Anne Gerhart

Resident

Hello dear reader, my name is Anne and I arrived in Avidanja by the end of September 2022. So, I am the newest resident in this amazing community.

When you enter the very small village in Central Portugal where the community is located, you are more than surprised to find at the end of the road the entrance to a paradise, a place created with so much love and care from the founder Jutta and co-founder Liva, which is visible in every corner. But the main reason why I made the decision to come here is to share the day to day life with likeminded people. Where we go beyond our masks and the filters we usually see people and situations through and help each other to grow and transcend deeply ingrained patterns that we are hardly aware of.

Originally I am from Germany and I lived there a so called “normal” life with job, marriage, house, etc., though from childhood on I had to deal with painful losses from close loved ones. When I was in my twenties I got the first glimpse that life is much more than I could think of. By walking in the forest by myself I had a recognition of Oneness, Freedom and Love just by staying there and being with the trees. But at this time I had nobody to talk to about this recognition and so I just went on with my life, yet knowing that there is more.

In 2015, after another painful loss of a loved one, I decided to give my soul some time to recover and stopped working for three months to walk the camino “Via de la Plata” in Spain. My soul took the chance and a great healing process started during this time. And once again I had some more recognitions of Oneness, Freedom and Love on the camino. This time I kept on searching for answers, which I found in the book “ The Power of Now” from Eckhart Tolle. I remembered that tears were rolling down my cheek: finally somebody who understood me and had some answers I was longing for. This book made it clear that I am more than this body-mind called Anne, that there is just one consciousness which shines through everyone and everything. After reading a lot by Eckhart Tolle I really felt that I wanted to find some people with the same interest and understanding, and so miraculously I found the Awakend Life Project (ALP) in Central Portugal in 2018. In the beginning I was just able to visit ALP one or two times a year for retreats or gatherings, but it became clear that my heart was longing for more.

So it happened that I got in closer contact with Avidanja, a sister project of ALP. In the beginning of 2022, I decided to finish my job in the company I had been working for for twenty years, rented out my house out and took my two cats and arrived in Avidanja. The transitional period from Germany to Portugal felt like a re-birth. I left a lot of people that love me dearly and which l love dearly too. I felt that I was carried in this love like being nurtered in a mother’s womb, yet knowing it is time now to leave and knowing that there are beautiful people waiting for me. So far I can say, that it was the best decision ever, and I already came more in contact with my patterns. I am very grateful for the love and care of my spiritual family here in Avidanja. I am sure there will come a lot more, to be continued…