Life has Co-Arisen!
In Gratitude to all Stewards of Transparency, Accountability and Co-Creative Inquiry in Public Health
I posted this message on April 5, 2021, on Medium (before I was censored there). I have several other articles in the works but felt moved to post this message here again, one year later, in its original form. It feels true to me more than ever. I am grateful for having experienced so many beautiful examples of “co-arising” this past year (see article below what I mean by that). How about you? And, at the same time, I have witnessed unprecedented levels of censorship and other forms of propaganda, which breaks my heart. How about you? And yet I trust in Life’s awesome capacity to co-conspire and co-create in an adaptive learning spiral, and I am so grateful that I get to be part of this r/evolutionary dance of Life with all of you!
Many blessings from the bottom of my heart!
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Here my post from April 5, 2021:
I am dedicating this reflection to the many physicians, epidemiologists, health scientists, lawyers, film makers, bloggers, independent journalists, teachers, community activists, and concerned global citizens who have been committing this last year to public health and healing, and, while doing so, have been censored, shamed, dehumanized, smeared, arrested, fired, or received death threats. I bow to you in gratitude for standing up for our children and for co-creating conditions that nourish Life!
I am so excited to be the bearer of great news. LIFE HAS CO-ARISEN TODAY! I looked and noticed that the tombstone of oppression, of silencing, of confinement to a fossilized “consensus” narrative has been removed, and I see life arising Everywhere! Life has co-arisen today, as life co-arises every day. I can feel the hustling and bustling of so many life forms greeting this day of co-creation and co-imagining a better world together. I put my ear down on the fertile soil and heard the underground teeming with life: countless life forms interweaving messages of love, of encouragement, of empowerment, nourishing millions of mycelial information sharing networks with the nutrients of transparency.
I witnessed life teeming on Telegram, on MeWe, on Facebook groups that haven’t yet been shut down, in Twitter feeds that have escaped censorship thus far. I witnessed this in Zoom calls, in comment sections on independent video channels and those YouTube channels on health integrity that haven’t yet been scrubbed for “violating community standards,” at demonstrations of millions of people the media is not covering, and in prayer circles. I witnessed this at public hearings, at conferences of scientists and health practitioners who are still subscribing to the ethic of Do no Harm and are still committed to learning together in shared inquiry. I witnessed this in medical journals that are still committed to open scientific discourse and at hearings of legal teams who are demanding accountability to uphold fundamental tenets of our democracy, such as the constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and The American Disabilities Act.
There is this nifty term in living systems theory called autopoiesis, and last time I looked, it hasn’t yet been erased from or smeared in Wikipedia as other entries have, and when I checked, a certain global public health institution hasn’t yet redefined it, as it has the definitions of p a n d e m i c s, v a c c i n e s, and h e r d immunity.
Autopoiesis describes the self-organizing dance of Life. Any living system needs three conditions to thrive: 1) healthy, semi-permeable boundaries nested within the greater nourishing membranes of Life, 2) participants intermingle to continuously inspire and help renew each other, and 3) the system cross-fertilizes with other living systems. When these conditions are present, something truly astounding happens. New life co-arises! Something more magical, more adaptive, more ingenious is born, something that wasn’t there before, that none of the participants could have imagined on their own. This is the miracle of life!
Apparently, autopoiesis has escaped the control algorithms of certain technocratic philanthrocapitalists, perhaps because it is a concept that is alive, that expresses the self-organizing capacity of Life itself. Autopoiesis cannot be pre-engineered. Life loves to co-evolve in intricate, decentralized feedback cycles. Life thrives on open, transparent communication, on mutual accountability, on countless checks and balances across the multiple membrane and boundary gateways that allow the macro-biome and microbiome to dance together in a continuous celebration of cocreation, in careful discernment of what to welcome in and what to keep out.
Friends, today I am the bearer of good news. Life has co-arisen yet again! I am beyond grateful to notice the hustling and bustling of life forms everywhere, globally interconnecting through countless communication pathways that cannot be censored and that refuse to be dampened down by the toxins of shaming propaganda which has popped up so visibly in so many spaces. There is no way the millions of souls co-conspiring in the con-spiratory Breath of Life, and in the con-spirituality of integrative consciousness, can be stopped in their autopoietic co-creation. All living systems are loving systems, and what I have been humbly witnessing this past year is such a tremendous outpouring of love, of care, of brilliant co-conspiring in the conspiracy of Life!
Friends, today I am the bearer of good news: Life has co-arisen yet again!