The Quantum Entanglement of Gaianet

A story about finding home through synchronicity

It happened during the Chinese New Year holiday this year. A few months earlier, I had made the decision to give notice at my job as an educator in China, where I was living until a couple of months ago.

I was ready to flow with the intention I had set for the year ahead: to align who I am, where I am, what I do and whom I’m with in order to allow my most authentic self to shine and fulfill my purpose on the planet.

Instead of traveling, I stayed home with my dog to meditate, read, write and reconnect with friends online. I also took time to update my profile on LinkedIn and browse the platform in search of organisations and professionals nurturing human and planetary regeneration.

I was looking for alignment in connection, for community. For the tip of that magical, synchronous string of events which had become so familiar to me since deciding to live in surrender.

One of those new, aligned connections happened with a female educator who invited me for a video call. Talk about synchronicity. No expectations could have foreseen the connection we fostered in the space of the hour we spent discussing regenerative education, spirituality, making bold moves and flowing with the universe; nor the outcomes that unfolded as a result.

Before our call was over, Alice told me about a newly created online platform for heart-centred, purpose-driven changemakers and New Earth catalysts, and invited me to join the community.

She was talking about Gaianet. A global co-creation community of heart-driven individuals and projects where members gather to share their knowledge, experience and resources to heal the planet and co-create a harmonised world for all life on Earth.

“I’ve found home”, I thought after perusing their website and astounding myself at the number, nature and beauty of the projects nestled therein.

Everything was there, in one place. A global alliance for positive planetary transformation and an institute for sustainable food production systems. Abundance-based economic and organisational design, and next-gen software innovations for consumption of products and services in integrity. Open-source societal standards for a global community-type of society. A regenerative digital currency in a decentralised financial ecosystem. And nothing less than a foundation dedicated to building 144 Light Cities on Earth, in which Gaianet will serve as a cloud city, to name a few.

It took me twenty minutes from arriving at the Welcome Town on Gaialand, Gaianet’s community space, watching the first introductory videos, to volunteering in a project that had just been announced: Gaianet’s New Earth Villages & Cities Fractal.

I mean, in my first ayahuasca ceremony a few years ago, I was shown a vision of an online platform to gather and propel planetary regeneration initiatives, and since 2019 I have been visualising a centre for human regeneration in a community-based ecovillage somewhere in the world.

I could have asked myself how it was possible for me to suddenly be at the edge of this watershed of manifestations, witnessing its embracing waters flow through me from afar. But simply sitting in silence with that mysterium fascinosum, in awe of its beauty, seemed much more fitting.

The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant […]. It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of — whom or what? In the presence of that which is a Mystery inexpressible and above all creatures. — Otto Rudolf.

The nonlocality of what I was experiencing and the force with which it was manifesting were the first guttural clues that led me to a realization that, later I understood, composes the very fabric of Gaianet. I had found the tip of that magical string, and it was about to entangle in a beautiful dance of co-creative synchronicities.

. . .

The primary idea in synchronicity, according to Jung, is that there is a unity in diversity or parallelism which is created by a series of so-called acausal coincidences.

The meaningfulness of this connecting principle is known to carry a numinous quality that often leaves us wondering about its engineering mechanisms.

In conversation with Daan Gorter, Alexander Keehnen and Bart Hoorweg, co-founders of Gaianet, they told me that the same phenomenon had been responsible for their coming together.

“It was synchronicity that brought us together”, says Alexander. “I was hosting mastermind sessions for purpose-driven entrepreneurs in the Netherlands, and so was Daan with Tribepreneurs. Because we both think in terms of collaboration rather than competition, we started to ask ourselves what we could co-create. It was in another mastermind session that I met Bart.”

