This is a truncated version due to word limit. To see a bit more detail for those seriously considering this community, please see the pictures. Feel free to contact us, but know that identifying information on specifically who/where they are will not be disclosed. Below are the main points and what we learned from nearly a year of getting to know them prior to moving there and 4+ months living at this forming community.

• There is one couple who owns the land. There is a main house and an unfinished living space above the detached garage. As of now, everyone including us, who have made a go at community with this couple have had to live together in the main house. Despite working long hours in town, the gentleman wanted to micromanage his help and therefore needed to be present for any progress on the building or other infrastructure projects. This allowed him to control the living situation of everyone there, that the time of cramped living space would be augmented.

• It is not a spiritual or an egalitarian community, despite what their ad states of their aspirations. It is based upon idealism and dreamy talk, but no stillness, no devotion, no respect, and little humility in allowing Source to be present and lead the way. Within two months of moving to Montana, after having sold our house in the Midwest, we were told by the man that he didn’t think he wanted to live with us because we didn’t have the “glue.” This, after incessant discussion about the necessity to deepen spiritually and to challenge our existing ways of being. We knew we didn’t have much in common as far as personalities go all along, but didn’t think such a shallow thing ought to keep us from trying to connect on the foundation of our shared vision and working the land, and break egoic barriers growing spiritually together and individually. But as the third month progressed it became apparent that all spiritual and community discussion was mere lip service and the underlying purpose of our interactions was an endless discussion of “process” that leads to no action unless the process was controlled by the couple. They did not want to work through or accept our differences, as they abandoned us when we came upon our first minor conflict. They are not receptive to others asserting some boundaries, privacy, and personal ways of honoring the sacred.

• In the third month, the couple invited a man who responded to their ad to live in the already crowded house, without even discussing the matter with us. We have three young kids and the situation disintegrated after this, as we had both 1) not been given the chance to develop trust with the newcomer, and 2) been blatantly disrespected in this big decision without hearing our concerns or considering the safety of the children. The couple upheld psychological dominance and rank pulling as an acceptable way of founding a community.

• We sold our house and uplifted our lives in order that we may buy into the land and incorporate as a community, and raise our family there for the foreseeable future. They knew this and this was the communicated plan all along.  I was being compensated for construction work at first and was later told that this situation was considered a big favor on the, now, landlords’ behalf.  Our original financial agreement was terminated and I was expected to continue doing carpentry work with my own tools for around minimum wage.  We were asked to pay rent (in a shared house no less) — an amount which was significantly more than what we had been paying for the mortgage of our house. There was never any transparency about finances. They had invited us with smiling masks on to make this our home. We only discovered too late that they never intended for us to thrive on it with any family sovereignty: like the heavy-handed US government over tribal affairs. (Their home is on CSKT tribal land.)

• The couple never had children and do not want to live around children, but for some reason they will not include this relevant piece of information in their ‘forming communities’ ad. This was yet another unhealthy aspect of living there that we deemed unviable for the sake of our children’s mental and emotional well-being.

• The problem in a nutshell is that they are two highly intelligent, highly unhappy people who project their issues onto the people they invite into their home. We talked with and/or heard of at least five other parties who went through similar experiences as we did at this house. ‘Nothing is going to change on this property, so let’s keep trying!’ is the maxim by which they seem to live, an insane pattern, which was exactly how we felt by the unbearable last few weeks there. Fortunately, we were still in a position to leave. Others made even more vulnerable, may not be. Please be careful, and wiser than we were.

May forgiveness be in the hearts of us all. We are currently heartsick and a bit angry over how deception played into this past year. But we have been praying for softening, and we do believe one day we will be able to forgive this couple as well as ourselves. This writing is part of a true process that transfigures the heart and heals it, and though it may sound harsh, we’ve determined that it is loving and that it may help some of you to know what to do and what not to do, should you choose to get involved with this couple.