Nica retreat postcap
This last Saturday we had the Fall NICA gathering at Ananda community. The gathering fed me. Recently it has been a struggle to get to these gathering -- my busy life pulls me strongly away. And yet when I come away from these gatherings I feel refreshed and energized. And I was fed physically, emotionally, and even (please forgive the word) spiritually.
We had a somewhat smaller number of people show up, and would probably had even fewer if we did not have so many people from Songaia show up. We normally have something like 35 to 40 people show up, and this time we had maybe 20-25. I suspect that holding the meeting at a Yoga community may have scared some people away. So many people have painful associations with religion, and then to hold the meeting at what might turn out to be a cult was not attractive enough to entice people to want to spend a precious weekend day.
It turns out that Ananda is not a cult -- or not that I can tell anyways. It is also not an Ashram, that is, it is not a monastery. The community is a collection of about 30 apartments (and a small swimming pool) on 5 acres of land in Lynwood. There are something like 5 Ananda communities in the U.S. and a couple more in Europe and India. This seems to be one of the more sucessful ones in that they recently have managed to fill all of their apartments with Ananda members whereas before they had a number of apartments they rented out to people who were not Ananda members.
Anyways, the reason we were there is because their community manager, Larry, recognizes that despite their religious background, they have share many of the same challenges and issues that all intentional communities face.
Recently, we have been doing consensus work at Winslow cohousing. And one of the things we have been talking about is dealing with conflicts (and blocks). What we are learning is that we need to get past the superficial heat of the moment and dig down to our deeper needs and values in order to get us back on track in the direction we really want. It was striking to hear Larry report that Ananda members work to resolve conflicts in a similar way. It is true that their method is religious, but it also is looking to hook us into the deeper level that we all share.