Manifeste Choose Love

Version française du manifeste à paraître sous peu.
Pour la version en anglais:

MISSION STATEMENT

« Building around people and a love for our environment and living and working and playing together, a love for being outside and playing and being active, a love for doing things and spending time with people. »
from Leo Babauta,http://mnmlist.com/reimagined/

The community is a cradle for consciousness. Every participant is invited on a journey to becoming a truly loving and conscious person, with a high standard of happiness. Balance, with the general movement from within to without, (i.e. 1.invoking 2.gardening) is the tool to achieve this.

The community, being rooted and alive in one first chosen Garden of Eden, seeks to be a model for common sense change everywhere, for more loving and balanced communities around the world. Especially where imbalances are obvious and call for change, self appointed missionaries are sent for intensives of recreation, in respect with local realities.

The model envisioned seeks to find Balance between external action and contemplation practices in everyday life.Rooted in action, the activity being chosen out of Love according to individual inclinations, the contemplative practice gives Purpose and Light to the actions. Prayers are encouraged to be self formulated, bringing the praying to focus on intention.

Rites of passages Retreats:

Themes:
Pregnancy, Parenting, Teenage passage, Crisis, Choice: A.Decision making B.Change in behavior patterns, Initiation, Incarnation: Man and Woman Hood, Retirement, Loss, Death
Targeted audience: Large, differentiated through themes.

Group Building Seminars and Retreats:

Using Percussion, Movement, Singing
Targeted audience: Organizations, Families, Group of friends

Garden Hospital:

Consultations in different areas of Traditional Medicine.
Pharmacy of delightful bulk herbs, tinctures, ointments and salves.
Garden of Eden Walks, inviting guests to choose out of love the different medicines naturally occurring in the auto-gardening medicinal landscape, with later rational confirmation from Traditions. Ecotourism.

Natural House Building Seminars:

Hands-On Seminars, giving human force to the establishing families.
Content will focus on natural, locally available material, and appropriate methods for the given context of climate.

Focus on a Mortgage Free life. How to build with sustainable, cheap resources a house with realistic proportions to the needs of a given family.
See book The Art of Natural Building

Learning Programs:

Once the community has been successfully been implanted and created a positive in and outward impact, a guide to recreation of this model will be thought to self appointed missionaries who will be trained to sow seeds of Choose Love around the world.

Kindergarden, School and High School Program meeting local regulations, with the following added values: Kindergarden and School: Special emphasis on movement, music and crafts. High School: Special emphasis on languages and self knowledge training such as yoga. Practical action and know how in resonance with the individuals selves. Why? Normal conventional school sap kids from their innate vitality to thrive towards learning and development by focusing on getting them to sit down ‘learning’ (this usually means imitating our mistakes) while they would rather be DOING interesting things.

Language immersion programs in different languages according to location of the community and the elocution of its inhabitants.

Balance Inside Out Community immersion program
Facilitation Training in Diverse Fields: Yoga, Music, Movement, Bodywork, Garden of Eden Walks, etc.

Fasting Facilitation
Sweat Lodge Ceremonies

Celebrations in Consciousness

Special Events, Birth, Birthdays, Weddings, Funerals

Flying Program

Parakite / Paraglide flying fun

Landscaping

Auto gardening and Biodynamic inspired. Added blessings value.
Blessed Certified Program.

Autarcic gardening model based. Everybody capable pitches in.
Any unused logging will be inoculated with mycellium.

Relief Center Program

For refugees, new immigrants, post-trauma victims

Daily Practice

Dream sharing circle at breakfast
Group Meditation once and twice/ day on certain days. Yoga or Qi Gong once/ day. An early morning and evening schedule might help collide different agendas.
Workshops / Consciousness practice according to offer.

Breakfast and Dinner prepared in communal building, everyday by a different person. See inspiring simple recipes in the book Healing With Whole Foods.

Power

Human: residents, students, woofers, prayers.
Electrical: From Wind and Water, following the autarcic model.

