July 15, 2023
A bi-weekly conversation in Zoom, every second Saturday at 8am Pacific Time, inspired by the world building session with Trimtab Space Camp Mesosphere visionary Tony Patrick in 2020. In our conversations, we mused that we were a World Weavers Web, weaving synergetically as a synarchy, rather than in the dominant mode of dominating over nature as architects and builders, and collectively agreed to change the name of the group to World Weavers.
The Seven Days of Co-Creation
When I was considering the possibility of redesigning the calendar as a way to shift my own perceptions and senses of the Earth, the idea that there are thirteen moons in a year was something that came from an exploration of Indigenous cultures.
Moons of the Anishinaabeg
The Anishinaabeg people live in a large area within what is now the United States and Canada. There are actually 13 moons each year, but most cycles follow the 12-month calendar.
The Anishinaabe designated the names of the moon to correspond with the seasonal influence within a given location. Because the region the Anishinaabe lived was so large, the moons may not be called the same thing for all areas.
For example, the Anishinaabeg in lower Michigan would not have the same activities as the Anishinaabeg in Minnesota.
The Center for Native American Studies adopted this version of moon cycles.
This is where the calendar design began with twelve around one. Three hundred and sixty-five and one quarter days can be divided by thirteen twenty-eight-day months, leaving a remainder of one and one quarter days. Each month can be equally divided by four into seven-day weeks. Given an international standard of a seven-day week, this seemed like the place to start.
Depicting these cycles in circles seemed best. The cycles rotate in the direction of the orbits of planets around the Sun looking down from a northern perspective.
There is an interesting correlation between the week viewed as six days around one and the model of living being, which also corresponds to a view of the solar year.
I was in the mode of designing my own experience of daily meditation. Learning from the Buddhist tradition, there is a focus on the breath. I noticed a pattern in the orbits of the celestial bodies in relation to the Earth. There is a kind of breathing pattern, if one focuses on inner and outer orbits.
A weekly meditation practice as a form of breathing, in and out, as we travel through the inner and outer orbits (relative to the Earth) of the solar system. The weekly cycle aligns with the annual cycle, a weekly reminder of this holistic experience of being alive.
Years ago, I began with questions about the creation story, about the temple, about the third day, and about the Trinity. Over the decades, I was noticing patterns. Is there more to the Genesis story? Light, water, and earth are the pattern of the first three days. Light, water, and earth are the pattern of the second iteration of three days. Then, there is a rest that signals the completion of the cycle of creation. However, creation does not end there. It is a co-creation process, where there is an invitation to recognize the image of the divine and to reflect the same patterns. If God is love, is this the pattern of love?
Intention
On January 17 of this year, I stated my intention for this orbit around the Sun.
Invited to listen to ambient music in a private group, Design Science Studio Creative Practice, I responded,
I could feel the sounds spiralling around me, expanding my sense of presence beyond the inner experience of self. Sound immerses me in a much larger world, connected to the rhythm of ocean waves, and the radiation of the original impulse of love that fills the universe.
We look into the night sky and see the points of light that reach us from light years away. What we may not notice from this perspective are the waves of light growing like spheres throughout the cosmos over billions of years. Like an immersion in sound vibrations, our universe is immersed in an ocean of light. The care taken to bring this life into being feels like swimming in an ocean of love.
And I added,
If we could navigate consciousness and time, what would the interface look like? What would love look like? Probably not like this. But, this is where my intuition has led me so far. It is a way of seeing life in a glance, while needing eternity to explore it all. As a mental model, it is very low resolution. It is merely a symbolic reference to the whole of experience, so it does not replace experience. It merely points to it. For myself, it does begin to help make sense of it all. To see life as a unified whole, with many diverse, complex, and unique perspectives to explore time and space.
Ensoulment
I had a conversation with Veronica Anderson this week in our bi-weekly ensoulment session.
Veronica: Can we get more specific about the outcome you’re looking for with this embodiment of love?
Stephen: I guess that’s probably where it’s been really difficult to even think in that way. Trying to put it in specifics feels like becoming attached to something—to expectations that are are going to just crash and burn, because it’s just been another pattern that I’ve been going through of, “I’m gonna throw all my chips into this and then see what happens.” And then I’m doing it on my own, I guess, and it just doesn’t work. And so that tenderness, I think, is feeling like it is holding me back. It puts me in that fear—a fight, flight, or freeze response. I don’t want to put myself into that position of being disappointed again. But my recognition of what a full embodiment of love is means letting go of fear. So what I would love is this dream of being part of a creative collective of people who are fully embodying love together—that’s the ultimate goal. But I’m just not sure what the shape of that is.
And that’s part of the process that I’m going through is creating a model of what that might look like, first of all, and then feeling what that is like personally. And then wondering, “Is this a model that we can integrate into a collective?” So what I’m recognizing, as I’m modelling what a living being looks like, it’s this living, breathing entity. And the breathing is this cycle that’s going around and then in and then out again.
And because I’m seeing that resonance within myself, at the collective scale, at the universal scale, it feels like the journey I started a few years ago is becoming more and more clear as I go through this process. So it’s helping me let go of that fear. My soul knows where to go.
It’s grown into these senses for navigating metaphysical gravity. I’m seeing love as action, as process, as something that I’m doing intuitively.
So it’s not like this either/or. The fear is always going to be there. But that’s not the focus. The focus is always on, “How am I navigating—not the fear—but navigating love.
