I feel as if everything I believed to be normal and usual has been completely
turned upside down! (As One Suzuka Tour)
Mayuka Noda, who participated in the community tour with her family during Golden Week,
shared her impressions of the tour.
She lived and worked in the U.S. for 30 years and returned to Japan last year, visiting As One Suzuka Tour in May and participating in the As One seminar this June.
The following is an Mayuka’ｓarticle >>
Over 3 days during the “Golden Week” in Japan, we, as a family, visited and toured an intentional community/eco village called As One Network in Suzuka-city of Mie Prefecture. As One Network started its foundational activities including SCIENZ (Scientific Investigation of Essential Nature plus ZERO) School in 2000 and during the last 22 years, the network has created a lunch box business, farming, research group, SCIENZ Academy, connected with and expanded to Brazil and Korea. It has registered and offer courses as GEN (Global Ecovillage Network) since 2014.
What distinguishes this community from many others that I’m aware of from research is definitely the integration of SCIENZ method. The community members are first encouraged (not required, I think) to go thru the program at their pace and learn to investigate and discover their own essential nature constantly. From this intention, they interact and communicate with others who are also interested in doing the same. While meeting many of the community members, it was very apparent that they are always processing their thought in the moment to see if it is aligned with their essential nature or zero before verbalizing it.
I can’t remember when I became interested in becoming an integral part of a community. I have always felt that I belonged to a community or several communities, be it a family I was born into, neighborhood, several families that I moved into (as a student living with a few different host families, and during the first marriage with my then husband’s family), and as a student at various schools and employee at various jobs.
I became more interested in consciously and intentionally creating my own community of “like-minded people” or of people with similar values when I opened an acupuncture clinic and a yoga studio. While I always enjoyed connecting with people with different values and backgrounds, when it came to living and interacting with people on the more daily, frequent basis, I wanted to be with and around those with very similar core value systems. It just felt much easier, fun, comfortable and harmonious that way. During the last 4 years living in Texas, Victor and I also found a spiritual community called Agape, where we connected with many people with similar value systems.
What As One Network community offered us was this type of intentional community with similar value systems. It just felt good to connect with people whose values are based on the exploration of essential human nature. I truly believe and realize that we are living on this planet to have variety of physical experiences in order to uncover or discover our true spiritual nature that we have been gifted and been born with. As we discover our true essential spiritual nature and align with it, we always feel harmonious and peaceful inside our hearts.
The name “As One” comes from John Lennon’s song, Imagine, the last line “the world will live AS ONE”.
The world peace and living as one can not be achieved unless we are living in peace, harmonious, at ease, and as one inside of each of us. This community is created with people who are working, studying and exploring what our true essential nature (Zero) is. How can we be aligned with our own Zero and live As One with others? At SCIENZ School and with its programs, each person is first responsible for their own discovery of Zero and then learn to interact with others from the place of this alignment. This community is essentially a kind of lab experiment to plant the seed of individual and collective awareness and possibility in people to live life As One planetary community.
Japan is a land of heavy group consciousness and conformity. The phrase “a nail that sticks out gets pounded” perfectly and literally describes the pervasive culture. As I was growing up in Japan, it became more and more uncomfortable for me to conform to these collective behaviors and rules and I was a minor rebel by high school. But luckily for me, I was able to create an opportunity to move to the U.S. at 17 where I felt that I would be much more free and not have to conform to things that did not make much sense to me. Over the next 30 years, I lived pretty much “cage-free”, where I was able to free flow to where I felt most inspirational, joyful and fun without the resistance from others and society at large.
Japan is definitely not an easy place to live cage-free just yet. But I also know that there are many good values one can learn only from being here such as respect for each other, things, kindness, safety, cleanliness, etc etc. I realize that cultivating our children in Japan is optional. But for now, As One is the type of community in which I would like to experience growth for myself and for our children where they can learn and grow in the home-schooling type environment and in a small group setting with no set curriculum. What’s more important is that they are with the care takers who are like family members who are also discovering their essential nature – because I know that kids can learn more freely what and when they want to learn from their own perspective when there is no have-to’s, should’s or requirements placed upon them.
I will be going back to the community to attend their one week seminar/workshops next month. Looking forward to learning, discovering myself and connecting more with the community!
