The grades

Curriculum

A grade is not had: it is exercised, and while it is exercised, it is taught.

What a grade is

• Progress in Kosmabeko is not measured by accumulated content but by mastery of the dimensions: by the growing capacity to read, instantiate and balance the processes of the world. There are four grades, one per dimension, and a fifth that integrates them.
• A grade is not a course you pass and leave behind, nor a thing you own. It is a capacity of process that is certified when someone exercises it recognizably, and from that moment on it is bound to be passed on.

The five grades

• Grade
• Verb
• Poles (Kosmahara names)
• Oscillation learned

Entitative

Belonging

Congregant / Singular

being with others / being with oneself

Structural

Bonding

Opener / Guardian

opening channels / setting limits

Energetic

Circulating

Ardent / Silent

kindling / resting

Stochastic

Regulating

Magnifier / Balancer

remaking the rule / upholding it

Hamiltonian

Balancing

all eight

walking both hemispheres

Three registers of competence

Live

The capacity to instantiate both poles of the dimension and to oscillate between them without getting fixed in either. It is the main register and the only essential one in the younger branches.

Read

The capacity to recognize the dimension in real situations —in oneself, in the circle, in nature— and to name it with the vocabulary proper to one's age. In the older branches it includes reading it as part of a landa.

Transmit

The capacity to accompany another, one step behind, through what one has just learned. Without this register there is no grade: it is the clause that closes the cycle.

Grade and depth

• The grades cross the age branches: a member of the Branch of the Pole and one of the Branch of the Systence can both hold the entitative grade, but not with the same depth. Each branch goes through the four grades again at its own level of reading —the pole, the edge, the landa, the systence—, so the grades are not repeated: they are deepened.
• In the Branch of the Pole the grades are walked, by default, in the order of the dimensions —Ξ, Θ, Φ, Ω—, because for a child belonging is the ground on which everything else is built. From the Branch of the Edge on, the order is free. Nobody is obliged to reach all four grades within the same branch.

The goal landa of each grade

Each dimensional grade has a practical goal that the catalog of the 512 names exactly: the cut loop of its dimension, the landa that alternates a pole and its opposite without either prevailing, with the dimension in equilibrium and the other three absent —held as background by the life of the group—. Each dimension has two, depending on which pole is the wrapper.

Yang wrapper

Yin wrapper

The two landas of each pair contain the same poles; what changes is which one is the field of which. In Ontic Respiration the group wraps the singular: being with oneself inside being with others. In Sovereign Sway the singular wraps the group: carrying the others inside being alone. To reach the entitative grade in full depth is to be able to dwell in both.

Each grade, branch by branch

Entitative grade (Ξ): Belonging

The learner learns to aggregate and to singularize: to be part of a body without dissolving and to stand out without isolating. The trial is knowing how to be alone and how to be with others without either destroying you.

The two collapses of belonging

Fusion

The group erases the singular: the one who no longer disagrees, the one who does anything to be accepted, the circle that excludes as a block.

Isolation

The singular loses the body that held it: the one who won't let themselves be welcomed, the one who withdraws from everything.

Pole

Joins group games and holds brief moments of being alone in sight of the circle (their own island).

Says in their own words when «we are all together» and when «each one to their own»; knows the Congregant and the Singular.

Shows a newcomer how the circle opens and closes.

Edge

Holds a role of their own within a team game without dissolving into it; spends half an hour alone and comes back to the group.

Tells what wraps what: «the group contains me» versus «I carry the group with me».

As a custody partner, accompanies a younger member's first welcome.

Landa

Holds the custody of belonging at a camp; mediates when someone is left out; keeps the solitary vigil.

Recognizes fusion and isolation in real situations and names them as landas of the dimensions the situation supports, without inventing the rest.

Prepares a companion for their entitative grade rite.

Systence

Integrates a new circle or rebuilds a fractured one.

Reads the belonging of the branch or of the group over a whole year.

Leads the entitative grade rite of others, with a guide.

Structural grade (Θ): Bonding

The learner learns to open and close channels: to weave networks, to build and maintain, to set and respect limits. The trial is knowing how to create a structure that holds and how to open it when it has closed too much.

The two collapses of the bond

Dispersion

Everything open at once, nothing finished, no limit to protect the focus.

Ossification

The closed habit that no longer lets anything new through, the circle that welcomes no one, the entry rule that turned into a wall.

Pole

Builds a stick hut with others; respects the limits of the play area; says «yes, I'll try» and also «no, not that».

Tells opening from closing; knows the Opener and the Guardian.

Teaches a knot to a companion.

