The meeting
Dear readers.
This is Chris writing. It was quite a special Friday evening, April 21st, 2023 (kin 78), with the sun setting down behind the Sinai desert mountains and me staring over the majestic waves of the Red Sea, with the contours of Saudi Arabia on the background, being fully present and grateful, contemplating the beauty of the scene in front of my eyes and being mesmerized by a kitesurfer jumping with the wind. It was at that moment, then and there, that Shadi walked into my life, shining bright like a holy man. For me, this was right after doing a sacred ceremony to find my purpose. For Shadi, it was a day after he asked the universe to meet a like-minded person who could understand him and team up. It was the beginning of my second awakening and a journey into the unknown, a journey we baptized Project Exodus (not merely referring to the significant, biblical location of our encounter in Egypt, but also symbolizing a quest for true freedom), a journey that is continuing until today and that became our life mission. The whole Chapter 1 journey from moment of encounter till now is mapped out here (password needed). It’s long and detailed, so only go through it when interest is very high 😊
We’re both nomads for a big part of our adult life, looking for meaning, knowledge of self and the world, and answers to existential questions. With a wealth of information from life experiences and deep investigation, Shadi had figured out that we need to get together in conscious tribes to empower ourselves and make any meaningful impact on our current paradigm, to help change it for the better. This paradigm shift is not a new idea and is reflected in several concepts with different names, all pointing to the same purpose: a shift from the individualistic, competitive current paradigm about growth, rivalry, control and accumulation, to the co-creative, cooperative new paradigm about wholeness and regeneration. Examples are the New Earth concept, Second Renaissance, Game B, and Next Culture.
The vision
Stepping into this vision takes nothing less than a complete inner perspective shift, where connection is considered more important than individual desires or achievements; a return to family values so to speak. This is extremely difficult in a society where family values have been broken down for decades, if not centuries. As a result, people nowadays are generally separated from a natural, intimate support system, missing its strong bond and sense of security, and are lost in trying to figure out their own paths—like cells floating in space, not remembering they’re supposed to function like organs and form healthy bodies with each other in order to feel truly fulfilled with a sense of purpose. The consequence is both losing ourselves into our individuality, where everything is about me, myself and I (personal desires and achievements), and losing our individuality into the collective, trying to do good for the bigger mass without knowing our intrinsic worth and values and how they fit in the bigger whole, and thus being, more often than not, insignificant and powerless. For a society to be healthy, an intermediate step is necessary. And it’s here, in linking these two worlds together—the individual with the collective—where a non-biological extended family or ‘conscious tribe’ comes into play, forming a bridge between both.
We have to learn to relate compassionately with one another, even if that means going through endless tensions and conflicts. We have to learn to be vulnerable with the right people and cope up with each other’s shadow parts, shine light on them, overcome traumas, heal wounds, decondition the mind and become stronger and more balanced as individuals as well as groups. As I mentioned before, we need to work on becoming solid bodies, to create a safe and empowered environment for the cells and organs. That doesn’t stop at ‘community’, a word that is used for the most diverse concepts, from only relating a few times a year with online community members, to taking part in the same activities every now and then, to living in the same location without necessarily sharing the same long-term path or goals. A ‘conscious tribe’ is therefore a term more suited to what we envision, also used by Mark Josephs from the Conscious Tribes Project. He states beautifully:
“A Conscious Tribe is a group of 10 to 30 people (though probably less at the beginning) who have made (what I feel is) a deep and beautiful commitment to each other—and become (what I call) “a non-biological extended family”. In other words, they´re bonded as tightly as many large, extended families used to be, but they´re not bonded biologically (by blood), they´re bonded on a path of learning to live consciously: of learning to live in presentness and emotional-intimacy with each other and with the world.”
I highly recommend having a look at his website and even read his book(s).
