What Makes Us Different
inner and outer go together
Many believe that Permaculture and the regenerative community movement is about calling people together to grow healthier food and to design sustainable land use for holistic production and alternative living practices. While that is indeed the gist, it is only the ‘exterior’ part, and not the whole by a long shot. At its heart, this ‘movement’ is about the balance of inner and outer awareness, the foundation for living into a successful eco-social future. This style of living is reflected within each of us as individuals, expressed through progressive values, and in turn is achieved through our collectives via communication, learning, and growth.
It is direct life experience itself, the experience of a more integrated awareness and understanding of the world around us and what it means in our own life, which some may call Love, that naturally invites us to expand our curiosity and learn how to leverage what nature provides for mutual benefit. It is this personal understanding of our interconnectedness that creates a relationship based on respect, and which emotionally motivates us to implement regenerative principles.
Harnessing greater alignment with natural systems produces holistic success — a universally applicable concept, yet only deeply grasped by those who have lived into a greater embrace of how we are all connected (systems holarchy) through their own life experiences. What becomes evident is a purpose driven understanding, one might say a worldview, that dawns gradually like a sunrise through learning compassion and the fundamental values of inclusiveness. We believe it is a fundamental human right and an imperative to provide adequate education and learning opportunities for living in greater harmony with each other and our environments around the world.
Without a personal understanding of how the whole benefits the self and vice versa, we have no clear motivation for compassion, and will continue to perpetuate a stage of human development that is immature or ego-centric in relation to each other and to ‘all our relations’ including other species and the health of our planet. It is time to grow up. This means learning to grow more sustainably than exponentially. Life experience is the best teacher, because it is multi-faceted and naturally integrated into the body-mind, producing a personal motivation and presence which is infinitely more effective than intellectual knowledge or dissociated belief. GeoFlower’s hands-on learning centers, together with a powerful online platform for communication and social connection, provide such valuable experiences to support us as we learn, innovate, and awaken around the globe.
Our Education Programs Are More Integrated Than Most
There are plenty of farms “by the community for the community” offering CSAs, classes, or events for learning to grow and share organic food using sustainable practices… so what makes ours different?
GeoFlower’s unique educational programs are designed to take us on a skillful adventure into both practice and realization in support of the natural inner process that accompanies external practices in holistic living, regenerative growing, and social resilience. We aim to inspire and to guide people in making the shift in their own inner choices and motivation to align with new options that both make life better and are better for life.
Without a trained inner awareness, we may not have thought the kind of connection or synergy we see demonstrated by the health of nature was even possible for a sustainable modern technological, social, and economic lifestyle. With our unique integration methods, once we begin to see what else is possible, we find we are fueled with fresh meaning and naturally seek to recreate such sustainability and harmony in our own lives. We become motivated to connect with others who share a similar understanding, even a collective mission.
Cultivating what we want to see as possible starts with our imagination and grows within us, eventually mirroring our external lifestyle. This simple natural process is known by many esoteric practitioners, yet is an often overlooked component. Humanity can be seen as an expression of the mind of the natural world, and as such one of the most fundamental truths we can learn from nature is how to be present to it, first within ourselves, in order to make the changes we really want to see during these transitional times. GeoFlower brings learning with the land into greater wholeness so that we grow and flower together
THE CORE OF REGENERATIVE VALUES
Regenerative values are seen everywhere, in ecology, technology, agriculture, social and family systems, economics, awareness, or anything that finds synergy among multiple lenses and wisdoms. It is the language of health and well being as well as success. In the big picture, the practice of regenerative living can be seen as a dynamic and integral movement of many components that respond in harmony for the benefit of the whole while supporting the parts. This is nature’s way — so effective at balancing systems that it has been referred to as ‘natural law’ and recognized as an innate expression of the divine in ‘sacred’ geometry.
We value what we understand. At its core, this movement begins with learning new things and how to expand and integrate what we value. If we need support or a shift in order for our conceptual-values to reflect our actualization-values, in other words what we want to see as possible made possible, we reach out to one another for reflection and support. We do this through our relationships and communities, and we will do this through nature as well. GeoFlower represents an international collective with like minded values, promoting education that can help us integrate our lessons both locally and with connections around the world as we manifest new dreams. It is entirely possible to create sustainable ecological technology that supports expansion as well as our environment. When we are able to tune inward, listening with our tool of intuition (to balance our outer senses) new ideas can burgeon, and we begin to unlearn some of what we have been programmed to believe or have had on autopilot which is now limiting us. It is time to re-member, and to create anew.
Now is the greatest opportunity for gaining wisdom and balance through our efforts. Progress can be seen clearly in our relationship with the land and ecosystem. It is because the land calls out to us to heal ourselves, our relations, and our economies from the imbalances we have been perpetuating, that we hear a stronger calling to work with it again now. We are witnessing a collective movement from a parts-focused or specialization-isolation society toward a more holistic or integrated-systems society. Today, and for many years to come, we are living through the lens (and lessons) of how everything and everyone is ultimately connected. For human evolution and for the health of the planet to find a new harmony during the dissolution of the old and the creation of the new, we begin by learning newly how to level up our awareness and compassion, and to then recognize and respond to more inspired, holistic solutions for regenerative living.
HEALTHY GROUP DYNAMICS
A healthy group starts with the alignment of the individuals involved, amplifying harmony, not dissonance. It is just so with any seed growing into its potential — with a healthy alignment or blueprint, the scalable version of it thrives. Many times groups with good intentions, permaculture or otherwise, find themselves cultivating exterior actions and outreach first, in an attempt to coalesce group momentum. Thinking they have everyone on the same page conceptually, they then find themselves wondering why momentum stays at such a snail’s pace, or overlook where division exists within the group even when everyone agrees with an overall vision. Most of what is overlooked is simply under practiced— namely the inner awareness of self and group growth dynamics, and an understanding of self and other that contributes to supportive interactions rather than getting stuck in defensiveness.
