ourselves to make the best choices as well as speak about responsibility and the long term.
Political: The World needs an inclusive governance, as well as a rebuttal of the neo-liberal viewpoint that the economy needs no regulation. Such a theory is false, as it fails to account for numerous environmental and social costs which are not reflected in the actual price. Thus markets are daily misrepresented; we cannot consider markets without regulation or regulation without markets.
So the State ought to be: accountable for equity, provide help to the weak in their relation to the strong, informative and vitalising, transparent, efficient, supporting engagement and determining priorities. The great challenges concerning the territorial dimension require global regulations, since financial exchanges, migrations, climate, oceans, biodiversity all transcend national boundaries.
From Concept to Action
In 2000 the Millennium Declaration2 and the 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)3, to be reached by 2015, included the elimination of extreme poverty and hunger, a pledge for primary education for all, the promotion of gender equality as well as women’s autonomy, and the reduction of infant mortality.
The June 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) concerned two principal issues, the contribution of green economy in the elimination of poverty and the institutional framework for sustainable development.
The final document, called “The Future We Want” 4 proposed the replacement of the MDGs by the goals of sustainable development; they “should be action-oriented, concise and easy to communicate, limited in number, aspirational, global in nature and universally applicable to all countries, while taking into account different national realities, capacities and levels of development and respecting national policies and priorities.” (§ 247)
In September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted the document Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (or Agenda 2030 5), including 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), “with 169 associated targets which are integrated and indivisible.” (§ 18).
The proper orientation of financial flows as a function of human needs – as defined by the SDGs – will enable us to fulfil the assigned tasks. The economy will be sustainable or it will not be, and conversely, sustainability will be economical or it will not be.
Towards a Sustainable Economy
A lot of goodwill is manifested through the social and solidarity economy6, and fair trade7, these being two forerunners in the present world of what the future economy should be. Innovative producers who propose services or goods of ethical, environmental, or social quality remain in the background, being too much ignored by markets and consumer choice. This has to be changed.
Orient financial fluxes in the right direction
A noticeable proportion of the investments are engaged in non-sustainable, unethical or even a destructive manner, as is the case with coal, nuclear energy or agribusiness. There is also the Dark net of economy absorbing yearly about $35'000 billion! In order to realize the whole of the 17 SDGs, i.e. to bring the world towards sustainability, we would have to invest between $5’000 and $7’000 billion yearly. Therefore, we cannot claim that this money is not available!
Replace the universally used but misleading GDP
The GDP basically ignores anything which has not some monetary function… and adds apples and pears together: anything involving consumption being welcomed. It is time to replace it with indicators of sustainable development, of human development or – as the example of Bhutan8 shows, of national happiness, or the notion of ecological footprint9, an approach developed during the second half of the 1990s by Mathis Wackernagel. It does not include social aspects (“a social footprint”) but the link is evident: exploitation of resources leads to a deepening of inequalities and a sharpening of conflicts concerning access to resources. In a sustainably managed community, social cohesion increases, the ecological footprint decreases, and the economic web becomes sounder.
1 Towards a Green Economy, UNEP, Nairobi 2012, p. 9 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/126GER_synthesis_en.pdf
2 www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.htm
3 www.un.org/fr/millenniumgoals/background.shtml
4 www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/66/288&Lang=E
5 www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/70/1&Lang=E
6 Laville J.-L., Cattani A.-D., Dictionnaire de l’autre économie, Coll. Folio Actuel, Gallimard, Paris 2006
Reflections on Earth Stewardship
A small selection of thoughts which were collated into a booklet for the seminar. To obtain a copy, please go HERE or download the PDF.
If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration. Nikola Tesla
I, the fiery life of divine essence, am aflame beyond the beauty of the meadows, I gleam in the waters, and I burn in the sun, moon, and stars .... I awaken everything to life. Hildegard of Bingen
This is one of the greatest challenges of our time: to convert ourselves to a type of development that knows how to respect creation. Pope Francis
The whole order of nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher life. Helena Blavatsky
There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places. Wendell Berry
Relationships for Change: A Path towards Resonance with all of Life
Jen Morgan is a strategist/entrepreneur working to ‘co-design and co-create strategies that can help accelerate human evolution and the thriving of all life on the planet.’ Jen is the Co-Founder of the Finance Innovation Lab – a globally recognized organisation for social innovation, and is currently Executive Director for The Psychosynthesis Trust. Video at worldgoodwill.org/video#jm
So let’s talk about Nature’s quality of diversity. Going back to the earlier example of the lake in New Hampshire, the lake survived for many hundreds of years, it evolved, it adapted, and it was perfectly working in balance and harmony. Till one year, there was a human intervention, when the local town wanted to attract as many fishermen as possible, so they over-stocked the lake with bass fish. In less than one year, the lake was dead: when I lay on the dock, there was no movement, no life. And it was almost what it feels like now: we have these mega species dominating our financial system, or the energy supplies, or the high street retailers. When I walk down the high street now, I don’t feel like there’s much life, it’s rather dead.
