Certainty – Soul Needs

‘Definition of God’ – and it still leaves us with the job of living with each other through the unity of mystery

The nearest I have ever come across to a satisfactory definition of God is as follows;

God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere.

Anonymous, ‘The Book of the Twenty-four Philosophers‘ (12thC)

Of course it isn’t really a definition – it’s more like a Zen Master’s ‘pointing’ – but what a pointing!

Of course I like it because it expresses my theological perspective and worldview – that of immanence plus transcendence i.e. panentheism.

Of course unless we lie through assertion or dupe through self-deception we don’t really, unequivocally, know. The best we can have is reasonably high degrees of certainty – and then preferably by combining several ways of knowing including sense observation, reason, intuition and the precedent of community precedents. We in truth live with mystery. As it says in the Koran ‘Man is my mystery and I am his‘.

“We are united by our doubts and divided by our convictions.” Sir Peter Ustinov

Recognition of ignorance is strength not weakness as Saint Augustine pointed out;

I am in a sorry state, for I do not know what I do not know!

Because we have unique histories we have unique worldviews. In fact it is the fact that at our centre we need faith to bridge the gap that exists between knowing and not knowing between finite humanity and that other defining characteristic of God – infinity.

As I suggested elsewhere excesses of certitude cut us off from truth and can lead to horrors of cruelty – the Nazis were certain that Jews, and Gypsies were sub-human.

“Certitude divides and diversity unifies…..We have to elevate religion above politics…..”

H.R.H. Prince El-Hassan Bin Talal of Jordan BBC Newsnight 9th Feb 2006

All desire to be united is as the drop that longs to come one with the ocean – the rub, and the joy, is that the duality through which we learn is the dynamic that exists between oneness on the one hand, via contemplative letting go of the ego, and l-one-ly separation on the other.

Triadic forms: Texts and our construction of meaning

Within the SunWALK model at the heart of this site (summaries are HERE ) I suggest that we all communicate at any one time in one of three voices – the subjective I voice of the Creative (Arts), the moral WE voice of the Caring (Humanities) – and the objective IT voice of Criticality (as in Scientific investigation, practical criticism and philosophical inquiry). I suggest that education, and personal well-being, is a matter of achieving balance between those three voices – because they each energize the others. I also suggest that wisdom is a balance of these three – at least practical, common sense, day-to-day wisdom.

The three ‘voices’ correspond to other triadic forms – Kant’s three inquiries for example. Another three concern how meaning is derived from text. This topic is brilliantly introduced on Daniel Chandler’s website at the University of Wales (Aberystwyth). He says;

The range of theories about where meaning emerges in the relationship between readers and texts can be illustrated as a continuum between two extreme positions respectively, those of determinate meaning and completely ‘open’ interpretation, thus:

* Objectivist: Meaning entirely in text (‘transmitted’);
* Constructivist: Meaning in interplay between text and reader (‘negotiated’);
* Subjectivist: Meaning entirely in its interpretation by readers (‘re-created’).

It may surprise some readers that anyone could adopt either of the extremes as a serious theoretical position. However, there are prominent theorists whose positions are at least close to these poles. For David Olson and other ‘formalists’ the meaning of a text is ‘contained in’ the text, and it must be ‘extracted’ by readers. Such a model of communication is ‘transmissive’: meaning is seen as something which can be ‘transmitted’ from a ‘sender’ to a passive ‘receiver’. As one moves towards the other pole the model of communication becomes more of a process of ‘negotiation’ or ‘construction’ (variously referred to as a ‘constructionist’, ‘constructivist’, ‘social-interactive’ or ‘dialogical’ model). In formalist theories meaning resides in texts ; in dialogical theories meaning is a process of negotiation between writers and readers (Holquist 1983). Those who stress negotiated meaning argue that the meanings of texts are neither completely predetermined nor completely open, but are subject to certain constraints. Some commentators refer to influences on the process of making meaning such as ‘a preferred reading’ – which may be represented in the text as ‘an inscribed reader’ or may emerge in ‘interpretative communities’. Individual readers may either accept, modify, ignore or reject such preferred readings, according to their experience, attitudes and purposes. This whole attitudinal spectrum towards meaning- making with texts parallels that relating to the nature of reality: ranging from objectivism, via intersubjectivity, to subjectivism.

As I have mentioned elsewhere understanding, and upholding, these various triadic approaches is vital to upholding an inclusive, universalist, world view and a balanced understanding of reality. It is also the antidote to fundamentalism and to various other sicknesses that plague us.
To be developed.

The ‘SunWALK PhD’ is HERE

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To read the rest of Daniel Chandler’s introduction – and much more – go HERE

A very interesting article on identity, prepared by Chandler for the OU, is HERE

“The Self is an ocean without a shore”: Bill Viola, a perfect match of spirit and form?

THE ARGUMENT The past lives only in the present in that our consciousness is marked and shaped by those whose insights we come to re-realize – including those that come from the great spiritual teachers. Memories are like art and sacred writings that are simply marks made – but marks made that can transport us to our own high realization in inspired consciousness. Bill Viola is now re-presenting us through his mastery of one of newest of mediums, video, with access to that spiritual core at the heart of the great world wisdom traditions. Is this a perfect post-modernist match of spirit and form?

In my SunWALK model about ‘what it is to be human‘ and about ‘how can we spiritualize education without the exclusivity of sectarian religion‘ I was inspired by several quotations as well as by Seamus Heaney’s poem Personal Helicon.

