By Travis Newbill

Floral Notes and Bardo: The Creative Chronicles of a Shambhala Mountain Resident is a daily feature on the SMC blog in which a member of our staff/community shares his experience of existing as part of Shambhala Mountain Center.

Slowly opening channels.  No ambition, please.  Or, good ambition..  Cows digging under trees for shade and shakes.  Blubber-utter, what’s shakin’?

This morning, first morning meeting with the new group of Dekyongs.  Feels good.  Feels relaxed.  Feels like we’re engaged, taking it seriously-enough, but not being overly ambitious.  Just putting little regular things in place is enough.

The Delek System:

Deleks are groups of people within the community, organized according to neighborhood.  The Delek System, as I currently understand it, has one main function:

To cultivate harmony within the community.

Part of that is ensuring that everyone is cared for.  Part of that is ensuring that everyone is heard.

So, the Delek System serves as a means for communication to flow through the community — inwards to the governing bodies, and back out.

Each Delek has a head, or leader, called a Dekyong.  Once a week the Dekyongs meet to discuss what has been coming up in their Deleks, community stuff, and so on.

I am the Head Dekyong, and so I have a seat on the Community Council — a decision-making, action-taking, body within the community whose precise mission and role is still being worked out.  It’s still pretty new.

Anyway, my piece, as I currently understand it, is to bring in information that I have harvested from my meetings with the Dekyongs so that the Community Council can respond to it — one way or another.  One way of responding is to suggest that a particular issue be brought into the next Community Meeting as a topic for discussion.

To be continued…

— April 24, 2014

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Travis Newbill is a curious dude on the path of artistry, meditation, and social engagement who is very glad to be residing at Shambhala Mountain Center. His roles within the organization include Marketing Associate and Head Dekyong–a position of leadership within the community.