Knowing – Page 2 – Soul Needs

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

Gandhi, certainty and the ‘Healthy Doubt’ – as the basis for ‘federating’ common ground

Whatever our religious background we tend to say something equivalent to, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’. This is an assertion of certainty. For some of us strength of certainty is an indicator of the quality of faith. Unfortunately, to take an extreme example, unconditioned certainty can lead to unspeakable horrors – the Nazis were certain that their killing of millions was a right and proper thing to do. So is a smidgen of doubt, the cousin of humility? And might it also be that such a conditioner of faith as a ‘healthy doubt’ hold us back from continuously negating ‘the other’.

I’m also suggesting that water-tight, hermetically-sealed certainty might put a break on an individual’s willingness to recognize the essential sameness in all of the world’s great faiths. Why can’t we be one? Well because we think our path up the mountain is the only right one – and because we are familiar and comfortable with it.

I can only think of three possible solutions. Firstly we all become Baha’is, Unitarians or or some form of Universalist worldview. Secondly we all wait to see which religion dominates and then hop on board (a time-honoured method but not out of Morality’s top drawer). Thirdly we take a leaf out of Ghandi’s book and expand our heart and consciousness so that we can revere our own tradition and the inner essence of all of the other great world religions.

Gandhi said;

I came to the conclusion long ago … that all religions were true and also that all had some error in them, and whilst I hold by my own, I should hold others as dear as Hinduism. So we can only pray, if we are Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu … But our innermost prayer should be a Hindu should be a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, a Christian a better Christian. (Young India: January 19, 1928)

This is interesting because it suggests that we can have a universal heart that works from within the particular. Is that possible? Is it only possible for a few? Whether or not we go with Ghandi ‘s ‘particular-to-the-universal way we need to break through from narrow-mindedness and close-heartedness. To be able to cherish both the particular culture into which we were born and have a heart that embraces the inner light of all of the great world religions seems to me to make sense – just as federalism makes sense in say America or Germany.

There are some other of Ghandi’s thoughts that are relevant to the view expressed here;

God has no religion

My whole soul rebels against the idea that Hinduism and Islam represent two antagonistic cultures and doctrines. To assent to such a doctrine is for me a denial of God.

We must respect other religions, even as we respect our own. Mere tolerance thereof is not enough.

A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.

(When asked if he was a Hindu) Yes I am, I am also a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, and a Jew.

“The sayings of Muhammed are a treasure of wisdom not only for Muslims but for all of mankind.”

The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives. Source WikiQuotes

If we can’t quite yet expand our consciousness to recognizing the inner oneness of all of the great faiths at least the Golden Rule (separate postings) is an ethic through which we can start to clear a meeting place within the forest of beliefs.

It is only beliefs that prevent the realization of our oneness. And it is only realization of oneness that will enable us to overcome our current ‘hardening of the hearteries’. That ‘hardening of the hearteries’ = beliefs so narrowed as to prevent us seeing ourselves reflected in the eyes of the ‘other’.

PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY – TWO VIEWS A) BY KEN WILBER AND B) BY DEB PLATT

Even a cursory glance at the ideological and physical conflicts of today will indicate the desperate need for understanding that enables a ‘clearing in the forest’ of beliefs – one that will enable harmony in diversity.

On this site I argue that the deepest recognition has to lie in our humanity which we hold in common with all others – I am human, you are human, they are human – we all are human. However since religion exists in many and powerful manifestations the most important of all questions is, “In what ways is there a common light at the centre of of all of the great world religions?” The answer is presented in Perennial Philosophy. Perennial Philosophy is not a particularly good title – something like ‘core mystical reality’ or ‘the great chain of being’ are more accurate, albeit much clumsier titles.

In many ways the appeal to recognize sameness in others, harmony in diversity, is also a call to a kind of federalism. That is to say such a recognition will enable the people of the world to hold an allegiance to the whole as well as to the particular – much as most Americans or Germans hold an allegiance to their national government as well as to their state governments.

