Child Centered

The Emerging Vision

The Vision of Eden is always growing and expanding beyond all expectations. But like a small child it does need some kind of boundaries set. Otherwise it will only grow up way too out of control to be any good for anything but to destroy the world that it has found itself encased within.

The modern world is filled with such people. And they can become very destructive very quickly. And it doesn't take much to ignite such a powder keg. We have seen this around the world and then we always have to clean up after that later on.

Communities that form out of the imaginary needs of these overgrown children who never grew up can only become very much like a self fulfilling prophecy of doom. That's why we do have to be able to test for these things and to monitor the results and report back to the larger group may be your first job in Eden.

Freedom or Bleedum?

Some people just want to know everything all at once about where we are right now so they can begin to understand what it is that we are looking at but big things take more time. Never will anything real ever be given to those who themselves are not ready to understand and to take good care of it all in a thoroughly responsible way.

Even Freedom has to be earned. If a child is old enough and able to hold true to the values that we share only then will they be entrusted with anything that we all hold to be so dear and true as you might expect to find among native peoples. Learning how to integrate this new material into your life in a positive way is one way to start. I know it is hard to drop the modern perspective. Do your best and forget the rest is what we say in Eden.

Dominator Culture

We do have very high ideals here, very much like most all other communities. That we all take full responsibility for our own needs might be a good place to start. A community has to be built very well so that no one person or group of persons can take the whole thing down out of negligence or disregard.

Or like the folks at Trillium a very few are forced to buy the others out under tremendous hardship and internal financial pressure. Or like the folks at the Farm in Tennessee who had to go through some serious restructuring which caused them to lose most of the looser people in a very short time.

Here we must take careful measures to make sure that this community will not fall victim to this kind of thing. There may be a few little problems. But people have to hold on tight. Those who just don't care or are just on their own trip are going to eventually find out that they are among the last and the least among us and that will jettison them right out of this community in no time. We know that doesn't work. We have been there and we have done that.

We do need to be able to protect our fine project from harm. Everyone of us has to care about something very strongly just to get in. If there really even is anyone out there who doesn't care about anything, then they should probably take this as a wake up call. We then will have to decide whether we care about what you care about enough to count that as a bridge to freedom.

We need to have a clear understanding about these things and it is for these reasons that we say such things. Otherwise too many things get glossed over and become corrupted. We will not finance our own destruction with other peoples carelessness.

We will not pave the way to Eden with a Yellow Brick Road. Everything has to be as unbreakable as possible because that is more sustainable. Dominator Culture is a throw away culture. We are a sustainable culture. We might be wise to stay deeply out of debt. And we should probably stay deeply out of most all possible legal problems which can only destroy any community.

We could do this by covering the communities backside first as it should because like a newborn child it is unable to take care of itself. The normal approach would be to cover our own asses and everyone else's backsides first which would allow the forces of need and greed to run rampant. We ask people to accept that we plan to use a whole different approach.

We will work with what we do have and not what we don't have. The vision works by many people making major contributions to what is seen as being a growing body of work that nobody has a right to capitalize on the ownership of or to profit from the resale of and so we are a not for profit and yet some people do need to make a little money now and then and so we combine all things good and right and support those who have made to most contributions

Internships in Eden

Those of us who really do know how to work will get the very few jobs that will be closely guarded. The rest will have to make their own money. We aren't building community just to make money. If anything we will make money to build the community. We will then be able to use that amazing community in various ways which will be a tremendous service to the larger community in whole or in part.

Free programs. Scholarships. Internships. Easy and pleasant work in a nice outdoors environment in exchange for trainings, food, lodging and entertainment could be such a deal for some people who may not have much of the green stuff kicking around in the old back pack.

Eden First!

The Earth comes first. The Forest comes first. The Land comes first. The Web of Life comes first. Eden comes first. The needs of the People come much later on in the natural order of priorities. You make your many contributions, both monetary and otherwise. It gets built. If we build it they will come. That is what is important here.

