The meditation room, ALP
“I always have this picture like I come in full and free somehow. And it feels like it’s just getting more and more narrow. You know, I feel more and more tight and squeezed. As if somebody wants to slowly kill me somehow.” Juri talks about why he was “fed up with society” and why he eventually started to look for ‘alternative’ ways of living. He grew up in South Germany, yet as a student moved to Berlin to pursue a career in the creative industry.
He soon, however, discovered how hard it was for him to realize his dream, as he did not seem to get through the huge amount of competition. This is what, among other things, seemed to contribute to his sense of being ‘squeezed’ by society: “there was this fear of, you know, not being good enough”. In Berlin he also met his ex-wife, who is from Kuwait. There they got married and were living together with her family for several years. However, he soon started to feel the same tightness as he had felt in Berlin; not from living in a
competitive city but from living in a so-called “golden cage”. He then again turned his focus on “alternative” methods to help him cope with this fear he felt: “It sounds maybe a bit stupid, but I was, again, pursuing like these alternative remedies, like doing yoga, being
vegan, sungazing, breathwork. And my most favorite was earthing, which actually helped me a lot. So I went out every day to the beach, walked, and all of a sudden it was like my fear—
and there was a big fear of losing everything, you can say—it dropped. There was a big trust.”
What is trust? Some people may define trust as a conditioned character they attribute to other people, things, phenomena based on their historical (dis)confirmation of their expectation of them; trust in a good friend, the local weather forecast or your dog’s loyalty when you unleash him in the park. For others, trust may be more of a characteristic of a relationship they experience with things less directly perceivable; trust in the Divine, society or ‘life’ itself. Whichever definition may resonate most, I think it is safe to state that,
ultimately, trust is the “necessary foundation for building any successive relational act”, as Di Somma formulates it (2022, 165). We could accordingly claim that it is a crucial element for the proper functioning of any community, and especially such intimate communities as ALP or Avidanja. Several residents here have namely pointed out that they—through experiences and stories—know that not many of such communities actually work, let alone last. What could possibly make this difference? What would be inherent to the “successive relational acts” that seem to make ALP and Avidanja work? To find out more about this, this chapter will be concerned with the question: What is the relationship between faith, trust and the development of a ‘moral’ subjectivity of the communities’ residents?
T(w)o Trust(s)
As mentioned, Juri was looking for ‘alternative’ projects and, as there was a lot offered there, decided to go to Portugal, where he volunteered at a few different communities. Yet in many other projects he saw, reflecting back upon his experiences from what he knows now, “a lot of ego and a lot of immaturity”; “I was in a community and it was just two parties, you know? And they were fighting. And I was like ‘oh my god…’, I mean, my whole vision shattered.” As he was meditating more and more, he was also deliberately looking for a place where he would find both a certain guidance and “likeminded” people, which is how he ended up at Avidanja. This, according to him, then shattered his view about what spirituality means: “I thought it’s more love, bliss and stillness or whatever, but I was challenged a lot.”
Although he definitely felt a certain love and care underneath their harshness and discipline, he also started “doubting like never before”. What nevertheless seemed to consolidate his
trust in the ‘sincerity’ of the intention of the people was his perception of a collective
“commitment to move somewhere together”:
I just sensed this commitment to be real. But this includes the challenges, because people are challenged to really be real, right? That was definitely very much at the forefront; that it's not satisfying or pleasing each other, or whatsoever. It's a new way of interacting with each other, which also means that we sometimes have to go into conflicts; you know, fight for the things we think are right. And yeah, this is what I didn't really experience in the other projects, this commitment to really want to go somewhere together, you know. And it came always from this ground of deep trust;
the trust that we are supporting each other.
