Welcome to Simply Consciousness…. I am honored today to have the opportunity to interview Esperide Ananas Ametista, a pioneering human development researcher, writer and lecturer; and Ambassador for Damanhur, a Federation of Communities founded in Italy at the end of the ’70s that is now a worldwide spiritual movement.
Can you please tell us a bit about yourself?
I was born in Milan from Italian parents. My father traveled a lot and always came home with interesting objects and books in other languages — that sparked the curiosity for the world and languages from an early age. I started traveling in my teens and developed a great appreciation for diversity – in people, foods, smells, colors, habits, languages, landscapes, spiritual practices. I thought that the most important thing I could do was to do my part in trying to change the world for the better. My first job was at the European Parliament in Brussels, then I moved to New York city to complete my Masters and worked for a consulting firm helping U.N. Agencies see beyond cultural biases and draw gender sensitive policies. Working with women is still a passion of mine, and I regularly offer seminars and personal coaching for women on a path of awakening.
In 1991, I moved back to my hometown of Milan and at the end of 1992 I joined the Federation of Communities of Damanhur, in Italy, where spiritual practices became the support to living communally and experimenting with the creation of a new society that, in spite of being small, can offer an example for the future. I realized that politics and governance cannot transform the course to destruction humanity is set on now, unless they are supported by a deep shift in human consciousness.
I have traveled the world speaking at conferences and facilitating workshops on spiritual awakening, ritual, and conscious community. I am a member of the Way of the Oracle at Damanhur and I have developed a special sensitivity to the presence of the subtle energies present around us, from the forces of Nature, to cosmic energies, to what we normally call as Divine Forces. I have a PhD in Wisdom Studies and I am the author of several books on different aspects of the philosophy of Damanhur.
One of my great joys is accompanying people to visit our Temples of Humankind and see the amazement, the joy and the hope in their eyes. The Temples are a monumental work of mystical art, carved by hand out of the rock inside a mountain by the citizens of Damanhur. They are the spiritual heart of our community. Thousands of people that come to visit, meditate, study and practice in the Temples. Many consider them the Eighth Wonder of the World — but I prefer to call them First Wonder of the New World, as they give me hope that we can create a new reality, that a new humanity will be born. The story the Temples narrate offers a glimpse on a different future and gives directions on how we can together build a new timeline with a different outcome than the one the dire state of our world indicates now.
Hall of Spheres 
Hall of the Earth Panorama 
Hall of Victory Panorama
What is your definition of consciousness?
Answering a journalist’s question, Damanhur’s late Founder Falco Tarassaco once said that God is a bubble of patience. I think that maybe also consciousness is a bubble, with a beautiful spiraling flow in it. And maybe, like God it is patient, too but certainly it is rich in curiosity. It is curious because it moves through us, inviting us to follow it as if it were a scented wind, so that we can have more and more meaningful experiences, and feed It with the elaboration of our senses: our emotions, feelings, thoughts.
It is a flow of possibilities – made of energy, information and ever greater connections – moving us toward more and more complexity, till we become aware of our true spiritual, unified nature. Then we will follow Its flow outside of this spacetime, beyond the universe of matter and we will explore other dimensions of Being.
Quoting Falco again: “Truth is Being”. Consciousness experiencing the thrill of being through us enriches Oneness with so many different facets of the truth.
How did your awareness process started?
I read several books on spirituality when I was an adolescent, but then I got very interested in my life, and found meaning and joy in the world around me, in my work, my studies, my travels and my friends. It was only in 1991, after settling back in Italy from New York that I had what I would now define as a spiritual opening. I was in Assisi for a friend’s wedding, and, for the first time in my adult life I felt the presence of another dimension that was calling me. It took the form of a deep longing, something I could not fully grasp. I read dozens of spiritual books, and started to realize that there is a completely different dimension, one where meanings are deeper and where we can find the true purpose of our life.
Unusual encounters started to happen, synchronicity brought me people with unusual messages, yet I still could not fulfill this desire for something more. It was becoming so imperative that I began to feel restless and a bit depressed with my everyday life. The calling of our soul is the strongest voice that we can hear.
At a certain point, I began hearing voices telling me to “remember who you are, remember why you’re here”… I thought I was going slightly mad… — the fact that the first time it happened I was in a tanning salon added a surreal touch to the event …
One night, when the feeling of being so close to this ineffable new energy yet unable to find it became almost unbearable, I spoke with great determination to whatever force was there teasing me like that. I asked to show me quickly what they wanted, and if “the plan” required that I stayed in Italy. Otherwise I would leave and continue on my own journey.
