First Reflections

I said my final goodbyes to Findhorn this morning and I now sit on a crowded train down to London as the sun’s blaring rays reveal all of the dust on my computer screen. I plan to continue blogging about my experiences and I expect I will have much more insight now that I am leaving the physical place of Findhorn Ecovillage. Someone once said the Findhorn program doesn’t begin until you leave. Deep inside, I know exactly what they mean. It will take me a long, long time (if ever) to process all I have learned from this magical place.

It feels nice to fly away from the Findhorn community and back into a traveling mode of spontaneous people, places, and spaces. A sweet young lad (as one might call them here) helped me get my unnecessarily large bag onto the train this morning. He chuckled as I told him I liked his Santa Claus hat that he sported for the day. We sat on the train together and I could not have asked for a more fitting departure from Findhorn…

As we settled into our seats, Steve explained that he was heading home to Newcastle for Christmas, taking a vacation from his job as a plane technician at the Air Force base adjacent to Findhorn. From day one I was blown away by the blunt paradox of the Air Force Base and Findhorn at each others sides. The roaring engines of the fighter jets would halt my brain waves daily--ultimately it was a blessing; a moment for appreciation; a reminder that the external war rages within and that my inner and outer experiences are eternally intertwined.

So this lad and I started chatting about world traveling—my stories from Guatemala and his from Poland, Greenland, Iraq, and other places the Air Force had stationed him. We exchanged pictures, and he showed me an American base-camp in Afghanistan. Wow, I thought, now that's first-hand experience.

He grew quieter, a bit more solemn, as he told me about his trip to Poland and how it had been an Air Force team building experience--they just so happened to be in Auschwitz on Remembrance Day. Then he flipped through some more photos and bashfully sunk into his chair as a picture of him making a goofy face standing on the wing of an airplane came up. I had a picture of myself making that same goofy face while standing on top of a compost heap. We shared some more laughs and some oohs and ahhs and wow, Greenland is just one giant rock, huh!? The last photo in his slideshow was a picture of him on a small stage playing a beautiful classical guitar.

“Oh you play guitar?!" I asked excitedly. "I do too. Do you write anything yourself?”

His face lit up—“well actually, I bought this great little gig here and I can record my own stuff and put background tracks to it.”

“Oh wow...You think I could I hear one of your songs?”

He became shy again and proceeded to warn me how not good he was before he handed over the iPod and gave me the pleasure of listening to some of the sweetest songs I’d ever heard. I remembered his anecdote about his trip to Poland as I listened to his second acoustic track and heard his beautiful melody harmonize with the chorus—and his words that sang, “Everything is nothing if we can’t look backwards.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The seemingly paradoxical shadows of the Air Force base and the Findhorn community dissipated in one strum of a chord as I heard words that I had felt before. For the guitar picking boy in the Santa Claus hat, fixing military planes is a job, singing is a passion, and war is not his direct intention. If I step back from Findhorn, its own nonsense hits me right across the face. The Findhorn Community Centre sign, for instance, has parenthesis underneath that read “(Private Facility)”. For Findhorn, spiritual community is the driving force, the uniqueness of people bring the passion, and social exclusion is not its direct intention.

My eyes increasingly recognize the contradictory lives that we live—it is useless to blame or shame, more important to recognize the game. I am not saying Steve is innocent and I am not saying Findhorn is guilty--but I am saying that paradoxes live deep deep within our lives.

I knew he would be embarrassed but I said it anyway, “I really like that line—about how everything is nothing if we can’t look backwards.”

“Wise, I know…” as he shyly chuckled and shrunk further into his seat. Steve confirmed for me that souls speak for themselves through art. We all live lives of paradox, doing things we may not believe in, trying to make a living even if our living perpetuates dying. Deep inside we undoubtedly have the capacity to see the bigger picture, to act on that is a huge...yet not impossible...next step.

Five hours melted into the snowy Scottish hillsides and his stop was approaching near. I said, “hey, keep writing music.” He said “you too.” And then we departed and carried on our way.

