Healing and transformation is messy, shit is going to happen, healing shifts things around, the world inside and outside changes. Healing reveals the true nature of life, which is groundlessness, what you thought you knew before, you are faced with the choice to let go of the old knowledge, or the pain of keeping an old knowledge that doesn't serve you anymore.
From the experience that I've gathered in my journey, when we tried to create a village, we were faced with the challenge that the villagers were deeply emotionally wounded, and there wasn't space for true collaboration. Any project that was proposed was soon facing doom as the wounded part of the villagers would come off to sabotage, shut down, abandon, or kill the project. Huge efforts and unconscious manipulation was required to get anything done, wasting tons of resources, at the cost of burnouts, more trauma, expelled villagers, and at the end not getting the results that were intended.
We made an essential shift. We shifted our focus to Healing emotional wounds first before attempting to create village. The results changed immediately. The spaces that we were creating were supportive of the healing and transformation of the participants, the participants felt loved, accepted and supported for the first time in their life, and this gave the foundations to start villaging sustainably.
Healing First, then Villaging Emerges. Trying to go the other way around is just another way of colonization and forcing your way through things, it goes against the nature of how life works. Trying to village first without having healing at the base is like trying to plant a garden when the soil is not ready for it. With healing at the base, you take care of the soil first, you don't try to pull the plants by the leafs to grow how you think they should grow, you connect, you listen, you stay in touch, you provide the environment for the plants to develop at their own rhythm. Love is at the core of this practice.
Put healing and transformation at the center of your organization, or your village is destined to suffer the illnesses of the capitalist culture, it will dilute and become a hollow dead space.