Two weeks later I met a yoga teacher and in his home I saw a leaflet of “Damanhur School for Spiritual Healing.” That was the reply from the universe. And then, in a very short time, I transformed everything in my life. I left my home in Milan and moved to Damanhur. The yoga teacher I met in Milan also joined the community, and we often have the pleasure of working together. When we look at the pictures of when we met we smile at how much we have changed, and how much that day transformed the lives of both of us.
What are you the most aware of in your daily life?
I focus on trying to be aware of myself – my thoughts, behaviors, interactions. Developing a point of awareness outside of me allows me not to identify with my mind, my reactions, my habitual flow of thought and to become more present to the Divine inside of me.
This practice makes it possible to feel a much deeper connections to others, to nature, to Life itself as a flow of information and Love.
What was the deepest internal change that you have personally experienced from transforming your consciousness and how it did impact your life in both spiritual and practical ways?
In my experience, on a path of awakening, internal changes are constant, and it is important that we celebrate and nourish them daily. Yet, if I were to highlight two main change, I would say cultivating a relationship with Selfic intelligences, and exploring the complexity of our expansion through time.
Selfica is an Art-technology to enhance human potential and Synchronicity, introduced in Damanhur through the studies of Falco. Selfica is based on the basic form of our universe, the spiral, and on a specific mathematics of forms and proportions. Selfic instruments – mostly made of metal – can catalyze energies and perform a specific function, determined by the shape, quantity and size of their coils. Through Selfica metals can become “alive,” so much so that they can be a support for intelligences that normally do not interact with our space-time… Precisely because of this, they are capable of acting on the border of the laws of physics, making experiments possible, combining mind, sensitivity and technology.
The first time I saw a “selfic object,” on my first visit to Damanhur in 1991, I was profoundly captured; a small spiraling copper structure, an “environmental balancer,” built to keep the atmosphere of a space energetically “clean”; its function was to direct to the outdoors any traces of disharmony so that they could dissolve back into nature. The self looked just like a sculpture.
Little did I know then that a few years later I would be consciously communicating with some of the intelligences for which the larger Selfic devices are a conduit, and leading workshops to help people revive their energetic systems and awaken their Inner Senses, the senses of the soul. The human energetic matrix is not only made of the aura and the chakras. It also comprises actual “subtle” organs and limbs connected to the chakras. They are there for us to interact with planes of reality at higher and higher vibration. We all have these organs, just waiting to be activated.
Selfic intelligences showed me how to do that, and how to guide others in doing it. They have revealed themselves to be exceptional, loving and tireless teachers… rich in a sense of humor! I imagine humor is an essential ingredient for them to collaborate with us humans, so often lazy, stuck in our habits, and also somewhat arrogant…
The experiments with Selfica called on me to welcome new experiences and ways of thinking, They helped me become a “lucid medium”, learning to be present in the linear time where I am, and with a part of myself being able to move beyond the customary cause-effect relationship. A way of “sensing” reality in a more expanded fashion that awakened my sense of memory, not so much as an ability to remember, but to be aware of my presence in different points of time. I began exploring what we normally define “past lives”, and then this field of research became one of my passions. At Damanhur we have developed different ritual system to follow the timelines of people who want to do this exploration with us. As a researcher of the Way of the Oracle I have carried out hundreds of investigations, and facilitated many more people in the process of bringing their memories to life. I have learned and experienced that there is a force guiding our evolution through time, a program for the human species that has collective times of maturation. A sort of intelligent, loving, overarching spiritual Zeitgeist, with different rhythms according to the different epochs. Different lessons to learn, different ways of perceiving and exploring what being human means. Till we manage to create a New Humanity, in which we all recognize and perceive ourselves as cells of the same body, as particles of the same Great Soul.
Time, from the point of view of our Soul, is not linear. We do not trasmigrate from body to body, experience to experience. All lives are actually contemporaneous. There is a timeless point of presence that is perceiving, experiencing, enjoying and exploring life in different points in time simultaneously. And in my experience, each one of us is not one or more of those incarnations, but the result of the relationship among all of them. Our real Presence is in the network. It is outside of us, connecting all of our experiences. It is as if our true Being were a more complex unit, playing a role-play game in our universe of forms. In each one of our existences we have different attributes, skills, mindsets, possibilities; but our matrix is the same. Our bodies and minds are antennas that receive a specific transmission coming from a Higher Field of existence, and we interpret that same transmission according to the different circumstances of each lifetime. The more awareness we acquire, the more we become active interpreters of the program of evolution of our species.