HERE IS HOW KEN WILBER SUMMARIZES THE SEVEN MAJOR POINTS OF THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY, IN HIS BOOK GRACE AND GRIT:

1. Spirit exists.
2. Spirit is found within.
3. Most of us don’t realize this Spirit within, however, because we are living in a world of sin,
separation, and duality–that is, we are living in a fallen or illusory state.
4. There is a way out of this fallen state of sin and illusion, there is a Path to our liberation.
5. If we follow this path to its conclusion, the result is a Rebirth or Enlightenment, a direct experience
of Spirit within, a Supreme Liberation, which–
6 marks the end of sin and suffering, and
which
7 issues in social action of mercy and compassion on behalf of all sentient beings.

THIS IS HOW DEB PLATT PRESENTED HER LATE LAMENTED SITE ON WHICH SHE BROUGHT TOGETHER A VAST AND BEAUTIFUL SELECTION OF QUOTATIONS FROM WORLD RELIGIONS

If anyone knows what happened to her site please tell me. Her site was a truly great contribution toward religious understanding and its disappearance a great loss. Equally if you managed to copy her site before it was taken down please let me know (onesummit ATgmail.com replace AT with @).

This is the ‘universal’, mystic heart of all of the great wisdom traditions as Deb Platt presented it;

• 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

Holistic Education doesn’t have allegiance to any one religion or philosophy, but Perennial Philosophy is very important for many and is the position of this site. It is motivated by recognition of the essential oneness of the great wisdom traditions

(SEE also Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy or Chap 2 of Jack Miller’s Educating for Wisdom & Compassion)

‘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.

Jane’s Short Story; teaching children ‘nowness’ in creative writing and photography

Source

In the unpublished doctoral thesis, from which this piece and Jane’s Short Story, is largely taken, the range of concerns include ‘the perpetuation in the present of early experience’. I’m interested to discover that one definition of ‘nowness’ is presentness: the quality of being the present; “a study of the pastness of the present and…of the presentness of the past”.

I wrote Jane’s Short Story to see what a Year 7 class (11 – 12 year olds in the UK) could ‘handle’, but it has become a major piece for teaching me, as well as for teaching others.

Jane’s short story (line numbers are simply to help in discussion)

1 “Come to mummy Jane. Come on, yes, you can do it.” Ste…steppp…stagger step..step got there BIGKISSmmmms’nice. Her mother’s nose stroked back and forth across her neck, as giggles of delight and laughter bubbled from Jane.
“Jane pay attention otherwise you’ll be asking me what the work is in five minutes time.”
5 (’Oh no I won’t Mr Moaner, I know perfectly well what you’re asking – so stop picking on me!’)
“Images Jane, images.”
Tulips. Gigantic red tulips, opened a bit beyond their best, and bigger than any red thing and redder than any red thing and she crawled to grasp, to know the greenness of the green cool green stems and embrace them and lose herself in the redness that was ……..
10 “I want you all to pay attention to the structure of your story……..”
How could she tell her mother that she never felt safe after he left. Only in his hugs with the smell of him did she ever, could she ever, feel safe. She chewed over this and poured herself another bowl of corn-flakes, sensing school time getting nearer and nearer. Her mother had left without giving the bus fare.
Yet again Jane’s leg itched from the nylon thread in the seam of her skirt.
15 She grasped the chair to ease her leg away from the itch, only to put her fingers under her chair and into some freshly placed chewing-gum. “Ugh! Boys are so disgusting!”
“Thank you Jane. I’m not sure what that has to do with careful control of your narrative but I suppose we should be grateful that at least you’ve re-visited our world, even though the visit will no doubt be brief. The trouble with you Jane is that you don’t use the possibilities and talent you have.”
20 Endless possibilities. The muddy brown wet sand, miles and miles of it. She sensed freedoms beyond the edge of her imagination, she would be all creation itself.
“Put your hat on Jane and come here – you’re not going in the sun until I put some cream on you.” Jane submitted to the sun-cream and enjoyed it but also remembered the tug of the harness around her shoulders – tug tug, with her running but not going anywhere.
25 “……and do try to put some images into your writing – do make it come alive.”
The finch, with feathers going in directions they shouldn’t, struggled on its side. The broken leg would not need mending because the shock was already killing the tiny creature. Jane hated the cat with an acid and granite hatred.
“You have ten minutes to finish your story.”
30 Jane sat back on her rump and examined her mother’s radiant face.
She spat out the tulip petals as her sadness entered her.
She was as rigid as the door he had slammed behind him.
She willed the incoming tide to consume her castle and leave only empty sands.
The finch stopped its fluttering and took on the stillness of death.
35 Jane wrote some lines.
Jane felt the tug tug of the harness and struggled to go somewhere.

