My consuming quest ...

My restless youth was governed by the consuming urge to find my place in life, to find the inner connection with myself. I couldn't remain still for long because sooner or later the burning reality within me would surface and propel me forward into a fresh search. My strong middle class conditioning to conform forced me into places and situations that would jar my deeper feelings and lead them to rebellion. "Who am I?' is still digging into the deepest part of me... will I know before my last breath?

My first job in London ...

It was 1969 when I became officially a professional photographer. I had finally achieved what I wanted to be for some troubled years. London was buzzing and so was the blood in my veins. I was still living in a bedsit in Kensington Old Brompton Road. A house I loved deeply and where I had so much fun photographing the various characters sharing it with me. The tiny room had my enlarger on a table, a gas ring on the floor for my food and the chemicals to process and print the films stored under my bed. Whenever I had visitors I would burn incense

to cover the smell of chemicals. Money was scarce but life intense...

January ...

January is always such a difficult month, demanding and confusing. I feel that I should be doing more and faster to embrace the promising new year. Lots of expectations and few results, unfortunately. A ghostly shadow is following me around everywhere I go, a kind of miserable alter ego, who is awaiting for the chance to trip me and ruin my act. I have not been able to get to my computer and write to my blog, in fact, because I feel pretty empty with little to say and even replying to emails is a gigantic task of concentration. Well ...the end of the month is in sight.

Love ....

As the old saying goes, my life begun at 40. It really did. Can one imagine a grown professional man, a photographer with a large business of his own, living at the creative edge of life, a wild youth of pain and joy ... realising, almost suddenly, that his past existence had been to him virtually meaningless and that the only reality left from it was a giant hole in the heart? At 40 the DarkHole begun to heal ....Yoga appeared in the horizon and a fresh chapter manifested. The expansion of my consciousness took me to devour spiritual books,

astrology, psychology and begun asking deep questions. I became aware that I had never been able to Love. I mean that openness inside, that warmth generated by accepting, that willingness to understand. I grew up in post-WW3 Rome where the daily reality were fear, sorrow, martyrdom, frustration, resentment, anger, and life was lived at a survival level. My family had been gradually drained of feelings through the experience of war.

What to expect? Where would I learn about love? ....

2010 ...

With the experience of the past, live in the present. Travel light without the weight of worries and fears rooted in the past. Face situations and decisions in the light of your reason.

I wish all of you, friends and students, an aware 2010.

2009 is ending for me in a psychedelic stream of memories and dreams ....

Doubts and Devotion ...

As I grew increasingly more aware of who I really was, I found that help in keeping me on the path I had

embraced was constantly appearing from nowhere. People crossing my life, practical advices, synchronicity, serendipity, inspirations and dreams all conspired to keep me going often despite myself. Swamiji used to tell us that a true path of self discovery, where devotion to the Ultimate Truth is unwavering, protects us from any negative obstacles and grows in us a sense of invincibility during our life experiences. Doubts dissolve faced with the devotional loyalty to our inner reality, our deepest feelings. Many times I found myself in tears when some emotional mountain had to be climbed, tears of resistance, tears of anger and tears of fear. Once in the Canadian ashram of Val Morin I walked to a place where Swamiji used to land a small plane, called the 'airstrip', a lonely spot above the camp. I was taking part to the Teacher's Course and experiencing a very strong resistance to the teachings and massive doubts whether I would be able to finish the course. Soon, I found myself sitting in lotus by the little forest of trees at the top of the airstrip. The landscape was awesome: massive sky, vast land. I felt overwhelmed and tears begun pouring out of me like a torrent. 'Swamiji help me' I was repeating like a mantra " I am 40 year old and I have wasted my life. I cannot go back to my old ways, I feel deeply hurt by them, and I do not know where I am going, no idea what is ahead of me". An hour or two went by and when I got up to return I felt empty, emotionally drained, very weak on my legs.Within me, by contrast, a strength I never experienced before had appeared: I felt an immense love and a deep, deep gratitude. I could never find out for what: it just was. Any doubt had drastically vanished and I never looked back since that event.

Christmas ...

We've got to the end of another year. Looking back to my past Christmases I see the ones I spent with my teacher Swami Vishnu in the Bahamas shining brighter than all others. I was working in the ashram as a teacher, as a cook as a shop manager and as a photographer. I was in my early forty and a professional man yet I felt like a teenager on his first trips abroad. I would spend 2 and half months in Paradise Island and back in London at the beginning of March where my studio team was waiting for me to resume my photographic work/projects. Every year I grew happier and healthier after those months spent close to Swamiji's powerful teachings on Hatha, Spirituality, the philosophy of Yoga lifestyle. After the whole day spent on karma yoga duties, often without stopping, I would collapse in bed at around 10:30 and fall asleep before hitting the pillow. It was such a novel experience for me to be so physically involved and so motivated to inspire the student guests of the ashram to explore a different lifestyle and allow the emergence of new horizons in their minds and visions. I discovered a level of love in me I never suspected I could be capable of. All my life I struggled with the lack of that feeling, the warm feeling of being meaningful, the feeling of belonging. My surprise was that I found that love by cooking food for a couple hundred people, sweeping floors and selling t-shirts and spiritual souvenirs in a ramshackled place by the caribbean seas... What happened to my glorious, high powered, creative photographic career? ....