19th December 2016. Open Day in Stafer. A moment of reflection and discussion. Pachamama is projected. Therefore, the meeting with its director, Thomas Torelli.
Moments of Restitution
There are moments when we all gather and are held together by invisible and intangible forces which exist and, for this very reason, on these occasions, they are felt as truly strong.
There are moments when people experiment and touch with their hands they are part of a community and of a whole thing. Everyone has his own value as he is an element of a totality existing thanks to the contribute of every part. Unique, particular, that cannot be reproduced.
In these moments, we are all perceptive: our senses are open and we have capability and will to comprehend. In these very situations, a good thing to do is restitution. We are in Stafer, all here, and the restitution today, 19th December, is the one of the School of the Territory, which associated the territory to its excellences stoked with interest, knowledge, curiosity. A laboratory of dialogue, reflections, learning, which brought the participants to grow together and bring the territory to grow with them, too. In fact, experiences change and make us change. They bring value, in every sense. The video of the School of the Territory shew the most intensive and emotional moments and made us feel all the spontaneity of its authenticity and truth. Exactly how we wanted it to be.
A New Direction
“Daddy, do you know what is the most marvelous thing in life?”
“Your daddy?”
“No, daddy, it is not. It’s living.”
When you apply this kind of logic, then you are not following standard logic, the one we intend as a rigid mental discipline: you are just beyond. You draw feelings from the space of heart, life as joy and as resource of value, as it is.
Thomas Torelli, after his documentary Pachamama ended, leaves us with this reflection. Moreover, he adds: “Time is the one of mind, of heart and of emotions.” He continues and tells us time should reconnect us with nature and not follow purely human conventions built upon and about nature. Finally, he expresses his point of view in this way: “The man of this millennium is ready to inaugurate a new direction. The one of another world”.
Listening to these words can produce a small revolution in us: we all would have guessed we were thinking of the same thing, but only in this moment – when we have heard it – we have complete awareness of this. We think all the questions we were asking to ourselves had a lacking answer and this words are their real answer: actually, not only these ones. We are ready to talk, at this point, of Pachamama.
Pachamama. Mother Heart. A documentary of Thomas Torelli, who communicates in a committed and determined way his vision of the world. His message arrives to us in a limpid, clear, direct way.
The capability to communicate without filters, the talent to build a complex, fragmentary even though cohesive, message, intertwined with the voices of experts and persons who bring their own charge of emotional enrichment to the problem which Torelli would like to face: Mother Earth.
To Be Men Among Men
Before Pachamama was projected, a video of Velasco teaches something to ourselves. His words are illuminating, they are like a truth we have never thought before. Velasco talks about metaphors and talks with metaphors. The positions in volleyball are roles exactly as the roles everyday are up to us and to the others. He narrates to us what happens in the details: everyone has his own role, everyone restitutes to others and to himself the best when performing a determined role. You cannot solve everything is simple, but what is up to you, whatever it could be. This is team working, but also a community and an organization: every time someone performs his role as his duty. He then solves harmony for everyone and of everyone. This means, in a wide sense, how to be men.
To Be or Not to Be
What does having faith in oneself mean? A second video from Walk the Line, (2005), about the story of Johnny Cash. We are caught by the force of metaphor through images. Johnny Cash, absolute idol, during his audition. With his band, he sang their songs in front of a label owner. A total flop. The label owner gave a new possibility to him. He advised him to sing something he really felt, something he would sing if he knew it was his last chance of living. The faith should be in ourselves.
Therefore, Johnny Cash changed the song he was performing and sang what he really believed in. He believed so strongly in that song that when he started singing it no one played with him, but then the other musicians followed him and his melody. This is the sense in having faith and this is believing. Being is the capability to create a direction and share it. Following one’s own direction, then others will follow.
Pachamama
A plot made by different points of view, increasing around a strong and urgent theme, about which we all are making questions that often do not seem to find an answer. Many are the explanations about nature, our mother, which today many scientists study in a technical and mechanistic way like if it was something separated from us, cold and simply organic. When nature, we all know this, is Life. Exactly as we are.
Reflections held together by virtuous connections, circularity of approaches which, even though different, show in the end a unique conclusion, unanimous, above the same line. A theologist, experts from the American native cultures, and, not only them, but all the researchers involved testify their intense worrying, not only for our planet, but especially for man.
Images narrate. They answer questions deeply treasured in ourselves.
The western history is made of conquests: if it is true that to every action leads to another, everything returns in the way it was, inverting the mechanism and directing it conversely. This is the story. The present, for many ways, shows its absurd. What happens in the macro dimension, also happens in the micro dimension: this is a cosmic law, too. The electromagnetic field around the sun becomes tenuous and our way of thinking becomes weaker, too: we can see what we can call a fall of intensity occurs. Macro phenomenon which resonates in the micro dimension.
Therefore, the focus is moved over the work which today is an instrument of repression where the worker should contemporarily be full of initiative and obedient, experimenting an evident contradiction which generates pathology, but the present anthropological type is glad to be unhappy. The reason is in this way he is similar to everyone he knows. The crisis is an expedient serving to make anxiety grow: its functions contributes to keep people obedient. Western civilization is this: according to the director, there is no possibility to take another direction. What is necessary to leave behind this absurd is a new moral paradigm which shows how the sense of life lies in correlations. We should invert the terms: upsetting the existing paradigms. We need earth, but the earth does not need us. We belong to earth: earth does not belong to us.
What is Time?
We adopt categories which have an Aristotelian origin. This is a convention, but reality is only one. Many phenomenons are inexplicable and are what the native American called sacred: we try to explain and understand everything.
Time for Maya populations was cyclical: it repeated according to a circular concept of harmony. Harmony is when everything is in tune and in correlation, when mankind and nature are in relation between them and with the cosmic order, too.
This awareness of everything in correlation with everything in the western civilization has been lost: everything is linear, separated, we are similar to God and we demand rights over what had been created. Religion and science broke this awareness.
This very awareness is the one we should recover: the circular thought, the harmony, which connects all the living creatures.
In this case, according to this new paradigm, who is the other different from me? The other is me in the mirror, he is another me. This is the time to invert progress: recovering spare time in a strong sense and use it to look around to gain new awareness.
We should define again what happiness is, we should reinvent peace, change the way to reason and to be. Most of all, we should walk in the beauty: which gives order to things and to our mind.
Man got lost from himself: he must be aware to be part of a whole thing. A necessary whole thing, of which we are parts.
What is Perfection?
Only this deep awareness will lead man to get saved. Getting saved is the only getaway from this present of ecological and human impasse.
Thomas Torelli, after he talked to us with his images, answers to a question. It is particularly interesting to know in which ways he manages to apply his awareness to his everyday life. If we know this, we can learn by him. For the reason that we all need concreteness and concreteness means also giving to us a small book of instructions to change this truth in something we can really feel tangible.
Thomas tells us to consider everything is perfect as it is. What exists is perfect. Being aware is changing paradigm. We need to go beyond, as children do. Letting it go. Convincing ourselves everything is marvelous, exactly as we see it.
