There is something deeply wrong with a version of progress that can deliver almost anything to our door but leaves us struggling to find time for the people we love. We can communicate across the planet instantly, yet go through entire weeks without feeling connected to anyone. We work harder, become more productive, buy more convenience—and somehow remain exhausted.

Look at what we’re being asked to accept. Forests cleared, water polluted, people worn down to keep goods moving and profits growing. More of our essentials controlled by companies that need us dependent and paying. Even our private lives have become something to sell. Our attention, habits, desires and relationships are valuable data to somebody.

We’re supposed to call that progress and keep upgrading.

We want the extraordinary things human intelligence can create. Medicine, technology, comfort, discovery, wealth. But for fuck’s sake, apply some of that intelligence to how we live. What good is all this capability if enjoying our lives remains something we keep postponing?

Alma Libre starts with a decision about where to put our effort. We can keep working to maintain a life that drains us, or use what we know to build one that gives more back.

We can take responsibility for more of what sustains us. Become harder to exploit, better prepared when things change, and more capable of looking after ourselves and each other.

“Turning community into humanity’s greatest competitive advantage.”

That’s the idea behind bringing all of this together. Our combined effort should give each of us more than we could create separately.

There’s a particular kind of relief in being with people around whom you don’t have to perform. You can be ambitious, uncertain, ridiculous, quiet. You can have a bad day without explaining your entire history. Someone knows you well enough to ask the second question.

That kind of closeness needs time together. It’s difficult when everyone you care about lives somewhere else and seeing each other requires six messages and a calendar negotiation.

We’ve put so much responsibility on the individual household. Find the money, maintain the home, manage the problems, stay healthy, somehow have a social life. We ask one partner to be our lover, best friend, emotional support and almost our entire community. Single people often carry the whole thing themselves.

Where is the rest of the family?

We want to build that back into everyday life. People who notice when you’re missing. Who check on you when you’re sick. Who know what you’re working toward and care whether you get there. People you can ask for help before a problem becomes a crisis—and who know they can ask you.

We bring different skills, histories, cultures and ways of seeing the world. We get to know each other by doing things together. We learn who keeps their word, who makes us laugh, who has patience when we don’t. Friendship gets the time and shared experience to become something deeper.

That is what we mean by chosen family. Affection, responsibility, familiarity. Being involved enough in each other’s lives that we stop carrying everything alone.

And we still get to close the door. Loving your people doesn’t mean spending every waking hour with them. Privacy and independence matter. So does knowing someone will be glad to see you when you come back out.

We want to grow our food, protect our water and produce our power—and know how to keep it all working. Every essential we can provide for ourselves gives us more control over our lives. Bring enough skills together, and we can stop paying someone else to solve every problem.

There is pride in looking around and knowing: we built this, it supports us, and we know how to look after it.

That’s why food, water, energy and construction belong in the same plan. We can design them to work together, share the equipment and learn the skills. Things that would cost a fortune for one household become possible when enough people contribute.

Permaculture, regenerative agriculture, agroforestry, food forests and aquaculture give us ways to produce food while improving the land. We’ll include animals where we can feed, house and care for them properly. We intend to build largely with earth, timber, stone and other local materials, using modern engineering and purchased components where we need them. We want beautiful, comfortable homes that make sense for the place we’re building.

And we want the land to get better because we’re there. Rebuild the soil. Protect the springs and waterways. Plant trees that feed us and provide habitat. Produce more of what we need without stripping the place to do it.

“Our work should keep giving back.”

A fruit tree can produce for years. A well-built home can shelter generations. What one person learns to grow, build or repair can be taught to dozens of others. Our effort leaves us with something we can keep using, improving and sharing.

We’ll still buy supplies, trade and bring in expertise. But when prices jump, deliveries stop or the grid goes down, we want options. Food growing. Water protected. Power we can produce. People who know what to do.

That’s the off-grid ambition. And we get to enjoy it long before anything goes wrong: fresh food, comfortable homes, land we love and fewer essentials left entirely in someone else’s hands.

