At the ‘dawn of an eco-logical age‘
with a growing recognition of our interdependence
we need to learn & teach
how to use our Insight & Vision
again !
Paying attention to our ‘Sense of Wisdom’ following our
‘Love for Wisdom’
The Best and most beautiful Things in the world
can not be seen or touched,
they must be felt with the heart !
Be aware, most of the time we discuss Education, we are just talking about a process of conditioning.
In fact, it is all about: how to train our children and future generations to become ‘productive members’
of society, now just a commodity in modern economics.
‘The crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism.
Our whole educational system suffers from this evil.
An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student,
who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation
for his future career.’ – Einstein on ‘Why Socialism?’
In the hierarchic Order of our Linear Culture, the conditioning & training of people became a very sophisticated process. The science of manipulating ‘the consumers’ behavior through marketing & propaganda is now the most valuable tools for the ‘Phantom Economy’ & politicians.
With a ‘Race to the Top’ the curriculums of reward & punishment are systematically selecting, recruiting & grooming the useful candidates to become the ‘cannon fodder ’ for a dysfunctional society.
(- Yes, even political orientations are correlated with our brain structure !)
Conditioning is training our subconscious mind & body-functions,
but Education addresses the conscious awareness.
Operant Conditioning – B.F. Skinner
So, if all these tricks are conditioning in one form or another, then – what is Learning & Teaching ?
Learning is an operating process
in the complexity of consciousness,
a process which opens our minds
and expands our horizon of awareness.
As interest & curiosity permeates all endeavors, so is questioning the stimulus for any intellectual learning process. This Quest for more knowledge & new experiences opens our ‘Receivers’, makes them eager to receive information & answers;
– like a Lotus,
growing out off the mud,
opening its flower towards beauty,
light & life.
Listening & observing will make us hear & see;
Hearing & seeing will make us understand !
For centuries science has studied the interaction of mind & body and the connection between physical & mental health. Abu Zaydal-Balkhi, (850-934) the first known cognitive psychologist
and medical psychologist argued that “since man’s construction is from both his soul and body, therefore, human existence cannot be healthy without the interweaving or entangling of soul and body.”
– He further argued that,
“if the body gets sick, the psyche loses much of its cognitive and comprehensive ability and fails to enjoy the desirous aspects of life” and that “if the psyche gets sick, the body may also find no joy in life and may eventually develop a physical illness.”
Modern neuroscience & psychology
now recognize the existence of more
than just the 5 traditional senses and
we finally understand that our perception
is fundamentally a multi-sensory experience.
Today we understand that physiology & psychology are close related,
that the ‘phenomenal sensory’, our physically observable experience,
is also closely associated with the ‘metaphysical’ & psychological processes in our mind.
As all the propagandists & marketers of our society well know, any sensory detection is not only effecting the obvious awareness of our conscious mind, but has even a much greater impact on our sub-consciousness.
– making this, and any following analyzing & sorting process, a psychosomatic experience.
Metaphorically speaking, viewing consciousness as a ‘Sense’ should provide a degree of conceptual illustration to help us understand the process of real learning.
Although, not the only form of organization in the brain, but a very unique & important ‘sense’,
it serves as an organizing & synthesizing tool, making things consciously aware to us,
– a cognitive processor which task it is to ‘make sense’ of all the neural inputs we receive from our sub-consciousness. The uniqueness of this ‘sense’ lies in the character of the organization it creates, where a conscious awareness becomes the property & purpose of that organization.
Awareness itself is the emerging effect of this organizing process,
the ultimate achievement of this ‘sense of conscious awareness’.
This awareness is not just knowledge, like the RAM in our computer,
it is a ‘sense of meaning’ or the WISDOM of knowing…
– where & how to find not-just-knowledge information,
– what to use, and when to apply, – like a CPU
– how & why to blend all this together so that it makes sense.