Back then, Bart had told Daan about his seven-year-old vision of a platform where people could meet, share skills and work on creating a more beautiful world together. “I had the vision as I fantasised with a housemate and his brother about how to change the world. We worked on it for some time, but I was quite young and not ready for it. Eventually, I asked myself who I needed to become in my self-development journey, what kind of people I needed to find and where I could find them to bring this into the world. I had been looking for people who were working on solutions, and scouting changemaking locations. I found Daan on LinkedIn and felt a strong resonance with the vision he shared in his videos. There was a beautiful synchronicity in meeting him later.”

Bart was supposed to attend a workshop on synchronicity, but the event was canceled, which created the opportunity for him to join one of Daan’s mastermind tryouts. “Instead of a workshop, life had decided to give me a real synchronicity experience. We felt a strong connection and knew that something was going to happen for us together, that we were going to meet again. A few days later, we had a mastermind session to share our perspectives on the impact of COVID-19 in the world and the needs created by it. Invited by Daan, Alexander joined us for a group session with four other people, which kickstarted the birth of Gaianet.”

Daan had started his mastermind company to gather a network to build a village, knowing that he needed a platform for the project. “When I heard Bart and Alexander talk about their dream, it sounded like what I wanted to create. We had several sessions with other people who were also interested in the project, including our initial co-founders Stefan, Giulia and Reinier, but in the end the three of us stuck together. In our biweekly meetings, we learned about holacracy, how to be in a consent-based space and to speak our truths while getting to know each other deeply. We didn’t just discuss our visions but also our values and our own operating manuals; our strengths, weaknesses, and what triggers each of us. It was about mapping the field of the players, which made it easy to define roles.”

One of the things that binds them, according to Alexander, apart from their shared vision, is their willingness to take action. “We know we increase our chances of meeting people by showing up in events where we’re prone to experiencing synchronicity. You can feel it already boiling below the surface. It was only a matter of time until the spark would occur. What strikes me is the beauty of the similarity of the visions that came through each of us individually, at different times.”

The idea came to Alexander from a systems approach, but it evolved to something much more purpose-driven, meaningful and aligned as a result of a lot of fine-tuning. “We took the time to develop a mission statement we felt was our life’s purpose and the reason why we are in this world. To this day, we return back to our shared vision and mission and affirm our understanding of the essence of what we are doing.”

We often dream about people from whom we receive a letter by the next post. I have ascertained on several occasions that at the moment when the dream occurred the letter was already lying in the post-office of the addressee. ― C.G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle

. . .

There seems, indeed, to be an underlying quality amongst people who experience synchronicity. It is anecdotally reported that the phenomenon is most experienced by those who walk the path of self-development, of inner and outer action in response to their unique needs, desires and visions.

Coming from backgrounds in Aerospace Engineering, Business, and Mechanical Engineering respectively, Daan, Alexander and Bart attribute their shift from a mind-centred existence towards a heart-led life to their pursuit of self-development and the spiritual awakening and synchronicities that followed.

A self-identified need to advance his social skills and the realization that he felt out of place in the world because the world was out of place were the catalysts for Daan’s personal development journey. “That path led me to understanding the concept of purpose and looking for something that would make my heart burn from aliveness.”

After experimenting with different plant medicines, Daan participated in a shamanic ayahuasca ceremony in which, for the first time, he experienced his soul. “ I felt my light body disconnected from my physical experience. I felt the heartbeat of Mother Earth, an overwhelming unconditional love for the planet and all of humanity, and an indescribable rush of energy through my body. I had no clue what that meant, but I knew I had found what I was looking for all my life. From there, I was catapulted into an acceleration of full-time personal growth. Inspired by the Venus Project, that journey ignited my desire to help humanity get out of the current system we live in. That’s how the Village of the Future came to life and I ended up co-creating Gaianet and co-initiating the Light Cities project in Brazil. By following my heart.”

