Discover yourself.
Find community.
Be the Change.

Hi there. My name is Albert, and I am your friendly guardian and host, here at iThou.org. This is our little piece of the planet, carved out on the web. Things are still in pre-Beta, for now, so forgive all the construction going on. But stick around, 'cause we've got some really cool stuff in the works...

iThou.org. Our name comes from Martin Buber's book "I and Thou" -- a book that underpins a lot of the New Spiritual Consciousness of the modern generation. According to Buber and the I-Thou way of thought: People are not things. Love is not a commodity. All real living is meeting.

What I-Thou stands for. Truth. Freedom. Love. Some of the most important shifts in consciousness are fed from this river -- from new kinds of therapy to new forms of dance and art to new ways of thinking about social action and reconfiguring the world. Some places on the planet, like the Esalen Institute, Findhorn, Sedona, or Hollyhock, are thick with I-Thou. They swim in it. Carl Rogers, the founder of client-centered therapy and T-Groups, changed his entire approach to therapy based on I-Thou. Gestalt's famous line: "Here and Now, I and Thou" birthed a new generation of consciousness that is still shaking our ground to this day.

The Intention. To shake spirit into the world. In any way possible. Through the mind. Through creativity. Through compassion. Through action. Through art. Through intimacy. Through love. Through the body. Through truth. Through service.... and to have fun and circulate love, compassion, and kindness along the way.

The Process. Pretty simple... caring for each other, and loving each other -- even when when it's difficult. Especially then. This site aspires to give us more and better tools to help us reach out and love in a world that oftentimes battles against it. We become who we are meant to be through each other and through love.

What it's all about. It's not just kneeling down in church, or wrapping yourself with Tefillin, or saying 3 Hail Mary's, or checking into the monastery and forsaking the worldly life. It's about manifesting your own being into the world -- this world -- full of demons and materiality and shadow and light. Because the work you were meant to do, the reason you are here, is already written into you -- "in your own members" and because the place that you are is here and the person you are is you. Because interlaced within the holy, holy world of spirit is a real world of day-to-day living. This "It" world of bling-bling and GenMTV. Because, although God is up there on the mountaintops, he is also in the back streets of the day-to-day. He is in each person. In every "You". In each moment. In every "now." In the board rooms. In the brothels. In the washing of dishes. In the eyes of a child. In the passion of a dancer. In the laughter of us all. Because change starts with where you are. Right here. right now. And that, my friends, is how you shake spirit into the world.

Contact. Support. Exchange. One of my old teachers at the Esalen Institute, Ray Swartley, once told me a story like this: He was an apple picker by day, and in the evenings he would do bodywork for people in his garage. He would just throw out a table, and people from around the community would come line up, and he would work on them. He would never accept money -- maybe fruit, or food, or a gift if somebody had made it themselves -- but never money. And then his teacher told him that it was time for him to accept money. But he viewed his work as "too pure." He did not want to sully it with financial considerations. However, his teacher told him "You need to accept money, because this way, you can bring your work to more people." He began to accept money and stopped his job as an apple picker and began to give his greatest gifts to the world as a bodyworker. He taught hundreds of students at the Esalen Institute and continues to lead workshops around the world to this day.

Courage. Community. And You. The time is now. The place is here. We are building a community of people who are the visionaries. The dreamers. The people who think outside the box. The drummers who march to their own beat. Who dance like no one's watching. Who love, as the saying goes, like they've never been hurt. Who see beneath the veil of life and dive straight into its pulse. People who have been inspired by the spirit in life, whether through a place, like Esalen or Sedona, or a practice -- like art, or dance, or poetry, or Gestalt -- or a book, like Martin Buber's "I and Thou" -- and who want to build a community and shape a world that includes their vision.

Truth follows truth. Courage builds on courage. Be the change. Find yourself. Find your community. Build your home. Create the life you imagine. Imagine it. See it. Be it.

It's all right here. Right now. I-Thou.

See you 'round the universe,
Albert Wong
Founder, iThou.org