Bill Viola from ‘Ocean Without a Shore‘ – click to see full size – Source artdaily

“One of the things the camera taught me was to see the world, the same world that my eye sees, in its metaphoric, symbolic state. This condition is, in fact, always present, latent in the world around us .”
– Bill Viola

I was interested to see news about Bill Viola’s recent work ‘Ocean Without a Shore’ (shown at Chiesa di San Gallo, Venice). Viola’s website cites the following two inspirations;

“The Self is an ocean without a shore. Gazing upon it has no
beginning or end, in this world and the next.”
Ibn al’Arabi (1165 – 1240)

From the Viola site we learn;

‘Ocean Without a Shore’ is about the presence of the dead in our lives. The three stone altars in the church of San Gallo become portals for the passage of the dead to and from our world. Presented as a series of encounters at the intersection between life and death, the video sequence documents a succession of individuals slowly approaching out of darkness and moving into the light. Each person must then breakthrough an invisible threshold of water and light in order to pass into the physical world. Once incarnate however, all beings realize that their presence is finite and so they must eventually turn away from material existence to return from where they came. The cycle repeats without end.

The work was inspired by a poem by the 20th century Senegalese poet and storyteller Birago Diop:

“ Hearing things more than beings,
listening to the voice of fire,
the voice of water.
Hearing in wind the weeping bushes,
sighs of our forefathers.

The dead are never gone:
they are in the shadows.
The dead are not in earth:
they’re in the rustling tree,
the groaning wood,
water that runs,
water that sleeps;
they’re in the hut, in the crowd,
the dead are not dead.

The dead are never gone,
they’re in the breast of a woman,
they’re in the crying of a child,
in the flaming torch.
The dead are not in the earth:
they’re in the dying fire,
the weeping grasses,
whimpering rocks,
they’re in the forest, they’re in the house,
the dead are not dead.”
(from David Melzter, ed. Death – An Anthology of Ancient Texts, Songs, Prayers and Stories (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984)

The Ibn al’Arabi quotations reminded me of my attempt to portray our state in visiting ‘the shoreline’ and encountering the unknowable Whole – in my Personal Myth and the four key qutations (SEE below)

The poetic sense of the dead speaking in the ‘dying fire, the weeping grasses’ etc is secondary for me to how they live on in the consciousness that we possess, because of them. Our spirits continue to live out their consciousness through ours.

FOUR KEY QUOTATIONS

The Ibn al’Arabi quotation also reminded me of the inspiration I got from four key quotations in relation to a sense of the Whole and to a panentheistic and Universalist perspective I hoped that they contributed to the leitmotif that made of the thesis parts, a whole;

Text 1)

“The larger the island of knowledge, the longer
the shoreline of mystery.” Unknown author

Text 2)

The search for reason ends at the shore of the known;
on the immense expanse beyond it
only the sense of the ineffable can glide.
It alone knows the route to that
which is remote from experience and understanding.
Neither is amphibious:
reason cannot go beyond the shore,
and the sense of the ineffable
is out of place where we measure, where we weigh…….

Citizens of two realms, we must all sustain dual allegiance:
we sense the ineffable in one realm;
we name and exploit reality in another.

Between the two we set up a system of references,
but can never fill the gap.
They are as far and as close to each other

As time and calendar, as violin and melody,
as life and what lies beyond the last breath.

The tangible phenomena we scrutinize with our reason,

The sacred and indemonstrable we overhear

with the sense of the ineffable.

Heschel A. J. (1971), Man is Not Alone, New York: Octagon Books p.8

Text 3)

Tao, the subtle reality of the universe

cannot be described.

That which can be described in words

is merely a conception of the mind.

Although names and descriptions have been applied to it,

the subtle reality is beyond the description.

One may use the word ‘Nothingness”

to describe the Origin of the universe,

and “Beingness”

to describe the Mother of the myriad things,

but Nothingness and Beingness are merely conceptions.

From the perspective of Nothingness,

one may perceive the expansion of the universe.

From the perspective of Beingness,

one may distinguish individual things.

Both are for the conceptual convenience of the mind.

Although different concepts can be applied,

Nothingness and Beingness

and other conceptual activity of the mind

all come from, the same indescribable subtle Originalness

The Way is the unfoldment of such subtle reality.

Having reached the subtlety of the universe,

one may see the ultimate subtlety,
the Gate of All Wonders.

Ni, Hua-Ching (1997), The Complete Works of Lao Tzu, Santa Monica, USA: Seven Star Communications – Tao The Ching (‘Chapter’ 1)

Text 4)

….set then yourselves towards His holy Court, on the shore of His mighty Ocean, so that the pearls of knowledge and wisdom, which God hath stored up within the shell of His radiant heart, may be revealed unto you….
(Baha’u’llah: Proclamation of Baha’u’llah, Pages: 8-9)

The past lives only in the present in that our consciousness is marked and shaped by those whose insights we come to re-realize – including those that come from the great spiritual teachers. Memories are like art and sacred writings that are simply marks made – but marks made that can transport us to our own high realization in inspired consciousness. Bill Viola is now re-presenting us through his mastery of one of newest of mediums, video, with access to that spiritual core at the heart of the great world wisdom traditions. Is this a perfect post-modernist match of spirit and form?

