we have a 5 year old granddaughter -- she resonates with these dolls -- she will stare and them and play with them for hours -- patiently studying each doll intensely before putting it back inside it's next larger companion -- until she has only one left.

--- On Tue, Feb 18, 2014, Anahata Pomeroy wrote ---

What I appreciate here is your integrity in referencing the people's whose ideas you are sharing. Doing this, the collective streams from these authors and artists come into our cultural collective, keeping us connected to the lineage of unfolding wisdom. Thanks to the free internet, the wikipedias, the shared creations flowing to us and through us.

--- On Tue, Feb 4, 2014, Bruce Schuman wrote ---

HOLARCHY

The Russian dolls illustrate the critical principle of organization in fractal layers, in a general framework that is variously described as "hierarchical" or "holarchical".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy

A "holarchy" is a cascade of levels of something, showing how "a whole" is composed of "parts". An organization chart is an example of a holarchy.

The idea comes from the word "holon", a term coined by author Arthur Koestler. In Koestler's definition, a holon is a simple basic concept in systems analysis that refers to "a whole that is also a part".

This screen shot from a Google image search for "holarchy" shows examples. The term is fashionable among new-age thinkers, and there are hundreds more images available.

HOLON

It's not a hard idea to grasp.

Is the kitchen in my house "a whole" -- or "a part"?

The answer is -- it's both. It's a whole kitchen, and can be understood as a unit, a single thing -- and it also makes sense to see it as a "part" of the larger framework that contains it -- the house.

When Koestler invented the term, he linked the idea to Janus, the two-faced Roman God of Doorways -- because a holon is a "two-faced" concept. It's like a coin, with two sides: one side is the parts of the whole, one side is the whole that contains the parts.

"Holon" is an extremely useful term for helping us understand the world and how its "pieces" fit together.

It may be true in some sense that "reality is absolute unity and wholeness" and in an absolute sense does not have any "parts" -- but in the world where we fallible human beings live today, we do need to know about up and down, left and right, stop and go, Part and Whole, Many and One.

ALIGNMENT ACROSS THE LEVELS

These ideas become helpful if we are talking about the connection of the individual human being to the Whole, the Absolute One. Our connection to absolute unity -- at the "top" of the holarchy -- is mediated through a series of levels.

If we are interested in aligning our our personal energy -- or the energy of our group -- or the energy of our nation -- into the Absolute One -- this alignment process involves a connection or linking across levels.

In a graphic brought to us by Starr* Saffa, she shows how this alignment can be maintained across a series of descending levels -- shown here as "primal point" (top level in the holarchy), universe (second level), our galaxy (third level), our solar system (fourth level), earth (fifth level).

In this model, we could continue descending from earth to nation (sixth level), city (seventh level), neighborhood (eighth level), my house (ninth level) -- and then, possibly -- to ME or YOU (tenth level).

In her model, Starr* does not simply show the levels. She also shows the all-important "axis of alignment" which maintains the "straightness" (the integrity) of the connection from the point at the lowest level in the cascade to the point at the highest level of the cascade.

What we are exploring here, as I understand what is being shown to us now, is that the power and integrity and brilliance of this potential emerging new global civilization based on harmonic integration depends entirely on the integrity of this alignment axis across the levels.

INTEGRITY AND THE SACRED TREE

If we can draw this alignment into resonance, and maintain the integrity of the process, we can enter the transformation. If we can't hold the integrity, because the tensions are too high, or people don't understand, or want to rebel, or can't maintain trust, or want to fight, then the integrity of the whole cannot be maintained and the system will remain fragmented -- divisive, argumentative, splintered over foolishness -- just as the Native Peoples foretold in the prophecy of the Sacred Tree.

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