Young People Growing Up E-Book

Stambecco Pesco

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 58

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

How do Damanhurian educate their children?

 According to what values? 

What does it mean to guide them towards their future choices?

 This is the story of what it means to be parents living in a community, seeking and finding formulae to help their children be happy and independent.



Damanhur, with more than forty years of history and thousands of followers all over the world, is a social and spiritual experience that has a lot of stories to share with the reader.

“Damanhur Con Te” represents a way to collect them and tell them so that you can take away with you a small piece of the wisdom – or the foolishness, it depends on how you look at it – that has led us in this adventure.

Leseprobe

DAMANHUR CON TE Series

YOUNG PEOPLE GROWING UP

Stambecco Pesco (Silvio Palombo)

Translation: Beira (Tiziana Redoni) and David Sutcliffe

First English Edition DEVODAMA srl, Vidracco (TO), Italy

ISBN 978-88-943270-5-2

COPYRIGHT 2018© MIL Associazione di Promozione Sociale.

The current volume was created by the Associazione di Promozione Sociale MIL as part of the activities and functions of the statute.

All rights reserved. No part of this work can be reproduced in any form without the express written authorization of the publisher, except for brief texts to be used in reviews.

Printed April 2018

The writer Stambecco Pesco (Silvio Palombo) has published, among other volumes, Falco Tarassaco, the Dream, the Message and the comic books The Stories of Damanhur: The Chest of Memories and Checkmate to Time. In this collection, he has written What Damanhurians Believe In?, A Temple in the Green, Alien Bestiary.

Young people growing up

children’s education in the federation of communities

Damanhur’s children, de facto citizens

Anyone who takes a stroll around Damjl – the first Damanhurian community – during a planned stay or a Sunday afternoon visit, is going to see many signs of toddlers and children: bicycles, balls, toys left about and a small but fully equipped playground. (This applies too, to a lesser or greater extent, to all Damanhurian territories.) If in Damjl you keep on walking and pass by the areas where the teenagers live, more than a state of untidiness it will be the decibels of blaring stereos that betray the presence of young people, not to mention their choice of music, a long stretch – shall we say – from the Music of the Plants that adult Damanhurians like to listen to.

At the present time, around six hundred people live in Damanhur, ten percent of whom are the offspring of Damanhurian citizens.

These range from the new-born to those who are well into adulthood, who live in the Federation of Communities, although not necessarily through deliberate personal choice of life path.

Damanhur’s philosophy is one of life and living, not simply study or philosophical inquiry, in which every aspect of existence is included; thus, the presence of children and young people is an integral part of the lives of all its citizens, both the immediate parents and those who “become” parents through the experience of others.

Many of the children were actually born in Damanhur: in fact, many Damanhurian women chose to become mothers by giving birth at home, where this was possible – in the early years thanks to the help from midwives from nearby towns, and subsequently with the aid of Damanhurian obstetricians, as new professionals joined the community. Other children were born in the local hospitals, when the prognosis made this advisable; still others arrived here, more or less grown up, along with their parents.

The children are welcomed in the community as de facto citizens: they form a vital part of it, involved as they are in the extended communitarian family, in the relationship with the territory and the environment, in the running of the nucleos and in all aspects of everyday life. They do not form part of the body of intentional citizens – those who have chosen to live their lives within the project – nor they take part in the spiritual choices of their parents but they have the opportunity to participate in all the major celebrations such as the Solstices and Equinoxes, and thus feel included in the world they live in.

Once they reach adulthood, they decide what to do with their lives, depending on what kind of personal dreams they want to fulfill: become self-sufficient, form a family of their own, complete their studies, etc. Consequently, some may decide to leave Damanhur, others may decide to become citizens. In both cases they leave their parents’ home. The objective of Damanhurian education is in fact to develop self-sufficient individuals, connected to a comprehensive reading of life and its meaning, able to make their own independent choices assuming responsibility for their own lives. When a son or daughter of Damanhurians decides to become a Damanhurian in their turn, this is cause for rejoicing for the whole community – however, if instead they choose to follow a different path this is to be celebrated too... since it means that the educational foundations laid have allowed the young person to become independent and able to guide his or her own future.

Children and young people are bonded in the first place with their natural parents; nonetheless, Damanhurian citizens have always looked very carefully at the implementation of shared upbringing and education, both from the point of view of contents and the structures in place.

Educational activities frequently involve the children of non-residential Damanhurians also, that is, the citizens who do not live in a nucleo but participate in the life of the community, as well as those of the many visitors who come to Damanhur for more or less long periods; all this makes for greater complexity and a very broad range of possibilities.

The objective

Damanhur’s Constitution states: Damanhurian citizens set up the best possible environment for the birth and the development of their children, both from a spiritual and social point of view, and to that end they favor birth programming. Through the implementation of shared pedagogical guidelines, they educate children to become autonomous and free individuals by giving them the necessary tools to express and develop their own talents and strengths. All resident citizens take part in educating, supporting and caring for the children.1

After more than forty years of history and so many experiences, what emerges as the distinctive trait of Damanhurian education? First it is necessary to say what is not.

Our children are not educated either by their parents or by the school, or the nucleos, to become Damanhurians when they are adults. “Breeding Damanhurians” would not be respectful towards the children themselves and, moreover, would be inconsistent with those principles of Damanhur that focus on individual choice and the use of one’s own free will as the basis of one’s spiritual freedom. We do not wish our children to accept Damanhur, we are very happy when we see that they choose Damanhur as their parents did in the past.

So, all the resources and the energy spent by Damanhurians in educating their children – those born in the community as well as those who arrive here with their parents – do not have the aim of shaping their future.

Damanhurian education sees its objective as allowing the children to live a serene, full, free and mindful life, starting as young individuals who, in time, will become mature adults and then elderly. We do not live fully only as adults, and childhood or adolescence are not ages spent in preparation for a future life, they are life already, even with the limitations arising from incomplete development and consequent inexperience.