Your Questions About Green Living

Is living in a Sustainable Home just as comfortable as living in a Ordinary home? Worse, better?

Does anyone practice sustainable living? homesteading?

what did you do to get started. things you learned and how you prepared yourself.. i live in a rental right now while we save for land and to build a house. we want to get off the grid as much as poss and would love any tips and suggestions … Thanks…

why is sustainable living important?

Do you think demand for environmental lawyers, sustainable developers and similar is going to hugely increase?

In the forseeable future, say next couple of generations.

I’m thinking, due to A) more awareness of sustainable living, B) more environmental demands placed on big business’, and C) Political motivation

Vision of sustainable living too far out? Thirty years of work for nothing? No real people out there to join?

When I was thirteen years old I started to have the idea about a place where people would live together in a different way than in this society. They would do things they like to do and not just for themselves but for the well of others. They would express themselves freely and also in an artistic way. Finding out about themselves as the most important ‘work’ because knowing that we are all in a growing process, to free ourselves to connect with spaces beyond ourselves. I designed places like this and years later I studied architecture still with the same vision. Then life took over for twelve years with family life, making money, etc. until this finished and I found a beautiful place in midst of unspoiled nature. I bought this land and started to realize my dream. The first years I build up the place. Some times alone, some times with paid workers. When the buildings were finished I offered the place to therapy groups. This went on for a few years.
It was difficult to find people for such a project, except hippies in those days, who wanted to space out. I was strictly against use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco and there seemed hardly anybody without. People came, were staying for some time and then left. This went on for several years and I learned a lot about human behavior… To make the long story short: I tried for more than thirty years. Once I wanted to give up and I had sold the place already with a small down payment, but then the buyer had an accident and I had to move back. Years past by and again I wanted to give up and offered the place for someone who would continue with a similar intention. I wanted to give the place for free, but nobody responded. Probably people thought this is a trick or I’m crazy. So I continued and sometimes there were times when up to twenty people were living together and were feeling good, things worked quite well. But all were traveler and after some time they left, again a coming and going.
Our place is pretty well organized: There is living space for about twenty people, there is plenty of food for even more people, there are absolutely no money problems and there is all the freedom one can dream of. At the moment there is too much work for the few people living here, but with four/fife people more it would be easy and with four hours of daily work we could maintain the place, animals and the people here. The last two years there was a lack of people and work has accumulated, so we need still to clean up, but the chaos is not worse than somewhere else… We are working on several projects like distributing information about meditation or how we call it now: ‘StressReleaseExercise’ and also we are offering our place to all kind of groups and this for free. One word more to the money aspect: We don’t deal with money, every thing we do is because it feels right, we don’t charge and we don’t pay. It really works! We get all what we need and more… A really exciting experience!
You might ask now why there are not enough people interested to live permanently there? The main reason is, that we don’t offer concepts, not spiritual and not religious. There is no leader or guru or any kind of authority, that’s what people prefer, but we need people to take self-responsibility. We need people who are capable to let go of their established concepts and deal with reality how it shows up, whatever this might be and then respond in a free way, not just reacting out of their unconscious background or at least being able to observe their reactions. Most people who come here are bringing their well-established self-image and concepts with them and then they want confirmation for this. And this is not what we can give. We can give space to experience oneself, to work on oneself, etc. but not giving confirmation for whatever concepts and for sure not for spiritual ones! How many people came here and then wanted to convince us of their beautiful spiritual concepts! Oh boy!
The last few months we went to a heavy experience with a kind of ‘troll’ who nearly destroyed all. Several people left and now there can happen a new beginning or it might be the end of my intention. The last few weeks I engaged myself in ‘answers.yahoo’ and I enjoyed it. I might continue writing here, but to do this I don’t need this place, I can do so from everywhere in the world. So I do this effort writing this ‘question’ with the hope that people will respond and so there might come several people together who will join us in our ‘crazy intention’, being in this world, reaching out to new horizons…
BeiYin
PS: If you are interested to read more about our place then go to: http://falconblanco.com
“Please state a question precisely, and then we may be able to answer it accurately,” wrote Peter Christopher.
Here you have some precise questions:
How can I avoid that people, who come here and write beautiful email promising the best, turn out to be liars, thieves, pretender, neurotic, psychotic, etc.? How to avoid people having a highly sophisticated concept about every thing, but not being able to relate and respond to reality? How can I avoid, that if such people when it shows their true personality so that it becomes obvious that they are not possible here, but then these people don’t want to leave and causing a lot of problems, how can I avoid that they show up here? How to avoid that when their expectation is not fulfilled, what hardly ever is possible, that they react angry and give all the fault to the place and me? How to avoid that people steal and take what they want without asking? How can I avoid that psychotic people try to kill me or threatening to destroy the place?
What can I do with people who are not really interested in our intention and not asking any question? Where are the people who are interested and capable to take self-responsibility and doing what is necessary? People who understand that when one is interested in ones growth, that this needs a certain discipline, for example daily meditation, because it shows up that even they had written that they are doing regularly meditation, but being here they don’t do it. What can I do to avoid people coming here and they know that we don’t accept alcohol, tobacco and drugs are lying and when here doing it anyway? So that at the end hardly anybody is meditating, but all are smoking and drinking and just using the freedom and the abundance of food to survive in an easy way. What can I do with this place that can give living space and food with a minimum of work for more than twenty people? Are out there people who might be really interested? How can I reach them? And avoid pretender? Tell me!
My questions: “Vision of sustainable living too far out? Thirty years of work for nothing? No real people out there to join?” I believe that these questions are pretty clear. I can make them more precise:
Is my vision of a life style living together with people, helping and supporting each other and doing things not in the first place for money but because it feels right and is what needs to be done, – is this vision too far out? Is this vision unrealistic? It’s not for me because I am living this and it works. But obviously it’s unrealistic to expect that other people coming out of this society are capable to live this vision. Thirty years of experiencing this reality of people should be enough. I need to find out now what to do, if there is a possibility or not. That’s why I am doing the effort to write here; although it doesn’t look like that any answer will clear this question up. I need to know if there are ‘real people’ out there and what I can do to find them, – if they exist.
Tamara, that’s true, probably many people who might be interested and possible for an intention like FalconBlanco, don’t have Internet because they live already a more simple life. But how can I reach these people? About twenty years ago when there was not yet Internet, I made anouncements in alternative magazines and there was a lot response from people who wanted to move from the city to the country. Quite a number of people came, but it was a disaster! There beautiful image of living in the nature was not enough and working on the land was far too hard for them. After 10 minutes they dropped the tool… But today it would be different, as I know how to check people before they come here. I can call them if they have telephone. I don’t know yet how to make anouncements. Would it be possible that you or other people make an add in a magazine? (Of course I will pay) Also you could tell friends without Internet about our place and that we look for people. That would help! Thanks!!
I made a page in ‘MySpace’ and also in Yahoo, but then i could not find out how to use pyzamp and select pimp my page as an option. Can somebody help me please, – – –
I found the mistake why I couldn’t find ‘pyzamp’ because there was a spelling mistake, the write place is: ‘pyzam’! This one ‘p’ kept me busy for several hours! …
I found the mistake why I couldn’t find ‘pyzamp’ because there was a spelling mistake, the right place is: ‘pyzam’! This one ‘p’ kept me busy for several hours! …
I will close this question now. I realize now that it was not a good way I had ask and that probably is the reason for the lack of answers. I have ask a new question and there came several practical and useful answers. Thanks for your participation. Hasta luego…
BeiYin