People who will be invited to join the community:

Families
Teachers and Gardeners for all the kids
All kinds of Traditional Therapists / Facilitators
Lawyers for managing subsidies, ressources distribution and political outreach
Accountantsfor managing costs, expenses and investments
Wide variety of plant life
Goats, Chickens and Fish
…

Incentives to Subsidies granting Forces toward Choose Love:

Agriculture and Natural Ressource / Ecotourism
Immigration Canada subsidies for refugees management
Education: Public grade and high School in a conventional sense (and beyond)
Tax credit for childrens’ extracurricular activities

Sources of Incomes:

Group team building and Different Retreats / Workshops
Medicines and Herbal Preparations for sales on site, web and local markets
Consultations
Seasonal farmers market for garden / farm overflow
Wildcrafting

To Contributors

To foster a healthy and just community, Individual contribution to the community could be objectively assessed in two ways:
Financial
Human Hours. One Human Hour is worth another Human’s Human Hour. Human Hours can be bought to a certain extent.
Visitors and Students pay a fixed fare for the duration of their internship.

Residents:
To maintain a personal living space on the community, one must either buy, rent or loan living space. Then, to contribute to the well-being of the Organism, from one a minimal of input is expected in terms of Human Hours.

Human Hours are Hours spent in endeavours one has taken in the intent of benefiting everybody else on the community. 4 hours/weekday could be expected from community members. One who has a busy schedule outside the community in other realms of enterprise can buy these hours or swap them for products and services with other community members (who then work out these extra human hours) or with the community itself. To buy human hours to the community means to invest financially in a communal trust used for equal distribution amongst other members. One Human Hour has the value of an average hourly salary for the community members.

Following Might spark discussion
The excessive income of one community member is redistributed equally amongst all members. An excessive income could be defined as such: more than the average for the given profession in the given area of practice. More than 10% of difference between the average and personnal income leaves a discretionary window of action to the concerned member. Income is calculated after expenses and non taxable personal savings are put in the equation. This means non taxable savings for retirement and children heritage don’t coun’t as income.
This politic aims two essential goals:

First, prevent burn-out and overwork of professional workforce within the community.
Second, foster a backboned community, ever stronger than whatever amount an heritage can be left for your children and grandchildren. Giving a model for authentic mutual support amongst a brotherhood of man is what our world and children needs most. Personal accumulation is inherently limitative and isolating people from one another.

A word on convalescent, retirees and motivation:

One considered not capable of working by the community is given all time to rest and restore, provided opportunities for on site intensive natural care to bring about a return to personal empowerment. Long term or Chronic Physical limitations related to age (or sometimes other reasons) are respected as a new chapter in the life of a human being. That person is called upon developping other areas of personal power, such as holding space for celebrations, acceptable clerical work, etc. Long Term limitations can not be self proclamed. It must reach a consensus.

No one can be forced into doing something. One needs to find interest in what appeals to be done.

Bill Hicks, a wise comedian, used to end his shows with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMUiwTubYu0

This is what triggered the idea for the name of our intentional community: The Choose Love Foundation or just Choose Love What do you think? It’s a call to action.
You can read the Celestine prophecy. It basically reminds how every thing we can realize that is happening to us is unraveling important details, meaning and direction to the unfoldment of our life. For example; recurrent background thoughts, dreams or patterns in the external events. When practiced, it feels like we start asking the right questions and taking the right steps. Also, you can check out Masaru Emoto’s Messages From Water. It is a physical confirmation of the Power of prayer.
Let’s open this plenarywith a quote from Leo Babauta http://mnmlist.com/reimagined/

« I’d havelibraries for everything. Just as bike libraries are springing up, and car sharing is becoming more common in cities, and other libraries liketool librariesare coming into public consciousness, we could have libraries for any kind of resources: computers, clothing, furniture, even houses. This would mean things would be far cheaper to use, as we’d be sharing them, and it would mean far less waste as well.

We’d not be consumers, but builders and creators and growers. »

If you have questions, would like to join in the movement, add your input, follow me on twitter or call / write.