A DECLARATION OF INTENT BY - A. JOSEPH ROSADO

                   

THE BIRTH OF A VISION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The vision for the Milagro World Center was conceived in the Spring of 1997 at the Chalice Well and Peace Gardens, Glastonbury, United Kingdom. At the time, it was intentioned to be a vision of The Glastonbury World Center which received an abundance of attention but did not manifest. I remember countless hours of writing this document on an antique, one person school desk, that had a flip top and an inkwell. I used the inkwell for my 2’ x 12’ White Peace Candle. Every evening after my work day at the Chalice Well, I lit the candle and asked the Source for guidance. In candlelight only, I wrote deep into the night.

 

Here we are, twenty years later, and I am writing this note to you in the candlelight of a White Peace Candle with the intention to manifest The Milagro World Center in Chiriqui, Panama, Central America into the fullness of this vision.

 

Many thanks to a dear friend and former Trustee of the Chalice Well Trust, Barry Taylor, for his inspiration and guidance. The Glastonbury World Center is mentioned in Barry’s book  "A Pilgrim in Glastonbury". It is a great read! Barry’s latest book, "Creating Spiritually Inspired Projects" is a fixture on my desk as a point of reference.

 

Many thanks to Nina Patrick, Co-founder of the Milagro World Center. Nina is a beloved friend and a great partner in this journey.

 

I hope you will enjoy your future journey to The Milagro World Center as much as I have enjoyed protecting and journeying with this vision over the years.

 

Alfredo Joseph Rosado

 

VISION FOR THE WORLD CENTER 

 

The World Center is a holistic educational center in an earth-friendly environment that provides a diversified curriculum of education, cultural arts, healing arts and recreation. Facilitators and Presenters will include well-qualified holistic teachers, authors, musicians, artist, and other professionals from around the world.

 

It is a place to enliven, deepen and be inspired - a sacred space dedicated to profound learning.

 

The World Center is a place where truly memorable experiences enhance the well-being of body, mind, and spirit, and imprint themselves, on our subconscious. To give us back our feelings and our spirit, so that replenished, we may return to the ordinary things of our life and live them extraordinarily well.

 

It is an environment full of simple pleasures. A place where people can come to the realization of how important it is to take care of their temple (body, being), but also feel the importance of being in partnership with the land. To be completely immersed in a healing environment both physical and non-physical, to feel safe, cared for, and most importantly enjoy the eco-sustainable manner in which this healing complex is created, and would educate current and future leaders, designers, policy makers, corporate and community citizens- with the vision and processes needed to replicate and achieve anywhere in the world a sustainable place of healing, while seeking to define humanity’s meaningful, rightful and responsible place in the natural world.

 

This Complex is a great example in the creation of a place where people can also come to experience and educate themselves with the knowledge of how to care for their body and spirit once back home. They will also see and feel, first-hand, the importance of how architecture can enable complete harmony with nature.

 

 “The Universal Soul is the alone creator of the useful and the beautiful… Here the omnipotent agent is Nature… the representative of the universal mind.” - Emerson

 

Understanding and Quality of Life

 

Understanding is the process of learning more about the nature of reality, more about us, and about our place within that reality. True the Center is not a location it is a state of mind. It is not a destination it is a journey to wisdom and joy.

 

The Architecture

 

The concept is to create an environment that’s built with health - giving intent, a place with organic responsible architecture where conditions are ideal for healing and spiritual growth. Architecture has such profound effects on the human being, on place, on human consciousness, and ultimately on the world. Architecture has responsibilities to minimize pollution and ecological damage. It also has responsibilities to minimize adverse biological effects on occupants. It has the responsibility to be sensitive to and act harmoniously in the surroundings.

 

Responsibilities to the human individualities who will come in contact with the buildings, responsibilities not only in the visual aesthetic sphere and the outer senses but also to the intangible but perceptible Spirit of Place.

 

These responsibilities involve the careful selection of building materials and the ways they are put together. This attitude of responsibility involves putting away stylistic or individualistically-enhancing preferences in favor of listening to what the place, the moment, and the community are asking.

 

This design process needs to continue right through construction. This depends on hand construction. This may sound unrealistically out of date, but the fact is that mechanical systems do not have sufficient flexibility. The growing building cannot be flexible when potential benefits or short- comings become apparent. Hand construction gives textured scale, for instance with bricks, slates, or wood instead of large mechanically erected panels. Where opportunities exist for the builders to become artistically involved in their work, such buildings have a distinct soul even before they are occupied. The buildings in the complex will be intimate with nature. They will be created lovingly and artistically in every detail.

