Page 18 - C.A.L.L. #39 - Spring 2015

Damanhur, Italy

David Bramwell, author of The Number Nine Bus
to Utopia: How One Man’s Extraordinary Journey
Led to a Quiet Revolution (Unbound), interviews
Tigrilla from Damanhur. Tigrilla works for the
Music of the Plants project at the spiritual
community, Damanhur in Northern Italy

Q: How did you end up living in Damanhur? Tigrilla. To formalize a deep
A: That’s a bit of a story… I’m not your usual relationship with nature and all
Damanhur arrival, which is now through the New Life its forces, citizens of Damanhur
temporary citizenship program. I came to visit after typically choose to call
themselves by names of animals,
hearing about Damanhur from several friends and plants and nature
students. I was introduced to a woman that was
working on a specific project and when she heard about my unusual background from
the arts to technology to spirituality, she asked me if I would come do a work exchange
to help launch a new project. When I got back home to Barcelona where I was living, my
roommate tells me that she is moving back to Argentina and I have to find a place, so
after not finding a new apartment I liked, I decided to pack my stuff up and go. It was
only supposed to be for six months, but for some reason I took all my stuff with me…
that was three years ago.

Q: What do you most love about it?
A: The diversity, the dreaming, the research, the ritual… the fact that spirituality is
intertwined in everything, not just something theoretical. The fact that if you can
dream it, you can probably find a group of people to build it. The fact that I have
different groups to express all the different parts of myself: creative, technological,
artistic, studious, etc.

Q: What do you find most challenging?
A: That we are not perfect. We are real human beings each with our own problems. It is
easy to think that because we live in a Spiritual EcoCommunity we should all be
enlightened, but it is just not the case. Each of us has a different path with different
speeds. We are not perfect, we are learning to love and respect one another without
judgment just like the rest of the world is. It is great that we have tools, but human
nature is at times lazy and habitual. It is exactly what makes Damanhur so amazing and
unique that also makes it challenging.

Q: What’s the next big project?
A: It depends on who you ask. Damanhur has many big projects: the Tempio Bosco
(Forest Temple) and related projects, making our School of Meditation even more
accessible, the launch of a new and improved website with more sharing than ever
before, the Music of the Plants and Plant Perception research, the Community School
for children, Spiritual Physics discoveries, and the list goes on and on.

Reprinted from The Idler at http://idler.co.uk

18