Changing the World
Introduction | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Afterword
A Vision of a Circleway Village
1. The Seed of the Vision
This visit was made in the year 2012, and obviously much had been accomplished in the village by then. The vision of that visit was recorded and published in 2005, before even land had been located and acquired for the village. After the first public reading of the vision in August, the author visited Damanhur, a village of about 1,000 people in the foothills of the Italian Alps. This community, with much the same intention as the Circle Way movement, had its own economy with its own money, 80 businesses, a shopping center, organic farm, elementary school, a spiritual university, and has created a renowned temple to the spirit of humankind actually inside the mountain. Their vision began in 1975 and the land was acquired and building begun two years later. Their achievements include many elements of our vision here and may be viewed on the Internet at www.damanhur.org.
The Circle Way Village vision had been germinating and gestating for ten years in our international camps exploring the Circle Way before this version of the vision was written. The author is satisfied, after creating, living in, and studying many communities for close to forty years, that this vision is eminently practical and feasible. Due to the nature of the Circle Way that encompasses and encourages the total range of creativity and intelligence of all its participants, there will no doubt emerge many variations in the manifestation of Circle Way Villages.
That is all to the good. Because our goal is not just to make better lives for ourselves and our families, but to create a society which works for everyone. A society that does not just give lip service to freedom, equality and friendly, supportive relationships among all human beings, but actually brings us closer to each other and allows our universal human qualities of creativity, playfulness, and caring to flourish.