David's Desk is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey. These letters are my personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you wish to share this letter with others, please feel free to do so; however, the material is ©2023 by David Spangler. If you no longer wish to receive these letters, please let us know at info@Lorian.org.
Poiesis
The Greeks, as they say, have a word for it. The word I’m thinking of is poiesis, which means “making.” I first came across this word back in the Seventies as one of the Lindisfarne Fellows. Brought together by the cultural historian and poet, William Irwin Thompson, the Fellowship consisted of a diverse group of biologists, physicists, mathematicians, artists, economists, anthropologists, sociologists, political activists, and spiritual and religious teachers. The uniting thread between us, other than William himself, was a belief that a new cultural paradigm was emerging. This emergence was oriented towards an ecological, holistic, Gaian, and systems view of the world.
One of the Fellows was a Chilian biologist Francisco Varela. He and his associate at the University of Santiago in Chile, Humberto Maturana, were researching life’s capacity to be self-organizing and self-generating. They coined a word for this capacity, shared by all living organisms, and that word was autopoiesis. This combined the two Greek words for self (“auto”) and making (“poiesis”) and thus literally meant “self-making.”
It's a simple but profound idea. Drawing on its internal chemical and metabolic processes combined with energy drawn from the environment, an organism makes itself. In effect, this theory says that a key property of life—perhaps the key property—is its capacity to be self-generating and, within its boundaries, self-maintaining.
Autopoiesis describes a process of incarnation as well. An organizing impulse from the soul (which I call Sovereignty, about which I’ll write more in a future David’s Desk) gathers a variety of energies and substances from a variety of sources (physical, subtle, spiritual, etc.) and weaves them together in a self-generating system that becomes the incarnate individual. Incarnational Spirituality is an exploration of this process, its meaning, and its potential.
There is another “poiesis” involved in incarnation (and in life generally, I believe). To describe this, I took a page from Varela’s playbook and borrowed from the Greeks as well. I coined the term holopoiesis, which means “whole-making” or “wholeness-making.” This represents a force in creation that works to draw things together to create a larger whole. This whole is not simply an aggregation of disparate elements. It is a dynamic system in which the emergent whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Think of yourself–you are more than just the sum of your organs and tissues.
However, my focus here is not on the “auto” or the “holo” but on the “poiesis.” The “self” and the “whole” are wonderful and important themes, but it’s the “making” part that interests me here. Autopoiesis and holopoiesis are natural processes that require no conscious intervention. However, where we are concerned, they are processes in which we can consciously participate and with which we can partner.
Autopoiesis and holopoiesis are active principles. They affirm that we can ourselves be active agents in determining the kind of person we are and the kind of world we inhabit and share.
I find this an empowering idea. It means we have the capacity to determine the kind of person we wish to be in the world. We are not merely victims nor clay to be shaped by others. We can “make” ourselves. We can be self-generating.
Likewise, we can create connectedness, collaboration, and partnership—i.e. wholeness—with the world around us. We can act to enhance and increase the health and wholeness of the world.
In short, we are Makers. Whether the selves and the world we make are positive and creative–or toxic and destructive–is up to us. The future lies in our poietic lap.
A NOTE: If you would like to read more about autopoiesis and the systems view of life, Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi recently published an excellent overview titled THE SYSTEMS VIEW OF LIFE: A UNIFYING VISION. If you would like to read more about holopoiesis and incarnation, my book JOURNEY INTO FIRE is a place to start.
An Experiment
One of the advantages of David’s Desk being digital is that I can do things I couldn’t if it were printed. My Lorian colleague and friend, James Tousignant, and I do podcasts together. He thought it might be interesting to you, my Reader, if he and I were to have a discussion around the theme of that month’s essay and then add the audio at the end. That way, you could both read my thoughts for that month and also listen to me talk about them with James. So, without further ado, here is this month’s conversation. I hope you enjoy it and the added dimension it brings to David’s Desk