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Jane is, substantially, but not wholly, me. It was an attempt to make the feminine side of my soul ‘walk and talk’

In writing the story I reached back down to early memories with which to ‘clothe’ some of the levels in the streams of consciousness.

In continuing to work with children, or adults, I still sometimes use Jane’s Short Story – as a way to encourage others to create their own stories, made from their own real, and imagined, experience. I discovered how powerful it is if PFC (Philosophy for Children), and creative task-setting, are combined/interwoven – so much so that I believe that the two, when harnessed, together create something akin to ‘exponential development’ i.e the most powerful form of transformative learning. It is still a joy, and a learning experience, when children make their own creations walk and talk, sing and shout, just as Jane became ‘real’ to me, some 9 or 10 years earlier. From time to time I revisit the story and change a few words. Once I also gave it to the same class on succeeding years and asked them to see what they could see compared to their ‘reading’ of the previous year – and to say what differences they felt between the two readings. On the success of this I think that it is worth doing something similar with every class, i.e. for them to re-visit a piece two years running. What they are looking at, with each re-visiting, is, in part, the growth they have had via another year’s experience – a very useful exercise in meta-cognition for the children.

Although it was written when I was in my early fifties I include the story here because it encapsulates some of how autobiography is expressed in even the most creative, or the most abstract, of our work. The story was written in a ‘stream of consciousness’ style to see how well my classes could be at deconstructing the text. It was written in my second year of doing PFC. Sometimes I use it just as a text, sometimes the classes go on to write their own episodes from Jane’s life.

My experience is that children in Year 7 or 8 take a little time to decode the levels in the ‘stream of consciousness’ but then respond most sensitively to the possibilities that exist in and around the story. It seems to work at quite a deep level for some, and very few, except perhaps in initial perplexity, reject the story. It also helps to teach them that story, in its different kinds of truth, can combine re-collected personal experience and meld it with imaginative material. It can be a minor revelation for children who see ‘story is story’ and ‘real life = the truth.

Jane, both as part of my spirit and personal history, and as an independent spirit, has continued to exist, but she has also been transmogrified into the creations of other authors, adults as well as children. It is Jane in the personal myth called Island Shoreline Ocean, presented at the beginning of Chapter 3. My (our) past is re-presented and it is continuously transmogrified, in further re-representations. Each of us re-experiences what we are, as we engage or re-engage, with our beliefs, values, attitudes memories and new experiences. We echo past experiences in each new experience, even when we are seeking to help others in their creativity. Jane’s short story lives on in me as a crystallization of the feelings and images deep in my soul, deep, one might say, in my ‘present’. It has generated versions from 11 – 12 year olds, but also from an 84 year old man who, on one of my courses, wrote the first story he had ever written in his life. (He was pleased and amazed; I was deeply moved by his openness and courage!)

TASK/SUGGESTED LESSONS: It would be fascinating to combine the ideas above with photography!

Great photography blog HERE

Reason and Revelation, Religion and Philosophy – the pre-eminence of Socrates in Baha’i Writings

Source Richard Dawkins – bete noir of many religionists. Source

‘Faith in religion’ and ‘the reason and logic of philosophy’ are in direct opposition – right? We might be forgiven for thinking this is so, given some of what comes out of religions – and out of philosophers. One religion at least seems to elevate philosophy to a high status and to give a pre-eminent position to Socrates in particular. Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i religion, speaks in glowing terms of Socrates;

…… Socrates … was indeed wise, accomplished and righteous. He practiced self-denial, repressed his appetites for selfish desires and turned away from material pleasures. He withdrew to the mountains where he dwelt in a cave. He dissuaded men from worshipping idols and taught them the way of God, the Lord of Mercy, until the ignorant rose up against him. They arrested him and put him to death in prison. Thus relateth to thee this swift-moving Pen. What a penetrating vision into philosophy this eminent man had! He is the most distinguished of all philosophers and was highly versed in wisdom. We testify that he is one of the heroes in this field and an outstanding champion dedicated unto it. He had a profound knowledge of such sciences as were current amongst men as well as of those which were veiled from their minds. Methinks he drank one draught when the Most Great Ocean overflowed with gleaming and life-giving waters. (Baha’u’llah: Tablets of Baha’u’llah, Page: 146

Depending on how you read phrases like ‘he drank one draught when the Most Great Ocean overflowed with gleaming and life-giving waters’ Baha’u’llah seems to elevate Socrates to a station akin to that of a prophet.