So what does diversity mean in groups? What do I mean by diversity? While I think that in groups and organisations in our society, diversity of race, age and gender is important, I think we are at risk of getting caught up in diversity of appearances rather than diversity of qualities. What I think is important in groups – and especially when we speak about vested interests – is to bring in diversity of thought, of capacities, diversity of emotions, diversity of energies. And this is what I think is important in social change.
Diversity for me is a moral imperative, but it is really a strategic imperative. And by strategic imperative, there are two main things that I mean in that. So it’s a strategic imperative because it does provide more resilience: we can pool our experiences, our capacities, our skills together, to almost act as a buffer against some of the shocks to our human systems, such as climate breakdown, and being in the midst of the sixth mass extinction of species on Earth. We are just on the edge of what we are going to experience in terms of shocks to our system.
The second strategic imperative that I believe that diversity brings is around coming up with better solutions. When I was leading the Finance Innovation Lab we brought all kinds of people together: activists, bankers, psychologists, academics, grass-roots organisers, to think about how could we build collective intelligence, to really shift the financial system? So for example we would bring activists and entrepreneurs together with policy makers, and one of our successes at the time was to create national policy that really allowed new entrants to come in much faster. That, in itself, will hopefully soon disrupt vested interests, so that the financial system is more diverse.
Another example is where we brought together the policy makers with the activists to work with entrepreneurs who were creating brand new disruptive business models, new currencies and financial products. So what we can do with this diversity is to see more of the whole, and see what was more relevant, at all of these different levels, so they could be implemented faster.
So what does it mean for me, as an individual in a group, thinking about diversity? This is a lot of what we teach at the Psychosynthesis Trust – skills that I’ve had to learn as well, around holding paradox. When you are in a diverse group, there are many different truths, and there’s One Truth; and there’s all this multiplicity, and you want to bring Unity together. How do you hold paradox in the groups that you are in? The other skill that I’ve had to learn is around really embracing conflict: when you bring in diversity and have different perspectives, there is often tension and difference, and that often leads to conflict, so how do you embrace conflict as a generative source, and how do you really appreciate difference?
So in the groups that you are in, how diverse are your groups really? How could you bring in more diversity of quality in these groups? And how are you developing your skills to synthesise diversity in groups and in yourself? In psychosynthesis we teach about the sub-personalities, so what I’ve had to learn for myself is how different parts of myself can work together so I have more coherence – how can my mystic side work with my pragmatist side?
SDGs: Framing a New Regenerative Narrative
May East is the CEO of Gaia Education and a UNITAR Fellow. Gaia Education, in partnership with UNESCO GAP Secretariat, has developed an educational tool – the SDG Flashcards – containing more than 200 questions introducing a whole-systems approach to the Agenda 2030. Video at worldgoodwill.org/video#me
There is an international consensus that our generation is facing a convergence of multiple crises in economics, society, ecology and so many other fields. Beyond this, there is a realization that the mindset that has created this convergence cannot solve it. We need a different mindset, a different framework.
At the Rio+20 conference in Brazil, world leaders agreed to try to define a global framework that would address the multiple crises and put humanity on a sustainable pathway. For three years there was the biggest consultation ever in human history. The Sustainable Development Goals that were the result of this process were heavily negotiated, involving uneasy compromises. They have a broad legitimacy amongst all parties.
For some the sustainability concept suffers from internal flaws. It fails to offer guidance on how to arbitrate between conflicting drivers of economic growth, planetary boundaries and social justice. As a framework it aims to provide a balance between humanity and the earth. Yet our presence on the planet has become so forceful and at the same time so disruptive that we need not just to sustain, we need to regenerate. The human quest today is bigger than the SDGs. Achieving the Goals requires a profound transformation in the way we live, think and act, to bring us into resonance with the living earth.
