Gabriela Fagundes
Love . Clarity . Trasnformation
18 Start Now!
18 Start Now is a 2 years on-line and off-line relational and gameworld building training for 18-28 years. It offers a holistic and transformational program that initiates young people into Adulthood and expands global understanding and personal awareness. 18, Start Now aims to unleash and empower young people’s Agency and Authority to take higher levels of Responsibility, personally and collectively, in the face of current global realities.
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It is divided into 8 modules of 3 months each. Some of the activities are on-line and some of them are in person, happening in different countries.
18 What Now?
I remember as a young child hearing and seeing the promise of being eighteen - in movies, books, songs, adults talking about it, older friends experiencing life (I would say now, surviving) in the height of their youth with drugs, parties, 'freedom'.
The promise had two major fantasy components:
1. First there was the excitement, the hope, the joy: "I'm finally going to be free to do what I want. I will be able to have my own time, pursue my passions, experiment with new things, drive, drink, smoke, go to parties and leave without telling anyone, have sex whenever I want and with whomever I want. I will be able to live my life the way I want to, to be radically free. Life begins.
2. At the same time there was this other side filled with despair, fear, depression, terror. There was this knowing and experiencing of how "the economic systems are collapsing, the environment is collapsing, everything is collapsing, and I can't do anything about it. I'm hopeless." I will be an adult soon. How will I live my life? How will I pay my bills? How will I make money? How will I change the world? "I need to be somebody, I need to find meaning in my life, I need to find my purpose, I need to get a good job that will give me stability and security."
"Since I can not do anything to change the world, at least I'm going to take care of my own life.
I need to go to college, that's the ticket to a good job and then a good life."
And then what? What really happens in life, in reality? What happens when all these promises are fulfilled in whole or in part, or broken in whole or in part? What if you find out that it was all a lie? That you wasted years of your life in school to become an expert at being an external reward seeker?
What if you discovered that the life you are living now no longer works? What if you decided to take a stand to create something different and step out of the patriarchy? What if you learned to go into the unknown with your fear and take the risk? What if it's time for you to take the next step in unfolding your potential and who you are in the world? What if you stopped fighting the system and what already exists and used all that energy to create what you want? What if a more beautiful world could be created that your heart knows is possible? What then?
I invite you to a Path of Empowerment, TeamWork, Possibility, Love, Clarity, Adventure, Aliveness and High Level Fun.
As you choose to walk this Path, things in your life will fall apart. It will be painful, it will be uncomfortable, it will be insane.
You will wake up some days with doubts and fears, 'what if my parents were right? what if the media, my friends, everyone were right?', 'what if I'm doing shit and destroying my life by choosing to follow the intuition of my being?'. It is ok. You keep going.
When you are in a fantasy world, you do not believe that you are in a fantasy.
The fantasy really seems to be reality, it seems to be true the story you have been told.
And the more evidence you create that this is true, the more you begin to be convinced that there is no other possibility.
"The world is like that. Period."
An indication that you are in a fantasy is when your fantasy world is confronted with a question, a perspective, a possibility, an experience, a suggestion, and you find yourself reacting to it: defending yourself, fighting back, trying to convince the other person, telling them they're wrong, you're right, 'this isn't for me,' blaming, saying 'she's saying that because she's privileged and white."
As you read this website, you may find yourself being confronted with some of these reactions. Maybe you have already found yourself in some of them, in these few lines you have already read. That is okay. I'm glad because you're feeling it, which means it's something happening more than just in your head.
If you find yourself angry, or scared, or puzzled by any of the ideas in this website, it could signal that you have discovered a new territory in yourself. That could be a place where further clarity and experimentation can happen. Do not be surprised if Emotions arise while reading this website. I suggest not hesitating to write your Emotion and its trigger in the back pages of your notebook, and then doing the associated Emotional Healing Process (EHP) at your earliest convenience. You can ask for it in this group.
Get Liquid. Have Fun!
"If you spend your life just doing what other people tell you to do, it's not your life.
It's their life."
Sylvie Guillem
Visions for the Future
1. This is my plan of what I will do when I have 100 million euros. If any of the values and projects mentioned there atracts you, maybe you are the person with you I might want to collaborate with you. Let's have a call. Text me here.
2. I will create a fund pool where young adults can borrow money to begin their path of initiation into adulthood and also their path as a spaceholder for what turns them on.
It will be a fund for the purpose of financing education and initiation into adulthood for young people between the ages of 17 and 23. The application process itself will be a journey of transformation and experimentation. For those who wish to apply to receive the gift, there will be an interview to tune in the person's background and purpose, and then an acompaniment of experiments that build a matrix in the person to learn to "fish", such as "write your 100 million plan", create a gift with their hands and give it to someone, spend a month volunteering in a prison, or in an elderly home, or something like that... The experiments will depend on where the person is and the neecessity.
It is not about filling out a form and saying how committed you are. It is a journey where you become the commitment to your own path. The experiments that are offered along the way teach you to fish, not just give you a fish to feed now and the next day you start yourself.
3. I dream of a future where there are physical centers around the world for young people to come together to fall into, and shift from Moder Culture do Arquiachy. A place to empower each other to grow, to practice spaceholder, healing and game world builder skills, and to be with each other.
Do you have a piece of land or a house that needs a guardian and a steward? Are you available to lend your space for a few weeks to have the first "pancake", the first pilot of this project? Contact me. I have proposals to honor and use the land for a brighter future for humanity.