There is always enough for those who have more than enough and some to share. But there will be no endless free ride for those who just show up for the free ride because nothing like that is ever going to be blindly provided here. Not for very long anyway.

Eden is not free. You do have to have or be able to earn your own way if you are going to do this whole thing right and not having any money is no more of an excuse than not having any skills or good work ethics. Better to go on out there and get some credit on the books of Truth. 

Eden is just the opposite of Jonestown. They made it very easy to get in, and very hard to get out, if you will recall. We make it very hard to get in and very easy to get out.

Everything is set up in such a way that it affords adequate protection for the community from the very dangerously out of control individuals who may come dragging our way from out of the Dead Zone.

We do have to be able to stand out from the likes of Jim Jones and Charlie Manson as we do in stark contrast. And so people who like to idealize those times will have to be able to deal with some of the changes, because we have made a lot of progress since them. 

We have been given almost everything brain dead backwards. For that reason most people start at the top with debt and then start working their way down to excuses and then we finally get down to these empty throw away ethics of mass production.

We must all start right at the bottom here with real contributions and then we can begin work our way up to Freedom and Equality with those who will tolerate these distinctions in peace.

That's what the real difference is here. We will have to learn how to choose the well grounded as opposed to the self confounded who will not learn how to earn it before they can burn it when they can steal it before you can feel it.

We are going to be just about exactly the opposite of what a whole lot of people might expect to be finding here. That is because we are not using the empty place holder ethics of dominator culture or its children who are carrying some of the same self centric material that only pretends to be sharing and caring. But that is only to be seen as being just a plug of filler material that may have been accepted elsewhere, but will not be accepted here in Eden.

People just looking for someplace to go will have to wait until we are good and ready for that.

It's not just a matter of information exchange. There is a natural order to the whole experience, just like when you go to visit with a native tribe in the rainforest. They didn't go to see you. You went to see them. That is why they will dictate what the tribal norms are going to be for your entire visit.

Information and diseases have killed many native peoples habitat and many a forest has been destroyed to make money. Mostly this comes from some thoughtless decisions made in the biggest of cities and this kind of negligence has killed a lot of innocent people, Trees and animals who have lost their natural habitats due to this amazingly free flow of information and disease down the pipeline which allowed them to be exploited.

Information alone

Need alone does not make a home. People is not what is needed in Eden. The right kind of people alone will be welcomed here. People of quality and integrity. Excellence is how we treat each other and excellence is how we live.

People who can speak with clarity and kindness and show some self control will be welcomed. With few exceptions. And you are the people who must bring that with you here and not to expect it from anybody else in return until you have been here for over 3 to 5 years and counting.

What we plan to do is something quite different from anything else you may know of and so I would like to ask people to become willing to unlearn what they already think they know about all this Intentional Community stuff. Because that kind of openness to learn first and destroy later is what it takes to build this new kinder and gentler world that is so badly needed now even though a lot of our people are very experienced in all such matters of the self destructive manipulation of other people.

Right Participation

We do not go stomping around out of control, not in this fine and carefully laid out Garden of Truth. Irrational behavior is almost always found to be unacceptable except for special times and places that are to be set aside for such purposes. We have that and do know what that is and where it belongs.

Womens' Centric

We are actually going to be more of a Child Centered Community. Everything is planned here to stimulate the next generations desire to continue on with the work that we have begun just one part of which is breeding so do bring your all tools and equipment.

The Children of Eden must grow up to be healthy and strong, and self sufficient as they will be the ones to inherit the homesteads, and the entire community will then be all paid off, and so easy to maintain and always ready for all to enjoy instead of always having to start from scratch every generation like insects who haven't got a plan for the woman or the man.

Everything we do here is for the Children of The Earth and Eden is about giving voice to the Spirit of the Earth. All good people will be welcomed here. Deaf People are Welcomed. Everyone is seen as having their own personal perspectives, most of which will be more Earth Centered, Child Centered and even Womens Centered as we have said, and we only work for the greater good with a new found respect for what the voice of the feminine spirit has to say.

