The Village Is Decentralized.
The Village Is Hyper Local.
The Village Is Here and Now.
You might be a village of one.
That's ok, the Village Principles still apply to you. After all, principle number one is "I am the one."
I am the one for me, and that is the foundation of my village. The way that I am the one for me is subject to continual refinement and represents the most effective lever I have over my own life experience.
The Village is a way of connecting, and it's so powerful and profound that I have the lived experience that there are homes open to me around the country and around the world, ready to welcome me as family.
This is ALL that saved my heart when it shattered two years ago. I reached out to people I had not yet met, in a town I had never visited, and asked if they had a bed for me.
Yes.
They bopped me around the family houses, fitting me around plans and other guests for four days while I underwent the reckoning that every life plan I had for myself was out the door, that the man I thought I knew was suddenly someone else. They picked me up without dropping everything for me. They let me join in what they were holding.
That was when I was utterly broken, I felt I had nothing to offer. Yet this village I had sown through the interwebs in this decentralized way was there to hold ME because of who I am, and because of who they are as loving generous people who resonate with what I put into the world.
The beginning of my healing was three straight months of this, going to cities I might want to live in, meeting internet friends and having unprecedented experiences of being met, seen, and held.
Now that I've revitalized, it's more iterations of this--going where I am called, homes opening to receive me, and this time it's me offering back in to the ecosystem. (I was doing this all along, for sure, but I did not experience it that way very much.)
I might pick up and move to another California city this winter, with the friend who suggested we maybe "all move to Austin." This was back in May, and I told her then, "the Village is decentralized. We ARE in it, and we will weave in and out of each other's geography consistently." Now, less than a year later, I'm considering a time of getting hyperlocal with her crew.
My village is decentralized, it is a collection of open hearts and open doors ready to iterate on days, weeks, months, or years of life with me.
My village is hyperlocal, it is right here and now, with the people I am at a here with any now. This month I think I've put more miles on my legs than my car. This month I have made maybe two plans to hang out with friends and have been busy every night with the ways events arise and people arrive.
I think to myself "I never make plans with my friends!" and in reality I see friends all the time.
My home is a hub where people stop by to shower and change, bring meals and groceries, park to walk downtown, cowork, and cook.
All of this runs on the technology of the Village Principles, and all of it rests on the stability of the way I am the one who is my own primary village.
The village is hyperlocal, it is within me. The village is decentralized--it is wherever I go, led by this timeless technology.
Alignment feels like one thing. Misalignment feels like a lot of things. Resting in the groove of alignment, I experience that all decisions make themselves, that the path forward already knows itself.
I want you to be at home wherever you are, and that is why I am teaching this timeless technology.
The craving you feel for love is painful because it is calling you to act. It is calling you to claim your belonging in a village where it is safe for you to be witnessed, where it is the practice to love and accept and celebrate you as you are.
It is calling you to curate the hyperlocal village where you already are so that it becomes this safe and nourishing place for you and for those you love. It is calling you to reevaluate your attentional practices and receive never-before-experienced elements of the infinite here and now.
This really speaks to my heart, thank you.
I recently had the pleasure of meeting Charles Eisenstein, and asked about a dream I had of living on land within an ecovillage with close family, friends, and friends who are yet to be. He gave me a piece of wisdom: Rather than strive for the place, live the values and vibration of the path you want to be on. As I read this article that feels embodied by the values and vibration of the path, my somatic gnosis says: YES. THIS.
Thank you so much for sharing this.