Creating Intentional Community
22 Apr 2010 1 Comment
in Culture, Living In Community Tags: consciousness, Culture, Intentional community, Living In Community, Mothering, parenting, parenting off the grid
When this all started about a year ago, I don’t think any one of us had in mind that we would become an intentional community. There are plenty of groups that make it their sole goal to become a community (visit http://www.cohousing.org). Ours came about from inner guidance more than from direct and verbalized intent. So if you’re not yet ready to go move into an established IC, start here. See what happens.
1. Pray/meditate on it. Living with others in an intentional setting is a spiritual as well as practical journey. Unlike the families of our birth, we have a say in how we craft our lives and whom we invite into it and how it operates. Bringing yourself into quiet awareness will help you access what you already know is for your greatest good. If your spirit resonates with the notion of community, you’ll know.
2. Get clear about how you want your life to look. The best people for your community will start to appear when you visualize how you want your life to be. Yes, this is a little bit of “The Secret” but it goes deeper than setting an intention and expecting it to come true. There is a subtle language to our bodies and spirits when we are clear about what we want. You may want community at a neighborhood or an in-home level. You may want community around your evenings but not your mornings. You may want a big community or a little one. Regardless, the world resonates with your thoughts. People who fit your vision will see themselves in your eyes, and that recognition will draw them to you, and you to them. Enjoy the inquiry, stay open.
3. Become aware of who you attract. You know how some people attract drama while others attract peacefulness? Well, if you know you attract drama, then you will attract it into your community as well. And that could be just fine, as long as you are aware of it and accept it fully. But attracting drama and then bemoaning it doesn’t help anyone. Ask yourself what part of you is served by attracting people who hurt you or prey on you or encourage you to wallow in your own crap. If that’s what’s in your life now, take a deeper look before you set your intention to live in community. Living in community offers us the opportunity to become conscious of our life structures, what serves us, and what no longer serves.
“Love is pull, not push.” Lolita Tademy in Cane River.
4. Follow your intuition. Your inner voice will have a lot to say about how you live and with whom. If you get that nagging feeling about a particular person, listen to it. There may be old baggage between you that needs to be unpacked, or the two of you may have differing communication or lifestyles that will take a lot of work to mesh. Honor your gut. If you can’t find a place of quiet peacefulness about living with this person, move on. But don’t miss an opportunity to dig into a challenging relationship either. Community is a place to learn how to resolve conflicts with dignity, honor, mindfulness, and hope.
5. Commit. Oh yes. Living in community requires commitment. Not marriage-like commitment but a vow to yourself and others to bring your greatest gifts to the whole. If you don’t believe you have any great gift, think again. Everyone has gifts to give. What is yours? Are you good with finances? Are you good with kids? Do you know how to help someone see themselves in a positive light? Are you patient? Do you have healing or sacred knowledge to share? Are you skilled in building bridges between people? Do you work with cars, with wood, with pipes? Are you most creative when cooking, or crafting jewelry, or writing, or photography? The beauty of living in community is that we have access to knowledge and wisdom that is beyond what we can access alone, even with the aid of the internet. No amount of Google searching is going to turn up someone who can show your son how to climb a super-technical spot on the local mountain bike trail. Nor can it offer Reiki on a sore neck. Nor console you when you ding your fiancé’s car. When you bring your gifts to the table, believing with certainty that you have something to share, you’ve invited others to come share themselves with you. You’ve opened the door.
6. Be Willing to Fail. Most of us are terrified of failure. But there is no life without it, certainly no feeling of success or mastery. Living with others means stepping right into our fears, most of which are from childhood. The things we couldn’t or didn’t get as children haunt us as adults and often interfere with our ability to get vulnerable and real with others. In community, having other adults around who know when we’re not at your best can feel scary and can help us learn to make mistakes well, to own them, and to become wiser from them, rather than be ashamed. The trick isn’t to be perfect but to find people who think it’s riotously funny and love you and encourage you even when you’re colossally imperfect.
7. Check your ego at the door. There is very little room for the ego in intentional community. Put on your big girl panties. And learn to take life a little less seriously. Living in an intentional community, we are able to see each others’ silliness in a whole new light. The dumb shit things we do aren’t used as ammo but as fodder for a good laugh.
8. Be Prepared for Change. We just learned this, again, when Corina told us that she’s setting sail for California. At her young age, it’s natural for her to want to go experience the wider world, and yet she’ll be missed by everyone. Feels like losing a limb. But now our job is to keep the light on for her as she goes out into the world and to reassure her that she has loved ones rooting for her. No sooner had Corina driven off into the west but three new folks arrived. Todd’s sister Beth Ellen, her partner Dwayne, and my nephew from California. As my father would smile and say, “How ’bout that?”
I would love to hear what you experience as you begin to think about crafting the life and community that you want. Tell your story, share your wisdom.
Next Up. Living in Community. Part III. Finances and Logistics.
Aug 22, 2010 @ 03:39:30
You raise lots of good points. The only thing I’d add is that for me, I had no idea how I wanted things to look before I moved into an intentional community, so “getting clear on how you want your life to look” was for me more about having fun and having gratifying relationships with people, and very little about physical or logistical aspects. Now that I have 6+ years of experience, well (honestly) – mostly I’m a lot more flexible about things than I used to be.
When you say, “follow your intuition” what I’d add is that there can be a very fine line between being willing to try something/experimenting and doing something you don’t want to do. Where I live we are very big on “don’t do anything you don’t want to do.”