Conscious Evolution

Series 4: Conscious Evolution

We arrived on a point in our evolution where we became conscious of ourselves as a species. The Universe becomes conscious of itself through us. Our Planet becomes conscious of Herself through us. The emerging Universe-centered consciousness (I identify myself with the whole Planet) is opening a new evolutionary cycle for human species. 

Conscious Evolution is about to decide – for the first time consciously – who we want to become and what kind of world we want to co-create. So, which direction for our evolution do we choose? Toward cooperation or competition? Toward exploitation and inequity or sustainability and fairness? What do you choose?

Conscious Evolution is about becoming conscious of the historical moment we are living.

Currently, we are heading toward collapse; thus, we have to reinvent ourselves. If we try to solve our problems from the same level of consciousness that had created them in the first place, we will not success.

Two seminars are dedicated to model the so-called Yellow-Turquoise level of consciousness/ (see Spiral Dynamic frame) – the one that will allow us to overcome our crisis.

The evolution of Life on this Planet has a clear direction: toward cooperation; toward increasingly larger scale of cooperation. Conscious Evolution is about becoming aware of this tendency and use it to orient our personal evolution. But also, it is aware of the barriers against cooperation. Conscious Evolution is mainly about how to overcome these barriers.

There are 3 kinds of barriers:

The first barrier is to find something – an innovative behavior and an innovative social organization – that could solve today problems and open a new frontier for human evolution. To overcome this barrier, you have to let yourself inspired! Many authors are speaking about a “future that wants to emerge” or “becoming servants of something greater than us”. We all are part of something greater than us. And this “something greater than us” – The Great Circle of Life – The Great Goddess of Life – name it how you want – is what is inspiring us. “The future that wants to emerge” is informing us and is calling us to co-create it. This inspiration is a huge topic and I deal with it properly in my future course “Conscious Evolution”.

Of course, even though we are inspired by above, what we express in words or actions is our creation – or better said our co-creation. I believe that Butterfly Community open-project is one of these co-creation inspired by above. All others descriptions about this “future that wants to emerge” are incredible similar with Butterfly Communities vision.

I propose you this open-project in the last 4 seminars as an example of conscious evolution. This emergent social space is design to help us to overcome the last 2 barriers against evolution/cooperation.

The second barrier is inside you. It does not let you to employ a new innovative behavior. This is a very serious barrier against evolution. We are shaped by our past. Past evolution has tailored our emotions, motivations, values and worldviews so that we find security and satisfaction in behaviors and actions that would have produced success in the past. We feel secure behaving in ways that have produced success in our species biological and social past, regardless of their possible success in the future. Our old set of emotions and motivations is pressing us to choose actions that have produce success in our species past but not necessary for future success.

If the behavior successful in the past is becoming more and more dysfunctional, impacting negatively our future success – there is nothing that could change it. Except a new worldview that could bring forth new values and motivations – that in time could evolve a new set of emotions. So, if we want to change our worldview and behaviors with ones that could produce success in the future, we need to consciously choose them – and reinvent ourselves as individuals and communities. Only Conscious Evolution is able to overcome the second barrier. Butterfly Community concept is based on the Living Universe worldview, aligned with Life organizing principles and conducive to cooperative behavior and fair relations. It is designed to help us overcome the second barrier.

The difficulty in finding motivation to choose what it takes for future evolutionary success (larger scale of cooperation) is even greater when you live in a capitalistic society that is conducive to competition, inequity and exploitation. This is the third great barrier that stop the majority of the people to change their strategies from competition to cooperation and from exploitation to regeneration. It is economic suicide to to this alone in the capitalist society. So, how can we take this evolutionary step further?

Butterfly Community open-project provide a solution: we can take this step together, helping each other. It offers an alternative social space conducive to cooperation, fairness and authentic self-expression. Butterfly Communities will prove to be successful in evolutionary terms for those who have had the courage to step forward in this direction.

In the last 6000 years, based on hierarchic organization, human societies did not manage to change their way when they needed. They always collapsed. What do you think: this time will be differently? The answer is depending on you: do you have the power to change yourself? For a person that develops a better understanding of its evolutionary process, it will be more likely to break free of its biological and social past conditioning and develop the capacity to do whatever it takes for future success. This series of seminars, as well as my courses are aiming to help you to better understand the evolutionary process you are part of and to break free of your biological and social conditioning.