We love what technology can make possible. AI can help us learn, design, create and solve problems that once required a specialist team or a budget most people didn’t have. Automation can take repetitive work off our hands. We should be getting more freedom out of this.

Instead, we’re paying subscriptions for tools we used to own, handing over our information and letting a handful of companies decide what we can access and what it costs. Technology that could make us more independent is being used to make us easier to track, influence and charge.

We want the capability. We want control over it, too.

That means building more of our own computing infrastructure, protecting our data and choosing tools we can understand, maintain and replace. We’ll use outside services where they make sense, but we don’t want the whole place dependent on one company’s pricing, permissions or continued existence.

Celeste, our planned community AI, is part of that work. We intend to use it to help run Alma Libre, make learning easier and keep track of what we discover. Building plans, growing methods, maintenance records, solutions to problems we’ve already worked through—all of that should be available to the people who need it.

Someone arriving should be able to find out how things work and start learning. Someone leaving shouldn’t take the only copy of that knowledge with them. Our experience should accumulate and help the next person go further.

“If technology saves us time, we should get to enjoy that time.”

Local computing, dependable communications and useful automation take work to build and maintain. They have to earn their place by helping us do things better, reducing costs or freeing us from unnecessary work.

We have plenty we want to create. We also have a life we want to live. The technology should help us do both.

There is nothing noble about a community that is always broke and quietly wearing out the people keeping it alive.

Alma Libre needs to earn. Maintain what it builds, pay for expertise, support its people and have enough left to improve. Constant financial stress is no foundation for freedom.

Alma Libre runs the business, with our people contributing through its departments and partnerships. Residency, hospitality, experiences and education help support the place. We also develop products, services and spinoffs with our people from what we learn and create together.

Growing food, building homes, preparing meals, running workshops and developing technology all give us opportunities to improve how we do things. Some of that knowledge can become a course or service. Something we make for ourselves may be useful enough that other people want to buy it. We can test ideas through actual use before taking them further.

That’s why the business belongs within the life we’re building. The work needed to support us can also produce knowledge, skills and things we can sell. We get more from the effort because we’re putting it to use together.

We like ambition. We like making something valuable and seeing it succeed. We want people to make money and do well. But if the business grows while everyone doing the work becomes more exhausted, we’ve recreated the treadmill in a beautiful location.

“Success should include being able to enjoy your own life.”

The money has to support the people and the place producing it. That means maintaining our infrastructure, caring for the land, compensating people and reinvesting in what will make Alma Libre stronger. It also means organizing the work so there’s time and energy left to enjoy being here.

Ownership, decision-making and financial participation need clear terms. People should know what they’re contributing, what they receive and who is responsible for decisions. Calling ourselves a community doesn’t excuse keeping any of that vague.

We want our combined effort to give each of us more than we could produce separately: money, security, time to ourselves and access to experiences that would otherwise stay on the wish list.

That is the richness we’re working toward.

Love, intimacy & conscious sexuality

A beautiful place means very little if you still have to hide yourself to belong there. We want to be able to talk honestly about desire, affection, what’s happening in our relationships and what we’ve been missing. Too many people carry those things alone for years.

Alma Libre is adults-only and sex-positive. Conscious sexuality is part of how we think about adult health and wellbeing. Pleasure, touch, emotional connection and how we feel about our bodies deserve attention alongside exercise, nutrition and everything else we do to look after ourselves.

This is for people that practice daily or those who are curious and wish to explore. This is for people in relationships who wish to reconnect, rejuvenate and IGNITE passion again. To give people a break from the mundane in a space that is free and non judgemental.

For us, conscious sexuality means knowing what we want, being able to say it and caring about the person we’re sharing it with. Listening. Being honest about boundaries. Having enough trust to explore without pressure to perform or pretend.

And enjoying it. Feeling wanted. Discovering what turns us on. Becoming comfortable enough in our bodies to stop watching ourselves from the outside and actually experience what’s happening.

For some, that means bringing curiosity and excitement back into a monogamous relationship. For others, it includes polyamory, ethical non-monogamy or the lifestyle. Single people belong. People who want no sexual involvement belong. Nobody has to prove how open or adventurous they are to be accepted here.

