Why Regeneration?

Humanity's relationship to life, regeneration and this living planet is deeply broken

Our collective humanity’s relationship to this living planet is in deep crisis. We have lost connection to the wholeness and interdependency of all life expressing itself through the vitality of the global ecology we are a part of.

Moving our global communities from a paradigm of materialism, extraction and separation from this living earth, to a paradigm of regeneration, holism and identification with all life on this earth is the single most important task the generations alive today are facing, and it is a task of tremendous urgency and momentous scope.

What is most clear to us, is that this challenge can not be overcome solely by answering scientific questions in our collective minds, it can't be met by reason, by ideas, by technology, by politics, by supranational agreements, by words or by merely cognitive approaches. To overcome this challenge we have to not only change what we think and what we do, we have to also change how we do it and as who we do it with.

This challenge can only be overcome in a profound and humble, direct, embodied, reciprocal relationship with this whole living ecology, with our hands and hearts deeply immersed in the soils and the waters of this alive earth, with reverence, attention, dedication, and devotion.

Regeneration is not just a fancy new word for "environmentally conscious" or "sustainable", regeneration is a total and profound recognition of the one life and the waves and cycles it is constantly engaging in: Birth, Maintenance, and Death.

These three fundamental qualities represent the fullness of life, the possibility of vitality, the dance of syntropy and entropy, the breathing of the living cosmos, evolution and involution, the lovemaking of light and dark, the perfection of life. Our culture of separation denies death as an elementary part of this cycle. Through this lens, death is an ending, a terrible truth, a fate to be resisted, a sentence to protest, the reason for a lifelong fight for survival.

This inability to embrace death as a fundamental part of experiencing existence is leaving us with an incomplete relationship to life.

We only live partially, binding energy and attention in avoidance rather than surrendering to being ecstatically alive. Our whole technological progress is driven by this avoidance. Every industry, in one way or another, is invested in either distracting us from the reality of death or finding a way to "cure" us from it, as if it was God's big mistake, death as the ultimate disease to overcome. In the face of death we become constricted in our core, we suppress the force of life moving through us - in fear of losing our life. Our culture worships the partial truths of our developmental journey, while ignoring the absolute truth they point towards.

As an interdependent system, the dissociation from our inherent relationality, where we have lost touch with each other, our bodies, and the places we inhabit, is deeply dysfunctional to the whole. The healing of this dysfunctionality is necessarily relational, because the roots of the dissociation are a severance of relationship.

Relationships grow and mature us, and they are what gives us subjectivity. Cut off from our relations, we can no longer feel ourselves, each other, and the beings we share our world with. Only in relationship can we heal the dissociation with life. Only in relationship can we imagine and co-create a more beautiful future.

The complexity of the times we live in, calls forth our capacity for building relationships, as an echo of a memory of the future we have already built, a future where we will have become Earth, an Earth that will have learned how to weave tender, strong webs of connection.

The tapestry of our dreams is woven from our shared prayers for the world we will gift to our children’s children.

Learn more about what regeneration is by clicking here.

The Vision

Coming back into a fully regenerative relationship with the whole cycle of life

What if we could look at death as an utterly beautiful expression of the regenerative cycle of life? What if we could step out of the mythos of scarcity we exist in and be in relationship with the never ceasing abundance of life?

What our culture feels towards death is not a response to what death is, but to what it imagines it to be.

We believe death is the most generous, compassionate, loving experience a soul can have, being embraced by the whole cosmos, all life, returning to the cosmic womb as a portal to more life, being utterly accepted as who we are. It is the most profound expansion of consciousness possible.

Acknowledging this holistic perspective on the cosmos also requires us to look into the abyss of all the ways we as humans are separating ourselves from the experience of this one living planet constantly: our collective trauma, shadow, fear and avoidance. Our broken relationships with each other and all sentient and insentient beings in this cosmos.

Supporting humanity through this developmental portal of healing our relationship to life, including and not limited by death, needs an actual place. A piece of land offering an experience that deeply changes who we are and how we relate to the vitality of this planet.

Because death belongs to earth. Earth belongs to death.

The Project

We want to create a sanctuary where women give birth on the soil, held by earth.

A place where people are abundantly nourished by the foods received from a syntropic relationship with the soils and the waters they are living on.

A place where tending to the needs of this life-giving soil is a lived practice that unites us.

A place where we gather to accompany our loved ones into the most profound expansion of consciousness at the end of their lives, with reverence, presence, compassion, love, celebration, connection, and the time and space to listen to their wisdom.

Where their ashes fall onto the fields that nurture our children. Where our children grow up knowing that food and life are given by the soils, the soils that are the living gift of death.

