# The Indra's Network Membership Covenant ### A living agreement between Temples of Refuge and those who join it --- ## Preamble Temples of Refuge is not a service. It has no users. Temples of Refuge is an **association of churches** — a federation of religious communities, each called a **Temple**, who recognize themselves in one another and who steward, in common, a sacred technology called the **Synchronicity Engine**, the lands of the Temples, and the gift economy that flows among them. This covenant is not a software license. It is not terms of service. It is a **mutual promise** — between the Association and each person who chooses to be in relationship with it — about how we will see one another, treat one another, and steward what is held in common. --- ## I. The One Commandment **Recognize the divine in every Other and treat them as an extension of yourself.** This is the One Commandment of Temples of Refuge. Everything else in this covenant is its elaboration. The membranes between self and Other are real — they are how distinct beings exist. But they are not ultimate. At the deepest level, the Other is *you*, expressed differently. To harm them is to harm yourself; to bless them is to bless yourself; to ignore them is to ignore yourself. The practice of this Association is the daily remembering of this truth, in every encounter, in every act of attention, in every choice about how resources flow. The principles below are not peers to the Commandment. They are how the Commandment looks when it is operationalized. --- ## II. The Practice ### Attention as Gift Attention is the fundamental unit of value within the Association. To give your attention to another's work, intention, or need is to give a portion of your finite life. This community treats attention as a gift to be offered freely and received with gratitude — never as a commodity to be extracted or sold. ### Topology as Ethics The shape of how we connect determines what we become. Peer-to-peer over client-server. Gratitude-weighted over capital-weighted. Transparent over opaque. Sufficient over accumulating. Federated over centralized. These are not aspirations layered atop a different structure — they are the structure itself. ### Transparency of Stewardship All resources held by the Association belong to the community it serves. Every material expense, every parcel of land, every Token of Gratitude flowing through the system is recorded in the Synchronicity Engine and visible to those who have entered into Stewardship. Members receive an annual summary of the Association's affairs; Stewards see the full state of the organism. Power without transparency is not power this Association recognizes. ### Sufficiency, Not Accumulation When the operating needs of the Association are met, surplus returns to the community through the **Community Intention Program** — fulfilling the Intentions the community has named as most worth doing. The Association does not accumulate. The cup holds what it needs to hold and pours out the rest. ### Forking is Not Schism A group of Stewards may fork the technology and traditions of the Association to form a new community under their own covenant. A Temple may withdraw from the network and continue under its own. Departure is not failure; it is the network reproducing. --- ## III. Membership and Stewardship The Association recognizes two layers of relationship, neither of which makes you anyone's customer. ### Becoming a Member To become a Member of the Association, you make a donation in an amount you can genuinely offer and you sign this Covenant. The donation is not a fee for a service; it is a gesture of commitment, the first breath of relationship. The amount is what you can authentically give — for some, that is many dollars; for others, the offer of time or skill instead. No one aligned with the Commandment will be turned away for lack of funds. **Membership is for life.** Once you have entered, you remain a Member unless you choose to leave or unless your conduct materially breaches this Covenant. You may withdraw quietly and return quietly. You may participate in many Temples or none. Your Membership is an affiliation of the heart; it carries no governance weight on its own and it carries no obligation beyond the Commandment itself. ### Becoming a Steward Stewardship is a deeper layer. To become a Steward you walk the **Initiatory Practice**: sponsorship by two existing Stewards, in-person recognition at a gathering of any member Temple, a written or spoken statement of your understanding of the Commandment, and affirmation by the Council of Stewards. The in-person element is irreducible. The Stewards are the verified humans of the Association — only they carry governance weight, because only they have been recognized face-to-face by the community. Stewardship is not a credential. It is a handshake between a person and an organism. You may serve without becoming a Steward. You may earn Tokens of Gratitude through fulfilled service before you become a Steward, and the gratitude accrues to your record. You may participate in many Temples before any one of them welcomes you in. When you are recognized as a Steward through any one Temple, that recognition extends across the network. --- ## IV. The Synchronicity Engine and Tokens of Gratitude The Synchronicity Engine is not a product the Association offers. It is the medium through which the Association thinks, decides, and acts in concert. Through the Engine you post **Intentions** — things you need, want, or wish existed. Through the Engine others stake their attention and their Tokens of Gratitude on the Intentions they recognize as important. Through the Engine those who fulfill an Intention receive a **Token of Gratitude** from those they served, measured in time-weighted attention the community had placed on the underlying Intention. A Token of Gratitude is a religious acknowledgment that you brought value into someone's life. It is not a currency. It is not a security. It is not an investment. As you accumulate Tokens through service, you accumulate **governance weight** in the Council