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12 years and still
making it! December, 2009 Kevin
and Donna Johnson It
was a hot, humid and sunny Friday on August 8, 1997. I had left work
early after lunch to drive to a small community 60 miles from where I
lived in order to look at a piece of property that was for sale. When I
found the place, I immediately loved the serenity, the quietness, and
the trees. It was isolated, wooded and seemed so remote from city life.
After parking the car along an abandoned old logging road, I leisurely
walked among the trees and scoped the place out. Little did I know at
the time that these two and a half acres would lead Donna and me to
discover the greatest turning point of our lives. I was 37, still working full time
as a draftsman for an engineering company, a job I hated. All I wanted
to do at this point in my life was move out to the country and start
living a life based on the Essene principles that Professor E. B.
Szekely wrote about in his classic books on biogenic living. At the
time, Donna and I had no idea what we were up against, nor did we have
any clue as to how to begin, or even how ill prepared we were. All we
knew was that we needed to get out of the city as soon as possible and
start adapting to nature as best we could. There was a burning desire to
get out of the system, to start living from a new vision, one that
sought to lighten our footprint on the earth. We had been working to get out debt
for the previous five years and had unloaded a lot of clutter and
possessions in our life. The next thing necessary was securing a small
loan for the property. Since I had gone through bankruptcy four years
before, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to get a loan for the land
for many more years. Fortunately, I only had to borrow about $9000 and
the local bank manager kindly gave me the break I needed. Donna and I
were able to pay it off in less than three years. The one thing we knew
was that we were never going to borrow money again. There was no
question that this was the right path for us; it was simply a knowing we
both shared. And we have never used a credit
card or taken out a loan since. If we need to buy something, we either
save for it or do without. That, in itself is something that young
people will have to learn in the times ahead. Debt free living is the
only way to true freedom. History has shown over and over that when an
individual or a society becomes indebted, it inevitably leads to
bondage. In America, over the course of the
past 60 years or so, people have become accustomed to believing that
they need good credit in order to make it in the world. Who perpetuated
that belief except the people who lend money? I still believe it is one
of the greatest hoaxes perpetuated in contemporary society. The simple,
reliable, yet profound source of ancient wisdom handed down through the
writings of the Essenes is one of the most important treasures left to
mankind. They believed fundamentally that the best life was one of
simplicity, self-reliance and independence, cooperating and relying on
just a few close neighbors and friends within a small agricultural
community. Furthermore, they taught that
extreme wealth was just as wrong as poverty and that for man to be truly
happy, he only needs the comfort and support of the natural forces of
life: the angels of sun, pure water, pure air, wholesome food, health,
creative work and beauty. They warned that when a nation expands too
much it inevitably leads to chaos and suffering. It is interesting that
when the original thirteen colonies were still a part of England, a man
named Professor Alexander Tyler wrote: “A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of
government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can
vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the
majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from
the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses
over fiscal policy followed by dictatorship. “The average age of the world’s greatest
civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed
through the following sequences: from bondage to spiritual faith, from
spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty
to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to
complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from
dependency to bondage.”
Our first couple of years on the
property were filled with a momentum of hope and adventure, yet we
quickly found how much we had been had by our society. I’ve mentioned
before in my earlier writings that I really felt cheated by my formal
education because I hadn’t learned the practical skills necessary to
survive on my own. I realized that I was completely unprepared for any kind of
self reliant, independent living.
Neither one of us had any experience in building a cabin.
We didn’t know how to compost, plant a garden without chemicals or
grow sprouts. We couldn’t do electrical wiring and plumbing, didn’t
know how to preserve vegetables, store wheat, grind it and bake bread in
a wood fired oven, or even how to build an oven. I didn’t have the arm
strength to split enough wood for the winter, neither of us could build
a decent fire in a woodstove, or make soap, raise chickens, milk a goat,
maintain a well, install a hot water heater, or fix a chainsaw. And for
everything we didn’t know how to do, we realized it only led to
another facet of dependency, meaning that we’d have to either do
without or pay someone else to do it for us. So, for me, it is
embarrassing to admit how stupid and ignorant we were after 12 years of
schooling, 2 years of college and another 20 years of swimming upstream
in the system.
