Farm Fresh June 2020: Beliefs and Agreements, Lasting Change

Dear Friends,

One aspect of joining The Farm Community in the very early days was to establish your intention to follow a Spiritual Path. You made a commitment that this was your primary cause for being in the community, not just because you liked the woods or thought living in a commune would be fun.

Following a spiritual path was acknowledging that you were setting an intention to work on yourself to be a better person. I particularly like beginning with this definition of a spiritual path because it doesn't require you to believe or accept any particular Dogma or set of teachings.

For new people who say they want to live here today, I believe it is critical they are aware that one of the primary distinctions that makes The Farm unique from other ecovillages is our acknowledgement that this is a spiritual community, Our Land Trust, the physical thing that unites us, is in the name of The church of The Farm Spiritual Community.

Recently there has been some renewed discussion about, "What are the values that we share in common as a community?"

Sometime back in the 90s when I was on our Membership Committee, a few of us put together a list of Beliefs and Agreements, drawing from earlier writings published by the community in books like This Season's People. You'll find them listed below. Most of us find they still ring true in our heart.

Namaste y’all!
Douglas

Shiva and Quan Yin

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The Morning Song is a traditional Polish folk song taught to me by singer and Dances of Universal Peace leader Grace Marie, whose parents were Polish immigrants. The translation to English is beautiful and uplifting poetry, which I updated slightly, changing the word "Lord" to "The One." When Grace led this dance during her travels in South America, she used the the Arabic phrase, La illaha illallah hu, which in English is said to mean "There is no separation, only unity with the One." I was immediately drawn to this delightful melody, and I am honored to share it with you here, including photographs from my travels, with the exception of the singing bird, from a public domain image web site. I hope you find this video uplifting and it brings a little brightness to you day. Click here to listen and watch my video on YouTube.

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The Grass Case

One of things that The Farm did to differentiate itself from other traditions and lineages was to say that we were something new drawing from the Essential Truths stated in all religions and practices. We chose not to give our new church a name or write down much of what we believed, in hopes that we could avoid falling into rules or practices that might lose their relevance, becoming empty ritual and dogma.

Stephen Gaskin in jail

Stephen Gaskin's talent was that he was a good storyteller and wordsmith, and through recording and editing his public talks, several books were assembled that expressed aspects of what we believed and how we wanted to live our lives.

The roots of our awakening came from direct experience, specifically the expansion of consciousness felt through psychedelics and marijuana. Not long after arriving in Tennessee, several of our members were busted for growing around 100 grass plants, and as our "leader," Stephen was arrested as well.

Although the case could have possibly been thrown out for various legal reasons, Stephen chose instead to take the "high" road, and mount our defense on use of marijuana as a religoius sacrament. This defense was the first attempt at putting our moral principles into written form, a document called simply, The Grass Case.

The case got passed on through courts for a number of years before finally reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, who refused to hear the case, bouncing it all the way back down to the original conviction. Stephen and several others served 1 year in the State pen.

From The Grass Case
October 1973
From the talks of Stephen Gaskin
(Beware! Abundant Hippie speak)

Why The Farm is here and why it is doing it like it is because we’ve been following the spiritual path. The main thing that keeps our community together is love of God.

(We typically used the word God as terminology that the broader culture could understand. In the community we more often talked about Life Force. Douglas)

We found through our collective experience that there are levels of experience that humanity is heir to that humanity is supposed to be able to experience, and that these are spiritual things.

In times when there is a lot of material success in the world, folks sometimes forget to tune into those finer things, and they sometimes lose the knack, maybe for generations at a time.

What we found when we were studying religion was that people have certain spiritual needs that must be served, so religions are created to serve people. Somehow religion has to serve a human being‘s needs. It has to help them in birth; it has to help them in marriage; it has to help them in death; it has to help one in growing up.

When we first started learning about it, we didn’t know what it was, but we’ve caught on to what it is now. At first we thought we were going to have to make a set of rules on how to handle it because it was so far out of the ordinary, but then we found out there was a set of rules already. It was like the 10 Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount.

