An artist once said, "I am a reflection of my community." We had a beautiful conversation with Quaglia on September 21. Quaglia is deeply connected to Damanhur, which is a spiritual eco community in Italy. In this conversation, she shares stories and reflections that took her to Damanhur and beyond.....
Transcript of Awakin call with Quaglia on 9/21/13
Bela: I think I wanted to start the conversation with a little bit of context to the callers. As much as I read about Damanhur online, I am still trying to grasp all of its magnificence. I am sure you get this question a lot, like what is it? So, how do you usually describe it to someone who has never heard of it before?
Quaglia: Damanhur is a spiritual eco community in northern Italy with thousand citizen members worldwide and it is a living dream, a laboratory, an experimentation field for the future of humanity, it has won awards, national awards for sustainability and what really drew me to Damanhur is that it brings alive so many different aspects of my passions which are spirituality, connections to nature, organic food and agriculture, communities and cooperative living, activism, solidarity, deep spiritual practice, arts and temples.
So Damanhur has created underground temples called the temples of humankind, magnificent underground spaces with beautiful visionary art intended to reawaken awareness of the divine spark within each of us and so this is the spiritual messaging core that emanates all of Damanhur that each one of us has the divinity within so we can express in our full potential and so our spiritual philosophy is one of action so not to just to be aware of this divine spark. Each of us in order to fully live it, we express in matter doing practical things creating things together doing collaborative artwork or living in community houses or working in our businesses and initiatives. It is a very practical school of spirituality in action and Damanhur is concentrated mostly in that area of northern Italy close to Turin or Milan if you are familiar with Italy and there are about 20 community houses spread out all throughout that valley and that is the core of Damanhur, there are two main campuses there and it is also global and worldwide, there are communities and centers in other parts of Europe and also in Japan. There have many networks of friends and connections and spiritual brothers and sisters all over the world. B: Hmm.. Wow! So many questions emerge from your description and I want to dig deeper into the descriptions you just shared but before we go into it, also, I think it would be really wonderful to learn a little more about you..I know you are the first American born citizen at Damanhur and can you please share what led you there, when we connected over Skype last week, you mentioned this theory that synchronicity does occur when you were traveling in Europe so can you share those events and a little bit about your own personal background and what led you to this place in northern Italy.
Bela: So many questions just emerged from your description and I want to dig deeper into the description you just shared but before we go into it and also I think it would be really wonderful to learn a little more about you. I know you are the first American born citizen at Damanhur and can you please share what led you there? When we connected over Skype last week you mentioned this theory that synchronicity had occurred while you were traveling over Europe so can you share those events and a little about your own personal background and what took you to this place in Northern Italy.
Quaglia: Yes, well, I was living in San Francisco and working at rainbow grocery and had a work study period in a community called Esalen in Big Sur. I went back to Esalen to visit a friend there and I met an artist in the art studios there. She is a Damanhur artist teaching stained glass there. The temples there have beautiful stained glass domes and windows and Damanhur is very well known for this technique. And she needed a ride to San Francisco and she came with me that day because I just happened to be driving up and she told me some very interesting things about Damanhur much less than I just told you because she spoke very basic English. She told me it is a spiritual eco community in northern Italy and we live in connection with nature and we make these beautiful underground temples using breathing techniques and meditation to make art and have these spiritual visions for the temples. I was really intrigued and following my intuition which told me to leave San Francisco and so I gradually embarked on a phase of traveling and while traveling I thought I will be going to Asia, I went briefly back to Texas to visit my family and while I was at a festival there, one night as I was walking across a field, I saw fire lanterns in the sky, a series of lanterns and it made an arrow shape and I thought that is a sign, that is the direction I need to go in my travels and I took out my compass and it was pointing East which really surprised me because I wanted to go to South East Asia and that is west of Texas, so.. I got out a world map later on and used a pendulum to do dowsing. The pendulum was indicating for me to go to Italy and I started receiving all of these signs to go to Italy, dreams, conversations and so I really trusted that and that alone will take you out to Rome and then I come to Damanhur and this woman I had met and planned my first visit there.
