Author Archives: Catherine Ann Lombard

Assagioli’s New Year Message

While poking around Assagioli’s online archives, searching for the words “peace” and “pace”, I came across an Italian newspaper clipping published precisely fifty years ago on New Years Day. The year was 1974, and this would be the last New Years Day Assagioli would experience as he would die on 23 August that same year at the age of 86.

The article has the headline “Per il Papa ciascuno di noi può contribuire alla pace” (According to the Pope, each of us can contribute to peace) and the text feels especially poignant given all that is happening in the world today. I can just imagine Assagioli in his study, reading through the newspaper and clipping out this article. You can see the paragraphs he marked with a red pencil held in a shaky hand.

Newspaper article dated New Year’s Day 1974 from Assagioli’s Archives

The article reiterates what Pope Paolo VI had to say on the Seventh World Day of Peace celebrated by the Catholic Church. Eerily, the first conflict that the Pope refers to fifty years ago was occurring in the Middle East. He then condemns the mafia and laments the general use of force throughout the world.

If we zoom in on what Assagioli considered worth noting, we see that he has marked what the Pope said about the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis.

“It might seem to those of us, who are merely spectators, that we can simply say: ‘But it’s so easy…why not just try to understand each other? What does one border mean as opposed to another? What is the value of one thing as opposed to another when compared to the value of peace and of the joy of celebrating brotherhood among mankind and of welding in friendship the relations that need to be forged between nations?’

“The theme of peace is not superfluous, optional, or ornamental, but essential to the life of every person and to their physical and actual safety. Peace is an urgent theme weighing on our destinies.”

We know that Assagioli sought peace – inner and outer – all his life, even to the point of spending four weeks as a prisoner in Regina Coeli jail, in the heart of Rome. On one August night in 1940, he was arrested at his home outside of Florence, handcuffed, placed on a night train for Rome, interrogated, stripped searched, fingerprinted and sentenced indefinitely for “praying for peace and other international crimes.” Once released, he was placed under house arrest and was constantly under surveillance by the fascist government.

Domed ceiling of the entrance to Regina Coeli Prison (photo by Pietro Snider)

It appears that even in his old age – frail, ill of health, and nearly deaf – Assagioli was still praying for peace. The second section that Assagioli marked was Paolo IV’s thoughts on the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. The Pope spoke of the nonchalant acceptance of these horrendous acts that occurred thirty years before. He lamented that people were beginning to talk about atomic weapons “as if they were nothing.”

“My God!” the Pope exclaimed. “We’ve almost turned the Japanese episode into a normal occurrence, hopefully an occurrence that will never come to pass, yet one that is not impossible for the people’s fate.”

The article goes onto say:

Our civilization is laden with weapons and “it is necessary for people to procure them otherwise they no longer know whether they will survive or not. The seemingly balanced world is in a tug of war, a balancing of forces. It is fear against fear.”

Let us begin 2024 as Assagioli did fifty years ago during the last year of his life. Let us begin by finding the best way that we too can diminish the fear and contribute to peace – whether through prayer or action, inner spiritual awareness or outer acts of will… Let us demonstrate through our words, thoughts, and lives any and all signs of peace.

As you can see, we haven’t gotten very far in fifty years… As Pope Paolo VI said, “We all need to be true – not false or weak – pacifists. True pacifists like Gandhi and Dr. Albert Schweitzer.” Let’s start 2024 by identifying our ideal model of Peace (There are so many!) and seeking their guidance in the New Year.

For further reading, see Assagioli’s article below.

may-the-spirit-of-peace Download

Christmas Letter from Tagore

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More than 100 years ago, Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature, spent five months in the United States trying to raise money for his newly founded Visva-Bharati University. He was mostly unsuccessful, in part, because British officials in the USA were discreetly working against him, dissuading rich benefactors from donating. This subtle sabotage was mainly because, after the Amritsar massacre in 1919, Tagore had renounced his knighthood.

Christmas 1921 at Yama Farms Inn. You can clearly see Tagore who is standing tall, left of Santa, wearing a traditional robe and his *real* flowing white beard!

At Christmas Tagore happened to be staying as a guest at Yama Farms Inn in the Catskill Mountains north of New York City. Located on 1300 acres, Yama Farms Inn had 40 rooms. It was a kind of retreat hotel for industrialists who could go there and enjoy the company of intellectuals without any fuss about their millions. It was the kind of place where you could find Mr. Colgate, Mr. Eastman, and J.D. Rockefeller. Previous guests had been Thomas Edison and the naturalist John Burroughs.