The method of construction and form of contract, therefore have a bearing on the spirit of the buildings quite apart from its appearance.

 

The design should not conflict with the stream of the past, everything that has contributed to the present, but not old fashion or imitative. Places that are inspired out of the future. The worlds of ideas, ideals, inspiration and imagination, but still have their foot in the reality of the present moment, for the present, however, inspired by the future is built upon the past. Past and future need each other: the past informs and the future inspires.

 

The spirit of place can develop because of, not despite, the building.

 

The Building and Landscape Architecture

 

This will be a great factor in the ambiance and uniqueness of the complex. There is an increasing awareness of the importance in the quality of our surroundings. The colors and materials used in modern buildings affect our well-being, as do shapes, size, and proportions of our homes and cities. For the most part, architects and planners have forgotten that our environment should not only be aesthetically attractive, but the scale has an important effect on us physically and psychologically. To build this center is to create an environment of peace, calm and serenity which is a replica of our mother’s womb. It is a place where we can leave the world, safe from any external dangers.

 

 “He alone is an artist whose hands can execute perfectly what his mind has conceived” – Michelangelo

 

The Welcoming Hall 

 

This structure will house all offices to do with, reception and customer service, administration, accounting, marketing and advertising, programs and events, and the orientation suites.

 

The Welcoming Hall will be the main entrance to the facility and will need to present a definite entrance to mark the transition from worldly cares and evoke a welcoming and enthusiastic attitude to the public. On arrival, the visitors will have the first impressions as to sanctity of place and the importance of the visit to themselves.

 

Creating this special atmosphere will entice visitors to be more open to all that is available to them in the Center. 

 

It is therefore vital that all individuals working in this facility need to embody the ideals of the Center. Through its design, the Welcoming Hall will express the feel and intent of the complex.

 

The Orientation Suites

 

The purpose of the “Orientation Suites”, are for coordinating all the services offered by the Centre, and for answering all questions pertaining to the vast variety of services, and programs offered etc.

 

It is very important that the decor gives the impression of comfort, safety, and well-being, as well as the friendly and a knowledgeable Services Coordinator who welcomes the guest. A combination of these elements will immediately transform the guest to a relaxed and peaceful frame of mind.

 

From a wellness point of view this is the time when the guest chooses an array of programs, services, events, etc.  Having a knowledgeable, caring, staff member assist in explaining the different services available, and recognizing the needs of the guest, will go a long way towards making the experience a pleasant, positive and long lasting one.

 

The Sanctuary of Sleep - Accommodations

 

This magnificent healing complex will offer environmentally sound and healthy accommodations ‘luxurious in their simplicity’ within intimate sacred gardens where fountains, pools, tubs, waterfalls, and exotic flora, create tranquil and healing atmospheres.

 

This rejuvenating haven of tranquility is where you arrive after a day of exploring exotic unthought-of possibilities. This sanctuary will be a harmonious rest/sleep environment. Beds will be monarch size with the best orthopedic mattresses ensuring a restful sleep.

 

The accommodations will be simple in design each with plenty of light and decorated in the most eloquent colors and textures, so to increase the feeling of well-being.

 

“For the Sanctuary of Sleep Still Remains the Ultimate Healer and Restorer”

 

The Bath Experience- Sweet Surrender

 

All accommodations will have unique, upscale bathrooms with large luxurious bathtubs. Beautiful picture windows allow the natural radiance of the sun and the moon to enter, and giving a picture view into the private tropical garden.

 

This is the sanctum where tensions are dispelled in a miasma of scented water, a completely relaxing refuge where you can sing at the top of your voice or lap up the silence in peace and tranquility.

 

The Sacred Garden

 

The eyes of the soul are awakened by the lovely songs of the garden. A garden captivates us with its richness of life and promise of growth and change. Each garden will speak a special dialogue, a unique sound, each with its own message of love and beauty. Gardens shelter, protect, soothe and nourish us, and it’s not a stretch to say that in doing so, they can heal us.

