Our Story
What is Mandala Springs?
I remember in my early 20s sitting with an older woman up on the side of a mountain watching the sunset. Some would call her shaman, others a medicine woman; she would shrug off these and other titles. Despite this, she was more powerful in those ways than anyone I had ever met.
She had already shown me inexplicable knowledge of my life, of my deepest inner workings. She showed me how to see beyond the bounds of my two eyes; to hear, to feel and to sense in new ways. When I was around her these things would immediately begin to happen; as if someone had suddenly adjusted the focus on the lens through which all life is experienced, and an uncanny and wondrous vividity would spring alive before me, within me, all around me.
We watched the sunset in silence for what felt like an age; myself saturated in the vivid details that were previously unavailable, through the simple gift of proximity to this being.
At one moment she turned to me and began to speak.
“You have a tremendous gift. You can go anywhere in the world and immediately find the center of flow. Where the magic, the adventure, the music… whatever it is you seek, you find the deep abiding currents effortlessly. You could spend the rest of your life doing just this, and it will be a beautiful life.”
She paused for a moment, before she turned to me and caught my gaze. Her eyes bored holes through me in a way I had never experienced. It was as if she projected her will into my bones, and the next words she spoke landed there, with an authority and absolute veracity I had never felt before.
“However”, she continued, “you will not know your true power, your true potential, until you have found your root. Until the moment you ground yourself in one place long enough that all those myriad flows, all those currents you so deftly travel will slowly, inextricably be drawn to you. You will become the confluence. You will become the convergence of them all. In this will you truly know your own strength in this world.”
She turned away and dropped eye contact with me, which felt like a rubber band snap back into my body. I had no words. I just sat with her in silence.
I was, perhaps, 23 years old. I wonder to this day if she knew; if some deeper cosmic joke was at play, but where we sat was less than a mile as the eagle flies, from the land that would become my home and one of my greatest projects of all time.
It took me 11 years to finally find that sacred, beautiful land that is Mandala Springs. Little did I know how much of a journey I was undertaking.
It could be said, as I write these words in the beginning of my 4th decade around the sun, that I still only have a blurry impression. Much like the moments with that woman, I find my vision coming ever into greater focus. Bit by bit I come to understand the deeper guidance that brought me here and the implications for the world. It is a wonder, a thrill; it is terrifying beyond anything I had ever experienced. Free solo rock climbs and high elevation mountaineering; solo pilgrimages in the wilderness of the world and so much more could only prepare me so much for this particular journey. Self leadership had come naturally to me. Learning to be a real, authentic and effective leader for others was something else; is something else entirely.
Now at this point you may be wondering “Why this story? The article is called ‘What is Mandala Springs?’ What is the point of all of this?”
Well, dear reader, it is important to experience the beginning of something; the fateful spark that ignited the tinder in my heart that would eventually (and, quite stubbornly) alight into flame on this blessed land.
Throughout the years as I continued to travel and teach, the words she spoke continued to reverberate in my bones. I would journal extensively, nearly daily for most of my life. In those journals you see a progression of vague notions coming into clarity around a deep yearning in my spirit. So in some semblance of order, the vision evolved;
“I want land to create something beautiful”
“I want there to be spring water. Oh, and a bouldery stream would be amazing”.
“I want at least one side to touch the national forest”
“I want this land to be within 30 minutes of a keystone city (eventually just Asheville) and still feel like pristine nature”
“I want a mixture of south aspected slopes and deep wet biodiverse Southern Appalachian Forest”
“And on top of ALL of this I want high speed internet.”
Ask and you shall receive, indeed.
Similarly my vision of what I wanted to do with that resource grew over time. I am grateful for the reference of my extensive journals for showcasing the evolution of my thought.
First a journal quote from 12 year old Robbie
“I want to do something someday that has never been done. I want to help people do things they never thought they can do. It isn’t going to be ‘science fiction’ it will be real”
And in my 20s and beyond;
“I want people to be free. I want a place someday where I can teach them skills to liberate them from society”
“I want to open up a school to teach the deeper mysteries and magic along side the super practical and functional permaculture and functional movement skills”
“I want to create an institute dedicated to the full realization of human excellence; with one foot deeply exploring our intimacy with the natural world, with our selves and our spirits, and one foot firmly rooted in culture and technology. I want us to bridge that gap”
To finally;
“I want to create spaces, businesses and lifestyle practices that exemplify the best of the best of our global culture; to create a cultural tsunami that renovates the physical world as a reflection of our love, creativity and genius, renovates our families, our communities and our culture to exemplify the very best of the fully embodied human spirit.”
So that is the driving force that feeds me. It is the force that allowed me to purchase, and therefore fully inherit a massive junk pile and gleefully dedicate years of my life to its remediation and return to excellence. After all, the particular gem hiding within was breathtaking to behold.
If my lifestyle gave me anything it was the eyes to see, ears to hear and body to feel the full implications of this beautiful land, despite the cloak of cultural abuse and neglect it wore.
It's the same spirit that led me to create and innovate my beloved Mandala Chocolate; to strive for bringing Certified Organics to public lands and to Perennial native forest farms. It led to the invitation for all to come and partake, to drink from the abundant springs and to find their own access to the codes of a truly new civilization, a new agreement between all living things, towards a future we could be proud of. To show the world, in all its glory, what these ideals look like objectively and fully manifest. And so we have Mandala Springs. She is beautiful beyond comprehension, already supporting the journey of thousands, and still very much a template for that which is still to come.
What I knew only in concept has become the most heartbreaking, uplifting, terrifying, exhilarating and otherwise challenging parts to all of this. Every subconscious behavior, character flaw, deep trauma and undercurrent to my thoughts and actions has been laid bare by the willful (and sometimes kicking and screaming) transformation I have agreed to undertake to be able to truly rise to my greatest potential for service to this mission. It has been consistent. Some would say relentless; but for each challenge there has been clear and necessary growth. There has come wisdom, and, by all grace, give thanks, more ease.
So we do not invite you simply to the pinnacle expression of this dream, the gessoed masterpiece behind the climate controlled cage for your viewing pleasure; we invite you into the arena of primal transformation. We invite you to a place where the new Earth is taking form before our very eyes, by the power of our own blood, sweat and tears. By our own embrace of the deep journey within; to emerge ready to lend our strength to the global tsunami of decisive and utter evolution that we came here to create.
This is the Academy of the Innovative Edge. There is no script, there is no well-trodden path to follow. We come as frontiers’ folk; ready and willing to forge new cultural practices, new layers of human capability, new systems of building, harnessing our energy, deepening sensitivity and fluency in nature, new technology that supports our work… all of it.
