͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ 
Natural Happiness graphic

Cultivating Community

Editorial

Perhaps like me, you seesaw between feeling the blessings and the alarms of life in these wobbly times. Community is a great way of finding more steadiness: you can feel solidarity, support, sanity.   

     The most effective and resilient groups often have a strong sense of higher purpose, inspiration, implicitly a spiritual dimension: and you'll find ways to explore this as you read on.



With blessings,

Alan

Image description
Feature blog: Spiritual purpose and community

Why we all need collective power

Image description

You may wonder why I see community as important in the field of spiritual purpose. It’s a belief that has only emerged for me in the past few years of mounting turbulence.

     It’s now very hard for lone individuals to sustain their spiritual beliefs, as well as a healthy, realistic view of life in general. Why? Because what we experience as ‘reality’ is largely a fabrication, manipulated by social media, big business and the elite. I don’t see this as a conspiracy: it’s simply in their interest to convince us that we’re isolated, vulnerable and dependent. Read more

Natural Happiness Seed 5: Cultivating community

When I think about how we can all prepare better for the turbulent times ahead, raising the resilience of local communities comes up as a top priority: this is something we can all contribute to, without waiting on all the many policy steps which national government should be taking. Sadly, human society has become highly individualistic, and many of us lack the skills to deepen human communities. However, cultivated ecosystems can teach us a lot about community, as well as other aspects of human wellbeing and resilience. Here are some examples from different contexts.

Read more

Image description
Community Resilience: project update

Project CLAAR is about community-led adaptation and resilience: an urgent need given the future outlook. Alan's Seeding our Future project is working with the Network for Social Change and others on plans for a substantial initiative, gathering key players and trialling a number of innovative approaches. See more here.

Natural Happiness Resource Toolkit: You and Your Communities

If you define community quite widely, you are probably part of several. This resource can help you assess the groups you’re in, and how they fit your needs. I’ve listed seven kinds of community: review how many of these you’re involved in. Read more

Events & Podcasts

Podcasts

Our podcasts feature Alan Heeks in interviews discussing his natural happiness approach, well-being, and personal growth. Tune in for thoughtful conversations and practical insights to help grow your own happiness. Tune in here.

Image description

Faith, Hope, Resilience, Garn Farm, Black Mountains, Wales

November 9, 2024

Image description

How can we find our steady centre in these uncertain times? Where do we place our faith and our hope? This day of exploration and support will include times of prayer, meditation and sharing, with periods outside for walking contemplation as a micro pilgrimage, and for communing with Nature as a micro vision quest: recognising the power of space and silence. More details.

Image description

Men's Elderhood Retreat, Trwyn Tal, Black Mountains

November 15-17, 2024

Image description

This weekend offers a shared space to explore as a peer group how we harvest the fruits and adjust to the losses of getting older: a chance to look afresh at our past and present, and consider the future we’d like to help create. How can we serve as elders in these troubled times, and be good ancestors to those who come after us? What’s the balance, in later life, between inner contemplation and outer action? This retreat is intended as a supportive circle for men who would like to explore these and other questions. More details.

Image description
Bonus blog: Sustainable, sociable and fun: a cohousing story

An ecological footprint is a measure of how much productive land area your lifestyle requires, and how far this is from sustainability. The UK average footprint is between 5 and 8 global hectares per person, based on different experts’ views. This is a story of how simple measures at the cohousing project I co-founded achieved a carbon footprint of only 2.4 hectares per person. Read more here.

Why does Alan have 5 websites?

Alan explains: I know this sounds a lot, but each covers a different aspect of my work, and if they were all on one site it would be horribly complex. So if you feel like some online exploration, here's a quick guide:

Soul Resilience (www.soulresilience.net): is about building spiritual resilience and purpose to grow through crisis times. Here, you’ll find info about a new project, the Searching Spirit Centre, plus resources and blogs to help your spiritual exploration. 
Alan Heeks (www.alanheeks.com): provides details of all Alan’s books, including the two on creative ageing. 

Seeding our Future (www.seedingourfuture.org.uk): this projects helps individuals, communities and frontline public services to grow their resilience skills and wisdom, to thrive and adapt to meet climate change and other pressures positively.

Living Organically (www.living-organically.com): shares some of the wisdom resources which have helped Alan grow through the rising confusion of our times, including Desert Wisdom: his retreats in the Sahara with Bedouin guides.

Natural Happiness (www.naturalhappiness.net): Alan’s unique approach to cultivating human nature through parallels with organic gardening. This website is packed with resources, events, blogs and more.

Book blog: A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit

Positive news on community responses to disasters

We’re clearly in an era of mounting disasters: not just incidents like hurricanes, but longer-term systemic disasters like habitat loss and food supply failures. This is a highly perceptive and reassuring book for our times.

     Rebecca has thoroughly researched a number of major disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 in New York, and the big earthquake in Mexico in 1985. Research may be too cold a word: she learned most from in-person conversations with survivors. Read more

Image description
If you want to unsubscribe, click here.
Sender.net