 

Joseph’s Table – The Culinary Pavilion

 

The kitchen is the soul of the center, where culinary alchemy enthusiastically creates healthy festive dishes for your delight. Feast on organic wholesome, satisfying, and extraordinarily flavorful Spa Cuisine.

 

The salad bar will offer an amazing selection of organic produce grown for the café by those involved with “The Milagro Farm Project” a work-study program, on learning to farm organically.

 

The Spa Chefs will go to great extent to give you plenty of delicious food that’s wholesome, flavorful with as little as possible fat content.

 

The Bakery

 

Bread was certainly a holy food for the Ancient Egyptians. For the early Celts, any form of grain was a gift from the Corn Mother, and the bread they made was not only food but a fertility object and good luck amulet. Still to this day bread is looked upon as sacred food for the soul. Just think of the smell of freshly baked bread when you walk into a bakery!

 

The Bakery on the premises will have the freshest wholesome bread, muffins, pastries, biscuits, cakes. Special whole grain thin crust pizzas can be created with the best of toppings from the organic garden. Special care will be taken to ensure that fat and calories will be simply at the minimum and of course always with the best of organic grains and flours.

 

The Sanctuary- The Architecture of Peace

 

A creation of living, silent, architecture, with the qualities being, gentle, unobtrusive, tranquil, eternal, and embracing the spiritual dimension.

 

A place of healing silence, a place with the qualities of sacred silence that is accessible for all, not just Globetrotters and pilgrims, but especially for those who lack the outer or inner means. A place we can go to find silence, a place of contemplation, prayer and reflection, a place of the soul.

 

“The contemplative waits in silence and when he or she is ‘answered’, it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by this silence itself suddenly, inexplicably, revealing itself to him as a word of great power.” ~ Thomas Merton

 

The Labyrinth

 

Details of the Labyrinth are on a separate document.

 

The Communal-Pavilion

 

This is an age of information where information comes to us in many ways, television, computers, etc. I believe there is far more to world knowledge that can be found through television, and the Internet.

 

Books proffer a kaleidoscopic world of discovery with more depth and far more room for personnel creative, imaginative input and emotional involvement.

In today’s world, we are losing the personal touch by using computers and other technology to communicate. We can forget what our family members and friends look and sound like. We become reclusive and slaves of technology. I am not saying that this technology is not important. I am saying that places as this around the world will offer us the opportunity of personal interaction, interaction with nature, and most importantly a time to refresh.

 

 

The Communal building is a place created for the knowledge that is afforded through conversation. Also, knowledge and information will be available via the extensive little library of books that will be donated to the complex by many of the relevant authors and publishers of today.

 

A place of cool quiet conversation, a meeting place where the etiquette welcomes you to share your experiences or just sink in and enjoy a good book.

 

Services and Bodywork

 

A wide range of holistic modestly priced therapies will be offered.

The programs attend to the individuals needs holistically, while providing personalized attention for each guest. The list of services offered will be according to the guidelines and theme of the location.

 

Bodywork Outdoor Studios

 

Nestled in secluded areas around this tropical oasis, individual Casitas will be available for those guests who prefer their bodywork (massage, reflexology, etc.) in the ambiance of the outdoors, which will make for an extremely pleasant experience.

                                                                        

The Heart Rhythm Pavilion Cultural Arts, Yoga, and Movement

 

This structure of creative eloquence will embrace many functions.

 

Nine large workshop rooms, which include, a sound-proof music room, a well-equipped room for art, two great rooms for large events, and two smaller rooms for yoga and movement and conferences.

 

The programs will be designed to promote the education, creativity, community, understanding, appreciation and the enjoyment of life through the Arts.

 

“When our eyes see, our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of creation is completed inside us the doors of our souls fly open and love steps forth to heal everything in sight” ~ Michael Bridge

 

The Little Shop

 

Located adjacent to the Communal-Library building and/or Joseph’s Table. Here you will find 'The Little Shop' where you will find a surprisingly large range of interesting and unusual books, jewelry, music, flower essences, aromatherapy, cards, craft items, and a full selection of spa essentials to take home with you so you can continue the Spa Life at home.

 

The shop will also carry a variety of works from local and global artisans and other items with relevance to healing and well-being that are not listed on this document.

 

The Residential Center

 

We intend to supply this demand with the construction of 15-20 environmentally friendly homes for short and long term rental. Accommodations will also be constructed for our visiting clients who will be attending courses and retreats.

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