Carolin

I think part of the reason why I could was because I felt this sense of attachment to something higher, that even though it's not visible and even though sometimes it's not quite there, I still felt like I wasn't alone. I mean, sometimes I do feel alone, but for the most part, I felt safe and secure in the knowing that. I actually have a memory from before I came here, God sent me. I was in heaven. I was up in heaven and it was kind of like a Waldorf kindergarten, and we were all sitting on little wooden chairs, and God came down and said there are problems on Earth. People don't get along. Who wants to go down there and help? My hand just raised itself automatically, and then I was down on Earth, and I had to go through a lot of problems to figure out how to help people and myself, especially around relationship stuff.

We see ourselves as stewards of the land, and we have started developing, planting fruit trees, bringing water, building aircrete domes, attracting community, and starting to have people come out on the land because none of us, us included, are used to living off-grid, getting our hands dirty, and working physically all day long every day, just to get water or just to make food. So we're taking baby steps. I grew up in nature. I grew up with really good food. I grew up with Waldorf. I grew up without television. I have very little susceptibility to advertising. Whereas a lot of people growing up in the States or even in Europe are just so programmed by what they're watching. I feel like I had an advantage by the environment I grew up in because in Waldorf, there's no electronic anything, no computers, not even radio really. Kids should be able to just be outside, play in nature, and have a healthy start into life, not live in cities, be on trains, and be in daycares and that type of stuff.

When it's fully developed, Turiya really has two parts. When you look at it on the map, it's a square. One half is the retreat center, one half is the eco-village. The eco-village has about 20 lots. People can have 5 acres to half an acre. There could be people with tiny homes. There can be people with a whole acre farm or homestead, depending on what people want to do. It's really a village where yes, we have some rules, but once you purchase your lot, you can pretty much do what you want with it as long as it's along the lines of being eco-friendly. The retreat people can be by themselves, and in the middle, if people want to meet, there's like a marketplace with the greenhouse terraces where people can socialize and do stuff. We have our own two hills. The idea is that people in the village can be in the village and do their own thing. They can work at the retreat if they want to.

Marianne Williamson quote - 'Our biggest fear is not to be small. Our biggest fear is to be great beyond measure' - hung over Carolin's bed for 20 years

The hardest thing in living my purpose is that people around me sometimes don't understand, especially my family when I was younger. To them, it would look like I had no clue what I was doing because I literally wasn't making any money and didn't really follow my career until I was 36. That was 10 years ago. I'm 47 now. They were just pulling their hair out thinking, when are you going to think about retirement? When are you going to start putting money away? You can't just hop from one thing to another, and you can't just wait tables all your life or babysit for $5 or, you know, whatever, be a mom. I always had a really strong feeling inside myself that I was on my path. But to translate that to the people that love you and are close to you is a little harder. Now they're all proud of me, of course, but that was hard. It was hard for them. I think their worry created stress for me, let's put it that way. It can be somewhat lonely because my path, I've never had an employer basically other than source. So I should say that one of the first things I came across when I started to spiritually awaken was the Mariam Williamson quote that said our biggest fear is not to be small. Our biggest fear is to be great beyond measure type thing. And I wrote that thing down and hung it over my bed. I made a big huge painting and it's been with me for the last 20 years.

So after you feel secure, the next step is to learn how to listen. People hear and feel differently because we have different psychic abilities. There's clear sensience, there's clear audience, there's clear cognizance. Some people just know, some people feel, some people hear, some people see. I'm not a clear void, I don't see. I'm not a clear audience, I don't actually hear. I'm clear sensient and clear cognizant, which is hard because it's just a sense or a feeling. I often work with signs. I would ask a question and open a book. I would use cards. I would just say, 'Hey, give me a sign,' like your blue butterfly or something. You have to first figure out what your way of receiving messages is. Some people get visuals, some people literally hear words. Journaling is really good, writing it out. To this day, I write in my book, 'What am I supposed to be doing today?' and I write it down, I have it in front of me, and I check it off every day because even if I do it in the morning and don't go back to my book, I'll forget because we just get so distracted.

I'm specifically passionate about children and making it a better place for children. I remember being really little, seven or eight years old, and thinking that if I could just become a doctor and help little kids live better or a philanthropist and create a place where kids could grow up really healthy. I'm very passionate about helping younger families be able to take care of their kids better, work less, have a start into life so that the kids can grow up in either a healthy family unit or more of a tribal setting where it's not all on the parents. I don't know how people do it nowadays, young parents trying to pay for a mortgage, trying to work, commuting, and just the way society is set up. When I had my kids, I very much felt like it shouldn't be this hard. It shouldn't be this way. It's really a flaw in the system. I really believe that when it's counterintuitive because it feels selfish to just do your thing, but when you do, you allow others to also do their thing. And my thing is to do for others. It's yes, it's selfish in a way, but I'm very driven by doing it for others, so mostly everything I do is to make the world a better place. Kind of like Mother Teresa.

So, the thing that I do when I hit roadblocks is I take my own medicine. I either do family constellations or I talk to my mentors. I have really good mentors. They know me very well. They know the subconscious really well. They are masters at what they do. So, I've looked for or I've been blessed to find the people that are the best in their field and I've stuck with them. And so I have created a support system that I can trust, that knows me really well, that knows my brain, that knows how I function, which I realized I needed for me. I need somebody who knows me really well. That's when I feel the most important, so that when I break down or have a meltdown, I can go to those people and they can talk some sense into me because I'm a very emotional cancer crap. Sometimes I need to just have somebody who can be very logical and put things into perspective and help me shift back into a grounded emotional place.

