Vital Ingredients

for Composting our Power-over Paradigm

into Earth-centric Relational Cultures

Becoming Earth~centric 

Expanding beyond our individualistic human-centric lens of the world to include collective, nature-connected, more-than-human ways of listening, seeing, being, doing, knowing, imagining and becoming. This expansion to Earth-centric consciousness supports us, and our groups, organisations and those who fund them, to source our visioning, planning and actions from beyond the consciousness that created our current crisis.

To become Earth-centric is to listen to Earth’s dreaming as She whispers sweet everythings into our infinitesimal ears. The process of becoming Earth-centric is Eco-awakening: the physical, emotional and psycho-spiritual knowing and very visceral experience of being part of and belonging to the entire Earth Community. Engaging in Wild Reciprocity, we recognize the sovereignty and agency of all beings and relate reciprocally with them to enhance Life. See the Design Principle Eco-Awakening for more on this.

Becoming Trauma~Attuned

Recognising that our current world-unravelling is the expression of historic and species-wide trauma. Appreciating that our collective histories of war, violence and oppression mean we all have trauma stored in our bodies, whether it is revealing itself or not. Accepting that this Civilisation Trauma is in fact the collective waters we are currently swimming in - albeit to varying degrees of unravelling and suffering. Expanding beyond trying to fix ‘broken individuals’ (so as to create more palatable, controllable, productive cogs in our consumerist works).

Centring trauma’s transformative power: the only way to heal trauma is by supporting our nervous systems to surrender their 'predict and control' tendencies and open to more connective, relational ways of being in the world - and the inevitable vulnerability this evokes. Recognising that transforming civilisation trauma inherently involves alchemising our species-wide core wound: The Illusion of Separation, into a sacred wound of apprenticing to the co-creation of relational cultures and wild reciprocity.

Centring a radically inclusive ‘wholing’ process that supports us to embody presence by noticing and welcoming more and more of our parts, especially those we have learned to reject or deny. Recognising that the healing, reparative, co-evolutionary impulse of Life requires us to ally with all those and that which are marginalised. Embracing that this means that to ally with Life's evolutionary intent we need to go beyond becoming trauma informed by actively healing our own nervous system so as to become trauma~attuned .

Decolonising at Depth

Whilst challenging external manifestations of racism and race-related systemic injustice is essential, unless we turn towards how we have internalised colonialism and racism within ourselves, our groups and organisations, we will continue to pursue solutions grounded in the same power-over consciousness that created white bodied supremacy.

It is our internalisation of power-over culture that perpetuates the abuse and violence symptomatic of colonial culture and all the harm it causes. By decolonising at depth we mean the gritty process of owning and liberating ourselves from these internalised supremacist/ racist aspects of our culturally conditioned worldview - and the largely unconscious, yet deeply harmful power-over behaviours this gives rise to. To do this we must track colonialism's imprints within our own psyche, identity, behaviours, ways of relating and beliefs.

This involves healing and transforming the civilisation trauma that has resulted from historic and on-going coloniality, as it more and more shows up within us, our groups and our organisations. It involves recognising and having compassion for our vulnerability within this deep trauma healing work. And for some of us, it means recognising the privilege in being able to choose whether or not we expose ourselves to the acute pain of the impact of our supremacy - and whether or not we take responsibility to do the decolonising at depth work that lessens our fragility and enhances our capacity to become better allies to all those and that which are marginalised. See our glossary for more on decolonisation.

Emergent Strategising

Letting go of our need to predict and control. Re-membering how to embrace deep trust in the cyclical nature of the elemental pattern of Life-Death-Life and the regenerative dance of rupture and repair. Upon the ground of that trust, we begin to withstand the initial discomfort of Life’s inherent uncertainty and relinquish “needing to know”. That threshold of not-knowing becomes the fruitful womb of our creativity and our capacity to listen. Out of that listening it is possible, one step at a time, to navigate by the North star that is our overarching vision - be that our own or that of our group, organisation or movement.

Actively surrendering to a power greater than our human selves means becoming a hollow bone or empty vessel, for the regenerative power and potential of the Life-death-life cycle. By learning to really listen to what Earth is up to in these times, rather than our inner voices of fear, shame, certainty, hope or despair, we align our actions with what each of us hears from Earth as our particular gift to the collective initiatory transformation afoot. Welcoming a multiplicity of stories, perspectives and creative possibilities, we recognise no one person, group or organisation has the answers, only questions being birthed from the particular emergent edge of life that we are each aware of. 

* See our Design Principles for supporting Life's Co-evolutionary Intent for more on Emergent Strategising.

Design Principles

Out of these vital ingredients flow an emergent web of nested Design Principles, all which interrelate with each other and show up, in, as and through us, as the ever-in-flux dance of Life’s inherent complexity at depth and scale. Take a look to explore which of them you are already bringing to life and which, if any, are unfamiliar or even intriguing to you.