Loko i'a

Please join with others in ventures in community vitalization and individual renaissance. Loko i’a is community-based social networking focused on coordinated and collaborative arts and the well-being and health in the community.

Loko i’a focuses on the union of a virtual community with a dynamic actual community. Memes and metaphors are attractors for expression and organization which, when taken as an integrated sequence, represent a model for a self-organizing system.

A vision for the network is to establish a forum for community organization, promote the collaborative use of studio, performance and exhibition space, model organizational civility, savvy, innovation and leadership and to bring together members wishing to join with others in improving their health, well-being, welfare and sense of belonging to a vital community.

Loko i’a has three core assumptions. The first is that all human interactions follow principles of self-organization. The second is that knowledge and information are open source. The third is that art is a transcendent expression of human consciousness. Based on these three assumptions imagine a network and matrix of interactions that avoids the traps of power and authority and dispenses with inclusion and costing based only on propriety and profit. While these dominant forms of our global inheritance have brought so much forward, they can be seen as auxiliary or adjunct to a core mission of open source, inclusion and artistry. Image a wide spectrum of participants focused on transformation, drawing energy and impetus from mindfulness, aesthetics, creative expression, metaphorical representation and cultivation of grace and compassion.

Self-organizing systems create an order and coherence that emergent from their own natures, transcendent of the individual properties. Envision a network that sets into motion elements that will allow participants to experience the action of self-organizing and to be part of the co-creation, be it in play, instruction, dialogue, encounter, experimentation, working flow or depth meditation. Participants will be open to enact their own truth and vision.

Given the chaos and crises found in the current state of the planet the question of how we are to be organized is most vital. We have organized ourselves into a condition that transcends us all and carries the danger of self-annihilation. Global transformation of group consciousness is an idea that has appeal but the problems of power, cultural differences, economic disparity and the drag of ancient enmity pose significant barriers. On the local level the challenges of sustainability, social and economic equitability and the humane treatment of the most vulnerable citizens offers the ground on which transcendence of our inheritance must be addressed.

Members of a social network and the metaphorical subgroups in the network are coordinated interfaces that hold and generate a pool of data. The data could be a domain of occurrences or events about the immediate surroundings of a community. Feedback could be provided to the users in the immediate surroundings. Just as in individual biofeedback a person can perceive below the level of consciousness and make adjustments, so group or community feedback might be similarly processed. Such feedback could be the ground for open appraisals and communal goal setting. The product of the system may not be content or message, but information about the process of connection.

Actors perceiving the feedback can create a new configuration by their actions that are reflected back to the source. The pulsing of individuals and the emergent nature of the rhythm and vibration of the group creates even more complex forms. Imagine ocean surf that is affected by the actions of the surfers. The resulting rhythmic or harmonic stream of information could have as complex or simple derivative representations as the medium would allow. As such, any rhythmic, periodic, harmonious, measurable, predictable oscillations of human endeavor could be logged and counted, fed back, and put into mathematical or artistic representations.

Art is as ancient as humanity. Body and natural rhythms started the drumming. Call and response became the song. The music of verse became language. Deep in ice age caves are murals of the hunt, signed by a hand. The medium and materials have changed over the millenniums but the essence of bringing form to formless and animating the lifeless remains the same. The artist enters into the gap between what has happened and what might be and draws the mind ahead through exaggeration, proportioning, abstraction, amplification, juxtaposition, distortion or transliteration.

To be artful is to strive for expression that breaks through the mundane and banal and gets to the essence of life and relatedness. Being artful is not just creativity but creativity with the rigor of excellence. To be rigorous but not creative is to be only technical. To be creative but not rigorous is to be silly. Imagine a network where the participants are striving for both creativity and rigorousness. Add sensibilities of thoroughness and mindfulness. These elements, in harmony, are transcendent. If the realized event is to be art, then the doing is art. From the point of inspiration to the moment of exaltation, the doing can be continual acts of spontaneity, originality, technical excellence and genius.

Any practice of medicine, healing, psychotherapy or personal growth is encompassed on the integral path. Some are sitting and meditating, some are exploring the mind/body interface, some teach disciplines, some are dialoguing in private and in groups. All integrate in mindfulness. The challenge is to specify how the abstract of all these approaches integrates. Across what gradients and by what mechanisms does what we do exist, from the simplest point in space to the most chaotic field phenomenon?