If you want to know more about this concept of conscious evolution or more about how Butterfly Communities open-project is design to foster an evolutionary step further, just engage this series of seminars. I said “engage” because it will be as inter-active as possible for a seminar. I would like that each seminar and each series of seminars to be engaged as a journey of discovery. Everyone of them was thought of as a puzzle of a map. Connecting these puzzle pieces in your own way, you can craft your own map that could help you better orient in our changing world.

Each seminar will have 2 parts. In first part we will talk – around only 25 minutes – about 4 or 5 ideas. I do not want to make it complicated. I will make it so you to have time to take some notes. The second part – around two hours – each of you could come with its question and I will answer. Hence, the discussion will be always oriented to your interest. Anyway, I will be glad a third part to follow – free discussion between audience triggered by the presentation. I will happily join this dialogue, ready to listen to your points of view and to improve mine.

Seminar 4.1: Conscious Evolution

In this first seminar we will introduce this new concept: conscious evolution. I am deeply indebted to Barbara Marx Hubbard, who opened my eyes to this reality.

1. Why we need conscious evolution?

2. Conscious Evolution and Yellow-Turquoise level of consciousness

3. How to take the first steps in your own conscious evolution?

4. How to go further and manage to overcome the barriers against evolution?

 

Seminar 2: Modeling Yellow-Turquoise Consciousness 1

In order to overcome the challenges of our social and ecological crises, we have to evolve toward higher levels of consciousness.
What does this mean? What could possibly mean “higher level of consciousness”?
It is simply a consciousness that could integrate more things, that could manage more complexity and diversity. We can not solve our problems from the same level of consciousness that created them in the first place! We have to evolve our consciousness to be able to integrate our divergent tendencies once more.
Life evolves always through differentiation and subsequent integration of that diversity, creating wholes of higher complexity. When divergent tendencies of an open-system start to overcome its capacities to integrate them, we say that the system has reached a “bifurcation point”. From here it could either evolve – toward a higher level of integrative capacities, either will collapse.
In the Spiral Dynamic frame, the last level of human consciousness is called Yellow-Turquoise ( I prefer to connect them now). This level is already achieved by some humans, but they are not enough to create a society. Anyway, this level of consciousness emerged in human species not random, but as the necessary next step in human consciousness development, one that can enable us to overcome our evolutionary challenges.
In the next 2 seminars, we will “model” this level of consciousness that we need to evolve in order to overcome our crisis and be able to build a fair and ecologically sustainable society. So, I am not “inventing” it, but I am just figuring out what could be the necessary cognitive step further in our species development.
In this seminar and the next, we will talk about 7 aspects of the new consciousness:

1. Integrative Consciousness

2. Reflective Consciousness

3. Evolutive Consciousness

4. Holarchic Consciousness

Seminar 3: Modeling Yellow-Turquoise Consciousness 2

In order to overcome the challenges of our social and ecological crises, we have to evolve toward higher levels of consciousness.

What does this mean? What could possibly mean “higher level of consciousness”? It is simply a consciousness that could integrate more things, that could manage more complexity and diversity. We can not solve our problems from the same level of consciousness that created them in the first place! We have to evolve our consciousness to be able to integrate our divergent tendencies once more.
Life evolves always through differentiation and subsequent integration of that diversity, creating wholes of higher complexity. When divergent tendencies of an open-system start to overcome its capacities to integrate them, we say that the system has reached a “bifurcation point”. From here it could either evolve – toward a higher level of integrative capacities, either will collapse.
In the Spiral Dynamic frame, the last level of human consciousness is called Yellow-Turquoise ( I prefer to connect them now). This level is already achieved by some humans, but they are not enough to create a society. Anyway, this level of consciousness emerged in human species not random, but as the necessary next step in human consciousness development, one that can enable us to overcome our evolutionary challenges.

In this seminar, we will “model” this level of consciousness that we need to evolve in order to overcome our crisis and be able to build a fair and ecologically sustainable society.

I am not “inventing” it, but I am just figuring out what could be the necessary cognitive step further in our species development.
In this seminar we will talk about another 3 aspects of the new consciousness:

1. Holistic Consciousness

2. Connective Consciousness

3. Participative Consciousness

4. What a yellow-turquoise world could be? 

 

Seminar 4.4: Butterfly Communities – an open-project

Nothing is more powerful than a vision. Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come!
And nothing is more powerful than an open-story that needs you, the listener, to enter the story and become one of its heroes!
Butterfly Communities is an open-world that is waiting for you to become a reality. In the next 4 seminars, I will introduce you to this open-project.
It is part of the series dedicated to Conscious Evolution because this project aims to overcome the three barriers against evolution. 