I am a fire dancer so I was also doing performances and visiting organic farms and finally made it to Damanhur and it was like coming first time in my life it was a very intuitive, energetic, spiritual sense of being in home and being so complete as a community, it is a space, it is a creation and it immediately felt very resonant and so after about a year of continued travels and going to Damanhur for courses and working stays to experience the community life I decided to live there become a citizen there. So I have been a full time what is called an A citizen for five years now and just recently I have come back to San Francisco bay area and I am currently working to bridge Damanhur and some of the San Francisco people and communities helping to organize events and workshops and retreats and temple spaces that are connected to Damanhur.
Bela: Ok.. wow, I am so struck by the imagery you shared earlier in your response about the arrow and the sky about looking at your compass and pointing East (laughing) you know I feel like a lot of people might say something like that and `might not even notice that it takes the shape of an arrow and so many signs are given to us in life that we just miss so I think that really says a lot about how present you are, and in touch you are with the world around you.
Quaglia: It also speaks to Damanhur. One of the spiritual principles in the teachings of Damanhur which is synchronicity that all things are connected and all things have a certain meaning even if it might be beyond our human understanding and so synchronicity is something that you can definitely notice and also work with and change to attract synchronic events in your life.
Bela: Going along with that, with synchronicity and also how things are connected, you know I learned from the description that the UN Global forum on Human Settlements which I didn’t even know existed until I learned about Damanhur, they awarded Damanhur the sustainable community award. I am interested to know what is the system and structure like in Damanhur, how is it designed in order to support, you know respect and co existence with our environment because everything is interconnected and so how is the community designed to support that?
Quaglia: Departing from the spiritual practice which the first manifestation of Damanhur, there is this understanding that we are part of a spiritual ecosystem just as we are part of a physical ecosystem in connections with any different levels of beings and so with this sense of interconnection there's a natural respect for nature, for plants, for animals, for the resources we have on earth because if I'm damaging the earth I'm damaging myself because I'm part of the earth's ecosystem, as well as spiritually. We have a project called the Tree-Orientation Project which is healing the connection between the human realm and the tree & plant realm which has historically been united but because of the destruction that has been doneby humans it has been separated. So it's a way of kind of sowing these realms back together - the human and tree realm, so that's one example of re-connection with nature through your spiritual awareness.
The communities in Damanhur are all moving towards self-sufficiency as much as possible in terms of food & energy and also everything that we do & create, so we're not there at a 100% of that; that's one of the intentions is to just to get as close as possible and there really is a special value to that like being able to be a partner and wear clothes that some of my community members have made and eat food that was grown from gardens with spiritual awareness as it was being grown and harvested and cooked and presented and to be able to buy furniture that another one of my community members have made and go to a concert of music, of musicians in our community, and go to the temples that we have created and to share my poetry with others and not only have physical sustainability and self-sufficiency, but also cultural, so to really create and exchange within our community system and to facilitate that we have a complimentary currency called the Credito which is the currency/money that it used within the community and for some of the nearby businesses to encourage local exchanges and to encourage the awareness of the true value of service and the true value of things that we create & share.
Bela: Wow. Let me go back to the spiritual awareness which I think comes out of living in a community like Damanhur. It seems that art is integral to the ecosystem there and you mentioned the temple of human kindness earlier and so can you share a little bit more about in your personal experience as well as the community life in Damanhur the different forms of art and the role of art and heightening our spiritual awareness and tapping into it and building community and then as you answer that also use that maybe as a segue to talk about the temple of human kindness and the inspiration behind those temples, because that's a very fascinating story as well.
