The second development in Antonio Mercurio’s thought became known as Sophia-Art. During this phase, many new therapeutic techniques were explored and developed using various artistic forms to transmit concepts and to elicit embodied responses in clients.
Again in the words of Professor Mercurio:
“How can we accomplish a harmonious synthesis between life and death in our daily lives? There are three historical ways we have defended ourselves from the fear of death: meditating on death, giving death to (killing) others, and denying death. Anyone who uses these ways will never become an artist of their life. Anyone who is too worried about death will never be able to truly deal with their life.
Sophia-Art proposes to study death like a bull fighter studies a bull, first to tame it and then to defeat it artistically before the applause and enthusiasm of the crowd. The bull stands before the bull fighter, but death does not stand before us: it is within us, and it threatens every instant of our life. Here I am not speaking of biological death, but rather of death that is a castration of life.
Death that is a refusal to love oneself, a refusal to transform oneself, a refusal to give of oneself, a refusal to forgive oneself, a refusal to free oneself and to take flight beyond any type of trauma, any type of conditioning or any type of narcissistic wound, which carries with it a drive for revenge. Humanity’s main problem is not biological death, it is existential death. It is life that is consumed by death without generating any type of perennial life, perennial like any work of art is.
Every artist studies death and faces it, so as to overcome it.
Sophiartists train to do the same thing, taking as their medium not a canvas or marble etc., but the daily experiences that are a part of their own lives in their relationships with themselves, with others, and with life. No one expects us to become a bull fighter, but Life asks us to become artists of our own lives. Not to escape hell nor to escape death, but to bend death and pull out of it the energy it holds within, and with it create new life.
Everything is energy: life is energy, and we all know this. Matter is also energy, and before Einstein we didn’t know this. Death, too, is energy, and artists have known this forever; now, however, Sophia-Art has understood their secret and can teach it to anyone.”
Prof. Antonio Mercurio