The Wild Mountain Collective shares similar aims to the Liology Institute, which flows from the work of Jeremy Lent, author of The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning.  Below is their explanation of the meaning of Liology and now it can inform our world view.  My favourite quote from Jeremy Lent:

We need to find other sources for meaning in our lives: growing the quality of our experiences rather than our consumption, building our communities together and reconnecting with the natural world.

You can find out more about the Liology Insitute on www.liology.org

Liology (pronounced lee-ology) is a word made up from the Chinese word “li,” which means “the organizing principles” and “ology” which is the Greek-derived word for “study.”  So liology means “the study of the organizing principles.”

You might ask: the organizing principles of what?  The answer: everything.  The complete set of dynamic patterns that make up our entire universe – what the traditional Chinese called the Tao. Instead of the conventional view that our human existence is split between mind and body, liology sees our human organism as an integrated whole, where our thoughts are embodied and our bodies possess an intrinsic intelligence.  Instead of the conventional search for a transcendent source of meaning, liology finds the most profound meaning in life arising from our intrinsic connectedness with every cell and integrated system within our own bodies and with every living entity in the natural world in which we are embedded.

Liology offers a new form of understanding our place in the cosmos with embodied knowledge – knowledge that arises not just from the intellect but from our felt experience that harmonizes intellection and intuition. Liology recognizes no distinction between embodied knowledge and action, leading to an understanding that our ethics arise ultimately from our intrinsic connectivity with the natural world.Humanity as a Fractal Entity

Liology sees humanity as a fractal entity within the natural system of the earth and as such, it impels us to find a sustainable way of existing on the earth in order to thrive.

Liology embraces traditional practices such as meditation and qigong/tai-chi, as well as modern techniques of interpersonal skills and energy management to develop a more integrated experience of our human connectivity.

The core values of liology are love, harmony and kindness.Science and Meaning

Liology sees no fundamental split between rigorous science and the source of meaning in life. Instead, it sees current findings in systems biology and complexity science as pointing the way to understanding our place within the infinitely complex and mysterious natural world in which we have evolved.

In the Foreword to his book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning (2018), Fritjof Capra notes that the scientist Werner Heisenberg (Physics and Philosophy) noted that “The Cartesian partition (of mind and matter) has penetrated deeply into the human mind during the three centuries following Descartes and it will take a long time for it to be replaced by a really different attitude toward the problem of reality.”  Modern cognitive science shows what has long been recognised in Buddhist philosophy: we construct reality through the way we think—through our habituated worldview.  For this reason, one of the central challenges facing humanity is to take a critical review of our worldview and where it has led us, and where it continues to lead us.

The conquest of nature set in motion by the scientific revolution was paralleled by an equally ambitious conquest of the rest of the world by European powers.  This included the conquest of Australia and dispossession of Aboriginal cultures that had lived here in a system of continuous adaptive ecological co-existence with nature since the Ice Age, for more than 60,000 years.[vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1536214910209{margin-top: 10% !important;margin-right: 10% !important;margin-bottom: 10% !important;margin-left: 10% !important;padding-top: 7% !important;padding-right: 7% !important;padding-bottom: 7% !important;padding-left: 7% !important;background-color: #ddd1aa !important;}”]“We are all connected; to each other, biologically.

To the earth, chemically.

To the rest of the universe atomically.

We are not figuratively, but literally stardust.”

~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson