Never before has there been such a sense of urgency to transform society and save our planet, and with good reason. Civilization is on a cliff’s edge, precariously balanced between a breakdown or breakthrough in our cultural and spiritual evolution. Our social, financial and environmental systems are deteriorating, a global pandemic is wreaking havoc on our daily lives and cultural and social wounds that have been festering for hundreds of years are in urgent need of attention. The challenges can seem insurmountable most days, but there is hope.

A global movement guided by the emerging principles of what has been called the new paradigm is gaining momentum. This transformative shift represents the emergent norm of our highest human values, representing the altruistic nature of our species at its best. It encompasses hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of individuals, nonprofits, small community groups and organizations all in motion working to change the fundamental nature of society.

To achieve this transformative shift will require a movement with a unifying worldview outlined by defining principles that give us hope, meaning and evolutionary direction. Poised at the bifurcation point of our species’ breakdown or breakthrough, it is critical our global family finds consensus in shifting our cultural values from “me,” to “we,” to “all.” A transformative movement of this magnitude needs a name to rally around, one I propose calling the Holomovement.

Finding a Sense of Hope within the Holomovement

I first came across the term “holomovement” nearly 40 years ago while reading “Wholeness and the Implicate Order,” a book written by American physicist David Bohm. Published in 1980, Bohm described the universe as an unbroken wholeness of the totality of existence: an undivided, flowing movement without borders. The holomovement, as explained by Bohm, was “a holistic understanding of our universe as a manifestation of the consciousness of our universe.” 

At the core of our universe is the implicate order, the field of consciousness and multidimensional reality of oneness that creates our world. The physical manifestation of how we perceive the universe is the explicate order. The holomovement is what weaves the two together. 

While this description was first used to describe the physical explanation of our universe, Bohm went on to apply it to cosmology and even the source of consciousness. For Bohm, the term describes the flow of the unbounded wholeness of reality, including an openness to apply it to the evolution of consciousness and social organization. In today’s context it can be seen as both a spiritual calling and a sociological branding for the so-called “movement of movements” to resolve our planetary crisis. 

In recognition of Bohm’s vision and the subsequent realization of the synergistic energy arising, the term “holomovement” perfectly describes the sociological phenomenon underlying the worldwide movement towards unity. Aligned under the whole world view of the Holomovement, we reawaken to our true spiritual nature serving the coherence of new paradigm thought. 

A Holotropic Attractor Guiding Us Toward Unity

More than a catchy name, the Holomovement, as applied to our current times, represents radical collaboration in action, founded in love, with a collective mission that continues to honor the autonomy of each of our diverse purpose-driven efforts. Guided by both science and spirituality and propelled by a sense of purpose, I, alongside a group of thought leaders, envision the Holomovement as a rallying cry for this grand movement to take root, grow and bloom into the new structure of our collective consciousness. 

Throughout history there have been cultural revolutions, yet we’re still struggling to give people their basic rights, freedoms and services required for human dignity upon which a transformed society can be built. Anger and frustration might fuel a movement, but it is love and compassion that will foster and sustain true transformation. 

We need a unifying worldview that bridges religions, race, nationality and cultural values. Within the Holomovement, we outline 8 core principles to create a coherent and inclusive vision and message. Alongside these foundational tenets, we also call upon the wisdom traditions to guide us in their long-held understanding of wholeness in our interconnected web of life. By embodying these principles, we can also explore the nature of this Holomovement through the threads of cosmology, psychology and sociology. 

Holomovement 8 Core Principles:

1. Interconnected Wholeness. Although dazzlingly complex and multidimensional, the cosmos is a single, living process, profoundly interconnected and sacred in its Oneness. 

2. A Conscious Living Universe. Dynamic and alive, the universe arises from a source of consciousness, offering each of us meaning within our interconnected wholeness.

3. Purposeful Evolution. The Interconnected Whole is evolutionary in its conscious awareness of existence, engaging in a purposeful evolution of its own nature. Over time, the cosmos, the earth and all living things develop increasing levels of complexity, interconnectedness, coherence, cooperation and consciousness. 

4. Wholesomeness as Our Natural State of Being. All of reality, including individual beings and social and cultural systems tend to be attracted to health, wholeness and the mutual flourishing of life and consciousness. Seemingly “evil” motives and behaviors are not fundamental to human nature, but rather an unbalanced state dominated by materialism and a sense of separation.

5. A Self-Healing Cosmos. Our existential civilizational Meta-Crisis (of climate, culture, society, economics, and more) is naturally coinciding with a widespread awakening of virtuous social projects, analogous to an immune response. These contrasting forces, or levels of consciousness, although challenging, offer the necessary impulse to propel our ongoing evolution. 

6. Embodying the Holomovement. David Bohm coined the term “holomovement” to describe how undivided wholeness is expressed in every seemingly separate entity, event and action. “The Holomovement” is an apt name representing the diverse sociocultural movement toward a just, fulfilling and sustainable human presence on Earth and within the cosmos. 

