Wakeasleep Sanctuacy

Objectives

Retreat and sanctuary for alumni and friends
Soft landing for integration for recent Sleepawake alumni
- Time to swap off of “dirty fuel”
Space to run retreats, experiments
Protect members of the community, offer room and board for innkeeper role
Launch pad for Cazadero / Homestead

Vibe

Tranquil. Cozy. Safe. Contemplative. Easeful.

Norm of emotional transparency, while also considerate of the boundaries of other residents.

Massage table. Pool / sauna. Walkable town with nearby grocery store and trails.

Ideally one bus ride and a short walk away from the city.

… an incubator for dreams and tenderness… lol

Timeshare Model + Innkeeper Role

There are several members of the Sleepawake community that need a place where they have some kind of role that offers them room + board, so they have material and social safety. One goal of the Monastery is to offer the innkeeper role for such a community member.

The idea is that the innkeeper may be the only fixed role in the house, and members of the community would (1) pay a timeshare on a monthly basis and (2) have access to a unified spreadsheet to coordinate timing + dates.

The expectation for the innkeeper role is to do basic logistics to make it easy for short-term residents to stay at the Monastery, e.g. calendar logistics, basic cleaning coordination (cleaners every N weeks, replace bed sheets), and food deliveries.

Hypothetically, in a 7-room ~$7k residence, split among 12 paying community members and 1 innkeeper the math would come out to:

$7 k /12 p eo pl e =$ 600 per person, which would in theory allow each community member to stay for 2 weeks per month. This would include the rent of the innkeeper.

While 2 weeks would be a standard timeshare, a full-time resident could simply pay for a room.

A similar model could be used for food as well, to minimize personal grocery shopping for timeshare residents.

How

Group size: 5-7
- Small enough to be coherent to corral, large enough to be interesting, offer many subgroup combinations and dynamics
Group composition
- 1 keeper, 1-3 full-time, 3-5 rotating
- Majority need to be emotionally and / or financially resources
Place:
- Has enough space for 5-7 people
- ADU for keeper
- Ideally has outdoor space for camping, weekend retreats from the city
- Attempt to put on bus line
Locations:
- Tradeoff between distance from the city and price
- Mill Valley: close, nice nature, but expensive
- Cazadero: far, stunning nature and inexpensive
- Alhambra: far from SF, close to Berkeley, okay nature, relatively inexpensive
Money:
- Timeshare:
  - Commit to spending certain percentage of time there, pay accordingly
- Tradeoff between distance from the city and price, and distance from the city and accept to SF community

Options

Open Questions

Use mum’s car for the monastery? Offering to gift car.

Stages

Get group together — target group of 12-16, spanning full-time resident to timeshare.
Present at Immersive Potluck (Second Half of July)
Run weekend retreat at Ahwanhee / run week-long test at Wilbur Hot Springs
Commit to month-to-month or 3-6 lease
1. Tradeoff between distance from the city and price

Interested people

Long-term / city rotations:
- Steven (confirmed)
- Ishaan (confirmed)
- Tamera (confirmed)
- Jonathan (interest)
- Hannah (interest)
- Natalie (interest, already in North Bay, will continue living with parents)
- Monica (long-term resident interest, already in North Bay)
- Benji (long-term resident interest)
- Taslim (long-term resident interest)
- Anisa (interest)
- Vlad (interest, need to chat with)
- Kat (interest)
- Emma (interest)
- Elena (interest)
- Ragesha (interest)
Keepers:
- Amma (confirmed)
- Micky (confirmed)
- Sarah Morin (interest)
Second-Tier Interest:
- Kenzie (interest)
- Clay (interest)
- Zarinah (interest)
- Maverick (non-committal but supportive of general idea)
Advisors
- Congle (interest)
Other supporters:
- Vlad (shared)
Future interest:
- Pooja (“I don’t know if that’ll happen for another six months, as I’m pretty involved with the current book right now.“)
Need to Share:
- Jessie + Randy
- Santi
- Ellie (shared)
- Django
- Brian
- Kate
- Dani
- Olivia

Long-Term Vision

For me, the whole point of any of this is building a chosen family, and eventually having a family in community context (target timeline, ~5 years).

Ideally I’d want to have a family in a community context north of SF, in a town like Sebastopol or Cazadero. Part of the intention of this effort is to (1) build community commitment through practice (2) have a foothold to explore North Bay to see how practical such a family-oriented community would be.

That being said, I believe there needs to be clean decoupling of practicing intimacy versus practicing commitment. The intention of the Sanctuary is to be place to practice intimacy, but in such a way that no future commitment is obligated, beyond supporting the Sanctuary. However the long-term hope is to find a subset of members of the community who would like to move into practicing commitment, which for me moves in the direction of “chosen family” and having children together.

flowchart TD 
	A(Retreat) --> B(Sanctuary) --> C(Coliving) --> D(Homestead)
	C --> B & A
	A --> C

Attitudes to Get There

I don’t need this initiative to succeed. Here’s why.

Failure is a function of cost, if the cost is low, there’s only an upside to failing. In the planning stage, the only cost is our time. At the execution stage I’ll likely prioritize a short-term lease of 1-3 months with the option of continuing month to month. Even if this fails, the learning will be worth it, which brings us to the next one:

Bounded downside, unbounded upside. By capping the downside, I can only lose so much, but the positive upside is basically unbounded. If you place enough bets with this dynamic, eventually some big wins crowd out all the loses.

Play the long game, the infinite game. Part of the reason I don’t need this succeed is that even if I lose this round of the game the real goal is to find a group of people to keep playing the infinite game with. Given the cost of failure is low, even if a “round” fails, if it means meeting other to play the infinite game with, my bounded cost can still lead to unbounded upside.

Celebrate exactly where people are at. All these other attitudes lower the stakes. In turn, this allows us to celebrate exactly where folks are at, without needing to change them or show up differently. Playing an infinite game also means playing games only when they make sense, along natural dimensions of alignment. In any case, there’s no need to force people to be something they’re not.

Safety means being safe exactly as you are. In turn, the prior attitude promotes safety, as it means validity and legitimacy by default, without justification. This in turn helps to reinforce the kind of safety and ease that I need to exist in my future home.

Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. While this may seem slow, it meets people exactly as they are, and utilizes exactly what energies and capacities they have to offer. Anything else is delusional, projection of needs and capacities onto others where they do not exist is a dangerous delusion. This is what leads to rupture, confusion, burnt bridges. Meeting others where they are at is smooth, and smooth moves fastest in the long-run.

It’s fun and interesting that these attitude co-emerge and mutually reinforce each other.

For me, “community of intimacy” and “chosen family” are the long game, the infinite game. If I find more folks who want that, and we just consistently play the game and move in a joint direction that feels both real and alive, it’ll all work out in the end.

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