What follows is the Permaculture Relationship series of lectures I gave in May 2019.
Phase 1 — Planting the Seed
Taking inspiration in nature, Permaculture Relationships series of talks explores the lessons of natural living when it comes to developing a fulfilling and rich romantic relationship. In the spring time of romantic love, passions are high and love is in the air. And this is exactly the time when we need to take care to plant the tree that bears the fruit of our desires. Too often new couples jump head long in to their desires without pausing to implement these few simple planning techniques.
With a little common sense and a return to all to uncommon simplicity in life, new couples have the opportunity to lay the foundation decades of future harvest.
Phase 2 — Choosing the Right Zone
The young permaculture couple are ready to start making a commitment and staking out ground to make their relationship a reality. Following the wisdom of nature and taking inspiration from permaculture design, now is the time for building common sense connections in your life that take the work out of building a relationship. By leveraging your natural strengths a weaknesses, consciously choosing proper boundaries, and making the most of a natural lifestyle, this the opportunity in your relationship to inspire tremendous growth in your fledgling romantic ecosystem.
Phase 3 — Survival of the Fittest
Continuing our course of conscious relationship building inspired by nature and permaculture design, we now come the rising action of our newlyweds story. Nothing worth having comes easy, and this is best exemplified by the natural axiom that that which is no longer growing is dying. Nature has a way of weeding you anything which is no longer serving a constructive purpose, and this is the time in your relationship to fight for survival. When living a more natural lifestyle, hard work is inevitably a component of life. But it need not be destructive. In this talk I’ll discuss ways to leverage the inevitable stormy days to strengthen the relationship and further swell eventual fruits to be had during the later stages of love and relationship maturity.
Phase 4 — Pattern Understanding
Growing together as a couple in the deepening phase of love primarily a task of establishing a life rhythm that complements and benefits each other. In nature we call the act of forming a cohesive whole from many desperate parts an ecosystem.
The key feature of a successful long term relationships is that the partners are evenly matched and get more from the arrangement than they give. There needs to be a balanced give and take on both sides to make the arrangement stable in the long term.
In this talk I’ll discuss patterns in nature that can shed light on the proper way to establish this foundation phase of life long romance. As well as suggest some ways to make deep love a reality in your relationship.
Phase 5 — Symbiosis
Genuine bonding is the phase of the relationship story where couples begin to accept there role in the couple and burgeoning family as part of their own identity. They begin to consider this pairing and an indispensable part of their own survival strategy.
In a strong relationship, the bonds that bind us exist on many levels, from a material need and egoistic identification, to intellectual bonds and higher emotions.
Once again nature has much to teach us in the search for a deeper and longer lasting way of relating. Using mother nature’s approach to symbiosis as our guide, in this talk we will discuss how we can go from “individuals in love” to “born to be together”.
Phase 6 — Surviving the Seasons
In this final and most difficult trial of the bonds of relationship, couples must deal with boredom in the relationship. Up to now everything has been new and exciting, but now that some form of stability has been achieved there is a pronounced instinct for self sabotage.
However, the real key to long term survival is learning to leverage the power of the relationship to give back and grow the world around. One key concept of permaculture is that everything must contribute positively to the world around it. And this goes doubly so for a couple coming in to their power of love.
As two, your personal strength is potentially multiplied many fold by the partner standing beside you. But, in order to stand the seasons you must originate a strong forest around you.
Phase 7 — Harvest
The great maxim of the farmer is that, “You reap what you sow.” After years and decades of work and intentions you are at the phase where the seeds of your choices are coming to fruition. Although not necessarily a set time in life, harvest is a key step in any lif long soulmate relationship.
Throughout life, we need to be ready to take the fruits of our effort whenever they are available. Further, we must have the future in mind when we are planning for today. Like every aspect of a homestead, developing a rock solid relationship requires a long term perspective, deep perception, and a commitment to hard work.
In this talk, well round out the permaculture relationship with goal setting, methods to enjoy life today, and connecting our relationship goals with every other aspect of our life to form the ultimate goal of a permaculture, a cohesive whole.
