4 January 2010  ~ Damnahur

When I first heard the proposal for the gift giving challenge, I thought to myself, “That’s a great idea! I’m definitely going to do it. Wait ... What more can I possibly give?”

As a citizen of Damanhur, most all my energetic and financial resources already go toward helping others and supporting community projects. Communal living, civic service, environmental protection and ecological awareness are built into our daily structures and routines. The gift giving challenge has served to direct my attention toward the act of giving, reminding me that gift giving is an attitude and choice; it is consciously being in gratitude, as much as it is any particular action.

Responding to the first invitation to personally give money to a person or cause in need, I immediately thought of the Temple of Peoples. This new Temple is to be an extension of the Temples of Humankind, and it is the biggest dream and most urgent project of Damanhur in this moment. The Temple of Peoples shall serve as a container for the memory of the peoples on planet Earth, including the ones at risk of extinction and destruction. The new Temple is a meeting place of peace for representatives of peoples to come to Damanhur and have direct and authentic exchanges with one another. They shall then to return to their homelands around the world and create places of spiritual resonance in connection with the Temple.

I intended to ask my nucleo community about my gift contribution to the Temple, because as a new citizen, I share my resources and decide priorities with the others. In the mean time, a member of my community announced to all that she had made a contribution to the Temple of Peoples in our name. I immediately recognized the power of our interconnectedness. What began as my individual intention, silently and synchronistically became our collective action. I was gifted my gift giving wish!
One evening, my friend Mattia, also a new Damanhurian, waved me over and told me, “I want to ask for the name Toro (Bull).” In Damanhur, we take animal names as a playful way to symbolize transformation and to connect ourselves with animals, recognizing and protecting animal species. Part of this process involves asking others in the community for support in receiving the name by donating volunteer hours or contributing money, that then goes toward the Temples. After hearing the reasons for wanting the name Toro, I decided to support him. I decided how much money in this way: Toro/Taurus is an astrological sign ruled by Venus, which resonates with the number 6, so I offered him 6 Crediti (the Damanhur complementary currency unit) for the sake of numerological harmony.

I recognized that Toro was another opportunity to consciously give the gift of money. While my original intent was to give to the Temple of Peoples in support of our highest ideals and for sustaining the peoples of the world, finding that intention already fulfilled, I gave to Mattia in support of his spiritual growth and the deepening of his Damanhurianity, a contribution which will go towards maintaining the existing Temples.

For the community part of the gift giving challenge, seeing as how I already dedicate many, many hours of volunteer service within the context of Damanhur, my thought was to seek out those in need in the local community, in a homeless shelter or a senior citizen center. However, Vidracco is a little mountain town of 500, half of which are Damanhurians, and those types of institutions don’t exist here, as they do in large American cities. During these days of pondering how to stretch beyond my usual volunteer engagements, I received various requests. One was from Rondine, a Damanhurian who asked me for computer lessons as an exchange of some sort, as she doesn’t have the means to pay for them. I offered her a free lesson as a service gift. Another request came from Macaco, who had an urgent need for help making a flyer, to publicize the Gaia Education – Ecovillage Design Education course to be held in Damanhur next April and May. So, I made myself available to her New Year’s Day to edit the flyer and arrange the graphics.

My intention was to go into the unknown masses and seek out something brilliantly humanitarian to do. Although, like with Toro, the requests for help naturally came to me; I didn’t need to seek them out, combing the streets for desperate situations. I found that I can simply open and make myself available to those around me, whether by teaching spreadsheet skills and doing graphic design, or carrying a load of groceries and watching someone’s child.

On the world level, New Year’s Day was my designated day of minimum impact, which actually began New Year’s Eve. I celebrated with other Damanhurians and our Italian and international guests by working on the Temples of Humankind together, as is the tradition for New Year’s at Damanhur. So, one group of volunteers painted murals inside the Temples, and ours did traditional work outside. We made a line of people bundled in wool hats and heavy jackets and work gloves, passing heavy buckets of rock from hand to hand, in a human chain symbolizing the connection between us and the union of our diversity. We stayed warm with camaraderie, laughing and singing together in the final moments of 2009 with a spirit of joyful festivity and practical service. Near the stroke of midnight, we celebrated in the Temples with a ritual purification of the year, and with sacred music and dance.

I expanded the minimum impact intention to include acting in harmony with nature in a variety of ways Here are notes from my ecologically conscious day from that evening onward:

- Service-oriented celebration (constructing together on New Year’s Eve as an alternative to consumption-based partying)
- Zero-impact transportation (walking and turning down car rides offered)
- Living in harmony with nature and its cycles, including those of the body (setting out a basin of water in the light of the full moon to absorb its vibrations, awakening in the morning without an alarm clock and napping in the afternoon)
- Conscious electricity consumption (using lamps only after dark, reading instead of computer use)
- Minimizing water consumption (washing and bathing from the basin of moon water, minimizing toilet flushing)
- Conscious food consumption (eating food already available rather than making new purchases, eating only what is necessary for sustenance, eating raw vegan meals)
- Avoiding disposable products (bringing slippers to wear in the Temples, thereby avoiding the use of disposable plastic shoe covers, using cloth napkin and rags rather than paper ones, feeding food scraps to chickens, drying orange peels which the chickens don’t eat, recycling a plastic bag after reusing it to carry home the orange peels and food scraps)
- Wearing organic cotton and wool clothing
- Direct social interaction and communication (minimizing cell phone and computer use, spending the evening with my nucleo community family)
- Connecting with animals (being with the animals on our territory - chickens, sheep and horses; spotting two deer, meditating on the perfect animal name for me)
-  Communing with trees (going on a guided walk in the Sacred Woods and learning how to care for the trees – selective cutting to allow for healthy growth and underbrush, walking a spiral circuit and meditating with an ancient Oak)

I noticed that minimum impact ecological living can be quite simple. Doing so is more a matter of directing attention to each action and making conscious choices rather than drastic changes. Many ecologically-sound actions can be done quite easily, requiring no more time or energy than the consumptive ones.

Choosing to live in harmony with nature shifted me out of my routines, habits and frenetic pace of productivity, and it brought me into a space of being in the present moment. Acting from this awareness strengthened deep and sincere connections with the people of my community, with animals and nature spirits. I appreciate the abundance of our social, spiritual and material ecosystems, and it inspires me to continue giving with an open heart.

by giulietta giada chi
Damanhur
giadadamanhur [dot] it
www.damanhur.org