-The Sense of Wisdom-
– is an integrate part of our Social Emotional Intelligence
and our interface to a greater, Collective Intelligence
– detects all other senses & processes in the brain,
then synthesize & relates these components
into a form that ‘makes Sense’…
– where ‘making Sense’ is defined as being useful to ourselves,
in our adaptation to the circumstances of life,
and with our integration into the environment as a whole…
– where true economic solutions reflect an ecologic harmony
which is absolutely necessary for our partnership with creation,
the eternal flow of energy…
This ‘Sense of Wisdom’ can create this
sustainable ECO-DYNAMIC
we so desperately need today !
The character of consciousness as a whole is NOT selective in the sense of –
Good = acceptance – Bad = elimination,
– it receives and stores all information & experience indiscriminately in our sub-conscious mind.
This sub-consciousness is the complete collection of all
our past experiences, and also our collective, spiritual world.
A more or less stimulated ‘Sense of Wisdom’ uses bits of information
out of this collection, ‘connects the dots’, makes aware and creates
the knowledge-network
we need to respond & adapt
to the ever-changing chaos of life.
This Wisdom is the ‘meaning’ & perception we need to ‘make sense’,
respond & interact with the rest of creation on a daily base.
Where ‘Good’ is defined as – balancing disharmonies,
and ‘Bad’ as – insensitive & irresponsible
toward these harmonies of life as a whole.
The main characteristic of this ‘Sense’ is that it connects, conspires,
consents, concludes & converts as much information as it can
extract & process from the ‘ocean’ of our sub-conscious data base,
– Synthesizing & creating constantly new, useful & manageable
awareness at this point in time we call NOW.
This Wisdom lives and operates in the NOW,
Wisdom puts content in context…
– it connects perceptions of History with the NOW and the Future,
– allows us to conspire with community and makes us a social being;
– consents to the ‘nature of things’ and makes us a participants;
– converts emotions into compassion & action.
This Wisdom comes to conclusions, – concluding (life)-cycles, making them perfect & complete;
Wisdom is a harmonic rhythm of the pulse of life.
In order to adapt and to be in-tune with the constant changes of life,
the sense of wisdom has to stay flexible, absorb & reflect, respond to
new challenges & resonate with the environment.
Consciousness is a complex system, not a fixed structure !
So is Wisdom a living organism with concepts & methods,
formulas & ideas…
Wisdom is here to adapt, evolve & mutate…- in countless variations !
Fixed points & positions have their limitations, are quickly outlived and obsolete.
Time & Life do not stand still !
Wisdom is like water…
…it becomes life !
→ Rigidity brakes & shatters easily
‘Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock,
which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft,
and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.
This everyone knows, another paradox: what is soft is strong.
Yet no one asks accordingly.’ LAO-TSE
In Consciousness is our ‘Compass in the Chaos’ of Here & NOW
– this Wisdom is the Insight & Vision, our navigator in Life,
we just have to learn how to operate this tool !
Like a muscle, this sense has to be moved and exercised to stay
flexible & alert, otherwise, like water, it becomes stale…
Wisdom is ‘Philosophy in Motion’
Any Quest, in general, awakens a multisensory experience
on all levels of consciousness.
Curiosity & Quest, analysis & re-search are the stimulus for a
conscious mind and therefore the slowest part of our awareness.
INSIGHT:
‘Looking thru your inner-eye’
for Imagination, Intuition & Inspiration,
wishing, dreaming & fantasizing…
with no limitations of time & space !
Craving, longing, yearning & desire etc. belong to
the vast & fast realm of Sub-Consciousness.
Questions fire-up numerous neurons in our brain and cause major chain reactions in our mind,
– a mental ‘digestion’ process is triggered, – we call Learning.
Often we find the answers to those and other questions build right into-it or underlying the Question itself.
– sometimes more question arises like: what do we mean with Learning or Teaching.
Who is asking and why do we want to distinguish between Learning & Conditioning ?