The mystic inner core of the great world wisdom traditions is incorrectly named as Perennial Philosophy

• There’s a reality beyond the material world:
• Which is uncreated.
• It pervades everything,
• but remains beyond the reach of human knowledge and understanding.
• You approach that reality by:
• Distinguishing ego from true self
• Understanding the nature of desire
• Becoming unattached
• Forgetting about preferences
• Not working for personal gain
• Letting go of thoughts
• Redirecting your attention
• Being devoted
• Being humble
• Invoking that reality
• Surrendering
• That reality approaches you through:
• Grace
• The teacher
• You’re transformed so that you embody that reality by:
• Dying and being reborn

Two views of the structure of Perennial Philosophy are HERE

Viola in our sea of uncertainty, and maelstrom of violence, is helping us re-connect.

Perhaps also Viola is showing us that video can do more fully what photographers – Minor White for example – have longed to do – to ‘en-form’ the spiritual?

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Where does Aesthetics and Aesthetic experience fit in all of this? (re Wilber, heart-knowing, head-knowing, and the 3 ‘voices’)

see post on September 5th, 2007

Where does Aesthetics and Aesthetic experience fit in all of this?

Aesthetics belongs to the science of philosophy (Criticality) BUT aesthetic experiences are ‘subjective-creative-mystical’ i.e they are Creative and subjective.

The Indian philosopher Coomaraswami said that art and religion were not similar – they are, he said, the same. I would say that they are the same in that both involve engagement that involves a ‘loss of ego boundaries’ i.e. they are ‘unitive’ experiences. But both of these are or can be morally neutral activities. Religion on the other hand is false if its spirituality does not engender right action.

Aesthetic experience then, so I argue, is closer to artistic creation and is similar to mystical experience. We may or may not see our unitive experience as taking place within a moral context or a moral world-view, such as a religion. That is a unitive experience like membership of a religion, or a taste for spiritual food does not of itself mean that we and our actions are moral. We have more or less the sensibility and will to grasp the moral implications and act on them

Our moral sense comes from parents, family, schooling etc. If we are religious then a major shaper of our moral sensibility is the founder of the religion and his/her teachings. If we are Humanist or a ‘Free-thinker’ other inspiring individuals shape our moral sensibility.

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Story and Personal Myth in making our selves, and our education, whole

My personal myth Island, Shoreline and Ocean –

a view of story in Personal Development and in Holistic Education

Introduction:

By way of an introduction here are a few succinct thoughts. Skip this if you want to go straight to my ‘personal myth’;

Myth operates in us – its part of being human – like philosophizing. Therefore we should make the most of it – in terms of the mythology we make, and that with which we choose to identify.

Story is central to our meaning-making and how we (choose) to make sense of the world and give account of our encounters and experiences.

Myth, as opposed to story generally, is about our deepest concerns and is characterized as narrative that gives account of the unknown and unknowable as well as some of the known. E.g. we die but we don’t know what, if anything, happens after that. Myth creates and is derived from beliefs.

Myth intrapersonally is the clothing we give to the psycho-spiritual dynamics of inner experience.

Myth interpersonally is the stories we tell each other to explain encounters with the (mainly) unknown and unknowable.

Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth is a must because it makes clear the relationship between myth and religion and world-views.

“Without myth, cult, ritual and ethical living, a sense of the sacred dies,” says Armstrong. Without the discipline of mythical thinking and practice, it was difficult for many to avoid despair. The dark epiphanies of the 20th century can be blamed on “the absence of a viable mythology” that could help us face the unspeakable. Guardian review by Tim Radford

A personal myth operates in us whether we choose to articulate it or not. It is closely allied to what one psychologist called ‘our personal script’ and the another (Kelly) called our set of ‘personal constructs’.

We can help in healing ourselves by articulating our personal myth in comparison and contrast to the group myths around us – or that exist as historical artifacts.

Restorying, (e.g.by writing different versions of) our personal myth can enable us to re-frame our personal experience and gain degrees of control and depths of energy that previously were denied us through locked-up pain.

Creating a personal myth can facilitate better self-understanding and there is potentially a powerful tool for teaching and learning.

My personal myth is here;

The ‘Island, Shoreline and Ocean’ personal Myth

The personal myth that follows was written as a ‘one-page’ way of expressing a) a sense of the relationship with the cosmos, the Whole, and b) of a range of the ideas in, and behind, SunWALK. Jane is part of me, perhaps the same Jane as in Jane’s Short Story in Chapter 1.

The personal myth is an attempt at re-storying one kind of knowing. A felt need to undertake a re-storying of knowing can lie in acknowledgement of the fact that we know, and need to know, and need to express that knowing, in more ways than the empirical-reasoning mode – hence Island, Shoreline, Ocean. To admit other ways of knowing, is to admit that in our wholeness we are more than our senses and our reasoning. It is also to admit that in our knowing we are surrounded by mystery, which we encounter. We in various ways give accounts of those encounters.

3:3 Island, Shoreline and Ocean

a personal myth concerning the nature of mystical experience & its relationship to consciousness, & to knowledge creation – as such it is an attempt to include as much as possible of what I learned during the eleven year journey of the thesis – in a ‘one page’ story

The sun always woke her. Every day Jane walked through her garden, inspecting this plant and that, analysing what needed to be done. The quest was never-ending. Sometimes she sat a while on an old tree stump in order to consider the tasks and challenges, trying to work out the feelings and puzzles of what didn’t seem quite right, what didn’t feel quite right. What she couldn’t physically arrange she sometimes tried to paint or write – she had an imaginary garden as well as a real one. Sometimes she looked at her neighbours’ gardens, wondering if that would give her inspiration, but she was always left with the feeling that her most important answers came from elsewhere.

