The gnats are out at DMU. They bit Johneo so badly that his eyelids look puffy and swollen. The bites ich most at night when the immune system is weakest, I hear. So we wake up iching. We worked six hours today and it felt like nine. I nice rain storm broke up the afternoon. Johneo and I retreated into the house and slowly started using the wooden wall framing and construction scraps as percussion instruments. It was rocking for about five min. Johneo used to be in STOMP so, needless to say, the man has skills. As the day wore on and my mind deteriorated, we started singing that Junstin Timberlake song "I'm bringing sexy back." or whatever it's called. The lyrics are like "I'm bringing sexy back, you people don't know how to act....I'll let you whip me if I misbehave, take it to the bridge..etc." We kept changing them until it was: "I'm moving termite rock, groovy soup knees grable gripple splack...I'll make spagetti if we go on a date...we'll play scrabble till it's really late...take it to the bridge"
I'd say that Diamond Mountain is the sixth community I've been a part of in 15 years. By community I just mean; the group of people I live and work with. My college years were a community. Living in Carbondale CO in the mountains was a great community. Then there was the commune Twin Oaks followed by a short time in Charlottesville VA. Brooklyn, New York, was an amazing and intense community. The thing I was thinking about all these places was how similar they were to each other. Each one had its core group and also had people that stayed for a short time but were greatly influential. I've seen seemingly solid couples break up with grace and with high drama. I've seen babies come and act as a glue for couples or as the catalyst for a break up. Some death. Lot's of gossip and also helpful advices, parties, laughter, fights, boundary crossing, love, magic. All the normal community stuff. What is new to me about DMU is not the daily interplay of individuals and work projects. The people are amazing and many of us occasionally do have a good world view and take responsibility for what we see in our world. What is new for me is seeing what happens when the community has a single goal that they believe in. For the last three years I've been amazed to witness the meetings and reports of people that are running projects all over the country and the world. All at a volunteer level. No money being made. Of course some money is made at yoga classes, trainings and such. It amounts to travel costs usually. I remember some classes where a returning yoga teacher would hand their teacher an envelope and say something like, "Please take it. We had a big turn out in L.A." Then a couple of classes later the teacher will be handing back these same envelopes to the people who were trying to give them money, en mass. It was hysterical. Everyone was letting go of any money they could and it was all coming back to them. Now with the retreat valley being built I'm really seeing what is different about DMU as a community. There's probably a core group of about one hundred and fifty people. Together they are building, what I think, is the premier deep retreat center in America. I want to say "the world" but I haven't done any research to back it up. I counted Seventeen homes at some stage of construction the other day. All will be off-grid solar homes with five hundred gallon water tanks, septic, all the fixings. There are straw bale homes, earth bag homes, one concrete walled home, and standard stick frame construction. I look back on the other communities I was a part of and wonder now what we could have achieved if we were all focused on one thing. Wether on purpose or not, our teachers at DMU have shown us how to really work with others. I think it must be part of the lineage. Before you can really learn to love others you at least have to know how to work with them. And do it for little or no money because you will get no money for learning how to love. Which is the most important thing you can do with this life you are living. The deeper you dig into love, you find secrets to living. It's good to have a teacher to show you where to look. The teacher could be your child, your parents, your partner, or your Lama, or the person that annoys you the most. It gets real interesting when you combine two or more of these.