Spiritual Community and the One Year Seminar

By Leonard Orr

Dear fellow Rebirthers, Conscious Breathers, Spiritual Seekers, and Intelligent Humans who are willing to be responsible for ourselves,

We have to learn how to build spiritual community and support groups that have the knowledge, understanding, and techniques to heal human trauma from the past and present. Our birth trauma, damaged inner child, our anger, our conscious or unconscious death urge, senility and old age, emotional and physical diseases, money and prosperity problems, as well as the larger economic, social, and political problems. We have to accumulate, learn, and share with each other the knowledge of spiritual purification, the healing power of herbs, the mind, etc. in order to make our individual and community Life sustainable and possible.

We have to learn how to stay connected to God and to live in the power and peace and harmony of the Presence of God. Truth, Simplicity, & Love is the Eternal religion.

One Year Seminars are the original and traditional form of spiritual community that created and sustained the Rebirthing Movement and helped the early Rebirthers to succeed and prosper.

As the OYS movement disappeared in communities and was not replaced by a different form, I’ve sadly watched as Rebirthing disappeared from cities, states, and even countries. The individual death rate also increases among Rebirthers as well as their failure rate when the basic foundation of spiritual community is not honored.

I realize that all of the above values and package of knowledge and practices may seem too big for you to balance and manage. However, I’d like you to realize that your personal and professional survival depends upon it. Building an OYS may be difficult, but living in misery and poverty is difficult also.

You may not need the knowledge of healing old age today, but you will. And the sooner you begin to prepare yourself, the easier it will be. The problem is that nobody believes in senility until it happens to them, and then, it may be too late to learn the tools to heal it. And none believes in career burn out until it happens to them, and then, they are usually trapped in so much pressure from work commitments and money problems, that death is preferable to healing.

People never know when birth memories or death urge is going to immobilize them. When this happens, you are sometimes desperate for the support that spiritual community can give. But we have to support spiritual community during our good times, so that it exists to support us during our bad times. This is such an elementary value system that even most animals have mastered, but it seems to escape most humans.

But spiritual community is more than this. Spiritual community embodies Love, beautiful human expression, existential wisdom, physical pleasure, social pleasure, culture, prosperity expansion, and present time nourishment in Itself.

Spiritual community enriches every day Life as well as heals us. And it reduces stress when the potential of rich relationships evolves beyond the superficial. But we have to commit to the form as well as the substance and show up for the scheduled meetings.

All One Year Seminars should have a weekly support group as well as the more leisurely full day monthly gathering. I also have available the OYS by mail, that you can join.

Since most OYSs have disappeared, a percentage of the money game or tuition involved should be sent to RBI, so that me or other RBI coordinators can afford to support their sustainable existence and quality. Traditionally, RBI gets 20%, leaders receive 40%, and organizers receive 40%.

There is plenty of potential for many full time incomes form OYS participation in the conducting of them professionally. And they usually have the effect of doubling the incomes as well as health and well-being of all participants. So the OYS is a very viable and exciting opportunity for everyone. Being an active member of an OYS nourishes us on all levels of Being.

We only have to keep the vision and the knowledge and reality of the One Year Seminar alive.

Not only does the One Year Seminar keep us alive and Rebirthing alive, but it has an ever growing important role to play in maintaining our civilization and basic human rights.

The traditional religions are dying and even democracy itself is disappearing all over the planet. Even farms and sustainable agriculture and food production is endangered by human unconsciousness, without even considering the big ecological problems.

One Year Seminars are a bright light in the darkness that are healing the root sources of these overwhelming problems. The cause of all problems and successes are spiritual. Spiritual community is the answer.

Environment is stronger than will power. When we join an OYS, we give ourselves a new supportive environment of spiritual family that can and will eventually solve all of our problems. But first, we have to have enough good sense to join, and second, we have to commit and faithfully participate.

Building One Year Seminars is not easy. We have to deal with immaturity, betrayal, the kill-the-leader syndrome, poverty consciousness, dishonesty and disloyalty, with glassy-eye cult mentality, with death urge, with conformists and rebels, with superficial peace, sickly sweet harmony, the critics, the different-and-better syndrome, lack of participation, etc.

But there is also Love, wisdom, generosity, courage and bravery, creativity, intelligence and practical knowledge, beautiful human and divine expression, warmth, affection, inspiration, nourishment, friendship, support, emotional honesty, spiritual purification, spiritual enlightenment, lasting high quality relationships, and the magical healing power of spiritual community.

Jesus said 2000 years ago, "When 2 or 3 are gathered in my name, I am there in the midst of them." And Babaji has said the same thing for millions of years.

Spiritual community does work! It is worth the effort and struggle and disappointment and whatever it takes. It takes persistence and constant re-evaluation.

I strongly recommend that you join Rebirth International and an OYS and participate faithfully until you at least become a senility graduate.

In 1974 I established a full time training center open 7 days a week, that offers trainings and workshops continuously. Call or write to address below for information or registration.

In Truth, Simplicity, & Love

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Last Updated 4/4/2001