Jan 26, 2026 | In Syntony
On Wednesday 21 January 2026, the Ecocivilisation Movement held its annual retrospective of the past year and prospective of the one just begun. We gathered online from around the world to take stock of where we’ve been and what we’ve done, where we’ve come and how it’s landed us in the here and now, and what it portends for this year going forward.
The event was both somber and joyful, both concerned and optimistic. The optimism, though, was almost an act of defiance, as though the storm clouds that have not only gathered on the horizon but have begun to wreak havoc in earnest around the world couldn’t batter us down. How could one take such a stance without some sort of naïve Pollyannaism that simply ignored the writing on the wall and the dire message of a new Dark Age already at our doorstep?
For my part, I sought to take an honest look at what we’ve been through and what we’ve managed to accomplish as an Ecocivilisation Movement over the past year (see my seven-slide keynote presentation here). I jokingly began by searching for my crystal ball to predict what’s coming, but no – that just doesn’t exist. We do, however, have each other. And the reflection on how we can “be the change,” as Mahatma Gandhi exhorted, was nicely captured in the spontaneous exchange I had with Stefan Blachfellner, Senior Lecturer in Business Strategy of the Hochschule Burgenland University of Applied Sciences in Austria and Managing Director of the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (BCSSS). Here’s what was said:
Stefan:
“After a long time of stepping down and back, it is time to shake the World again, in a gentle way for those who help each other and in a brutal way for those who hurt us. We need to counter-fight again… Brutal Facts of reality :)”
Alex&er:
“Ahh… the fight. A question of the transmutation of energies, of crises, of threats into powerful energies for connection to, with, and through life. Not a traditional fight!
(We can’t fight with the same aggression and violence that we are seeking to overcome. That much is clear.)”
Stefan:
“I know, but still very intentional directed Energy 😉
We always fought in the sense of Gandhi; civil disobedience, non-violent, still forceful.”
Alex&er:
“Yes, the first step is to Be the Change we Want to See – or as you and I rephrased it for the 2014 EMCSR (European Meeting of Cybernetics and Systems Research) – to “be the systems you want to see in the world.” If we embody anger and violence, that will be what we see in the world because it will be what we bring to it. Change begins with each one of us – and now (at last) empowered by and with each other through the Internet and forums such as this.”
Stefan:
“100% Agree”
My sense is that no generation on earth at this time is any longer embracing the stance of disinterested aloofness. It’s no longer cool to be blasé and flip off the world with a cavalier shrug of “whatever”. And while popular entertainment still teems with zombie apocalypses and dystopian futures, it’s too in our face now and it stings (if we’re fortunate enough for it not to be already causing deep pain, suffering, and anguish).
So, I have become an Antidystopian. Antidystopianism roots out cynicism and indifference, and especially fatalism and despair, and it sources them back to love, hope, and care. It is underwritten by an Ethic of Care, the closest stance on which is embodied by ancient wisdom traditions such as that of Ahimsa (which, in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jainist traditions, embodies and enacts respect for all living things and the avoidance of violence toward others).
May you take heart, even if you feel hopeless. If you give hope to others, you will find it, yourself. Connect to the deeper source of syntony that has brought forth a planet teeming with life, abounding in beauty, and redolent of magical moments in even your darkest of days. This is the way of the Source’rer of Syntony. This is how we transmute crisis into opportunity, despair into hope – by being the source, ourselves. Indeed, this is the way.
Jan 18, 2026 | Humaning, Spark
Transmuting barricades, barriers, and walls into boundaries, bridges, and welcomes.
Transmuting the mundane, meaningless, and melodramatic into the mystic, majestic, and magic.
Resting in resonance and connecting in consonance.
Playing in stillflow and being danced through the holoflux across the liminal thresholds of the forevermoment.
