The School of Wonder

Philosophical Exercises

Gatherings guided by Pablo Corral Vega, photographer, writer and philosophical counselor.

For the philosophers of Antiquity, philosophy was not a doctrine to be learned but a way of life to be practiced. Their texts sought less to inform than to form: to transform the way their readers saw and lived. Stoics, Epicureans and Platonists practiced exercises of attention, memory and seeing every day.

Pierre Hadot called them spiritual exercises. I call them, more modestly, philosophical exercises. They are neither therapy nor self-help. Nobody leaves with a recipe. If anything, you leave with more questions, and with more peace.

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What a gathering is like

Read, talk, look, let go

• Read. Each participant receives a booklet of texts by Pierre Hadot, Epictetus, Simone Weil, Nietzsche, Meister Eckhart, the Daodejing, Martin Buber, Francis of Assisi. We read them aloud, slowly, and let them speak.
• Talk. In a circle. Nobody has to convince anybody. What surprises people most is how much they learn by listening to someone who thinks differently.
• Look. I spent forty years behind a camera learning to pay attention. Wonder, for me, is not a concept but a craft: it is practiced. We go out into the garden, lie down on the grass, watch the sky through the branches, sit around the fire.
• Let go. Many of the exercises are about detachment. Asking who I am once I take off the accessories. Imagining the world without me. Ceasing to defend, ceasing to prove.

In the press

Letting importance rest

Priscilla Falconi Avellán was part of the circle at Cusín. On Wednesday, September 30, 2026, she published this column in the Ecuadorian newspaper Expreso. It is reproduced here, in translation, with her permission.

This weekend I came to a stop. For two days, a group of us gave ourselves the space to read, talk, breathe and ask ourselves questions without the urgency of reaching useful conclusions. They were philosophical exercises, led by Pablo Corral Vega.

Pablo shared a story his mother used to tell: “There was a man so very, very important; a man so important that, every block or so, he had to let his importance rest. He would step into a doorway and rest his importance.”

A funny image, but an unsettling one. How much does our importance weigh? Letting it rest does not mean feigning modesty or denying our worth. It means suspending that exhausting need to occupy the center, to be right, to be recognized, to defend every position, to impose our version or to turn every disagreement into a personal affront.

Many conflicts that seem ideological are, in fact, importances that have not rested. When we confuse our convictions with our identity, a remark becomes disloyalty, a disagreement an offense, and someone else’s prominence a threat. We stop listening and start defending positions.

Those who lead have a greater obligation to let their importance rest. A cause can be greater than whoever heads it, and leadership demands remembering that the common purpose comes before the spotlight. Listening, correcting course and stepping away from the center do not diminish authority; they keep it from turning into vanity.

The Tao Te Ching teaches that “the tender and the supple are disciples of life.” What lives bends; what is dead stays rigid. The ego also hardens when it feels that changing is losing, yielding is disappearing and correcting oneself is humiliation. Only someone who does not always need to prove their importance can be flexible.

We live in a world that pushes us to show ourselves off, to have an opinion on everything and to react immediately. We are exhausted from holding up the importance of who we believe we ought to be.

Perhaps we should look for our own doorway. Leave there the title, the grievance and the need to win. Remember that not every argument needs a winner and that, sometimes, making room is the highest form of leadership.

Priscilla Falconi Avellán · “Sin vueltas” column, Expreso (Ecuador), September 30, 2026. Original title: “La importancia de descansar la importancia.” Translated from the Spanish.