Edge

Pitches and strikes a tent in pairs; draws the map of the campsite; sets the limits of a game with the circle.

Knows which channel opens what and which limit protects what; recognizes the edges of affinity and of opposition in the graph.

Teaches a younger member to pitch the tent.

Landa

Holds the custody of structure at a camp: materials, route, safety limits; builds and opens the threshold.

Recognizes dispersion and ossification in the circle's networks and in their own.

Trains a new custodian of structure.

Systence

Designs with the guides the makeup of a branch's circles; coordinates an activity with another group.

Reads the group's web of bonds and its connection with the community.

Leads the structural grade rite of others, with a guide.

Energetic grade (Φ): Circulating

The learner learns flow: to produce and to give, to receive and to move on, to recognize the difference between the saving that serves the cycle and the hoarding that denies it. The trial is sustaining a healthy flow: contributing without burning out, receiving without being a parasite.

The two collapses of flow

Fever

Unbraked activity that exhausts everyone, enthusiasm that cannot stop.

Ice

Shutdown, the circle that won't get going, the one who keeps everything to themselves.

Pole

Plays at full speed and in slow motion; helps hand out the snack; keeps the hour of silence.

Notices and says when they are «switched on» and when «tired»; knows the Ardent and the Silent.

Explains the hour of silence to a newcomer.

Edge

Lights and puts out a fire under supervision and keeps the ember; tends a plant in the garden through a cycle; takes part in the game of the rusting tokens.

Tells rest from neglect and ardor from exhaustion; recognizes when the circle needs activity and when repose.

Teaches a younger member to keep the ember.

Landa

Holds the custody of flow at a camp: water, food, fire, funds and the rhythm of the circle; keeps the fire vigil.

Reads the circle's fever and ice as landas of the dimensions the situation supports.

Trains a new custodian of flow.

Systence

Manages a camp's budget and their branch's commons; organizes a service to the community.

Reads the group's economy: what circulates, what stagnates, who is running empty.

Leads the energetic grade rite of others, with a guide.

Stochastic grade (Ω): Regulating

The learner learns rule and criticality: to set rules and to know when to remake them, to deliberate, to mediate, to hold custody without possessing. The trial is governing a process without collapsing it into order or into chaos.

The two collapses of the rule

Frozen rule

The rule that is merely obeyed, the «it has always been done this way».

Permanent crisis

The circle that changes plans every minute, where no decision lasts.

Pole

Plays by the rules and plays at inventing them; tolerates a change of plan without breaking the game; carefully repeats a custom of the group.

Tells «rule» from «surprise»; knows the Magnifier and the Balancer.

Explains a game rule to a younger member.

Edge

Proposes a rule in council; takes part in a critical period; faces the storm (the prepared unexpected).

Tells a rule that serves from one that is merely obeyed.

Teaches a younger member how to use the talking object.

Landa

Holds the custody of the regime; leads a circle council; leads an ordinary repair circle with a guide present.

Reads the circle's regime: frozen rule, permanent crisis or oscillation.

Trains a new custodian of the regime.

Systence

Moderates a branch council; leads a branch's critical period.

Reads the group's regime and its relation to the rules of the wider community.

Leads the stochastic grade rite of others, with a guide.

The hamiltonian grade: Balancing

• The highest grade does not add a fifth dimension: it integrates the four. The learner who reaches it knows how to read the landa of a whole situation, diagnose which dimension is stalled and lead a transition that restores the oscillation without breaking the closure.
• The 48 hamiltonian landas —those that put all four dimensions in bias at once— all have an extreme sign: they go through only yang poles or only yin poles. Whoever «stayed» in a hamiltonian would be fixed in one hemisphere, which is the opposite of balancing. So the hamiltonian grade does not certify that someone dwells in a hamiltonian landa, but that they know how to walk both —the yang one and the yin one— linking them through the bridges of opposition without breaking their own cycle. That capacity is proven once, in condensed form, in the Crossing, and then exercised daily in the grade's most characteristic practice: holding a council.

Requirements

The hamiltonian grade may be requested from the Branch of the Landa on, though it is usually reached in the Branch of the Systence. It is recognized when the member:

• has reached the four dimensional grades with the depth of the Landa or the Systence;
• has held the four custodies, at least once each at a camp;
• has read a real situation of their circle or branch as a landa —with its dimensions in bias, in equilibrium and absent correctly identified— and has proposed a landa to practice, verified in the catalog;
• has accompanied a member of a younger branch through a complete grade rite;
• has done the Crossing.

Whoever reaches the hamiltonian grade may serve as an assistant guide and, once they meet the age and training the manual requires, as a guide.