reconnecting with Nature through Spiritual Permaculture

I found this link and liked it very much.  It is from Russia and translated into English, based upon the Ringing Cedars of Russia book series, which I have read.

The idea of Spiritual Permaculture kind of worries me, because I can imagine permaculture becoming a philosophy/spirituality merely, without actual practical application of it in daily life (kind of like some other religions I could mention but won't!)   

The guy in the video is okay. Watched it to the end but couldn't stop yawning whilst he was talking about this spritual stuff. I mean common! Putting seeds in your mouth for 9 minutes, holding them in your hand for another 30 seconds before planting.

Even Lupin seeds???

Ludi Ludi wrote:
The idea of Spiritual Permaculture kind of worries me, because I can imagine permaculture becoming a philosophy/spirituality merely, without actual practical application of it in daily life (kind of like some other religions I could mention but won't!)     

Isn't the Findhorn community in Scotland exactly a spiritual permaculture?

Pakanohida wrote:
Isn't the Findhorn community in Scotland exactly a spiritual permaculture?

I don't know enough about it to know if they practice permaculture.  I'm not immediately finding anything about permaculture on their website, though they certainly are spiritual!   

http://www.findhorn.org/aboutus/vision/history/

Ludi Ludi wrote:
I don't know enough about it to know if they practice permaculture.  I'm not immediately finding anything about permaculture on their website, though they certainly are spiritual!   

http://www.findhorn.org/aboutus/vision/history/

They grow organic and have made a permanent community of like minded people.  What can be more permaculture then that! 

Well there ya go! 

well that very much depends on your definition of permaculture.
The findhorn community is a spiritual eco-community, thought permacuture is looking for ecological solutions to, well just about anything, being ecological, or growing ecological is not necisarily permaculture to me.

I know enough organic gardens where the earth is still tilled, and sprays are still used (organically certified food from the store doesnt ensure its poison free, the organic certification just means there is a limit to how much toxins can be sprayed by organic farmers).

The organic garden is still completely set back to its pioneer stage of mainly annuals every year, and crop rotation is still necisary to prevent soil depletion and pest outbreaks.

To me that is not permaculture, i think permaculture can, apart from its definition of striving for permanent culture, also mean using a certain set of principles and ethics that lead to certain techniques.

These techniques are often considered as 'the permaculture toolbox'.

I dont really like arguments that go into the direction of 'this is or is not permaculture' because it tends to be a judging endeavor and i dont want to value others activities or grade things. It is well possible that permaculture principles are being used for the social cohesion part of the findhorn community, and i cant imagine that nobody in findhorn is using permaculture in gardens, but for me a community living ecologically and eating their own (organically produced) food isn't necisarily permaculture...

i am not saying that there is a minimum of thing you should be doing before you can call it permaculture, there is no rule saing to what extend your application of permaculture principles goes, but i think at least people should intentionally strive towards permaculture before i would call it like that. So anybody who is trying to apply permaculture and wants to call it like that can, but i dont want to start calling every eco-village, or ecological sound design that reminds of what permaculturist are doing permaculture...

i hope im not being too much of a negative nancy here...

I tend to agree with you, Joop.  To me the word "permaculture" has a pretty specific meaning.  But other people seem to have different meanings for the word.

There is so much "permaculture" ideas in the ringing cedar books series you would not believe it. And books are beyond spiritual.
Don't take permaculture as a religion, it's just a word. Same for the spirituality.
We are all on the same side as human beings.
Peace.

Plankl wrote:

Don't take permaculture as a religion, it's just a word. Same for the spirituality.

They are just words, what matters is our connection to those words.    ((Adlibbing the last Matrix movie))

Permaculture is beyond spirtualism. Permaculture is quite obvious (in a positive way) tainted with Bill Mollison's naturalism. There is no "put the seeds for 2 hours in your mouth, jump around, eat mushrooms by fullmoon and watch out for the unicorn"-stuff involved. Because it's nonsense. Permaculture is about ethics and design, repeatable for everyone of us.