All the ways that people be, and all the things that happen to people, and the loves and births, and deaths and angers and hatreds - all the things that could possibly happen to mankind - have happened time and time again over the last hundreds of thousands of years. All those things have been figured out so many times that we all do to know what to do, and it isn’t so mysterious.

We learned that if you really want to change the world, you have to change your soul - you have to change things from the spiritual level. That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “The prophets of old say unto you, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but I say unto you, thou shalt not be angry with thy brother.” He had a vision that could perceive the telepathic plane where anger is just the same as violence. He was saying that you’re responsible for your thoughts, just like Gautma Buddha when he said you’re responsible for your body, speech and mind. All those teachings are really plain if you look at them from the point of you that they were trying to tell people that there is another plane of existence that’s as important and as real as the material plane.

Our church has various precepts. We believe we’re all one, and that the Holy Spirit is identical and one in all of us. So there can be no final or perfect enlightenment for anybody until there is for everybody. When you know that, you try to help everyone, equally and impartially. We recognize that humankind has a common spirit, and that everything takes that takes place is the agreement that takes place in that common spirit; that whatever harms any of us harms all of us; that we can’t have folks we like and folks we don’t like, and friends and enemies – we can’t have that at all.

We are all one, and we can share one soul, and we can communicate telepathically and vibrationally, and you can know your brother right straight across, one to one, wide open, no barriers, if you have enough nerve to look in their eyes and say to yourself, “I’m sorry if I was ever cheap or bad to you, and if you find it in my heart, forget it, forgive me, I want to be with you anyway.” And just open up and let them come into your mind and soul.

There is a plane of existence which can be felt by a human being which is other than the three dimensional material plane. There are many religions to tell us of people experiencing that plane. Those are the stories of miracles and visions and revelations, and there have been many religious teachings telling us how to get to that plane.

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Beliefs and Agreements - as listed today on thefarmcommunity.com
What I particularly like about this list, is that it starts from conceptual beliefs, followed by how these are expressed in our daily lives.

We believe that there are non-material planes of being or levels of consciousness that everyone can experience,
the highest of these being the spiritual plane.
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We believe that we are all one, that the material and spiritual are one,
and the spirit is identical and one in all of creation.
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We believe that marriage, childbirth and death are sacraments of our church.
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We agree that child rearing and care of the elderly is a holy responsibility.
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We believe that being truthful and compassionate is instrumental to living together in peace and as a community.
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We agree to be honest and compassionate in our relationships with each other.
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We believe in nonviolence and pacifism and are conscientiously opposed to war.
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We agree to resolve any conflicts or disagreements in a nonviolent manner.
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We agree to keep no weapons in the community.
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We believe that vegetarianism is the most ecologically sound and humane lifestyle for the planet, but that what a person eats does not dictate their spirituality.
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We agree that livestock, fish, or fowl will not be raised in the community for slaughter.
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We believe that the abuse of any substance is counterproductive to achieving a high consciousness.
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We agree to strive for a high level of consciousness in our daily lives.
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We believe that the earth is sacred.
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We agree to be respectful of the forests, fields, streams and wildlife that are under our care.
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We agree that the community is a wildlife sanctuary with no hunting for sport or food.
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We believe that humanity must change to survive.
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We agree to participate in that change by accepting feedback about ourselves.
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We believe that we, individually and collectively, create our own life experience.
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We agree to accept personal responsibility for our actions.
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We believe that inner peace is the foundation for world peace.

Next month: More aspects of our Spiritual Practice

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Long Term Solutions - Kids To The Country!

The massive protests in the streets have been very moving, especially to see so many politically conscious young people. As we transition to the conversation of how to create lasting change, I want to call attention to our program called Kids To The Country which has been in operation for over 30 years, unfortunately halted this summer due to the covid-19 pandemic. We bring children from Nashville's inner-city and other areas to experience nature firsthand and allow the divine mother to produce her own Magic on souls opening to her beauty. A project of Plenty International, plans are being discussed on what could be done safely with the kids this summer, including plans to distibute bicycles and books. You can learn more by visiting the KTC website. Consider becoming a supporter. https://kidstothecountry.org/

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Peace,

Douglas

Douglas@thefarmcommunity.com