Council Gamma, support sector
May 2001

Workshop

The sense of mental lucidity
  
Aim: This workshop aims at reflecting on the necessity of mental lucidity starting from the acknoledgement of suffering as an useful alarm bell that something does not work.
  
Game: ( of relation ) blind fly in couples; like the usual one but this is played arm in arm and in couples ( the ones that are bandaged and the ones that have to be recognised ), these last couples are decided after bandaging  the first ones, that will have to recognize who are the two that have been caught.
  
Introduction:
Today we will treat a topic of vital importance that includes all of us: the topic of suffering, where it comes from and how overcoming it.
  
Reading:
Hunger, thirst, sickness, and all bodily  injury  are pain. Fear, frustration, despair, and all mental hurt are suffering. Physical pain recedes in the measure that society and science advance. Mental suffering recedes in the measure that faith in life advances, in the measure that life gains meaning.  

What is it mental suffering (not to be confused with pain)? What do you experiment as mental suffering?
(everybody gives examples that can be written on a placard, the conductor helps to distinguish suffering from pain)  
  
We can define suffering as the alarm’ signal that warns us that in our life there is something that doesn't work; suffering has often been interpreted as a test to face in order to grow or to strengthen,; we simply believe that suffering is the  alarm’ signal that warns us that we are unhappy and that it is therefore necessary to change something in our life. It is just changing what makes us suffering that allows us to grow, the signal of this growth is given by overcoming suffering, i.e. when we overcome our unhappiness, and we start feeling an agreement with ourselves and with others, when, practically, we feel happier, and the alarm’ signal is not activated.  
  
We make an example to understand what we have said.  
Do imagine a lighted candel… if you get close to the candle you ‘ll surely get to the point in which you are obliged to remove your hand. Is there something that tells you to remove your hand? What’s that? ….pain. What would happen if you didn’t feel pain?…your hand would burn; we can then say that pain cannot be disregarded because it preserves bigger damages. If that alarm’ signal were somehow disarmed, the consequences would be dramatic.  
  
Let’s now take one of the suffering we’ve listed (for example loneliness). Is it a psychological theory, a moral law, mummy that tells us what ‘s wrong in loneliness?
It’s the feeling of suffering: thanks to the fact that I feel pain I’ll try to get out of that situation. But what would happen if , like in an anesthetized or hypnotical state, I didin’t recognize that alarm bell? I wouldn’t recognise what  harms me, I could believe that "everything is all right" and damages would be even worse.! I would not recognize my difficulty to move towards others, to open myself, to give and to accept help; I wouldn’t recognize the difficulty to communicate, to grow together with others, to build together, etc. etc…. not recognizing these difficulties, I would not do anything to overcome them, and they will end up becoming even worse: incapability, impotence, marginalisation, mental  and physical illnesses, self-destruction. (besides this example, you can choose another form of suffering, among those listed above, and try to see the consequences of it  if we would not recognise that it hurts… till the extreme consequences)  

Synthetizing : If I do not recognize my suffering or if I prefer not to recognize it, I will go straigth towards what scares me more, I “ will internally burn”! 
  
Therefore we say that suffering is a signal we’ve got to take into account. From this point of view each person that suffers , that is depressed, is in the best conditions to choose whether changing direction to his/her life, or not; he/she has got the possibility of giving more answers, to decide to remove his/her hand or not!
Being aware of this can save our life.   
  
GAME:  Composed statue (in groups of 10 -15)  
  
Like an anesthesia would prevent me from realising that my hand is burning , equally it is possible to anesthetize the conscience.  
  
What can produce this anesthesia of the conscience?  
(people look  together for the factors of anesthesia  that are then listed on another placard)  
  
It oddly seems  that tools don't miss: Drug, Alcohol, Psychotropic drugs, etc., are at every corner. How do you explain yourself so much "offer"? Who earns with it and why?  
(the participants try to find answers to these questions, all together)  
  
This fear and the tools to disconnect it without facing it have an origin and precise responsible.  
  
READING
(one or more participants are invited to read aloud, standing on a chair or a table or a bench or a desk! It has to be striking, sensational.)

  
WHO ARE THE REAL RESPONSIBLE
In an inhuman and violent system that exerts on us the most alienating values of the human spirit, i.e. violence and the imposition of money as the way to reach happyness. If happyness is reached thorugh accumulating richness and  possessing things, where people end ? People  as well are being transformed in things  by the system, transformed in object, in numbers! It is clear that social relationships have crushed and this obviously brings to a condition of loneliness that the majority of people feels without doubt. For the first time we live in a century in which  
In an inhuman and violent system that exerts on us the most alienating values of the human spirit, i.e. violence and the imposition of money as the way to reach happyness. If happyness is reached thorugh accumulating richness and  possessing things, where people end ? People  as well are being transformed in things  by the system, transformed in object, in numbers! It is clear that social relationships have crushed and this obviously brings to a condition of loneliness that the majority of people feels without doubt. For the first time we live in a century in which all points of the planet are in communication; we have never had so much technology to solve the most primitive problems as hunger, thirst, unemployment, poverty and war ; yet the most powerful people for their convenience persist to divide the world between "developed and under-developed."   
Everything is handled by the religion of Money God that dominates the direction of events, from nations to the individual, that feeling himself/herself as an object, and seeing others as objects too,  plans his/her life believing that the meaning of  life is to relax when he/she comes back from work or school.   
I suffer because I live in a system that exerts violence on us reaching the most intimate part of ourselves; a system in which I and the people around me count everyday less.   
I suffer because we are being pushed at taking away value to every topic related with the meaning of the life.   
But how can I  be happy and master of my future, of my life, if I turn my head on the other side?  
  
