For the last five months I have been staying in an eco village in southern Portugal. My time here is slowly coming to an end, and I am already looking forward to seeing you all again. Over the years we have created a small healing community in Brussels, and I’m very happy to dive back into it with you this winter.
I came here to recharge and to learn. Above all, I wanted to learn how to live in community, and especially how to deal with conflict. I am convinced that, whether we live in a city or in the countryside, we need to build stronger community structures that include everyone, and I wanted to understand how that can be done.
It has been beautiful, and not every day was easy. I’m sharing some of what I found here because I think it matters wherever we live, whether that’s a tent in the hills or a desk in an office.
A reset, almost 24/7 in nature
I came looking for a reset, and I definitely received one. I spent almost every hour of the day in nature.
As I describe in my book A Healing Map, I am a terribly light sleeper. Sleeping in collective rooms was out of the question, and for many months it was the only option on offer. So, believe it or not, I lived in a tent in the hills. Only recently have I been upgraded to a private room. I loved it: watching the sun rise from the tent and falling asleep under an endless starry sky. As someone here put it, we live in a “ten thousand star hotel.”
The food is vegan and never contains sugar, and I think I have never been healthier. My social media and film consumption dropped to practically nothing, and I didn’t miss them as much as I expected.
Community: the most challenging and the most rewarding part
Community life confronts you with your own patterns and shadow, whether you like it or not. Whatever you didn’t feel like looking at will sooner or later come up.
I live in a group of 30 people from all over the world, of all ages and backgrounds. It has been fascinating to watch how the “reflective shadow” moves through the group. Sooner or later each of us goes through a more difficult phase and is pushed into challenging introspection, and then the attention moves on to someone else.
[Your payoff on conflict: two or three sentences on what you observed. For example, one thing that helped the group work through a conflict, and one thing that surprised you about what makes a structure inclusive.]
It also made me look again at the question of belonging, which seems to be such a big part of my life. Do I belong to this group? What does it mean to belong? Do the others feel they belong? Do we already feel a sense of belonging to the eco village itself? I don’t have neat answers. But I notice how often I perform belonging rather than feel it, and that is something I will carry back with me.
A planetary perplexity
The eco village also has a constant flow of guests and groups arriving for workshops, so there is permanent coming and going. I often talk with the visitors, and one thing keeps striking me: there is a great not knowing among people these days.
Many of those who come are highly educated and skilled, yet they simply don’t know what their next step in life is. Some have sold their businesses to move on. Some have quit their jobs and are living off savings. Some want to learn how to set up a community, others want to join an existing one.
I started calling this a planetary perplexity. I think it reflects the current Zeitgeist: a fractured world, a constant stream of bad news, and a consciousness of anticipation, as if something terrible is bound to happen. So why can’t we sit down together and think about what a healed world would look like? Why does it feel almost naive, or “hippyish”, even to suggest it?
Gratitude
It has been beautiful, and also tough and challenging. I will be grateful forever for the encounters, the moments, the processes, the insights, the connections and the teaching, and above all for the people from all over the world I was allowed to meet here. They will impact the course of my life.
I am happy to return to Brussels and share what I have learned, seen and understood with all of you.
Questions to take with you
- Where in your life are you not knowing right now? Can you let it be a pause rather than a failure?
- Where do you feel you truly belong, and where are you performing belonging?
- Where in your own community, whether it’s a workplace, a neighbourhood or a circle of friends, could a conflict be met with more openness?
- If you imagined a healed version of your own world, even a small corner of it, what would it look like?
