Home » Anxiety: let’s try to cure it with the Divine Comedy

Anxiety: let’s try to cure it with the Divine Comedy

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THE newest PATH to find serenity comes from Florence in 1300, and bears the name of Dante Alighieri. The proposal comes from two American therapists, Richard Schaub e Bonney Gulino Schaub who propose to read the Divine Comedy as a healing path that is still relevant today, described in their new book The power of Dante.

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The poet to get out of Hell

A path of enlightenment for a full and happy life (Bookshop Pienogiorno 2021 € 17.90). After all, explain the Schaub, “we all want to get out of Hell.” And we can try it by retracing the journey of the poet who tells us about his most dramatic experiences and his emotions, but at the same time chooses reason and faith as a guide, “on a journey that can become for each of us a path to follow – remember the authors – to deal with malaise and difficulties, discover the fullness of one’s potential and find true serenity “.

Their rereading of the poem starts from the studies of the founder of psychosynthesis Roberto Assagioli (the Schaubs founded and run the New York Psychosynthesis Institute): “We realized how important the Divine Comedy was for him, but also the beauties of Florence”, he explains Bonney Schaub: “I don’t know your language enough to read Dante in the original, but even in translation his voice is striking, you can read it as if it were talking about you, and you notice how much attention he paid to the psychological aspects of the events he tells, even in relation to his personal experience “.

Studying Dante after the Twin Towers

Also for the Schaub the writing of the book was intertwined with the news: “We started working on this path immediately after 11 September – they explain – our office was right in front of the Twin Towers”. And in those days of fear and pain, Dante’s study seemed an effective tool for reconnecting to a sense of hope: “It seemed to us that the fear, the anguish we lived were in some way similar to that experienced by the pilgrim who faced his journey into the afterlife, “he explains Richard Schaub: “In the Comedy there are important themes, such as the role of fear in determining our actions, and the need to find hope in order not to give in to despair”.

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Evil

Dante confronts the most atrocious evil, initially guided by reason, personified by Virgil, who then leads him to climb the mountain of Purgatory and free himself from the burdens that still oppress him in order to be able to rely on love, personified by Beatrice: “Years ago – remember Bonney Schaub – a nun who was following one of our courses pointed out to me how important it is that Dante chose a woman as a guide, and as a personification of the energy of love, particularly in an age when the feminine was not valued. And even today, when we live in an emergency situation due to Covid, it is important to stay in touch with positive energies “.

That of Schaub it is a modern interpretation of the Comedy, in which some of the sins condemned by Dante have no place and Beatrice, who represents faith, symbolizes the possibility of connecting to an inner wisdom that comes to us from the bond with our spiritual dimension. And for the poet, reality is made up of good or evil and there are no shades, while the Schaub emphasize the need for balance: “Even if he speaks to us like our contemporary, Dante is a man of his time – explains the therapist – pride is a sin for him while we know that within certain limits it can be useful for find our place in the world, while an excess of humility, which for Dante is a virtue, can prevent us from obtaining the right recognitions “.

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On the other hand, the condemnation of greed remains relevant for the Schaub represents addiction, one of the themes they have been working on for years, “helping patients to overcome different forms of addiction, which all have a common root, drawing on the inner resources that allow us to live with our vulnerabilities”.

Fear

And the role of fear that opens the door to our vulnerabilities remains central: “Fear arises from the oldest part of our brain, the one that fights for survival and that still has a great influence on our behavior”, he explains. Richard Schaub: “While it is only at the cortical level, in the newest part of the brain, that we can observe our fears with detachment and decide what to do: as if somehow in us too there were a hell dominated by instincts, a purgatory and a paradise “.

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Represented by our superior abilities, “which unfortunately we are not used to taking care of”, explain the authors who for this purpose propose various meditation practices in the volume that recall the techniques of mindfulness. With some differences: “mindfulness – they say – is very valid but it focuses on the present moment, it does not pay attention to our imagination and to all the information we can draw from it”.

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The inner voice

While for the Schaub the goal of meditation is precisely the possibility of coming into contact with a higher self, an inner voice that in meditation can take the form of a religious figure or a loved one: “Neuroscience also shows that there are higher areas of the brain that are activated during meditation, and that allow us to connect to what surrounds us “, he recalls Richard Schaub: “It is the way in which science explains the spiritual experiences that various cultures describe with different metaphors. And in the end, it is precisely what Dante taught.”

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The idea of ​​meditating on works of art also comes from the thought of Assagioli; it is a visualization-based technique. Ricorda Schaub: “The aim of Renaissance art was to tell stories: all the historic buildings in Florence are full of sacred stories, told in paintings in which buildings and landscapes of the time are inserted, as if to suggest to the spectators to imagine themselves part of the Square”.

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The art

And this is exactly what the authors invite to do: visit a museum, then obtaining the images of the works that have particularly struck our imagination and use them to meditate, try as he suggested. Assagioli to “enter” the painting imagining to be one of the protagonists. “We did it with different groups also in Florence – recalls Bonney Schaub -. A curious experience because many Protestant Americans are not so familiar with sacred art, and were struck by the beauty and power of the images they sometimes give. the feeling of being overwhelmed: in fact, art takes us to higher levels of consciousness “.

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