Thankfully, we knew how to read books and were able to
learn a tremendous amount of practical wisdom, as well as ancient
spiritual knowledge through Professor Szekely’s books. The only thing
that I ever truly lacked in my youth was simply KNOWLEDGE OF THE ANCIENT
WISDOM from the greatest minds over the last 5000 years of collected
history. And this is precisely why Donna and I created the EarthStar
website and why we have such a passion to write and answer e-mails from
hundreds of people each year. We want others to have easy access to the
ideas, philosophy and practical information that leads them to freedom. And we want it to be
freely available to everyone! Here again is the heart of what
Professor Szekely taught in his book, Cosmos, Man and Society. "We
must lead mankind back from the great towns to the country, just as the
peoples of the Bible were led out of Egypt. Disease and death and
destruction are close at hand, and the new society can only be
constructed if the fundamental equilibrium of human society is
re-established and seventy-five percent of people return to the
fundamental occupations of a simple, natural life, to a natural
agriculture, to freedom, and to harmony with the natural laws and
natural forces." Professor Szekely’s books are
such a gift in this world. He was a genius for being able to gather and
decipher all this ancient knowledge and restate it in such a way that
ordinary people like us can benefit from it. His books have inspired,
challenged, educated, uplifted and helped us more than anything else,
yet it still amazes me that this vast collection of writings are
relatively unknown by even the most well educated people in the world
today. Anyone who wants to understand the
mystery of human existence and man’s rightful place in the great
scheme of life should look into at least one of his books. At present, a
complete booklist is still available by writing to his successor, Norma
Szekely at: International Biogenic Society, P.O. Box 849, Nelson,
British Columbia, Canada V1L 6A5.
(She does not have a website.)
Henry David Thoreau was also one of those great,
uncompromising Americans who understood that man and nature are
inexorably intertwined and that a society cannot maintain its integrity
or prosper in independence when the majority of its citizens leave the
land in order to inhabit factories, industry or to seek profit in
cities. His short 2 or 3 year experiment near Walden’s pond was for
me, a testament to the modern awakening of the Essene spirit, of one
man’s inner drive to discover true creative independence by honoring
and relying on the natural forces of life.
So even though we had joined in the flow of others who
thought this way in the past and believed in the ancient tradition of
simplicity, the final biggest challenge came a few years later. After we
had learned all these new skills and built our little homestead, we had
to confront financial survival in a money and taxation system that is
designed to make life hard. In other words, we had to accept the loss of
true community and the supportive network that in the past, gave people
a sense of security and the ability to generate income locally. In our
area, we have no bonded relationships with neighbors seeking to live the
same set of independent, eco-friendly principles, people whom we can
rely on for a sense of camaraderie or social support. For
the most part, the people who are our neighbors, as wonderful as they
are, are simply not interested in the kind of lifestyle that leads to
financial freedom and enlightened liberation. Many people’s
lifestyles, including those who live in the country, are still mostly
concerned with luxurious comfort, distraction, isolation and
convenience, all of which leads only to complacency and weakness.
Anyone who reads our website and might be inspired to
achieve similar goals must accept the fact that they may have to do it
alone. The inevitable collapse of the society and the resulting meltdown
of personal finances are happening now. And though it still looks as
though government polices, laws and bailouts are going to pull it
together down the road, the sobering fact is: the
American model of prosperity is unsustainable and there will be nothing
left for our children. We cannot
operate on the same level of mindless wastefulness, believing that
government officials care about us. Governments don’t care about
anything but staying in power. They cannot and will not bail us out.
They cannot provide wholesome food and shelter and resources to
everyone. The government is not going to magically be able to keep
printing or borrowing money from foreign countries in order to finance
the same kind of system that caused the problem in the first place.
