The story, the questions, the journey to now. We begin with recognising climate catastrophe, social injustice, economic breakdown, housing crises, agricultural decay, food insecurity as the common global challenges, yet at the base of these disasters is the question, are these simply the result of political forces, or is there something deeper driving these issues? Could it be the way that we look at our world, from a human centric perspective, that provides fertile ground for exploitation, disadvantage, and oppression? We begin with not only realising all that holds us to the human centric system we have built but the process as to why and how this is done. That deep amongst this, lay the firm beliefs we hold that are tying us to the separation from life that we desperately seek. The journey from this point, takes the readers to not only identifying the challenges we are facing, but how it is entwined to our own personal growth and how unravelling the two together can be the inspiring paradigm change we need for our future. It is here we begin to understand that the Living System is actually the language of life that is continually in conversation with us through all that exists, and that our re-membering to life and observing and participation in its language we become whole.

Unravelling through awareness to realisation. This section provides an outline of the journey that encompasses the paradigm shift required to make the changes back into the Living System. It reveals the lemniscate as a visual concept of the process of learning and living, what was, what can be, and allows a starting point of realising how our disconnect has deeply altered not only the course of life and nature, but of humankind itself. That through the course of our own separation we have never truly opened to the sacred threads of life that weave us all as one, and ultimately will bring meaning and perspective to our eco centric future.

The essence of belonging is at the base of the Living System. Acknowledging belonging as the people and place who make us whole, what that looks like and how our separation from the feeling context of all that we are has invited us into deeper wandering down this human centric path, and how in remembering our belonging walks us back to our place. The work around the context of belonging is deeply embedded into the Living System as an inner guide that not only offers us place, but brings us to our greatest community.

Introduction into the Living System revealing what it is, and the connection that has long been held at arms length - to which we belong - and can now allow ourselves to make place amongst again. We traverse here first with what has held us at arms length, the constraints of time and space and how we can return through entrainment. The reader is then drawn to considering how they may again connect with life in a way that will bring the paradigm shift required to catalyse the changes we so sorely need.

The bridge over which we cross through our spiralling lemniscate is that belonging to the Living System. It is in crossing this bridge between the learning and living phases of our unravelling that we can gather the truth of the Living System and as we rise through our realisation off all that we are, seeking to actualise it, we open to the truth of all the Living System holds. Beginning with her values, the reader then embarks into a reunion with all that holds these values in place, the Living System concepts of communion, locality, play, soil / soul / solar system, the terrain and death, known here as life’s cycles.

Fortune telling was once forbidden, yet many still sort answers to their deepest questions, or reminders as to the nature of life. Kings, Queens and the greatest conquerors and rulers all sort an advantage through the unknown, or inspiration through that which can be seen. Their secrets were held close through their source, using only ancient texts, they would open a book to be given guidance to the answers they sort. Inspiring reminders are powerful short glimpses into actions to be taken now that allow us to stay connected to our true course amongst the Living System. Inspiration that allows us to simply be guided in the moment as to how to step in and honour all that we are amongst life. When so much can pull us from our course, reminders of life’s calling allow us to stay true to our path.

The most understated components in bringing the Living System to life is the phase of actualisation. Living into the system itself. What does this mean, and most importantly how do we do it? This is the unwritten phase that we have never crossed into. Highlighted through the text, readers have come to understand that each of us have never known the Living System, never gathered her values and wisdom, and never fully opened ourselves to our greatest potential. In realigning with life, threading ourselves back into nature, we come to understand that what lay ahead of us, depends solely on our actions today. That our paradigm shift is the game changing leverage point that will determine all that is next to come. This shift asks for our dive into feelings and honouring all that we each hold deeply within us, and use our ‘recipes’ of inspiration as poetry to draw out the poet within and start to speak our love to life once more. Offering the final pieces to this journey of becoming, we finalise the book with the steps required towards the inspiring alternative we each seek to create.

The return to the question of what is the inspiring alternative we each will create and how will we begin that journey? Encouraging each of us to begin the process of recognising all that allowed us to arrive here, the systems we were drawn and born into and the one waiting for us to return to. Offering an ending to the text that brings the readers to answer within themselves what will they do now? Also offered are templates to work through this process that provide tools as companions to the journey.