Every day beneath the practical considerations she felt a longing. Having made her review of her garden Jane walked over the fields, across the two streams that eventually made their way down to the sea, and along the cliff, and down to the shoreline. At the shoreline she breathed in her sense of the infinity of the ocean, along with the ozone-heavy, sea-weedy, sea air.
Frequently she imagined the island’s shoreline around the island’s circumference. In her mind’s eye she saw each place being shaped in some different way by the ocean – which was sometimes gentle, and was sometimes awesome in its relentless might. Sometimes the feelings that filled her were so powerful that she was overcome. Sometimes the beauty of being in the presence of the ocean was so great that she felt that neither garden nor painting nor poetry would ever fully satisfy the deepest longing.

Often after such reverie she slipped into the sea.

The sea had so much salt that she just floated. And, when the temperature was right, in floating, eyes closed, she lost all sense of where she ended and where the surrounding sea began. There was no separate sea, no separate self – it was just ….. being. It was always that way, just being. At such times she felt both full and empty, both powerless and at that same time she felt herself to be the very ocean that insistently carved and re-carved the island shoreline.

Mostly at that point she just wanted to stay, to be just part of this place between land and sea, like a driftwood sculpture, ocean-polished, that had been thrown up after a long journey from some river bank, high up some vaguely-remembered river. The shoreline was exquisitely the best of places. But she always took that first step. A first step on the walk back to her garden. And with the walking the experience that was ineffable started to give up insights and possibilities to both refine the garden, and to extend it into some more of the island’s familiar, wilderness, space.

In the evenings she and her friends sat beneath the moon, in whichever was the most interesting of their gardens, at that particular time, and they discussed the issues that concerned them. They all, more or less, had similar such deep experiences as Jane. The ongoing conversation was what united them, along with their respect for how they clothed so differently, in imagination and form, the experiences that were ineffable.
C. from an unpublished doctoral thesis by Roger Prentice, Northumberland ver July 2003

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Karen Armstrong’s book A Short History of Myth is HERE NB Read the Customer Reviews which are excellent and ignore the Editorial Reviews which are carping, mean-spirited and self-serving!

Relevant book that looks interesting Restorying Our Lives: Personal Growth Through Autobiographical Reflection HERE

Island map SOURCE

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Texts and Contexts and the Ultimate context – post-modernism and dinosaurs

All postings, and pages, for this site are seen as texts as in ‘particulars’ or parts. But each post or page is as I will later point out in relation to an ‘ultimate’ context.

The parts or particulars are as in Wilber;

“To understand the whole it is necessary to understand the parts. To understand the parts, it is necessary to understand the whole. Such is the circle of understanding.

We move from part to whole and back again, and in that dance of comprehension, in that amazing circle of understanding we come alive to meaning, to value, and to vision: the very circle of understanding guides our way, weaving together the pieces, healing the fractures, mending the torn and fractured fragments, lighting the way ahead – this extraordinary movement from part to whole and back again, with healing the hallmark of every step, and grace the tender reward.” Eye of Spirit; an integral vision for a world gone slightly mad by Ken Wilber (1997) pub. Shambhala p.1.

Handling more and more challenging texts is one way to think of progress in education.

One aspect of post-modernism is the attention paid to con-texts. Literally con-text = what (meaning) comes with the text. A whole bunch of questions then become vital for examining the the text in one or more contexts. For example who wrote it or made it and for whom – and why, with what reward, what pressures etc.

One key variable then for the teacher is how s/he emphasizes (or de-emphasizes) contexts as s/he conducts discourse with the class.

I always felt that historical contexts were less important than how a text helps us right now- the group – in informing our selves more deeply concerning, ‘What it is to be positively and fully human’.

One source of novelty in post-modernist art is to re-contextualize objects – literally to give them a new framework. A friend got her first-class honours degree for – amongst other pieces of work – taking a reproduction of an old master and tucking under the arm of a central figure a baby dinosaur.

The most memorable teaching of my life was with a group 12-13 year olds when discussing the shortest story in the world, “When I woke up the dinosaur was still there.” All the drive and creativity was in construction of possible contexts as well as discussing whether or not it constitute a ‘story’ in any meaningful way. In due course I will post sections of the video of the ‘story lesson’.

Schools and teachers should provide experiences that help with developing a sense of the Whole and not just the ‘hell of relativity’ when the world is presented as just endless bits.

The ultimate context that we are all in, in reading all of the texts that come our way, is one of mystery, of not knowing. When we accept that we can enjoy both the concepts of separation and duality and the amazement of laying down the burden of self in an experience of unity- as in Heschel’s;

“The world presents itself in two ways to me. The world as a thing I own, the world as a mystery I face. What I own is a trifle, what I face is sublime. I am careful not to waste what I own; I must learn not to miss what I face. We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world. We objectify Being but we also are present at Being in wonder, in radical amazement.” A. J Heschel

Peter Ustinov makes the point in a different way; “We are united by our doubts and divided by our convictions.”

Our encounters with the Whole are part of the personal story (history or her-story) that we make up to explain the cosmos. We should all write our ‘personal myth’ at some stage. As an example I will post mine separately.

In the light of the above comments I have added this to the front page of the site;

CONTEXTUAL QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

3 Questions and suggested answers that provide the context for all posts and pages on these sites

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Q 1) “What is it to be positively & fully human?” = the most important of all questions. My answers are in 2 and 3 below.

