My Life in the One World Family Commune

Creating Spiritual Revolution

Those early days were a magical learning period of highs along with the karmic cleansing lows. We were inspired revolutionaries with the vision of a world of harmony, peace and love, as we awakened to the joy we had known as children when we “played house.” “Love is Service Done,” or LSD, became our motto, and life took on a wonderful new meaning. We let go of the false motivation of getting and possessing money and materiality for self, along with the insecurity that goes along with that programmed illusion. The welfare of the group as a whole became our priority, and we put our trust in the Universe to provide all our needs. There were times in those early days when we “just made it” financially, but that simply caused us to be more creative, and we never lacked for our basic needs.

During those days, along with his continuous channelings, writing and speaking, Allen Michael did everything from changing the babies’ diapers to mopping the restaurant floor, always making himself available to anyone with need. He did not set himself up as an authority, an idol to be worshipped, or personality to be adulated, but only asked that he be loved as he loves, served as he serves and recognized for his ability to channel messages from Creation Universe.

The old saying, “life begins at forty,” was definitely true for me. At 40, I had switched from playing the role of a suburban family housewife and mom, to being a communal mother, sharing the joy and responsibilities with other mothers. It was a high time, serving our healthy natural food, preparing fresh green grape juice and macroburgers in The Here and Now for the wonderful Flower Children, baking our delicious Whole Wheat Sunflower Seed bread in the second floor bakery of our house nearby on Oak Street, caring for all of our beautiful children and dancing to our own music and the music of the Beattles, the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Pete Seegar and all the other inspired rock and folk musicians of the day.

I felt as though I had been swept up into a fairy tale – and they all lived happily ever after! Along with the necessary discomfort of going thru great changes, life was an on-going adventure of romance and creativity. We found that living communally and sharing all things in common fulfilled our spiritual and social needs more than anything we could have imagined. We were inspired by the truth from a greater perspective than we had ever heard before and could see that Allen Michael was a Being of great wisdom as he channeled messages for the New World from Galactica.

As an only child of a young single mother, I had never experienced family life, so sharing with others, doing projects together, cooking, cleaning, shopping, sewing, singing and playing music, with the welfare of the whole being our foremost concern, was all new and wonderful. It was like finally coming home.

As I dropped out of the fear-of-lack/getting-for-self lifestyle, I could see how the way we use money comes between individuals, family members, races, religions and nations. It distorts every aspect of our daily lives and perpetuates in the collective consciousness the unnatural fear of the unknown. In Normal Universe, there is no fear. There is only Love.

We recognize ourselves as an autonomous democracy, led by wisdom and true personality. We felt that when they heard it, the rest of the world couldn’t help but recognize this wonderful, comforting truth. We had no idea that it would take this many years for this to come about, but everything being relative, that time is coming at last.

II: Our Dynamic Demonstration

You can imagine what a profound change it was for me, going from a housewife in suburbia with four young children, to the communal lifestyle of hippies in the world of the “Flower Children.” It was the Happy Hippy days of the 60’s, and there we were, right in the midst of it all on Haight Street, operating our little macrobiotic restaurant, The Here and Now.

In the have-and-have-not’s world, where most people must “work for a living” I had been conditioned to regard service-type occupations as demeaning and, having set my sites on something far more glamorous, never could have imagined that I would work in a restaurant. Glamour is a false illusion of the material world, the world of duality, which people have been conditioned to value generation after generation, and I had never experienced the joy that can come from the simplicity of sharing and serving together as one family.

“Channeling energy,” as we call it, in our “Creative Schools of Experience” is nothing like what they call “work” in the world of buying and selling. It’s a fulfilling experience when, together with your family and friends, you are preparing food that you know is delicious and healthful for one another and for people in your community and, with the high vibes of the Flower Children, it was magical! The word, “work,” naturally began to fall out of our vocabulary, just as it will no longer exist in the New World of sharing.

In the work-a-day world, most parents, children, husbands and wives live under an illusion of dependency and possessiveness, reacting emotionally rather than responding to need, blocked from growing and perfecting their individuality and autonomy. When we learn to freely give and receive unconditional love thru service to one another, we will no longer fear the loss of control over those we are close to. We will recognize that each of us is an autonomous being and that we are always there to serve one another. This is the meaning of Love.