You should be as comfortable saying no as you are saying yes.

Consent is specific to the people and the moment. Being part of this community means nothing about what someone is available for. We respect each other’s privacy, relationships and decisions.

With that understood, there is plenty to discover. Tantra, sensuality, touch, communication, body confidence. Learning something about yourself—or someone you’ve loved for years—that you hadn’t known before. Being able to tell a partner what you’ve been afraid to ask for, and listen to their answer.

Jealousy, shame and old relationship habits deserve honest attention, too. Most of us weren’t taught much about handling them. We can learn to have those conversations, understand our reactions and take responsibility for how we treat each other.

“There is a kind of freedom in being loved well that independence alone will never give you.”

All of this belongs within a bigger culture of affection. Friends who express love. A welcome hug when you want one. People who can sit with you through a difficult day without immediately trying to fix you. An extended family where care is something we give and receive regularly.

We want love, pleasure and intimacy to have a place in our everyday lives. Enough honesty to ask for what we need, enough respect to hear each other, and enough curiosity to keep discovering what we can enjoy together.

Some of us have spent years being useful while ignoring how we feel. We’ve pushed through exhaustion, swallowed grief, lost confidence or forgotten how to relax without guilt. Eventually, we need time to deal with what we’ve been carrying.

We want that time to be part of life at Alma Libre. Access to good practitioners, people we can talk to and opportunities to try something that might help. Therapy, breathwork, meditation, movement, bodywork and time in nature all have a place in what we intend to offer.

Sometimes there is difficult work to do. Sometimes you need sleep, a swim, good company and a day that asks very little of you. Nobody needs to turn their entire life into a self-improvement project.

You should be able to look after yourself before you’re falling apart.

There’s also the curiosity. What have you never given yourself permission to explore? What do you believe because you’ve examined it, and what have you simply carried forward? What might you discover if you had time to pay attention?

Spirituality belongs in that exploration. Meditation, ceremony, ritual, consciousness. Experiences that leave you moved, full of questions or feeling connected to something you can’t quite explain. We want people to be able to talk about those things without being dismissed—and question them without being shut down.

“Bring your faith, your curiosity, your skepticism. Think for yourself.”

Nobody needs to adopt a belief to belong here. Nobody gets authority over your life because they claim to have answers. Participation is your choice, and an intense experience doesn’t oblige you to accept someone else’s explanation of it.

We can take care in choosing practitioners, respect the traditions we learn from and be honest about what we know and what we don’t. Curiosity and good judgment can exist in the same person.

Alma Libre gives us a chance to make this part of our everyday lives. Keep practising something we’ve found useful. Talk through what we’re learning with people who know us. Have support when things are difficult and company when we’re ready to enjoy ourselves again.

We want to keep discovering who we are and what we’re capable of. There is still a lot of life to experience, and we want to be well enough, curious enough and free enough to enjoy it.

There is a satisfaction in looking at something useful and knowing you helped make it. A place means more when some of your care is built into it.

Residents participate in the life of Alma Libre: learning, teaching, making, maintaining and contributing through its departments. We need people who enjoy getting involved. There is plenty to do, and everyone brings a different combination of experience, ability and curiosity.

You might have spent twenty years at a desk and discover you love building with earth. You might know something another person has wanted to learn for years. Teaching it may remind you how much you enjoy it yourself.

“The knowledge is walking around in actual people.”

That is our living university. You can ask another question, watch someone work and try it yourself. Experienced people, apprentices and curious beginners work together. A workshop can help build something the sanctuary needs while giving people skills they take home with them.

We don’t all need to become good at everything. Some people love growing food. Others can fix almost anything, organize a kitchen, teach movement or make sense of a technical problem. Coordinating those abilities lets us accomplish more without each person having to carry the whole job.

And this is how we get to know each other. We find out who’s patient with beginners, who spots the problem everyone missed, who can make a difficult job fun. We ask for help, return the favour and learn to trust each other through what we actually do.

Contribution should leave us with more than another day of work behind us.

