kalaya (space)
Junctures (Now)
Almost three-years into stewarding this space that has initiated me into devotional guardianship, aka the Greenhouse Theatre / Kalaya Wellness space, I am at a beautiful juncture of clarifying by the end of June if it is still in divine & soul alignment to steward this space.
With the fullest trust that if I am meant to continue to steward the space, I will meet aligned co-stewards, I call you in if you are there! And if it is time for me to let go of this responsibility, I am here for this emancipation of my beloved bb with infinite love
But wait…. before all this, there is story that desires to be shared around the space and its birthing! That being said, if you wanna dive straight to the invitation I am extending for co-stewardship , go all the way down love 💗
Beginnings | Clearings
I remember crying profusely - deep, cortisol-liberating tears from the recesses of my lymph - many, many times in the months leading up to the birthing of the Kalaya / Greenhouse space in September 2021
That year marked heartbreak, transitions from a beautiful, intense, challenging relationship that left me feeling raw, hurt, and humbled by love, yet in deep gratitude for how love rewilds us to the deeply somatic and human phenomena known as * * feeling * * - lol - what so many of us desire yet paradoxically try to avoid at the same time.
2021 also marked the year I moved back to my childhood home in Scarborough after 7+ years of living in Montreal/Tio’tiah:ke and then other parts of T’karon:to after moving back in 2015 to the original lands stewarded by Six-Nations (Haudenosaunee), Anishinaabek , Wendat, Petun, and Seneca nations. In the process, I experienced a series of traumatic living situations that also invited me to recognize/mourn parts of myself that fetishized trauma, a part of myself I was being invited to liberate myself through…
I now realize that all the mourning that year leading up to securing the space was making way for the profound clearing required for birthing this bb
Entering the Space
As soon as I entered the space, I knew this was it ! I was ready to commit to pursuing it even though on some perceived material/financial level it felt “impractical” and certainly in need of deep renovation. Yet my gut interdimensional self knew to listen to the deep knowing that this bb - a short walk from the childhood home I had just returned to - was undeniably the space I was seeking. Within a few weeks I was in the process of securing the space with the support of my parents who helped me put down first & last month’s rent while I applied for a loan from Futurpreneur & BDC that I would later receive to support renovations.
Amidst major financial initiations - including encountering major renovation surprises that prompted me to launch a fundraiser to support the space - kin, ancestors, and family support ushered the bb thru the birth canal by December 2021. Infinite gratitude to all those who offered sacred support - emotionally, financially, spiritually - during that time 💗
Land | Deep History
The space has been an interdimensional compass to the superlocal area of my birth and upbringing. A few months into moving in, I worked with a practitioner I have continued to work with over the years - Amanda of the Guardian Ones - and through a facilitated clearing of the space, we confirmed something I had already felt/sensed through various experiences - that the land surrounding the space (formally/colonially known as Milliken neighbourhood of Scarborough) is imprinted with deep memory of particularly violent expressions of genocide (as with many parts of Turtle Island).
In coming into relational awareness of this, I have felt a deeper sense of care and co-responsibility to this space and neighbourhood I was raised in, and it has a been a place of deepening relationship to ritual and kinship with the ancestors of my lineage and of the land to support all our relational and interdependent healing in both human and beyond-human ways
Salamat to all those who have co-created with the space 🙏🏽
The space has stewarded so much life, love, and kinship, hosting events throughout the years including/not limited to galactic open mics, tagalog meditation, bipoc healing arts markets, the current cosmoverse music residency, the launch for filpino farmers in Tkaronto Zine, the Tkaronto book launch for Home is in the Body, and many a full/new moon circle including last year’s full moon batik with Dhiv,
The space is also a beyond-anthropocentric event space - that is, ancestors, elemental relatives, mycellical relatives (mushrooms have spontaneously grown in one of the spider plants!), and relatives across species and dimensions gather here too lol. In the winters I have been away for 2-3 months in the motherlands, while the rent wasn’t necessarily paying for human healing activity, I sense that there were beyond-human events happening for the highest good of all beings!
Broader Context
Relatedly, part of the reason the time is now for this clarification of stewardship is that there is a parallel path in the motherlands that calls me to be there with deeper presence soon.
I am attuning to a call in motherlands to listen to/embody a purpose/instruction that has been in my awareness since 2014 when I first sat in Vipassana - a call to steward a land-based space in service of silence, sweating, fasting, and ritual theatre, all practices that have supported so deeply in summoning me back to my original instructions
In this calling, part of the ask is to be in the motherlands for longer in the coming year(s) and to save up finances to support the birthing of this ancestral bb. I am planning to share more about this space in my next blog, as I also prepare to return to the Pinas unanticipatedly quite soon 🙏🏼
Co-Steward Call-In
If you are curious about being a co-steward of the space, email me (innegration @ gmail .com) and we can have tea here for us to sense into alignment, and to explore a practical overview of the financial collaboration invited.
If it’s meant to align it will and it not, it won’t! So easy in all the ways
What I currently feel called to explore - while I am also open to hearing if there may be other types of alignment that are reciprocally supportive (I have been thinking about configurations like co-working spaces for example) - is co-stewardship with 1-2 artists/healers or artist groups on part-time basis (10 days a month) or perhaps in a more shared and overlapping non-isolated way
If you are an artist/artist collective and it feels mutually aligned to explore, I am also open to supporting you to write grants that will contribute to your space rental or programming from the space, something I have successfully supported before
Finally, I feel called to share that if you feel a Spirit/Source nudge to explore this call of co-stewardship while questioning “Where will the money come from?” - let me tell you, if you are meant to be a co-steward to the space, the material support will make its way to you in divine time. I know this because I have experienced it again and again
🌊
Salamat & Infinite Love