Quaglia: To me personally, I love art & artistic expression of all kinds, whether its painting or drawing or singing or dancing, writing, making music and I've found tons of expression in all these different areas in Damanhur. And art at Damanhur is always collective art - it's always art in community, so there's not a sense of being the genius artist who is exalted & famous. There is this sense of art in a spiritual community and also of community connectedness and so the temples of humankind are created by the whole community, there's no one main artist, just as all of the other art works in the community are collectively made. So sometimes it's even hard to know who painted what part of the temples or who exactly made particular sculpture that's on the lands. And so that's a sense of really achieving together and awakening together as a populo. I use that word in a poem that I wrote and that means peoples and I left it in Italian because it doesn't really completely translate completely into English; there's a sense of being deeply connected to an identity, to a peoples, to spiritual alliance within a group that many of the indigenous groups on Earth have had and have had and sometimes are in danger of losing, so it's reconnecting to that sense of populo. So it's really special to see arts and see creativity at Damanhur and there's really a sense of meaning and pride. There's a saying about art at Damanhur that an art is giving meaning to life and everything that we do and so with that attitude even sweeping the floor and taking out the compost can be art. The temples of humankind - to explain a little bit about the location of the temples in Damanhur - there are energy lines that run around the globe and connect the earth to the universe called synchronic lines and they're not magnetic lines, it's a different system of energy, of information, of dreams that flow and many of the ancient sacred spaces were built along the lines or at a point where two of the lines crossed, and the original founders of Damanhur when they decided to build a community in order to accelerate spiritualism by using each other’s universe they went around a search around the globe for these sacred places and they found that there are two points on earth where four of these synchronic lines crossed. One is in Tibet and one is in Italy where Damanhur is currently located. So after this global search for the right place they went back to about 40 miles from where they started. It goes to show that sometimes the thing that we're seeking for most in life are right there in front of our eyes. The synchronic lines were sometimes very high in their energy to the earth it's extremely rare to find them on the surface and so that's one of the reasons that the temples were built underground to access those very powerful energy lines for spiritual work. The temples serve as a reminder to all of us of the divine nature of humankind. It's actually a series of eight principal spaces and corridors that connect them. Each wall has a depiction or element of particular characteristics that's associated with it. To visit them and being in the temple is like an alchemy in ourselves and the journey to the awakening different parts of spirituality of ourselves.
Bela: Anyone can visit these temples, anyone can come to Damanhur and take a tour, right?
Quaglia: Yes, there are many different kinds of visits. It's open all year to visitors and so from a half day to a week-long visit including temple visit, it's an experience . Meditation can be done in different halls after an initial visit. I'd also like to share that right now there is a fairly new program for a couple of years called New Life and this is a program that allows anyone who wants to have an experience of living at Damanhur to go and do so for 2 weeks and be immersed in community life that is happening at Damanhur, just as all of the citizens do - living between houses and participating in the community meetings and rituals and then having special classes and experiences to get to know Damanhur. If anyone is interested in that you can contact me or go to the Damanhur website.
Bela: I saw that there's also a virtual tour online that kind of took me through the temples and it's really magnificent. I don't know how many years it took to build all of those temples?
Quaglia: The temples started being built in August of 1978, which is actually the month before i was born, so in some ways I feel like as a soul I followed the call of the temples being here on earth. They were actually built in secret for about 16 years because at the time there were no building regulations for underground constructions of that kind and sometimes even members of the community didn't know about them. They were kept sacred and reserved in this way. Then when they became known to the public, there was danger of them being destroyed, so there was a campaign to save the temples and it worked and they were recognized as having artistic and social value and are now safely protected and open to the public.
Bela: Wow! Secret temples. I hope to be able to visit them one day.