What is an ecovillage anyway?

What is an Ecovillage? And why are they important to the world?
The function and purpose of ecovillages is a really interesting and debated topic around here and especially in my group. Some people feel that these ecovillages are simply an escape from reality and that they do not acknowledge the urban environments and all of the structures that already exist. This is an interesting point that has truth to it. But it is not the whole picture.

Here are the unifying aspects of ecovillages:

· Communitarian-focused around community and cooperation. Below are two folks working on the grounds outside of the community center, where community members eat all of their meals.

· Citizen initiatives-rather than governmental or business initiatives

· Shared Values over Blood Ties-whether it to be peace activism, social justice, or spirituality, values are the unifying principle of the community

· Reverence for a larger purpose-whether it be God, Gaia, the Universe, or whatever else people deem sacred.

· Created by visionaries-sometimes eccentric, sometimes non-law abiding folk; a deviation from the societal norm; manifestation of visionary ideas

· Peace Activism-Reverence for peace and conflict resolution, Example: Tamer in Portugal sends people to Columbia in order to protect citizens--there is less violence with the threat of bad international press via harm to international people.

· Respect for Ancient Wisdoms-Acknowledgement and revival of ancient knowledge and techniques.

· Human-scale technology-Manual labor and small-scale technology over larger and more inherently dangerous technologies. Farming usually done manually and communally.

· Community Currency-Many ecovillages have begun to encourage local economic resiliency by printing local currency and using the capital to support community projects.

· Social Inclusion Blatant discrimination unacceptable, though more subtle economic discrimination can be an issue

· Alternative Education for Children Examples of this would be Waldorf schools, Kibbutz L’otel, and homeschooling.

· Intergenerational Interaction Inherent in community life that there is more interaction between generations

· Earth restoration Reforestation at Findhorn and Auroville Ecovillage in India, Findhorn was once a trailer park and an army base. Lebens Garten in Germany was once an old arms stock of Hitler. Ecovillages seem to arise in inopportune places and they begin to restore and heal the land that they are situated on.

· Tend to be quite beautiful Artistry put into the design of spaces and buildings

So the fact is, the current systems that we live in will not sustain humans for much longer—so we need some different ideas to pick up pace in the mainstream. Ecovillages are hubs of old and new ideas—simple ideas yet largely forgotten. They stress community, local goods, and the local “culture in agriculture”—not so radical really, just different from most of the Western world today. As Ivan Illich pointed out in his article “Deschooling Society”, “The progressive underdevelopment of self- and community-reliance is even more typical in Westchester than it is in the northeast of Brazil.” I grew up in Westchester so I can attest—if money suddenly lost its value, I would not have known how to medicate myself, grow food, or even where to find clean water in Westchester. I was many steps removed from the actual production of most of the goods that I needed to survive.

Rural ecovillages may not be practical on the large scale because so many infrastructures are already in place. Nonetheless, they can function as catalysts for the societal leap we are about to take. Ecovillages are educational centers where people can come for support in making change, while simultaneously learning the practicalities of sustainability—everything ranging from strawbale house construction to permaculture. Who knows how these ideas will manifest; there are already budding urban ecovillages and other sustainable initiatives in towns worldwide. If you are interested in visiting an Ecovillage to see for yourself what kinds of things are going on there, here are some links:

Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage Rutledge, Missouri: www.dancingrabbit.org

Ecovillage at Ithica Ithica, New York: http://www.ecovillage.ithaca.ny.us/

Findhorn Ecovillage Findhorn, Scotland: http://www.ecovillagefindhorn.org/

Los Angeles Ecovillage: http://www.laecovillage.org/

Culver Way Ecovillage Clayton, MO: http://www.culverwaycohousing.com/

Auroville Southern India: http://www.auroville.org/

There are a ton more, these are just some of the ones I’ve learned a lot about and gotten involved with. The GEN (Global Ecovillage Network) has a directory of all the ecovillages in the world. (http://gen.ecovillage.org/) Something that I want to acknowledge is that ecovillages are much more distinguishable in industrialized nations. In nations like India and Africa, ecovillages are simply defined as communities committed to staying in touch with non-consumerist values and local economies. In the industrialized world, ecovillages stick out much more because they are in stark contrast to mainstream communities which have heavier shopping-mall, celebrity, reality TV influence.

