The MindKind Village
What we agree to
You are here because you walked eighty-eight days. So did everyone else. That is the ground this village stands on — it cannot be bought, copied, or hurried, and it is what makes trusting the people around you reasonable rather than naive.
This village holds no power to compel anyone, and wants none. What it has instead is a set of promises, written plainly so anyone can hold us to them — including those who guide this community, who are bound by this document no less than you are.
The six values
Love
We meet each other with care, compassion, and generosity, and we give without keeping accounts.
Unflinching
We name what is hard to name, we welcome the unwelcome, and we protect those who disagree with us.
Cutting edge
We work at the edge of what is known, and we say plainly what is experiment and what is established.
Walk the talk
We practise what we teach, and when we fail we admit it, repair it, and ask forgiveness.
Pure wonderment
We meet each other with curiosity rather than conclusion, and take everything as a chance to learn.
Tensegrity
We can hold two true things at once, and we do not force a resolution where none is honest.
What you are saying yes to
Three of those six are promises you make to the people here. They can be kept and they can be broken.
You put love first. You treat every member as a person and never as a means. You hold what is shared with you in confidence as it was given. You give without keeping accounts, because a gift that creates a debt was never a gift.
You are unflinching. You say the hard thing when it needs saying. You do not look away from someone else’s difficulty. You protect the person who disagrees, including when they disagree with you.
You walk the talk. You practise what you offer to others. When you fail, you say so, take responsibility, make repair, and ask forgiveness. Naming your own failure before anyone reports it counts for something here.
The other three are not rules you can break. Cutting edge is what the Institute owes you — honesty about what is experiment and what is established. Pure wonderment is how we hope to meet each other; no one will be judged against it. Tensegrity is how to read this document: where it holds two things in tension, that is deliberate.
What is not permitted, and what happens
The boundaries
What no one may do to you, and you to anyone
These bind every member equally, and most of all those who teach, host, facilitate, or lead.
No harm — mental, emotional, or physical.
No taking — what is not yours.
No harassment — no intimidating or pursuing someone who has asked to be left alone.
No betrayal of vulnerability — what someone shared in confidence is never used against them.
No extraction — this community is not a place to recruit, sell, or mine for advantage.
What is yours by right
To leave.
At any time, for any reason or none, without explanation or penalty. No one may pressure or shame you into staying. You may return by walking another eighty-eight days.
To disagree.
In good faith, with this community, its teachers, or its founders — without losing standing. Written down precisely because places like this tend to lose it quietly.
To be private.
You control who sees you in the Field, the Village, and your Garden, and you may block anyone at any time.
To be told.
If you are ever removed, you are told why, in writing, in plain language.
When something goes wrong
Anyone may report.
Any member may report a breach, and reporting carries no penalty. Where there have been three reports, or one report of serious harm, the matter goes to a review circle.
Repair comes before removal.
The circle may dismiss the matter, require an act of repair, restrict participation for a time, or — where the breach is grave or repeated and repair has failed or been refused — end membership.
The circle decides, and says so.
The circle must reach a conclusion and say what it decided. Holding a tension is honest in practice; it is not available as a way of avoiding a decision when someone’s standing or safety rests on it.
What the Institute owes you
This document binds the Institute, not only its members. It undertakes to be honest about what is experiment and what is established, to hold what you share in confidence, to make no claim on your petals, to hear dissent without penalty, to admit its failures and make repair by the standard it asks of you, and to make leaving as easy as joining.
If you believe it has failed one of these, you say so in writing and receive a written answer within twenty-eight days. Every complaint and answer is published in summary twice a year.
Who decides
For now, authority rests with the MindKind Institute and its founder. This is said plainly because a community that implied otherwise would be making a promise it had no way to keep. A five-member Village Council takes over oversight once the community reaches the size named in Article VII.
Where a matter concerns the founder, the founder gives an account and answers questions, then leaves — absent from the deliberation and the decision, with that absence recorded.
This is the short version. The full constitution sets out each article and the reasoning behind it.