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Q 2) “What is it to function holistically?” My answer =

“To proceed in all particulars with a sense of the whole.”

Two quotations that are key to understanding. Firstly Jung’s,

“The utterances of the heart— unlike those of the discriminating intellect— always relate to the whole.”

Secondly Heschel’s;

“Concepts are delicious snacks with which we try to alleviate our amazement.”

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Q 3) How in one sentence does my PhD answer the question, “How should we educate to create a paradigm shift in education?”

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The SunWALK model of spiritualizing (or humanizing) pedagogy sees human education as:

the storied development of meaning, which is

constructed, and de-constructed,

physically, mentally and spiritually, through

Wise & Willing Action, via

Loving and Knowing – developed in

Community, through the

‘Dialectical Spiritualization’ of

Caring, Creativity & Criticality processes, all undertaken in the light of the

‘Sun’ of chosen higher-order values and beliefs, using

best available, appropriate content.

NB Please see these 3 questions, and suggested answers, as the context for all postings and pages on these sites.

The diagram that pulls everything together

Summaries of SunWALK model are HERE

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The ‘Rules for being Human’, Perennial Philosophy and Universalism

These ‘Life-Rules’ by Cherie Carter-Scott, from her book If Life is a Game, These are the Rules are becoming well-known and they seem to me to be are interesting in relation to a holistic perspective, and to the ideas of Perennial Philosophy and a mystical world-view.

When you were born, you didn’t come with an owner’s manual; these guidelines make life work better.

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s the only thing you are sure to keep for the rest of your life.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called “Life on Planet Earth”. Every person or incident is the Universal Teacher.

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation. “Failures” are as much a part of the process as “success.”

4. A lesson is repeated until learned. It is presented to you in various forms until you learn it — then you can go on to the next lesson.

5. If you don’t learn easy lessons, they get harder. External problems are a precise reflection of your internal state. When you clear inner obstructions, your outside world changes. Pain is how the universe gets your attention.

6. You will know you’ve learned a lesson when your actions change. Wisdom is practice. A little of something is better than a lot of nothing.

7. “There” is no better than “here”. When your “there” becomes a “here” you will simply obtain another “there” that again looks better than “here.”

8. Others are only mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another unless it reflects something you love or hate in yourself.

9. Your life is up to you. Life provides the canvas; you do the painting. Take charge of your life — or someone else will.

10. You always get what you want. Your subconscious rightfully determines what energies, experiences, and people you attract — therefore, the only foolproof way to know what you want is to see what you have. There are no victims, only students.

11. There is no right or wrong, but there are consequences. Moralizing doesn’t help. Judgments only hold the patterns in place. Just do your best.

12. Your answers lie inside you. Children need guidance from others; as we mature, we trust our hearts, where the Laws of Spirit are written. You know more than you have heard or read or been told. All you need to do is to look, listen, and trust.

13. You will forget all this.

14. You can remember any time you wish.

(From the book “If Life is a Game, These are the Rules” by Cherie Carter-Scott)

TASK:/LESSON

1 Take a look at Perennial Philosophy and the Golden Rule and compare and contrast them to Carter-Scott’s ‘Rules’.

2 Re-write these according to your beliefs and world-view.

3 Find out what Cherie Carter-Scott meant by reading her book.

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

The Golden Rule as one aspect of the world-view shared by most holistic educators

The Golden Rule

Two aspects of the world-view shared by most holistic educators are Perennial Philosophy (see separate post) and the Golden Rule.

One measure of the challenge facing us is in the following. In looking for short definitions that might be useful I was struck by the fact that several (many?) Western encyclopedias actually refer to the Golden Rule as a Christian doctrine! Ethnocentricity rules! The point is also well pinned down in an interesting article from Arab News by Iman Kurdi

Below are some of the most interesting sites that present and explore the Golden Rule along with some suggestions for lessons and all ages.

http://www.jcu.edu/philosophy/gensler/goldrule.htm

http://www.goldenruleradical.org/

Home

SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR LESSONS/Discussion

1 In what sense is the Golden Rule the same as or different to acting justly?

2 Collect some examples, via interviews, of where the Golden Rule was applied with good effect?

3 Choose several of the problems that exist in the world and see how far you can a) analyze the problem and b) obtain inspiration for steps toward a solution.

Source – for your poster Golden Rule info and much more

A TOUCH OF IRONY: The Wiki entry on the Golden Rule currently shows the price of democracy in that it is hung up in disputes! Re-named as the Ethic of Reciprocity – has it been hijacked or up-lifted by philosophers! I’m sure it will settle eventually – in the mean time there is a lot of good stuff alread on the site – including additional sources.

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NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

‘Practical theory’ re: Jane’s Short Story, meaning, interpretation, stories, meta-thinking, the teacher – and generating an antidote to fundamentalism!

Teachers, and other professionals, deal in a) texts (written and other kinds) and b) discourse about their meaning and interpretation with students every day.

When we engage with texts we do so in one of three voices – the philosophical-scientific, the creative or the moral-caring. This article comprises the first of a few reflections about hermeneutics in relation to the process of teaching – and in relation to the SunWALK model and ‘what it is to be fully and positively human’ – the main focus of this site.

‘Essentially, hermeneutics involves cultivating the ability to understand things from somebody else’s point of view, and to appreciate the cultural and social forces that may have influenced their outlook. Hermeneutics is the process of applying this understanding to interpreting the meaning of written texts and symbolic artifacts (such as art or sculpture or architecture), which may be either historic or contemporary.’ Wiki

1 It makes sense for middle school children, and above, to come to understand that texts represent possible meanings and ‘critiques’ represent readings of texts. It might also be useful from this to understand that readings can both change over time in our lives, but principles might remain constant.

