Special Feature
Unicorn Camps
This year's camps are expected to be a little different in some ways to what has gone before. The biggest change may well be that the Dance Camp has become Peace Through The Arts! This is rather more than just a change of title and reflects the growing tendency over the last few years towards a widening programme of activities - which this year will add astrology and advanced yoga to the established list - and to the international blend of participants, including the much-loved Grace Marie from Colorado. The Natural Voice Camp is celebrating its 10th season with a revisiting of a few old features that have been missed and requested...for more go to www.unicorncamps.comThis year's camps are expected to be a little different in some ways to what has gone before. The biggest change may well be that the Dance Camp has become Peace Through The Arts! This is rather more than just a change of title and reflects the growing tendency over the last few years towards a widening programme of activities - which this year will add astrology and advanced yoga to the established list - and to the international blend of participants, including the much-loved Grace Marie from Colorado. The Natural Voice Camp is celebrating its 10th season with a revisiting of a few old features that have been missed and requested...for more go to www.unicorncamps.com
Unicorn Village
So many of us have said the same thing so often - "Yes, I'd love to live in community but I want my own space too!"
The idea has been around for a long time - a sustainable intentional co-living arrangement that allows for the advantages of sharing and also provides each individual and familiy with a degree of privacy. As our kids depart and we creep inexorably towards retirement, we will eventually want to take steps to provide for ourselves what other will not provide for us - a whiolesome environment that addresses our major requirements.
- Shared expenses
- Enjoyable Company
- Sustainable Abundance
- Freedom to do what we want and to move without stress
- Being part of something bigger, preferably dynamic and pioneering
1.1 This document is the first attempt to express an intention to create a new approach to shared housing
1.2 Three individuals have decided to rent a 4-bedroom house in or near Frome as a first step towards attracting other participants who want to live communally
1.3 All types of accommodation can be considered—rented, purchased, large, small, central and rural—although the first stage of the development is likely to be using larger rented furnished (and possibly unfurnished) houses because of the ease both of acquisition and of participation of members
1.4 Rooms may be rented as (shared?) offices and healing spaces as well as for residential use
2.1 There is a feeling that a category exists of mature adults, singles or in couples, who would be interested enough to join the project in preference to a more solitary lifestyle. These people are typically free from full-time parental responsibilities and ready to enjoy group activities with kindred spirits.
2.2 Parents and children have different requirements that need to be carefully considered and may need a longer period of planning, especially with the involvement of parents on or with the steering group
2.3 In the Frome area some 180 people have subscribed to ‘Sustainable Frome’—so this suggests that a certain type of person lives in this town and that such people are well networked. Some of these are interested in the Village
2.4 Suitable houses may be available only occasionally because the buy-to-let stock rarely includes larger properties. Three local letting agents have been made aware of what is required; local newspapers also offer a possible connection to find would-be landlords
3.1 The Unicorn list has been compiled mainly from those who attend Unicorn Camps each August. They attract about 800 or so, and for 10 days a temporary living community is formed around a specific evolving ethos, which includes a code of behaviour, ecological and spiritual values.