Quaglia: It really is like a science-fiction adventure, going to visit (laughs)
Bela: (laughs) Yeah, it sounds like it. I want to shift a little bit to going back to you and your own journey and so I sort of have a couple of interconnected questions, going along this theme of interconnectedness. Well, I want to know how living there has changed you and maybe deepened your own values that you already felt that were yours and that Damanhur was like a magnet maybe that was pulling you and these values that you already inherently lived with and believed in, but how did living there intensify and strengthen those values and principles? Related to that: what different roles have you played in the community? I know that you give tours of the temples, you're a spiritual dancer as well, so if you could share a little bit about that - the different roles that you play, and how being there has changed you and helped you along your own spiritual journey.
Quaglia: Wow, good questions. One of the core values that underlies all of the different activities and choices in my life is compassion in healing and for me Damanhur has really changed my experience of that by understanding the scope of the effect I can have with my intentions in a spiritual community like Damanhur or any community, particularly with the spiritual intention and practices and technology. I feel like my intention of expressing compassion to the world and the people and the ecosystem is magnified. That happens in many different ways, just by being connected to hundreds or even a thousand people, if I have a specific intention. For example, if I have a friend who is ill, I can send healing energy to my friend, if I share with all my community members that I have a friend in this condition and she needs help, that is amplified by a thousand times by everyone being conscious of that and sending energy and also with our relationship with spirituality, with divinity, there are ways to really magnify any individual intentions. The same goes for very practical dreams, like I felt like I was really making progress as a healer and as an artist individually although what I found to be very valuable at Damanhur, setting my intentions and doing my work in the work in this community was that being in a group, in a team, in a community that has these shared intentions, that really magnifies things as well. In terms of my different roles, you mentioned the sacred dance. There are many spiritual pathways at Damanhur that we can choose from as our expression of our devotion, and so mine is the way of the oracle which works with ritual and connection to divine sources and within this pathway there's the pathway of sacred dance. So we do this particular kind of sacred dance in the rituals including full moon rituals and the solstices and equinoxes. It's an expression of the sacred language which is ancient archetypal language that predates all human languages. It's something in each one of us archetypal and is expressed in many different ways. It can be expressed in writing Chinese or Japanese ideograms, kind of similar to those kinds of characters, it can be expressed in song and chant, and it can also be expressed in dance. So every movement is a particular work and dancing a series of these movements is like giving prayer. And so this is my spiritual pathway. I also have many different roles at Damanhur from English-Italian translation to working with the social media and the websites and international connections, working to organize events and conferences. We had an open summit on the theme of child birth and a conference of the global eco-village network that Damanhur is very active in, particularly the European network. I also founded an aesthetics and dance community in D. I find dance being incredibly healing in a way you're going back to the values I was taking about to connect to each other in compassion beyond linguistic differences and age and culture differences and socio-economic differences one of them, as humans, is that we all have a body, we can all experience a sense of interconnectedness and divinity within the body
Bela: Listening to you is just making me think of my own experiences with being part of intentional communities. Most recently I had - it was quite a gift - to be a part of volunteer with the Gandhi Ashram in India and with an NGO there. Also, you know, Service Space in a sense is an intentional community and it makes me ask you: what are your challenges and edges? What challenges and edges come up when you are not in Damanhur when you're an ambassador of Damanhur in the "real world"? Is it difficult for you to relate to the way the current, modern world is, revolving around monetary currency and that time is money and materialism? How do you relate? How do you stay present and with your compassion and joy?
Quaglia: Well, one of the beautiful things of travelling so much in the world and sharing Damanhur is that I really think that there is so much happening in the world in different ways that reflect the value systems of D, whether they are intentional communities or eco-villages in the world, or other urban non-residential communities around healing or spirituality or ecological awareness or co-operatives and I'm currently at a festival called Symbiosis, sharing some Damanhur teachings here and so there's also the temporary community experience of festivals, where Ii really have the resonance and a reminder of those core intentions of what we're creating at Damanhur out in the world. In some ways it's really enriching to be meet people in these settings or just everyday conversations and if it's about Damanhur I really see people and feel them enlivened to know that this is happening in the world and to know that something can really happen in a practical and grounded way that we all share as human beings and at some level or another.