Though it may not look like the society has fully fallen apart today, be
assured, it is coming. And it is only a matter of time when all that is
going to be important is not which party has the majority of seats,
it’s not the Democrats or the Republicans or the Green Party that
matters, it’s the basics of life: water, food, fuel and shelter! And we have to learn to supply these
for ourselves if we want to be free. It takes very little effort to
prepare a little bit each day. Begin by learning some practical skills,
getting out of debt and storing food, water filters and a few basic
supplies. (See the following section, “Practical Tips on Radical
Downsizing and Thinking Small.”) We personally know several young
people who really see that there is no future for them. Most of them are
already in debt on credit cards. What kind of mind thought of the insane
idea of giving high school kids credit cards with $500 line of credit
upon graduation? They don’t even have a job at that point. They have
been brain-washed to believe they must go to college for four years just
to get a decent job. Instead, what the majority of them get is a lot of
school debt and part time jobs at bookstores or coffee shops or busing
tables at restaurants. And even these jobs are getting hard to come by.
The latest estimate is that there are at least 6 unemployed people for
each new low wage or part time job that becomes available! The last realistic, unofficial
unemployment rate announced is now around 22%. This figure includes
people who lost their jobs years ago and never went back to work. That
is depression level. And unemployment continues to get worse each month.
How could it not go up? Each year another American company sells out and
moves their base operations to China, India and Mexico, where they can
get cheap slave labor. America is not producing raw goods and products
like it used to, automobile manufacturing is in decline, there are
hardly any textiles or steel being manufactured, agriculture is now
operated by huge corporations with gigantic industrial farming tracts of
mono-culture crops, sapping up more and more groundwater, increasingly
spreading more chemicals and pesticides. It is a classic formula for
collapse and it is happening now. The answer, for those who have the
desire to look into the open book of nature, is very simple. Though it
isn’t easy, a lifestyle in harmony with nature really works, as long
as people change their approach from the false values that destroy
personal health and erode the mind, in favor of true values that lead to
financial freedom, spiritual liberation and independent thinking.
Ancient peoples have known this for thousands of years. Why can’t we
all see it? As Donna and I were busy working
during the early years, earning money to fund our meager lifestyle and
building projects, somewhere around 2002, I was finally laid off for
good. After that it became impossible to secure a steady job in my field
of pipe drafting for more that a few weeks at a time. The time
in-between jobs increased as well and eventually my unemployment
benefits completely ran out. I remember the day it happened. At
first we were very worried that we wouldn’t make it and thought,
“Well, maybe this is the end for us; it looks like our EarthStar
Project might be doomed to failure.” All we could think about was not
being able to survive without a steady paycheck. But we knew we could
not give in to fear after all we had been through.
We had done all that we could to change our lifestyle here at
EarthStar by getting out of debt, learning practical skills, trying to
cultivate our relationship with the natural forces of life and making a
real effort to prepare. After several weeks of worrying
about money, one day we just decided to peacefully let go and trust our
fate to the unknown. At that point, we knew we couldn’t bring
ourselves to go back and recreate the unnatural, unhealthy and unhappy
conditions of our former lives. So we chose to change our focus to
gratitude and the true richness of what we had created together.
We had each other, our humble little hut, our garden, chickens,
some stored food and supplies and an old truck. We were just living each day with
the faith and trust that we were on the right path, not yet knowing what
to do about right livelihood. A
short time later, we were out in the back of the property, making a
fire, burning branches and twigs, just doing some clean up work when I
got a phone call. Someone
wanted to hire me for a music performance for $150.00. A couple of days
later someone called wanting to know if we could sell them a batch of
our homemade sourdough bread. That eventually led to another neighbor
offering to produce an instructional DVD of us teaching how to bake
bread. Some weeks later a friend of mine offered to let me record a
music CD in his studio for free. And this was the beginning of our
“Vintage Bread and Blues”; it just organically came to life on its
own. None of it was ever planned. It just happened because our focus was
on following an innate call to live in harmony with nature and the earth
and doing whatever was needed to maintain our self-reliance. The unseen hand of support began to
manifest in many ways. We started earning small amounts of cash doing
odd jobs to support our small homestead and doing what we passionately
loved to do - putting smiles on peoples faces by baking old world
sourdough bread and playing music. The more we put ourselves out there
with this new attitude of trust and letting go, the more things began to
work out for us financially. This
doesn’t mean that we haven’t felt the effect of the economic slump
too. A lot of our bread sales and music gigs have diminished in the last
few months. But we are still able to make ends meet as long as we
continue to look for opportunities to volunteer and serve in the
community. I believe that success lies in local networking and
cooperation. Now, as of 2009, twelve years after
we began our exodus out of the American model of “more is better,”
we are finished with all the building, everything is paid off, the
garden is rich and fertile, the chickens are productive, we have a few
fruit trees, a well and a cistern for catching rainwater, a stack of
firewood, money saved and food stored. We have accomplished everything
we set out to prove, which is that it is possible to break out of the
fear that the present system engenders.
