I live in a small and old neighbourhood just outside one of the many cities in Australia. Having lived there for over 10 years I have noticed families come and go, with employment issues and downsizing of family units. What has been interesting to note in the last few months has been the selling and buying of a number of houses near me, and in recent weeks the home next door and one across the road.
The same real estate agent was organised to sell both homes and dropped past my front yard one day while I was gardening, asking if I could give her a short summary of the neighbourhood, as she was setting up a profile for potential clients moving into the area.
At first I was surprised to hear this question coming from a real estate agent as I had this instant crazy belief that all ‘real estate agents were out to make money’ and were not interested in supporting anyone to get the best location and price for a new home. It was interesting to note how I could feel my body move in protection and my head move straight into setting up a facts profile of what to share about my neighbours:
- Old married couple across the road
- Gay couple in the house adjacent
- Mother and disabled daughter next door
- Single gay woman with overseas students homestay two houses down
- Young couple with a newborn on the corner block.
Even though this was a factual account, there was nothing that had dropped into my head that was truly sharing what a great community I live in.
I knew at that moment that what had played out was the instant load of ideals and beliefs that are constantly on standby waiting for us to take or leave about the world and how we see each other.
It made me realise the ways in which we project towards each other and assume another to be without stopping to feel what is the intent of each person’s words, including our own.
Do we speak to heal or harm?
Many times, the judgement that comes with ideals and beliefs often clouds both people from sharing what is on offer to appreciate about the exchange and see what can be offered to everyone in the long run.
I knew that none of these thoughts were true as the movements in my body said it all and stopped me from sharing the realness we share as a community together.
The ideals and beliefs were blinding me from hearing that this real estate agent was genuine in asking about the place – and what better way than to ask those who live here? What I did choose to give in return was a snapshot of the diverse backgrounds of each and every home, and what each person brings:
- The old married couple who bring in my garbage bins from the kerb each week and always stop for a chat, come rain or shine.
- The deeply loving gay couple who regularly open up their home for us all to enjoy their built-in pool, all year round.
- The mother and disabled daughter who offer support with recycling projects in the neighbourhood and gladly offer to mind pets when families go away on holidays.
- The single gay woman who has a heart of gold and offers her home to many students and people new to the country with affordable accommodation close to the city.
- The tender and loving father of the newborn child next door who often asks for gardening advice and is a whiz at supporting with ‘handyman jobs’ around the house.
- His wife, a beautiful woman who constantly reflects the importance of staying steady and honouring herself as she spends time nurturing her newborn.
This is my neighbourhood. A place where there is no perfection but a community of people who are all playing their part to support one another, and in doing so have broken down the beliefs and ideals I have held about people in general and how a community should be. This group of men, women and children who live in my street bring such a sense of community and family that it has deepened my understanding of the importance of being part of a community and what we can all offer each other when we make life about supporting one another, deepening our relationships and opening our hearts.
Inspired by the work of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.
By Anonymous
Related Reading:
Community Living
What is Connection?
The Roseto Effect – A lesson on the true cause of heart disease
Words on Serge Benhayon 
I guess you will get the perfect new neighbours with an estate agent who is truly interested to know more about the place where the house is situated that she needs to sell.
If we feel what others around are truly reflecting and bring to us we start to honor them for who they are.
I was out walking the other day and everyone that drove past waved at me even through I did not know them. This to me feels like a very decent and loving acknowledgement of fellow human beings.
Awesome Elizabeth, it sounds like where you live is a very special place and it is great to appreciate we have communities in our society where people are open to connecting even if it is a simple wave hello.
I love it when little kids wave at me from cars, they look so gorgeously cheeky, when I wave back they are so delighted and in awe! It’s such a natural thing to wave and connect, no strangers, just knowing each other by our joy and love.
Making a true connection with someone, or everyone we meet for that matter, is one of the most valuable things we can do in our day. Even a simple smile or hello when offered from a place of true connection to who we are, can be enough to literllay change someones life.
I agree that the real role of a real estate agent is not only to sell houses but to match up the right house with the right person. This definitely requires a connection with people.
To be able to share with such tenderness the beauty of each person is a clear indication of the love that has been chosen by anonymous. For another person who has not yet opened to their love, the rundown on Neighbourhood life would be very different.
Do we boil life down to the facts which can feel so two dimensional, or do we enrich it with the qualities of everything that is going on around us?