Where could this ‘ground of deep trust’ originate from? Here residents’ shared faith may come to play a significant role, which Jutta for example explains in her account of the time she was living together with Sandra and Joel in Avidanja. As similarly described by several residents in chapter two, she mentions that this was challenging for her as she felt there was “nowhere to hide” and they were constantly “testing” each other. She also suggests that “on a superficial level” they did not trust each other at all. But “fundamentally” they did trust each other which, she assumes, held them together as a ‘community’. She elaborates upon the difference between ‘superficial’ and ‘fundamental’ trust in the following way:
To trust on a fundamental level, I mean that we trust in each other that nothing is more important to us than to be free, which means we want more ‘being free’ than ‘living our egoic movements’. So that’s the trust on a fundamental level; that we want to be free of our egoic movements and everybody does whatever he or she could to make this true. On a more superficial level, as we are not enlightened beings, we do have egoic movements and we would see them [in others]. And then mistrust is coming in.
Because we see ‘wow, you are actually here and there an egomaniac, and I don’t trust you’. But we always could find our way back to that place of trust, because we knew that even if someone sees the egomaniac in the other, that person is willing to see the egomaniac, as well. Maybe not in that precise moment, but on a fundamental level, for sure; we were willing to do this and to go through this.
As Jutta explains, what thus seemed to hold them together as a community was a
‘fundamental trust’ in each other which was there due to the other’s devotion and willingness to see their egoic movements.
Yet what such intersubjectivity could be said to ultimately depend on is a faith in ‘true freedom’ as a result hereof; something which may, once more, become clearer through Rui’s experience. In chapter one, we saw how for Rui his recognition of his prior freedom during the ten-day-retreat had been crucial to his understanding of and devotion towards realizing freedom. In chapter two, we moreover saw how this recognition made him aware of whose choice it ultimately is whether he is happy or not, i.e., whether he is ‘rejected’ or ‘loved’. In relation to this, Rui emphasizes how this recognition has not only affected his personal priorities nor his sense of personal responsibility, but also the way he relates to people. Or, as he mentions, how it became a certain “reference point” which supported him in achieving a new way of being with others:
If I’m for example having an argument with someone, before I would feel much more easily... I would feel rejected, or like ‘oh, I don't wanna go there’. And instead of that, now it just becomes an exploration between two human beings, and we can learn.
Because it's not a problem fundamentally, you know? Because I believe
fundamentally it's all good; that we are already free from the complexity and the problem and the hatred. It doesn't mean there is not that, it just means that because we know that we are not that fundamentally, then we have more space to talk about it from a different point of view. Or not even a point of view, we can just talk about it knowing that we are not that, it’s just something that we are doing as conditioned human beings, but it’s not us. So we can just talk about it, and by talking about it something happens; something is released. So how I live now is just like being more interested in finding out what wants to happen more than what I want to happen, you know.
Di Somma (2022) shows that in Greco-Roman traditions, trust (in the social order) was intrinsically related with having faith to the degree that there was even no
linguistic/conceptual discrepancy between the two (pistis in Greek and fides in Roman).
Faith, he accordingly explains, was a “social virtue inherent in human sociality and always connected to it”, for it was “only because the single individual had the capacity to have faith that it was possible to establish meaningful social relations” (ibid., 158). This is why he notes
that the relationship of trust essentially referred to a “metaphysical hypostasis”, or people’s
“sense of implicit order in which the things that have value find their own position and structure” (ibid., 159). If we correspondingly analyze Rui’s narrative, we could suggest that—within the communities’ sociality—a (shared) faith in a metaphysical freedom
establishes a form of trust. For he, too, touches upon an earlier presented finding; that through a shared commitment of ‘being available’ to ‘what wants to happen’, residents sense that what actually happens in their intersubjectivity is not animated by their ego but by something catalyzing a freedom hereof. In Rui’s example, this means to not go with his egoic desire to want to avoid conflict but rather to speak out to the other due to a trust in the freedom
implicit to this act, or the “release” it provides. He thus explains how “there is a layer of trust that is not a trust in another human being, it is a trust in something bigger that then ends up also trusting in a human being”. We could, in other words, state that underneath the trust that is based on behaviors lies another trust (or faith) in an underlying motive guiding those behaviors. This “social virtue” inherent to residents’ sociality may, in turn, be quintessential for ‘doubtful’ people such as Juri to be able to cultivate a faith and trust (in the community’s sociality), too.