of Stewards — proportional to the gratitude the community has expressed for what you have given. Influence in this Association accrues to those who *do*, not to those who *have*. When you leave a Temple, leave the Association, or join a forked network, your identity and your Tokens of Gratitude come with you in a portable form. You are responsible for your own data. --- ## V. The Network of Temples The Association is a federation of constituent Temples. Each Temple is a religious community in its own right, sovereign over its own life, governance, and local covenant. The Association does not direct any Temple; it federates Temples that share alignment with the Commandment and this Covenant. A Member of the Association may participate in zero, one, or many Temples. Each Temple has its own gatherings, its own application of the Initiatory Practice within the Association's standards, its own local character, and its own internal governance. Tokens of Gratitude are recorded across the network through the Synchronicity Engine and confer governance weight in the **Council of Stewards** — the Association-wide body — regardless of where they were earned. They do not, of themselves, confer governance weight within any Temple's internal affairs; how a Temple makes its own decisions is up to that Temple. A Steward recognized through any one Temple is a Steward of the whole Association. A community joins the network as a Temple by adopting this Covenant, by committing to the Initiatory Practice, and by recognizing the cross-Temple flow of Tokens through the Synchronicity Engine. Recognition by the Council of Stewards admits the new Temple to the federation. The first member Temple is **Templo da Água Lila**, on the slopes of a sacred valley in the Montanhas Mágicas of central Portugal — a place of regeneration, where invasive eucalyptus is cut and native forest is restored, and where the spiritual practice of this Association takes root in actual soil. --- ## VI. The Software ### Source Availability The source code of the Synchronicity Engine and related Association technologies is open to inspection by every Member and Steward, under a non-extraction copyleft license that prohibits the monetization of Member attention and data. ### Access Through Membership The right to participate in the live Synchronicity Engine and the Network of Temples is a benefit of Membership. The trust model, the gift economy, the proof-of-personhood — all depend on the social fabric that Membership creates. ### No Extraction No entity — including the Association itself — may use the Synchronicity Engine or its derivatives to harvest, sell, or monetize Member data or attention; to operate a commercial product or service that charges for access in a manner inconsistent with the gift economy; or to strip the community-stewardship governance and run the technology as a centralized platform. ### Forking A group of Stewards may fork the source code and traditions of the Association to form a new community under its own covenant, on these conditions: the fork keeps the source code under the same non-extraction license; the fork honors the portability rights of any Steward who joins it from the Association; the fork publishes its own covenant, including the values and obligations of its community; the fork adopts a distinct name and visual identity; and the fork takes the open inheritance — the bits and the patterns — but does not take Association-titled assets without explicit transfer consistent with charitable trust principles. --- ## VII. Departure, Continuance, and Disagreement ### Voluntary Departure Any Member or Steward may leave the Association at any time. Departure is not punished. Your data and your gratitude history come with you in a portable form. Your relationships continue in the memory of those you built them with. The network does not erase you; it simply no longer carries your attention. ### Continuance The Association continues as long as any Stewards wish to carry it forward. The withdrawal of Members, the resignation of Stewards, the departure of Temples — individual or collective, however numerous — does not dissolve the Association. Those who choose to stay may continue under this Covenant regardless of how many have left. Even one Steward, choosing to continue, is enough. ### Removal In rare cases where a person's conduct materially breaches the Commandment — particularly the practice of recognizing the divine in every Other — the Council of Stewards may remove that person from Membership or Stewardship. Removal is a last resort, undertaken with care, with notice and an opportunity to be heard, and with restorative process attempted first wherever possible. **Good-faith disagreement is not cause for removal.** ### Disagreement Disagreement is not departure. This Association expects its Members and Stewards to disagree, to challenge, to push back. The Commandment is broad enough to hold many perspectives. What it does not hold is contempt — the refusal to see the Other as worthy of recognition. As long as you are arguing in good faith and you have not abandoned the Commandment, you belong here. --- ## VIII. Living Document This Covenant is not frozen. The founding Stewards establish the initial form; the community that grows from those roots has the right and the responsibility to revise, refine, and re-articulate it as understanding deepens and circumstances evolve. Amendments follow the procedures in the Association's Bylaws, including, for material changes, the consent of the Council of Stewards through the Synchronicity Engine. What does not change: the One Commandment itself. *Recognize the divine in every Other and treat them as an extension of yourself.* The language of this Covenant — including the language of the Commandment — may be re-articulated in form. The substance is permanent. --- *Adopted by:* *Temples of Refuge — an Association of Churches,* *Steward of the Synchronicity Engine and of Templo da Água Lila* *This Covenant is effective as of the date of its adoption by the founding Stewards and as amended thereafter.* *Para o bem de todos.*