Learning to understand ourselves.
‘…Learning is not the lifeless, sterile, futile, quickly forgotten stuff that is crammed in to the mind of the poor helpless individual tied into his seat by ironclad bonds of conformity!
I am talking about LEARNING – the insatiable curiosity that drives the adolescent boy to absorb everything he can see, hear or read about gasoline engines in order to improve the efficiency and speed of his ‘cruiser’. I am talking about the student who says, “I am discovering,
drawing-in from the outside, and making that which is drawn-in a real part of me.”
I am talking about any learning in which the experience of the learner progresses along this line: “No, no, that’s not what I want; – Wait ! This is closer to what I am interested in, what I need;
– Ah, here it is! Now I’m grasping and comprehending what I need
and what I want to know!” Carl Rogers 1983
The learning process is far too complex to be understood just by linguistic explanations alone, as well as the use of our overloaded 5 senses is insufficient for many things we are talking about here on these pages.
Here we are facing the dilemma of the linguistic limitations & restrictions of a very materialistic Linear Culture.
Since the “Tower of Babylon” we know
that natural languages & dialects help
to communicate, distinguish & separate things,
but can also confuse situations & people.
– things ‘get lost in translation’.
The concept of Learning, as in attaining wisdom,
belongs essentially to a different dimension of awareness.
Talking about consciousness, enlightenment, metaphysical experience and other mental phenomena might be better & easier understood on abstract & symbolic levels.
Metaphors & Allegories in fables & fairy-tales are not only a language for little children but are also a very important communication technique for the invisible world of mind & spirit.
The use of metaphors is probably the most important human trait
based on the cross domain abstraction that ‘mirror neurons‘ mediate;
– there is for instance a hemisphere for action metaphors –‘get a grip‘
or another for visualization or Imaginary metaphors.
– Any monkey can reach for a peanut, but only humans can ‘reach for the stars !’
Recognizing a true Learning experience as something which
opens-up, connects, links, integrates, adapts, evolves & mutates…
– rather than refuses, divides & restricts.
Looking for alternative principles of thinking or rules-of-conduct,
– we should go back in history when these original events of law-creation took place.
Todays dominating ideas of Right ↔ Wrong, Good ↔ Evil, Beginning ↔ End
were already quite unsophisticated 3500 years ago and can
only be understood in the historic context of nomadic tribes
trying to find & conquer new Territory, a ‘promised land’ to settle…
– The idea of growth & expansion.
More appropriate & relevant ideas for today’s education can be found in the underlying concepts
of the ‘Codex Hammurabi’ or in the ancient Egyptian ‘Ma’at’,
– the Divine Principle of Truth & Fairness.
Hammurabi’s principle of ‘If … – then…’ for instance, leave the door open
for a more case-based reasoning in our thinking.
– A reasoning where an ethical principle depends on the ultimate consequence.
– A law depending on the circumstances of an action, having effects, – causing reactions.
– A logic which ‘makes more sense‘ in a constantly changing environment of time & space.
– A method in motion, adapting to the flow of Life.
And then there is the Egyptian Ma’at,a truly wHolistic concept of balance & harmony
which embraces all aspects of Life…
– A perception of Life as eternal, circular and nonlinear,
a foundation for natural & social-order in unity.
– A spirit in which justice is applied rather than a brusque exposition of
commandments as in the Jewish and later in the Christian & Islamic laws.
– Rules recognizing the underlying holiness & unity of the Universe,
trying to create & maintain a cosmic harmony by living in balance with nature & community.
A careful & respectful observation of nature made them a truly environmentally conscious society.
This wider-order & ‘sense of law’ generated significant achievements in impartiality & equality in social justice,
– even in preserving the rights of women.
With their ‘Sense of Wisdom’ this great Culture developed an
organic & humane system of thought & conduct, which is
often characterized as rhetorical laws.
