Intentional Communities In Portugal

Awakened Life Project

A short introduction to a sustainable community in central Portugal that is pushing the boundaries of collective human potential. The Awakened Life Project is a non-profit association situated in a beautiful and wild ecological reserve in the mountains of Central Portugal. Part retreat centre and 21st century spiritual ashram, part permaculture farm, part integral evolutionary education hub, the Awakened Life Project is a multi-dimensional evolving organism and movement of (r)evolutionaries that is being co-created by a growing network of people throughout Portugal.

Website: Awakened Life Project



Tamera

Tamera in Southern Portugal is an international training and experimental site for the development of peace research villages and healing biotopes worldwide. Under the motto "Think Locally, Act Globally," approximately 200 people live, work and study in Tamera. Tamera’s aim is to develop an example of a model for a nonviolent co-existence of people and between people and nature. The main tasks of Tamera are: the education of young people within the "Monte Cerro" peace study, the building of a village model called "Solar Village" which produces its own food and solar energy, and global networking under the name of GRACE.

Website: Tamera



Osho Garden

Osho Garden is a communal project to create a living space where ecological gardening and meditation go hand in hand. We are registered as an Osho Information Center. The project started in 2010 and presently our accommodation is limited to a maximum of about ten people. We welcome visitors who want to participate and enjoy community life, spend time in nature and join the meditations, workshops, meetings, gardening and health food preparation.

Website: Osho Garden

Terramada

Isn’t Terramada like ”home”? A place where we can belong instantly and leave knowing we are a part of it even when apart. One Global Family. We share a wonderful gift in being Terramadians, in a community that is created by our principles of love, harmony, truth and freedom. By the labour each one of us who have tilled the soil, made the website, baked or organised or participated in an event or workshop has given.

Terramada needs your help to evolve into an ethical village and community, Where more people can visit and be inspired by our lived philosophy: Living as one, loving as one, in harmony with the Nature and each other. Creating a new world based on the heighest visions of ourselves by developing the power of our spirit.

Website: Terramada

Sustainable Living Projects, Courses and Events: Eco Living Portugal

Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds

Inner Worlds was created by Canadian film maker, musician and meditation teacher Daniel Schmidt. The film could be described as the external reflection of his own adventures in meditation. As Daniel came to meditative insights, he realized that these same insights were discovered over and over in spiritual traditions around the world and that all traditions share a common mystical underpinning. He realized that it is this core experience that connects us not only to the mysterious source of all creation, but to eachother as well.

Part 1: Akasha

Akasha is the unmanifested, the "nothing" or emptiness which fills the vacuum of space. As Einstein realized, empty space is not really empty. Saints, sages and yogis who have looked within themselves have also realized that within the emptiness is unfathomable power, a web of information or energy which connects all things. This matrix or web has been called the Logos, the Higgs Field, the Primordial OM and a thousand other names throughout history. In part one of Inner Worlds, we explore the one vibratory source that extends through all things, through the science of cymatics, the concept of the Logos, and the Vedic concept of Nada Brahma (the universe is sound or vibration). Once we realize that there is one vibratory source that is the root of all scientific and spiritual investigation, how can we say "my religion", "my God" or "my discovery".

Part 2: The Spiral

The Pythagorian philosopher Plato hinted enigmatically that there was a golden key that unified all of the mysteries of the universe. The golden key is the intelligence of the logos, the source of the primordial om. One could say that it is the mind of God. The source of this divine symmetry is the greatest mystery of our existence. Many of history's monumental thinkers such as Pythagoras, Keppler, Leonardo da Vinci, Tesla and Einstein have come to the threshold the mystery. Every scientist who looks deeply into the universe and every mystic who looks deeply within the self, eventually comes face to face with the same thing: The Primordial Spiral.

Part 3: The Serpent And The Lotus

The primordial spiral is the manifested world, while Akasha is the unmanifested, or emptiness itself. All of reality is an interplay between these two things; Yang and Yin, or consciousness and matter. The spiral has often been represented by the snake, the downward current, while the bird or blooming lotus flower has represented the upward current or transcendence.The ancient traditions taught that a human being can become a bridge extending from the outer to the inner, from gross to subtle, from the lower chakras to the higher chakras. To balance the inner and the outer is what the Buddha called the middle way, or what Aristotle called the Golden Mean. You can be that bridge. The full awakening of human consciousness and energy is the birthright of every individual on the planet. In today's society we have lost the balance between the inner and the outer. We are so distracted by the outer world of form, thoughts and ideas, that we no longer take time to connect to our inner worlds, the kingdom of heaven that is within.

Part 4: Beyond Thinking

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We live our lives pursuing happiness "out there" as if it is a commodity. We have become slaves to our own desires and craving.

Happiness isn't something that can be pursued or purchased like a cheap suit. This is Maya, illusion, the endless play of form. In the Buddhist tradition, Samsara, or the endless cycle of suffering is perpetuated by the craving of pleasure and aversion to pain. Freud referred to this as the "pleasure principle." Everything we do is an attempt to create pleasure, to gain something that we want, or to push away something that is undesirable that we don't want. Even a simple organism like the paramecium does this.

It is called response to stimulus. Unlike a paramecium, humans have more choice. We are free to think, and that is the heart of the problem. It is the thinking about what we want that has gotten out of control.The dilemma of modern society is that we seek to understand the world, not in terms of archaic inner consciousness, but by quantifying and qualifying what we perceive to be the external world by using scientific means and thought. Thinking has only led to more thinking and more questions. We seek to know the innermost forces which create the world and guide its course. But we conceive of this essence as outside of ourselves, not as a living thing, intrinsic to our own nature. It was the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung who said, "one who looks outside dreams, one who looks inside awakes." It is not wrong to desire to be awake, to be happy. What is wrong is to look for happiness outside when it can only be found inside.

Food Is Free

The Food is Free Project is creating a repeatable model of growing food and community. It is our vision and wish to empower you with the knowledge and know-how to transform your block and neighborhood step-by-step. Using salvaged materials we are building front yard community gardens for all to share. Imagine walking down a block lined with fresh produce ready for the picking. Neighbors not only growing food together, but becoming friends and supporting one another.

Website: Food Is Free

The Goodmornings Project

Together we will brighten up the world.