In Service of and for Freedom
Every Thursday at ALP was communal working day, a weekly day planned specifically for those jobs that tend to need more (wo)manpower, as well as for residents to just enjoy a day of working together. On the first communal day of my fieldwork, I was working together with Inês, Sasha and Julie. Through the area of ALP flows a beautiful stream which is used for the communal water supply as well as for refreshing dips. During the winter, however, there had been a storm during which some of the mountain trees standing on the edge of the stream had fallen into it. Together we therefore had to gather these to make the area in and around the water clear again. At times it was a tough job, as we were trying to maintain our balance on the slippery rocks that form a crossing over the water whilst lifting the heavy trunks together. Yet every strenuous effort to move the trunks from one side to the other was always followed by a sense of accomplishment and a small communal ‘celebration’, which made also made it a cheerful activity. When after our hard work I got the impression that we were finished, Inês took off her shoes and socks to climb down the water to get into the ice-cold water. As I was standing on the edge of the stream, she handed me some more small branches she had noticed were still lying around. “That’s devoted”, I thought to myself. It
was the first time how I, during my fieldwork, became aware of how everyone here often seems so dedicated to the jobs which they are doing ‘in service’ of the community. People working longer than the set working hours, people taking care of jobs which were not necessarily ‘their responsibility’, people climbing into trees, going in the water or getting their bodies into many awkward positions to just get the job done in the best way possible;
the devotion and care put into the work by both ALP and Avidanja’s residents was quite remarkable. Even more so because many—though not all—residents have actually explained to me how they used to experience a severe resistance to many of the jobs that they were assigned to do; how they could not possibly grasp why they would ever do such chores which they did not even get a salary for (which could be said to be not unlike my own attitude on my first working day at ALP last year). What could be inherent to this transformation in one’s relationship to the work? Three examples may elucidate upon this.
The stream
As mentioned in chapter one, when Marco first arrived at ALP, he got the sense that the people there were in touch with something that he was not in touch with himself; that “they understood something about life deeper” than he did. This in turn gave him the willingness to learn more about this lifestyle and, hence, the willingness to commit himself to becoming a community member. But he also mentions how this was a process in which he struggled a lot, for example due to his obligation to carry out chores whose use were still rather “unknown”
to him:
What was very difficult was that there were a lot of things I didn't understand. And I'm a person that—which kind of goes back to the mind rationalization—you know, if I don't understand why I have to do something, it takes me everything. Like ‘what the fuck, what’s the point?’ And here there were a lot of things that were very… unknown.
But all from the base of ‘why am I spending my time doing that?’ You know, yeah, even job wise of course, there was a lot of ‘fuck… I'm coming from a good job, I was earning a lot of money and now I have to fucking…’ you know, with the grass. Ah what you were doing today actually.
M: Weeding.
Yeah, weeding.
M: How did that change?
Well, I think it's a process, as I said. I might still think that certain things are not useful, and I might still think ‘I don't think this is the right way’. So, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that I agree with everything we do here and that I would do things in the same way. And yet, what fundamentally changed, as I said, is finding a trust which goes beyond the need to understand always why I have to do something, and instead align myself to stay with the possibility that maybe there is a reason which is beyond my mind, which I will only know maybe in the future, or maybe never. But only if I allow myself to give myself to that process, otherwise I will never be there. So again, I think what changes is the process of suffering versus surrendering.
Secondly, Julia explains that when she arrived as a volunteer at ALP and got assigned her first job it “freaked her out” that she did not get any credits for her effort, as she
“desperately wanted to have this credit”. Over time, however, her attitude to the work seemed to change:
I was very victimized in the beginning and I hated it. Yeah, I didn't like to work in the beginning. I was like ‘what the fuck am I doing here?’. The first job I had to do was digging these stupid tranches up there for the rain. It's like ‘what the heck?’, I really hated it. There was nothing in it for me. Why would I do it? I don't live here. I don't even know these people. Why should I do this stupid job, you know? Yeah, but now it's very different.