Bela: I know that you've also recently just started a new collaboration with Kindered Spirits out here in the Bay Area and I'm not sure if that community out here was already Damanhurian or if there were just similar values - and it's called the Center for Awakening Presence. Can you share more about that?
Quaglia: Center for Awakening Presence is a collaboration between Damanhur and the friends of Damanhur in the San Francisco Bay Area. These friends have already been connected to Damanhur and have been supporting to Damanhur for many years. This is the first time we're really making it an official collaboration. It's not exactly in a physical sense although there are actually different physical sites that we use for our activities and one is a cultural center in San Rafael and the other one is a private homes in Scotts Valley and so in this private home there is a temple space called. This space is one of the spiritual technologies of Damanhur that can be expressed in many different physical forms including paintings. So having this space based on the painting from Damanhur creates very powerful energy that's also all connected to Damanhur, energetically and spiritually. In the end of September, one of the main researchers at D, she's recently written & almost published a book about this space; she'll be coming to the Bay Area to activate the second temple space in the Marin area. The intention for this collaboration, the event in October is to ride the wave of this energetic opening, with the new temple space being activated and to share with public the teachings about these energy spaces, there's a two day workshop on in Marin and a past life course which is one of the spiritual kinds of research that are done at Damanhur through the way of the oracle. There will also be a full moon retreat and both will be in the Scotts Valley area, that's October 17th through the 20th. I just wanted to respond to something I heard in the sharing circle about community and wanting to be inspired or to create community right now and so I encourage anyone who feels called to know more about Damanhur and about community to participate in one of these events, particularly the full moon meditation or the retreat to understand the spiritual technology that has really helped Damanhur to activate all of the intentions of the community and to receive this other layer of help, spiritual persistence and manifesting our community dreams. With the full moon retreat there will be an opportunity to explore all aspects of Damanhur from the spiritual and mystical to the social, ecological connection with trees and so on.
Michelle: Hi this is Michelle Oehler, calling from San Jose. I'm very interested in having you speak to what you see the role is or what the idea in the Damanhurian context is of these kinds of communities bringing humanity together. As I said earlier in my earlier sharing that a great interest of mine and particularly the bringing awareness of the entity, humanity and our role in that and out interconnectedness in that particular entity. Is there any conversation in the Damanhur community or what do you see or the context of Damanhur sees or the community sees in the awakening of humanity as an entity and the bringing together or every human being?
Quaglia: Yes, actually going back to the temples, one of the visions and intentions and motivations of the temples - we call it temples of humankind because there is this collective movement towards awakening as one humankind and not as a particular religion or any particular identity of culture, nationality or gender and tapping into our interconnectedness as a species, as a spiritual ecosystem. We are in a point in time of some pretty powerful potential for reawakening each of our spiritual awareness and gifts and abilities and also collectively as a species and there is a sense of connecting beyond cultural differences also for the vision of the new temples. There is a future temple that is envisioned and called the temple of people and this is to create a sacred space where particularly the indigenous and native peoples of the world, leaders and representatives of these people can come & meet for peace, of encounters of peace and of sharing their particular cultures, arts and spiritual heritage and having a repository to really keep that knowledge and culture alive. We see it as a big mosaic with so many different pieces of humanity creating one whole.
Michelle: Where is that temple being planned?
Quaglia: Excuse me?
Michelle: You said something about there is a temple being planned, where is that?
Quaglia: That's also going to be at Damanhur. It's intended to be an extension of the existing temples at Damanhur.
Michelle: And are you connected with the thirteen grandmothers at all? Is that part of the connectivity?
Quaglia: Yes, we are. We have a connection to thirteen grandmothers. Three of the grandmothers came to Damanhur recently maybe be a few years ago..
Michelle: Ok, great. I was in meetings with them earlier this year, so great, it's great...
Quaglia: Oh, wonderful.
Michelle: Aha. Thank you. Thank you for the work and thank you for what you're doing. I really appreciate what you are doing for humanity.
