Yearning for a community

Yesterday I came back from a 6-day NVC training with Robert Gonzales, an event that reached very deep within me, resolved many inner dilemmas, gave me enough clarity for many future steps and inspired me in many ways. Therefore I guess there is going to be a lot of my posts here inspired by this experience.

But, parallel to the inner work at the training, the longing to live in a true community was awoken within me once again. Since the training was taking place in an eco-village, an intentional community Lebensgarten in Germany, for a week I was embedded in a physical as well as social environment that brought back pleasant memories and nourishing feelings.

I have been twice a part of an intentional community. The first one did not function as a fully residential one, but we did have a community house in an isolated spot in nature and were spending a lot of time there, working, sharing, being together. This was a beautiful time of my life and some parts of me are still mourning over it.

The second one was a permacultural intentional community in Australia, where I have spent 9 months in 1990. I was still merely a long-term guest there, though sharing a work and community life. It was definitely one of those places where the fanciness of a car never mattered a bit – and all the rest did. So unlike the modern so-called communities

Anyway, the fact of the matter is that whenever I spend some time in an intentional community, be it a holistic like The Findhorn Foundation or a very light and down-on-earth one like the RCNUWC, a strong feeling starts to wake within me, a feeling that the way I am living my life is a tragic mistake. A feeling that every cell in my body and every part of my being actually yearns for a true community life.

A life where one is embedded in a supportive environment of people with shared values and visions, where children run all over the place as “our” children, enjoying the all-present safety, where people meet and share, laugh and cry together, connect and interact on a true level… Where life is fully alive and supported by life.

And, yes, where a pristine harmony with the nature and its forces is fully present. Where the nature slowly takes over (eating up the houses like in Lebensgarten) and everybody is happy with that. And everybody can sleep like a baby. Without hearing a car or any sort of pulsating modern-life city commotion.

Now, of course, things are not entirely romantic in intentional eco communities. Egos get in the way, conflicts remain unresolved and communities do fall apart, sometimes with a lot of pain involved. Just as relationships and human lives do fall apart. Not every single one of them and not always, but yes, they do.

But I still feel this is what a human life should look like. Not being locked in a dehumanised system of working for spending, running from one shop to another, from one meaningless encounter to another, gasping for some air in between, and spending the rest of the time plugged in a LCD screen, be it a TV or a computer. Holy crap, what an existence. As my dear John Lennon said: “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.”

Being in a phase of my life when I am reconsidering its directions and ways, I will definitely include the option of joining an intentional community in my wonderings.

Anyway, our dear van is all ready, things are more or less packed and in a couple of hours me and Marjeta will be on our way to explore Albania, perhaps one of the last resorts of a more pristine life here in Europe, not yet fully commercialised and sold out. We are so happy to be connecting with the true spirit of our dear Balkans again.