For more on how the ecosystem builders build as they are built in building without walls, visit the Evolutionary Learning Ecosystem page – https://alexanderlaszlo.net/evolutionary-learning-ecosystem/
Mar 7, 2024 | TBT- Throwback Thursday
Eight years ago today, my daughter Kahlia and I were in Moscow, Russia, for a meeting and conference of Global Education Futures (GEF). It was a wonderful experience, not the least because we shared the adventure, both as tourists and as independent presenters at the event. Indeed, it was the first time Kahlia spoke to an audience of over 500 people, presenting the results of a research study that she had conducted in the US and Argentina, comparing student responses to questions of what kind of education they foresaw, and desired to foresee, in the medium to long-term future. Out of this experience came a paper we co-authored, though Kahlia was the primary author. The paper was called “A Whole Systems Approach to Education Redesign: A Case Study on the Need for Inter-Generational Perspectives and Inclusion.”
This was an experience of syntony at work as we explored and experienced life at play. Eight years ago… and the play of life carries us on with syntony and spark.
Mar 6, 2024 | Key Quotes
Nature is full of contradictions. Just look at the giraffe, for crying out loud!! What a lovely ensemble of elegance and awkwardness, of practicality (for reaching leaves in trees) and impracticality (for drinking at a waterholes). There is a syntony in this dance of improbability and possibility, of fantasy and actuality. Were nature to consist of only highly coherent beings and processes, we would be surrounded by a narrow spectrum of highly efficient but quite unimaginative expressions of life — boring, useful, and not much fun. Instead, nature dances … and is full of humor!
And that’s the fun of contradictions. They are healthy, provided one doesn’t take them too far… but that goes for just about anything, including eating fruit or taking medicine. An excess of anything is, well, excessive. But to change one’s mind, to sense something differently, to feel that something has changed … this is necessary for evolution to take place. After all, if nothing changes, you’re as good as dead.
Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish between contradiction and hypocrisy. Contradictions are fine (within limits, as mentioned); hypocrisies are not. While a contradiction involves the opposition of contrasting elements that often appear to cancel each other out, a hypocrisy involves knowing and willful deception through the premeditated presentation of one thing as something else. That ain’t good, no matter how you slice it. Contradictions are usually innocent and inoffensive, whereas hypocrisies almost always aren’t.
David Zindell, in his wonderful science fiction book The Broken God, writes of how “One can never become multiplex if afraid of paradox or enslaved by the god of consistency. Multiplex vision is paradoxical vision, new logics, the sudden completion of startling patterns” (Zindell, David. The Broken God. Bantam, 1994. Pp. 112). I think Walt Whitman would agree.
Feb 17, 2024 | Humaning
This event was amazing.
From Friday 9 through Sunday 11 February 2024, right when the Year of the Dragon began on the 10th, the Awakening to Humanity’s Sacred Mission Symposium took place. We had over 2400 people register from 86 countries with dozens of organizations and over 50 Keynote Speakers and Keynote Listeners. At any given moment over the three days, between 160 and 300 people were in the Zoomroom and many more participated via the livestreamed sessions. A truly amazing event just for the sheer magnitude of it!
But what made it really stand out was the way it danced. The whole event danced, and everyone in it, from Visionary Speakers to Space Holding Meditators to Movement Flowers to Breakout-empowered Participants, we all swayed and pulsed and flowed throughout the three days. But what was the music that danced us so?
An experience of deep listening
The Symposium was designed as a wake-up call, but not so much one with alarm bells and awooga blaring klaxons and instead one that recognized that, as the saying goes, “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” … and we’re not waiting any longer! With a delicate balance of presensations from well-known figures at the vanguard of consciousness studies and practices of how to human well, to movement and stillness exercises that brought us inward and outward in connection with life, to breakout sessions where we could engage in petite conversation with two or three others, to dance and poetry and sharing from around the world. It was the kind of wake-up call that said, “hey, you already know this! We’re all here and connected to life in the sacred dance of Interbeing and interesting becoming – how could it by ever have been otherwise?”
Two Paths of Syntonizing
The symposium gently led us onto the dancefloor of participatory co-emergence, or what is more commonly referred to as conscious evolution. We explored two “paths” into augmented sentience. One came through the classical activities (and “non-activities”) of the going inward path that helped us embody and engage our sacred mission. That path involved quieting “the monkey mind,” releasing into the moment (without the need to “do anything” with it, just being present — fully present), and making yourself “available” to what arises in and through you. These three stages augmented our ability to connect and be in syntony with all that occurs within, through, and around us. The four preparatory non-movements of syntony associated with these stages include –
- slowing
- grounding
- centering
- aligning
This path of practice is one of not trying to do something or to act, but of being moved to act. It’s the difference between trying to dance and finding yourself being danced; allowing life to dance you.
