Further Thoughts on Community
Community - Part 2
I would like to discuss some practical matters that are important when considering what type of community to create. What will the members of the community do? What will it do for them? How will it maintain itself on all the levels a successful community must address? How will it be able to keep its members and attract new ones? Questions are more important than answers at this stage, and only by asking them can we begin to formulate the answers in our own minds and hearts. This last is most important: A community without a heart is a dead community.
Aim
A community must have a single, main reason for existing. Different principal aims will inevitably conflict, both operationally and within each member of it. For example, creating a community for fear of economic collapse—or at least substantial change—will conflict sooner or later with the aim of spiritual growth of each member. If attention is focused on the difficulties occurring in the outer world and how to avoid or minimize them, little attention will be available to attend to inner growth: the first will drive out the second.
Stated another way, one cannot resonate with two very different things at the same time and stay “in tune” within oneself. An aim may be large enough to cover all the bases, but not so large as to be overly general, or to have no hope of ever being achieved. It is possible for aims to grow and change with experience, but the direction of that growth—as best as may be understood at the outset—must at least be sensed.
An aim must be broad enough to appeal to prospective members, yet specific enough to offer concrete and doable advantages. Formulating such an aim is difficult, because each of us has a personal past representing what has worked and not worked for us, and an imagined, idealized or hoped for future that we each desire. The gulf between these can be very wide.
Which brings us to the next topic
Where we are now
Our personal experiences define our comfort zones for the most part; anything new and different evokes discomfort for most of us. So a community with an aim that is too different from what we are accustomed to—at least at first—will either not attract enough committed members, or will not be able to keep them when they see what is really required. For the practical experience of living in a community means giving up some things in order to get some other things. There are many examples, but a food co-op may be used to illustrate the point. We all have our own habits for food shopping: what we buy, where and when we buy it and how much we spend. Buying food together disrupts all these habits. One person is not used to buying/preparing/storing/eating food that others prefer. Everybody has to adjust, even if families or singles take food home from a drop-off point. There are still choices in the food one orders, and one can always go to the market to supplement the co-op food.
Matters escalate when people live together, say in a co-housing manner, and some meals are prepared and eaten collectively. Who likes what? Who can’t eat that? Who will cook and clean up? How will food costs be handled? How often must people assist in food preparation?
The point is that too much change too fast will turn people away—unless there are very compelling reasons for putting up with the necessary change. Which brings us back around to aim, and/or substantial economic change.
One way to mitigate the discomfort of too much change is to start small, try some things out, then take the next steps—which will then be understood more clearly. One idea is to start part-time then decide if moving to something full-time is desired. A food co-op is easier to begin with than a communal kitchen with many more responsibilities.
Relocating is the biggest issue many of us will probably have. I like where I live now. It has its plusses and minuses, but they are mostly the former. How much will I have to give up, and how much am I willing to give up, for a live-in community? How can I know if I’ll really like it, or if it will succeed? What will I get in return if I “suffer” by giving some things up? How will we each know we can count on many others when we know we can’t even count on ourselves sometimes? Small steps are easier than large ones, absent outer conditions that force the big ones all at once.
Nota bene. Suppose, given how fast things are moving these days, the perfect spot becomes available to us, yet we are not sure we are ready for what it implies? This kind of situation may be described as Spirit testing our limits. A nice, careful toe-in-the-water approach may not be available. Sometimes all or nothing is presented as either-or. (See the questionnaire at the end as homework and practice for this moment, if it comes.)
The financial structure
Ownership. The bane of all communities. If something is purchased for a group, who pays for it and who then owns it? Real estate, lawn mowers and milk cartons will serve as examples.
If land is purchased, with or without buildings, who owns the land and who owns the buildings? If new buildings are built, who pays for them and who owns them? The same goes for a lawn mower that is needed to maintain part of the land. If the community chest buys the food, how much milk can I drink before I’ve exceeded my “share,” assuming the community has shares? Along these lines, if I “buy in” (again assuming there is such a thing) with $1000 and someone else buys in with only $100, what’s the difference, if any, in ownership and decision making? Should there be any difference?
If I already have a lawn mower, and decide to let the community use it, do I get paid anything up front? Maybe I don’t have to use it as compensation. (But it’s “mine!” Lol.) If I leave the community, do I get to take it with me? Who decides?
Most Medieval monastic orders had the rule that when you joined up, you gave your possessions to the order, which would then take care of you for life. How many of us would go along with this today? Yet the crux of community is contained in these issues. What kind of community could take care of us for life? Do we even want to be taken care of for life, if this also implies taking care of others? How would we have to recalibrate how we understand family?
Back again to the importance of aim, but also to the idea of responsibility. We are more responsible to and for certain members of our current families than to other members. Spouses versus cousins, for example. To what level are fellow community members family, and what are their mutual responsibilities? Finance is only one area here. Others are quality of life, emotional support, health, elderly and child care, on and on.
Community income
One way to mitigate these problems is to operate a number of community-run businesses. Everyone pitches in to create products or services that are marketed outside the community. The proceeds are then used to finance and operate the community. The list of possibilities is limited only by the creative imagination and effort of the members. Some examples.