Each of us committed ourselves to a five hour per day “love service shift.” We rotated between food service in the Here and Now, baking macrobiotic pastries and bread in the second-floor bakery of our house on Oak Street and daily shifts in child care, meal preparation, house cleaning, buying, publications, promotions, art projects and performing our music and songs. Hundreds of songs were written over the years, inspired by our sharing lifestyle, and singing with others was one of my dream’s come true.

Making up the shift schedule was both challenging and rewarding, and it helped bring us in touch with the understanding that each person, to the extent of their ability and past conditioning, is doing the best they can. With forgiveness and affirmation of one another, we are freed from self-limitation to excel to greater heights in contributing our individual abilities to the whole and recognizing our true selves.

One of the fears many people have relative to communal living is that they will lose their individuality. The opposite is actually true. In our large group, where so many facets were covered, we were freed to pursue our individual talents and to develop new projects to be added to our Creative Schools of Experience, such as food preparation, baking, airbrushing, sewing, woodshop, video, music and publishing.

Those early days are a memory of joy and despair, going thru a myriad of changes, learning to trust and care for others outside our immediate family and letting go of attachments to people, things, and ideas. At times, it was like childhood memories of playing and sharing with friends, while at other times, it was the disorientation and insecurity in relationships that go with such changes. It was all made easier by knowing that it was just old programmed fears and that we had found the real thing and were living it.

The conditioning in the getting-for-self world of duality didn’t just vanish overnight. There were many times when, because of my childhood experiences and 40 years in the status quo world of effects (and previous lifetimes), the pain from the negative feedback (karma) would build up to the point where I would say to myself, “I’ve got to get away from here!” The next instant, I would recognize that there was no place to go, for the status quo world of effects held nothing of value for me. So I was forced to face my karma and make the changes within myself necessary to stay in the high energies of sharing.

When Michael and I joined the commune, the change was most difficult for our oldest son, Mike, who, at nine years old, felt that he had lost a father. Even though we know we couldn’t have done otherwise at the time, when we look back, it’s painful to realize that, if we had known what we know now, we could have helped our children deal with much of the hurt and unhappiness they experience in this backwards world. Michael and I were captivated by the inspiration of it all, while at the same time going thru great changes ourselves and were unable to recognize the insecurity Mike was feeling and to give him the support he needed. I realize that it was also Mike’s karma from past lifetimes to attract that experience, just as we all have karma that plays back to heal past errors and to prod us on in our awakening. I feel that he, and all of our children who grew up in the Commune, would have a far more difficult time in the world as it is, had they not had that sharing communal experience.

For me, it was an intense learning experience as I began to realize that things don’t have to be done “my way” to turn out right – and, being a very strong Leo mother, that was quite a revelation! It has taken all these years, but I’m learning to value the particular strengths I have and to share them with others without feeling the need to force anything on anyone, as well as to recognize and appreciate abilities in others. We each have our particular strengths to add to the whole, and when we live together as we do, no one person has to be all things. It’s been a wonderful, growing experience over the years, with Allen Michael, a master of relativity, setting the example along the way.

When I look back on my life before this awakening, it seems as though I was acting a part, and I’d forgotten who I really was, and of course, I’m still learning. We all are conditioned in our childhoods and past lives from our experiences in this backwards world of negative effects. Much of our early conditioning is based on fear, seeking approval from others out of fear of rejection in this status quo getting-for-self world. In the Commune, we are recording in the morphogenetic field, the new way of living, as we create our lives for ourselves from moment to moment.

In the world of duality and materiality, fear of lack has been the motivating force in maintaining the backwards, ungodly system of usury money. In our sharing new world, along with all other words of duality and fear, the word, “lack,” will no longer exist. As Jampolski says, “Love is letting go of fear.” Love is sharing and serving, and as all of humanity comes into a sharing relationship, there can be no more fear and nothing to let go of.


