beyond the known
In the mid-1990s, Damiano met Joanna Macy, co-founder of Deep Ecology, and his perspective expanded from focusing solely on individual healing to a broader view of the planetary community. Joanna Macy’s work integrates personal experience with ecological engagement. She bridges the Buddhist worldview and the holistic approach of General Systems Theory with a deep concern for the ecological crisis and the work of the Great Turning. Together, they organized three conferences in Assisi, where they shared the deep ecological vision in connection with the Christian earth-mysticism of Saint Francis of Assisi.
In 2000, Damiano encountered the radical approach of Paul Lowe, which gave him a new perspective on looking at the world and understanding spiritual awakening. From Paul, he learned the importance of unconditional surrender to truth in dealing with oneself, others, and the world.
In 2012, Damiano founded the Gestalt Forum Freiburg and has since been leading three-year Gestalt training programs. Through his years of working with many people, especially young adults, he realized that Gestalt therapy offers a wonderful way for individuals to allow their personality to become an authentic expression of their inner being. However, he also saw that therapeutic work, with its focus on life issues, behavior patterns, and past wounds, can only partially support the process of spiritual awakening. The consciousness awakening from the sleep of everyday life is often hindered by the ongoing preoccupation with personal preferences, desires, and dislikes. The realization of who you truly are lies beyond the boundary that, in therapy, is carefully guarded by the need for autonomy.
Driven by this insight, Damiano began to look for new ways to support those who are ready to explore the transpersonal dimensions of being. It is in the silence of the mind and the surrender to lived truth that he sees the gateway to the true nature of being. What lies beyond the familiar is inaccessible to the thinking, controlling mind but is known and longed for by the heart, where the truth has always been alive.
Since 2016 he lives with his family on a small mountain farm near Assisi, Here is the “Piccolo Castello”, the medieval building where almost all of his seminars now take place. Damiano sees himself as a wanderer through time, with a deep desire to let the truth that has been placed in every person’s heart shine through.