Emphasizing on the importance of Rhetoric, the intelligent use of word & speech, the oral & written expression, essential for any human interaction & communication.
Communication is the tool to exchange & share information for any social being.
How we master this tool is not only important for community-interaction but also essential for the integrity of our own mind, how we use our senses, sort & process information in our brain.
Self-awareness & confidence expand our horizon of Consciousness.
Specially in today’s global economy with mass-media, satellite-communication & internet, it is absolutely necessary to understand & learn the principals of verbal & non-verbal rhetoric in communication.
Expressing our feelings, defining our meaning, explaining the consequences, describing facts,
clarifying causes & context and debating ideas are a big stimulus for all our senses,
and the steroids for our ‘Sense of Wisdom’.
A fundamental curiosity and the need to satisfy body & soul is all we need to open our minds.
Critical observation, analytical thinking and sound communication skills are the most important sensibilities we require to digest & ferment all the in-flow of information.
If these senses are asleep or not developed, if we are unable to process & regulate these daily ‘tsunamis‘
of information, they will flood our sub-conscious mind uncontrolled and eventually drown our entire consciousness.
With loosing the awareness & control of our mental processes we give up our self determination & autonomy,
we will depend more & more on outside help.
With ‘all guards down’ and the ‘backdoor‘ to our subconsciousness wide open, we are now vulnerable to any manipulation of outside forces…
– ready for brainwashing & indoctrination.
The problem we are facing today is not only about loosing the abilities & senses of awareness, but how we communicate or teach these fundamental skills of consciousness in the first place.
The majority of society lives in a daze of blind faith
unable to feel the sensation of an original, ‘first hand’ experience.
The monotheistic Abrahamic faith, a hierarchic & chauvinistic
Belief System has brutally taken over all aspects of life on earth.
Now this outdated systems of Law & Order has occupied our minds
with ideas of possession, dominance & obedience, success & failure…
‘The more laws and order are made prominent,
the more thieves and robbers there will be.’ Lao-tse
Dogmas have replaced spirituality, and any honest quest for truth is subdued in an early age.
This Paradigm of a Linear Culture has now created mentally, emotionally & physically sick human beings
in dysfunctional societies which are unable to respond to the challenges of today.
Based on selection & discrimination our societies have systematically erased Learning & Teaching
and replaced it with conditioning and other sophisticated training programs, they call Education.
Educational institutions became a very lucrative breading ground
for a uniform & mindless workforce..
Teaching is now downgraded to a highly efficient training program for the masses,
corrupting our ‘little’ brains with an archaic belief system.
How ludicrous of a society to make education a profitable business,
where a few selected are in possession of the keys to salvation.
This is the privatization of knowledge where we have to pay our way
into the ranks & cadres of an army of cannon-fodder or workforce.
Positive & negative enforcement are aimed to brake the individual spirit and subdue any personal autonomy…
just in order to replace it with new forms of self-deception, a ‘false sense’ of Self. ( just read the Secrete)
All efforts are made to pressure young & innocent minds to conform, to fit-in and to fall-in-line with a system of undisputed obedience to the Laws & Norm of this Belief.
The repetitive processes of conditioning is the ideal method to produce ranks of leaders & followers, armies of numb-nuts.
Everything we ‘teach’ today, from public kindergarten to schools & universities is tailored to produce ‘productive’ members
of society, a calculable Commodity in linear mathematics & statistics.
Multilevel marketing is framing & trimming future generations to a mono-culture of egocentrism & uniformity;
– a multilevel educational system is creating violent societies of Mobbing & Bullying
While autonomy & authenticity are not easily attained, their absence proves to be catastrophic to both individual & society as the embittered conformists seek new victims on whom to wreak violence and avenge their psychic wounds.
Arno Gruen has challenged Freud’s assumption that humans are born with a tendency to destruction & violence.
He argues that the root of all evil lies more in self-hatred, a rage originating in a self-betrayal that begins in childhood,
when autonomy is surrendered in exchange for the ‘love’ of those who wield power over us.