At a time of increasing global threat to the livingness of the earth, regenerative theorists consider that it is more important than ever to understand, not just how living systems survive and thrive, but how they stay on a progressive course towards increasing vitality, viability and potential. We need to regenerate ourselves and our thinking, re-designing our presence on the planet in such a way as to remain close to the planet’s living evolution. The question is, how can we do this as we unravel the convergence of multiple crises through the SDG process?
The regenerative approach understands the interdependent nature of living systems. It recognizes that judging the paradigm of increasing growth and wealth in a global economy by the speed with which we extract, produce, consume and throw away, is obsolete. We need to design revenue generating opportunities that create value in ways that make people and the rest of the natural world stronger, more vibrant and resilient.
When planning strategies and services we can think about the SDGs as nested interacting systems of intelligent activity, so that whenever one SDG is activated this becomes a catalyst impacting many other SDGs. The Goals were designed to interact like this. When making decisions about projects we need to think systemically, with intention, considering the impact on the good of the whole: the locality, the nearby proximate whole, and the greater whole. The mind goes together with the design. By setting clearly the intention to affect the good of the whole, we are already trying to address the convergence of multiple crises with new mind-sets.
The regenerative approach is about designing for evolution. The capacity for evolution is inherent in all living systems. It has been core to life’s ability to sustain itself for billions of years. Now we can design for co-evolution by designing and developing intrinsic and extrinsic conditions that enable living systems to become agents of their on-going evolution.
The case supporting the SDGs is incredibly compelling. We are asked to do something that has never been done before. Our role as forward looking world workers, regenerative practitioners, is key in seizing the SDGs framework potential. By understanding the interdependent nature of the Goals, we may gain this whole systems perspective, and become enablers of a vitality by which societies, ecologies and economies can co-evolve and thrive.
Is the "2030 Agenda" a Game? Why did 30,000 People from Corporations, Government, Education and Civil Society Play the Game?
Takeo Inamura and Takeshi Muranaka are the founders of Imacocollabo, a Japanese NGO with a mission to inspire collaborative action to create a sustainable future, through their innovative 2030 SDGs card game. Video at worldgoodwill.org/video#tm
We heard from a UN staff member, that there was a discussion just before launching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) about the icons, which are very colourful, but may be misleading. If you look at these seventeen icons, what might be a little misleading – can you see it? 
[Response from audience] Yes, that’s exactly it: these icons are separate from each other and it doesn’t look like there is a connection between them. That is the point that the UN staff member said would need change.
For instance, let me give you an example. Let’s say we are working with goal #4 [Quality education: “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”] and we set up a school in a developing country; but no children come. Why do they not come? Because this connects with goal #1 [No poverty: “End poverty in all its forms everywhere”] – the children have to work hard to support their families, who are in poverty, so they don’t have time to go to school. But what are they producing? This relates to goal #12 [Responsible consumption and production: “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns”]. So for instance they work hard to produce food products consumed by people in developed countries. And goal #12 affects goal #15 [Life on Land: “Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”]. If we take Japan as an example, Japanese people consume a lot of palm oil, and a lot of that palm oil is produced in Indonesia, where rainforest has been cut down for palm oil plantations. So that affects #15, Life on Land, and that affects #13 [Climate action: “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”]. And #13 is going to affect #1 (No poverty) and #2 [Zero hunger: “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”] because climate change affects farms meaning that food crops cannot be grown there any longer.
So everything is connected, and we can’t pick one goal out of seventeen, we have to think of them all together. This explains why the SDGs are also symbolised by a coloured wheel, to show that the goals are all connected. So we believe that the SDGs reveal that the world is connected, and because it is connected, I, too, can be a starting point. If I change my way of purchasing products, my way of eating, that can also change the world. Another way of saying this is that, by transforming individual consciousness, people’s consumption and behaviour can be transformed; and also, by transforming businesses and social systems, we can transform individual consciousness. We are here to promote this cycle of creating more sustainable and fulfilled individuals and a thriving society. That is what we want to achieve through the 2030 SDGs card game that we are going to explain now.
