Inside Out: The Psychology of Intentional Communities

There was once a time of great hospitality, when people lived in interconnected communities, and everyone was welcomed everywhere they went. We’ll first explore humanity’s fall, from this warm place of belonging into our current consumer culture promoting the separation and isolation of “every man for himself”.  Similarly, each of us are born ready for relationship, born ready to welcome and be welcomed by the villagers we expected would greet us when we arrived on our shared planet. We’ll explore the inner fall that comes for each of us when our natural desire for relationship is thwarted by humanity’s fall into consumerism, and how this creates a fragmentation within us that mirrors the separation that has happened around us. Then, we will talk about the road home, the journey we each must take within our hearts to reclaim our wholeness, and to ready ourselves for one another. But this is not just an inner journey, but an outer one as well, so we’ll examine the parallel road we must travel on with each other, the road taking us back to intentional communities.  We won’t simply talk about these in an abstract sense, but we will uncover and try on practices, applicable in the here and now, that come with the  promise of bringing us back to ourselves as well as one another. The presenters have undertaken the study of the consumer culture, many indigenous cultures, and cultures of numerous intentional communities, examining how these cultures impact the individual and the individual psyche.

We are excited to bring our insights about what has been lost, individually and collectively, in the consumer culture, and the healing journey we must take within ourselves and each other to find our way home to genuine communities of belonging.