It should leave us with skills, friendships and something useful accomplished. The work needs to suit people’s abilities and the needs of the place, with clear responsibilities and people who know what they’re doing.

We have no interest in filling hours just to call someone productive. Organize the work, use the tools, share what we know and improve how we do it. We want people to be able to say, “I helped create this,” and have time and energy left to enjoy being here.

All the resilience, technology and economics would be a spectacular amount of effort to miss the point if the life itself were boring.

We’re building Alma Libre because we want to enjoy the hell out of being here. Finish what we’re doing and have people to go swimming with. Hear music and wander over. Get talked into an adventure we hadn’t planned. Stay in a conversation because it’s getting good, without checking the time every five minutes.

Waterfalls, horses, trails, exploring Costa Rica. Great food, bonfires, dancing and parties worth staying up for. Learning something because it fascinates us. Having people around who bring their own ideas of a good time and introduce us to things we wouldn’t have tried ourselves.

Some of the best experiences start with someone saying, “Come with us.” We want more chances to say yes.

“You don’t have to squeeze every experience into a week because your flight leaves Sunday.”

You can get to know someone gradually. Practise something long enough to get good at it. Have an incredible night and leave tomorrow morning alone. There’s no need to make every day an event when you actually like your everyday life.

That includes the quiet. Coffee without rushing. A book you finally finish. A nap without feeling guilty. Time alone, with your people nearby when you want company.

We still have work and responsibilities. But enjoyment deserves time on the calendar before everything else has used it up. We want to look forward to an ordinary Tuesday.

That’s what all the effort is for: people we love spending time with, things we’re excited to do and enough freedom to enjoy what we’re building.

If we make Sanctuary One work, we want to build a network of Alma Libre sanctuaries in different places. More places to live, explore and spend time with people we know. More opportunities to take what we’ve learned and build something good with it.

Each sanctuary should suit its land and the people who live there. Different climates, food, architecture, cultures and experiences. We can share what works while giving each place room to become somewhere worth visiting for its own sake.

Across the network, we can share knowledge, technology, products and services. A building method improved in Costa Rica could help another location. A useful system could be adapted instead of built again from scratch. People with experience could help a new team avoid mistakes they’ve already made.

Our effort could keep paying off well beyond the place where it started.

“And the extended family gets bigger.”

People we know introduce us to people they love. We spend time in another sanctuary, make friends and keep those relationships when we leave. The next visit begins with people glad to have us back.

That would give travel something we often miss: enough time and connection to become involved in a place. We could learn from the people there, contribute what we know and share more than a few days of sightseeing.

It would also give us more people and resources to call on. Experience could move between locations. Teams could help each other through problems. What one sanctuary learns could make the others better prepared.

That’s how far we’d like to take this. First, we have to build one sanctuary that works—and that people love enough to want more of.

Costa Rica is where we intend to build the first Alma Libre sanctuary. We’re evaluating properties and bringing together the people and resources to make it happen. The land, funding, infrastructure and operations still have to come together.

We’ve put substantial work into the plan. Now we have to choose the right place and turn that work into something people can live in.

Water, productive land, access and the ability to build responsibly matter as much as how beautiful a property looks. We want to love the place, and we need it to support the life we’re planning.

We intend to build with Costa Rican people, local knowledge and local partners. This country is already home to communities with their own experience, relationships and ways of doing things. We have learning to do, and our presence should bring something worthwhile to the people around us.

“It has to work after the presentation ends.”

Sanctuary One will teach us things a plan cannot. We’ll find out how the systems perform, what the land supports and how people actually live together. Some things will need adjusting. We’ll improve what works and change what doesn’t. An idea doesn’t become sacred because we wrote it down.

The first people involved will help give the place its character. What we build, how we solve problems, how we welcome someone new—all of that becomes part of life here. We haven’t made the stories yet or discovered which ridiculous idea becomes an annual tradition.

That is a big part of the excitement. There is work ahead that matters, and the people doing it will get to see their contribution become part of a place they can enjoy.

We intend to live this. We have every reason to care about getting it right.