An introduction to EarthlingZ, the creative community that has grown up around the site in the mountains where my wife Futaba and I settled a few decades ago:

GreetingZ, EarthlingZ!

Most of you know about and many of you have visited The
Greenhouse and Silkhouse , which constitute the physical
basecamp of EarthlingZ in the mountains of Chichibu. It
is a couple of old farmhouses which we have turned into a
place catering to the creative and nature-oriented people
we have come to know through our own activities,
especially those working in the fields of music, dance,
graphics, the healing arts, and the spiritual sciences.

Of course there are countless such people, especially in
and around Tokyo, but our location and the values we
encourage has meant that only those who have discovered
the importance to their creativity of connecting with the
infinite energies of organic Nature will make the effort
to return again and again.

There is very little in urban life today that brings to
our attention our place in the cosmos, or even reminds us
that we are on an actual planet. From the moment we leave
our rooms in the morning we are moving through a creation
of human engineering, a giant warehouse and database
which we navigate in as straight lines as we can towards
destinations determined largely by our material agendas.

We rarely look up, knowing that there will be no stars
visible, and that what's happening in the sky makes
little difference to our work and movements. Even as we
sleep we are bathed in the discordant electromagnetic and
psychic vibrations of the physical and mental activities
of millions, but hardly understand the tensions and
levels of egotism this creates.

If we step out of this and into the real life of the
planet, we find our oppressive sense of separate selfhood
dissolve as we walk through the cool cathedrals of the
cedars, watch the wind ripple over the ricefields, or
hear the voices of birds and animals punctuate the
stillness of the glittering night.

In such an atmosphere, we need no guidance, no teachers
or gurus, to bring us to considering our condition as
humans on the earth. We move without effort towards
wider perspectives, consider our pasts and futures with
at least temporary detachment, and recharge our spiritual
batteries through grounding to the earth while attending
to the heights.

This often leads us to make music, to dance, to centre in
the Here and Now, to show each other the wonders we
discover in so doing, and to rediscover what marvellous
creatures human beings are when they are really Present
and open to each other and their environment.

It was once said by Terence McKenna that "Nature is the
great teacher of metaphysics". People who like to learn
this way we call EarthlingZ, and all the facilities we
have developed here are meant to make this easier.