Fully sustainable off grid communities/learning centers??

Upon looking for permaculture communities/eco villages on the web i discovered that there are quite a lot out there and It can get overwhelming escpecially if one isnt searching on a particular continent. With openly linitless plans I ask my fellow travelers the communities in which they experienced the closest thing to New Paradigm Permaculture sustainability. In other words, does anyone know the "BEST" communities, the ones that are fully off grid, fully food/ energy sustainable and with a balanced approach to Permaculture and community living. In my humble opinion what should be encompssed in "BEST" community would be one that also has learning/exploring centers where the esoteric Spirituality meets Nature, where Purple meets brown. I seek to find the most Permaculturally advanced community where nutrient rich food is abundant and energy infinite. If anyone resonantes with this and has visited or seen/heard of a farm,retreat or community nearing alignment to what i described please pass on the details.:) I found some promising ones in Hawaii such as Asante gardens and Kanekiki.

~Zach

Hi Zach,

I read what you were looking for when you arrived as a boot.  

" My whole purpose in diving into permaculture is to be able to grow my own light, elemental food and be completely sustainable and self reliant...."    is a sentence out of context I stole from one of your posts.

It is my opinion when one starts solely looking at logistics, one finds the scared four "Shelter, water, fire, food" first and then the rest after these have been established. It is also my opinion you arrived at Wheaton Labs during the shelter and fire stage.

Your valuable work at Wheaton Labs has furthered securing the best general shelter model that anyone can use in any climate zone (I've built a debris hut to sleep in and they work but I want, as most do, want a shelter which will heat me, cool me, collect my water, give me a place to cook out of the weather, and a place to sleep without freezing or dying of heat exhaustion -I believe the wofati is proving itself this winter and we will see as the winter progresses).

If you want a place which already has the scared four in place for you to observe plus a community, there is tamera.org.  I mention them to you because I like one of their versions of fire: their stirling engine with hot veggie oil as their energy store. They also have used Sepp Holzer's rain water to pond method and now have a living lake. They don't appear to do food forest as their main food production method and they do other things I'm not so enamored of.  
Tamera's social structure and community is affected by their deliberate unique sexuality behaviors.

Here in the USA, there is also  Colorado Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute - CRMPI...they have the food stage and maybe the fire stage completed.

You'll find need to create the missing solutions at every place you go.  What Paul is trying to do is create the sacred four which will work for everyone.

I encourage you to visit Tamera and CRMPI who appear finished on the surface and ask yourself this: do they provide the sacred four from the land?  will their model work for everyone in all cultures and climates?

Thank you so much Orin for that brilliant reaponse. I love the idea of the "sacred four" and I definetly want to experience somewhere that has some of those established so that I can learn and recreate. I will definetly look those you have mentioned.
~Zach