What can I do to optimize Integral City Impact? We ask the question again – as an honoured contemplative practice to repeat the question as a doorway to yet deeper knowing.

 

Integral City Map 5: Spirituality in the Human Hive

Integral City Map 5: Spirituality in the Human Hive

Our spiritual guide in this series of Optimizing Impact has been Dr. Roger Walsh. He pointed out (at IEC) that we can seek to answer this question with a one-time answer from our knowledge base.

But when we treat this question as a Wisdom Query, it becomes a kind of koan, that takes us deeper into ourselves/Self and reality.

As intentional Practitioners we are called to develop the expertise to do three things:

  1. We can relieve external problems to the best of our ability as “barefoot doctors” or “Spiral Wizards”.
  2. We can heal the internal sources of problems in our own psyche, the anguish of others, or across cultural divides. As we widen our circle of compassion, we are more able to be the non-anxious presence who can offer a calm and grounded centre to be with others in difficult circumstances.
  3. We can bring more integral and Integral City frames to bear on the work we do.

As pioneers of a new paradigm for the city we engage spirituality in multiple contexts – in our personal reflective practice; in the work place; in our communities (of practice and place); and on behalf of the city as a whole. (It is the territory of Map 5 for the Integral City.)

Integral frameworks are now emerging in most domains of human understanding (including psychology, medicine, education, sexuality, history, geography, systems, culture). Thus we are recalibrating our ability to design habitats for wellbeing and relieve dis-ease in all its manifestations.

An integral mindset is able to flex and flow in a stream of awareness that opens eventually into a transcendental awareness, where spirituality in the Human Hive is an alive re-sourceful condition.

What I can do to optimize Integral City impact, then comes down to choosing a path of never-ending maturing. It means, according to Dr. Walsh, that we regularly dive into inner work as deeply as we can. He calls it “karma yoga” – where our work in the world of Integral Cities becomes a spiritual practice itself. It is the manifestation of our Master Code: Take Care of Yourself, so that you can Take Care of Each Other, so we can Take Care of this Place, so we can Take Care of this Planet.