Because this requires such a big shift, lots of inner work and exploration, and lots of patience in relating, it’s rarely been done before. However difficult, we’re both convinced this is the right way to welcome more meaning, connection and prosperity into our lives. So we decided to initiate it ourselves and found our first tribe members in each other. Our partner-ship started sailing from that moment onwards. It became one big experiment, full of ups and downs, obstacles and synchronicities, suffering and joy, tensions and magic. But there is one constant: meaningfulness to the core.
The process
We needed to approach it step by step, slowly yet urgently (keeping in mind our collapsing society). During a big part of our joint journey, we’ve been wanting to organize a get-together of like-minded people who would experiment with living together in group for a while and see how they could bond and co-create projects together, as first step in creating a conscious tribe—read more about our tribe concept and co-living concepts on the website I put together in the summer of 2024. In that process, we’ve sent out several presentations and invitations to our networks, with our vision explained, to prompt them to come together and live together for some time. Regardless of the positive reactions we got, real action was missing, because a clear vessel was missing: the date and location (the coordinates in time and space) were not set. Not everyone is living in the extremely spontaneous way—hopping from one place to the other, not bound by time schedules or plans—that Shadi and I have come to see as natural. On a few occasions, in different places throughout our journey, we were accompanied by old friends or new friends; people we met along the way whom we got together with again later in time. However, most of the time that was mostly to temporarily catch up with us and then continue their own path, not yet having fully integrated the necessary communal mindset to make it last longer.
After quite a journey, from trying to organize a retreat in Bosnia, to traveling through the Balkans, living in Saudi Arabia and visiting the Caucasian countries—all the time in pursuit of a place we would feel connected to and could base ourselves in (at least temporary)—attempting a few other projects on the way, we realized how important it was to commit to a specific place and set specific dates for anyone to join us in our mission, whether it would be our friends or people we didn’t know yet, who came to the same conclusion as we did: to make any positive, long-lasting change in this world, we’ll have to really focus on group cohesion.
Foundations of our first tribal co-living experiment
It took us several months from realizing we would need a fixed place (quiet, in nature, reachable enough, with enough capacity) and time (pleasant climate), to making the experiment really concrete. At some point, when we were temporarily living in Georgia, Shadi listened to an interview between Jim Rutt, the founder of the Game B concept and Richard D. Bartlett, a founding member of Enspiral and the founder of Microsolidarity. If interested, listen to the episode here. After listening to that podcast, Shadi got led to a blog post from Richard about a three-month co-living experiment that he organized in a villa in Spain, including all behind-the-scenes details. After reading it, I saw how what we wanted to do was very similar, even though our focus would be purely on co-living without organizing events besides it. Also, we wanted to give every participant their own private room and to keep the space entirely free from alcohol, cigarettes, drugs and meat. The price for the venue that I saw in the budgeting sheet of the blog post was lower than all prices I had come across so far. I got in touch with the owners of the house (a traditional Spanish finca) and funnily they are from Belgium, like myself. They gave a higher price because we wanted to rent for one month in comparison to three, and certain energy prices had increased. Still, it was a good deal taking into consideration their normal price, the size of the property and the alternatives we had found so far.
Due to us being in travel mode and very slow communication with the finca owners, a few months passed before actually deciding—while being quite ‘stable’ in a housesit in Wales—on a concrete time period in the low season at the end of Autumn, which turned out to be still available. Long story short, after an agreement was made, I created an invitation on our website, and then we could start inviting people: first with private invitations to the friends in our network, then to people from the past and eventually more public posts in related Facebook groups, on the Game B platform, on the Freedom Cell Network platform, in Life Itself’s WhatsApp group and in certain Telegram groups. After finding a suitable location, it was finding enough (qualitative) participants to have a worthwhile experience and cover all the costs (mainly house rental, car rental and food) that was without any doubt the hardest part. One of the reasons is probably that it was our first time and another reason is surely that we are attracting similar people to us, who are mostly living quite nomadically on quite a tight budget and even asking the bare minimum contribution to make it happen, is often too much for this segment. And that was our clear intention from the beginning: making it actually happen is of way more importance than keeping any cent of profit, regardless of our huge time and energy investments throughout the entire process. As Richard mentions in the interview: “I’ve been doing community organizing work for a long time and in many of the places that I organize, it’s really hard to make a living as an organizer because you’re mostly dealing with do-goodness, frankly. People that have really good intentions and are contributing something really positive in the world, but very rarely have any spare money to rub together.”
