Wow, Fred, I think we are on the same Starship! I would consider it a great favor if you would give a poke at my latest article posted on this site to see if it does anything for you. It's looking for that small audience interested in Group Theory, Communication and Information Systems Theory, and Theoretical Physics. Ergetic flow and enthymematic hope are terms that tend to induce insomnia; but I believe there is an underlying pattern that would replace the concept of "anti-matter" with something like "ExFormed Struction", where Exformation is the reverse temporal order of Information in a developing, regenerative, communication system. So RNA is Prime Relationship Codex, in a (0) Axial Core (Taoist) Universe.

Anyway, I keep trying to find some intellectual (and spiritual) affinity within my Species. So far, not so much.

Gerald Dillenbeck, M. Div, MPA www.gdill52.com

--- On Tue, Jan 7, 2014, Fred Meagher wrote ---

Ho.mol.ogy: 1: a similarity often attributable to common origin 2 a: likeness in structure between parts of different organisms due to evolutionary differentiation from the same or a corresponding part of a remote ancestor -- compare ANALOGY b: correspondence in structure between different parts of the same individual 3: similarity of nucleotide or amino-acid sequence in nucleic acids, peptides, or protein 4: a branch of the theory of topology concerned with partitioning space into geometric components (as points,lines, and triangles) and with the study of the number and interrelationships of these components especially by the use of group theory -- called also homology theory.

Sociogony: Myths concerned with the origins of social relations and social structure. A society so ordered i.e. Commoners from the feet of the First Man, Warriors from his arms, Priests from his head; etc.

""The fantastic persuasive power-the real genius-of such a system is its potential for synthesis. One feels that there was nothing that might not be satisfactorily subsumed within the pattern of homologic thought, which sought to integrate all existence within one encompassing structure. When members of the priestly class successfully propagated at least a superficial understanding of this powerful system of religious ideology through all social strata, two major results follow. First, people of all classes felt the cosmos to be an intelligible and reassuring entity, a place in which death was but temporary and every destruction was followed by a restoration. Second, people of all classes felt society to be legitimate, and also reassuring; stable, eternal, well founded, and rightful. What is more, this sentiment contributed dramatically to the actual stability of society.”

“Myth, Cosmos and Society, Indo-European themes of creation and destruction” Bruce Lincoln

Bruce: The organizing capacity of any human activity requires a common operating system; previously mythic to our Ancestors; currently rational to us Moderns. The vast range of evolved imagery from Iceland to India developed from Indo-European produced the male dominated militant hierarchy once religious in orientation and now economic in focus. The World Tree in this system is the human body. The head is the priests, the arms the army, the legs the peasants who support all. In Christian terminology ‘we are all parts of one body’.

That every society based on extreme hierarchy keeps commoners and kings; 1% and 99%, separate by a shared mythos is as viable a truth in rational structures as it was in pre-literate societies. The World Tree with roots in inchoate Matter and upper branches in causal Light connected by a trunk of Middle Class history as education and income evolution could work as a shared framework.

I, for one, am willing to carry a wheelbarrow or two of fertilizer to get things going. I’ll even trim and rake if need be. A growing planet also needs weeding. I’ll get down on my knees for this; but not to grovel to those who claim the Tree is theirs and not the property of Us All.

Fred M.

--- On Tue, Jan 7, 2014, Bruce Schuman wrote ---

Good morning. Thanks for being here.

I am catching my breath. As my own attunement calms down a bit, I am wondering whether this converging vision can really be correct. Is this actually workable? Could it be as simple as it appears? Is this really the vaunted intersection of theology, cognitive science, and the internet? Is this really the axial center and common ground of all human agreement?

All of this has been growing here -- in this very modest and mostly unknown and often noisy and somewhat confusing space. It would be good to confer with "experts" -- but they're not around. We've got to do our own testing, get really calm and centered, and move one little step at a time...

CAREFUL CONNECTIONS

Suppose we want to talk to "Christians". Maybe we have to build a really careful gentle respectful detailed branching interface for people who might check that box. Let's say these things in their language. We've got to listen. How many of those beautiful people have ever heard of "Axis Mundi"?