Developing meta-thinking via periodic re-visits to a useful text

There are calls for teachers to help children to achieve meta-thinking and one enjoyable way is to re-visit a story in succeeding years with the discourse centred around such questions as;

“How do you read the story?” and

“How do you feel what you’ve learned over last year has changed your views and, what you value – in relation to the story?” and

“In what respects have you, and your thinking, changed and developed over the last year?”and

“How do you read the story now compared to when you first ‘met it’ – what’s stayed the same and what has changed?”

One re-visiting was to Jane’s Short Story in a Roman Catholic middle school. Jane’s Short Story was posted to this site yesterday (8^th Aug 2007). I wrote Jane’s Short Story to see how good Year 7 children (11 to 12 year olds) were at de-constructing and critiquing a piece that was deliberately stream-of-consciousness, oblique and cryptic! They surprised me the first time we used the story as a text and they also impressed me with their reflections on how their thinking had developed and the differences they saw on their second encounter.

Such work is also an antidote to the shallowness and superficiality that blights much of what children suffer in school. If you treat children as profound thinkers they show that they are profound thinkers – that’s part of the genius of the process in Lipman’s Philosophy for Children

What’s the connection with the SunWALK model?

PFC Philosophy for Children is the exemplary programme for the ‘IT’ voice, the objective mode of engaging with truth. The spirit flows even more powerfully if we combine IT engagement with working with the ‘I’ voice of creative expression. This means that the children can treat the text, including occasionally pieces by the teacher and/or other pupils both as literary text and as philosophical text. Switching back and forth between the two activities and the two treatments of text becomes a very powerful mode of teaching – including for the third voice, that of the moral and other-centred i.e Caring.

What’s the connection with fundamentalism?

There are many including;

Once you have separated out the different forms of truth-telling, the IT voice of philosophy and science, the ‘I’ voice of Creativity and the ‘WE’ voice of Caring you no longer have to defend texts in inappropriate and very dangerous ways. Treating religious texts as the supreme sources of inspiration for acting with justice, truth, beauty and goodness makes sense. Treating such texts as finite and fixed in their meaning as if they were simply mathematic formulae doesn’t.

It is we who make the meaning, not God – which is why we should always be tentative in how we assert our interpretations (including this one!). Sacred texts are gifts of meaning-making possibilities. Of course part of the texts is time-related and part constitutes eternal realities, but understanding what we are doing as we engage in objective, subjective or moral truth-seeking helps minimize confusion.

Literalism is the denial of God because it is the denial of meaning-making possibilities in relating to sacred texts – it limits the text to fixed and finite meaning – and tends to take us away from the focus on the need to act in the world with justice, truth, beauty, goodness – and all of the other so-called names and attributes of God.

It also allows people to start believing that the ‘others’ have broken whatever covenant is deemed to have existed so that no ‘rules’ of war’ need be complied with.

Its only in early life that we can prevent the kind of indoctrination of hatred for others. Understanding that spirituality, be it theistic or humanist, is simply the process of gaining the will to act morally is vital. Understanding the ‘voices’ with which engage and the texts that we engage with are all either objectively focused or subjectively focused or morally focused is vital in developing the truly mature mind-set and world-view.

Knowledge, Knowing and the Unknowable: Head, Heart and the Mystery of Our-selves

Ver 2. as at 4th Aug 2007

PREFACE

This was written as a summary of some of the discussions held during a recent course run with 9 wonderful young women and men. So first and foremost this is for Poppy, Ellie, Jono, Saha, Natalie, Paddy, Jody, Kenny – and Davey.

This is what I feel/think I’ve learned so far;

WHAT’S WRONG?

Because of its lopsidedness and excessive specialization modern science, and thought generally, has got us into a mess. The mess is characterized by our consciousness and life being fragmented, mechanical and excessively materialistic. We need to create a new ‘post post-modernism’ that combines the positives from modernism, post-modernism and pre-modernism.

First of all we have to chose a starting point – because all of life is a circling matrix of connectedness.

THINKING AND FEELING AND BEING – AND BEING ‘MORE THEN’

I am – therefore I think. (Variation on Descartes’ starting point).

We are/You are – thereby I am. (Variation on a Swahili saying).

I am supported in my existence by all of the relationships in which I am embedded – including my ‘significant others’, and those I chose to lead me, and those with whom I chose to identify – so as to become like them or at least possess some of their qualities.

Our being is much more than our thinking, reason and logic – we are 51%, or more, feelings.

Unless our capacities for feeling are attenuated, blunted or simply under-developed.

We are known and knowable – but also exist at levels that are beyond the knowable.

That is we are, in the depths of our being, a mystery to our selves – and to each other.

Thinking is one way to engage with other/s, or the self – and with reality.

Thinking is what we do as part of being – sometimes it is more, and sometimes less, than the feeling/s we are also generating/experiencing. One or the other is in dominance at any one time.

Thinking and feeling are simply different forms of the single human spirit that flows through each of us – and apparently around that ‘space’ we call our inner world or interiority.

What would be a sensible name for the single flow of spirit that switches back and forth between ‘heart’ and ‘mind’? I suggest ‘heart-mind’. ‘Heart-mind’ actually has a long history in Chinese thought.