3.2 Typically participants become regular attenders for many years and have repeatedly gone through processes of personal development. The Unicorn culture is based on sharing and caring, environmental awareness, tolerance, openness and personal responsibility; boundaries are firm and well held
3.3 The Unicorn Village is likely to attract people from these camps; others may also be invited to join if they are able to demonstrate an awareness and willingness to adopt the Unicorn ethos
3.4 Similar activities to camp workshops are likely to be offered so that evenings and weekends are socially attractive for ‘villagers’ and others in the area. Other social benefits include the sharing of costs, transport, values, exchanges and so on. This has particular importance for members approaching or within the pension period
4.1 Current models of housing are not addressing everyone’s needs very well—some people are lonely for want of the sense of community associated with village life and are less well off because costs are unnecessarily high when living alone. Such wastage is no longer acceptable because people have widely come to realize the need to address Climate Change urgently and want to help by implementing economies at home
4.2 Therefore the time is right to act now
5.1 This first step is part on an evolving vision that will, at some point, include the acquisition of land upon which to build dwellings according to principals of sustainability. Older properties might be purchased and refurbished room-by-room; many other ideas to make for improved utilization of resources are known, and still more will arise. Sustainable property management needs to be moved from fringe to mainstream
5.2 Personal transformation is central to the vision, and it is envisioned that trainings and courses will be offered, particularly those germane to the project
6.1 There will be issues arising—there always are when people live together, especially when undergoing development work—and so a procedure has to be put in place to support conflict resolution and to deal with difficulties that come up from time to time
6.2 A core group of three or four is anticipated, whose purpose is to make decisions and implement disciplinary measures if necessary. Such a group will periodically shed, by agreement, one of its number to make way for a replacement, so that a dynamic yet experienced authority exists to supervise matters. The whole question of how best to reach decisions is a major part of the community process and this suggested first stage is certain to be subject to evolutionary changes
7.1 These need to be looked at: legalities, charity status and associated tax benefits, finance, insurance, contracts etc
7.2 Are there any models that may be useful…community models, financial models etc?
7.3 Can the Unicorn ethos be written into a form that acts as a code and informal agreement between all participants?
7.4 What selection processes are needed for candidates?
What next?
Meet interested people
Develop a core group and its agenda
Acquire the first dwelling
Talk to potential investors about purchase finance
Publish the idea further?
Sources of finance?
Members with equity in their own property
Joint Equity Schemes
Private sponsors
Corporate investment capital
The Dying Earth
The models that everyone has been using to forecast climate change predict a maximum warming of 5 degrees by the end of the century. But Dr Peter Cox and his colleagues now fear those models may be wrong. Temperatures could rise twice as fast as they previously thought with irreversible damage just twenty-five years away. If we don't do anything by about 2030, we could have a global warming of over two degrees, and at that point it's believed the Greenland ice sheet would start to melt in a way that you wouldn't be able to stop once it started; it would melt. It would take a long time to melt but ultimately would lead to a sea level rise of seven or eight metres. Once the Greenland ice cap begins to melt, nothing will stop it. Many of the world's major cities will be living on borrowed time. Decade by decade, the risk of catastrophic flooding would increase inexorably. But unless action is taken it won't stop there. Because after Greenland, the world's tropical rainforests will start to wither in the heat.
By 2040 it could be four degrees warmer; the climate change could have led to big drying particularly in the Amazon Basin. That would make the forest unsustainable. We'd expect the forest to catch fire probably, turn into savannah and maybe ultimately even into desert if it gets really dry as our model suggests. And as the rainforest burnt away, it would release vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, driving global warming still further. Cox calculates that in just a century, the world could be 10 degrees hotter, a warming more rapid than any in Earth history. If this were to happen, the landscape of England would be utterly transformed.
We're talking about a change from a lush, moist climate like this, to a North African climate in just a few decades or a hundred years. Most British plant species could not survive a North African climate. With vegetation dying everywhere, soil erosion would become a severe problem. From a green and pleasant land, England would become a country of extremes, with winter flooding giving way to summer dust storms. And it will be far worse elsewhere. You can imagine ten degree warming in the UK in a hundred years is catastrophic, but far worse, a ten degree warming in an already hot country makes it essentially uninhabitable.
And just when one might think things could get no worse: in the far North a ten degree warming might be enough to release a vast natural store of greenhouse gas bigger than all the oil and coal reserves of the planet.
We will be in danger of destabilising these things called methane hydrates which store a lot of methane at the bottom of the ocean in a kind of frozen form, ten thousand billions tons of this stuff, and they're known to be destabilised by warming. At this point, whatever we did to curb our emissions, it would be too late. Ten thousand billion tons of methane, a greenhouse gas eight times stronger than carbon dioxide, would be released into the atmosphere. The Earth's climate would be spinning out of control, heading towards temperatures unseen in four billion years. But this is not a prediction - it is a warning. It is what will happen even if we clean up pollution while doing nothing about greenhouse gases.