7. Prior Unity in Action. The Holomovement is not a project to unite diverse efforts, but an inherent expression of the nature of reality and its collaborative coherence converging into unity while simultaneously respecting the autonomy of individual and group endeavors.

8. Cosmological, Individual and Sociological Dimensions. The Holomovement is a name for the action of the undivided cosmos working to reassert health and wholeness in the face of the crises of fragmentation. This cosmological process becomes conscious and is enacted at the level of individual human beings, first through psychological and spiritual transformation, and then as transformed behavior that can scale to transform human groups, organizations, systems and societies. Both individuals and groups can awaken to and choose to participate more consciously and effectively in the inherent activity of the Holomovement. 

Radical Collaboration in Action 

At the heart of this unifying worldview is the belief that we live in a purposeful and conscious universe. Unfortunately, material wealth is the current metric in which we measure our value, and we’ve been duped into believing success and happiness are linked to our net worth. So much of our collective frustration, anxiety and fear is a result of this rampant materialism. We long for purpose and meaning, but these materialistic habits distract us from awakening to the spiritual essence of who we all are. 

It’s time for a spiritual revolution from the inside out. One that is ignited by peace and love and manifests in purposeful social action. Despite the illusion that we are all separate, the implicate order is wholeness and there is an attraction to bring us back to wholeness, or as Dr. Ervin Laszlo suggests, our driving evolutionary force operates as a “holotropic attractor.”

In his recent book “Reconnecting to the Source,” Laszlo breaks down the term into parts, “holo” meaning the whole, the all and “tropic” meaning the orientation or the tendency, “holotropic” is defined as a fundamental, orienting drive toward wholeness. 

An “attractor” is something that lures us onward: purpose, love, ideals or truth, beauty, goodness. It is what creates order when chaos is involved. 

Within this context, the Holomovement is the material manifestation of this flow toward oneness, the holotropic attractor leading civilization out of chaos and back to our natural state of harmony. 

Cosmologically, psycho-spiritually and sociologically, the Holomovement is quite literally a movement of the whole towards truth, beauty and goodness. In a similar fashion as to how yin and yang make Taoist philosophy an interconnected and flowing whole, the Holomovement weaves the spiritual and material into a unified field of collective consciousness. 

Our earliest ancestors, with their close connection to the natural and spiritual world, understood the essence of the whole world view as we are now exploring it, based upon a purposeful and conscious universe. Now is the time to merge the understandings of our elders with our knowledge of quantum reality such as proposed by David Bohm, and fuse it all into a grand, worldwide movement for social renewal.

Though the ideal of a thriving and vibrant community is shared with most of our global family, awakening to our interconnectedness proves to be much more complex and challenging. Disillusioned by a sense of separation, we’ve lost our way. Materialism has seeped into our relationships creating a subtle, transactional expectation prompting the unconscious question of “what’s in it for me?” So ingrained is this materialistic mindset, most of us have difficulty avoiding this way of operating. 

In the same way Bohm described the implicate and explicate order moving in an unbroken whole, each of us are entwined as co-creators within our evolutionary flow. We are moving beyond the transactional nature of relationships and embodying the transformative power of deep spiritual connection. The good news is the Holomovement is endemic to everything we do. It is consciousness flowing in the universe, through us and the manifestations of our souls. Thankfully, we don’t have to “find it” but rather slow down and drop into a mindful place of deep knowing and feel the force of love that weaves our humanity together. 

The Holomovement is living and flowing through each of us and we can no longer afford to fall back into habits of complacency, ignorance and denial. So profound is our entangled connection with people and planet there is no distinction between who is suffering. Ultimately, we all feel its effects.

What is possibly the most challenging transformative step in solving the current crisis of our world is exactly what we must do to see positive change. It is imperative that we form and nurture relationships across all divides and belief systems if we are to rediscover our collective sense of purpose and spiritual worth. Love and compassion are not finite resources within the flow of the Holomovement. In fact, the more we connect with others through goodwill, compassion, joy and curiosity, the more abundant these qualities become. 

A Commitment in Tending Our Spiritual Commons

Tending our spiritual commons can no longer be the work of a few. The Holomovement and its unifying world view envisions a spiritual shift embraced by the mainstream. As interconnected groups around the globe, we are inspired to coalesce the rise of human consciousness and resolve the challenges we face in this singular moment of history. Finding inspiration and energy within the Holomovement helps us to better understand our true purpose, thereby accelerating our evolution towards our highest principles as we simultaneously surrender to the collective pull of prior unity.

Imagine the beauty and wonder and feeling of flow that we could experience if 7 billion people, acting with compassion and purpose, moved together in phase for the good of the whole.

Each of us has a soul-based purpose to contribute within this diverse sociocultural movement to restore the dignity and integrity of humanity as a functioning whole. Now is the time for human consciousness to find its purpose and put it into practice, every day, hour, minute. This is the call to action in following our individual purpose toward the greater good of our oneness.