Exceptional Community Living: A Most Worthy Lifestyle

There is a vast over-abundance of talk on the problems that are constantly enveloping us. So today with the sun seeming intent on pushing its way out to warm this cold day and, hopefully, melt some more of what remains of last weekend’s monster snow storm, I thought I might take another crack at introducing you to a bit more of the reasoning and rewards for “why bother with community”.

So this is my gift of some sunshine! 

An "exceptional community"
can be like a love bath.

The best offering I can think of, today, is to share with you the perspectives New Horizons and myself hold of what makes all the hard work that we urge worthwhile. 

Destination: a healthy, happy, successful personal life combined with a lifestyle of “exceptional community” living.

Perhaps I may even be somewhat overdue in offering this to you.

My best, most comprehensive written piece on the subject of the “exceptional community” is already posted at this link.  I hope you enjoy reading this. And that what I have written inspires you to dialogue further with me on the subject and share your own visioning of what is possible for our collective lives.

See my article on "The Exceptional Community" here.

One thing to note about the topic, the exceptional community, as New Horizons holds it, is that our model combines the Asklepeion Total Learning Environment – therapeutic community model, originally created by Marty Groder, with the Kebzeh community of Murat Yagan, as recounted by him, based on his ancient Abkhazian heritage.  A New Horizons Newsletter article on the merging of these two can be viewed at this link on pages 6 and 7.

Marty’s Asklepeion model is difficult to summarize. At its height it was beautiful, powerful and transformative. At New Horizons this model lifted us, too, to our peak. I try now and then to come at the subject from various angles, always falling short, to my dismay.  I guess you can only truly know the magic by experiencing it. 

Murat’s oral traditions regarding community are, on the other hand, preserved in writing by him from many different slants, most extensively in his “Building Up A Kebzeh Community” monograph and Ahmsta Kebzeh: The Science of Universal Awe, Volume I.

I hope you will avail yourself of these as well as the many other books written by Murat and derived from his heritage. Murat’s books are available here. New Horizons also still has some of these on hand, if you request them of us at zonesofpeacenh@aol.com.  If purchased through New Horizons they are used in part to support our program and projects and in part to support the Kebzeh Foundation.

Urgency: Where Does "It" Fit Into Your Modus Operandi?

Fitting The Pieces of The Survivor/Addict Puzzle Together For Your Profile

The GRAD theory holds that each and every one of us is predisposed to developing non-ingested chemical addictions (i.e. adrenalin/excitement addictions) under the proper conditions.  As it turns out almost every Western society provides those conditions. Thus almost all of us are; men, women and children, at risk and challenged to move beyond this lower form of human development.

You can do it! 

I’ve been doing “it” (c0nsciously healing my survivor/addict personality structures) Dark Side Warrior since the early 1980s when I learned the formula from my mentor, Marty Groder, M.D. 

Along with my team of board members and volunteers, I am here to help you do “it” too.  24/7 we are working on it, individually and collectively. And having a great deal of fun and reward for the effort.

I will be posting as many articles, as often as I can to help you heal this complex, self-destructive aspect of your personhood. (In the meantime, try out our Bus Ride Story Adventure with your friends and family. Any variation of the original will work just fine as New Horizons discovered when first we started on the adventure in 1999.)

For now, I want to remind you that your enemy mentality is a key part of the puzzle – and – most likely the single most important one for you to pay attention to. It is apt to do you in when and where you least expect it. So be on the lookout for it. And, keep returning, again and again, to my Survivor/Addict Inventory to assess how and how far out of your Dark Side Warrior functioning you are moving.

But there are other key aspects too. To the extent these are operative; you carry an active, internal presence of deterioration for the ongoing dynamics of your mind, body, spirit connections. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. And, to the extent that you make even small changes in this complex system you are going to free up your negatively entangled but still beautiful life energies.

So take up the task!

Today’s lesson for turning the lead in you into gold (transforming your Dark Side Warrior into a Compassionate Warrior (the Where Is Your Compassionate Warrior Hiding? Inventory is the same as the Survivor/Addict Personality Inventory. The  name change was made simply to offer an alternative angle for exploring the same old, same old.) 

The following questions on the Survivor/Addict Personality Inventory are marks of your survival instinct operating beyond healthy limits, if you go beyond a response of one or two points.

1. Do you need to seek out excitement in your life? (Inventory question #1);
2. Do you seek out excitement when it might hurt others that you care about? (Inventory question #5);
3. Do you work until you are exhausted or burned-out? (Inventory question #18).

Again I want to urge you to strive for a total score of 35 or less on this inventory. 

My caveat is that if your score is in the 36 – 59 range, you are going in the right direction but there is still more to do.  You are already equipped for the task of moving beyond this.  If you take up the challenge, you can be of great service to yourself as well as others, even as a viable role model. And, we are not ever going to have too many of these.

Good luck. More on the way.

An Enemy Mentality: Is That One of Your (Secret) Downsides?

Anastasia Commenting: On the price we pay for turning potential allies into adversaries

The reptilian brain can be blamed for the survival instinct humankind has that is capable of rising above the primitive, biological force that can serve us well – or prompt us to self-destruct, even lead us to destroy others. 

Personal concerns, especially those related to my recent cornea transplant surgery coupled with the present societal and political climate of our nation prompt me to want to point readers of this site to what I consider the bottom line issue; an enemy mentality and the toll it demands, underlying everything that comes of New Horizons and me, personally.

You will be most able to follow what I have to offer on this point and its intrinsic impact on almost “everything” here if you avail yourself of the opportunity to take the Survivor/Addict Personality Inventory – and – read the overview I have posted on the GRAD theory.

Seeking to, minimally, make a dent in the widespread “enemy mentality” infecting our society and politics is what I deem to be the next important agenda for this site.  If nothing else, I am hoping to, at least, expose some of the facets here of this destructive force that prompts us to make enemies out of potential allies; combatants out of possible collaborators.

Your expanded and refined consciousness would be a start. Your enhanced and more highly developed conscience would be an even greater reward for me.

So – if you have not yet done so, avail yourself of my Survivor/Addict Personality Inventory. And, if you have anywhere near a total score above 35, pay particular attention to any and all forthcoming posts that take up this theme, “An Enemy Mentality: Is That One of Your (Secret) Downsides?”

This sum total means, for starters, that the Force in YOU  is not operating with enough Light enough, maybe not at all!

Beginning Soon! 

Everything you have always wanted to know about --

Exploring Your Dark Side: The Adventure of A Lifetime.