SCOPING
Function & Purpose
The Challenge
The challenge is that we need significant shifts in paradigms in order to be able to transform our linear, siloed, extractive and degenerative systems to regenerative systems that function within the earth's operating conditions and bring us into right balance with the natural world and ourselves.
A human being is part of the whole – called by us ‘universe’, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature...
- Albert Einstein -
Einstein understood the limitations we impose on ourselves by our way of thinking, which determines what we focus on and how we see the world. He asked us to question who we are and our relationships with all of life and the universe as a whole. Einstein invited us to explore a more systemic perspective, holistic thinking and an integrative consciousness that acknowledges our participatory intimacy with the universe, as a fundamentally interconnected and continuously transforming whole manifesting as patterns of energy, matter and consciousness. In this view, matter and consciousness, matter and life, matter and mind, matter and spirit are not separate but intertwined. - Daniel Christian Wahl
So how then do we explore a more systemic perspective? How do we begin thinking holistically? How do we expand our consciousness to perceive the fundamentally interconnected and continuously transforming whole?
As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul…
- Hermes Trismegistus -
The work we need to do in our outside world (the ecosystem of nested systems within systems - environmental, social, economic) reflects back to us, the work we need to do in our internal world and vice versa.
Discoveries and developments in Unified Physics are now confirming that our physical creations are born of the subtle realms, at the quantum level - beliefs, thoughts, imaginations.
Could our existence on earth be a classroom for the development and understanding of self?
Could our perceptions of the outside world, the natural world, provide the mentorship and guidance needed to transform our inner world? And would the transformation of the individual's inner world then not translate to external transformation?
In order to apply biomimicry at a systems level for truly transformative innovation, we need to transform hearts and minds on the individual level, the familial level, the community level, in order to then leverage nested systems.
By asking the appropriate guiding questions repeatedly and entering into conversations about our collective future in all the communities we participate in, we may be able to find a set of patterns and guidelines that will help us to create a culture capable of learning and transformative innovation. Living the questions together is an effective way of preparing for an unpredictable future...
- D C Wahl in his book Designing Regenerative Cultures -
Can the reconnection and ethos seeds of Biomimicry move us towards living the questions more deeply, towards the understanding of self, towards new ways of being?
What's Not Happening That Should Be?
We need more access points to biomimicry, outside of design and engineering applications.
I’ve had numerous conversations with individuals from all over the globe who travel through Wild Spirit (a lodge based in Natures Valley on the Garden Route) where I’m currently living as part of a community whose desire is to live more regeneratively.
Through these storytelling encounters and the exchange of perspectives, ideas and philosophies, in combination with my experience working within BiomimicrySA, a theme has begun to emerge. I began to realise that most people resonate with the idea of biomimicry and perceive its potential to shift outdated systems, but most of those who don’t have design or engineering backgrounds find it more difficult to make the connection with how biomimicry or living systems thinking can be implemented into their own lives. How it could be relevant to them in the short term, how they could do biomimicry themselves. It becomes an abstract concept that is understood to be powerful but somewhat out of reach.
As Daniel Christian Wahl states "If we take the time to get the questions right, to live the questions more deeply individually and collectively, we will not only be able to hear this new world breathing, we will realise that with each breath we take we are participants in the networks of relationships that are giving birth to this world".
With the Emulation seed being predominant in our practice of Biomimicry, is there an opportunity, through the Ethos and Re-Connection seeds, to deepen our understanding of our relationship to the ecosystems we exist within. Could these seeds perhaps hold the secret to broadening and diversifying the access points to biomimicry within our individual and collective everyday lives and move us closer toward regenerative being and therefore creating the world we desire to live in.
Defining The Vision
What Are We Trying To Get To?
We are offering a world of more beauty, more joy, more connection, more love, more fulfilment, more exuberance, more leisure, more music, more dancing, and more celebration. The most inspiring glimpses you’ve ever had about what life can be – that is what we are offering.
- Charles Eisenstein -
The desired outcome for the learning experience is to spark a realisation that we are nature. That everything is connected. We are active co-creators and participants of a continuously transforming whole. That what we experience outside of ourselves is a reflection, a feedback loop designed to guide our own internal journey of self discovery, our evolutionary journey. That through the discovery and transformation of self, we transform collectively and systemically.
A successful outcome would be that the learner has connected (mentally, emotionally and practically) with nature's repeating (winning) strategies and how these can be used as model, mentor and measure, to live the questions more deeply, a set of tools that assist our exploration of what it means to create the conditions for thriving in our personal human experience as well as our shared experience, and the significance of being a co-creator and participant of a greater whole.
The evolution of consciousness is both a personal journey that we are all capable of experiencing through our lifetimes, and a journey at the collective level. We are on a journey from the ‘original participation’ of indigenous tribes that perceives everything as alive and meaningful relations, to the ‘separation of self and world’ (nature and culture) that brought us the Enlightenment and the multiple benefits of science and technology based on analytical reasoning; the next step is towards a new kind of “final participation” – as Owen Barfield called it (1988: 133-134) – which expresses a synthesis of both perspectives. We are part and parcel of nature and we have evolved to self-reflective consciousness and free will, which gives us the choice to participate in life’s processes in a destructive or a creatively supportive (regenerative) way..