If we carry on pumping out the tiny airborne particles of soot and other pollutants produced by burning fuel, it will have terrible impact on human health. Particles are involved in all sorts of respiratory diseases, that's why they're being brought under control, and of course they affect climate anyway. If you fiddle with the balance of the planet, the radiative balance of the planet, you affect all sorts of circulation patterns like monsoons, which would have detrimental effects on the earth’s population. So it would be extremely difficult, in fact impossible, to cancel out the greenhouse effect just by carrying on pumping out particles, even if it wasn't for the fact that particles are damaging for human health. Instead we have to take urgent action to tackle the root cause of both global warming and global dimming - the burning of coal, oil and gas.
We may have to make very difficult choices, about how we live and how we generate our electricity. We have been talking about such things for 20 years. But so far very little has been done in practical terms. The discovery of Global Dimming makes it clear that we are rapidly running out of time. One of the real driving forces is that we leave an environment that is comfortable for our children. And if we carry on going the way we're going, we're not going to do that, we're going to leave an environment that's much worse than the environment we lived in; that would be truly tragic.
JANUARY 2005
BBC HORIZON
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Time Twins
I recently came across an interesting website that links people who were born at the same time in different places—Time Twins. It lets you connect with some stranger from another land and you can see what similarities there might be, for example, in what you like and what you do. The results are quite fascinating! My special perspective is astrological, because that’s been a major study for me for 25 years or so.
It’s central to the ideas of astrology that a person’s nature and circumstances are seen in some way to reflect the planetary positions at the moment of their birth. Typically astrologers are not concerned about whythis is true, they just notice that it is true and study in extraordinary detail the precise ways in which this phenomenon expresses itself. In order to study the birth moment a map is drawn up for the positions of planets at the time of the baby’s first breath, and this map—the horoscope—is creatively understood according to principles that have been handed down for 5000 years from the Babylonians, then re-examined and reinterpreted in this modern era.
There are 3 main factors to look for when considering a horoscope:
The placement of planets in Zodiac signs (e.g. “Moon in Cancer”)
The mutual angle that is measured between 2 planets, called the aspect (e.g. “Sun square Pluto”)
The placement of planets in Houses (e.g. “Mercury in the 7th”)
Whereas the first two of these are not overly dependent upon the precise moment of birth—signs and aspects—the third is. So 2 people born 24 hours apart will share most horoscope factors except house positions, which would only be identical in exceptional circumstances. We can therefore assume that our time twins share signs and aspects with us—but not house placements. The crucial thing to do with Houses is the Ascendant, or the first house ‘cusp’, which is considered of major importance in determining personality, and so it can be easily seen that however similar the twins are, there will almost always be the key factor of the Ascendant and Houses to make a difference.
Having put a few constraints in place, now let’s consider some possible explanations for the startling and often bizarre ‘co-incidences’ that are being observed, and we can do this more easily with an actual example. Two middle-aged men, one is English whom we’ll call Bill and the other a Russian called Igor. They share all the planetary signs, including the Taurus Moon, although Bill’s Ascendant in Capricorn differs from Igor’s in Taurus—so all the House positions are different. Let’s begin by listing the coincidences:
They are or were both…
- businessmen in manufacturing
- healers with their own unique method
- with knee injuries
- with similar back injuries
- obsessively punctual
- built like trolls
- married to Virgo women who share a birthday (though not time twins)
- musical
- engaged in strong sport (Bill rugby, Igor kick boxing)
- creatively artistic (Bill with music composition and Igor political cartoons)
An astrologer could explain all of this because of their shared:
- Taurus Sun conjunct Mars, square Pluto
- Taurus Moon trine Virgo Saturn
- Capricorn Chiron square Aries Jupiter
- Aries Mercury sextile Gemini Venus
As a matter of further interest, another man was found having the same birth time: Time Triplets! Although in this case Joe’s Moon is in Gemini, he is also (like both) a rugby player who has also been in trouble with a government (in his case in Africa), and like Bill, has written a book, is a part-time teacher in a developing country, is dedicated to fight against injustice and towards raising awareness of environmental issues. We may notice that a couple of these things were more easily achieved outside Russia, and so more likely to be shared by the two westerners rather than with the Muscovite. There are other similarities, though less noteworthy. All in all these 3 men have truly extraordinary similarities, though their lives are being lived out very differently in England, USA and Russia.