Great question Simon, we’ve ground life down to a basic functionality. We almost grind ourselves through it with gritted teeth, with the occasional ‘good time’ thrown in just to prevent us from throwing ourselves off a cliff. But life, as in the whole of life can be an utterly joyful experience. It can be a collaboration of souls all working together for a common good (and God). Life can be light, purposeful and so incredibly enriching but it all depends on which consciousness we align to. Align to the pranic consciousness and it’s gonna be fraught with emotion, struggle, drama and highs and lows; align to the consciousness of truth and it’s gonna be steady, connective, purposeful and loving.
Community is incredibly important to me, it is the fabric of the world we live in and when we reduce each one of us to a title and a label we reduce the potential of any form of relationship. I love how you expanded that list and will carry that with me.
What a difference it makes to focus on the deeper aspects of a person than to the common display of knowledge and normal everyday chit-chat — I enjoy putting together the right and true description of another’s qualities and the value they bring me, others and life.
It’s a great practice Ric, and if we can learn to express that, to appreciate the qualities in another, then that is pure gold for the day ahead.
Lovely to read and be reminded of the common decency that exists in so many people in our communities. Unfortunately it can be the case after a bad experience with someone or from seeing crimes reported on TV that we close off to people and forget that there are so many lovely connections to be made with others.
To feel the love and regard you have for your community and neighbourhood was beautiful to feel. Appreciation is the cornerstone of building great relationships with others and with ourselves too.
With sharing from your heart, your neigbours and the place you live with them came to life, the other sharing was just a list that could be anywhere and create a distance between you and the estate agent but also between you and your neighbours, great to honour them and what they mean in your daily living, actually a very different intention in sharing this.
We can be factual and functional or we can go deeper and truly express what we feel and deeply appreciate the qualities others bring and the relationships and community around us .. the choice is ours.
Learning to be part of a small community allows us to grow and become part of our global community we call humanity.
And what happens between two people is then forwarded into all of their other relationships if it’s true relationship. If two people are ‘deeply loving’ with each other but not with everyone else or only with those close to them then they haven’t been truly loving with each other because when we cultivate true love with someone then we’re cultivating it with everyone else as well, that’s how we know it’s true.
It’s always super important to see others for who they are and not just what they do. When we react to what they do they also do not get to see who we truly are either.
What I have observed over time within the neighbourhoods I have lived in is that people want connection, they want to communicate and that ends up in many different ways, and people are naturally honest, helpful and supportive of each other.
For so many of us, living even in the densest population areas, we have lost community… And yet community is what we hunger for… Connection and community.
It is a great point how if we are not appreciating what’s on offer before us we will but have a lesser version of it.
Life is always offering us a chance to observe deeper, to express more, to feel fuller, to expand ourselves, it is so joyful.
Unnoticed we do have many images with us of how life is, but do we ever check if these fixed images do correspond with the reality of life we live in? A life that is constantly changing and never ever fixed. While this is a fact, the fixed images do hold us in a certain place, a fixture that is withholding us from moving on and stay in line with what is truly on offer, a continuous opportunity to grow and evolve back to live that quality of life that we already naturally are inside but do not live in physical life yet.
There is a beauty in every neighbourhood we live in, we only have to allow ourselves to be open to it and see and to feel the tremendous support we are for one another.
Yes.. those ideals and beliefs about how things supposedly are,
are always there on standby waiting for us to buy into them or not. The more we build a connection with our bodies and what we’re actually feeling from within, and not what we think we ‘know’ in our heads, the more those false ideas and beliefs (including ones that we might have bought into for a very long time) stand out as something we’ve aligned to that isn’t part of who we are.
Community in connection – Love lt!
Since reading and commenting on this blog a couple of months ago many more situations and invitations have come my way to take part in local events. I am enjoying this very much, doing things I would not have considered before and finding a lot of fun in every activity.
I love that, these blogs do not remain on the page, they come with us into our lives and into the lives of others as we shake the shackles that have held us in protection and hidden from our own lives let alone anyone else’s for so long.
Developing relationships with everyone we come in contact with is simple and a great way of showing how we are all connected. Thus connecting to our essence so we feel the way our body relates to others and, “from sharing the realness we share as a community together” we can then build relationships that have no restrictions only the love we all are.
It is “beautiful” to feel our divine essence, and then to also sense how our relationships deepen when we are connected.
It is beautiful to feel how much you cherish people and the relationships you have built.
And that word Leonne, ‘cherish’ is such an important one because cherish is something that ultimately we all have to return to feeling for one another. We’re currently such a long way from that, if the truth be told we’re not even able to tolerate each other at the moment. How sad is that?
