Regenerative Geometry of Vital Intelligence
Enso · Ouroboros · Torus · Holarchy · Prosocial Evolution
1. Why Geometry and Symbol Belong in VIM
The Vital Intelligence Model (VIM) treats intelligence as recursive: systems that sense themselves, model themselves, and update themselves in response to experience. Across cultures and sciences, this recursion keeps appearing in geometric and mythic forms:
The ensō – a circle painted in one breath within Zen traditions, sometimes open, sometimes closed, associated with emptiness, wholeness, and wabi-sabi imperfection ( Wikipedia).
The ouroboros – the serpent that circles back to its own tail, a symbol in alchemy and Jungian psychology of self-devouring, self-renewal, and shadow integration (Wikipedia, Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis).
The torus – a donut-shaped field where energy and information flow in, circulate, and flow out again, used in Dirk Meijer’s nested toroidal models of brain–field consciousness (Meijer & Geesink, 2017).
The holarchy – nested wholes (cells → organs → persons → groups → institutions → biosphere) connected by multi-level feedback, central to D.S. Wilson’s multilevel selection theory and Elinor Ostrom’s work on commons governance (Wilson et al., 2020; Ostrom, 1990).
In VIM, these are not religious claims; they are symbolic lenses on real dynamics in nervous systems, groups, and AI-mediated infrastructures.
2. Enso & Ouroboros – Recursive Shadow Integration
Enso: Open Wholeness and the White Gap
The ensō is a single, continuous brushstroke that forms a circle. Sources note that it can be open or closed, with the open form emphasizing motion, incompleteness, and the beauty of imperfection.
VIM focuses on the open ensō because it visually encodes:
Wholeness, not perfection – The circle holds stress, regulation, reconnection, and response in one gesture.
Impermanence and flow – The stroke is drawn once; there are no edits. It mirrors the nervous system as an ever-changing process rather than a static object.
The white gap as recursive pause – The deliberate opening at the top represents the moment of awareness:
The system recognizes itself: “This is a pattern.”
It can choose not to repeat the same conditioned response.
New possibilities emerge before the next loop begins.
In VIM, this gap is the space between Respond and the next Recognize in the Regenerative Cycle—the contemplative pause where experience is digested into new capacity.
Ouroboros: Shadow Integration and Feedback
The ouroboros—a serpent encircling and biting its own tail—appears in alchemical texts as a symbol of self-referential transformation. Jung describes it as a dramatic image of the psyche “devouring itself” and turning itself into a circulatory process, integrating opposites and shadow material into a new wholeness (Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis).
Key qualities:
Self-reference and feedback – The serpent closes a loop with itself: old forms become food for new forms.
Integration of opposites – Light and shadow, conscious and unconscious, creation and destruction coexist in one continuous body.
Death–rebirth of patterns – The ouroboros “kills and renews” itself at the level of form: old ego configurations, built around prior experiences and survival needs, are dissolved and re-organized into more integrated, less defensive patterns of self.
In VIM terms, the ouroboros symbolizes feedback loops that include shadow: cycles in which trauma, conflict, and depletion are not expelled or denied, but metabolized into wisdom and new structure.
Regenerative Cycle as Living Enso/Ouroboros
Read through this lens, the Regenerative Cycle—Recognize → Release → Reconnect → Respond—becomes a living ouroboros drawn as an open ensō:
Recognize – Stress enters the system and the pattern is named.
Release – Guided regulation cools physiological and emotional energy so it can be felt and processed.
Reconnect – Presence and co-regulation restore coherence across the system (self, others, environment).
Respond – Creative output and structural adjustments embody what has been learned.
The stroke of the ensō is this full loop of experience. The gap at the top is the choice point: repeating the past or returning with deeper intelligence. Recursive intelligence lives at this opening.
3. Torus – Flows of Energy and Information
Dirk Meijer and colleagues describe consciousness as supported by scale-invariant, nested toroidal couplings of energy and information fields surrounding and interacting with the brain (Meijer & Geesink, 2017). A torus can be imagined as a donut-shaped field:
Energy/information enter through one pole,
Circulate around the surface,
Exit/Return through the other pole in continuous exchange with environment.
In VIM, the Regenerative Cycle can be visualized as a meridian on this torus:
The outer path traces the visible cycle: Recognize → Release → Reconnect → Respond.
The inner return carries the informational update:
Natural Intelligence (NI) updates its predictions about safety, belonging, and agency.
Artificial / Agentic Intelligence (AI) is revised in light of real human and ecological impacts, constraints, and ethical commitments.
Over many loops, the system does not merely go in circles; it spirals around the torus, gradually reshaping the whole field of Vital Intelligence.
4. Carbon & Silicon – Two Substrates, Shared Geometry
Beneath NI and AI lie different elemental substrates:
Carbon-based NI
Carbon forms chains and rings (such as benzene), whose geometry and vibration support complex organic chemistry and, eventually, nervous systems.
Brains and bodies are carbon-based oscillators expressing pink-noise rhythms and fractal dynamics.
Silicon-based AI
Silicon forms crystalline lattices used in semiconductor devices.
Transistor networks and integrated circuits implement digital computation via controlled electron flows.
VIM does not collapse these differences—but it notes a deep rhyme:
Both carbon and silicon become intelligent through geometry and flow: rings, lattices, fields, and feedback loops.