People have created a false sense of Self, a pleasing-to-others image of themselves that originates in a powerful,
deep-seated fear of being hurt, humiliated or abandoned.
The insanity of rage & numbness that this hyper-conformity produces,
unfortunately, goes widely unrecognized because it has become the ‘reality’ of modern society.
Now we raised generations of confused & unbalanced individuals in disharmony with themselves & Life,
– created a Linear Culture in a hierarchic order with Selection & Segregation,
Societies disconnected & finally separated from the rest of creation.
This paradigm has grown and grown to an enormous cancer which will eventually eat its own host,
us, the Homo Sapiens, from the inside out.
A Linear Culture racing to a self-fulfilling prophecy of ‘The End’,
with people collectively forcing or ‘attracting’ their own destiny.
The result is, whole Nations are now mentally, and obviously physically ill, completely clueless what to do,
besides repeating themselves over again & again…
Gruen again, warns that escape from this paradigm is not simply rebellion, cause rebels often remain
emotionally tied to the objects of their rebellion, but a development of a personal
autonomy and a relinquishing of all forms of self-numbing & self-deception.
Education ?
We ‘love’ our children, and in return, they trust their parents ‘blindly’.
It is a common believe that there is nothing wrong with the principal ethics
or the fundamental knowledge & skills which we inherit from our parents.
So we continue to hand-down these outdated believes and dysfunctional principals to our children,
and all our curriculums of education make sure that these warped & ailing ideas
are passed-on & ‘downloaded‘ to the following Generations.
But it is exactly these ‘core principles of life’ which have corrupted our way of thinking,
and crippled our social emotional intelligence.
Just like any other virus infection, a mental disease, also called a meme,
spreads like a wildfire across the population and up the generations.
All our social networks, from our parents and their political & religious organizations to the educational
institutions of society, are a perfect breeding-ground & incubator for this kind of mental illness.
In fact, schools, collages & universities became the ideal transmitter
for this devastating & crippling disease, a mental pandemic of epic proportion.
Nothing really useful, or even intelligent, comes out of these institutions anymore,
just corrupted information and manipulated knowledge reaffirming the old madness over & over again!
No wonder that with this kind of Knowledge & Education,
our leaders & experts are absolutely clueless what they are doing.
To navigate thru a constantly moving & changing environment requires a totally different
form of skills, a different kind of Knowledge & Education, a different way of thinking.
This way of thinking has to go back to the origins of learning, where Skhole meant leisure time,
a free time & space where one can sit back and rest from the hassle of the day,
a quiet ‘place’ to contemplate & meditate. This is where our mind opens-up like a lotus flower,
where we get inspired & stimulated on all levels of consciousness.
Real Education provides this kind of time & space to ‘digest’ Inspirations & experiences.
This kind of ‘School’ is not an institution to condition our minds,
but a time to ‘amalgamate’ & ‘ferment’ knowledge & ideas with wisdom,
a place where we take our Intuitions into consideration and develop the Imagination & Vision
which will guide us from the Here & Now into the future.
This way of Learning & Teaching is not only nurturing the individual mind, but also revives
our Collective Consciousness, preparing our social emotional intelligence
to co-create sensitive & responsible solutions for the future.
School is a place in the clouds as much as
it is rooted in the soil of this planet.
The constantly changing circumstances of Life can not be tamed by some arbitrary rules & regulations.
Change is Flexibility & Fluctuation, patterns which require constant re-adjustment adaptation & mutation;
– Any real learning or healing process has to understand & adopt this Dynamic.
A more multisensory inquiry, or ‘learning’ process, is necessary to understand
the context & complexity of Everything and our involvement in the whole.
The awareness of this Dynamic & Inter-connectivity will help us to become
more flexible & innovative in our response to the ecological challenges of today.