The Womens Centric perspective could be said to be that the solutions are naturally to be found within the problems and within the local environment, and in the relationships.

This is about working within the natural relationships, among the people involved through the natural order of priorities.

Getting to know the people that we know we need to be able to work with in the local community, and to work with what we have to offer, and what we can make, and what we can do under our own power and with our own energy, without any outside inputs, from the almighty government or the state of disarray. These are the natural relationships to land and people and the spirit of place that have been discarded.

This ties in with Economic Re-Localization and Saving the Earth one step at a time which is the purpose of this project. The traditional perspective might be to buy up all the votes necessary, or to force the patriarchal government to drop the big one on the problem.

We don't need to try to force an unnatural solution upon the problem and to control the people from outside the problem, which should have been seen as being a solution in itself or containing a reflection of the solution, for those who can see it because it may be that there is no real problem, not in the entire universe, only a natural environment that we need to work within once we have begun to identify with the whole Web of Life. Those who want to come here can bring all the resources necessary.

The needs of the People do not come before the Web of Life. We have had that wrong. Neediness is a dead end. That is a trap and it is not a resource. The power of numbers alone will only bankrupt the environment and destroy all the habitat and all living things on the Earth.

It is not for the people to decide to destroy the Earth of not to destroy the Earth. They do not yet own the Earth. These are just a very few of the very new things that can be learned from a lifelong study of the Natural Order of Priorities.

We are all going to have to become reasonably self sufficient from now on, for these very same reasons, at least in the way we think about ourselves and in the way we connect up with the world because unless these humble words really do signify a major change in the direction of our thinking we will be going right back around where came from.

Let these new ideas become our one distinction.

The Honor System:

Who do we have to turn to for instance to get the help that any of us may one day need? Our Own People First and our own local communities. They are the ones that we should have earned the highest honor and respect from.

I should be able to turn to anyone in this group for instance, where I am well enough known and may have earned a welcome place in the hearts and minds and the homes of at least some of the people, who have come here in good faith and been good citizens within this community that I have had to honor of presenting to them. A relationship does exist here.

Others may have not earned very much in the way of recognition here and they may have no relationship but they may have extensive networks of supportive friends they know and they may have true companions they can trust elsewhere so it is not for us to assume that they are nobody, but they have still not proven anything with us and so they will be accorded the appropriate levels of honor and respect that would be accorded to any unknown quantity, as it would be in any tribe.

We all have to learn how to turn first to those with whom we have already earned the deepest trust, and the highest levels of respect, and maybe even a little gratitude, and respect, which can only be earned over many years of solid, proven service towards the greater good within the community.

People who have no Trust can not be Trusted.

Money alone does not make a home.

Need and Greed won't get you Freed.

These are just some of the most efficient new answers that are just now finding their way around in the wind, and that are still not yet that well enough understood within the larger society. We must leave room for some respectful disagreement, but there is an order to how things go down in the community.

There may be many here who cannot be expected to comprehend any of this since, they have been taught only the ethics of thoughtless dependency and reckless disregard, that is what Jonestown was built upon.

The those empty bag ethics of neediness and dependency that once worked so well were simply to theological when the time has come now for an Eco-Logical approach.

Those simple minded empties are all still considered to be very popular beliefs and we can go right down the list and deactivate them when you are good and ready, but most of the people are not yet ready, so there is still going to be much more disagreement until we have landed some of these slower minded people onto the side of Truth, where they must be willing to reject everything that is not justifiable, just to prove our worthiness and willingness to leave familiar territory in the past where it belongs.

The Good Thing is that we can always go back to living in the fold of theological oppression.  Nothing we disconnect from is ever destroyed. We do appreciate all the constructive criticism.

My Humble Apologies to this group for some of the more in depth material we have been getting into here of late, but it is not all going to always be about inspiration and always just laying out the metes and bounds and what you get for so much, and how and when, and hoping that people care, which is mostly about general dependency and neediness and not self sufficiency.

