Will You Repeat Your Programming As Temporary Caretakers on The Land, Building Your Temporary Dream Life, Or Will You Instead Create Something On Your Land For Eternity?

"Happy is he who knows the cause of things."  
Quote from Virgil

Course Correction - A chapter in our history

For those of you who are looking at this website as a source of information for helping you streamline your own process of creating a kin domain village or settlement, I offer the following history of our first major course correction.  It will tell you why it was needed and the reasoning behind the decision.

Why a course correction was needed: From the beginning our group meetings became increasingly dysfunctional.  The fourth meeting presented the first major demonstration of the dysfunction, although looking back, the evidence was present from the very first official meeting.  We didn't recognize the first major event as a group dysfunction.  Most of us named it "his dysfunction."

In the fifth meeting our dysfunction slowed our progress to a painfully difficult crawl. We still didn't recognize it's true source and named it, "the problem with our intake system." We set about to improve the intake system.

In the sixth meeting our dysfunction caused all progress to grind to a halt.  We experienced tremendous tension expressed in finger pointing, desperately holding on to individual visions that appeared to be slipping out of individuals' grasps, and a general feeling of powerlessness.  Everyone left with really yucky feelings.

I, Joyce, went home to sit with my plants who are growing just for me, and screamed to the Universe, "I WILL NEVER EXPERIENCE ANOTHER MEETING LIKE THAT.  GIVE ME THE SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM OR I WILL NOT ATTEND ANOTHER MEETING."  Others have reported similar kinds of reactions to that meeting.

Help came:  The next day three significant things happened.

1. I remembered a mistake I'd made with my car during our first unofficial founding meeting and the message that was given to me about that.  As a result, I recognized a major mistake that had been made in that first unofficial meeting.  
2. I kept hearing, "Go read the American Story in book 8.1."  I finally gave in and read it even though I felt I already knew the story and was sure it provided no model that I could make use of because I am not a billionaire (pg 78 in book 8.1).
3. A member of our group sent me a link to a website about Holacracy.  (www.holacracy.org)  It is a magnificent organizational structure and decision making process based on autonomous task circles.  The practice quickly filters out ego and identifies the core tension and action steps.  It ensures that every voice is heard in a safe environment and quickly makes visible whether or not every leader in the organization is qualified for their task and for their steering role.

Each of these three events held important information that led to a major course correction:

1.  The original mistake came with an important sign:  At what we called the "first unofficial meeting," I sat in a coffee shop with two friends talking about the Ringing Cedars series which two of us had just finished reading.  I told them about my dream of creating a kin domain village or settlement in Colorado.  

After much excited discussion about our responses to various things in the book, I asked my two friends if they wanted to join me in starting a settlement.  They did.  I NEVER ONCE QUESTIONED THAT WE WERE ACTING FROM A SHARED VISION, BECAUSE I ASSUMED THAT ANY READER OF THE BOOKS SHARED ESSENTIALLY THE SAME VISION.  

But not so, as we eventually discovered.

Over three and a half hours later, as we walked to our cars about 1/2 block away in a very busy parking lot, I made the horrifying discovery that I had left my car unlocked and running during the entire three and a half hours.  I immediately remembered that I only had just under a quarter tank of gas and realized that with the air conditioning on I probably had almost no gas left.  As soon as I got into the car I checked the gas gauge.  Amazingly, it still showed just under a quarter tank of gas.  There was no noticeable drop of the gauge needle.  

The car mistake was so big and so dramatic it hung around in my mind for weeks.  Finally in early November I asked within, "What is the message or meaning of this outrageous event?"  The answer was quick and simple, "You will make mistakes as you create your settlement and some of them will seem very big, but remember this event.  No gas was lost, and the vehicle is not lost.  Everything is fine and you are quickly able to get on your way to your goal."

I didn't know of any mistake at that time but thought it was nice to have such a message if a mistake did happen to show up.  I shared the message with my two co-founding friends and went about business as usual, not realizing it was referring to a mistake made in that first meeting while the car was left running.

2. Re-reading the American Story of John Heitzman:  

As I re-read, I noticed many new layers of information that I had missed in the first two readings. i.e.,

	John Heitzman took responsibility to manifest HIS dream.  He was not trying to incorporate several dreams.  He did not assemble the future residents of his settlement to ask for their dreams so he could incorporate them or make sure they were right for his dream.  It was about him taking personal responsibility for his dream.
	John Heitzman drew in many people who were benefited in helping him manifest HIS dream.
	It is not necessary to be a billionaire to follow the John Heitzman model Anastasia gave us.
	Hundreds of people were able to step into a magnificent life (building their ideal dream) as a result of John Heitzman manifesting HIS dream.
	The John Heitzman model of dispersing the domains solves many problems created by other methods.

I have looked at selling land, selling memberships, various lending and repayment methods, and they all have serious inherent problems to the function and the sustainability of the settlement - at least as our country's legal system is currently structured.