Only this kind of brain plasticity can re-connect us with our natural environment,
and is able to re-develop our social emotional intelligence.
Nothing stands still or remains in position,
Life is on the move
and we have to learn to navigate this motion.
So, we don’t need another educational reform or some cultural revolution,
what we need is a paradigm shift in our deepest belief-systems…
Starting right here and NOW with ourselves, finding our very own
identity & strength in a ‘Sense of Belonging’ to the whole.
This Quest or this process is deeply rooted in spiritual awakening
and is the fundamental Learning process we all need.
We train our children how to take care of their body and how to use memory & knowledge,
but fail to teach them how to maintain their mental health with basic Psychological hygiene.
Trapped in materialistic ‘science’ and fragmented in specialized faculties,
we have lost the ability to teach the basic fundamentals of Life.
This way, we have lost our ‘Sense of Wisdom’ from early on, we don’t even understand who we are anymore;
We never learn how & why we do things, and most of us don’t even know where they belong.
Our Self gets stuck in Oneself
and with such ‘Arrested Development‘
our complacent Self remains an immature & vulnerable mind in a a grown up body !
Social-emotionally uneducated individuals are the consenting & compliant
consumers and ‘Cannon Fodder’ of our economy.
[ read more about the maturation of the Self ]
There was nobody around who could share this essential wisdom with us.
Only at a later stage, and if we can afford it, we try to fix the problems and fill this ‘void‘ with psychotherapy,
rehab, life-coaching or some other alternative healing methods.
In absence of learning, our world, as we know it, became eco-nomically & eco-logically dysfunctional !
With the disappearance of real learning & teaching we lost our understanding of inter-connectivity,
our sense of wisdom, our common sense of balance & harmony in life.
As in any divine Paradox, = Learning is Teaching.
A Learning process becomes also a Teaching process by voluntarily & consciously training & conditioning our own mind…
– Now, awaken & understanding the complexity & integrity of the Whole, we will practice sharing & reflecting not only with ourselves but with our environment & community –
this dynamic is transforming our Learning process into Teaching !
As questions & answers belong together, so do Learning & Teaching complement each other,
they build a dynamic relationship like patients & healers ;
– one does not exists without the other.
In fact, we are all student & mentor, patient & healer in one person…
…as teachers know that they are also students of constant learning;
– and we all know the healing power of a caring hand.
Teaching is sharing ideas & experiences ( -yes we can !)
– passing-on knowledge & wisdom to future generations, teaching helps ‘making sense’ of things and assists in ‘connecting the dots’ !
Teaching is the key to all conscious awareness and, same as Learning, has no limitations or Taboos!
…it makes sense to ask at what moment someone became apprised or enlightened of a truth,
but not to ask at what moment someone learned a skill.
Learning is an ‘aha !’ experience of the HERE & NOW !
When, where and how are the questions.
We learn from the past, we live in the here & now and we teach for the future..
We all want to know where we belong in this world,
We all need to learn how to navigate thru this environmental chaos,
and how to use our inner compass on this eternal journey of life.
Unless we change the way we learn & teach
fundamentally & completely, our children & adults will ask us the same questions over and over again:
Why is humankind repeating these mistakes over and over again, why haven’t we learned from these endless wars or the pathological greed of people and the deep despair of nature?
Let us questioning what really matters to us and recognize the
difference between involuntary conditioning and conscious learning.
Let us learn & teach how to maneuver our individual spirits within the divine chaos of Life,
how to live in balance & harmony and become One with the Whole.
Trust your ‘Sense of Wisdom’ and the voice of the 3I’s
Our body can learn to protect itself thru immunization & antibodies,
so can our mind & soul learn to heal itself thru self-analyses and the fundamental Quest for Belonging.
Knowledge comes
by taking things apart.
But wisdom comes
by putting things together.
Be Aware of everybody
who charges you for
Knowledge & Wisdom !
For mindful reflection & conversation feel free to contact me→