Even then, it was a big task with many waves of stress, turbulence, uncertainty, being close to giving up, pushing through, and eventually success. Throughout that process, we noticed certain patterns of people liking the idea and wanting to come, but … and then certain categories of reasons why it wouldn’t be possible to participate. This was so frequent that I started an “I’d like to, BUT” compilation. For reasons of completeness, I tried my best to divide them into categories. Those are:
Plans that are already made for that period;
Not ready to pay an amount that is—from their position—substantial;
Not the right life stage (knowing the longer-term tribal purpose of the undertaking);
Too far geographically or ‘stuck’ in current geographical location due to various reasons;
Happy with current life and no desire for group living.
We also had calls with people who are undertaking things that are related to our project, hoping that we would reach their networks too, after making our intention clear. Reflecting back, none of the participants actually came through that method. Where did they come from then? Partly from our network, partly through social media posts.
Some demographic, esoteric, arrival and fun details of the participants (and of us between brackets) will follow. For those of you who are Human Design & Astrology enthusiasts, this section is particularly for you. We ourselves have found these systems very useful in our journey, because they’re a way to connect certain dots that science wasn’t able yet to connect. So we found these esoteric modalities extremely helpful and accurate to explain lots about personality traits, interpersonal behavior and people chemistry.
3 from Denmark, 1 from Canada, 1 from Lithuania, 1 from the US, 1 from Czech Republic, 1 from Slovenia, [1 from Arabia-US, 1 from Belgium];
Ages 20, 22, 23, 23, 24, [28-29], 33, 36, 39, 46, [45-46] (we both had our birthday during the experiment);
Gender: 6 [+2] male, 3 female;
Human design types: 3 [+2] generators, 3 manifesting generators, 1 manifestor, 2 projectors;
Human design profiles: 1x 3/5, 2x 1/3, 3x 5/1, 3x 6/2, [1x 1/4, 1x 4/6];
Zodiac sun signs: [2 Sagittarius], 2 Libra, 1 Cancer, 1 Taurus, 1 Aquarius, 1 Capricorn, 2 Aries, 1 Leo;
Astrological elements (based on the sun signs): 3 [+2] fire, 3 air, 2 earth, 1 water;
Arrival dates: [2x 10 nov]; 2x 12 nov; 1x 13 nov; 3x 14 nov (official start date); 1x 22 nov; 1x 23 nov; 1x 25 nov;
Fun fact: everyone has different initials: [C, Sh], A, O, S, T, J, M, K, R, P
The experiment itself
Having only seen photos of the finca beforehand (the traditional Spanish farmhouse that we chose as our location), without actually having been there, was quite a risk, especially with Shadi’s standards for comfort and aesthetics. When eventually we arrived there, a few days before the start of the experiment, we were pretty much blown away. Both the house and the environment are more beautiful than we could have hoped for. There was quite some work to do though, like certain items that were broken or missing, so we absolutely needed the full 3 days of preparation. During that time, we also did a big grocery shopping to have initial stocks, because we had included the meals in the package. Grocery shopping takes plenty of time and effort here, since the closest supermarket is a 30-min drive away and being just two people to buy the quantity of groceries for 8 is quite a big deal. A takeaway from that is that next time, we would do communal groceries only once the group is actually already there, so that more people can help out. That’s what we did most of the rest of the time during the experiment, and even then, with extra help, half of the day would be gone by the time of having stocked everything in the house.
