How We Live

We are a creative experimental space. We celebrate exploration and an investigative and inquiring spirit in everything we do. Each one of us can contribute in the way that feels right, in the moment. And we may transform and change and explore new ways of being and bringing our gifts into the world and our community.

There is no dogma. We explore a way of living together which creates a deep inner and outer freedom for each of us, while it also lets us thrive as a community. We use rules only as tools where the collective finds they are necessary, and we let go of them when they have served their purpose. We remain flexible and embrace the flow of life. Whenever something does not seem to work anymore, gets stuck, gets stagnant or crystallized, we act, we keep exploring, we invite and embrace change as part of existence and life. We stay alive and move organically with the flow that arises. People can flow in and out of the community, there are no absolutes.

We embrace the unity of life. The division of life into work and leisure is a construct that does not serve us. Children are an integral part of our lives – we celebrate them, and strive to give them the space to explore the mystery of life and the universe in their own unique way, following their own curiosity, joy and pace. We also embrace death as part of life.

We cultivate a gentle kindness towards ourselves. We are aware that we enter into the field of community with a backpack full of patterns and wounds, that we have been shaped by a system that tends to fragment humans. We explore collective and individual methods to release and transform those parts of our heritage which do not serve us any longer, and to harvest those parts that hold power. And we celebrate that we create a new way of being in the world, every day, despite and with everything we bring along.

We can endure contradictions and paradoxes. We each cultivate a loving attitude towards our fellow human beings. We strive to see the higher self of others. We do not evade conflicts, but bring them into the light and explore ways to transform them and move beyond our polarized opinions. We continuously question our own way of being in the world. We accept that there are many things we each do not know. Each one of us takes responsibility for their own experience. We are all each other’s teachers and mirrors. We all strive to bring our shadows into the light, to drop our masks and show ourselves fully. We ask for support when we need it.

Our core commitment is to stay in communication. We all commit to participate in our common communication tools (such as Forum, talking stick, and non-violent communication – these are open to change if something emerges that serves us better). We communicate directly and honestly. We include the “private” in our communication within the community, and openly address joy, tension, and frustration around love and sexuality.

We all participate in practices that let us become conscious of the place from which we perceive, feel, act, and speak. We use this awareness in the way we interact. We know that we tend to emphasize the negative and to ignore the positive and beautiful. We strive to transform this individually and in community. We raise our collective energy using tools such as bodywork, to help us perceive the positive.

Each one of us takes care of their health and well-being (in a holistic way, including physical, mental, and spiritual).

We explore ways to harness our collective intelligence and wisdom beyond the individual mind. We strive to move beyond polarized conflicts and intellectual arguments in decision-making. We explore the power of meditation and similar practices for this purpose – to explore what the question we ask truly is, what wants to be resolved, and to open up to receive guidance from Great Spirit. We cultivate the human capacity to receive guidance from beyond ourselves and harness it to thrive as a community.

We create the possibility for abundance to flow, for the things and people we need to come to us. We explore ways of being and acting in the world outside of the destructive cycles we observe.