Watchman's Week
The tenth session of the 14th round of the public educational workshops of the Congress 60 Archery Club, dedicated to travelers and companions of Congress 60, began at 17:30 on Friday, May 23rd, 2025 (2nd of Khordad 1404), with the honorable Watchman, Mr. Amin Dezhakam, as the master of session; Mr. Mahmoud, the club’s respected agent, as the guard; and Reza the traveler as the secretary, with the agenda topic: “The Watchman's Week.”
Hello friends, I am Amin, a traveler.
I hope you are all well. I am very happy and grateful to God for being here at the Takhti Branch Archery Club.
I have been active in this field for a long time and was present at the archery club until 2016. I got busy with some things and rarely had time for this sport. I respect the sport of archery and have a great interest in it because it has been a part of my life; it has enabled me to learn and meet good people.
The place we have now is a divine gift. Search all the clubs in Tehran, and even all the clubs in Iran, and you will not find such a place. The space we’ve been given is not a coincidence. I hope we will be appreciative and make good use of it. Gratitude for a blessing is shown in a person's feelings and actions.
If a person appreciates a house, he will not start a fight in that house, if he appreciates a club, he will not poison that space, and these are the true forms of gratitude. If you love something, you respect it and do your best to preserve it, so in a house where people argue over trivial and small issues, they actually do not know the value of that house. If a person understood the value of the facilities at their disposal, they would never fight or argue over small issues.
God has given us the blessing of this club, and the gratitude for the club is that we use it well, to exercise properly, to spend good times together, not wasting the opportunities we have, and be present there. If you have the financial means and the potential to teach archery, use it to improve the quality of the archery club. These efforts make our environment better, more beautiful, and greater.
We must try harder. In places where people make more effort, the space becomes prosperous. If people don't make an effort, that space becomes empty, its invisible attributes [features] loses its energy, and then it crumbles. These are important points that we must pay attention to.
Now I will tell you a little about the sport of archery. I am no stranger to sports. I started working professionally and semi-professionally since high school. I worked and trained in cycling, swimming, and martial arts for several years and learned many things. One point is that when we come to an archery club or any sport, we have an individual goal and a collective goal.
The individual goal is to become healthy, to be joyful and spirited, to have a good body, and to gain energy. These are individual goals, but we also have a collective goal. Some people may or may not pursue the collective goal. The collective goal is that this archery club is dedicated to Congress 60 and we should use archery as a tool.
The reason why archery was founded in Congress 60 was that travelers and companions could attend this place, grow, and then reach higher points, and when they reach those high points, they become an evidence for addiction cure, that is, a message for liberation from addiction.
For example, what has changed inside a traveler? When he was a drug consumer, he did not have the necessary awareness, his awareness was lower than the level of ordinary people, now, three to five years after coming to Congress 60, and now he shoots and competes with capable opponents. This is the highest and most flawless document for the Congress 60 treatment method. One of the ways we can convey the message of Congress 60 to people [around the world] is through sports.
When a person enters a place, they should know why they did this. Someone might say, "I came just for sports," but if you came, you are for the Congress 60 team. You should not be worried that others will find out you were once a drug user, you should be proud that you were once a drug user. You go to other clubs and competitions and say, "I used to be a user, we were members of Congress 60 and our addiction is cured." Our identity and identification card is that we were drug users and we were cured and now we have reached this point [where we play sports]. How can you deliver the message of liberation to people if you say, "I was not a drug user," and hide it?
All those who are trained in Congress 60 teams, from legion training, to individual and group competitions, must have this characteristic in themselves. As a necessary condition, wherever we go, others must know that [we drug users and] we have nothing to hide. Another point is that to gain the necessary strength in a sport and achieve good results, we must have a series of specific characteristics, the first characteristic is that we must have a strong and powerful body appropriate for that sport. The next point is that we must have a good feeling, we have to learn the techniques and rules of that specific sport, for example, in archery we have to know how to stand and breathe properly, and it holds true for swimming.