Part of the group arrived before the official start date, so they were able to help out a bit for the last things to arrange, including some more grocery store and market visits. The three next participants arrived on the official start day, exactly when there had been floods in Malaga region, which compromised the public transport options and therefore our plan to pick them up from one of the nearby villages. We waited for the last of the three to land, and then picked them all up at the airport in Malaga, combining it with a big purchase of tahina pots and red lentils in an Arabic store, since that’s food they don’t seem to be used to in Spain, but is quite a necessity for us.
We had kept the rate the same for all rooms, because it was a contribution to cover the overhead costs and not a commercial package price. We let everyone choose their room in agreement with each other and saw how everything seemed to work out well and everyone managed to take a room they liked, without competition: a good example of an application of the game B cooperative paradigm. Eventually, the latecomers arrived 7, 9 and 11 days later. About letting people arrive later—at their request, for various reasons—this is something with such a huge effect that I deem it useful to mention more about it here: this type of experiment creates a very intimate group setting very quickly, because the place is isolated, so there is no distraction around; most of the time is spent together; and we initiated several sharing circles from the very beginning, which brings up a lot of vulnerability and therefore boosts the depth of the group connection. Shared time + shared emotions + shared meals = strong bonding. Letting people arrive later in this setting—especially if it’s one at a time—is not a good idea. At the very beginning, everyone is just an organ trying to find their place in a new body. After a few days, that body gets created though, and newcomers are now individual organs that have to try to become part of a body that is already set. However goodhearted and inclusive the initial organs are, energetically it’s very tough for a new organ to enter that body, or at least it takes time. The first belated organ succeeded (possibly helped by their energetical set-up matching well with the others), the two next ones didn’t. Also, for us as hosts, it was very hard to put extra effort in accommodating the newcomers, because 1) we are also part of the initially created body; 2) we have extra responsibilities and tasks, so less surplus energy to go the extra mile. I suppose we could have done more though, but at the same time, the intention was to be at the same level as the rest of the group, so letting the new body form itself organically with efforts from all sides or no effort at all seemed the way to go.
The term ‘organically’ brings me to the next point. One of the biggest characteristics of our experiment—that probably also sets us apart from most other co-livings and retreats—was letting things happen organically. This means no time scheduling: not for waking up, not for activities (except for a few days of set morning meditations) and not even for meals. Sure, sometimes target times were mentioned, but they never had to be taken too seriously or strict. In the end, all we have is the moment. Any moment, everything can change. In our society, we are taught to constantly live in the future and therefore in our minds; by planning, scheduling and even earning money. Planning and scheduling are tools for trying to control future events. Money is stored perceived value, intended to use in the future. So in reality they form resistance to the moment-to-moment flow of life. Letting go of that mental illusionary control is no easy assignment, especially after a lifetime of being conditioned. It’s evident then, that this was one of the most frequently recurring topics coming up in the sharing circles. Certain folks felt less comfortable with the prevailing timelessness than others. And it went in waves: from accepting that it was possible in no-schedule mode to still get things done, to becoming frustrated about how difficult and unusual it was, to really seeing the magic and synchronicities that timelessness invites.