A place where we heal our collective trauma, dive deep into our shadows, and heal our relationships to ourselves, each other, and the land. A place where we can share knowledge and invite other humans to have a lived experience of a regenerative culture, so that they can bring it back into their communities.

A place we can invite organizations and managers to, to expand their horizon on what this new paradigm needs from the current powers of our culture. A village in which we learn life in a new way, integrating our advances of humanity with the laws and truths of life in a syntropic and synergistic way.

Every human being is born with the capacity to belong to a culture, but also with an innate impulse as a soul to transform that culture into something more whole. In the industrial world, we have largely forgotten this truth of our children, and the capacity of us as adults. We come here to mature the world we were born into. Including more of the world inside of oneself, taking in the essence and meeting it with a creative, transformative impulse.

This project is also a place for souls to grow. The maturation of the soul happens in presence and in relationship.

We’re moving from a paradigm where I do everything by myself for myself, to a paradigm where I do it with you for all of us.

In traditional cultures, the primary task of the tribe was to care for the development of each individual’s soul in service to the tribe’s continued maturation and service to the world.

We want to reimagine the archetypal structure of human tribes for metamodern times. We are weaving a tapestry of souls coming from a wide range of ancestral lineages and cultural histories, learning together to root ourselves in the fertile soil of soul, while digesting and integrating the wisdom of our personal, ancestral, and collective histories.

This is our response to an increasingly fragile social and ecological world: to build resilience in the form of strengthening relationships with each other and strengthening our rootedness in the soulful depths of our beings and the grounding soils of this earth. As one cell of a planetary organism of temples, villages and schools, we are becoming Earth awakening as one soul.

In July we have identified two properties that can hold this vision, and two of us went ahead and signed the contracts and made the down-payments to secure them for this project in a state of deep trust and clarity that this vision wants to manifest.

We have chosen the incredible islands of the Azores to be the place where this vision wants to land, or rather the Azores have chosen us to do so. The Azores are a vital paradise in the passed by the gulf stream in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, birthed by powerful volcanic activity. A wild, primal expression of earths vitality. Volcanic fertile soils, comfortable climate year round, abundant supplies of water, a complete absence of polluting industry, steaming hot springs and wonderful people.

The Azores are known for the sweetest pineapples in the world, and produce mangos, avocados, bananas, passion fruit, a large variety of vegetables and are a perfect place to raise healthy, grass fed animals. Even tea and wine are growing here. Due to the volcanic activity the islands are peppered with epic hotsprings and lush green mountains. The oceans around the islands are clean, healthy and offer a home to wales, dolphins, manta rays, wale sharks, sharks and all sorts of fish.

The juxtaposition of this vibrant, powerful, wild and alive land with our cultural idea of death seem like a perfect place to land this sanctuary, to heal the artificial dichotomy between life and death our culture is holding onto. Reachable with many direct flights from Europe and the US, or by sail boat, it can be a bridge that brings communities together that usually stay among themselves.

These perfect conditions for regenerative agriculture and permaculture are also a great opportunity give back to the land by regenerating its destroyed forests - a result of centuries of monoculture forestry and life stock, leaving the islands covered in mostly pastures and empty commercial forests. Helping the island of São Miguel to restore its diverse, endemic and healthy primary forests, while offering a sustainable, regenerative home to transgenerational families, is our ultimate purpose and goal.

The Mountain

200 hectares of wild mountain slopes, juicy green pastures, seemingly infinite forests, old trees, two creeks with plenty of water and ocean view from every spot. We still can't believe we found this jewel waiting for us.

This is where we want to build a thriving village, a retreat and education center, a school, and permaculture gardens to feed its people. We want to regenerate the commercial monoculture forests into endemic, healthy, diverse woodlands and plant food forest and market gardens. The south-facing steep slopes are ideal make use of solar energy and hydropower.

The land already has two cisterns to collect fresh water and a road to access it. This is the home of Alma do Solo, the place where our project wants to land.

The Quinta

A hundred year old elementary school building with 1.3 hectares of farmland in a beautiful little village close to Povoaçao and just a five minute drive or short walk from "The Mountain".
This building was renovated completely just ten years ago and served as a hotel since then. The owners have invested a lot of love to start turning the pastures into a thriving permaculture garden with herbs, fruits, vegetables, goats, chickens, turkeys and the cutest donkey in the world! All the animals will stay with us! YAY!

This wonderful place will serve as the launchpad for the development of the mountain and be the first home for the stewards and pillars who move in on March 15th 2023 to begin developing the project!

Ultimately The Quinta will be transformed into a regenerative and sustainable retreat center able to host workshops and provide accommodation for 30-40 people to generate a source of income to fund the project on The Mountain and to host guests that are receiving training there or volunteering.

A Regenerative Village