Birthing the Symbiotic Age - Interview with Author Richard Flyer
“Let’s go for heaven on earth, just for the hell of it!” – Swami Beyondananda
Greetings and welcome to what we hope will be a truly NEW New Year!
As you may or may not know, I launched the “Signs of the Upwising” blog on Substack to support my notion that conscious spiritual awakening is required for humanity to make it through our current existential crises.
I call this “fractal” awakening happening simultaneously at the individual and collective levels the “Great Upwising” because it requires awakening to the illusion of separation, acknowledging the truth of Oneness, and applying our collective wisdom here and now in the real world to bring heaven to earth in daily life.
You can see our four-step program here.
The idea of “Signs of the Upwising” is to help us recognize and reinforce those ideas and projects at the forefront of this evolutionary transformation.
That’s why I am excited to start the New Year by adding the element of podcast / broadcast to my Substack platform and introduce my Front and Center podcast “podner” Michael Maxsenti. Our three tenets reflect and resonate the principles of the Great Upwising:
From political battlefields to cooperative playing fields.
Seeking the whole truth together.
Putting government on the side of the people.
Front and Center launches a new year of podcasts with a conversation with Richard Flyer, whose life work has been all about lifting us off the old battlefield of what he calls “the culture of separation” and onto a new playing field that he calls “Symbiotic Culture”. His work is truly an encouraging sign of the Upwising!
“The idea of bringing heaven to earth for me, is not metaphoric. It's not a story. And I believe -- from my own experience -- that you can actually connect to the Transcendent as a power and it can be embodied within us.” -- Richard Flyer
In the wake of an out-of-this-world life changing experience at the age of 12, Richard dedicated his life and work to bringing about “heaven on earth”.
Huh? Heaven on earth?
As Richard explains in this eye-opening interview, this is no pie-in-the-sky ideal, but a feet-on-the-ground real deal – reality tested by his work building a local living economy network that transformed Reno, Nevada, and the work of his mentor Dr. Ariyaratne via the Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka.
A biologist by training, Richard says, “Symbiosis occurs in nature when organisms come together for mutual benefit over a period of time.” Symbiotic Culture, he explains, is a society where mutually-beneficial interactions are the norm, happening at every scale – from individual to family to community to nation to world. “It’s a kind of ‘fractal empowerment’ that can happen simultaneously in communities around the world.”
And – the “secret sauce” is a Sacred Source that he calls an “ancient blueprint” -- universal principles like the Golden Rule at the foundation of every spiritual, religious, and secular ethical system. It hearkens back to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and expresses itself through Gandhi’s “village awakening movement”, and Dr. Ariyaratne’s Buddhist-based Sarvodaya movement – a network of 5,000 villages in Sri Lanka dedicated to bringing this ancient blueprint to daily life.
Influenced by Dr. Ari, Richard was able to bring the Reno, Nevada community together above and beyond tribes and silos, around a “common purpose to connect the good.”
The good news is, what Martin Luther King has called “beloved community” has been created in the real world, in ordinary communities involving ordinary people – using the extraordinary power of what he calls “multi-siloed, distributed networks.”
Richard’s work now is to weave together the “threads” of siloed networks, to build a parallel society from the grassroots up, as our current “culture of separation” falters.
Please join us for an enlightening “Newer Year” conversation that will help us bring about a “newer world order” of intentional mutual benefit.
Watch our Front & Center interview with Richard here. Or watch on YouTube here.
Join Richard’s Substack community, subscribe, and read his book in installments for FREE right here.
How YOU Can Support the Great Upwising and Front and Center
Currently, I am building my Substack community and making all content free. However, we invite and welcome your financial support to proliferate truly generative ideas and cohere the critical mass to make 2024 a “Quantum Leap Year.”
You can give once, or give monthly right here:
https://frontandcenter.locals.com/support
You can also support the Great Upwising by making a tax deductible contribution to our sponsoring organization, ALL OF US, Inc.
https://www.12habits4allofus.org/contribute
Oh, and there is one more FUN way to support my work – have the Swami ZOOM in for a FUN(D)RAISER for your organization or just your friends. Please respond to this email if interested.
Normally these pleas for financial support come at the end of the year … we are asking at the beginning of the year because we intend 2024 to be THE year that makes THE difference.
Thank you for being co-hearts on the journey!
Steve Bhaerman
Michael Maxsenti
And All of Us at ALL OF US – Elaine, Kurt, Rosie, Annette and myself