GAME: circle of the trust (circles of 6 + 1 at the center)  
  
If I am not lucid, I will go straight toward what a violent system wants from me, straight toward what scares and bewilders me most.  
If I want to be happy it will be convenient not to run away from suffering but to recognize it in order to be able to overcome it.  
  
I invite you to realize some brief experiences of imagination:  
  
First experience: contact with suffering
Close your eyes and let images rise, images of your every day life, at school…, at home…, with your family…, with your friends…, 
how is it going recently at school…, at home…, with the family…with friends… 
since when?… 
and if things do not change in future? 
That everyone asks him/herself: with the elapsing of life happyness or suffering are growing inside me? Do not define these words. Answer on the grounds of what you feel…
  
Interchange
In groups of 4 – 5 people try to define in which situations you don't see future and how much disconnection and escaping from these situations weigh in this lack of future, besides the usual difficulties in these situations. 
  
Comments: If we are awake and lucid we can recognise all this, we can feel ourselves, perceive if  things inside are all right or not,  so we can choose whether to remove "the hand" from the fire. If we are hypnotized or anesthetized, we won't feel ourselves or we will feel ourselves in a distorted fake and exasperated way, we will not think with clarity; like the candle burns my hand if I don't feel it, not recognising the reasons of  my suffering or not wanting to recognise them will bring me to a greater damage!   
  
Second experience: Contact with happiness
I close the eyes, and I try to remember the best moment of my life...   

Interchange
The participants (all together) are invited  to answer to the following questions with examples of images and feelings  that have risen during the experience: 
Did you remember situations in which you felt a certain faith in yourself, or in another person, or in the relationship, or in the situation in which you where? 
Did you find yourself in the possibility of doing things, practically ?
As if you could breathe very well, as if your chest got wider ? 
Do you then have a bright image of that situation?
  
Conclusions: In that situation there is future, things can be done, you can count on the other.   
In that image there is strength, such a strength there that even today, perhaps after many years, who has succeeded in recalling that image well, was able to experiment a conversion of his/her state of mind.   

Third experience: contact with the world

I feel that my body is calm, my mind quiet and my heart in peace…
I let that the best feelings flow in my breast…
I remember the best feelings of my life...  
I evoke this feeling of deep and true joy that, expanding from my breast, invades my body, my heart and my mind as in a fertile valley where snows dissolved by the sun arrive...  
I feel this joy and faith in life like a fire caressing me...  
I feel my breast, my heart like open doors toward the world from equal to equal...  
I have the precise feeling that life is something marvelous that I can feel in my being...  
Then I listen to the clear and serene voice of my Guide that invites me to meditate:  
"Measure with the heart and you will see if your actions correspond to what you feel...  
Love yourself and you will love others...  
Communicate your experience, only your experience...  
Respect what you feel, only what you feel... 
Your being is a instrument that has infinite strings, let your actions be a melody that sings the universe with clear, deep and defined notes."  
I then understand when I have acted with inner unity...  
I then understand the importance of my actions in everyday life...  
I therefore understand the echo of my actions in myself and in others...  
I understand that humanizing is putting what is most human in me in favor of life... 
Now I understand the value of what I can do of my life...  
Then I get up, I reach out for my neighbor and I feel this mission in favor of life...  
 
Interchange on the experience
The participants are invited , if they want and in the form they prefer (together, in groups, individually) to communicate among them the impressions on the experience realised.  
  
Fourth experience: the change
I close my eyes and imagine  one after the other the situations in which I don't see future… but now, in that moments of my life, I put faith, I put it where I had lost it : faith in myself… faith in the other… faith in that relationship… there I put future…   
On the grounds of this faith I can imagine myself while acting in those situations in a new way…   
Changing is possible and  will depend on my intentions and on that of the people around me…  
  
Personal plan
Propose yourself to try and experiment the new behavior in two or three situations in the next two weeks.  
  
WHAT CAN I DO NOW?
During the hours we’ve spent together , we have thought about our life, we have put ourselves some  questions  and we have talked together with others about what happens to us, we have seen together how this violent system brings millions of people to be confused, not lucid, including ourselves.  
Here there is the personal project of giving a valid and coherent direction to one’s life, this project and that of a Universal Human Nation go in the same direction: there’s need of  lucid constructors to unmask the traps of this inhuman system, strong people that cannot be taken away by the current.   
The communication that we opened here has to be fed   
  
Interchange
Tell others what you are doing,  what you think to do or what you would like to do.  
  
Appointements are fixed.

For all Peace Force and Joi

----------------------------------------