The second path is one often practiced by Martial Artists and Qi Gong masters. This path involves opening all the senses, being fully present and aware of your surroundings, coming vibrantly alive and attuned to everything that’s going on in and around you with heightened sensitivity. There is a beautiful scene in the classical film by Akira Kurosawa called The Seven Samurai in which ronin samurai are being recruited for a cause. To test whether they really are samurai, they are invited into a little hut to meet the recruiter, but unbeknownst to them, someone is standing just inside the doorway entrance with a stick that they intend to bring down on the ronin samurai as they each enter the hut, one at a time. The accomplished samurai will have quick enough reactions to be able to meet and deflect the attack without any problem, but those that get bonked on the head are not considered worthy of joining the crew. Now, what happens next is really interesting and perfectly illustrates this second path of syntonizing. One ronin samurai approaches the building but stops just before entering, saying “ahh, no no no, there is a trick here – I will not enter.” His senses were so keen that he could tell there was someone just inside waiting to pounce on him even before he entered the building. He was immediately recruited.
The sort of anticipatory sense-ability involved in this second path of syntonizing can indeed be trained and cultivated. But to my way of understanding, truly awakened connection requires both paths — that of going in and quieting, and that of opening out and enlivening — and it requires them in simultaneity. Awakening to our sacred mission is all about dancing both of these two paths at once.
See my article on “Are You Available? Augmenting Access to the Akasha Dimension” featured at the bottom of the Syntony Starter Kit page for more on these two paths.
Recuerdos del Porvenir – memories of things yet to come
(title of a novel by Mexican journalist and screenwriter, Elena Garro)
Awakening to Humanity’s Sacred Mission is a re-membering of our roles and response-abilities as dancers in the cosmic jam session that has been playing since time immemorial. Time to shake a mean leg – or perhaps a more gentle, loving, and mystery-imbued one. Session 5 on Day Three of the symposium was focused on what became the Embody & Engage session, though I had originally designed it as a session to move from Vision to Action through the theme of “Practices of Interconnection: embodying and enacting our Sacred Mission.” I wanted to move beyond words into sensing sacredness, living into the ideas and words of the Visionary Speakers in the first part of the session — or rather, letting their words and ideas live in and through us. The participatory, immersive, experiential activities of the second portion of Session 5 were designed to help us sense into our individual and shared Sacred Mission — as “human tuning forks” engaging our sense of coherence, of resonance, and in the process, cultivating our Syntony Sense.
In any event, the idea behind the whole thing was to start with this vision-casting symposium and to use it to galvanize an action-engaging movement. That is, to go from the Awakening to Humanity’s Sacred Mission Symposium into another stage of Birthing Humanity’s Sacred Mission Movement. To do this, we realized that embodying and engaging were not enough, though they were a useful shorthand for the full process that flows as follows:
Embrace → Engage → Emerge → Empower → Embody → Enact → Evolve
Now there’s a dance challenge worth of Homo Sapiens syntonicus!
Joining the Sacred Dance
At the end of the three days, we were reminded that this is not the end of anything at all. Rather, it should be seen as the beginning of a movement where, together, we embody and engage in the dance of humanity’s sacred mission. It had become clear that Humanity’s Sacred Mission is not a destination. It is not an objective to be attained. Rather, it is a way of being, of breathing, of being danced.
I realized that it is truly a matter of humaning well every day, from moment to moment. When it becomes a regular way of being, there is no difference between the individual/personal Sacred Mission and Humanity’s Sacred Mission. This is a wonderful way to embody and enact the syntony quest.
If you’re feeling the rhythm pulse through you and you’ve got the urge to dance and be danced, come join us on the dance floor at Jon Ramer’s amazing interactive Kumu map. By clicking on the ‘focus’ button in the legend on the top right, you’ll be able to zoom into any circle you select and see all the people, organizations, and initiatives swinging and swaying together!
To see what this event was all about, check this link on my Events Page where you will find a recording of the session that I designed and ran.