In my SunWALK model reason (using the senses + reasoning) and revelation are seen as two of the ways by which we come to know. Others are;

a) tradition in the sense of the contents of the repositories of Art, Sciences and Humanities and the living traditions that are exercised in various communities.

b) caring by which I mean our heart consciousness that derives from the relationships in which we are embedded and the love and other positive qualities we have received from those with whom we have relationship. (Without having received love it is very difficult to love.)

Interesting piece by Dawkins HERE

Writing your thesis, dissertation, essay or paper – Encyclopaedia of Philosophy of Education – Resource No 1

The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy of Education – a resource when writing your thesis, dissertation, essay or paper

Socrates

A useful resource if you are writing a thesis, dissertation, essay or paper is The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy of Education. It has been developing slowly – being produced by busy people!

Its format is pleasing in that the entries are of sufficient length to constitute short essays and are coupled with sufficient references to take you on to greater depths.

There clearly isn’t much time for editing or strengthening translations. Consequently there are a number of entries that present problems such as this first sentence;

The feminist criticism which in the XIX century emerged in the United States and Europe, even defending the equality of rights, considered the differences between men and women from the biological point of view, respecting the existent dichotomy between the public and private space which also meant to accept the feminine domesticity and subordination to the masculine pattern, besides imprinting on those natural differences an idea of women’s inferiority on account of a greater physical and intellectual fragility, in spite of an undeniable superiority from the moral point of view.

Hmmmmm….. Whether the origin of this painful assault lies in first-language woolliness or clumsy translation major dis-service is done to the cause of gender equality as well as to the reputation of the Encyclopaedia!

However still the project is useful and I hope it flourishes – for several reasons. The main reason is the need to get teacher education back to a core of philosophy of education.

It ought to be able to define its purpose easily as a) giving account of ideas in the Philosophy of Education field and b) giving account of the educational import of the work of philosophers (and others?).

I mention the issue of ‘keeping sharply focused’ the definition of the purpose of the encyclopaedia because of the powerful development of other online resources such as the Wiki Encyclopaedia and the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy

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

Summaries are HERE

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

How can we make our teaching and parenting more holistic?

Source – beautiful work at Yellow Cottage Mosaics

Loosening the strait-jacket and increasing the holism

Question: “What is it that constitutes holistic teaching?”

Answer: “The holistic teacher is one who proceeds in all particulars with a sense of the whole –

and who once a lesson (at least) brings the pupils/students back to a sense of the Whole.”

Holistic Education – you must be joking! Fragmentation rules! I know that in the UK at least teachers are in a continually worsening government strait-jacket

So what can you do – starting today – to make your teaching and lessons more holistic and more satisfying for you and for those you teach? Here are a few suggestions.

a) ‘Re-framing’

By re-framing I have in mind that we all habitually use ways of thinking that we were taught or that we have adopted over the years. We can enrich what we do by seeing it in a new light and by then consequently changing how we work.

‘Re-frame’ your thinking via ‘added’ creativity. (SEE quote by Charles Darwin below)

If you are an arts teacher (performing creative or otherwise) see what inspiration can come from the sciences.

If you are a science teacher explore the creative and the humanities to re-fresh your thinking and practice. It was Darwin’s one great regret that he didn’t stay closer to the arts:

“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made it a rule to

read some poetry and listen to some music at least every week…

The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly

be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to

the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”

Charles Darwin (quoted in Christian p. 611)

Add the creative suggestions/connections to the presentation and discussion not just as balm for your own soul!

b) Make a deliberate effort to link each activity with other activities. In modelling through your behaviour/talk this ‘making of connections’ you will encourage pupils/students to make such connections. When a pupil/students does make a connection point it out; “Did you see how Juan/Maria made a connection between what we’re doing and the History lesson we did yesterday? Can you see any other connections?”

c) Relate subjects that are specifically concerned with values to values contexts.

d) Point out the creative potential in activities that are not specifically concerned with creativity.

e) Build in some simple form of contemplation/meditation in which the children let go of all of the busy-busy ‘freneticism’ and just ‘sense the whole’ to which we all belong.