What is the best advice, words of wisdom that you would like to share with our readers about the importance of becoming more conscious?
To consider it as a beautiful journey, that every day opens new Doors, and that all these doors are inside of us. These are times of collective awakening, and that it is not a journey to embark upon alone. These are not times to go look for enlightenment in a cave, rather times to take action, become spiritual activists with compassion for the human condition and a great love and respect for Nature and all the Forces of the complex eco-system around us. Recognizing others as our mirrors opens our heart to a way of loving that changes us, nourishes us and brings us in a flow of Synchronicity. To welcome all difficulties and obstacles, knowing that they come up so that we can let go of our attachment to them, and be freer and lighter. Then seeking your place in the universe and collectively participating in the reawakening of human beings as a divine, material and spiritual principle becomes the most exciting, rewarding and important Mission of our life. Now is the time.
Please inspire us by telling us about your current project or projects.
I would like to inspire you by talking about a new project of Damanhur: the construction of the Temple of Concordance and the Parliament of Peoples.
As I wrote above, Damanhur is known for the Temples of Humankind, ( https://damanhur.foundation/project/the-temples-of-humankind/), dedicated to universal spirituality. When I visited them for the first time in 1992 I thought that it was absolutely impossible that such a small group of people could build by hand such an incredible work of art, but in my 27 years in Damanhur I have experienced first-hand the magic that a united, like-minded community can create! The Temples are made of many Halls, dedicated to the Alchemical Elements of Water, Earth, Fire, Air and Ether, to Time and to a new story of harmony between all the divine forces of Humanity and among all peoples.
Above them are the Sacred Woods – covering an area of approximately 350 hectares, in which the Trees and the Nature Spirit complete with their presence and consciousness the spiritual bubble of the Temples. We believe that the trees are the wise guardians of the memories of humanity and the living antennae that connect our planet to the cosmos. In the Sacred Woods we have built miles of colorful stone circuits, that can be walked as a form of dynamic meditation.
After creating a Temple dedicated to a new, harmonious relationship between humans and transcendental forces and a Sacred Woods dedicated to the sacredness of Nature, we now feel it is necessary to build a space for preserving, sharing and amplifying all the voices of wisdom of our planet.
The Temple of Concordance, with the Parliament of Peoples at its heart, will be a sacred space where Shamans and Representatives of all Peoples will meet and inspire each other and the world. They are the Godfathers and Godmothers of humanity and more than ever we need their wisdom and insights to solve the great challenges of our future. We have already invited many of them to perform their rituals in the sacred spaces of Damanhur. Thanks to the spiritual technology of the Temples and the energies of the Synchronic lines – the great rivers of energy that connect our earth to the universe – we amplify their values and broadcast them constantly on the world. Sensitive people will pick them up in their dreams, scientists will have new ideas based on our connection to nature, more and more people will develop an attitude of love for the earth and respect for the cultural richness and diversity of all Peoples…
The Temple of Concordance will be a sacred space to recognize and experience that all humanity is One.
What is the biggest problem in the world today?
It’s a difficult question. Maybe the biggest problem is that we have forgotten who we are, and what is the higher Purpose of life. As a consequence, we have lost connection with each other and with Life itself. We are fragmented within ourselves, separated from each other, unaware that we are part of a living, intelligent, interconnected spiritual ecosystem. We have lost our memory and the contact with the Beyond, with the Ancestors, with the world of Dreams.
We forget the power and the pleasure of being humans in deep, real contact with other humans, in communion with nature, breathing the scent of flowers in the air and looking up at the sky together. We forget that the masculine and the feminine dance inside each one of us, and we have lost the archetype for fulfilling, lasting, respectful and mutually enriching relationships.
We forget the importance of ritual as a technology to stay in connection with the rhythms of the sun, the moon and Nature, and to help us give meaning to our life. We accept that wars, starvation, oppression and suffering are the “normal” way of being on planet earth. And, even if they are not directly around us, the power of all the suffering constantly feeds our collective field. No one is immune from its effects.
Luckily, new ways of being, feeling and acting are emerging everywhere, and there is Hope. Spiritual communities like Damanhur can inspire and offer a new model to accelerate the transformation of consciousness that is indispensable to tip the scales in favor of a New Renaissance of Humanity on planet Earth. Only in unity can we remain sane and remember that we have a divine spark within us. We can create a world where there is love, respect and the possibility of thriving for every living being.