Naturally, when tuning out of artificial time, and tuning in to the holy now, fascinating things start to happen. Everyone starts to be at the right place at the right time ‘co-incidentally’. People start to become telepathically connected, thinking and talking about the same topics ‘by chance’. The mind starts to calm down and a rare inner peace is achieved. We’ve experienced something similar before during rainbow gatherings, that share quite some characteristics with this undertaking: shared meals, sharing circles, vegetarian food provided, no drugs, no alcohol, in nature, non-hierarchical, anyone can organize (“focalize”) workshops, and most importantly: timelessness. It invites an atmosphere that really IS nothing short of magic. And since magic only happens nowhere (now-here), in presence, it would get broken or distorted by recounting it here. So I’m going to leave it to what it was and let it be. You can participate in our next experiment to experience what I’m talking about. You need the right space and setting to really innerstand. What I do want to mention is certain of the activities that have happened organically throughout this first experiment I’m reporting on:
ecstatic dance
sharing circles
qigong
5 Tibetan rites
meditation
5 rhythm breathwork
holotropic breathwork
Wim Hof breathwork
hikes
improv theater
community envisioning
project brainstorming
project process
contact improvisation
work-outs
cold water swimming
massage jam
fasting in group
table tennis
yoga
(therapeutic) Focusing
Human Design class
Law of Time classes
body rhythm jam
telepathic experiments
possibility speaking
spontaneous kitchen dances
bonfire
hitchhiking
city trip
camping
drawing & poems
thousands of hugs
Even though we spent by far most of our time in and around the finca, we didn’t stay the entire month in the domain. Some of us needed a bit more adventure and exploration, so there were hiking activities, small trips to nearby villages and a bigger city trip to Granada where some of us stayed longer than others. It was interesting to see how the group got quite divided after that. The division was already tangible from the moment of saying goodbye in the evening, when part would go back to the finca and part would stay to camp. The amount of love and hugs given there made it really feel like we would never see each other again. And you never know of course. So, the division was physical on the one hand, because five people went back to the finca the same day, three people came back a day later, and three others still two days after that. But mostly an energetic division emerged, because every day at the finca—throughout the whole experiment—felt like a week. So in three days, there was so much that happened, that it created the same effect as for the people who came later at the beginning: a new body was created again with which we did a vulnerable sharing circle, a brainstorming session about community visions, an event day where we had a visitor, and Shadi’s birthday celebration. And of course, the camping group themselves bonded also more with each other, creating a separate body themselves.
Once they came back, it felt like they were back from a month of travels. The day they came back was also the start of 10 days of energetic turbulence, indicated as ‘galactic activation portals’ in the Mayan Tzolkin. And turbulence there was. During this period, 4 of the 9 participants left. 1 departure was planned from the beginning, so doesn’t count for the turbulence meter. 3 were unplanned. 2 of the 3 were part of the group that came back from the city trip after several days. 2 of the 3 were among the ones who arrived later than the start of the experiment and never really found their place in the group—a big part of the reason is that one of them barely ever participated in the sharing circles and even the communal meals, so there was no room to speak out their heart, and the other was often having calls for their job, which made it difficult to fit in a space where everyone had mostly made themselves free and everything happened spontaneously. This made them miss many cohesive group moments, while they already had arrived later than the others in the first place. The third one who left unplanned was someone who bonded intensely with one of the others who was leaving, and at the same time didn’t resonate with our plan to start a business in team; to use elements of Game A (the current paradigm) to empower ourselves and then move on to Game B (the New Earth paradigm), even though we had made that clear from the invitation onwards. He had been a businessman in his ‘previous life’ and didn’t want anything to do anymore with that world. Repeatedly, we had explained to him that everything would be different with a solid group, which would turn it more into play and mutual support than ego and greed, but he didn’t alter his mind, so sadly also left.
Now all of a sudden, with about 10 days to go, four out of ten rooms were empty. It felt strange. But there was also a lighter feeling, having a smaller group, especially because the ones who were still there really wanted to be there, so it made the project undertakings way easier and more efficient—we had spontaneously come up with a business idea when dropping off one of the departing participants. This brings me also to two phenomena we experienced since early on, during the experiment:
Whenever someone would be absent from the group in its whole—mostly noticeable at the dining table—for the ones present, it would feel as if at least two people were missing. This can be explained by the absence of both the physical body ánd the energetic body, including its 7 ‘subtle bodies’.
A group feels like one unified whole up to 7 to 8 people. Discussions at the table now involve everyone and are still focused on one topic. Group activities happen in an efficient and manageable way. From around 9 to 10, a transition happens. Dinner table conversations get scattered. That is the clearest indication. But overall, the group atmosphere with that quantity of people starts to feel a little bit heavier, distorted, more chaotic, less cohesive, less close to the heart. I just realized that this might have been another influence on the turbulence we faced, and on the people who left when we were 9 to 11. These numbers are not set in stone. They’re based on our own personal experience. For example, in Microsolidarity, they speak about 3 to 6 people for a solid, unified group, and a dinner table transition from 8 (see ‘The Crew’).