NB Even if we could all agree on what constitutes a fully holistic form of teaching/education most teachers are restricted, particularly in the State system. Therefore it makes sense to think of stages or degrees of ‘holising’ given that teachers have such restricted freedom to plan courses.

The above principles will help in moving your teaching several steps toward being fully holistic.

TASK: Is this the crunch question and answer?

It took me 15 years to formulate the key question and provide myself with a reasonably satisfactory answer. (OK I know I’m a slow worker!) I know its very simple – we always overlook the obvious. If you can think of a better answer – or a good alternative – please send me it.

Question. “What is it that constitutes holistic teaching?”

Answer: “The holistic teacher is one who proceeds in all particulars with a sense of the whole – and who once a lesson brings the pupils/students back to a sense of the Whole.”

More questions

Question: What is it that makes of the parts a whole?

Answer:……………………………………

Question: Does a mosaic serve well as a symbol of holism – or is it ‘too mechanical and fragmentary’?

How is it that our consciousness/perception sees beyond parts to wholes?

Answers:……………………..

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.

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

SunWALK a model of (holistic) education in a nutshell

SunWALK a model of (holistic) education

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.

So Sun = the values we internalize through which we read the world and see the path ahead.

WALK = Wise and Willing Action driven by Loving and Knowing.

We do the WALKing in the light of the ‘Sun’.

Working with such a model enables teaching and learning to be a spiritualizing/humanizing process and reduces the tendency for education to be just materialistic, mechanistic and atomistic.

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

TOO CONDENSED? – LONGER VERSIONS HERE!

DIAGRAM of the SunWALK model

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 ?

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

Fundamentalist science and alchemical religion: a holistic take on ‘Intelligent Design’ versus the ‘modern-scientific mindset’

Draft updated 15.11.07

Fundamentalist science and

alchemical religion:

: a holistic take on ‘Intelligent Design’ versus the ‘modern-scientific mindset’

The politico-religious movement that advocates ‘Intelligent Design’, and its rejection by some scientists, is just one of the less bloody battles going on in our world. Is there a solution to this conflict, since it plugs in to other battles that involve a great deal of blood-letting? What and how should we be teaching in schools that might help prevent or heal the conflict between ‘Intelligent Design’ and what has been called the MWM (Modern Western Mind-set)?

The ‘Intelligent design’ people make the mistake of using dubious science to promote their religious views and end up, as Karen Armstrong has said, with bad religion as well as bad science. Ill-chosen, or ‘plain wrong’, science would seem to be a fundamentalist as well as a fundamental mistake.

Unqualified literalism is seen as one of the chief destructive characteristics of fundamentalism. Another is belief in ‘textual inerrancy’. However Terry Eagleton, in Beyond Theory, has pointed out, that as soon as a text and a (subjective) human being come together the idea that a text can remain absolutely, objectively, ‘fixed’ is inevitably shattered. Each person has a unique history and each textual engagement is therefore unique. (You can only have the cultural records of previous agreements about ‘readings’). Truth and comm-unity codes then become a matter of agreement and mutuality. Of course to maintain a fundamentalist position it also helps if we switch off all critical faculties – to swallow teaching that is falsified through over-simplification, as well as by literalism.

The mystical heart of the religious can only be expressed in parable, allegory and symbol. Even if required actions are crystal clear – be loving, be good etc. When religion falls to fundamentalist levels there is – in effect – no longer the need for the individual to be a responsible, autonomous human being. In such a case we can relieve ourselves of the burden of self, not through transcendent experience, but through the capitulation of obedience to an imposed, fixed, interpretation. Then religion is as false as the promise, and premises, of alchemy.

On the other hand scientists, when they also happen to be materialists, only value one kind of knowing – the rational-empirical. They invalidate other ways of knowing – rather as women have been invalidated throughout history. Might there might be a connection here?

