What is required is not just a negative (but necessary) rejection of the destructive materialistic western lifestyle, but also a positive affirmation or goal; in this case being an instrument or light-center in bringing about a global transformation. This requires more than a dreamy communal utopia; it requires putting discipline and hard work and sweat into a real and authentic sadhana of tikkun of planetary redemption. It doesn't matter what outer techniques one does or teachers or teachings one follows; what matters is the end result.

The community I envisage would be a "Light Center", in the "New Age" sense of the word (I mean the original New Age of people like David Spangler, not the commercialised version!), a focal point or energy point for individual and global change on the subtle (and hence ultimately the gross) levels.

As mentioned, the problem with some well meaning small alternative communities, and with the alternative scene in general, is the question of where to focus one's energies. On the one hand, there is the political activist sphere of social, political, and environmental reform both locally and globally; on the other, self transformation and working on oneself. These two aims certainly need not in any way be contradictory. However it is felt that self transformation, and establishing a center of light, and a refuge from the craziness of the world, including a wildlife and nature and nature-spirit sanctuary, should be primary, and indeed the essential first stage in a progression to even greater work of spiritual transformation. If you clean up your own act, how can you fix the whole world? (this is why the Communist ideal went wrong, and became dictatorship). But if you can transform yourself and your immediate environment, you can radiate light to the whole world.