This fear can be overcome as long as one is willing to rethink
their own values and learn the philosophy and skills necessary to
maintain a modest lifestyle of Voluntary Simplicity.
We are writing this, not to boast
about what we have done, especially in consideration of all the people
in our country and worldwide who are now out of work, losing their homes
and struggling to buy food. We
write to encourage, inspire and motivate others to begin to think
outside of the box of this current model of expansion and profit
esteemed by modern society. It’s
all coming to a crises point. This insane idea of never-ending growth in
business and population is not sustainable. It would take the resources
of 3 or 4 earths to keep it going. And that is simply not possible.
There is not enough fresh water to keep flushing away the wastes of
billions of humans! The resources of this planet are finite, and what
mankind doesn’t learn from wisdom he will surely learn from woe. Let
us give our children a heritage of ancient wisdom, instilling in them a
compassionate respect for all life, an attitude of love and stewardship
for the resources of the earth and the knowledge of self-reliant,
practical skills that will sustain them and their children. Included in this essay are some
practical tips on moving toward radical downsizing and thinking small.
Please copy and pass them on to others. Practical
Tips on Radical Downsizing and Thinking Small We receive many letters each week from people asking for
specific information and advice on how they can begin to downsize and
move towards a simple, debt free lifestyle. Since we’ve answered
similar questions over and over during the past few years, we thought it
would be helpful to include them in one list and post them on our
website. As you will see, our approach is very radical – Think small, reduce everything, want little, minimize
spending, get out of debt and work less! These tips are only examples and suggestions of the many
things one can do to downsize and achieve independent freedom and a
peaceful lifestyle. We
encourage everyone to use these as inspirational stepping-stones to
launch your own personal strategy for something higher and better.
We realize that our path to freedom is unique for us and will not
be workable for everyone. For
example, not everyone could do what we did:
buy a small piece of land and live in a tent while building a
small cabin and starting a garden and still going to work at a full time
job. We had to do it this
way because of necessity. Many people may have the money and resources to do it without
the struggles that we had. Begin where you are with small steps that
feel right for you and the wisdom of simplicity will be your guide.
Once
you’ve cleared out all the excess clutter in your outer life, you will
make some space in your mind where you can see things clearly and make
better decisions. This will
also prepare you for living in a smaller house, with only the essential
items necessary to be functional and comfortable.
Biogenic
nutrition has a rippling effect which leads to
superior health, reduced food and medical expenses, the ability to live
in a smaller shelter, reduced fuel and water consumption, reduced living
expenses, less hours spent earning income, increased leisure time and a
greater sense of freedom and contentment.
(For complete information about biogenic nutrition, see
Chapter 14 in our free on-line book, The Subtle Way & Its’
Power.)
Equally
important is staying away from get-rich schemes, especially multi-level
marketing or any other business venture that requires a large investment
to get it going. Don’t
get into debt borrowing money for a business with the hopes that
you’ll make it rich. It seldom works. It is far more cost effective
to sell your labor, provide some type of service, work odd jobs or do
some form of creative artwork.
Avoid anything that requires overhead capital and high
maintenance. Realize
that starting a business is risky and takes a lot of money.
A huge percentage of new businesses either fail in the first year
or enslave the owners with long hours of endless work, taxes, headaches
and bills. There are always too many regulations, licenses, product
fees, taxes, insurance - the list of requirements and restrictions
issued by local governments is not conducive to success.
It is as if they are designed to cause the small business owner
to fail. The old saying is true; “it takes money to make money”. So
if you want to be free, don’t try to own a business, unless you have a
lot of capital to put at risk. The option of working from home could
generate some of your income. If you have extra money, buy gold and
silver coins. The
same is true of trying to raise animals to earn a living. The costs
involved are outrageous. There are so many expenses that have to be
considered such as feed and veterinary bills, vaccinations, food
supplements, shelter costs, fences, worming medication and
transportation costs. There is nothing simple or cheap about raising
animals for profit. So we
don’t raise them and we eat very little meat. The
point is, if you set up a practical, simple lifestyle, you won’t need
very much money to maintain it. Don’t
expand! The more you expand, the more money you will need. THINK
SMALL!