Hindsight findings
The last phenomena that I would like to bring up before concluding this report, are the following:
The presence of 1 woman—attractive in every sense: conscious, fair, sincere, kind and caring—with a group of men (attractive, conscious, fair, sincere, kind and caring as well) is matter for an extremely fascinating and one-of-a-kind experiment. It’s difficult to fathom the level of insight this brought for both of us and probably everyone who participated. This ratio was not true for the whole co-living period, but it was for the first 10 days: enough to see clear patterns, notice the catalyzing role of a woman—being energetically magnetic by default—and come to realizations. I feel the scope of this format is not sufficient to go into details about this topic, but I’d like to bring up a few major tendencies. See it as conclusions, derived from a social experiment on the microscale, that can be seen as a pretty accurate representation of society on the macroscale (even though the characteristics of the people who participated were above average in terms of awareness, fairness, sincerity and kindness).
Some important side information before going into the tendencies:
The woman in question is a Projector in Human Design, which means that she connects most strongly with people in a one-on-one setting, and that her aura gets locked with that one person when giving them attention. Here a little quote from a Human Design book: “The secret is their focused and absorbing aura. Projectors have an uncanny ability to penetrate other people and see into their gifts, feelings, challenges, and true essence. Projectors are not here to dwell on the surface; they can’t help but go deep, see things that others miss, and come into situations armed with advice, suggestions, and the perfect question to elicit a breakthrough.” As you can imagine, this makes people generally very seen and understood when in connection with a Projector, and makes others feel excluded from the one-on-one energy bubble. Another quote: “Projectors do not carry energy in their own personal field but absorb the energies of others and manage it.”
This particular woman has very balanced energy, which allows her to be authentic, caring and attentive with everyone present, and not play preferential games.
Okay, so let’s go into some takeaways:
Most men are polarized in their yin-yang energy, and therefore easily magnetized by the presence of the ‘woman in red’. The polarization most probably comes from a combination of 1) childhood wounds connected to the mother, 2) a society that stimulates further polarization through materialistic advertisements, Hollywood concept of romance, lack of sense of security, and separation from spirit (alienation from source unity). There áre men who are balanced and not easily pulled by the magnetism of the female archetype, but they’re extremely rare. We had three of them in the co-living though, just to make clear the exceptionality of the people present in this first experiment.
The polarization causes a few feelings and behaviors:
Wanting to spend as much time as possible with her (lots of male attention and energy is going to her presence, both in the physical and the mental realm).
Seeking constant recognition, approval and care from her.
Feeling lack and jealousy when she’s spending time with someone else (intensified by her Projector type), even though she might have spent quality-time with him just a minute before.
Desire to ‘possess’ her, strengthened by a lack of clarity about the intentions of the other males present. Shadi tends to make an analogy with a land and a seed, where a land represents a woman (Madre Tierra / Pachamama) and the seed represents a man. As long as the land is not occupied, the polarized male energy wants to occupy it and mark the territory to be able to safely plant seeds for plants to grow. This is rooted in the base consciousness of the plant and animal kingdom. As humans, possessing higher consciousness, our task is to transcend this polarization and remember our wholeness (holiness) and balance within. To go more in depth into this topic, I invite you to watch this video of Mark Passio on consciousness, polarity and the human brain, and to look into the Spiral Dynamics system, starting with this podcast.
