the reciprocal frame
peacebuildings
inner journeys
meditation
grahambrown.earth
pathways of awakening
the reciprocal frame
peacebuildings
inner journeys
meditation
Aim
Help keep the Peacebuildings Yurt with its Reciprocal Frame roof on the road in UK and Europe, as an epicentre of personal and global change.
Peacebuildings -
How can a building generate peace?
The Peacebuildings project has its origin long ago, when I sat on my bedroom floor, age 12, to meditate. No teacher, just a knowing that I was more than the thoughts I had about myself, and a hunger to know what that was. That was the beginning of my lifelong inner journey.
In 1987 when I was 33, the Reciprocal Frame, the roof structure of the Peacebuildings Yurt, leapt out of nowhere and into my awareness, to change my life forever.
When we change...... the world will change
Giving and Receiving
Why we need your help.
Five years on, Christian needs his money back and I need your help to repay his impulsive generosity or we must sell the Yurt and the trailer to make the repayment.
The sum we need for the yurt and the trailer is £33,000, but as previously stated we wish to make a few improvements and repairs costing £4.000, so the stretch target that we would like to reach is £37,000.
This is the sum that secures the yurt indefinitely, and puts it into our collective custodianship...just where it should be.
Yes, the Peacebuildings project has much further to go....
We need to secure a vehicle to tow the 3500kg of the yurt and trailer. We need to fund our expeditions to different parts of the UK and Europe. We need to continue the work on our online courses and apps, so that people can be supported on this Journey of no Distance wherever they are in the world. We have an intention to build a second yurt and trailer so that we have one resident in the UK and one in Europe, and finally we launch the permanent Peacebuildings project globally...
But this is all for later, for another time. First things first!
Our priority at present to secure the Peacebuilding's Yurt £33,000 and then a further £4000 to put the Yurt in excellent shape for the future. Every donation, no matter how large or small helps us achieve these preliminary goals.
Peacebuildings is a deep, radical transformational project that operates within our own being and in the actions that we carry out in the world. Therefore, when it comes to our offer to reflect your generosity, it has to be appropriate and aligned with that goal...and it is.
Please check it out in the Giving and Receiving video …Its radical…
The Peacebuildings project
and the Peacebuildings Yurt
Standing on No-thingness
When I first did this, a rush of silent energy shot at my spine.
This was the structure introducing itself.
Firstly, as a financial structure, an endless cycle of giving and receiving.
Next, a non-hierarchical social structure, where we see the awareness behind the eyes of another, as exactly the same as that behind our own.
Finally, as timeless wisdom in structural form, but at that time I had very little idea of what that meant. It came with a very simple instruction. Do it.
Since 1987 I have been doing it, but in truth, it has done me. It has taken me on an inner pathway through the complexity of my own mind, to know at age 60, the simplicity of pure awareness and in that peace, happiness and freedom.
How could I know that this journey would involve 45+ Reciprocal Frame buildings, the Peacebuildings project, and last but not least the Peacebuildings yurt as a travelling home for the Journey of no Distance workshops and year programs... I had no idea.
Now I often watch people as they enter the Peacebuildings Yurt for the first time. They look up at the Reciprocal Frame and a silence falls upon them.
It's as though they have a remembrance of something that they feel they know, but they cannot capture with their mind. It is clear an imprint is being left in the depth of their being.....just as it had in mine.
It's a vision of what we might be.
A vision of what our world might be.
A vision that calls us to a very personal inner journey,
to finally knowing self as silent timeless essence of life....pure awareness.
That essence is continually overshadowed by the busyness of mind. The Journey from busyness to that silent knowing, I now call a Journey of no Distance.
In the early 2000s I was invited to participate in an architectural competition to design buildings for the Colney Woodland Burial Park in Norwich. I won the competition…strange as I am not an architect. I went on to design and oversee the creation of Reciprocal Frame buildings for 3 woodland burial parks, in Norwich, Epping and Beaconsfield. The years I spent on these sites, caused me to witness people of all faiths and none, meeting each other, sharing moments and telling stories of their loved ones, as they held and supported each other in ways that touched me deeply.
A simple thought struck me...."If we can do this in death....why not in life".
This thought was the birth of the Peacebuildings project, which I finally established in 2011, with the intention to create permanent Peacebuildings, as epicentres of personal and global change around the world. That intention still remains.
But in 2011 this was a bridge too far, people did not get it, and I was not ready. So I started passing on what had been given to me, first in weekend workshops and then in year programs.
In 2019 I had the notion to create the Peacebuildings Yurt as a travelling epicentre of change, where I would take the Reciprocal Frame to people, so that they could feel its wisdom, as it makes a cellular imprint upon their being, and awakens a curiosity and willingness to approach radical change in their being.
All this, because the physicality of the structure proves that a new way of being is not only possible but strong, resilient and constantly resolving itself when put under immense pressure.
I could feel my heart beating, as this idea made a home in me. That fear told me it was the right thing to do. But as mentioned in the video, there was a problem. I had no money. But my friend Christian fronted the money necessary to create this beautiful yurt, and buy a huge trailer in which to transport it all, and together we built the yurt in his workshop.
Footnote
Since 2020 the Peacebuildings Yurt has been a home for this deep and challenging work. Recently a member of the current year group stated in the opening round, that coming into in this place is like coming home to family.
The reciprocal frame reminds us that no matter what our colour, creed or culture, we, the people of earth, and all life on this planet, are earth’s greater family.
Families take care of each other, as we must if life on earth is to survive and thrive.
This is the Peacebuildings project, and this is the Peacebuildings Yurt being built in 5 hours. Hard work and deep cellular awakenings.