Now is the Time for Human Beings to Speak to the Stars
Mary Stewart Adams is a star lore historian who led the successful initiative to establish Michigan’s only International Dark Sky Park in 2011. She presents a weekly program on Interlochen Public Radio, The Storyteller’s Night Sky, and is a student of the Rudolf Steiner teachings. Video at worldgoodwill.org/video#ma
In December of 1922, Rudolf Steiner spoke of changes in our relations with the starry worlds in a verse given to his wife:
The stars spoke once to human beings
It is world destiny that they are silent now
To be aware of this silence can be pain for earthly humanity
But in this deepening silence
There grows and ripens what human beings speak to the stars.
To be aware of this speaking
Can become strength for Spirit Man.
This verse offers what I recognize as a three-fold step. First the stars were speaking to the human being. They were central to the attention of spiritual becoming and to what was happening on the earth. This idea flourishes as far back as the ancient Egyptians. It was the age of the Astro-Logos when the speaking of the stars could be heard as the beginnings of astrology. It wasn’t just looking to the stars to try to make a prediction about what’s going to happen in the human biography but reading the gesture of the stars as an expression of what’s coming to being on the earth.
Then, in the second step, we arrive at the 15th century, when the stars become silent. This is the Age of Astro-Nomia when Nicholas Copernicus writes that the earth is not fixed at the center of our planetary system, but like the other planets, is in orbit round the sun. It dramatically changes the way we think about our relationship to starry worlds. No longer do we ask of the Morning Star: “what might the goddess of love and beauty be speaking?” Our question becomes: “how far away is it?”; “What’s the chemical composition of its atmosphere?” “How can I figure out the periodicity of its orbit?” Rather than attempting to understand the gesture of the celestial world as an expression of the spiritual, we look for a definition of this starry world that’s rooted in the laws of the physical.
And now, in the third step of this verse from Rudolf Steiner, our time is seen as a World Destiny Moment. From the Astro-Logos to the Astro-Nomia we are entering what could be called the age of Astro-Sophia: the wisdom of our relationship with the stars. The relationship becomes defined by our conscious participation in the conversation. It’s not something being spoken to us from without, but our deeds, our activity, our dreams, our thinking, our intentions are informing the conversation. It is as though the natural world, the spiritual world and the celestial world, all wait on what the human being must bring. The destiny that is bound up in this relation is that we must be freed from the dictates of outer understandings so that the human being can be self-directing. The threat is that we will not remember our relationship to the living nature of the earth and its relationship to the celestial world, but that we will think of ourselves as being the single most important thing in what we do and what we say.
So, our task is to try to awaken a living relationship with starry worlds. For this we need a kind of active imagination which does not mean creating a make-believe imaginary world but trying to conceive of the mighty gestures of the spiritual world that wait on the human being to participate in the picture. In doing this we have a responsibility to awaken not only the mythic grandeur of these gestures, but to live as though we know it.
World Invocation Day 2019
To build a more just, interdependent and caring global society what humanity needs above all, is more light, love and spiritual will.
On Monday June 17 2019, people of goodwill from all parts of the world, and from different religious and spiritual backgrounds, unite in invoking these higher energies by using the Great Invocation. Will you join in this healing work by including the Great Invocation in your thoughts, your prayers or your meditations on World Invocation Day? Further information and videos at worldinvocationday.org
The Great Invocation
From the point of Light within the Mind of God
Let light stream forth into the minds of men.
Let Light descend on Earth.
From the point of Love within the Heart of God
Let love stream forth into the hearts of men.
May Christ* return to Earth.
From the centre where the Will of God is known
Let purpose guide the little wills of men –
The purpose which the Masters know and serve.
From the centre which we call the race of men
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out
And may it seal the door where evil dwells.
Let Light and Love and Power
restore the Plan on Earth.
Adapted version
From the point of Light within the Mind of God
Let light stream forth into human minds.
Let Light descend on Earth.
From the point of Love within the Heart of God
Let love stream forth into human hearts.
May the Coming One* return to Earth.
From the centre where the Will of God is known
Let purpose guide all little human wills –
The purpose which the Masters know and serve.
From the centre which we call the human race
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out
And may it seal the door where evil dwells.
Let Light and Love and Power
restore the Plan on Earth.
* Many religions believe in a World Teacher Who is to come in the future (hence ‘Coming One’), knowing Him under such names as the Lord Maitreya, the Imam Mahdi, the Kalki avatar etc. These terms are sometimes used in versions of the Great Invocation for people of specific faiths.
Image Credits
Banner: Aurora Addicts, www.aurora-addicts.com