If the community owned a building with a space that held 20-100 people, say, musical, educational and other types of events could be given or sponsored for the public. This can be a profitable source of revenue. Personal services can be given in the community’s facilities, with a percent going to the practitioner and a percent to the community. On-site child care could be offered. Organic food could be grown and sold at a good profit (and eaten for good meals). Classes could be given either on-site, at off-site locations, on the road or on the Internet; pooling the knowledge and skills of the members, combined with the aim of the community could result in substantial revenue streams.
To the extent the community generates revenue as a community, this lessens the effect of who owns what. Eventually, the community might be able to repay its original investors in addition to its monthly expenses, if this was desired.
A steady resonance
Now to the less material aspects of community, which are determined by its aims.
The outer world consists of chaotic and unexpected events; that is its nature. The aim of a community will be in some way to bypass as much of this as possible and desirable, and so to achieve something steadier and more consistent, by moving some of the causes and factors of those changes within the community. The community will then be more subject to its own causes, over which it has greater control. In this way, a resonance or life-field, if you will, may be set up that is different than the arbitrary energies and events in the outer world.
Naturally, the more substantial the community, the greater is the degree of resonance which can be achieved. Here again the monasteries serve as examples. The idea was to keep the outer world outside the walls, so that a certain atmosphere could be maintained inside, that was conducive to their aims.
Some of the co-housing communities provide a contrast. Often the members are in it for the housing only, and keep their old jobs. Instead of its own products and services, the community has dues that fund its needs. There is usually no spiritual dimension, for example. But the maintenance of a certain resonance becomes critically important if there is a spiritual dimension. If it is desired to evoke communion with one’s spiritual teachers, then an appropriate venue is necessary. It’s a joke that any even semi-intelligent “alien” would ever consider landing on the White House lawn. They stay hidden, whatever their true nature, because the world is an extremely dangerous place for them. Even if they chose to appear (and perhaps they do), the state of consciousness in the outer world prevents them from being seen by nearly anyone (save little children, bless them).
However, if a place is properly prepared and maintained, they do appear. A simple example is keeping an undisturbed, wild area next to your garden, as Machaelle Small Wright described in her book Perelandra Garden Workbook. She advised roping off an area for a nature spirit sanctuary, and inviting these spirits to occupy it. It was strictly off-limits to people. These nature spirits then aided plant growth, yield and exemption from harmful insects and pests. I can testify from personal experience that this works exceedingly well.
Such a sanctuary is not limited to plant divas. Communion with beings from many different realms may be established in a similar way. Such communion is faster to manifest and more overt than when done individually, whether outdoors or in one’s mind. The sanctity of the space must be maintained, however. People cannot walk through it, mentally reliving their own crises or whatever. A community whose members all respect the sanctity of such a space is mandatory, for over time the energy of the sanctuary will increase, and the residents and visitors will begin to resonate with it more strongly.
I am personally, keenly interested in creating such a space and venue in which it can thrive. Away from the things of man.
Location
But not too far away.
A city or other densely populated area would make it nearly impossible to create and isolate an area that didn’t overflow with city energy. There are other problems, such as higher crime rates and more people knocking on one’s doors, so to speak. On the other hand, an isolated, rural area, distant from a population center, while more easily able to hold a desired energy, can be too cut off from the very people who are economically and socially necessary for other community functions. People have a long way to commute for on-site events or services. Grocery and work commutes are too long and expensive. The idea is not to cut off communication with the outer world, but to control it.
Other issues also arise, such as zoning, closeness of schools, doctors, building supplies and so on. Goldilocks was right: Not too hot, not too cold; just right.
The spiritual retreat
In search of something “just right,” the following model might be used for discussion. Land with some buildings might be purchased in a suitable area. Instead of living on the land, at first anyway, it might be developed with the goal of creating spaces for business ventures of various kinds, and one or more spaces for meetings, concerts and other events for the general public. Gardening could be started, and a nature sanctuary could be created.
Doing just this much—which is actually a lot—would give everyone a chance to get their feet wet, to experience what working with a new “family” is like, and to get a feel for what the next steps should be. The work done on-site would be real improvements, and should result in a profit for all involved should the experiment fail or just not be what was desired.
Co-creation always requires giving up some things to obtain other things. We cannot know what we are actually willing to give up until we test ourselves. Nor can we know what we are willing to work for to get something else we may never have had a taste of, or, more accurately, of which we have forgotten.
A questionaire
This questionnaire first appeared many years ago in The Little Review, edited by Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson. The purpose of it was for each person to examine the question: Who was one to work for? The ego/personality or the essence/Higher Self? The questionnaire is only valuable to the extent it is answered without lying to oneself.
- What would you like most to be? To know? To do?
- Why wouldn’t you change places with any other human being?
- What do you look forward to?
- What do you fear most for the future?
- What has been the unhappiest moment of your life? The happiest?
- What do you consider your weakest characteristic? Your strongest?
- What do you like most about yourself? Dislike most?
- Make a list of your (a) likes; (b) dislikes.
- What is your attitude to Art today? [This question was specific to the Review’s audience. You might consider changing the word Art to something else. Like Community.]
- What is your world view?
- Why do you go on living?
- If you died tonight what would you feel most cut off from?
Back to Community Part 1, Why Community?