Extreme denial of other ways of truth-telling by those who have turned the MWM into a creed can be as fundamentalist as religious extremism. Materialistic scientists, and other MWM de-valuers, need to open up to respecting the positives that can flow from other ways of knowing.

What can help toward a solution? Karen Armstrong, most recently in her A Short History of Myth has argued for a re-balancing through a modernised form of mythos to counter-balance the current form of logos. Mythos is not just a matter of myth, as detractors like to argue. The origin of ‘mythos’ relates it to speech, narrative, plot, or dialogue. I would also see it as closer to ‘heart-knowing’, to the imagistic and the ‘gestaltic’. It is a mode of knowing that flows from apprehension of the whole with a subsequent moving toward the particular.

It would be good to have the two, or more, ways of knowing validated and seen as complementary. On the head-knowing and heart-knowing front there might be useful correlations with left-right hemisphere brain functioning – but only if you get the philosophy and the science in good balance!

Instead of complementariness gradually, in the MWM since the Age of Enlightenment, the only valued, and therefore the only valid, way of thinking has come to be a matter of starting, proceeding and ending, in measurable ‘bits’. But being human is always far more than what can usefully be measured. This monopolism rightly upsets ‘good’ religionists as well as extremists – so much so that they mistakenly reach for bits of science.

Before the MWM became a monopoly, in the West, ‘the whole’ had value complementary to knowledge of parts. The ‘ology’ of biology, zoology and geology was the whole – in relation to the particulars of ‘bio’, ‘zoo’ and ‘geo’. It accepted as we do that the ‘ology’, the whole, is always more than we can comprehend, but humility like mutual respect is in short supply. To re-new this lost balance requires first a re-legitimization of a modernised understanding of mythos. It is true that literature, film and the plastic and performing arts have kept us spiritually connected to the mythic but the language to re-factor mythos into our various discourses has to be re-discovered.

Were we to have legitimated forms of mythos and logos, the arts and religion, on the one hand and science-reason-logic on the other hand could then be explored in many kinds of complementary relationship. Mythos and logos, the arts and sciences, characterise two ways of truth-discovery as well as truth-telling.

The third way to truth is a matter of agreements. A community’s agreements, and our internalization of those agreements as conscience and moral sensibility, is the third voice, the moral. All three are ways to enable us to engage in reality.

Truth and reality might usefully be seen as one but it is vital that truth-telling be seen as multiple. When truth-telling is seen as being of three kinds (at least) the two camps have a way to unite. Ken Wilber has called these three the I, WE and IT ways of knowing truth and reality.

The ‘I voice’ of the arts speaks of reality perceived via subjective truth-telling. It, of course, often uses mythos, symbol, allegory and metaphor.

The ‘WE voice’ of the humanities, speak about the moral aspects of reality via what we might call ‘community truth’. ‘Community truth’ is, of course, negotiated according to the society’s political structure. In academe religion is often classed as one of the humanities.

The ‘IT voice’ of the sciences uses the objective truth-telling of empirical methods. But we are always more than we can usefully measure.

Philosophy which used to combine all truth-telling voices, and from which the ‘fragmentation’ of subjects sprang is all but lost. Matthew Lipman, the developer of ‘Philosophy for Children’, sees the restoration of philosophy as the means to restore wholeness. I prefer to add the contemplative and transcendent as well. Philosophy starts with “I wonder”; the mystical with just “wonder”.

If religion has a purpose it is to generate spirituality. If spirituality has a purpose it is to convert good feeling into good action. If religion doesn’t lead to justice, truth, beauty and goodness, etc., we are better off without it.

Religion however is in some ways closer to art than to the humanities. The ‘studying about’ versus ‘studying in’ distinction is vital here. Spiritual and moral competency comes through ‘practice and action’ not just through academic knowledge. But religion, or at least first hand religious experience – John Hick’s definition of the mystical – can only, like art, be subjective. Ideally it is universal enough to be agreed upon, agreement being necessary in all knowing/ knowledge as Wittgenstein pointed out. This is why common ground needs to be established, and expanded, and ‘perennial philosophy’ re-looked at. However we can I believe agree only on our human predicament – we all love, hope, need security etc. We can go a bit further with recognizing matters of justice, truth, beauty and goodness, but theology is (rightly) too subjective. Academic theology is often just a version of bean-counting.