Get
rid of your electric clothes dryer and use the sun if you have room for
a clothes line, use a crock-pot to slow cook your beans, soup, potatoes,
corn meal mush, etc., build an outdoor clay oven for baking bread and
other foods, install ceiling fans, open the windows and minimize the use
of air conditioning (air condition only one room in your house).
Instead of getting rid of the electric bill, just figure out how
to minimize it. Our electric bill is always less than $45.00 per month.
$540 per year is far better than trying to come up with the initial cost
of setting up solar energy.
So
hang in there, catch the vision of a simple life in touch with the
forces of nature and take the steps necessary each day to achieve your
goal of independent freedom. All of the above tips are covered in more
detail in Part Two of our free on-line book, The Subtle Way &
Its’ Power. Cool
Quotes to Ponder “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play
in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to
body and soul alike.” - John Muir “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above
hoarded gold it would be a merrier world.” from The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien “We must rediscover our place
in the world picture, our original role as the partner of the creator,
helping to sow and harvest and make the earth once more a garden.” -
Professor Edmond Szekely My House is Small My
house is small because
my desires are too My
meals are simple because
my tastes are few. My
life is quiet because
I have everything I need. My
heart is still because
I am where I want to be This
land is beautiful I
need be nowhere else I
have books and movies and music and
they all go well with a hot cup of tea, a
slice of toast and
a warm fire. I
can see the morning sun through my window and
at evening time the stars dance across
the sky. My
lady sits next to me reading
her books, or
playing her ukulele. She
looks to me like a piece of Heaven- So
beautiful and happy And
I am grateful that my house is small It
makes us sit closer together. -
Kevin
Recommended
Resource Material
FOOD
Dining
in the Raw
(vegan, raw food ideas) by Rita Romano The
Bread Builders, Hearth Loaves & Masonry Ovens
by Daniel Wing & Alan Scott Dick
Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cooking with Mother Nature Search
for the Ageless, Volume 3, The Chemistry of Youth,
by Edmond Szekely The
Subtle Way and Its Power: by
Donna and Kevin Johnson (Chapter
14: Food-Nourishing
Ourselves Naturally) BUILDING & SHELTER
Build
Your Own Earth Oven,
by Kiko Denzer The
Complete Book of Woodworking,
Published by Landauer Corporation Low-Cost
Green Lumber Construction,
by Leigh Seddon GARDENING
The
Humanure Handbook,
by Joe Jenkins How
to Grow More Vegetables,
by John Jeavons How
to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back,
by Ruth Stout Square
Foot Gardening,
by Mel Bartholomew Lasagna
Gardening,
by Patricia Lanza SIMPLE LIVING, SPIRITUALITY & ANCIENT WISDOM
The
Encyclopedia of Country Living,
by Carla Emery Extreme
Simplicity: Homesteading in the City, by
Chris & Delores Lynn Nyerges Balance
Point – Searching For a Spiritual Missing Link,
by Joe Jenkins Choosing
Simplicity, Real People Finding Peace & Fulfillment in a Complex
World, by
Linda Breen Pierce Tom
Brown’s Field Guide to Living with the Earth,
by Tom Brown Deep
& Simple – A Spiritual Path for Modern Times,
by Bo Lozoff Living
Without Electricity,
by Stephen Scott & Kenneth Pellman NATURAL HEALTH
The
Biogenic Revolution,
by Edmond Bordeaux Szekely 10
Essential Herbs,
by Lalitha Thomas (an absolute must for natural healing) The
Essene Gospel of Peace,
translated by Edmond Bordeaux Szekely The
First Essene,
by Edmond Bordeaux Szekely DNA:
Pirates of the Sacred Spiral,
by Leonard Horowitz Healing
Celebrations,
by Leonard Horowitz The
Subtle Way and Its Power: by
Donna and Kevin Johnson (Chapter 15,
Natural Healing: Taking
Responsibility for Your Health and Healing)
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