Well -- maybe the answer to that question is -- more than we realize. Just as there is a statue to Ramon Lull at Montserrat Monastery (a fabulous place maybe 50 miles inland from Barcelona, where I stayed a couple of times, thanks to the CPWR), there are paintings of Ramon Lull in the subway stations in Barcelona. People in Catalonia value him and his vision. So, maybe the issue is a matter of insularity and exposure. If you've never heard of this stuff, it could be shocking -- or more likely, just a blur it's easy to ignore. In any case -- we'll make it easy to understand, and write it all in a dozen languages, including fully secular languages. The thrilling thing is -- it is suddenly appearing fully possible to do this -- in ways that promise to unfold with a naturally motivated grace.

So, this thing needs to grow carefully and be explained patiently and politely. We just take our time, and get the details right. As I get a bit rested, I'm starting to do that.

MY ALLIANCE

I'm getting more facets of this little programming framework tuned up. The idea is -- anybody, or any group, can build their own network in this system -- selecting existing contacts, adding their own contacts, building groups and mailing lists, and extending their own "vine", for their own reasons.

We'll think about exactly how to do this. But more or less, it seems like the core idea is -- all growth branches from the common trunk -- the One Tree --

So, "all alliance" in this context extends from a single integral core alliance -- a little like the parable of the mustard seed...

What do we agree on?

Well, at minimum, without considering whatever this visionary integral tree-structure might imply, simple basic mutual respect. That's the foundation for everything.

But we're moving from there -- which is kind of "random free-association" -- to this tree-structured branching way of doing things -- which is highly ordered and intentional -- and which carries this Logos idea of "the pattern that connects" -- which is, if you see it that way, an unfolding expression of "The Christ" -- maybe that "Cosmic Christ" that Matthew Fox was talking about in his 1988 book "The Coming of the Cosmic Christ" -- and which I wrote about in my News Update from a couple of weeks ago on "The Birth of the Cosmic Christ" -- http://interspirit.net/alliance/news.cfm?nid=100087

VISION

Of course, I am just guessing what might happen. But I'd say we are starting to emerge from our own collective New World Manhattan Project -- where millions of us have been interacting together in a huge bumpy semi-conscious collaborative/evolutionary/co-creative conversation -- producing all of this together. We don't have to consciously come together and do this -- intentionally convene some huge semi-emergency-driven "Manhattan Project of the Mind" as a huge collective response to national and international crisis -- because we have already been doing this -- for the last thirty years or more, and on the internet for the last 10 or twenty. We don't need to all get together and figure this out -- because that's exactly what we have been doing all this time.

And emerging from that vast global conversation -- are simple extremely powerful/central ideas, like this Axis Mundi thesis -- that just might turn out to offer the core politically-perfect integration we really need to make this world work.

I'm just guessing -- but I'm guessing that the pieces are coming together. I'm guessing that people here are going to help put them together. In fact -- that's exactly what we have been doing -- as the initial track-record of this network indicates -- as our core vision was launched with several hundred energetic posts from Starr* and Ram and others.

LIFT-OFF

So, there is this "weaving" thing that is emerging -- this "weaving a world that works" -- this vast Alliance construction that wants to emerge -- that takes on everything -- and does so in wholeness, and in balance, and in grace...

There is huge lift-off in all of this, I think. It's going to take some work, and it's going to take some time, and some endurance -- but the evolutionary push is there.

Thanks for being here.

--- On Mon, Jan 6, 2014, Bruce Schuman wrote ---

In 2004, I was a delegate to the "Assembly of World Religious Leaders" held at Montserrat Monastery, prior to the Parliament of World Religions in Barcelona. Prominent there at Montserrat is a mysterious statue to the saint of Catalonia, Ramon Llull, a 13th century visionary Franciscan monk who poured out prolific writings on mandalas and logic and the tree of knowledge. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Lull

RAMON LULL

Lull had always been one of my personal inspirations. He is sometimes seen as the founder of "mind maps" (see http://lullianarts.net/) and is thought by computer scientists to have conceived ideas fundamental to the computer science revolution.

This morning, as this conceptual/integral process seems to be moving into some new stages, I did a quick search for images related to Lull, and found many that directly relate to and illustrate this emerging new integral thesis of Axis Mundi.