About author

Author
Del Rainer

It has been over 40 years since a group of us dropped out of the old world of duality and buying and selling for personal gain. We joined together to live as a communal family, sharing all things in common. These experiences and revelations are based on my wonderful days at the One World Family Commune.

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Comments(11)

  1. REPLY

    John says

    This was great reading. I lived in Lahaina in 75 and loved the Cafe Paradise. The tables were set within a bunch of banana trees. All the hippies in Lahaina ate there. I still use the One World Cook Book. It was while using it that I got interested and checked out where you guys were. It was fun to read this story about the group.

  2. REPLY

    Joseph says

    Bravo! Del, you really nailed it right on the head. My honor to have shared so much of it with you, Allen Michael and everyone. What an unbelievable crew, what a life!! An abundance of creative talent and energy in revolutionary service to a new world. And what a channeling, from the EG down thru the daily details, ETI is omnipresent with us and in us.

    Thank you God, we are ever grateful. Love is service done!

  3. REPLY

    Bill Best says

    Aloha Del,
    Thanks so much for your article and especially the pictures. It was great to see the restaurants and family (where are they now?) and even my pizza poster! Please post more and keep up the good work. I would be happy to know the family listened to my daily radio show 10 to 2PM ( Maui time ) Monday thru Friday on manaoradio.com. A lot of great music (non-commercial) with a few positive ideas mixed in. On the fly with an I phone etc. download the app tunein radio. Keep it UP, Bill Best

  4. REPLY

    Nick Oliver says

    Dear Del,

    Remember me ? … brother of Chip ( black and silver ) . Early days … Berkeley, Larkspur. That aside … I read your article. Truly fabulous. You have an amazing memory, just like me. I’ll never forget your tan face and salt and pepper ponytail. I posted my email address in the required field, but I’ll post it here just in case you don’t receive it : h2o6164@att.net. That’s h2o, as in water, that’s an “o”, not a zero. Del, just one rule I have … nothing impersonal, like ecards or groupthink, etc…. gotta be you, and you only. If you’d like to send an email to Chip, his email is alpholive@yahoo.com. Until then, Love, Nick

  5. REPLY

    Dolores Hansen Nelson says

    I am a first cousin of Steve Wolfe, whom I believe was a member of this group. I never got to know him but would like to know more now. Anyone who would care to share stories? I know he was an accomplished musician.
    Dolores

  6. REPLY

    Mark Grimsley says

    My, My, What a great feeling in my heart to know that I have found something of interest in this world again. I’m intrigued to find a belief I have felt all my life but was too supressed to succeed. I hope to make this a new beginning. I am ready! Let those unknowing learn, share & develop.

  7. REPLY

    Del Rainer says

    Hi Mark, It’s always rewarding to hear from a kindred spirit. Where do you live? I’d be happy to send you an EG if you’d like.
    Happy New World,
    Del

  8. REPLY

    Cathy Cross says

    You all might remember me and my husband Christopher Cross. Our daughter Crystal was born while we were living in one of the Berkeley communal houses. I am in the picture of the family from 1973, immediately to the right of Allen Michael. I think about all you you and was glad I found this web page. Sorry to hear about Allen’s passing, but he did live til he was 92 and he certainly had a long rich life! I live in Amsterdam, Holland now with my Dutch boyfriend, but if I have a chance to visit any of you that remember me I’d love that. Please get in touch with me through my email if you’d like to reestablish a connection. Best of luck to you all!!!

  9. REPLY

    Cathy Cross says

    GREAT ARTICLE!!! Brought back so many awesome memories of those days in Berkeley, the restaurant, peoples’ park and all the wonderful times I shared with everyone in the family for the years I was with you guys! Hope you are all doing well.

  10. REPLY

    Lori Roche says

    Loved reading the history of One World Family. I lived in Hawaii in ’75, and learned airbrushing from Debbie and Michael. I lived with them in Sunset Beach on Oahu. They would take me to Maui to help work in the store. I was in Lahaina recently and looked for the location, but it has changed so much. Great memories! Hello to Debbie and Michael!

  11. REPLY

    splat says

    In reply to john.

    John, I cooked the magic mushroom eggplant parmesan at Cafe Paradise in 74 and 75 using the cookbook.

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