ALIGNMENT PROCESS

at Khula Dhamma in January 2010

Ninnette, one of our new members, brought in all her skills to run an ALIGNMENT PROCESS in January. She saw the process as a tool to help the growing community get down to basics – as she kept saying, “get from the roots to the leaves” and not the other way around.
We all had various expectations, mostly wanting deep and honest sharing to develop between us. We also wanted to create a community goal and get clarity of our roles here at Khula Dhamma. It seemed like we had actually grown in numbers too quickly and now we had to sort out a whole bundle of tangled knots!
A great deal of time was spent on defining who we are as a community, especially looking at our spiritual focus. It seems that we are all dedicated to a spiritual path, however one would like to define it, and as our name, “Khula Dhamma” implies, we each consider ourselves as “growing on a path of awakening”. It happily emerged that we are all in alliance with that; we can call that our founding and core intention.
During the Alignment Process many of us found it useful to use M. Scott Peck’s four typical stages of building community to see where we were as a community.
1. Pseudo-community: This is a stage where the members pretend to have a bon ami with one another, and cover up their differences, by acting as if the differences do not exist. Pseudo-community can never directly lead to community, and it is the job of the person guiding the community building process to shorten this period as much as possible.

2. Chaos: When pseudo-community fails to work, the members start falling upon each other, giving vent to their mutual disagreements and differences. This is a period of chaos. It is a time when the people in the community realize that differences cannot simply be ignored. Chaos looks counterproductive but it is the first genuine step towards community building.

3. Emptiness: After chaos comes emptiness. At this stage, the people learn to empty themselves of those ego related factors that are preventing their entry into community. Emptiness is a tough step because it involves the death of a part of the individual. But, Scott Peck argues, this death paves the way for the birth of a new creature, the Community.

4. True community: Having worked through emptiness, the people in community are in complete empathy with one another. There is a great level of tacit understanding. People are able to relate to each other's feelings. Discussions, even when heated, never get sour, and motives are not questioned.
It was easy to see that we were in Chaos! And now as the months go by we might say that there is a sense of moving into a phase of Emptiness – another tough one!
During the Alignment Process we also developed a Quality of Life Holistic Goal for the community:
We intend to live in a peaceful, safe and healthy environment where most of our physical needs are met directly from the land, in particular abundant organic food and clear water. We also intend to create an environment which promotes mindfulness and stimulates spiritual growth, artistic expression and celebration. Living a joyful life in harmony with each other and nature. We intend to share what we have learnt with people living around us and others who may be drawn to the life we are living here.
Keeping in mind the discussions during our Ecovillage Convergence where we spoke about how we could develop good livelihoods (Blessed Works) here, we produced a fine looking list of, for want of a better word, businesses which could be set up at KD; it now remains to implement these wonderful ideas! Or at least some of them!
And so looking through the feelings of disillusionment, the sense of exclusion felt by some as well as the many ambiguities, we each move forward more conscious of our place within this group of people and determined to express our personal truths with clarity.