Being Part of an Eco-Village Network
When we began this journey nearly seven
years ago we did not set out to form an eco-village, nor did we have
any conscious concept of what an eco-village even was. Over the years
of our experimenting and sharing, creating and growing we began to
have an awareness of the concepts of permaculture or sustainability
or organic and to meet others on similar journeys. It has been a
process of observation and of changing consciousness for me.
Three years ago we went to our first
Eco-Chile gathering, PermaSur at El Manzano Eco-School, and
recognizing ourselves reflected in the other groups present, joined
the eco-village network in Chile. Since then I have visited several
different eco-villages in the network and in every one I have found
resonance, understanding, friendships that feel like extended family.
Travel is sometimes difficult when you awaken your ecological
consciousness because you are used to composting most of your waste
or have a deep, near religious appreciation for water conservation or
really enjoy eating what's in season and produced locally, but
visiting eco-villages, their pace and rhythms, their creative shapes
and ideas, their building materials, their garden patterns, has
always felt like home away from home to me. Just the conversation
topics alone fill me with harmony to know others who share my passion
for a peaceful, abundant, life-giving transition from our current
global consumerism travails, who have or are actively changing their
lives to live in an alternate consciousness from the modern,
competitive paradigm. We recognize one another, see our reflections
manifesting in fractal patterns where all over the world people are
awakening, changing directions, putting their hands, hearts, and
minds to the good work of fulfilling dreams instead of bank accounts,
building sanctuaries instead of debts.
But we ourselves are in transition, in
stages of transformation born of the modern, dominant consciousness
and we bear its scars, its traumas, its immature emotional patterns,
its struggles of ego. We are not perfect, we are on a journey, we are
learning by doing. Even the courage to begin is remarkable. The
courage to stare-down your own ego, shed pride, and give yourself
over to collaboration, letting go of internal fears, experiencing
truer freedoms beyond that which you had previously accepted as the
outlying boundaries, that is the courage necessary to continue, to
transform.
Eco-villages are forming everywhere and
since 2012 we have seen exponential growth in the number of groups
forming, sharing, learning, creating. If you want to get to know more
about eco-villages, try volunteering at one during the summer months
of the growing and building season, or attend a workshop class hosted
by an eco-village. Read the monthly newsletters from the Eco-Chile
network at www.permacultura.cl
(in Spanish) where participating eco-villages send in photos and
blogs of their activities throughout the year. Dreams awakening take
on many forms.
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