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 Synergism and the Cosmic Human-- in Cosmology, Philosophy, & Spirituality

Synergism and the Biological Human-- in Anatomy/Physiology, & Biosphere (symbiosis, bio-diversity in ecosystems, etc.)

Synergism and the Social Human-- in Social Basics, in Economics, in Health and Health Care, in Aesthetics, & in Culture

  1. Total Human Development and Harmony Through Synergism

  2. Holistic Health Care and Medicine

  3. Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature 

  4. Sense of History and Sense of Mission

  5. Civics and Democratic Governance

  6. Culture as Community Creativity

  7. Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education

  8. Gender Sensitivity, Equality & Harmony

  9. Reconstructive/Restor-ative Justice

10. Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development

11. Synergetic Leadership and Organizations

12. Appropriate/Adaptive Technology

13. Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships

14. Human Dignity and Human Harmony: Human Rights and Peace

15. Aesthetics Without Boundaries: 'Art from the Heart'   

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The Human Freedom
To Grow and Flow

By Ed Aurelio C. Reyes  

Lead Founder and current Executive Director, SanibLakas ng Taongbayan Foundation; and Executive Convenor and Network-Building Consultant, Lambat-Liwanag Network for Empowering Paradigms

The article below was written as an introductory summary for the presentation of the fifteen "empowering paradigms" (see left column for the list).

THE FILIPINO articulation of this is very simple: “Magpakatao at Makipagkapwa-tao.” Fully self-actualize as a human being and relate accordingly with the fellow human beings. Some questions now follow for us to answer honestly: Have we been doing these as basic to our human dignity? Are we being enabled and encouraged to do these? Or are we allowing ourselves to be prevented, by various formal and informal institutions, from doing these?

Full self-actualization as a human being would require the removal of the artificial but very effective ceilings that restrict human growth, the growth of each person’s physical, mental, and spiritual capabilities.

These ceilings have unjustifiably impaired the use and the growth of individual persons’ multifaceted capabilities, including the capability to challenge the claimed logic and seeming impenetrability of these limitations on the human spirit, mind and body.

Relating accordingly with other human beings would require the breakdown of all the artificial but effective walls of division among human beings that impede our innate predisposition – as essentially spiritual beings – to embrace one another, and even flow into one another in collectively self-actualizing the profound Oneness of All.

Walls of division reinforce the ceilings that restrict full human growth. There is so much to be learned from one another if we could and would share with one another and listen well to one another. The ceilings, in turn, limit the growth of human wisdom that would have clearly seen fit, much earlier in our continuing evolution as homo sapiens, to dismantle all those walls.

But the ceilings of restriction and the walls of division have even become entrenched in the restrictive and divisive patterns of thinking and behavior. And these restrictive and divisive paradigms, enshrined in cultures and even in some laws, have rendered most human beings powerless and have weighed heavily on further human evolution.

They are now the dominant paradigms in most human societies, and we need to shine the bright light of wisdom in order to subject them to sharp inquiry and real challenge.
 

Empowering Paradigms

A real challenge has been raised by a set of “empowering paradigms” that seek to free human beings and human societies from all the undue restrictions that have weighed heavily on our individual and collective growth for centuries, and that seek, as well, to tear down the walls that had long been erected to divide large groups of people and pit them against one another.

The “Empowering Paradigms” challenge the restrictive and divisive dominant patterns of thinking and behavior and assert the simultaneity of human individuality and human community. Thus they effectively resolve the world’s “ideological divide” during the Cold War years, which saw rival blocs overemphasizing one or the other.
 

SanibLakas Program for Light-Sharing

In pursuit of its overarching program thrust for Human Development and Harmony (HDH), the SanibLakas Foundation has set for itself this mandate: “Educate and facilitate for synergy as many people as possible, in the shortest time possible, to popularize and apply the synergism-oriented paradigm shifts for personnally-rooted human development and harmony,” thus promoting human individual and collective actualization, empowerment and harmony.

It has launched and continually develops its LightSharing Program for Growth and Empowerment, with this two-pronged mandate: “Develop (research collate, refine) and popularize the synergism-oriented paradigm shifts for human development and harmony for personal application, and for academic adoption and social application.”

The first prong, synergizing our learnings from personal experiences, is carried mainly by facilitating personal sharings in earnest conversations (on-line with the LightShare e-mail list group, face-to-face in “sanib-sinag” sessions, or on the phone through our “confidential sharings” service extended to members of the SanibLakas community, also called Pamayanang SanibLakas ng Pilipinas).

The second prong seeks to mainstream the personal-experiences-based learnings to be covered by the realm of academic inquiry, through the projects and activities of the mainly-academe-based Lambat-Liwanag Network for Empowering Paradigms.

Both the personal (micro) and the academic (macro) components of this integrated Light-sharing process and all its sub-processes have to be pursued with determination and clearly intertwined in synergy. Within such intertwining, the personal component stands as the experiential basis and ultimate usefulness of the output, and mobilizing the academic component is the broad-reaching social-mainstreaming mechanism.

We expect to meet with difficulty but we vow to respond with creativity, full clarity and firm determination.