Because the names of the participants are anonymous, I feel like sharing just a few quotes that came up during personal interviews with some of the men as examples. I will use fictional names for reasons of clarity and anonimity:
Dan: “Reactions and emotions regarding Joanna: hard to accept that they keep coming up. Jealousy about her appears when she speaks with Thomas. Frustration about this jealousy popping up over and over again. Hard to overcome it. I’m unable to ask or invite myself in a group hug, so going into distancing. When having connection with her, it feels authentic. But when that moment is gone, the lacking feeling comes back. It’s not that I want a serious relationship with her. Most impulses and reactions towards her come to some extent from a feeling of attraction. Are they coming from seeking approval from a mother figure? The feeling of rejection comes after connecting with her, so this feeling of rejection is obviously irrational. I tend to try to connect to my center, knowing my worth. Any interaction that happens, is then natural, not from neediness.”
John: “Regarding Joanna: there is jealousy; not wanting to have a relationship with her, but still wanting to catch her attention, or make her happy. Very strong energy. Not wanting to be a slave of this force. Part of me wants her, maybe the animal part. Competitive mind. I’m observing who she’s interacting with and still mentally reacting. One part wants to explore more with her and make a move before she leaves. One part wants to have clarity and just be friends with her. I don’t feel I have freedom with this. It feels like these feelings are controlling me. I want to overcome them, but it’s so hard.”
Ben: “I thought I had made progress regarding the effect of Joanna’s presence. But there is a feeling in me of not getting attention from her. It feels like I’m protecting myself from her by not initiating contact, but with that, there is automatically more distance created. And it affects me. I’m longing for more closeness with her.”
From the perspective of a balanced woman, these polarized inclinations can be quite annoying, since initially, she sees all group members as fellow souls, without their gender being of much importance, with whom she can be a very loving human being. However, once she realizes the impact she has on most of the men, she starts to feel more in her body than in her higher self, she starts to become more self-conscious about her actions of giving attention, loving touch and care, and just feels overall like a woman instead of a soul. Becoming aware of the turbulence she’s causing unintentionally, just by being the only woman, who is at the same time (more than average) a caring person by nature, leads to moments where she feels the necessity to “put up a wall to protect herself”, which she doesn’t like because she wants to be authentic to herself and the others, which is a very open and touchy person. This slightly breaks her flow in relating to the others until she restores her balance. In her case, restoring that balance was possible. It would be interesting to see what would happen in a similar situation with a woman who is polarized too. Would she choose her preferred man and together create a bubble that is more closed towards the others? Would that create more jealousy for the other polarized men, or on the contrary: less, because now there is clarity about who ‘occupies’ her. Not sure. Maybe we will find out in another experiment.
Continuation of some perceived phenomena:
The occupancy of food: Regardless of all the activities we managed to experience together, without doubt the single biggest time consumer was food (after sleep of course). Not only does it take extensive amounts of time to run errands, also cooking two meals a day for 7 to 11 people is taking dozens of hours throughout the month. Nobody—not even the most passionate cook like Shadi—is willing to take that task solely on themselves, and thus the cooking process is one of the most valuable team building activities. The group is basically caring for each other’s basic needs. The time-consuming aspect of it becomes most clear when it’s suddenly absent. At some point (quite early) during the experiment, the group decided to fast together for a day or two (exact period depending on personal choice). It was very noticeable how much more time was available during that day, and it felt packed with activities.
The power of sharing circles: We started to hold sharing circles (or ‘check-ins’, as we called them during the experiment) from the very first day of the moon period. This allowed everyone to open up to each other from the very beginning, and created very strong trust. Because not only did everyone see each other’s positive, ‘light’ side, also deeper, internal ‘shadow’ sides were openly shared, while those are generally kept hidden, especially with strangers. The level of vulnerability among the group members was exceptionally high, which got me motivated at times to share more vulnerable things than I would usually do with people I don’t know through and through. The downside of being so vulnerable, naked and exposed with each other, is that there is more susceptibility to being hurt. When all defenses are down, it’s easier to get wounded. That’s why it’s scary for many people to be so open-hearted and it’s indeed important to choose the right people for that. We had one negative experience with one of the participants who left earlier. I don’t feel like elaborating on that here, but you can always contact me to know more details.