Since the field phenomenon will always outstrip the capacity to quantify or describe, the only available shared intellectual device is the metaphor. A map is a metaphor. A social network is a metaphor. The metaphors should not be confused with the actual reality but they can be taken as useful stepping off points. This is especially important when dealing with the integral nature of dual or polar phenomenon underlying human potential and nurture such as religion, science and art.

Loko i’a does not seek to supplant or to compete with what already exists. Integral does not vie with passions or fixations. It merely abides. Side by side with the actual and enacted, Loko i’a provides an open space in which the creative, innovative and experimental can be fostered and nurtured. It is but a hope that Loko i’a can bring forward the expressions, solutions and new beginnings to the current chaos and crises plaguing our communities.

DEFAULT

What's in it for me? If the discussion can only come to that then it is for naught. Living as free people, just as doing art, is pure expression. To focus prematurely or obsessively on the question of self interest and short-term escape from fear of uncertainty or the slipping of power is to lose the essential experiential meaning of exchange and the moment for enlightenment is lost. The value in the exchange is always conjectural, contextual and transcendent. The master work comes about in the enactment of rigor, creativity, persistence and mindfulness. If what is represented to us by our leaders is so dissonant with our sensibilities then we are free to organize our selves and means of exchange in as rigorous, creative, persistent and mindful way as our collective endeavor can sustain. If there is only passing attention or absorption then the return is minimal. Sustainability is not passive but an intentional and enacted process. There will always be a crux, a nexus of attention and action, across which there is an exchange of meaning and significance. The temporal, the non-intentional, is always at play. This is the hope. It is also the refuge of the eternal speculator, searching for that big break. We have collectively reached a point of unsustainability. Perhaps this is the cosmic joke. Then laugh, and entertain yourself and others with the capturing of moments through the transcendence of art. Participate, share and benefit in the provenance of this moment. What's in it for me? Depends on the spirit of the moment.
Amandla Ngawethu!

Membership

In Hawaii, fishponds are built upon the shores. Enclosures with gated openings face the open sea. The rhythmic tidal action naturally infuses the calmed waters and bring the culture and the fauna. Openings to the sea can be gated and filtered, letting in or letting go. The vast ocean nourishes a tiny ecosystem. The pond does not search, explore, browse or possess the ocean. It makes one through proximity and openness. A unique niche can be tended and harvested within the enclosure. The purity and fertility of the medium is dependent on the freshness and clarity of what flows down from the heights, the precipitation of the past. The boundary to the ocean needs constant attention and maintenance. The opening to the source has to be kept intact and integral. If the boundary to the sea breaks or subsides then the pond becomes the sea.

Within the enclosure plants, hatchlings, juveniles and diminutive life can be raised away from the predation of the wide world. Once grown and robust, the life is attracted to the surge of the tide when the gates are opened. Crowding back to the source through the narrows of the sluice, they are easily sorted, tended and harvested.

Say yes. We all share. Respect, empower, include. Openness and inclusion are the basis of compassionate action. Simply creating a connection to the whole creates a being. That connection can be gated and tracked and have output modified according to the condition of the relationship to the whole. If the input to the being is open source, an organic process, then the output and feedback can be just as open. Arising are multiple expressions from a single source, in coordination.

Mastery in Empty Space

The empty space. That which becomes the active in the next moment, immediately replaced by the neutral once moved. Active and passive are not stillness and movement but reaching, contracting, fixing, shrinking, compacting, rigidifying, adding density, swelling, exploding and collapsing. The law of opposites mediated by the third, the middle way. The empty space, the neutral space, an extra degree of freedom, something to spare, the only true “movement.” It is extending, limitless, existent beyond the horizon of knowledge, awareness without reason.

In application it is the source, an open circle, movement agency. Development follows principles of self-organizing beyond ego reach. Ego is always following behind, constricting, limiting, cutting, power hungry, finite.

