Casa Mandala is situated in an olive finca (farm) on the edge of The Sierra Del Las Nieves, a  ’Parque Natural’  just outside  the small town of Alozaina.

Here the artizans and  artists, John and his partner Anna, are living the greenest of lifestyles one is likely to find, pushing the boundaries of reducing their standard of living in exchange for a beautiful  standard of life.

Here they recycle, create and build, all with an artistic theme and in touch with the flow of spirit and nature.

Though a skilled carpenter, John’s primary interest begins from his concept of living a ‘bill’ free life. Do away with bills to concentrate on life, this is expressed in his preferred method of building, Cob (cob is a mixture of clay or clay soil, sand and straw). His buildings are mainly a mixture of stone, cob, and recycled materials like pallets and washing machine doors (the glass ones!)

John and Anna accept visiting volunteers who come to learn about using cob in art, sculpture and structure, and are accomodated in one of the three small handmade chalets.

The earthen roofed chalet

The Yurt

At Casa Mandala there are no connected services, the electric comes from their 3 kilowatt solar photo voltaic system, the toilets are compost toilets and the water is collected rain water from the previous winter.

Here is the shower!

I asked John, if he was sure he wanted me to show the shower, my first impression was people seeing this may be put off wanting to come and stay but now I understand how much value one can get from Casa Mandala and it is all summed in this shower, I will explain this statement a bit further on.

Water is a precious resource, some of us are lucky to live at the source of a beautiful never ending stream of clean water, some of us are not so lucky. At Casa Mandala water is precious, it is collected in the winter and rationed through out the year, obviously during this time the water can go off but here John has an ingenious way of purifying it and storing it.

The water is left in theses jars for a couple of days, the sun heats the water and this low heat process purifies the water. The water is then transferred to dark glass jars for storage before being used.

So how does the shower represent the value at Casa Mandala?

To live this sustainable lifestyle, a lifestyle that is far more work than our average western lifestyle requires letting go of fear and replacing that fear with trust in who and what we really are beneath our facades. That open shower with one bucket of water strips away our facades, strips away our modesty, strips away our fear of not looking our best, it connects us back to nature and what nature can supply us with. It is natural and allows us to experience who and what we really are. After a hard day’s work of positive energy, a great learning experience and sweat, I would think what it takes to use that shower would cleanse and refresh the soul, the spirit and the body.

To contact John and Anna  send an email to       soul_connection@hotmail.com

Meditation cave

Above is one of the meditation spaces at Molino Del Rey, a centre for holistic retreats.

Molino Del Rey is the first post of hopefully many homes and buildings I hope to visit local to our home whose owners are trying to live a more sustainable green lifestyle.

The complex of buildings were originally two water mills that have been converted to provide a wonderful setting of meditation spaces, caves, streams and waterfalls.

But what really interests me are these -

Not the most beautiful or spiritual view the centre has to offer but these washing machines, made by LG, only use approximately 150 watt hours of electricity for an average wash. The main reason they use such little electricity is because they have no means of heating the water.

Though Molino is not off grid, if it were, any kind of electric water heating is a big drain on the power and battery capacity available, increasing the power requirements and expense of a photo voltaic solar power system.

But if you also have one of these on your roof ,

The 1300 litre solar hot water panels use the sun to heat the water for up to 22 guests and staff and of course the washing machines. Even on a cloudy day.

The two washing machines linked to the hot water panels are a great way to save electricity, reduce the size of the electricity bill and help green the planet.

There is also a back up oil fired boiler, (not so green).

If you would like to know more about Molino Del Rey go to www.molinodelrey.com

The writing on the wall

How can there be any bad news to green living?

In my ‘Success’ trilogy (under the tag ‘Success’) I speak of how the pandering to the ego is destroying our selves our communities and our planet but I also believe that balancing ego success with heart success can repair the damage done.

I am not sure if it is because I am now a grumpy old man or if other’s share my view but I believe the various crisis that we are now experiencing, both financial and ecological are caused by human kind’s shallow spirituality caused by the growth of desire for ever more stuff!

With that said I thought it would be a good idea to visit other peoples green blogs to find out how they were living the green lifestyle so I could read and comment, hmmmm big mistake!!

All I could find was blogs selling green living, from soap to electric vehicles, admittedly there were some good blogs that consisted of regurgitated news on the subject but they themselves are supported by the advertising revenue that often looked quite dubious. (I am not speaking of green sites, just blogs)

I wanted to read what the people who have actually gone green had to say, I am not saying they are not out there, I just couldn’t find them, maybe the Google gods of search engines don’t value them, who knows.

So what does green living mean to you? Are you happy you can go online and buy it.

Of course you will not be buying an actual green way of life, you will just be buying into the same old ego success painted green.

Green living is living a sustainable life, so what standard of life would that be?

Well roughly, if you take the average USA citizen and reduce their standard of living by three quarters this reduction would not be quite enough to be sustainable, if you live in the UK and halved your standard of living, again this would not be enough to be sustainable, based on the whole world population having the same standard of living. http:///greenstory_view.php?storyid=1196

So what is one to do if one wants to not only live a green life but promote the benefits of a green lifestyle?

Well governments haven’t got a chance, no government is going to be voted into power on the bases that it is going to massively reduce your lifestyle.

Which unfortunately means most if not all the rich western governments are lying to their people when they talk about economics and growth.

So who really wants to sacrifice their lifestyle to return the earth to it’s natural colour.?

Well I do, and if you care to read on maybe you will as well.

It is not possible to sustain growth to a greener world, a greener world requires sustained shrinkage, in fact it is probably no longer just an option. If we cannot embrace sustained shrinkage it is likely the economic and environmental changes we are experiencing will force it upon us.

The fear of loss is greater than the loss you fear.

I believe the key to a green life is to seriously consider striving for heart success, the success of doing the right thing and not the ego success, the success of turning a blind eye to the right thing in order to have stuff and power.

We need to do more and use less but most of all we need to get out of the race to have the trinkets that say who we are and realise that all they say now is actually how spiritually shallow we are. To me wealth is not wrong but the trappings of wealth, for me, represent exploitation, somewhere along the line someone and something was exploited.

You cannot buy a green life, you have to live a green life as a whole.

Becoming a vegetarian (says the meat eater but I am trying!) is a wonderful example of doing more and using less, it takes planning and thought to eat well and be a vegetarian.

Any example I give you will be about making more effort and using less resources, that is the easy part, the hard part is to change peoples perception that success, real success, is not how much power and money you have or that you have a marble top kitchen, or the Ferrari parked outside.

Real success is sharing one’s wealth to resource others in your community, this is heart success, it is the key to the mindset that will help create a green life and combat the alternative which is the stealing by force of other’s precious resources, the darker alternative future.

For instance let us look at house wall and roof insulation, why haven’t all the houses built in the western world in the past 30 years had super insulated walls and roofs integrated at the design stage?

It is not because of cost or design factors it is because you can’t park insulation outside, or wear it to a party or show it off to your friends, unlike the success of double glazed windows which can be shown off that don’t save anywhere near as much energy as the unseen insulation

Green living is fun and I admit this post appears to be removing all the fun away from a green lifestyle but I am just trying to be real.

Now if your idea to go green is to buy an electric bike as an addition to all your stuff then you are not really helping anything other than your own ego, but if you buy the bike as a tool, an alternative means of travel it will give you the heart success I speak of, so much so that even on a cold wet evening sat at the traffic lights as the guy in the Ferrari pulls up next to you you may actually feel sorry for him!!