How we managed to get together a bunch of exceptionally goodhearted humans: throughout the months of preparing to build up a conscious tribe, we put together a question form that turned out to be an invaluable tool for the curation process of this co-living experiment. Additionally, making use of our innate people intuition, as well as esoteric systems like Astrology and Human Design, and combining it with a video call, allowed us to have a very clear understanding about someone’s personality before meeting them in real life. And since in this type of experiment, it’s all about the people, I think we did a great job in that. Besides, keeping alcohol, drugs, tobacco and any type of intoxication out of the picture (even coffee most of the time) and that way keeping the mind clear and consciousness high, was also a major measure with significant impact.
Bubble effect of inner peace: Throughout the whole experiment and beyond, me and most of the others experienced a sense of wholeness and inner peace that is rare in today’s society. This type of peace only emerges when not in a state of survival, meaning basic needs are checked. Shelter? Check. Food? Check. Nature? Check. Mental activity? Check. Human connection and belonging? Check. A consequence of this was not feeling any desire to be in touch with the outside world, including dear friends. Because everything of importance at that moment was there and then. It felt complete. It’s a feeling I’ve rarely ever experienced before. Usually, I’m immersed in digital communication with friends in different parts of the world, or I’m having some feeling or fear of missing out on something valuable. None of that this time.
For the people knowledgeable about Human Design, some interesting findings under this topic:
The people who left suddenly and unplanned were the 3 manifesting generators. They’re fast-paced, need a lot of action and have an easier time to switch courses.
The people who left with their departure planned beforehand, both with the intention of joining again later on, were the 2 projectors. They both wanted to take care first of people they were emotionally entangled with and both had to be clearly invited again (their strategy) to really make it back.
The one person who had the intention to continue together, but very impulsively left at the end of the experiment was the 1 manifestor. The pace of the group was too slow for him and he wanted to keep following his own track of high intensity.
The people who stayed together after the end of the experiment (at least for a while) were the 5 generators. They’re slow to start, but very hard to stop once they’re on course.
This is just one obvious tendency that is easy to describe here. The level of accuracy of the esoteric systems that we were able to witness throughout this whole experiment was phenomenal, and makes us excited to keep those modalities as precious tools for future undertakings.
To be continued
Overall, we consider this first co-living experiment a success that exceeded our expectations. It confirmed the value of living in group, carrying more positives than negatives. It multiplied the magic we witnessed and resulted in a rare feeling of inner balance and peace. It makes us aspire to continue this path and build a solid tribe, no matter how long it takes.
If you want, you can find photos of this first experiment here (password: timeisart). If you’ve come this far, chances are high there is quite some resonance between us. If what you’ve read here indeed speaks to you and you feel aligned with what we are undertaking, then I highly recommend you to stay in touch and be updated about our next experiment. Act now. With the current state of the world in mind, we feel there is a sense of urgency to get together, find a safe space and empower ourselves, with freedom, sovereignty, connection, respect, kindness, morality and equality at the core. We chose to dedicate all our life force to this project and you can become part of it too, if you let go of fear and join us into the unknown. Here again the link to the tribe building section on our website.
Besides, if you feel like delving deeper into your own depths and use your cosmic blueprint to get to know yourself better and get back on track, guided by a specialist (Shadi), then you can book personalized esoteric counseling here.
Last but not least: we are currently scouting for the ideal location for experiment 2. Conditions for the venue are:
Surrounded by nature (can be forests, mountains, lakes, sea, …);
7-11 bedrooms;
Under €4000 for a month, the lower the better of course, since this will be reflected in the contribution we’ll have to ask to participants;
Minimum 3 bathrooms, a big and well-equipped kitchen, spacious interior and a private outdoor area;
Max 30 min drive to grocery possibilities and public transport.
Check out the gallery of the finca where we did experiment 1 as an example of the ideal.
If you have any leads, please contact us.
Thanks for reading to the end and please feel free to reach out for anything, whether it’s questions, curiosities, or interest in the next experiment.
In love and light.
Chris
Shadi
– Timeless Space