We do have more material to cover here that goes beyond just to make people feel good about themselves. There are some serious changes that are apparently being made by the humble organizer of this project, in the way we begin to view our relationships to this project. And this can be seen as being a big imposition and a new thing whose value may not be instantly recognizable to most members. But all this new stuff is not really that new to native peoples.

It is true that the Year 2012 may not signify the end of the world as it has been understood in the past, by the Maya, but that is merely going to be a bright new beginning for all the positive spirits that we represent here in this Group, who are going to begin to lay down a new Truth.

There will be an end to a lot of other things though, which are just not sustainable, and that will not work anymore in America.

We are even creating a back up plan, which appears to be the main plan but is not, and right up front, may be the best place to keep the back up plan well hidden from prying eyes from doom and gloom, and we say these things because the people have not yet earned a word of Truth.

We are creating a New system of Ethics which are based on Ecological uncertainties, for the first time, instead of these worn out Theological Absolutes, which is what we see behind every commonplace ethic we see in place today.

The Old School Theologically based ethics of these brain dead politicians and these wannabe leaders within this emerging Family of Loving Light will only lead us further into slavery until there is no escape. That is precisely why we must disengage from the rage and turn the page.

Ecological concepts alone can set us free, from these power hungry politicians who will only hold us down forever, when the time has come for Freedom. You have to earn it before you can burn it, as we have said, which is not a very popular precept within this unstable family as yet, but it is entirely ecological, and that is a Truly Tribal concept.

This is going to require some raw new openness of the spirit to accept some of these fresh new ideas, which have come down to us directly from the Crazy Spirit of Truth behind this gracefully unfolding, or recklessly dangerous project, as the case may be, which is always going to be seen as being a huge danger and a threat to all those who stand among the millions behind the Satatus Quo, which is now becoming obsolete.

It is all going to be seen as being as alien and foreign concepts at first and so this will be rejected by all these high holy hippy types, who have no specific rights within this project and who would like to make a power play as a bid for power, and who don't want to see the old theological heirarchy go down into the past where it belongs, because they depend upon that for their very survival, which is done by manipulating that which is not true.

So we are disengaging from all those obsolete aspects of the old brain dead theological leadership within the family stone, because these bad spirits who are stuck in the past, will always try to drag us back down into the status quo of some of the most basic theological values that have ever been found anywhere in the world, and that is no longer the best way to serve the Earth and the people of the future.

We have turned the page on all of that, and created a new way for us to go, which is the way of the Tree. It is now time to set up a few new systems and make some new plans for how things should work within the Honor System and within the Natural Order of Priorities which works by a whole new set of principles, as well as some of the old theological principles which may still have some value for a limited time as we make the transition into a whole new world of grace.

We are in the process of becoming a real community, and not just a random crowd of people, and so there are some real responsibilities that will need to be shared first before any real rights and responsibilities can ever be handed out, and there will be people who need to care, and real commitments that will need to be bared, just so we will be able to handle all the specifically decisive actions that will have to go along with everything else, so we can all live as one.

Asking questions about what has been said in a respectful manner, is probably the best way to go from here and that is highly recommended to some of the new people here as this whole project is based on the new way of living in community that has been created for the people to share, who are going to become some of the most self sustainable survivors of the current trends on Earth no matter what kinds of changes may come down the Old Valley Road.

But we do not intend to do that because it is all just an especially interesting model of mass domination which we saw represented by the Peoples Temple of Doom. The Peoples Dominion through the Power of Numbers only leads to Death and Destruction. 

Truth, my fellow Edenites, like our places on the Earth, must be Earned, before it can be Burned. This is relatively new attitude is still almost completely unknown, because we have not learned the most basic laws of the expanding universe.

We are going to have to learn how to disengage from all that which has been ruled by ignorance and the blundering power of numbers which will follow no man and will learn no thing from no Women of Truth.

That empty slogan based economy of political expedience has brought us nothing but a long series of empty promises gone bad. Luckily we do have a plan to do up some of that, but that is going to require a lot of cooperation and a willingness to accept some of the most dignified guidance and direction possible to imagine.