If you’d like to know more about if, follow the link for a very interesting look at some real life examples of people with identical or similar horoscopes, and where you can find whether you have your own time twin somewhere on the planet! It’s free incidentally.
James Burgess
100th Monkey explained
This quote on morphic fields and the related observation known as the 100th Monkey principle is from Dr Sheldrake.
The Hypothesis of Formative Causation states that the forms of self-organizing systems are shaped by morphic fields. Morphic fields organize atoms, molecules, crystals, organelles, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, societies, ecosystems, planetary systems, solar systems, galaxies. In other words, they organize systems at all levels of complexity, and are the basis for the wholeness that we observe in nature, which is more than the sum of the parts. According to this hypothesis, morphic fields also contain an inherent memory given by the process of morphic resonance, whereby each kind of thing has a collective memory.
For example, crystals of a given kind are influenced by all past crystals of that kind, date palms by past date palms, giraffes by past giraffes, etc. In the human realm this is similar to Jung's theory of the collective unconscious. In the realm of developmental biology the morphic fields that shape the growing organisms are called morphogenetic fields; in social organization they can be called social fields; and the organization of mental activity they can be called mental fields. But all these kinds of fields are particular kinds of morphic fields, and all are shaped and stabilized by morphic resonance. For a fuller description of the Hypothesis of Formative Causation see my books A New Science of Life, which is quite brief and somewhat technical, or my book The Presence of the Past, which is longer, but less technical, and more complete.
The 100th monkey story is often told and appears to support the idea of morphic resonance. However, I never use this myself because most of the versions of it that are in circulation have drifted a long way from the actual facts. It is then easy for sceptics to debunk.
The original story appears in Lyall Watson's book LIFETIDE, where he describes research on Japanese macaque monkeys, which have been studied intensively for more than four decades in a number of wild colonies. In 1952, a researcher first provided monkeys in one colony on the island of Koshima with sweet potatoes, which were thrown onto the beach and hence were covered with sand. One of the monkeys, an 18-month old female, called Imo, solved the problem of the sand on the potatoes by carrying them down to a stream and washing them before feeding. This new form of behaviour spread through the colony. By 1958 all the juveniles were washing dirty food and some of the adults learned to do so by imitating their children.
Watson goes on to say: "Then something extraordinary took place. The details up to this point in the study are clear, but one has to gather the rest of the story from personal anecdotes and bits of folklore among primate researchers, because most of them are still not quite sure what happened. ..... I am forced to improvise the details, but as near as I can tell, this is what seems to have happened." Watson then tells the original version of the 100th monkey story, making it clear that this is not literally what happened but a kind of dramatisation of it:
"In the autumn of that year [1958] an unspecified number of monkeys on Koshima were washing sweet potatoes in the sea, because Imo had made the further discovery that salt water not only cleaned the food but gave it an interesting new flavour. Let us say, for arguments sake that the number was 99 and that at eleven o'clock on the Tuesday morning, one further convert was added to the fold in the usual way. But the addition of the 100th monkey apparently carried the number across some sort of threshold, pushing it through a kind of critical mass, because by that evening almost everyone in the colony was doing it. Not only that, but the habit seems to have jumped natural barriers to have appeared spontaneously, like glycerine crystals in sealed laboratory jars, in colonies in other islands and on the mainland in a troop at Takasakiama."
This story has been repeated by all sorts of new age speakers and writers, mutating as it is retold. I think that the observations to which Watson was referring does show something like morphic resonance, but exaggerated versions of the story often bear little relation to what really happened. I myself prefer the example of rats that learned a new trick in one laboratory (Harvard) and later groups of rats in other laboratories, in Scotland and Australia that learned the new trick quicker. The details are given in my book A NEW SCIENCE OF LIFE, chapter 11.