Quaglia: You're welcome.
Vinya: Hi Quaglia. Thank you so much for being with us on this call. I was just curious to know about how sometimes - at least I find this challenging - when you're part of a beautiful community where there's so much happening sometimes I feel like I get lost in all the goodness and beauty around me and... I don't know how to articulate it, I hope I'm making sense... to where sometimes I have to consciously work on cultivating my own values and not getting lost in the space and so my question to you is how do you consciously seek challenges to grow & learn, being part of this beautiful community and how do you separate yourself from it? Does that make sense?
Quaglia: It does and it's actually an interesting question because earlier on in the talk I was reflecting on individuality and community, talking about festival culture and in many parts of American culture there is this sense of individuality and personal expression and freedom and uniqueness that sometimes really needs to be harmonized with the more community sense of oneness, being together making collective decisions and being more of a community body instead of an individual identity. For me that is a constant dance, I think it is for everyone at Damanhur. Sometimes Damanhur is considered by the Damanhurians as a community of individualists, because we do have community values and this community sense moving together in solidarity, supporting each other and collaborating and also each one of us is very unique. For example, our names, we all have different animal names, mainly in Italian and so this is a very unique name. There are Terrance or Bills or Sallys to give you some examples of American names, so everyone is a unique animal. My name means quail and someone else is platypus and someone else is elephant and someone else is cat and so I think the individuality in the names is really reflected in the individual personalities and there are many different avenues of every citizen of Damanhur having that space of personal expression and value and meaning and of being in the world. I mentioned the spiritual pathways - one of the spiritual pathways is that of life, which is a depiction of the community and its members and building the temples. There's the spiritual pathway of healing, there's the pathway of arts and words, to theatre and art and communications. There's also a pathway of self-sufficiency, there's one of looking at spirituality through work and commerce and business. Also, all of the choices at Damanhur are temporary so if I'm part of the sacred dance pathway I can make a commitment for maybe a year or two years. Anyhow, I always have the option to change, so if at a certain point I feel like my spiritual pathway is taking me more toward theatre as an expression, I can switch to that spiritual pathway and express that different part of myself. One of the spiritual visions of Damanhur of human beings is that we're all collections of different personalities that are very diverse and so each one of us expresses many different personalities in the course of a day and of a lifetime. At Damanhur I find that the container is so large and there's so much variety within that that I can allow so many of my personalities to be active at different points in time and I'm sure that will evolve too as I move on as a Damanhurian.
Vinya: It's very sweet how there are different animals assigned to people based on their individuality. Each person can have a separate identity - I love that. My follow-up question is: do you find it challenging at all when you're not in the physical space of Damanhur? Do you find it challenging just to be able to cultivate? It's different when you're not part of a physical community, but can you share some thoughts on how you're able to be so and be aligned with your spiritual self and what sort of challenges you do have when you're away from the spiritual space of Damanhur?
Quaglia: Yeah, I feel that I have many different ways of staying connected, whether it's through meditation and rituals that I do, or very practically connecting on the internet or on Skype or email. We have a weekly community meeting that's open to the public to discuss esoteric research at Damanhur, every Thursday evening, it's a public forum at Damanhur and it's also broadcast online, so I'm able to connect to the community meeting in that way. So there are spiritual ways and technological ways of staying connected at a distance and going back to the origin and speaking of the temple space that's being created in the San Francisco Bay Area with this technology also connects each of us as community members and as the peoples, as the populo of D. In this realm, the one that we work with, there isn't this distinction of individual identity as much as we have this is as human beings, a kind of work as a collective of beings and the same is true of trees. Trees don't have the same kind of individual identity as human beings, they're just kind of this treeness, so at Damanhur we have this sacred woods and it really is considered to be one living entity and so in some ways it's like we're all cells of the same body and so if one cell is in California and one is in Japan and another one in Italy and in different parts of the world, it's still one same body.