The application is that the idea of therapeutic neutrality is ego fiction, applicable to misshaped agents that are uncoordinated and getting in the way of natural development of self-organization. The therapist ego flavors the exchange, vivifies experience, models and entrains experience but also allows the freedom of movement in both from impulse to perception to memory. Active to passive to neutral.

Interaction is the guided conversation. Congruence the active, empathy the passive and unconditional positive regard the neutral stance. Simple rules. In martial art there is a neutral space, not just separation but a field of neutrality maintained throughout the execution of the arts, the reminder or enactment or acquiescence of no separation. Separation is pulling or intruding or passively detaching or collapsing. At higher levels of energy and movement, passive is just going through the motions, movement for movement’s sake. Once you learn how it all works then you are really actively “doing something” but that is too much about you. Active yang, passive yin, neutral tao. Going to the neutral space.

It is not enough just to go meditate in a cave, be removed from the world, choose exile, experience neither the pain of movement nor despair of paralysis. Be the void. The neutral, mundane sameness of it all is essential and obvious. Not profound as such. And yet so well eluded, avoided, misinterpreted, embellished, co-opted, defiled. All ego or folly, not it.

It is not in the fixing but in the transformation and movement, the change. How to bring essence to everyday, to the therapeutic but not reek of Zen or God or Buddha or the rarified realm of dogma, insight so profound that it surpasses definition. It comes down to simple virtues and earnest efforts and sincere words. Humility.

The challenge across situations is the intensity, the juxtaposition of shallow or ignorant with the wise or fast moving. The principles of movement and the universe apply equally no matter the relative status of the individual being. The only difference is the individual understanding of rhythm, alterations in movement, the letting go of façade, edifice and scaffolding, levels of development, stages of expertise, from novice to master. The master is novice, able learner, advanced practitioner, superior practitioner and visionary, in simultaneity and flow. The master can constellate the profundity from anywhere in the field or matrix. Humility.

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. Humility arising is transcendent. Rising from density into lightness rather than swelling, collecting out of swelling without density, rousing out of collapse without rigidity, letting go of rigidity without collapse. Therapeutics would teach the virtues and not indulge the vices, make earnest to be a model, be optimistic, be courageous, stay honest and sincere. Be present.

Numbers

Solitaire
Meditation, mindfulness, service, contemplative writing, mind-body coordination, openness.

Têtê à têtê
Vis à vis, dyad, mutual, dual/polar, synergizing, synchronizing, generative, intercourse

Trois
Yin-Yang-Tao, active- passive- neutral, adult-parent-child, subject-object-verb, players-audience-stage.

Quatre
Triads of threes, odd man out, transitional space down to three, two, one or up to higher levels.

Salon
Five to eight. Shared experience of meeting, exchanging ideas and improvising artistic performances. Unscripted drama.

Assemblage
Multiple salons. Nine to Thirty Two. Aggregates of artifacts and material evidence in support of a theory concerning culture and communality. A sculptural technique for organising or composing into a unified whole a group of unrelated, often fragmentary or discarded objects. An emergent record of interactions.

Milieu
Multiple assemblage with an emergent resonance of the record of interactions. The feedback system. The mix, the energy, the vibe. Six degrees of separation

Fête
Tradition over multiple earth cycles. The tipping point.

Principles of Inquiry

The essential nature of being is the field of consciousness.
The body is a vessel for individual consciousness.
Force and power act on the body/mind but do not act on the field of consciousness.
Coordinating the mind and body allows fuller revelation of the field of consciousness.
Every human encounter carries the potential of raising the quality of expression of the field of consciousness.
The value of our existence is in furthering the fullness and quality of the revealed field of consciousness.
Our habits, distortions, fixations, concepts, language, knowledge all denote consciousness, but consciousness can only be connoted.
The evolution of consciousness is revealed through myths and mysteries.
The role of the helpers is to use awareness and compassion to inquire into the condition of the other's mind and to look for stability.
The clarity of your own inquiry shows your own stability and condition of your mind.

Ethics of Behavior

Do no harm
Keep a proximal distance to each other, not too close, not too far
Approximate your behavior to resemble others closeby
Say yes
Listen for meaning
Be enthusiastic
Observe what is emergent, eg. synchrony, and return to the first ethic