In education the experiential is vital; doing religion, or at least spirituality, is just as important as learning about religions. If the violent possessiveness and exclusiveness that many people of religion feel could be eased then a pan-religious, meta-religious spirituality could be developed – without denying others their beliefs. In such a ‘non specific-faith-group’ form of spirituality the widening and deepening of consciousness might have a chance. A sense of reverence, a sense of the sacred, a sense of transcendence might then be part of all children’s entitlement Qualities such as respect and humility, that can help inoculate against such negatives as racism, might then thrive a bit more. We can’t go on forever relying on David Beckham and Thierry Henri to band-aid a bad situation.

All truth systems only provide degrees of certainty. Demanding scientific certainty of the metaphysical is dangerous – usually to others as minorities – as well as plain impossible to achieve. The ‘healthy doubt’ is vital not just to enable respect for others but to prevent our own excesses. Absolute certainty requires a ‘narrowing of the hearteries’ as well as a closing of the mind. It also prevents humility.

The ‘IT voice’ of the sciences uses reason and the empirical to reveal reality via objective truth. But isn’t the overbearing assertion that this, and only this, has human value just as fundamentalist as Christian or Islamic extremists? Deifying science and reason can lose us the better part of our humanity. Debasing religion has the same effect.

All three truth-telling voices need to be validated through working with each other and by avoiding making claims from the ground and viewpoint of each other. Religion that pretends to be scientific can end up in an embarrassment of scientism. However each way of knowing can inspire and support the others.

In the case of religion and beliefs the proof is always in the pudding. Personally I don’t care what a person believes so long as it leads to virtuous action – to the ‘I WE and IT voices’ manifested in the world as some expression of beauty, goodness or truth all conditioned internally as well as externally by the spirit of justice.

Can extremist-fundamentalist mindset ever be transformed – its in virtually every religion? I saw a flicker of hope on an edition of The Daily Show. Jon Stewart interviewed an ex- fundamentalist, Bart Ehrman, who had been converted to having an open mind! Although the show’s large audience may well believe that Stewart’s satire get’s nearer truth than ‘straight’ news programmes – (is that an I, WE or IT voice?) – Stewart gave Ehrman a largely admiring and straight interview.

Ehrman was an evangelical Episcopalian (see http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6301707.html ) but through serious studies of the Bible shifted to a ‘happy agnostic’ because of what he found – that the Bible, far from guaranteeing inerrant comfort for the literalist, was a ‘living document’ derived from an almost limitless number of changes effected by copiers of texts down through the ages. His book Misquoting Jesus has become a best seller. It is not clear whether he has received any death threats – or faeces.

The poison of religious hatred can only be overcome step by step, perhaps person by person. Education is vital to such a healing. We could all help in making clear the ideas that separate out the roles of Wilber’s ‘I, WE and IT’ voices.

Shouldn’t we teach these basic different kinds of ‘truth-telling and truth investigation’ ideas in every school? Better still shouldn’t they be a way of teaching in every school? As someone interested in holistic education I see the need not just for the theoretical acceptance of other ways of knowing but also for the praxis that enables them to be combined in discourse by all teachers of all subjects.

In my own teaching in schools I found that using the three voices in ‘creative dialogue’ within the subject discourse of English, and Philosophy for Children, a produced amazing results in pupil performance. A fuller account of this way of teaching is at https://sunwalked.wordpress.com/

There just remains the task of persuading the two camps and, oh yes, HM Government and its TTA.

Dr Roger Prentice

Email: rogerprentice AT bigfoot.com

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

Lectures

In development

Additional Lecture-workshops

Listed here are examples of a range of additional lectures supplementary to the modules in the 30 unit course.

1 Happiness, Self-understanding and Better Relationships

2 Hard Times, Measure for Measure and the spirit of poetry – a literary take on Holistic Education

3 Seeking a Friendly Face: reflections of holism in contemporary UK art

4 Exploring ‘cinematic’ language and experience as metaphor of holistic reality

5 New Circus and Holistic Education

6 An aesthetic view via an appreciation of the photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson

7 Science and Religion: Fundamentalist Science and Alchemical Religion

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

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