Vinya: Thank you.
Bela: That's so interesting. It also made me think of my own experience with living in communities and I was wondering - I know that when you live in community there's such easy access to so many opportunities and activities and people aligned to the values that you're interested in. It sounds like at Damanhur there's just a lot of, like a wealth of activities and things like that, so I was wondering if you find yourself doing... are there other interests that you have that might not necessarily be related to Damanhur or groups of people or things? Do you find yourself ever needing to carve out space for that or do you feel like it just fits what your interests are and how you want to spend your time? Does that make sense?
Quaglia: First, we really have acceptance of everyone and where they are on their particular paths and to have compassion. I have compassion for myself. I know that 10 years ago I was in a really different space and 10 years from now I'll be in a different space and different level of involvement in everything related to community and spirituality and I think just holding that space of loving compassion and instead of judging someone for what they may or may not be doing, including myself, I think its important to ask what is it that this person before me really needs and so when they are guests at Damanhur that go into the temples I really see a transformation. I feel like it's really a universal need - that inspiration - as a reminder of what we're capable of as individuals and as humanity collectively and so to give space to that even if someone... necessarily wanting to think about resources and ecology - what is it that really makes them alive and passionate in the world and encourage them to connect to that space, maybe its someone who has always wanted to sing although he's been told as a child that he can't sing and so has this desire to sing that has been suppressed within, so to encourage that. So if someone in the world who was afraid to sing and is now deciding to step in that space and sing to fulfill that, that's also creating a better world as much as anything else. I think that holding that human space of acceptance and allowing and also encouragement to be who we really are and do what we came here to do.
Questioner: Thank you also for bringing Rainbow into the conversation. We also love Rainbow very much - Rainbow co-op.
Quaglia: Oh yes. I just want to add that I also feel that Service Space is such an inspiring community. The space and the emails that go out and it shows that it is also a really powerful community and a source of inspiration so I also want to thank all of you for the work you’re doing in the world
Bela: That was the second part of my question. We always get inspired about how we discover these communities. I was going to ask you quickly the story behind how did you discover the Service Space community... I was wondering how did that connection happen?
Quaglia: Shortly after I got back to the bay area I was invited by a friend of mine to go to a movie premier, Money and Life, in Oakland and there I met all kinds of amazing leaders in the community including Nipun. So we had a conversation about Damanhur and about Service Space and later we reconnected and I feel grateful for this space and for forest calls.
Bela: That concludes our Q&A. Quaglia, what a gift! I do want to ask you just one more thing before we close - how can we serve you? How can we serve you along your own journey from the Service Space community and also as unique individuals, how can we help you?
Quaglia: Keep doing what you're doing in the spirit of service and in compassion and in bringing so much life to the world... and also to help spread the message and knowledge of Damanhur and the community and in the San Francisco Bay Area. I know everyone on the call will receive an email with information, so if you feel inspired by any of this, please do connect in some way and come visit Damanhur, come visit the SF area events and share with all of your friends and network and encourage them to connect ... that's really the richness of community... the connections that we have with each other and exchanging inspiration.. .like we have been doing.
Bela: I'll definitely be connecting with the other activities in the SF bay area and really looking forward to it and hopefully crossing paths with you again in person that'll be really nice. I sincerely thank you from my heart for sharing yourself with us this morning and just thinking about the repsonses and the imagery that you painted through your sharing of your experiences really evokes a deep sense of joy that I feel from you for living in a way that celebrates and inspires our unique spirit... to come out of our boxes, to live courageously, to live with that fierce love and compassion. In this era, there is a great need for collective awakening and I sincerely feel that individuals like yourself and the members of Damanhur and other people from the community and other intentional communities are really gifts and guides for us and thank you for your authenticity.
Quaglia: Thank you so much, it has been a real honor for me to share my stories and share about Damanhur with all of you.
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Quaglia currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is involved in several outreach and community building events around Damanhur....