I keep hearing this idea that love needs to be a public policy, but the problem with that is love doesn’t have a clear definition. So, when I’m reading Bell Hooks, All About Love, that’s where she starts. If we have a clear definition of love, then that makes it a whole lot easier to actually live into it. And for me, if I’m doing anything—and in a kind of Bucky way—it’s, “There’s no point in fighting the existing model.” Because the model is fear. If you fight the fear, you just make more fear. So that’s what I’m doing. We have got to create the new model and we actually have to be able to articulate what love is. So this is as close as I can get to feeling what this is like. I’m going to show this model around to people and ask, “How does this feel to you? Can we do this together?” That’s where I’m going with it. “If I can embody this, can we do this together?”
Veronica: It feels like we really got somewhere with that. “A clear definition of love.” That feels like a specific outcome to lean into. Does that feel accurate?
Stephen: Yeah, absolutely.
Veronica: I don’t want to miss the chance to validate how that process went for you and to bring your attention to the way that you started by speaking into the shadow. Really, well done. Because you named the resistance. That was really powerful: “Because it’s actually just fear.” You named that. “There’s a resistance to being specific because it feels like I’m getting attached expectations.” And then, “These past experiences of failing because I’m doing it on my own, essentially.” And this activation—that’s trauma response around being disappointed again. So you very concisely named all of that, and that’s the landscape, right? That’s the shadow that you’re using to create this goal. You’re going into the shadows and then you’re using that to create light.
I feel honoured to have witnessed that. And then, right away you said, “A full embodiment of love means letting go of fear.” And so you already were aware that this is resistance: fear. “I’m in fear around this question of a specific outcome. I don’t like it. My body is reacting to it.” And I wanted to also share with you that today, the twelfth of July, there is a square happening between the Sun and Chiron. Chiron is the wounded healer. And right now this transit is asking us to reconcile with our failure, our past failures and move forward anyway. So there’s this really supportive energy right now for acknowledging that crumbling that has been part of the journey, and that excruciating pain of disappointment. And I love that you named attachment to expectations was such a limiting experience to have and it’s wonderful that you’re aware of it from this “liberation from suffering” standpoint, where we know that attachment creates suffering. And to really hold this specific outcome question lightly and to say, “I’m looking for a clear definition of love.” I don’t know what format it is going to take. It might be a book. It might be a book, a workshop, and a song. It could be many things. It could just be one thing. It could just be your life. But I think holding this as a specific outcome is… What do you think? Does it feel like this could support you on your goal setting?
Stephen: Yeah, I think it’s part of the whole thing, of articulating what I’m doing is the project. The way I was describing it in the Design Science Studio Creative Practice group is, “This feels like concrete poetry.” I’m trying to actually take something that feels very ephemeral, and taking my skills from design, put words to this, put colour to this. There are all these different layers of resonance that we can explore.
And the embodiment would be that full resonance that is hard to miss, that sense of, “Oh, yeah. I felt nourished. I felt cared for. I felt trust. I felt intimacy. I felt love.” All those things that feel so hard to put into words, but the actual experience of it is pretty hard to miss.
Affirmation
I reached out to a colleague about some of the work that I have been doing over the last few years and received this affirmation.
Thank you for sharing these! I’m glad to see you’re on Substack, and continuing to write and publish. Your robust ideas and frameworks deserve a home. I admit there is a great deal to take in and process and can’t attempt at this time to take it all in — yet I recognize these as the continuing evolution of your pattern-recognition, synthesis and blending towards a “unified field theory” of love and wholeness across all disciplines. It’s an Einsteinian pursuit, with so many gorgeous influences and beautiful outputs. I hope future readers and discoverers along the way will be able to recognize and benefit from the massive effort you are putting out here. Also, love that in addition to writing and theorizing, you’re continuing to prioritize healing, “ensoulment” and self-acceptance. I’m honoured to have been pointed towards your treasure-troves.
Another colleague offered this question regarding the above image.
Stephen Bau, do you make versions of these for your grandchild? I want versions for my children. I imagine my child studying a version of this that’s at his eye level as he learns to read and allowing it to naturally inform his cosmology as he makes sense of the world.
I replied,
This work I have been doing has not felt finished enough to put into a form that I felt ready to share as complete. It is always evolving. So, I have been sharing my process instead.
But it is helpful to receive the affirmation that what I have created would be valuable in its current form.
My heart is full this morning. I am honoured to receive such high praise for my art—to entrust these words to one’s children to help them grow their sense of the world.
I have been pondering what it is I am doing, and it has been an inner quest to answer the question, “What does love look like?”
So, I resorted to what I knew from my background in design—form, line, colour, and typography—to create a form of art in the medium I am familiar, a creative practice in concrete poetry, finding resonance between myself and the vibrations of energy all around me in the form of gravity waves that we sense as balance, along with pressure and heat (touch), taste, smell, sound, and light. In all these different senses, we are detecting waves of energy at different scales of proximity and amplitude. This constant stream of experience is a form of information and communication. It feels like I have been wondering what all of this overwhelming amount of information might be communicating, if there was any meaning and purpose to any of it. I have come to sense this information to be an ocean of love, and we are swimming in it. That shift in perception changes everything.
A Bi-Weekly Zoom Meeting
Join us in our World Weavers conversations as we explore the inward journey into who we are as human beings and sensing, feeling, thinking, and acting carefully as we consider the world that we are weaving together for the generations to come.
We are experimenting with Substack as an alternative to the Google Group as a way to stay connected in between World Weavers meetings. Add your email to the mailing list for the World Weavers by subscribing to Trimtab.