Cognitive blindness: We simply do not see what we do not see. That is not to say that we don’t see shapes, colors, light and dark, etc. But we don’t see meaning and context unless living and learning has modified our structures. Maturana calls this structural coupling.

There is a direct connection between what you feel when you do a behavior and the likelihood that you will repeat the behavior in the future.

We need to move from competitive ideation, trying to push our individual ideas, to collective ideation, collaborative ideation. It isn’t about having the number one best idea, but having ideas that come from, and work for, more people.

When we speak of systemic change, we need to be fractal. Fractals—a way to speak of the patterns we see—move from the micro to macro level. The same spirals on sea shells can be found in the shape of galaxies. We must create patterns that cycle upwards. We are microsystems.

We heal ourselves, and we heal in relationship, and from that place, simultaneously, we create more space for healed communities, healed movements, healed worlds. What I offer here are the core ways I have tapped into my own power and wholeness, and ways I have supported others to tap into their own wholeness and transformation. And fractal strategy suggests wholeness in our organizers yields wholeness in our

future.

I am a fan of being creative and self-directive with practices. What are the practices you need to line your life up with your values and beliefs?

Pattern disrupting.

I know I am always whole theoretically, but I don’t always feel that way, I feel half sometimes, I feel fragmented sometimes, messy. Being whole includes owning all of that as me. When I am feeling fragmented or limited, seeing any of my friends in their wholeness reminds me of my own capacity. And as I stand in my wholeness, which includes being more honest with myself and others about what I want and who I am in the world, it exerts a pressure on others, both to receive me and to become more whole in themselves. This disrupts those

familiar diminishing patterns in my friends and in myself, the internalization of a world that has rejected every aspect of my identity at some point. Counter rejection. Still I rise. And new patterns become possible, more interconnected and interdependent patterns that rely on being open.