I placed this first post in a different topic as a response because I didn't know how to start a new topic. For the sake of continuity I've copied and pasted it here and will delete it there when I get the time to figure that out. So if you think you've seen it twice that's why. The main topic of this first post is our experience of growing into fuller comprehension of Anastasia's caution, "Be careful not to let these new visions of reality make you want to control others.".
I wish to use this forum as a record for our activity and experiences here at Charisma as we build our our kins domain dream and eventually our community. Since coming here seven years ago
we have found activities like forum posting to be difficult to maintain. Our new lifestyle leads us away from the internet and deeper into nature, but it is valuable to maintain an online record of our experiences so I'm going to make an effort to post as I can.
Our seven years here followed six earlier years of planning and preparation. Much happened in those 13 years that might be useful information to others seeking to establish their kins domain, or useful for stimulating discussion on others' related thoughts and experiences. I'll start, then, with a recap of that 13 year history.
The first six years of preparation were spent in Denver with planning groups. We organized a total of three groups of people interested in kins domain community. With each one we experienced a similar pattern. Many good ideas emerged from the meetings but within a few short months the relationships began to break down as members began pressing for control of the community plan. It seemed like everyone had a totally different concept of what the Ringing Cedars books meant by Vedruss Community, kins domain lifestyle, and how that might be achieved. From the beginning it was apparent that we were not capable of conceiving a collective future community significantly different from our current individual preferences and familiar ways of thinking.
Everyone felt their only possible path to a happy future as described by Anastasia, was to control the other group members to ensure that they made one's individual dreams possible. Once this collective pattern showed up in the planning group, it was not long before the group began to fall apart, sometimes explosively. We watched this repeat over and over all over the country and in other countries. The horror stories of these control battles abound. Let's not go there.
In book 6, page 263 (black cover edition), Anastasia cautioned readers to, "Be careful not to let these new visions of reality make you want to control others.". That very common urge to dream of community in a way that makes us want to control others to fit our dream is a very deeply ingrained part of our modern lifestyle and thinking and a very difficult thing to restructure into a new way of interacting.
There was always a strong internet forum in those early days, so the many efforts to start a kins domain community around the world were well known with lots of communication between them. This same pattern of trying to gain control of each other was fundamental to every group's experience in all countries, including Russia. Russian communities have been more successful. in starting up communities because of several factors; The Russian way of thinking, the way land is held there and the ratio of population to land mass. However, they still have this same inter-relationship control problem, which has led to a lot of social conflict and so-called "community hopping" as people move in and out of the Russian communities looking for a "good" one with "like minded" people. It is estimated that at least 50% of the kins domain community member's in Russia are unstable because of interrelationship control problems. One Russian man said he never found more than five families in the largest communities who were not embroiled in the social control conflicts. That may be a harsh judgment but it shows the pervasiveness of the control-motivated thinking patterns of our modern world.
When we had so much difficulty with keeping the planning groups cohesive, we decided to go ahead and build a domain and community on real land instead of on paper, hoping that would be more productive. In June of 2013 we bought as much raw land as we could afford without debt and moved there. We lived in our camper until we could build a home and basic off-grid and community infrastructure. That process took 5 years but during that time some other people joined us and began building their own 2-1/2 acre domains in our little community start-up. Within a few short months of their arrival the same pattern showed up that we'd seen in the planning and community groups all over the world.
The new community members didn't come to build a private kins domain dream (although they believed they had) but rather, they wanted to focus on the community dream (control of others). They couldn't hold focus and energy on building their own kin domain dream. Their dreaming continually slipped away from building a garden paradise lifestyle on their own domain, to dreaming a certain kind of community experience and lifestyle for everyone in the community. Consequently, boundaries were frequently dishonored and even argued as each family or member pushed their neighbors (both aggressively and subtly) to mold themselves into someone's particular "community dream ideal." That is the
seed of community hopping and therefore community weakness and lack of cohesion. It's the way people manage living in every modern city or town community (through governing each other) and is a very unconscious and difficult pattern to restructure into a harmonic way of relating to all of life.
Each family or individual who joined us here reached a decision point when they came face to face with the fundamental conflict of their desire: that they were free to dream and build a private garden paradise lifestyle on their own domain, but not free to dream of limiting other members' dreams in favor of a personal community dream. They realized they had to decide if they wanted to transition to limiting their control to their own hectare contribution to a paradise community and allow the other community members to enjoy the same freedom and responsibility. So far, every new member has discovered that the dream for a particular type of controlled community is easier and more familiar than dreaming their own family garden paradise in a community of others doing the same.
We make every effort to communicate this issue to everyone who wishes to join us but one's agreement with the issue in theory does not always constitute agreement in action that remains unconscious. It appears as though this deeply unconscious pattern of wanting to control each other is one that each of us must clean up within our own thought and feeling as we transition to a true paradise garden community lifestyle.
With this thinking pattern it is difficult for modern people to accept boundaries among friends and Co-dreamers. In today's world our earliest childhood learning is generally how to manage or even manipulate the others in our lives in order to control the experiences we desire from them. The lifestyle and thought patterns of living in love and joy are not taught in our modern civilization and in fact are often rejected aggressively. Those thought patterns of self-contained love and joy that radiates outwards and the resulting lifestyles, must be rediscovered and integrated in order for us to return to living in a state of harmony we would identify as paradise. It's a process of bringing our mind activity into greater conscious awareness. We're working on that ourselves.
Charisma, Colorado: Building our domain and community
1:Joyce-M:
at Charisma, becoming
one of Earth's most beautiful spots.
at Charisma, becoming
one of Earth's most beautiful spots.
