SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT
If we use the words “social environment” it is because we believe, without denying the important influence of possessions and power, that culture is also a determining factor in the structuring of social groups.
Many people live in different ways the same experience of the fruition of possessions, which does not only mean material possession because a hierarchy of values can give them a different position of importance.
The social environment is therefore formed as a result of multiple groups of humans, which are never neutral, in which each person lives.
CONTEMPLATION
Contemplation is a dynamic behavior: placing the object of contemplation at the right distance allows us to receive without prejudice and to integrate into a hierarchy of values the recall of nature, people and events contemplated.
It is linked to artistic activity.
Contemplation is the constant search for balance between inner existence and the forces of the world.
In this way, it opposes activism, which is an escape from action.
COMPARISON
We believe that comparison is an activity with two sides emerging from relationships with others. On the one hand, being completely true to ourselves and our commitment to life and being able to express this: which involves interiorization; on the other hand, being totally welcoming of the other person and his truth.
Comparison is neither polemic nor the search for systematic opposition; it is the acknowledgement of the other as different from oneself; it requires interlocutors and a clear realization which leads to re-evaluation, and if possible, a common grounds for growth.
CULTURE
The word culture often evokes the meaning of acquisition of knowledge.
We respect this aspect, but without the meaning of this knowledge being predetermined; which therefore presupposes pluralism.
What we want to highlight is the notion of adherence which we believe is strongly linked to that of culture.
Culture is a free choice that every person is called to make in the heredity of human patrimony; it is therefore necessary that there are means of doing this.
It is in this sense that culture for us is “perspective”, that is, it allows us to take from the past elements of a solution for the future, placing itself in the evolution of the world. This means that if culture is a personal element, it also has a social dimension, especially in its design.
LIFE LONG LEARNING
No one can expect to reach a perfect and definitive level of training.
Every person should learn to look critically at himself and at others, aware of the stages and crises which characterize a necessary evolution.
Life long learning aims to support these ‘crises’ through alternating actions, through discoveries and through re-evaluation, yet with the wisdom of taking into account the times needed.
FREEDOM
Freedom is not about the absence of restraints.
It is within and through conditioning that we develop the act of personal liberation. For us, conditioning is necessary for freedom; it is the basis for its development through the acceptance, the refusal or the transformation of the issues it proposes.
SPIRITUAL REALITY
We reassert the spiritual dimension of man. We affirm that the spirit of man is not reduced to simple intelligence, and that the laws of nature don not provide all the explanations for human destiny. We believe that the material satisfaction of all the needs and all the desires of man and society are not enough to develop a human being.
We propose a like-minded solidarity, requested by each person, not imposed.
We assert the possibility for each person to realize an act of transcendence that he finds in himself; taking part in a project that is beyond him – that surpasses his own personal contingency – it provides a sense to his own story and to that of the world.
For many transcendency only has a religious meaning; it is God who gives man a task to surpass himself and he is pragmatically invited to do so; others, however, recognize the transcendent dimension of a person without believing in God.
When we use the term spiritual, it is not only in a religious context.
EXPERIMENTATION
Experimentation should be the result of a long and deep reflection. The group which attempts this must be open about its project with other groups of trainers, and have decided, with responsible measures, the limits of the experimentation in terms of its duration and application.
Back up solutions should be provided in case of refusal from the side of the trainees. During the experimentation, an even more supportive attention should be paid to each person and each group in training. An experimentation should not become the model for all just because of the simple fact of its application.
VALUES
A human person assimilates values because they are profoundly linked to his birth and growth.
A value is an attributable quality towards physical, corporal, esthetic, intellectual, moral, social, economical, political, and spiritual reality with the function of an order of meaning and judgment partly linked to space and time, therefore, it is subject to evolution.
This does not however open the door to ethical relativism, which heads the idea of individualism so far from our concept of a person.
For us, it is essential that the person is not closed within a pre-established system, and that society helps him to freely adhere to the values that he perceives.