7 Words Synopsis
This period of history is so fraught with danger that many people are justifiably concerned that their way of life is permanently at risk from climate changes, war and pollution. The problem lies in the way we think. Humanity has misunderstood the nature of reality and is now facing the inevitable consequences of having ignored all the signs that indicated that a new paradigm had to be found. If we are collectively to change how we think, there needs to be some way that explains all of our experiences and is reasonably satisfactory to power-possessors and their advisers: scientists, sociologists, philosophers and religionists—whether Moslem, Christian, Jew or Buddhist.
The 7 Words System offers this. It is defined by the use of 7 primary words—No, Hello, Thanks, Goodbye, Please, Sorry, Yes—and their 28 related keywords. This text explains the principles and how they can be found useful in practical applications—individually and collectively for worldly and spiritual purposes.
Words are powerful. They shape the way we think and therefore how we act. If we misuse them by the employment of propaganda, deceit and sensationalism, then the mind becomes confused. Such confusion and the related suspicion can never lead to harmony and trust. To end war we must speak truth. Life is constantly changing; empires come and go and beliefs constantly shift—and yet there are some fundamentals that never change. These are universal laws—and one of them is the law of 7. Intuitively we have understood the mystery of this number and it appears in our collective mythology repeatedly—including even the days of the week, which were created as seven without solid reasoning. We can look differently at all aspects of life when we look through the lens of 7. We can see what is actually going on in any system and in any communication by analysing its components into each of the 7 words.
Each of us has our own individual strengths and weaknesses. Some are strong with No, weak with Hello; some good at Goodbye, and reluctant to say Sorry. A questionnaire has been devised, researched and statistically validated, which has the capacity to lead a person very quickly to an incisive degree of self-awareness. It can also be used as a tool for practitioners in one-to-one sessions of psychotherapy, also in group work and in relationship counselling. Data has been collected from which charts are drawn to show how certain types of people—for example those who pray, those over 40 and those who are happy—have characteristics that are measurable in terms of the 7 Words.
In corporate management, and in the context of our career decisions, there are many benefits. Employment profiling is useful for both employer and employee—if you are weak on Hello then it may be inappropriate to become a receptionist. The 7 stages of management are made clear—and are applied in personal and business strategies as a way to effect changes quickly, clearly and cleanly without omitting any essential aspects of the process.
At a higher level, we can see that there are new ways to comprehend global issues and therefore new approaches to address the major problems of our times.
War relates to No
Media Corruption relates to Hello
Poverty relates to Thank You
Environmental Issues relate to Goodbye
Human Rights relate to Please
Tyranny relates to Sorry
Persecution relates to Yes
Having redefined the problems we are to deal with, we now need to strengthen our faith that we can take action and expect results. In this, we call upon the wisdom of Sheldrake and Matsui, who show that…
Thought impinges upon matter
We can influence distant things by resonance
…from which we deduce that humanity’s polluted thinking actually can be healed quickly enough to save ourselves from a dark future. It’s not too late!
Much of the 7 Words text is given to a full and detailed study of what the primary words have come to mean and—because they have never been taught properly—this differs from what we might expect. This examination goes deeply into each of the 4 keywords for each of the 7 primary words so that we can focus precisely upon their meanings, and therefore have the wherewithal to come to a mutual understanding about the building blocks of our thoughts, therefore our language, therefore our intentions and our conscious actions.
Looking from the 7 Words perspective, we learn to see agreement between things that seemed very different, for example science and religion, Islam and Christianity—and we encourage people to develop their capacity for optimistic reframing through self-analysis and meditation. In conclusion it is proposed that we can understand our history in a new way, in which the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions are understood as stages of the development of humanity’s consciousness. This enables us to put into new perspective the current crisis we are facing, to learn what we need to do and to begin the reorientation necessary to create a wholesome future together on Earth.
Dalai Lama: Millennium Message
1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three Rs: Respect for all, respect for others and responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realise you've made a mistake take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able, to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones: deal only with the current situation, don't bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the Earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.