Here is some additional info on Findhorn’s local currency:

Findhorn developed a trust called Ekopia to support local business endeavors, specifically projects which promote organic agriculture, fair trade, ecological practices, renewable energy, and affordable housing. Each adult member has one vote independent of how many shares they own. The community invests with the knowledge that the community will gain resiliency and strength. Discounts at the local shops are offered to share holders and there is local currency, called the Eko, that has equivalent value to the British Pound. The purpose of Ekos is to promote local purchasing. One study done showed that only 20% of the money spent in an average European town actually stays in the local economy, meaning that the majority of capital gets funneled right into the pockets of larger corporations—national and international. I’m sure this is true for most towns in the states as well.

Imagine if your town had a local currency? What would it look like? Where would you use it? It's a really cool idea and a great way to encourage local trade and build community resiliency.

Group Dynamics

I sit in the living room of my bungalow with five young human beings who were strangers to me just two short months ago. But in those two short months, we have learned the expressions on each other’s faces better than we know our own. Isn’t it amazing—how once we get accustomed to people, they are so familiar to us. Yet before we know strangers, so much judgment is passed, so much unseen prejudice underlies every interaction we have with strangers. Strangers—what a strange concept, because most strangers never turn out to be strange once we know them. And how detrimental is that, to think of people we don’t know as strange or foreign, rather than knowing they are the same as all the people we already know. We’re all so damn similar, it is just our differences that are more susceptible to scrutiny.

I am falling in love with the vastness of human experience—people’s life stories. Everything that has led up to this moment in your life is so incredibly different than everything that has led up to this moment in my life. Something that a friend Emily said in class today was this: “Everyone has perfectly good reasons for believing the things they believe. It’s more interesting to try to figure out the reasons why they believe those ideas rather than attack those ideas from my own perspective on the world.”

We had a Group Dynamics class today and we talked about how our group sometimes shies away from speaking our minds because of the fear of hurtful opposition. Opinions are sometimes so deep-seated in us that we associate our opinions with our identity and sense of self. In turn, emotional pain is felt when an idea of ours is attacked. We talked today about how this is evident through our different communication styles. For instance, when an opinion is candy-coated with lots of precursors like “I’m not so sure but…” and “I don’t really know but…”, it is as if that person is trying to dissociate from what they’re saying in an attempt to protect themselves from a rebuttal. On the other hand, some people voice their opinions with strong conviction, perhaps to intimidate away any rebuttals or maybe because they identify strongly with that opinion.

Differing voices of rationality, spirituality, and skepticism are strong within our group of 13. We talked this through today and thought of some ways that we could communicate our own perspectives without feeling threatened. One solution we came up with is to reframe our opinions. If we just want to be heard, we’ll start by saying, for instance, “I would like to just be heard on this…I believe that the human race is rapidly changing and evolving.” On the other hand, if someone feels that they want to put an idea out for discussion, they will frame it as, “I’d like some feedback on this…I think religion is the root of all evil.”

Once a framework of tolerant discussion has been set up, the group feels safer to start delving into some really personal issues. Once this safe environment was set up, some amazing, beautiful and deeply personal confessions were voiced like, “I have a constant inner battle between optimism and extreme cynicism about our future” , “I wish I had more energy to have rage for the state of the world” and “Sometimes I think if I had a perfect body we’d have world peace” . Others said things like “I believe that people should be free”, “I believe in synchronicity”, “I believe most people are a disappointment”, “Sometimes I wish I didn’t have so much faith in the potential of people”, and “Sex is a really big deal.” All of us have deeply personal opinions that we protect most of the time. The creation of a safe space to release these vulnerabilities is one step closer to embodying them and feeling empowered by them, rather than letting them simmer in the boiling pot of inner confessions too raw to reveal to the world.