The John Heitzman model of giving the land and the home in exchange for signing an agreement solves those problems.  It doesn't solve all problems but it solves the most serious ones.

As I read the American Story I remembered in book 2 that Vladimir returned to Moscow after meeting Anastasia the first time and decided to do things his own way rather than follow Anastasia's instructions.  It nearly destroyed him.  At the edge of suicide, he remembered that he had not followed her instruction as she had given it to him.  The result of his later decision to follow her instructions is a huge benefit around the world.  

It was clear to me that our group's dysfunction was strongly linked to not following the instructions and clues inherent in the American Story.  We believed our dream could only be fulfilled if we incorporated everyone's dreams who wanted a settlement in Colorado.  To do so required that others compromise their dream.  

Our forward motion ground to a halt as members began to draw protective lines around their dreams, and refused to participate in events or discussions that weren't about their particular version of Anastasia's dream.  Several members decided that the fate of their dreams lay in the "control" of the meetings and began to struggle for control of the meetings and decision making process. 

Even though I had a very clear vision that guided my leadership actions and choices from the beginning, that guiding dream or vision had never been expressed in such a way that would allow people to determine if they were aligned or not before joining our group.  Therefore we attracted some people who also had no clear guiding vision and could only respond to the visions expressed by others in the group, or people who saw our group as a structure for manifesting their personal dream.  

The way our meetings and group decision making was structured, each new person who came into the group was forced unconsciously into the position of having to sort out how much of their personal dream was included and motivated to try to squeeze the rest of their dream into the mix somehow.  

After telling the American story, Anastasia said to Vladimir, "That is no made-up story, but a projection of the future.  The names and locales are not important.  What is important is the essence, the idea, the dream!  ...many people will add their own details and infuse the projection with their own great meaning and conscious awareness."

After reading the story a couple more times, I saw that I had already been largely following the John Heitzman model but doing so badly and unconsciously.  I had included the mistaken belief that my dream would be better if it included the dreams of everyone interested in living in the village.  

That put my dream and everyone else's at risk for being "voted out."  We watched helplessly as everyone's dream was being whittled down and diminished to an unrecognizable version that no longer felt like their dream.

3.  Course Correction:  After reading about the Holacracy model of organizational structure and decision making practice, I made my decision for correction.  I met with my two friends who had been involved in the very first discussion of our group and shared with them my originating but unspoken vision.   I explained that 

1. I was taking responsibility for my own vision.  I would share it with the group so each member would be able to decide if they are aligned with that vision or if they are called to manifest their own.  
2. The John Heitzman model from the American story would be my choice for how my dream is manifested, because I'm not willing to risk such an important decision to my own or anyone else's creative ideas before we've moved a lot closer to Anastasia's level of foresight.  (Like Vladimir demonstrated so well in book two)
3. The organizational structure of Colorado Kin Domains would be the Holacracy model to speed up the fleshing out of the originating vision as well as the John Heitzman model.  We would get the vision up immediately and keep it updated as it develops so that prospective members can clearly see if they are aligned with us or not.

It became apparent that one of my founding friends might opt to leave the group because she either didn't like or trust the John Heitzman model (I wasn't sure which).  She wanted to be fully involved and in control of creating of her own vision (justifiably) and the determination of how the vision would manifest.  

Because of the IMPLICIT rather than explicit nature of the originating vision and structure of our group, it was very clear that when my course correction was shared with the larger group, I would likely lose some and possibly all members of our group, but I remembered my message from the Universe on the day I made the first unconscious mistake requiring this course correction:  "...No gas was lost, and the vehicle is not lost.  Everything is fine and you are quickly able to get on your way to your goal."

Anyone else in our group could make a major personal course correction without substantially affecting the group.  I could not.  I already owned the urls and had created the websites before the group began.  I owned the legal entities and the contract with the Grant Team by default because of the way the opportunity came to us.  I had all the copyrights by default, and much more.  

I could never have made such a huge decision without the realization that the very Universe placed us into the Heitzman model that Anastasia gave us.  I could never have handled the weight of such a decision without the support of the very powerful sign I had been given in the beginning. "...No gas was lost, and the vehicle is not lost.  Everything is fine and you are quickly able to get on your way to your goal."

At the next meeting when I presented my course correction, four of our attending members left, either to register their disapproval or to go manifest their own dream.  Seven people were left and a few minutes later another showed up who opted to stay.  

We began our first meeting with the guiding vision and the new models in place.  It was delightful to observe the speed at which we moved through very sticky and threatening vision issues without anyone compromising or feeling overpowered.  The tone of our meeting was better than it had been from the beginning. 

We laughed.  We felt comfortable, safe and free to express any tension that came up.  Our new system allowed us to go to the next level quickly and easily.  We felt enlivened by our explicitly shared vision that we had expanded into an even better fuller one.  We almost effortlessly created an organizational map as a by product of our meeting structure and process.  I believe every participant expressed some form of gratitude for the improvement.

I hope this painful history is useful as you design your own vision and village.