So while other farms are putting forth their best effort into the exterior expression such as working the land and group gatherings, financial and social resources can become drained and many good hearted endeavors struggle or fail. Some of this is due simply to a misalignment between conceptual values and actualization values. We live in a society that has not yet been educated in the essential nature of our inner awareness and natural alignment for hundreds of years, even centuries. That practical wisdom is returning now.
The keys to rebalancing our success are in learning how to live as an expression of nature, from the inside out, or as above, so below. By giving our attention first to inner alignment, our values, mindset, or worldview can create authentic empowerment, and from that place of clarity and reflection, we can more efficiently and mindfully express our ideals and engineer a natural alignment within our groups. If we continue to overlook becoming educated about the practices and workings of our inner awareness and how it guides our actions in the world, we continue to risk repeating the unconscious habits or limitations passed down to us, in lieu of the success of the group actualizing its potential and purpose.
ACTUALIZATION + ACTION
Our actions, and actualization, express our beliefs, conscious and unconscious. We grow by recognizing our unique ‘why’, and we identify with or internalize experiences based on the level of questions or assumptions about ourselves and our world. With our ‘why’ as our motivation, we naturally seek out and participate in the kinds of communities that form around similar intentions to support and serve one another. A healthy community will form naturally among individuals who align their core values successfully to become greater than their parts. Therefore, at GeoFlower, we focus on the natural cycle — educating and supporting healthy individuals, finding successful alignment, and building healthy community. To begin, our programs are designed to help each of us find and implement our unique ‘why’.
Most people have yet to be given the chance to think about the value of sustaining a respectful relationship with their land much beyond how to cultivate it to receive a return. This is a mindset that can be viewed as an operational pattern we see from our consumer culture to our human relationships as well. A mindset is like a worldview, it is a lens based on programmable inner values through which we see (or don’t see) various opportunities as we go through life. How tightly we hold to our inner values determines the limitation or universalization of our identity or tool of perception. And therefore our actions and feeling of either division or inclusion of the world around us, from our neighbors to our community, to nature itself.
Perception, and hence identity, can be changed to able to see and embrace more. We have learned to nurture something solely in order to get something. While there is value in this approach, it is partial, so if we try to make that partial value our core way of life, imbalances occur as we are witnessing in our emotions, our economy and ecology. Trying to adapt life to suit partial values is revealed to be a somewhat limited or egocentric strategy that eventually isolates each of us, where once it used to provide us with satisfaction. When we realize we’re ready to outgrow the old pattern, we begin to see with more wholistic eyes and to cultivate a more integrated sustainable practice that yields greater satisfaction for all, this time through recognizing benefits beyond the limits of individual self interest such as mutual respect for others and for nature. Because this change of mindset can come with so many questions, and because there’s so much more to experience in life than what we’ve been taught, that’s where GeoFlower’s integral-based education shines through.
OUR UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY
GeoFlower’s unique educational opportunity focuses on learning from the inside out in order to come into greater balance with the world around us. Whether we are an entrepreneur, a business exec, a teacher, a property owner, a parent, a student, a kid (and we each play multiple roles), once we are given this opportunity to learn new ways of seeing and relating to each other and to the land, we begin our unique journey of waking up. We begin to see what part we play in the whole of life, not just our role, so that we can make conscious decisions about what constitutes a healthy lifestyle rather than simply being part of the old problem.
We begin to seek out different possibilities in our relationship to the world and to be inspired to take purposeful responsible actions toward a healthier way of living within our families, groups, our work with the land. In short, we learn how everything is connected. And from here we can begin to see a larger picture in which we we realize we are an integral part with an important impact. Like a seed or a sunflower, the journey always starts within, at the center, and builds upon that inner alignment to achieve our expression in the world. Like an unfolding or a flowering, we learn how everything can dance and flow, creating beautiful unique expressions and greater wholeness, and encapsulating the seeds and wisdom of those experiences for others, and future generations, to evolve and grow.
Many feel that at this time we have lost a kind of heart-centered feeling of purposeful contribution and belonging at a tribal level. Why is this so? Pulled this way and that in a sea of consumerism, division, and overstimulation, what we truly need is to rebuild our inner core, which is nourished by honoring all relationships (yin/receiving) in addition to our social roles (yang/performing). This can mean taking down time for integration, creative time for hobbies and sharing, social time to feel a supportive connection, exploration time to something greater than ourselves, always discovering anew what’s best for us in the present moment. Giving ourselves these essential experiences helps to bring our current role-driven lifestyle into greater balance by allowing us to integrate and to open to new possibilities.
Learning experiences at GeoFlower represent the seeds of a deep universal interconnectedness inherent in healthy tribal life, aka community — to find where we truly fit among many diverse families, groups, neighborhoods, ecologies, and expressions of philosophy and purpose— to find our unique contribution and to be received. Our past social roles have prepared to survive and to perform. Now it is time to embrace our soul’s wisdom and creativity. What defines our health, wealth, and happiness? Discovering and working with natural principles, and cultivating nurturing experiences are central parts of our socio-ecological growth as a whole. At GeoFlower we understand this basic requirement, and have consciously designed our programs to give everyone not only the tools but most importantly the spark of awareness needed to take our next steps in becoming authentic empowered socially engaged humans.