While Tagore was there, he was outside the inn at the same time J.D. Rockefeller was waiting for his car. When Rockefeller saw Tagore, he gave him a dime. Later Rockefeller told the owner of Yama Farms that he had given a dime to “an old Negro.” Tagore is said to have later asked two Russian artists, “Isn’t it odd…Do I look like a tramp?”

Tagore wrote this pained letter to his friend and confident Charles Freer Andrews from Yama Farms on Christmas Day:

Near New York, December 25th, 1921

To-day is Christmas Day. We are about forty-five guests gathered in this inn from different parts of the United States. It is a beautiful house, nestling in the heart of a wooded hill, with an invitation floating in the air of a brook broadening into a lake in the valley. It is a glorious morning, full of peace and sunlight, of the silence of the leafless forest untouched by bird songs or humming of bees.

But where is the spirit of Christmas in human hearts? The men and women are feeding themselves with extra dishes and laughing extra loud. But there is not the least touch of the eternal in the heart of their merriment, no luminous serenity of joy, no depth of devotion. How immensely different from the religious festivals of our country! These Western people have made their money but killed their poetry of life. Here life is like a river, that has heaped up gravel and sand and choked the perennial current of water that flows from an eternal source on the snowy height of an ancient hill. I have learnt since I came here to prize more than ever the infinite worth of the frugal life and simple faith. These Western people believe in their wealth, which can only multiply itself and attain nothing.

How to convince them of the utter vanity of their pursuits! They do not have the time to realize that they are not happy. They try to smother their leisure with rubbish of dissipation, lest they discover that they are the unhappiest of mortals. They deceive their souls with counterfeits, and then, in order to hide that fact from themselves, they artificially keep up the value of those false coins by an unceasing series of self-deceptions.

My heart feels like a wild-duck from the Himalayan lake lost in the endless desert of Sahara, where sands glitter with a fatal brilliance but the soul withers for want of the life-giving spring of water.

From left to right: Baron Roman Romanovitch Rosen, who served as the Russian ambassador to the United States and to Japan; Rabindranath Tagore; and Arthur Hamerschlag, first president of the Carnegie Mellon Institute of Technology, outside Yama Farms Inn.

Writing a Spiritual Christmas List

Rule vs Rules

Assagioli’s note referencing Underhill.

The first thing that I noticed is that Underhill called her list a “Rule.” Not a list of “rules” but a Rule, similarly to what is known as The Rule of Saint Benedict. When she visited Sorella Maria in Italy, she referred to the community as:

“… a little group of women who are trying to bring back to modern existence the homely, deeply supernatural and quite unmonastic ideal of the Primitive Rule.”

This use of the word “Rule” instead of “rules” seems to be a more open, discriminatory way of dealing with life as opposed to hard, fast rules that don’t allow for unforeseen conditions and our human frailty.

Try Writing Your Own Rule Christmas 2023

Upon studying Underhill’s Rule, I was impressed with the number of items on her list. Three pages full is a lot! Naturally, it inspired me to write my own “Rule. Christmas 2023” and I hope it inspires you as well. Here’s a few suggestions:

1. Prepare the space. Make sure you have enough time and a quiet space to work in.

2. Prepare yourself. Before starting to write, take time in prayer or meditation to quiet your mind and heart.

3. Use pen and paper. I know it sounds soooo old-fashion, but it works. Assagioli explains that while writing by hand, you allow other thoughts and feelings that you were not yet aware of to spontaneously emerge. It is as if the pen were to “take control of your hand.” But in reality, it is not the “pen” that is taking control but the unconscious.

4. Be honest and gentle. Try to come up with a list of items to be “dealt with”, as Underhill writes, “not by direct fighting but by gently turning to God or thoughts of serenely loving Saints.”

Just write. It doesn’t have to be perfect, wise, or entertaining. Just write without any judgment. Tell that judge inside you to go away! You know, that one who keeps insisting: “Oh! This is so stupid/a waste of time. I’m a terrible writer. Look at my handwriting. What a mess!”

Don’t make the list too long. Up to five items is enough for now…

5. Be grateful. Afterwards, extend your thanks to God/the Universe and yourself, especially the part that really did not want to write this Rule!

6. Be diligent, persistence, and patient. Put the Rule away somewhere safe, but keep it in your heart. Check periodically with yourself to affirm what you are doing well and what you might need to continue to work on.

7. Celebrate. In June 2024, at the Summer Solstice, reopen the Rule and assess your progress. Know that any movement forward is great spiritual success. Be Joyful!

Love and Will

A psychosynthesis approach to living