‘Heart-mind’ is preferable to ‘heart’ and ‘mind’ as some sort of separated ‘organs’.

Heart-mind is interiority – conscious thoughts and feelings, + re-callable memories + that which normally remains in the sub-conscious, such as painful memories.

HEART-MIND (THE ONENESS OF THINKING AND FEELING) AS THE 3 ‘I’, ‘WE’ AND ‘IT’ VOICES OR MODES OF ENGAGING WITH REALITY – AND OF CIOMMUNICATING WITH EACH OTHER

Thought and feeling however don’t account for the fact that we communicate with each other, at any one time, in one of three voices; ‘I’. ‘WE’ and ‘IT’ .

Sometimes our heart-mind/spirit switches into the I mode of artistic-subjective expression and engagement with reality.

Sometimes it switches into the WE mode of caring and other-focused action.

Sometimes it switches into the IT mode of scientific-objective investigation and engagement with reality.

We switch back and forth with great rapidity – unless we are in a meditative state or dreamless sleep. The other 2 voices are always ‘running in the background’.

THE ‘I’, ‘WE’ and ‘IT’ VOICES CORRESPOND TO CREATIVITY, CARING and CRITICALITY

I suggest that the term ‘thinking’ is better thought of as three separate ways in which we engage with reality, with each other – and our selves.

Thinking in the sense of Criticality (inc. philosophy, science maths, Eng. Lit, etc.) is one way for the human spirit to engage with reality. The other two are Caring and Creativity.

Caring focuses on moral truth as caring – action for the sake of others.

Creativity is concerned with subjective truth as a way to engage with reality – its voice says “This is how it has been for me, this is how it looks for me – standing in my ‘skin’.

Criticality focuses on objective truth – in which reasoning and logic are especially important.

Thought and feeling/s are two sides of a single coin – each transforms into the other moment by moment in the dynamics of the heart-mind. This is evident in simple introspection.

Heart-mind, is however socialized into the 3 I, WE and IT voices.

All 3 have cognitive and affective charges at any one time.

The I WE and IT voices are internalizations/socializations of parental voices, school and community voices.

The cultural ‘repositories’ that correspond to the I,WE and IT voices we call the Arts, Humanities & Sciences.

The moral voice is an internalization of early caring and experience – with conscience as the internalization of the parental voice.

There may be sensible connections to be made between left and right brain hemispheres and the UIT and I voices.

It seems sensible to connect the I voice and the mystical since both involve unitive experiences.

In dealing with the Critical IT way of engaging with reality we deal in concepts – but we might agree with Heschel who says “Concepts are delicious snacks with which we try to alleviate our amazement.”

CONCEPTS AS ‘DELICIOUS SNACKS’ – AND ‘AMAZEMENT’ AS THE UNITIVE STATE OF THE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

Amazement is the state of union, the unitive state which in its elevated forms is the mystical.

The mystical needs to be recognized as a normal, every-day even, part of being human. It needs de-mystifying and de-rarefying. It is not the sole prerogative of the exceptional such as Joan of Arc or of those who unhelpfully hear voices.

The basic experience is embedded in every day language as when we say, “It took me out of my-self.”

In normal, conceptual, busy-busy life we have a strong sense of ego/self/me-me. But sometimes I forget my self – through a unitive experience.

As the gospel song says;

I’m gonna lay down my heavy load

Down by the riverside

I’m gonna lay down my heavy load

Down by the riverside

Gonna study war no more.

One reading of the ‘heavy load’ is the small self, the ego, the ego boundary that keeps us in the relative hell of separation and pain and suffering.

Contemplation or perhaps deeper meditation is what takes us to the unitive state.

But I don’t think permanent self-loss is the goal because the dynamic lies in going back and forth between the unitive and the duality that is most of everyday life.

In fact I believe that our knowing comes as a consequence of the dynamic that arises from going back and forth between the unitive and duality

LOGIC IS WHAT WE NEED WHEN WE RETURN FROM THE STATE OF AMAZEMENT/MYSTICAL UNION

Logic is a good servant but insufficient as an overall master explanation of what we are, or what amounts to truth.

For example logic can be used impeccably to support the view that God exists, and equally for the view that there is no God.

Logical constructions, like journeys, always start somewhere.

That ‘somewhere’ in our intellectual-spiritual journeys, and dialogue with each other, is always a set of assumptions and viewpoints.

DEVELOPING A NEW PARADIGM – AND REALIZING THAT THE INADEQUACIES OF THE OLD PARADIGM LIE IN ITS SET OF ASSUMPTIONS (BECAUSE THEY LARGELY LIE UNTESTED)

The assumptions, like a geographical position, always imply a world-view.

The assumptions are largely untested like the 9/10ths of the ice-berg that is below the surface.

The world-view can include a range of other assumptions including what it is to be human, what constitutes reality, what is good or bad etc.

The new paradigm that is struggling to be born is characterised by wholeness, flow and realizations of the spiritual nature of being human – the opposites of fragmentation, the mechanistic and the excessively materialistic. Above all it centres on realizing to a much deeper and higher forms answers to the most important of all questions; “What is it to be (fully and positively) human?”

REALIZING UNITY – PERSONALLY OR COLLECTIVELY – IS HELP BY THE GIFT OF WISE VOICES

Individually our happiness depends on our integration – of heart and head, of identity and purpose, of personal development and service to others. One key secret is realizing that mind and body and spirit are all one and the same – the singleness of the life-force, chi, the human spirit.

