Intentional Community Vision.

[ChristopherW]

While I can get along with most people, I am increasingly finding it hard to find deep connections. As anyone, who deviates from the mainstream lifestyle knows, its rare to find people alike yourself.

I want to live among people with similar goals/values, not just have them as friends that I see once a week after work. I want to live amongst them. Much more potential for fulfillment. Besides, you really do become who you spend time with.

What better way to do that then, start your own community with them. Create a group of people that all want to self-actualise/pursue their own goals, and bring each other up in the process. Make a kind of superior culture dynamic, of mutual co-operation and values.

This is an example of one intentional community. http://www.twinoakscommunity.org

I do not want to live the bare consumerist life as a wage slave, and I ultimately want to live solely in line with my values and interests.

• Self-Improvement
• Self-sufficiency
• Primal/traditional living.
• Lifelong learning.
• Brotherhood/common investment.
• Contributing value to the world.

I WANT to grow my own food, hunt, and grow myself. I WANT to fuck around, and shoot assault rifles, and play sword battles with sticks. I WANT to make shit tons of money together with friends and invest it in a shared independent community.

The main challenge in achieving this will be connecting with others who BOTH share my values, and want to participate. However, I know I will do it, as It's something I want badly. I do have a one or two great friends interested.

Right now however, my focus is on pursuing personal progression, and then monetary gain.

Has anyone else considered settling down/living, in an intentional community?

What values/lifestyle would you want it to be based on? Any thoughts on how it could be achieved?

 

 

 

Edited February 18, 2016 by ChristopherW

[Ida]

Heysa

Im very often thinking on the same thing. 

How to achieve it: Get together with your friends and spread the words for everyone you meet. Buy a biiiig landproperty and go crazy: build and be!

My own values:

I don't wanna live with people who shoot animals  

But I would build COB houses(clay and straw), natural swimmingpool(plant based cleaning construction. Same goes for the toilet, composting toilet, with plant based cleaning. And our shit should be used for compost along with our green kitchen garbage). And plant based cleaning for the shower water too. So NO shampoo and other bad chemicals. 

I would make a forestgarden in permaculture style. And stribe to be self-suffiecient at least on food. Also would I build a greenhouse underneath the earth, so it would be warm in the winter. 

I would find some green energy solution. 

I would do naked yoga and dance around with my lovedones <3 

But also just use the space for studying and making experiments. 

I actually have a lot of drawings on my future house. Right now my sister and mother is interested in the building project too. And I have one friend who would love to stay and build around, he is also a smith. But I think I will begin it with myself, and hopefully someone could join me over time. I don't think my sister and mother would stay around.

I have some animals to enjoy solitude with

[Guest]

This is an amazing idea and I thought about this too. I'd love to live in a personal development community with successfull, positive and motivated people, who are also spiritual. Living with and amongst amazing people is a huge boost to ones own personal development.

The most important thing is that those people live by the higher values and aren't negative people or people with psychological problems or drama.

[Ayla]

1 hour ago, The Alchemist said:

The most important thing is that those people live by the higher values and aren't negative people or people with psychological problems or drama.

good luck

 

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Ayla said:

good luck

 

Exactly. A task next to impossible in our day and age...but I have some hope

[ZenMonkey]

There is a Tedx talk that really inspired me. A guy called Jon Jandai tells how he quit studying and went back to his village to life a simple life similiar to how his people lived some decades ago. He now growes his own food, builds homes basicly out of mud, dirt and clay and only has to work 2 month a year. The rest of the time he teaches how to build dirt houses.

Sometimes I wonder if it would be better to just settle down like this and focus on the "important" things like realising who you are/enlightment. But maybe it would also be a step back. My community would be vegan and we would grow most of our own food. In other aspects really free.

Anyways. Because I am cycling around the world at the moment I have the unique opportunity to be in Thailand and visit Jon Jandai in a few month. I look forward to how that goes.

 

 

[ChristopherW]

 @ZenMonkey He's got the right idea. We over-complicate our lives to a massive degree.

We absolutely don't need to shop or work to survive, and we do have the freedom to be self-reliant in the truest sense. Yet we just have fixed ideas of life in the western world.
Though I think it is self-centred to abandon society altogether, if you are capable of contributing value. I would argue that value shouldn't be produced from a place of desperation/survival. That is akin to slavery.

It should be AFTER you are self-sufficient. Once this is accomplished, you have no other goal than to benefit yourself with knowledge/self-improvement, and ultimately benefit the world. Like his TedX video/teaching for example.

@Ida 'I don't wanna live with people who shoot animals' If I were to hunt, I'd want to do it with a bow or a more primitive weapon. Hunting the animal is far more ethical than buying its meat in a supermarket. You are connected to the death, and you understand what was lost. It's far different than throwing bits of pig that were mass-slaughtered into a shopping trolley. (No matter how tasty )

The rest you've said sounds great. Permaculture/sustainable building/self-sufficiency. Absolutely.

[ChristopherW]

5 hours ago, The Alchemist said:

This is an amazing idea and I thought about this too. I'd love to live in a personal development community with successfull, positive and motivated people, who are also spiritual. Living with and amongst amazing people is a huge boost to ones own personal development.

The most important thing is that those people live by the higher values and aren't negative people or people with psychological problems or drama.

Like-mindedness is key to these communities. Everyone is so eager to be 'inclusive' but if you want it to work you couldn't let in just anyone in. Would definitely have to find worthwhile quality people, if it's to be your own home and to have a high level of social cohesion.

Edited February 18, 2016 by ChristopherW

[Ida]

16 minutes ago, ChristopherW said:

more ethical than buying its meat in a supermarket

Yes. But I would also never do that :-P in my mind; killing is killing. 

[Simon Zackrisson]

8 minutes ago, Ida said:

Yes. But I would also never do that :-P in my mind; killing is killing. 

You are responsible for the death of probably millions of lifeforms every single day.

Just because one life form is more cute then another, doesn't mean you're not killing.

Killing is killing.
I'd be careful with sitting on the high horse of ethics. 

[Ida]

Hey Simon

Yes I kill small beings all the time. Doesn't change I feel sorrow for bigger animals, and that I feel it's wrong to kill them. I don't think I should be careful sitting on my high horse of ethics. I guess it's my own beliefs and feelings. You can hear a big animal cry in pain and fear, you don't feel the same empathy in your body with things you don't even notice that you are killing. 

What I referred to was killing an animal contra killing a human. I believe it's discrimination to say humans are more important than animals, and therefore it's okay to kill an animal. To start talking about small lifeforms that we have no change to avoid killing is pointless to me. And I don't see animals as cute, I see them as serious (not helpless, but with their own agendas) beings. And I think we should respect that. But that's just my opinion, and if you feel like I got high ethics, that's fine. 

[Simon Zackrisson]

We all have different perspectives and preferences that we are entitled to hold. If you feel a vegan diet is bringing you happiness, I'm genuinely psyched you found something that is a inspiring factor in your life. All this is, is dietary choices.  

 

Now, if one were to claim moral superiority with a certain diet, there's a problem.

[Simon Zackrisson]

A friendly joke:   

 

 

[Ida]

Veganism isn't a diet, and I don't claim to be superior. But hey, we are maybe spamming ChristopherW's post :-P

[Zephyr]

12 hours ago, The Alchemist said:

The most important thing is that those people live by the higher values and aren't negative people or people with psychological problems or drama.

I wouldn't expect someone who live by the higher values to be negative, I mean they are already living the high values right. I can't see them just faking their way through. What's possible though is that they would potentially become negative...