The analogy by Alan Watts which describes the universe as "the playground where God plays hide-and-seek" is what resonated most deeply with Bart in his self-development journey. But there were several limiting beliefs and social expectations he had to move through during the process of following his heart. “To become aware of them is the first step towards learning how to navigate them. Facing fear of judgement to step into that space and move with the unknown required a lot of courage from me. That made me feel alone at first, but it gave me a highly valuable perspective to approach life.”

For Alexander, the process of self-development ultimately brought him to a place of exponential growth and deep gratitude. “Life is a thousand times more beautiful than my wildest imagination from thirteen years ago when I first started my self-transformation.”

From their lived experiences and knowledge about the power of heart coherence in nurturing our intuitive guidance, the three co-founders also share an empiric understanding that manifestations can only happen from one place.

“It’s a no-brainer to manifest from the heart”, says Bart. “My life became one big sequence of synchronistic experiences where the right opportunities and people appear if I come from the heart and I’m courageous enough to take action. That is one of the essential ways we operate on Gaianet. We listen to our hearts, let them show the way as we renew our courage to take action. Once you do that, the Universe starts working for you. And if you do that with more people, it creates an explosion of synchronicities.”

“When we are really vibrating at the heart frequency and are all in coherence, for example when people are meditating, breathing or co-creating in a state of flow, we can get group coherence. If we do that in a bigger network, we can get supercoherence. That’s what we aim for with Gaianet”, says Daan.

One of the most beautiful things about Gaianet is the possibility it has given us to experience love together. — Bart Hoorweg

Gaianet is where earth regenerators, village builders, self-love communicators, healers, artists, social entrepreneurs, wisdom keepers, storytellers, permaculture specialists, futurists and visionaries find and uplift each other.

It’s also a place where people who want to move out of the current system yet don’t know how to build a new future meet, support, and inspire each other. It’s a place where connection happens from a soul space in which everybody feels safe, at home.

“We have been building a trusting community thanks to our initiation steps, which allows us to see that, in their core, our members know we are all one. Everything we do and design on Gaianet is set up for ultimate purpose drive and unlimited scalability through an operating system for highly conscious individuals and organisations to self-organise and work on their mission”, says Alexander. “By using our resources and expertise base to propel diverse visions, our purpose-specific fractals are built to stimulate synchronicity between changemakers on a global scale.”

. . .

Since joining the platform, I’ve made invaluable friends and found an incredibly conscious and supportive community. I’ve had the opportunity to contribute to a regenerative education project as an educational consultant and to join a decentralized, regenerative financial ecosystem. I’ve found connection.

As a Gaianet community contributor, I’ve had the chance to put my love of writing in service of helping leverage the visibility of a festival about building regenerative villages and Gaianet itself. I’ve met people from different parts of the world and angles of the Regenerative Renaissance and New Earth movements and experienced a new paradigm, one in which the living understanding of our interconnectedness ignites heart-centred co-creations for a better world.

The newfound need for alignment with the self I had both cultivated and witnessed grow over the years revealed questions which brought about answers I had many times entertained, but never with the breadth and depth they were presenting themselves to me at the beginning of this year.

It was by identifying a state of disconnection and incoherence between my surroundings and me, and realising the resulting voidness of life of my inner landscapes at that point of my journey, that the need to explore and honour my authenticity and purpose in their full bloom showed up stronger than ever.

My spiritual awakening had brought me to the edge of the deepest unknown I had faced so far. As I looked inward, I realized that the edge of that abyss was in reality the tip of that string which was set aflame once I honoured and stepped into the knowingness of my heart.

Whether your personal development journey has brought you to the edge of an abyss from which you need to take a big leap or simply to a door on which you need to knock, Gaianet is a place where you can land on a feather bed or find the feeling of walking into the soul space of a warm home. Where the tip of your string will entangle with other strings and birth an alchemical helix of synchronicities.

Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.” ― Terence McKenna

To join Gaianet, go to www.gaianet.earth/get-involved and follow your heart.

…

Written by Gaianet member Barbara Lima, Regenerative Education & Culture Catalyst | Writer | Artist