An International heartbeat

One of the things that fascinates me most about Damanhur is its “internationality”, or rather, the chance to meet many people from many different cultures. I know that there are areas of work, such as the tourism sector, which allow you to meet people of many nationalities, but I believe that, in reality, there are ways to “meet”, on a much deeper level. I do not refer to service or assistance, I speak, in this case, of a real meeting, in which something precious is transmitted from one human being to another.

It is much more than a courteous or useful gesture, it is instead a profound feeling that then remains permanently and changes you. I feel fortunate to be part of the staff of the “New Life” Program, the Temporary Citizens of Damanhur. There are some periods of the year when guests from all over the world decide to participate in the New Life program.

Thanks to this social experiment, it is possible to enter into the daily life of the Damanhurians for three months, learning about Damanhur in a practical way, before perhaps choosing to live here permanently. The group that is formed is always quite varied, however in this moment there are people in the program coming from four different continents: Canada, Israel, Italy, Holland and even from distant China!

This means that, in addition to not using your mother tongue language, because in the group English is mostly spoken, you come into contact simultaneously with many different cultures, habits and ways of thinking. The personal stories are many and very different from each other, of course creating many different characters. Our differences are manifested in the activities we do together and enrich us as if they were many colors of the same palette, sometimes they go together, other times they don’t blend so well.

My favorite moment is what we call our “heartbeat”, that is, when we meet each other once a week and share our impressions and reflections on how things are going, despite the problems with the language, since, for example, none of us speak Mandarin and our Chinese guests, do not speak Italian, nor do they speak English.
It is here that magic happens!

The result is that everyone opens their hearts and this makes it easier to communicate much more deeply than they could simply with words. You learn that culture, provenance, education and character are not fundamental when people open up and talk about their dreams and how they would like to change the world.
Despite linguistic limitations, gratitude is strongly felt in being able to contribute by bringing one’s vision to the others.

There is great willpower and great dedication that I feel in every participant and I feel it even more in this group, which is made up of obvious and great differences. Perhaps it is these differences that allow us to accept, with more simplicity, what is really important: to learn to let others contact us, to give some of our parts through sharing, an opening of the heart that welcomes feelings and makes them an integral part of us.

It is also thanks to the internationality of this group that I felt so deeply enriched and changed, it has been an opportunity to clearly understand that our geographical origin has no importance, because our hearts are all children of the same Earth.

Labrador