Collectively we also need deeper realization of unity – that unity is based on the existential reality of being human. Like millions of others I learned this from Shakespeare. Scots would add Robbie Burns.

Unity can not in the social political sphere be achieved through philosophy or theology, both of which depend on reason and logic. Why? Well as the ancient saying goes, ‘The longest journey in the world is from the human head to the human heart, but the shortest journey in the world is from the human heart to the human head.’

Unity can only be achieved via a commitment to the existential reality of being human. We are all human. We strive for a better life. We have loved ones and we all suffer grief and loss……………….

Our theology and philosophy are only games (of reason and logic) that we play – on the ‘foundation’ of incomplete certainty, not-knowing and mystery – and they must take second place to realizing our existential human oneness – and truth and beauty and goodness.- and above all justice as our over-riding interior ‘conditioner’ as well as the chief conditioner in the social and political realms.

Deep unity is realized through our existential sameness. The ‘healthy doubt’ is vital in matters of theology and philosophy. Doubting, just a modicum not a flood, is healthy when it functions as a cousin of tentativeness and humility. Absolute certainty is the condition of the fundamentalist – and the fascist and terrorist. Unity requires something other than closed minds and cold hearts. The co-existence of humility – but without a collapse into the hell of relativity, political correctness and effete values now displayed in so many Western countries. But our unity lies in the state of not-knowing, not in hard and water-tight (heart-tight?) convictions;

“We are united by our doubts and divided by our convictions.” Sir Peter Ustinov

Excesses of certitude cut us off from truth and can lead to horrors of cruelty – the Nazis were certain that Jews, and Gypsies were sub-human.

“Certitude divides and diversity unifies…..We have to elevate religion above politics…..”

H.R.H. Prince El-Hassan Bin Talal of Jordan BBC Newsnight 9th Feb 2006

I am because we are. I am ultimately in a state of not knowing. I see through a glass not darkly, but with imperfect vision – this being an inevitable consequence of being finite.

Speaking personally I can’t live fully up to the truth, beauty, goodness, justice and mystery that I’ve learned (about) so far. This means that I, like us all, need forgiveness; hearts embrace, minds take a stroll together before parting. I/we need for-give-ness as part of the love through which to gain the will to walk on!

Go well.

Roger

Dr Roger Prentice

World-views: understanding our own and other peoples’ world-views

Source

World-view – making clear our own world-view

To be developed.

“Certitude divides and diversity unifies…..We have to elevate religion above politics…..”

H.R.H. Prince El-Hassan Bin Talal of Jordan BBC Newsnight 9^th Feb 2006

“The world presents itself in two ways to me. The world as a thing I own, the world as a mystery I face. What I own is a trifle, what I face is sublime. I am careful not to waste what I own; I must learn not to miss what I face. We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world. We objectify Being but we also are present at Being in wonder, in radical amazement.” A. J Heschel
In this section I intend to do two things. Firstly I will make clear my own world-view as it now is. Secondly I will make clear those questions that need to be asked and answered in consciously holding a world-view.

In this process I hope to also identify some of the excesses, and some of the inadequacies that cause so much suffering and grief.

Understanding our own (developing) world view is vital.

It is essential to self-understanding – and to avoiding self-deception.

It includes our our sense of the whole/Whole – the cosmology, and theology.

It includes what we attribute to the culture in which we have grown up and what we attribute to our essential nature – and what is meant by ‘reality’.

Our philosophy – and our behaviour in the world – rests upon, and is shaped by, our world-view.

For the time being the following chart is helpful;

Five Worldviews

A very useful discussion is to be found at SEE http://www.xenos.org/classes/papers/5wldview.htm

They say;

It sometimes seems as if there are more philosophical and religious views than any normal person could ever learn about. Indeed, there are more than six thousand distinct religions in the world today. However, some people are surprised to find that the world’s religions and philosophies tend to break down into a few major categories. These five world-views include all the dominant outlooks in the world today.

REALITY

MAN

TRUTH

VALUES

Chart is adapted from Christianity: The Faith That Makes Sense by Dennis McCallum (Tyndale).

Certainty, senses, reason, logic, tradition, heart-knowing, intuition, revelation & insight in knowing

Some have concluded that we really know nothing (fully?).
Source
Its certainly difficult to even know ourselves and also very difficult to know others, even our loved ones.

It might then be wrong, or inadvisable, to believe that we know (anything) with absolute certainty. What is advisable is that we can obtain high degrees of certainty when we rely on combining more than one way of coming to know.

These ways of knowing include;
i) our senses and the experience we have through them
ii) reason and its servant logic
iii) tradition – all accumulated experience, laws etc
iv) heart-knowing including in-spiration, and meditation that provide in-tuition revelation & in-sight
v) dialogue and consultation with others.

However we can be misled by any one or more of these but combining the benefits of all of these will give us the highest possible degree of certainity when they are in accord.

To be developed.

—–0—–

All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Who are you? Who am I? What is human being?

Saw this today – with some quick ideas for a lesson;

“You are the average of the five people
you spend the most time with.”
– Jim Rohn

Are you? Am I?

Do we have an essence? Or are we each an admixture of the roles we play and the relationships in which we are embedded?

Or both?

The best answers I ever found were in Who is Man? by Abraham Joshua Heschel.

The Photo is of Heschel with MLK at Selma – they consider each other to be a ‘prophet’

Is my essence the sum of that with which I identify?

Or is there an essence that is independent of the accidents of personal history ?

—–0—–

All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

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