The Vision

EarthHeart is a vision held by Jewels for most of her adult life. It is now manifest in the depths of the forest of Dean near the Wye valley. This is what Jewels says of her vision –

“I have deeply loved nature from as far back as I can remember, even as a very young child. As a child nature would speak to me and I would enjoy speaking back and listening for answers to questions I had. I experienced nature as the body of ‘God’ as divinity itself somehow. It always brought me back to this, especially during the darker times of my life. It kept reminding me in such a simple yet powerful way, the Sacredness of all life and about my place in the interconnected web of life. Nature was my religion. I experience it as a profound teacher of Love and an Earth based spirituality that makes sense to my body heart and soul. It showed me the truth about relating and about the need for respect and balance between the feminine and masculine in all things. How everything in nature is aware of all that is around it and how they are all giving and receiving from each other.

When I left home all I wanted was to live close to the land and in community. I have spent as much of my life as possible doing this. From as early back as my mid teens I started to listen to the wisdom within the natural world around me and received such profound support I began to listen more. I also was being guided by a circle of ancient being who showed themselves to me and I call my ‘council’ They encouraged me to listen deeply and to trust what I heard and what was being asked of me. I found myself creating temporary Sacred spaces wherever I went, for people to gather and share in. I held a vision that one day I would be the guardian of a piece of land that meant that this sacred space could create ever deeper roots. A place that people could come and experience nature as our teacher, an opener of our human hearts and a re-membering of our sacred interconnectedness. A place to slow down enough to be able to hear the heart beat of the earth and the wisdom she brings, commune in her wildness, sit with her stillness and be in her awe inspiring relentless beauty. A place to bring consciousness to the human fragile hearts and to heal our relationships between the masculine and the feminine in humanity. To discover such connection in ourselves through this that the natural outcome is to want to honour all life as sacred and live from a balanced place within so that our lives become in the service of Love for the collective evolution of all humanity.
This place showed itself to me, I listened and here I am . . .

The Place

After many years it has come into manifestation. It feels important to mention that contrary to occasional assumptions, the finaces raised for the creation of EarthHeart where not by inheritence money, but from the past 20 years of my work in the world.

It comprises of 4 acres of land in the middle of the beautiful 200,00 acre ancient forest of Dean (a place I have visited my whole life to come and feel connected again) next to the Wye Valley just north of Bristol.

The place itself is stunningly beautiful. Off the main road and about a mile along a forestry commission track with a house and buildings and a small spring fed lake at one end (see aerial view). It’s surrounded 360 degrees by forest. The house itself was originally part an old mining dwelling with lots added over a few hundreds years. It is now a 7 bedroom house that has been made into a beautiful space for people to come and stay, play, share and connect.

 

 

Gratitude Economy

The vision at EarthHeart is to be an experiment of a gratitude economy in action. I have always believed in finding ways to give and receive what we need from each other in creative ways that don’t involve money. I have taken great inspiration from Charles Eisenstein on this subject and was delighted to discover someone mapping so clearly a way I have aspired to live for so many years. A beautiful and real map for how to give and receive with each other in the currency of gratitude.

“. . . money is currently used as a currency of power and separation. Gratitude is the currency of the heart and relationality. . .”

My deepest wish is that eventually the EarthHeart centre works entirely as a gratitude economy. It is early days as there is much to learn about how to do this but it has already begun. The TED talk clip on the left is a talk by Charles Eisenstein about the ‘gift economy’
Everyone has a gift to offer and EarthHeart is an experiment for ways we can give and receive our gifts beyond (but including) the need for money. This is living as Love.