The power of numbers in itself, will not ever get us free, and that big dream of wrongful enrichment that so many have been clinging to out of ignorance, will only get us all killed in the end, along with the Earth, which will be our collective fate if we don't make some major changes which can only begin on the Eco-Village level.

That is why we say that what the unknown and unproven people may think they want, and may think they need, who have earned no special rights, is entirely a Self Centric proposition for the most part.

It doesn't matter if we have a hundred or a thousand or even a million of these followers of need and greed. It all adds up to nothing at best, and at worst it will self ignite and self destruct us all right back down, along with the Earth, once it has reached a critical mass. Remember that we will be among the first to go so this idea that we are the privileged few is a boondoggle. We actually have no rights as a group, and very few of us have any rights as individuals.

What we should aspire to represent is a whole new uniquely Universal perspective. We are all to be seen as being independent thinkers who will follow no party leader, but who do know how to stand in solidarity with the Spirit of Eden, even if we don't understand it all. And no one is going to explain it either because it changes every ten thousand years. What is true today may not be true tomorrow.

The Natural Order of Priorities

There is a natural order to all things Universal. What is the Natural Order of Priorities?

First there is the Web of Life which is of primary concern.

Then comes the Rainforests Eco-systems and the Eco-Logical Communities of life that all work together to keep it together.

Then comes the Emerald Forest of Sustainable Communities of which Eden is just one small part.

Then comes the Kindred Spirits around the world who can find some way to serve the community they are a part of which in turn will serve the Earth.

Then comes all those women and even a few of the men here on Earth and a lot of other places who have heard some tell of something going on and are very interested in learning more and supporting that in a positive way but sometimes just in order to exploit the whole thing. That is what the larger Resource Base is.

Even people who don't really know us that well are to be counted within our largest circle of friends as long as they mean us no harm. And whatever you really do have to say does matter even if it is just coming out of your own past and is just another regurgitation of nothing but empties that really means nothing to us here in Eden. We have to know how to listen to what people really mean to say.

At the other end of the spectrum we have the Consensus Council which will make decisions based on the collective input of all such peoples. Focus Groups and Committees of all kinds will also be created. We are connected to all the other people on Earth who are true humanitarians in good fait but we do have to grow like a Tree does from where it is and with what it has. These Trees will then be able to connect up later on as they grow larger.

The Council is a Circle of those of us who represent all the homesteaders in this community by a 3/4 Consensus.

We will have many friends and a large Resource Base. And they all run together and there is some overlap but there will be no internal disintegration due to the wrongful manipulation of the power of numbers gone wild.

That would most likely be the result of just throwing everything together into one big compost pile in a completely disorderly manner. That is not integration. That is just what could be called mixing or averaging.

The natural order of workability needs to be respected as we put these things together or we will have a premature breakdown and collapse just like you would expect to see happen in a compost pile. The big meltdown at Jonestown does come to mind as well. Order is the only thing that can save us. But that doesn't mean we don't have a healthy appreciation for the Wild Spirits of Regeneration.

A Second Chance

We will have interns up for the summer. We will have many others who are not that deeply involved in our community affairs but who are here just like it would be at any other community where some people come up for the weekend but won't accept that they won't have an equal say in everything and want to fight about it right off the bat.

Let us not be too naive to make the necessary distinctions about what is going on and what all the ramifications are, and as we grow larger, those will all need to be challengeable to some extent because of the challenging people we may choose to attract.

That is why we need the Honor System and the Natural Order of Priorities so that we have something to go by when decisions need to be made which will help the learning and burning process.

They will all expect to be able to be part of everything they have no part in, even the decisions that have already been made, sometimes before they were even born. You know how kids are.

They will be demanding answers that have not been earned about why everything is the way it is. That is why we need to be able to stand in Solidarity with the vision of an Earth Restored and a World at Peace and working within the Natural Order of Priorities and the Honor System.

- T