We live in this gorgeous, complex, yet simple world with all of it's stuff to discover.
Why do some humans have to make things up or have to add stuff they think must be missing? 

If it makes them happy, I say go for it. I'll help look out for the unicorn. 

What do we call spiritua,l it is a word that covers a lot of different things.
  one part of spirituality i salway sconsidered to be moral considerations do things for others or not just for yuorself.
if we have an idea of a god with infinity powers then there is an accompanying idea of trying to be one wit such a being that is to have a fuller understanding of things than we do not to be ourselves but to expnd tha tself to a bigger potential quantity of abilities and comprehension than we posess now.
Some say it is love but love does not always lead us right, a stupi dperson may suffocate a person they love and  as there exist s hard lovign and soft lovign i¡loving behavior maybe almost anything from softness to extreem e brutality for the sake of learning you. Jesus did not say love he said love your neighbor as youself a much more concrete instruction and for me that means an end to al hierachal behavior tha we have to educate everyone in the same way.
  Then there is a bit which is sort of psychological, are you unhappy and negative well think of good and goodness. Of course it all gets very complicarted how far is it right to make others follow your idea of goodness and what means can you use to oblige them. to do so. It is like the law, you need to enforce it and you need to decide wha tis a jus tpunishment and punishment is cruel and normally morality is there to reduce cruelty.
  I think the psychological question o fexpressing yoursel for being able to squuare the things that happen to you up come into some activities we give the name of spiritual. Ted Hughs wrote a poem to the tree outside his window he si¡aid the tree movign in the winds was occupied by outer and he with inner weather does teh workings of nature serve to illustrate some of our inner weather stormyness and such. It might help osome to comm to terms with their stormines sthey mmight say i am like th eweat¡her it is natural to be stormy.
  If you meditate in the buddist sense as i understand it, you observe your thoughts and come to realise that a thing you see is a sort of thought, in towns what we see is so limited, for example that small peice of sky we see between buildings instead of the whole sky as we might see it in the country. If sky is a thought and we have never seen the open sky, our thoughts or experience has been limited we has been limitied and in some way e feel that havign a fuller experience is psiritual.
      Nature gives us metaphors for what goes on in our own head and extends our experience and makes it more wonderful, a whole sky is more wonderfull. We can feel that the more wonderfull is more godlike and so more religiouse. We can also feel more special for seeign the wonderfull and so more satisfied and happy. THough many religiouse people seem to think that we are totallyegotistical i think tha thumans often feel small and insignificant and a need to feel of more worht rather than a need to be humiliated. Accordign to pschiatry it is other things tha the perception of the wonderfull that make us happy, expresion of our own thoughts for example and that certainly makes me happy, so the whole idea of nature satisfying us is a illusion. agri rose macaskie.

I think the idea of gods makes animals (humans included) second class beings and this sort of thinking is certainly one of the biggest roots of evil at all. Think of racism. One clever german philsopher (Michael Schmidt-Salomon; still alive) once said: False ideas must die, before people die because of false ideas (roughly translated).

Sure, I still differentiate between conscious beings (humans), partially conscious beings (animals) and unconscious beings (microbes, plants, etc) but in my opinion it is justifiable to destroy microbes, plants, even animals for a good selfish reason (e.g. self preservation). But only when you gave them an overall happy life first. Without unnecessary suffering. We nurture them, make them happy and we harvest them. I mean: People even keep dogs, like I do, to harvest companionship and love from them.

The term spirtuality for me is equal to made-up-stuff or (when I am in a good mood) an overeager interpretation of a moment of perfect clearity, which I know exists. But even a moment of perfect clearity is just a sensation, a mood. You think you see clear but the belief can't be falsified. It's just a beep in our heads and that means it is a human's minds creation.

I'm going to agree that spirituality and religion, are what a person makes of it. Good or bad, the choice is yours.