Although many people associate monasteries with particular religions, celibacy, and solitude, being a monk at the House of the beloved does neither require nor exclude any of these. As a community, we're not part of any tradition (although individual monks can be), and we welcome all that is human (togetherness, body, sexuality, expressing intense emotions, etc.) as a spiritual practice.
What then does it mean to be a monk?
At the core of life as a monk is the inexorable willingness to be fully available, to stand naked at the edge of our awareness and let ourselves be devoured by the moment.
For me personally, being a monk at the House of the beloved means to feel a deep desire..
to completely give myself up to a calling -a silent whisper that shares its birthplace with dreams, visions, mystical experiences, and intuition- and by giving myself up, allow a life to be revealed through me.
to shape my life around the question “What in the face of death is worth living for?”
to practice unconditional love (i.e., cultivate the will to extend myself to support the existential development of myself and all others)
to faithfully risk myself, to expose myself over and over again to annihilation so that what is indestructible can arise within me.
to dedicate myself completely and continuously to attaining a permanent, non-symbolic experience of reality and become immersed in life without the mediation of language.
to become useless to the world, resisting instrumental reasoning, and the societal pressures to conform, consume, perform, produce, be healthy, be happy, and be efficient.
to joyfully accept constraints (including the monastic rhythm and monastic vows) that help me antidote my tendencies and allow for non-habitual states of awareness and aesthetic enjoyment.
You can read more in depth about each of these intuitions here.
House of the beloved welcomes all journeyers who hear a calling to become a monk, regardless of their philosophies of life, traditions, religions, gender, or sexual orientation. Placing diversity and difference at its core, the communal and monastic life is a “being-different-together".
If you feel a (strange) pull to try this out, let us know.
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