This idea has a long history, and has evolved in complex and highly detailed ways. This essential and simple concept is so primal and universal that it supports thousands of alternative interpretations. The entire notion of "taxonomy" could be understand as a branch or facet of this broader generalization. All notions of "conceptual form" or "hierarchy" or "theory of categories" relate to it. The mysterious and sometimes contested relation between "hierarchy and circle" is illustrated by it. Computer science absolutely depends on related notions -- and indeed, the entire internet, particularly the "DNS" (domain name system) is based on it (DNS: how a domain name like "interspirit.net" is connected to a particular computer server someplace -- a huge tree structure maintained by internet authorities under the highest levels of security and integrity). A personal computer file/directory structure is based on it. Our entire civilized world is organized into wholes and parts and levels through this framework.

BRANCHES OF THE ONE TREE

We are talking "tree structure" -- and for us, right now -- the simple concept is -- branches extending from a trunk. A totally organic and "natural" idea -- with vast universal implications for logic and organization and structure.

This may seem wildly audacious or perhaps amazingly egocentric -- but I think what is happening is that through a huge collective/evolutionary/co-creative conversation where we are all participating, a new extremely fundamental meme is appearing -- that I personally believe can (and will) emerge as "the absolute foundation" for a new integral world civilization, that will be consciously and intentionally (and brilliantly and graciously) built on the core framework of this foundation.

We'll have to talk about this -- or others will. It will be a huge conversation, with scholars from all across the interdisciplinary spectrum considering what it means -- from studies in comparative mythology and symbolism and depth psychology to scientists and mathematicians and philosophers of many types, exploring how and whether indeed their discipline and their understanding could possibly map with true elegance and precision into something this simple...

But for right now -- it's just emerging -- maybe here in this conversation as only one local instance. Maybe others are seeing this, or seeing it in slightly different ways. The huge pressure out there today for integral community in a context of agonized and vastly wasteful fragmentation is pushing through with highest evolutionary force, like the inevitable movement of a glacier, and we are in the path of that force.

A "HOLY OF HOLIES"

For my part, I am beginning to describe this below image as "Axis Mundi Sanctuary" -- a kind of "holy of holies" for this possibility, as we imagine this golden axial line connecting heaven and earth -- and everything else -- as the immutable trunk of a universal tree, which can be absolutely trusted from every point of view to remain in place as we build our new world on and around it. There are many other ways to envision this foundation -- one might be the column of smoke rising from the sacred fire at the center of an indigenous fire circle...

For us here -- and for me -- the next steps will probably involve continuing to reinforce and examine this idea, confirming and testing it, validating it from various points of view, inviting critique and challenge, exploring additional interpretations, looking for more historical exemplars and illustrations, etc.

MY ALLIANCE

But immediately -- certainly for me, and and perhaps for the bolder and more imaginative explorers among us -- the next next steps will involve the emerging growth of this "My Alliance" concept -- which I am continuing to build at the programming level -- and which I am beginning to understand as a way for any number of privately-motivated and dedicated networks to emerge, each following their own vision, but held together in the single "sacred tree of community" through this one common trunk, this one common universal axis.

Building this framework will take a little time. Right now, I have to fix a few things, as the evolution of my initial design needed a little course-correction, and I need to keep things as simple as possible. I myself expect to use this framework to reach out in who knows how many directions, or for what purposes, to invite individuals and agencies to bond into the framework, for their own reasons, as we honor and acknowledge what they are doing, and invite their input and comment and growth energy.

Take a look at it if you have a minute. Maybe all the pieces will be working by the end of the week, and we'll see how it goes. http://interspirit.net/alliance/myalliance.cfm

Here for now are a few graphics I picked up this morning. This first, on the left, shows Lull's "staircase" illustrating the "Great Chain of Being" -- the core idea (literally repeated 100 times in the text) in Ken Wilber's 1998 "The Marriage of Sense and Soul" on the relation of science and religion -- and discussed by many perennialists, including Huston Smith.

The image on the right clearly shows "the trunk of the tree" as the vertical axis -- on which many fruit blossom.

Here's another take on Lull's Great Chain of Being staircase.

And below, a categorization of "The Names of God", in the form of an encyclopedic tree/circle/mandala

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