Mucus-free eating and detox - Carolin's specialty in nutrition that helped her heal her body

My specialty is also in detox and eating mucus-free. Because of my history, I had to do a lot of healing on my physical body and I did it mostly through food, energy work, and family constellations. The food that we've been given is just not serving us. In my opinion, it's all created this denseness or toxicity in a sense, where when your body is not well taken care of, when you're emotionally disturbed because you're not securely bonded from the beginning, it's very hard to feel safe and secure enough to relax enough to hear God or your calling and move forward with it. We hope to be a center where people can come and learn alternative building, but also for people to come and really do healing retreats. Food forest, Valapi greenhouses to grow year-round root sellers. We ourselves are planning on building an earthship.

If you're somebody that hasn't figured out your purpose, I think really one of the first steps is focusing on healing your nervous system. There are many different ways to do it. But I think unless we can heal our nervous system and feel securely attached within ourselves, we can't relax enough, like I was saying before, to trust our inner guidance and take steps forward. The food that we've been given is just not serving us. In my opinion, it's all created this denseness or toxicity in a sense, where when your body is not well taken care of, when you're emotionally disturbed because you're not securely bonded from the beginning, it's very hard to feel safe and secure enough to relax enough to hear God or your calling and move forward with it. I do think healing those early attachment things, which are very closely connected to learning how to regulate and heal our nervous system, so that we can feel safe and secure, is one of the main things.

Bliss Bonding - couples practice Carolin recommends for nervous system regulation and secure attachment

Family Constellations - Carolin's primary modality for healing trauma and her own go-to when she hits roadblocks

Because of my history, I had to do a lot of healing on my physical body and I did it mostly through food, energy work, and family constellations. We hope that other people who live in the village and are practitioners of some sort will bring their own following in their own groups, or people who have followings like yoga teachers, breathwork instructors, shadow work facilitators, whatever, will come and use the facilities. The thing that I do when I hit roadblocks is I take my own medicine. I either do family constellations or I talk to my mentors. If you're somebody that hasn't figured out your purpose, I think really one of the first steps is focusing on healing your nervous system. There are many different ways to do it. If you're in a couple, one of the best ways I know of is a practice called bliss bonding. If you're single, there are other ways. Family constellations are an amazing tool to help heal trauma.

The way I came to this conclusion was that I really struggled in life early on. My childhood was pretty good, but then from 10 till 20 I struggled with eating disorders. I really led a double life and had basically no friends, just isolated myself, and was battling this disease or addiction. I remember when I was 15, I felt like I was 70 and I was ready to die. Part of me wanted to give up, and another part of me really wanted to live and find my soulmate, have kids, and have a normal life. When you have an addiction or an eating disorder, or any kind of addiction, for over 10 years, statistically your prognosis of ever recovering or getting better drops to about 5%. So at 20, my prognosis for living was higher, but for recovering it was at 5%, and for living to be 30 it was also at 5% because I was doing damaging things to my body. I think because I struggled so much with just having normal and then finding a way to healing, everything else became easier. Because of my history, I had to do a lot of healing on my physical body and I did it mostly through food, energy work, and family constellations.

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Meet a multi-generational off-grid eco-village just 40 minutes outside Ash Fork, Arizona.

I'm very fortunate because I am building a 160-acre development, part of which is an eco-village and the other part is a retreat center. The idea is that the retreat center is going to be financially successful so it can finance the school and some of the affordable housing units for the eco-village, and it all becomes a place where the older generations who have maybe made some money can contribute financially, the middle generation can contribute through their labor, and the younger ones or those with families can be supported. All of us can create a model for a healthier lifestyle, for our nervous systems, for our need for community, for the way we feed ourselves, for being interdependent from the government system. It's called Turiya, and Turiya actually is a Sanskrit name or a Sanskrit term for the fourth state of being, a state beyond the physical, a state of oneness. There are going to be 10 what's called Eden Arches, which are smaller dwellings made from earth aircrete. And then domes. We'll have 10 of those, 10 Eden Arches, so 20 dwellings altogether that can hold up to 60 people. We'll have a big movement dome, a kitchen area, a dining area, and a lounge area. We'll definitely have a greenhouse that has tropical plants, a cafe, and a smoothie bar. We're going to have different natural pools and ponds, cold plunges, saunas, wood-fired saunas with glass doors where you can overlook the whole valley. We'll have meditation paths, a running path hopefully all the way around the property. We'll have a food forest, Valapi greenhouses to grow year-round root sellers.

I'm very fortunate because I am building a 160-acre development, part of which is an eco-village and the other part is a retreat center. The idea is that the retreat center is going to be financially successful so it can finance the school and some of the affordable housing units for the eco-village, and it all becomes a place where the older generations who have maybe made some money can contribute financially, the middle generation can contribute through their labor, and the younger ones or those with families can be supported. All of us can create a model for a healthier lifestyle, for our nervous systems, for our need for community, for the way we feed ourselves, for being interdependent from the government system. It's called Turiya, and Turiya actually is a Sanskrit name or a Sanskrit term for the fourth state of being, a state beyond the physical, a state of oneness. There are going to be 10 what's called Eden Arches, which are smaller dwellings made from earth aircrete. And then domes. We'll have 10 of those, 10 Eden Arches, so 20 dwellings altogether that can hold up to 60 people. We'll have a big movement dome, a kitchen area, a dining area, and a lounge area. We'll definitely have a greenhouse that has tropical plants, a cafe, and a smoothie bar. We're going to have different natural pools and ponds, cold plunges, saunas, wood-fired saunas with glass doors where you can overlook the whole valley. We'll have meditation paths, a running path hopefully all the way around the property. We'll have a food forest, Valapi greenhouses to grow year-round root sellers.