I can so recognise that protective reaction where I hold myself back from expressing the all, and how that leaves me feel incomplete, and now I can understand how that also holds me back from feeling and appreciating the truth of what is.
True community brings a greater sense of belonging to the larger community we call humanity.
I live in a large block of flats on the floor so use the lift daily. What I’ve noticed is that even though people have very busy lives the more connected I am with myself and the more open I become the more people I get to meet and connect with in the lift.. something I am really enjoying. Much to appreciate.
So true – we cannot blame others for a lack of connection we feel within ourselves.
I loved what you have shared about your community, and you expressed not from ideals and beliefs, but from appreciating the loving connection you have with each one of them, recognising the quality they bring.
Appreciating our neighbourhood, our community and humanity is letting people in.
How do we view ourselves? Because if I focus on the factual parts of me I miss out on all my qualities, same goes for when describing other people. That’s why I like to use people’s names when discussing say my work day for example, the other person may not know nor never meet who I am talking about but using their name you can get a feel for the person and not just ‘my manager/colleague’ etc.
Anonymous, I love this; ‘Truly appreciating the people in my neighbourhood’.I had this experience yesterday. A member of my family came to visit and I could feel what close and supportive relationships we have with the neighbours, he witnessed friendly conversations we had wth 3 or 4 of our neighbours, how they were loving and jovial with our son and how the children in the street enjoy playing together and go to each others houses. I can feel that I had taken these relationships for granted and had not fully appreciated them and the warmth and love that there is between the people that live on our street.
Yes lovely. And also great to see how beliefs can harden and make us think and speak in unloving ways. Makes me question: how many ideals and believes do still run me?
The potential we have in our community to support each other in so many different ways is amazing.
Just this week I realised how this process of appreciating people around me is an ever expanding movement. It started with those closest to me, then those a little less close, then the neighbourhood, the community and now even on a larger scale in a way that it becomes quite natural to appreciate all people that I meet. Sometimes I still get challenged and can be critical first but the work I have done in the past years is then supporting me to come back and see people for the uniqueness that they bring.
This judgment happens with the people in our street, the people we live and work with and the world in general and affects us every time we have that judgment. And the judgment isn’t needed.
This just proves to me that most people are good, decent people and many are there for us in a crisis or just to help us move a bookshelf or something and there is no reason our world shouldn’t be one gigantic neighbourhood, except like anything there are a few bad eggs that have to ruin it for the rest of us so we have to lock our homes, put up protection and be afraid of getting mugged, raped, shot by a terrorist or something as sinister if we walk out the door.
A sense of community is a crucial element of our collective well-being. I love what you share about how community has deepened your understanding of what we can all offer each other when we make life about supporting one another, deepening our relationships and opening our hearts.
It is great to read of the appreciation you have for your neighbours and fellow community members Anonymous. There are always many things we can be appreciative of when we choose not to judge or criticise.
When we open our eyes, and start to feel what is there to be seen, the world unfolds for us, the potential of what it is like to live with no separation.
Every person is truly beautiful even if it can be hard to see at first, so a neighbourhood can if you want show you people in their light or if you want to see all the bad this will be all you see. So powerful how we choose to live in order to feel and see what is really there for all our brothers.
Every person has a beautiful core. They may not express it – at all, sometimes – but it is there.
A gorgeous reminder of how important it is to stay awake, be clear and open to see what is truly happening around us. What needs change and what needs absolute honoring (appreciation) from our side.
As soon as we drop into critique we are judging and condemning or as you say harming, then when we open to the essence of who we are then the golden wisdom of what is true flows from our lips.
It is incredible how the love with which we hold people and the way we choose to engage with life, think and express not only affects everyone and everything around us, but also has a direct impact on ourselves and the energy with which we move forward in life. This relatively simple choice profoundly colours and shapes our world.
It’s great to see people for the virtues and qualities rather than just their achievements or accolades.
You have just shared so beautifully the antidote to judgement; appreciation and opening our heart to the world.
Anonymous, I love this, it feels like such a simple, natural and gorgeous way to all be together, it puts things in perspective and reminds me that life is about people; ‘what we can all offer each other when we make life about supporting one another, deepening our relationships and opening our hearts.’
I love this and many would, to live in a community like this where everyone is open, knows each other and there is a care that is present between everyone. I often find the same thing in remote communities.
Ultimately there should be nothing that we need another to be in order for us to be open with them, (other than perhaps breathing!)
The community that is possible within a village or street or area, when people are willing to come together and connect within their everyday interaction in even the smallest way, is a very profound kind of connection that we can often loose in our focus on our own busy lives.