Kevin Lluch

In a recent visit to the community of Los Portales, Luciano Furcas, good friend and wise disseminator of Permaculture, told us that what we were doing was "Human Permaculture". Since my knowledge of Permaculture was quite limited, his statement intrigued me and stimulated me to want to know a little more about it. And I was very surprised to discover that the principles of Permaculture apply perfectly to community life. Through them I will share the essential features of our experience.

Permaculture talks about how to "create sustainable human habitats following natural patterns, that is, the durability of living natural systems and human culture."

Thirty years may be nothing in the scale of the evolution of the cosmos, but on the scale of the durability of community projects in our modern societies we can say without false modesty that it is a long time.

In our case, everything started back in the late 70's, when a group of people gathered in Brussels around a Jungian therapist and analyst with a growing commitment to an inner work, with a path of self-knowledge and personal evolution. In addition to psychodrama and other psychotherapeutic and / or shamanic techniques, the main tool of this work was dreams. Dreams, which constitute a way to access the hidden or unknown dimensions of ourselves, tell us about our areas of suffering as well as our defensive strategies in the face of this suffering, but also open us to our dormant potential, to all that that we can become, both individually and collectively. In addition, dreams put us in touch with the collective energy field, in the sense expressed by Lyne McTaggart in her book "The Field" or Gregg Braden in "The Divine Matrix".

Below I will develop some of the basic principles of Permaculture in light of those thirty years of experience of community life: