The work of Elisabet Sahtoruris (http://www.sahtouris.com/INFO/), and in particular her book, Earth Dance: Living Systems in Evolution, offers something to us that ties a lot of this together. I’m going to let her speak, from that book:

“Darwin saw evolution as driven by competition among individuals. Later evolutionists noted cooperation and altruism within species, suggesting that evolution must be driven by competition among species for ecological niches in which to flourish. Richard Dawkins then proposed that both these theories were incorrect, as evolution was really driven by selfish genes that struggled to maximize their expression in the overall gene pool. What none of them had the vision to see was that they were all right, but only together. Self interest at all levels—species, individual and gene—motivates nature’s creativity and health.

…It is very important to recognize that self-interest is not a bad thing, except when it is not contained and modified by negotiations with other levels of its holarchy. This clearly suggests that a world economy can work well only if it recognizes the need for strong local economies within it, rather than destroying them.

Nature works out dynamic balance between self-interest and interest beyond self, as we can easily see in our bodies. It is no doubt for good reason that every cell in our bodies contains the gene plans or resources for the whole body….” —pg. 280-281

“What we can say is that as long as the body is healthy, there is no conflict between its ecology and its economy. It coordinates a win/win economy/ecology in which all parts contribute what they have to offer and all parts benefit equally from the collective economy. No part of a healthy body gains its health at the expense of other parts; there are no such things as rich and poor organs.” —pg. 345

“The principle of mutual consistency suggests that a healthy species insures its survival by putting out only quality. Quality material is something useful to others.” — pg 365

The key here is the “principle of mutual consistency,” or ‘mutual coherency,’ as I prefer to think of it. Nature is woven of relationships; the language of Nature is relationship. Given this, even predator/prey relationships in nature must seek balance for the mutual benefit (coherency) of all involved, or the dominating party risks self-annihilation.

And that is where human system victim/perpetrator relationships reveal both their domesticated resilience (resiliency’s shadow), and their imbalance in regard to the River of Life: they are relationships not grounded with mutual interest in the wellness, hardiness and wholeness of the larger organism — the relationship itself.

And it is this grounding that is the challenge to both businesses, and to our relationships with our lovers and our children and parents and friends and community and… yes, enemies too. Without this grounding, I perpetuate the victim/abuser dynamic in my daily living.

My mentor believes that one of the purposes of a human life is to bring balance. Hence, she has taught me to look to anamals as alliances to teach how to work within the whole to support the whole. If you want to learn about altruistic leadership and hierarchy, the wolf pack is a good place to study. Community? How about coral or herd animals or plants in a forest. The list goes on and on, and that is the study with her, but one of the key elements is shifting out of human centric– anthropocentric– views about what is altruistic. Everything is alive and everything is radically equal in the great circle and everything has a right to exist.

Yes, the animals are embodied living processes- deeply connected, deeply connected, deeply connected because it is their nature to be so– which is why they are teachers. But not all are keystone or altrustic for the whole the way a beaver or wolf is.

I also just want to comment on oneness. In the early eighties I did a lot of practice with Sufis. The meditations led to experiences of “unity” but the problem was that I had to come down. I had experiences of exalted states. Coming down into my life and body with its accumulated unresolved emotional pain after touching these realms which seemed like home was so difficult that at one point, in the middle of a retreat, which had to end, amd was about to end, I almost got up and threw myself in front of a car. So then I practiced and did long solitary retreats with Tibetan Buddhists, which have a more horizontal approach to meditation. But it was my Native teacher who helped to bring me back into my body by showing me how to connect with nature and teaching me how to experience life connected to the earth.

When you are young, you go to your mother when you are in pain. When you are a man, where do you go?

I have been thinking more about my own question too– the key stone of my life. In the mornings when I sit doing my Buddhist meditation practice, I stop and connect with the sun rise. That moment, the blessing of the dawn, that feeling of possibility, of beauty, of wonder, is one of my keystones to wild resiliancy. Just feeling that first light. The Buddhist practice connects me to spaciousness, but the sunrise connects me to the great mystery and beauty. The combining is my keystone “moment” that I need to connect to in order to stay alive.

There’s so much more to say about this, what takes place during the day– the heart of which, to me, deals with how to live sacredly, keeping that connection in tact, through giving away, through generosity and honoring what I kill to keep me alive through the actions of my life– the debt of my existance. I wish I were better at doing this.

Good conversation. By the way, I’m writing from Chicago, where I have set up for a trade show in the McCormic tomorrow morning.

And, if I may shamelessly plug by own blog, part of the fragmentation and disenfranchisement Mr. Choyt speaks of is the result of urbanization. See Cities and Men, Parts I and II at http://www.goldenstate.wordpress.com (It’s in the Power of Place category.)

Regarding the “keystone” concept as utilized in ecology, and nature, I think it is easy to forget that the beaver and the wolf… are essentially ‘embodied living processes.’ Of course they are ‘objects’ too, but I am attempting to point to the dimensionality and depth and dynamical presence of that embodiment, that your post also points toward.

In this light, the keystone of my personal wild resiliency (I think that is your question) is… the allurement of awe and wonder at the mystery of Life. The “Keystone Processes of Wild Resiliency”, within the model itself, thus become a means of embodying and focusing the eyes of a child upon the world.

And yes, I suspect we each in our own way become both perpetrator and victim—to the smallness culture would have us experience ourselves as. The senses, of awe and wonder at the mysteries of Life, thus enact the roles of both beaver and wolf in the shaping of the internal ecologies of my life, in proportion to my willingness to live out loyalty to their embodied joy.

This is why I say ‘wild resiliency’ is a radical affirmation of the Breath-of-Life, because of this loyalty to the deep, wild joy, that seeks expression through us, that would feed upon the smallness culture seeks from us; it is this very expansive experience of Life that fundamentalisms of all stripes and hues seek to suppress.

Secondly, much of the religious conservatism today is tilting to a rigidity and a fanaticism is a response in my opinion to the general fragmentation and disenfranchisement. The breaking down of the circle and the belief in the line” alpha/omega… things start with Christ and end with the rapture or apocalypse.

The healthier you are, the more choices you have. The two questions are good– especially when taken internally, in our own processes, which we have more choice with than our outer circumstance.