Which role should spirituality have in our living and working community?
Should we, (prospective) participants, first reach agreement on our spiritual premises, before we can decide about our practical living and working situation?
We don‘t think this is necessary.
To us, spirituality is an important part of our personal lives, yet the least relevant part of the life we share. Shared premises about living and working arise from different spiritual, religious or humanistic convictions. However, these convictions are personal and should not have priority when organizing our common daily life in our village.
Spirituality is a very personal part of our lives and thus very hard to describe. We don‘t think it is necessary, feasible or even desirable to want everybody to think the same in these matters. Agreement in that area is not needed for the village to function well. We think spirituality is not to be embedded into some sort of shared "village spirituality". What we need is respect to everyone of us in all our differences.
Just like with other personal matters, we often don‘t find the right words to be able to accurately communicate it. For instance, just try to explain to someone who has never had a new herring before, what the flavour of it is like...
It is difficult to describe any flavour or scent. It will always be very subjective. But we think that is all right! This does not have to be a problem. There will remain enough areas to be enjoyed together!
When people eat together, knowing that the others enjoy the food as much as you do is enough for the individual to be able to enjoy the food even more. This could be the same with spirituality. When we just know it is there and do not want others to confirm us, we can live together in great harmony and respect.
There is no reason for wanting to reach an agreement about spiritual matters. Give room to others to enjoy their spirituality and enjoy your own. Rejoice in the multiplicity.
Don‘t make the same mistake that many made before, wanting to create uniformity and/or to instruct others through rules or methods. We think we should not want others to become participants in some spiritual institute.
Don‘t ask for confirmation of your unique experience. Just take the freedom to grow and let others be free to do the same. Don‘t burden yourself trying to make structures where structures are not needed. Don‘t start discussions hoping to reach some agreement. A year later you will find the agreement thus achieved lasted only for a day or so. For you will have grown further, and so will the other person.
Many people live in a situation which is determined mostly by managers and politicians. Our
national governments and the one in Brussels make many rules and regulations that form a frame
in which our movements are confined. Many basic issues that colour our lives are decided outside
our realm of decision-making. Things are decided for us. We are losing our freedom in a growing
number of basic things in life. This decreasing ability to make our individual choices results
in situations that are eventually life-threatening to the entire world, such as the
environmental problems, the changing climate, the structural unemployment.
In difficult times like ours, people often look for spirituality. Some of them also turn away from society. They do their grocery shopping, but don‘t want to know about the devastating ways of production, transportation and packing materials. They look inward and get their hope from spirituality. The world around us does not seem to give us much hope. Society is like a ship broken adrift, with the human race standing at the railing, waiting for the big blow.
Or do we have a choice after all?
An eco-village, a living and working community can be a way to redirect our lives. We can decide to withdraw from most of the constraint. Together with others we can make new rules. This new set of rules will go well with a certain way of life that we choose for. Such as less pollution of the environment, less waste of resources, less change of climate and less toxic emissions.
These choices may seem unrealistic. They appear to be of a meaningless smallness when applied on an individual scale. However, as a group we can support and encourage one another in making these choices. We can seek a life of well-being and prosperity, yet without causing other people either in our country or in other parts of the world to starve because we took too much of the "cake" which we are to share.
When we stop looking at our politicians for solutions and start to look at ourselves and at one another, we can go for what we think we should do, for the way in which we choose to live.