In general, stories are self-contained: they have a beginning, a middle and an end. Stories are about the storyteller or about some heroes, but they are not about you, the listener. Open-stories are open-ended: there is no resolution yet. There is some kind of opportunity in the future and it is not clear whether it will materialize or not. The resolution of the open-story hinges on you, the listener: the resolution depends in part on the choices you will make and the actions you will take. An open-story is a call to action directed at the listeners, stressing the role that they can and need to play in resolving the story. Effectively framed open-stories (open-projects actually) are designed to inspire and motivate others to come together to accomplish something that none of us could fully accomplish on our own.

1. How to shape serendipity through open-stories?

2. Why an open-project? 

3. Why fairness and cooperation?

4. Why mutually-consistency and authentic self-expression?

5. Why we have to look afresh to build a better human world?

 

Seminar 4.5: Butterfly Communities – why human-scale communities?

We already spoke in the third series of seminars, The Human History, about how we evolve as a species, living cooperatively in our tribes. A tribe is a human-scale community. In this seminar, we will enhance once more how fit we are to live cooperatively in human-scale communities:

1. Why human-scale communities?

2. Why we choose to live cooperatively in human scale communities?

3. Why we choose to live morally in human scale communities?

4. Why we choose to live ecologically in human scale communities?

Seminar 4.6: Butterfly Communities – a society based on Life Principles

It is crystal clear: if we want to live on this planet, we have to play a functional role in the Great Circle of Life. If we want a human world fair and ecological, we have to align our human world with Life Principles. We have to reinvent ourselves as a species and find a way of living that is not destroying the planet and enslaving humans.

1. The Life Principles

2. The old concept of Commons

3. The old concept of Holarchy

4. The old concept of Permaculture

5. The old concept of P2P relationship

 

Seminar 4.7: Butterfly Communities – toward a holarchic (fair&ecologic) society

The evolution of Life on Earth has a direction. This direction is toward increasing the scale of cooperation among living processes.

From the deep social and ecological crises we are now facing, we have a long way to go before we can achieve a fair global society, harmoniously integrated into the planetary ecosystem. Though everyone could easily envision the huge benefits of human fairness and collaboration on planetary scale, the barriers against this cooperation seem insurmountable.

Butterfly Communities Open-Project offers an extremely important thing: it helps those who are aware of their evolutionary responsibility to take their step forward not individually but accompanied by others, creating together a community. Butterfly Communities will prove to be a success in evolutionary terms for those who have had the courage to step forward in this direction.

1. A holarchic human organization on a local, regional or planetary scale

2. Why holarchy as a system for self-governance?

3. Holarchic organization and human authentic participation.

4. Holarchic organization and ecological sustainability.

 

What we will learn?

This series of seminars – like all other seminars and courses offered by the emerging Butterfly community – is primarily about personal transformation. The “next right step” we have to take, the next threshold that we have to cross in our evolutionary journey, is to raise our level of consciousness toward more integrative abilities, that could encompass the whole Planet as our new self! From this Universe-centered consciousness, it is easy to see that the best life strategies for the long term are the cooperative ones. What we have to do is to choose cooperative life strategies instead of individualistic ones, ecological instead of exploitative ones and fair instead of unfair ones.

Be a Collaborator!

Anyone can become our collaborator!

We are searching for artists, trainers, film-makers, web-designers and for everyone that is inspired by the same vision as us.

Whatever the challenges of the future, cooperators will have a clear evolutionary advantage compared to non-cooperators.

In the new VUCA world, we will have to survive and thrive in new ways, different from those that have been successful so far. As a multicellular organism is smarter and has better capacities to deal with its environment than a cell alone, as an ant-hill is smarter and has better capacities to deal with its environment than an ant alone, the cooperative groups will be smarter and better equipped to deal with future challenges than single individuals.

Educators, trainers or artists – those who aim to have a social impact, to spread an idea – have to cooperate, if they want to succeed. However, the evolution of Life has a clear direction: towards ever-increasing scales of cooperation.

Those who want to move forward must learn to cooperate in mutually enhancing ways.

The open project “Butterfly Communities” is an emerging community that is searching for young artists, trainers, filmmakers, etc. that have understood that we have to help each other to have a stronger social impact.