Hi Tibet,

Thanks for writing this! I can’t tell you how exciting it is to see these thoughts being considered by a fellow bay area native. I spent 6 months in Tamera a few years ago but since then have been sitting on my inspiration waiting for the right moment to bring it into reality. Maybe that moment is approaching?

With respect to your questions I don’t there is a “right” answer to any of them. When working on the edge often only the subjective is available and so that is what I will offer here.

• What should our vision be? Is Tamera’s the right one to adopt?

A vision should replicate as closely as possible the highest vision of the world we hold to be true. It should be as personal as possible while at the same time common to all founding members. This commonality of vision is essential to getting anything close to what Tamera has built. Therefore adopting another communities’ vision is possible however I expect it is improbable and for many reasons undesirable.

• Is there a different way to articulate it that I think would better encompass the path to a more beautiful world, or resonate with my San Francisco Bay Area tribe? Are my friends ready to take on a political path as part of daily life?

This question comes back to vision. Vision is developed through experience and if your friends are lacking similar experiences it will be difficult for them to understand let alone become excited about your vision. Tailoring your vision to fit the existing matrix is sub-optimal as the drive will simply not be there if the reality your are building does not align with what is in your heart.

• Is the work on love, sex and partnership absolutely necessary as an essential piece of building community? Is free love (love free from fear) the answer for every community?

In my opinion it is necessary to re-examine the question of love and partnership (among other things) when shifting from a culture of individuality to a culture of community.

• There is a deeply spiritual aspect to Tamera’s foundation based on the interconnectedness of everything, and best described in the book “The Sacred Matrix”. While I resonate which much of their belief system, I didn’t include it here because to me it doesn’t seem like a necessary part of any/all successful community building. But am I wrong here? Does a strong community also need some kind of shared spiritual understanding?

Goals and practices which are shared help to unite communities, but are not absolutely necessary. Shared mindfulness and grounding practices can be extremely powerful tools for community development.

• Another area I didn’t dive into is the importance of elders in the community, especially for holding the communal wisdom. How do I build/find a multigenerational community that has elders on board from the beginning? Ideally including my family?

There are many in Tamera and other communities here in the US that I would consider elders. Without their shoulders to stand on we have no chance of reaching the next level.

• How could I build a community that is more inclusive and not for a privileged few? And/or how to spread these ideas to disenfranchised communities around the world?

This is probably the hardest one to answer as there is inherently in community a certain amount of insularity. Additionally, there is a tension between our inherent desire to help others and the megalomania which can develop when we think we have the one answer for others. The answer to questions like this have many years of hard work in community building before they can be answered (if they can be answered in this way at all).

• How can we create similarly strong communities in urban environments, which are more directly connected to the mainstream world?

I would argue that this is not possible when trying to build tightly woven, highly driven communities like Tamera. “Field building” requires a certain amount of seclusion in order to develop a shared state of mind. Urban environments are great for many things but holding the space for communities with new culture building potential is not one of them. When it is established well enough eventually the field will spill out into the mainstream, but there is very little chance of it developing inside of it.