What is a wisdom community? To us, wisdom is the process of both intellectual and intuitive knowing that brings us toward the experience of the interconnectedness of life. By community, we mean a group that is too big for people to easily see each other if they sit in a circle around a big room yet small enough for many members to have a strong ongoing sense of belonging to the group.

So, a wisdom community is a medium to large group of people who are learning to live as if they are truly interconnected as one family. Each person takes responsibility for living the life that is true for them and for supporting what is for the highest good of the collective. The tension between individual autonomy and the collective good has long been a cultural dilemma that has been balanced differently throughout time and place in human history. As we study wisdom community behavior around the world today, we are heartened to find many success stories of people in communities everywhere that are pioneering patterns for healthy integration of the needs of the individual and of the group.

These wisdom community patterns seem to reflect how people relate to each other rather than what they do together. Healthy co-existence appears to depend more on a way of being together from which wise doing just naturally happens. For the sake of simplicity, we summarize these patterns in the form of our WisdomSpace mascot, a bear cub named LARS. L.A.R.S stands for Listen, Appreciate, Respect, and Share. L.A.R.S. represents the attitude of curiosity, openness, and compassion which creates the safe space required for wisdom to flourish at any social level. More information about wisdom community patterns is presented in the Patterns of Wisdom Communities section.

A simple model of wisdom community dynamics is shown below.

Wisdom Community Dynamics model

A wisdom community begins within an individual.  It takes a person committed to the wisdom journey to do their own inner personal work so that they have the skills and the capacity to work with both the interior and the exterior dimensions at the group and larger community levels.

Wisdom community evolution begins in the interior dimension within an individual. It starts with a personal yearning for healing, for wholeness, for interconnection.

As the person learns to listen, appreciate, respect, and share more deeply in their personal life, the deeper wisdom effects ripple throughout all the communities in which they participate. The reverse is also true. As communities grow wiser as a whole, the deeper wisdom effects ripple through each of their members’ lives.

A wisdom community could start with you.

Integral Community Healing & Development

We believe that some of the most mysterious experiences of deep connectedness and collective wisdom in a community occur when attention is paid to building connections between community members on this "being" level, or what we call the "subtle" plane of consciousness. We call building these connections community "healing." We believe the community healing is necessary before healthy community development or growth can occur. 

The WisdomSpace library books on Developing Collective Wisdom in groups and communities and networks contain many resources for community healing & development.

Our specific focus in WisdomSpace is to inspire and host community healing events. These are simple yet powerful times when people gather with the specific intention of healing their community. These events might be "listening" events, where people meditate, pray, sit quietly, or whatever method works for them to support community peace. Research shows that meditation & prayer events have tangible, statistically significant effects on the health and harmony within the community.  Community healing events can also be "doing" events such as dances, marathons, celebrations, or strategic planning which have specific intention to heal their community.  We encourage integral community healing events which honor both community healing and development.