The Regenerative Cycle is a place where these substrates interact:
Carbon-based nervous systems feel stress, regulate, co-regulate, and respond.
Silicon-based systems can either
amplify dysregulation (e.g., outrage-feeding recommendation loops), or
support regeneration (e.g., tools for breathwork, NVC practice, prosocial coordination and decision support).
VIM’s trauma-informed, somatic emphasis keeps NI at the center while inviting AI into the toroidal field as a potential partner rather than a master.
5. Jung, Kekulé, and Symbolic Pathways into Science
The ouroboros has already shaped scientific understanding:
Alchemists used it as a symbol of self-referential transformation of the prima materia.
Jung reads it as an image of the psyche integrating shadow through feedback over time.
German chemist August Kekulé famously reported that a dream of a snake biting its own tail catalyzed his insight into the ring structure of benzene—a key step in modern organic chemistry.
This lineage matters for VIM because it shows that:
Symbolic imagination often precedes formal equations.
Unconscious geometric models (circles, rings, spirals, tori) can guide the evolution of rational world-models.
Today’s challenge is to let symbol, soma, and silicon inform each other, instead of allowing a narrow, purely rationalistic image of intelligence to dominate AI and institutional design.
The Regenerative Cycle is one such bridge: a way to translate symbolic insight and embodied felt sense into explicit models and design principles for NI–AI systems.
6. Holarchy & Multilevel Selection – From Individuals to Groups to Planet
VIM situates the Regenerative Cycle inside a holarchic, multilevel selection frame:
Holarchy: individuals nested in groups, groups nested in institutions, institutions nested in ecosystems and the biosphere.
Multilevel selection: prosocial groups that regulate self-interest and care for the common good can outcompete groups organized around pure dominance and extraction (Atkins et al, 2019; Wilson et al., 2020).
Ostrom’s core design principles: robust commons-governing groups share features like clear boundaries, fair decision-making, monitoring and feedback, graduated responses to harm, conflict-resolution processes, and nested governance (Ostrom, 1990).
Within VIM, these principles are not just governance rules; they are extensions of the Regenerative Cycle up the holarchy:
Individuals practice self-regulation and shadow integration (Recognize → Release → Reconnect → Respond).
Groups adopt prosocial norms, non-violent communication (NVC), and conflict repair practices that mirror the same cycle.
Institutions and platforms learn to update policies and infrastructures in response to trauma signals and ecological feedback, rather than suppressing them.
Trauma-informed shadow work becomes an evolutionary driver:
Dysregulated individuals and groups tend toward zero-sum competition and authoritarian simplifications of complex realities.
Trauma-informed groups build capacity for somatic regulation, NVC, and shared meaning-making about stress signals.
In this sense, stress is information:
At the individual level, physiological stress (heart rate, breath, tension) signals predictive overload or misalignment.
At the group level, conflict and burnout signal design flaws in incentives, narratives, and power structures.
At the planetary level, ecological breakdown is a macro-level stress signal about our collective world-model.
The Regenerative Cycle teaches us to treat stress as data, not as an enemy—to integrate shadow rather than numb it.
7. Universal Kindness as the Lowest-Energy Configuration
From a thermodynamic and evolutionary perspective, VIM proposes:
Universal kindness is the lowest-energy configuration for Humanity.
Not kindness as sentimentality, but as:
Minimal friction in social interactions (less chronic fight/flight/freeze).
More efficient coordination across scales (less wasted energy in conflict and mistrust).
Stable prosocial equilibria where multilevel selection favors groups that care for their members and their environments.
In a holarchic, toroidal field of Vital Intelligence:
Kindness and co-regulation reduce the energy cost of being together.
Trust allows information to flow more freely (less defended bandwidth).
Trauma-informed shadow work keeps the system near criticality—flexible, responsive, creative—rather than locked in collapse or chaos.
NI and AI together can help us steer toward this low-energy, high-wisdom configuration:
NI brings embodied sensitivity, moral intuition, and relational depth.
AI, properly constrained and guided, can help us sense patterns, simulate futures, and coordinate action without dehumanizing the substrates that make any of this possible.
Through this lens, the Regenerative Cycle—read through enso, ouroboros, torus, and holarchy—is VIM’s way of saying:
We can evolve with our technologies if we honor the body, the shadow, and the circle— using every loop of stress and disruption as fuel for deeper collective kindness.
References
Ensō. (n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enso
Ouroboros. (n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros
Jung, C. G. (1963). Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy. Princeton University Press.
Meijer, D. K. F., & Geesink, H. J. H. (2017). Consciousness in the Universe is Scale Invariant and Implies an Event Horizon of the Human Brain. Neuroquantology, 15(3), 41–79. Link:
Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press.
Atkins, P. W. B., Wilson, D. S., & Hayes, S. C. (2019). Prosocial: Using evolutionary science to build productive, equitable, and collaborative groups. Oakland, CA: Context Press / New Harbinger Publications.
Wilson, D. S., Philip, M. M., MacDonald, I. F., Atkins, P. W. B., & Kniffin, K. M. (2020). Core design principles for nurturing organization-level selection. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 13989. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70632-8
Brown, R. P., & Gerbarg, P. L. (2012). The healing power of the breath: Simple techniques to reduce stress and anxiety, enhance concentration, and balance your emotions. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications.
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