M: Why? What changed?
Well, over time I realized that being here means to not get anything out of what I’m doing for myself, as a separate sense of self, which made me realize that the work I was doing was not for me; it was for something bigger. So over time—with the impact of other people and also just realizing it for myself—I learned to be of service:
to do things in a loving way whilst not expecting to get anything back. (...) I guess it was catalyzed through meditation practice and through going to the retreats, because I just got more space to actually see what was arising, to see the patterns playing out:
why was it that it was triggering me so much to do the work? Or why was it that I wanted to get something back and that I couldn’t just give?
And, finally, as mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, when Juri stayed at Avidanja as a volunteer he was challenged a lot. So too was he challenged by the other residents on his ‘heaviness’ and overt resistance regarding the work that he was assigned to do: “After one week they were asking me ‘Juri, do you actually like to work?’ And I was like,
‘oh shit’. ‘No, actually no. I don’t like to work’”. However, when he became a part of the sangha and moved to ALP to spend the season there, he mentions how his point of view regarding this changed. For there he did feel okay with doing work he was not per se fond of doing. I asked him why it was different compared to his time at Avidanja:
Well, there's this notion as a volunteer, right? You are not really a part of the
community, of the sangha. You know, I'm here [ALP] part of the sangha, I want that this place is thriving. In Avidanja I didn't care, right? I really did not. I cared more about my experience; how I feel. And here it's not about that. I mean, sometimes I feel shit, you know. Yeah, or I fall back in my heaviness, could be. But I see just like; okay, I don't do it for me. And I'm fine with that. You know, I'm at ease with this and I don't need to do an amazing super exciting job. I want that this place is thriving; I want to support my brothers and sisters. Yeah, like last year I had to empty always the compost
toilets. And you know, in the end it's a shit job, right? Literally. But I don't know, there's something to it where, yeah, it needs to be done, somebody needs to do it. And actually, while I'm doing that, I feel grateful. I mean not that I smell that shit and stuff, but it's just like I can give something back, you know, for what I receive always.
Taylor (2007) describes how, for him, the birth of modernity entailed a shift away from an imaginary in which individuals were conceived to fundamentally exist to ‘complement’
the whole towards one in which society exists to guarantee the well-being, rights and freedom of individuals. Or as he puts it, the modern moral order “starts with individuals, and
conceives society as established for their sake” (ibid., 170). Such a modern imaginary seems to similarly come forward in residents’ narratives presented above. For Marco could not comprehend why he had to weed grass for the community as an ex-successful businessman.
Julia claims that, in the beginning, it “freaked her out” that she did not get the credit for the work which she thought she deserved and that there was, she assumed, nothing in it for her.
And finally, in Avidanja, Juri cared more about his experience and how he was feeling than about the thriving of the community. In other words, they all initially considered being in communion as a threat to their individual freedom, or society as fundamentally subjected to their individuality. This is why Honneth argued that Berlin’s notion of ‘negative freedom’
can be seen as inherent to “modernity’s conceptual world” (2014, 24), since a freedom from
‘externally imposed restrictions’ is only imaginable when subjectivity is conceived of as being separate from an external objectivity.
Nevertheless, what becomes above all apparent is that every one of them also seemed to find a way to renegotiate being ‘in service’ as something meaningful rather than as an impediment to freedom. And we may observe a distinctive journey towards this
understanding in every story. First, Marco could “find a trust” in the possibility of there being a reason for his duty which is beyond his own understanding. We could say that in his case faith and trust were intrinsically related, as described in the previous section. Julia, on the other hand, was—with the help of her peers and her practice—able to develop “more space”
to see how her duties did not actually have to be in service to her egoic subjectivity (her
“separate sense of self”) but to something transcending it (“something bigger”). In her case, we therefore again notice the value of a discipline in the context of a communal structure as described in chapter two, not just for the individual but for the well-being of the community itself. In Marco’s and Julia’s cases, it thus becomes clear how faith—whether ‘recognized’ or
‘cultivated’—seems to be able to catalyse a breach away from a subjectivity in which one’s