The foundation of all sports is the same: we must strengthen our bodies and strengthen our senses. The feeling is a very tricky thing. For example, you get your body in shape, you have worked for years, your body is ready for the sport, and then at the moment you want to shoot, you shoot an arrow as if you've learned nothing. That is, you have worked for ten years, but you shoot one arrow as if it were the first day you came to the club, and all ten years are wasted. If your senses are disturbed, your concentration is also disturbed. The sensation has the ability to destroy all your efforts in an instant. We must work on this issue. What makes the body strong? If you come to the club and work out, your body will gradually become stronger, but it is not enough, you must have proper bodybuilding.
Your body is like a car, and the power of a car is its engine, how much horsepower (Hp) does this engine have? A car with a low-powered engine will wear out within five years. Humans are exactly the same. If a person starts a sport, whether it's a racing car or a tow truck, it depends on the type of sport and it must be compatible with the power of their engine.
The power of the engine means that the heart is strong. The human heart gains strength through aerobic exercise. Base sports like swimming, cycling, running, and brisk walking. You should start with these sports from very beginning. Someone who does bodybuilding, their heart doesn't expand. In sports, we must first strengthen the heart, so we must do bodybuilding. The basis of bodybuilding is running. We work on this issue at the archery club. It makes a difference when you know what you are working for.
When you are shooting, your breath must be under your control. When your lung capacity is high, you can also control stress. Therefore, if we want to become powerful in a sport, and in archery in general, we must start the sports from the basics. We must strengthen the heart slowly from zero point without pressure. We must consider this; if we want to have a strong club, we must include bodybuilding as one of the primary and main principles. We must work on bodybuilding in all club sessions that are held, it doesn't take much of our time. The bodybuilding program we have designed for archery takes 45 minutes. To learn the techniques, we must have strong legions, we must be present in the Legions, and the guides must teach the techniques of archery in the Legion. To strengthen your sensation, we have devised something for you: you must shoot in front of others, in a group. We also do this at the Music branch. I participate too, and sometimes I get stressed. You must challenge yourself and be exposed to judgment, be in the phase of constructive and correct pressure.
One of the main and fundamental things is that the closer a person becomes to their True Self, the easier it is to express themselves, because when a person wants to express themselves, expressing what you are, is easy; expressing what you are not, [when you want to show a fabricated Self] is hard. The easiest word to say is the truth, if you want to lie, you must think a lot. We practice and continue to participate in groups. To improve sensation, a person's actions and deeds must be correct. They must serve and do useful things. At the archery club, do archery so that you can enjoy it and have a good sense and peace of mind. It is impossible for us to do something with a good sense and not get a good result. A person may fail, but he feels satisfied.
Therefore, shooting and facing it is a way that strengthens our body and makes us reduce the distance between ourselves. Lessening the distance from myself caused my heart to feel light when I was shooting. I had this feeling, and it is a good thing. Finally, let me say that sports and art are for one thing: to make people feel good, and for the healing of the body, for treatment, and for getting better. If we understand this, we will get good results.
A poet who writes poetry for his own heart, recites the most beautiful poem in the world, but a poet who wants to write a poem better than another's can never write the best poem. If the great Hafez became Hafez, he did not intend to recite poetry at a night ceremony of poetry and be applauded. Hafez wrote poetry to feel light. He wrote poetry for his own feeling; he didn't do it for anyone else. The great Rumi wanted to express his sensation and feeling. There is such a rule in sports too, if you want to enjoy archery a lot and shoot very beautiful arrows, you will definitely reach the championship level. I hope you are successful in this, since the topic was about sports, I tried to speak in a way that was appropriate to the subject.
Thank you all for listening to me.
https://www.congress60.org/News/413457/%D9%85%D9%86-%D9%88%D9%82%D8%AA%DB%8C-%D8%AA%DB%8C%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%B2%DB%8C-%D9%85%DB%8C%E2%80%8C%DA%A9%D8%B1%D8%AF%D9%85-%D9%82%D9%84%D8%A8%D9%85-%D8%B3%D8%A8%DA%A9-%D9%85%DB%8C%E2%80%8C%D8%B4%D8%AF
Translated by Hamsafar Qurban, Saeb Tabrizi Branch of Congress 60
Revised by Elahe