These were all thoughts about today and this was an afterthought to make this into a blog entry, but I hope something can be taken from these ideas. My mind is changing, rearranging. We process everything here and really dive into the deeper meanings, the realities, the confessions, the emotions. There is no bullshit. There is no separation between education and who we are as people, it’s all the same thing. I dig that.

(This is the nature sanctuary. The space is used for singing, meditating, hanging out, and whatever else you could think of. It's beautiful. Wow. There is a garden on the roof.)

Putting Away the Toys

Every day there is a new bunch of kids that get to play in the biggest, coolest playroom in the universe. There are dominoes and stuffed animals, playing cards and building blocks galore. Each game has intricate pieces that are essential to the whole. Unfortunately, when the kids enter the room, they become overwhelmed by the abundance and they take bits and pieces of different games and scramble them all together.

They roll around in the monopoly money, rip out pages of books so that whole messages in stories are lost, and throw plastic pellets at one another. When more than one kid wants the rocking horse, there is usually a bidding war and the domino offerings skyrocket.

At the end of the day, it’s clean up time, so the kids follow the rules and take all the toys that they used off the floor and throw them into this thing called the “clean up bin.” They leave in a hurry and don’t look back. The bits and pieces that once had a unique place inside of each game now lay scattered, stagnant, and misplaced inside the “clean up bin”.

The next day, an entirely new group of kids come to play in the biggest, coolest playroom in the universe. They are once again overwhelmed by the abundance of toys and they dig through the boxes, though none of the games are complete anymore. It doesn’t matter so much to them because they usually end up playing this weird game called “house”, where they and their pretend families compete to see who can collect the most stuff. They get possessive over their bits and pieces sometimes, and for some reason they always think other kid’s toys are better than theirs.

When the sun sets low, it is time to clear the toys again. The kids throw all of the mangled pretend possessions into the “clean up bin” and they leave.

Each new day, the bits inside the games dwindle and the “clean up bin” gets bigger and bigger, but kids never, ever think to play with things from the “clean up bin.” It is almost as if the things inside the bin are invisible. So the kids just play “house” with fewer and fewer dominoes every day.

Sadly, tomorrow, the kids who come into the biggest, coolest playroom in the universe will find that there are just empty boxes where intricate, unique pieces once made up whole games. I think the kids might then see the “clean up bin” in the corner, bulging with excess, crying for pieces of whole systems to be put back together. Maybe then they will try to put the games back together.

Our Earth is the biggest, coolest playroom in the universe. Every time we throw something into the garbage bin, it goes to a landfill and it rots away. Our earth is finite and each fraction of each system is as important as every card in the deck. Even a vanished two of spades would ruin every game that is played with the deck—our earth’s ecosystems are just as vulnerable, one piece of the puzzle gone and the image is never the same.

I think of the trash bin as an illegitimate term—it implies that there is a such thing as “away” when we throw something “away”—as easy as throwing our toys in the “clean up bin” at the end of the day.

Much like every red balloon that fades into vast blue canvas, some experiences are too beautiful to perceive the invisible, inevitable ends. But as each one of those red balloons has popped in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, so too will all material goods perish that we once deemed beautiful. Products that are made without future in mind are dead. They are not able to re-cycle. They hinder the chances of future generations to utilize them. They break apart natural systems, ecosystems, they take cards out of the deck, a future game of poker will never look the same.

There are amazing ideas about the transformation of the life cycle of products. One book is called “Cradle to Cradle” and it talks all about thinking in circular systems, rather than the linear production today that brings most products from “Cradle to Grave”. The book “Cradle to Cradle” is itself made out of corn plastics and the ink is soy-based and removable. After a certain amount of time, the ink can be washed off of the plastic pages and a new book can be printed on it. Genius.

I really, really recommend www.thestoryofstuff.com if you have not seen it. It’s amazing and worth the watch. Thanks for reading—Goodbye.