First-ever Integral Education Seminar
That's never stopped me before, and while memories, sensations, emotions and understandings tetra-arise, and while the multiple voices within me are happily conferring with one another, I want to permit them all latitude to be heard.
Integral education has been my passion for over 14 years, from the first wilber book I read in the 1980s and from the time I returned to the classroom in 1992 from my law career where I had already begun to apply Integral theory as I then understood it , to the courtroom during a death penalty case.....
Dealing with changes within consciousness in Western history as I taught AP history; creating experiential exercises to integrate cognitive understanding within the bodies of my high school students; switching out of honors and AP teaching to the regular college prep students, and wondering how deeply I could affect them with Integral education taught directly and taught through, and experienced....
Shift to Don Beck's SDi listserv in 2002 where I encountered others like me for the first time. By Sept. 4, 2003, Nancy and I decided to start a Yahoo group, I had met Ken, and Nancy did the tech work on the Yahoo group. It claimed 114 members before we set up the Integral Ed phpbb site.
Before long we had excited Terri O'Fallon, Miriam Martineau, Juma Wood, Matt Baker, Jenny Gidley, Jamie Wheal, Santo Nicoteria, John Gruber, Toyce Collins, Vic Smith, Sue Stack, Gary Hampson, Nick Owen, Olen, Katie, Hannes, Micki, Patricia Gordon, Richard, and 80 nothers who similarly had been isolated in institutions world-wide and wrote with a passion merging on the spiritual to come into community with other educators influenced by Integral theory.
The core of this group became a virtual LL and wanted closer contact; we sensed that embodiment as best we could arrange it had to be the next step in the deepening of the group. I've read a bit on vitual groups, and although it is possible to maintain a high levvel of interaction within a group that has constructed an appropriate container that can deepen without further engagement in the gross realm, perhaps it was the fact that educators are, indeed, qualitatively different.
We might teach on-line, but many of these programs have a "meetspace" component once or twice a year, or now a FaceBook/YouTube/Skype component. My hunch is that we wanted that next level of intimacy, as we encounter within our classrooms, to sense into the levels/lines/states/stages/types of our new colleagues.
A conference call grew into regular calls, and once Hannes created the phpBB site, we began the serious work of creating an overview and detailed descriptions of I Ed.
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Ah, but that imminent launch was postponed...and postponed...and postponed......
In the interim, we decided that we all realllly needed to meet one another, and a few of us met in Boulder in July, 2004 at the Holiday Inn. After creating a tentative structure, we got to sit with Ken at the loft while he talked, really for the first time deeply, about his view of Integral education. Could life GEt any better???
By later 2005 we had created the following structure for our forum:
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The challenges had to do in part with our origins outside of I-I, with folks not familiar to nor approved by Ken. Under the old structure, this was a real concern; under the structure offered by Robb, this is not an immediate concern at all, but we had yet to learn about holarchic structuring, which created tremendous freedom within the holonic format for us all to function creatively.
Other contributing factors were my reluctance to suggest that some participants were a hindrance to the healthy development and functioning of an emergent LL, due to my hesitance to utilize masculine compassion. It was a stressful time for me, coming immediately after my aunt's death, which had a deep psychological impact, plus my triggering and engagement by and with a member of the NY community who did not have much capacity for introspection, although neither did I in regard too our unhealthy tangling, at that moment.
2006 came with an explosaion of activity on the iEd forum, which will remain archived, so that the fascinating discussions and helpful resources will remain. We began an impressive on-line meditation begun and facilitated by Terri that was totally extraordinary, and we adopted a holacratic structure to resolve our orientation to ourselves and to I-I:
The annual meeting for our now much smaller executive sangha was held in Nelson, BC, at an exquisite site that Miriam and Stephan had rented for the summer. it was apparent that we core team members would travel anywhere in the northern hemisphere to be with one another.
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| Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2006 12:05 am Post subject: | |
| I cannot express my gratitude, in this life and forever more, thru all the transmutations this Soul might take, for your enfoldment of me during the retreat. I wrote to Ken and got a lovely answer from him. He confirmed that there is a caution around I Ed b/c we have been the only center to have developed a LL separate from the structure envisioned by IU. I replied that we had moved beyond the state of whether we are volunteers or a separate group, and explained that we have adopted a whole/part philosophy, where, for the time being, we fit into IU's structures, while permitting us to continue the growth of a startlingly robust collective individualism. Love, Lynne | |
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We were itching to put on a seminar, and we wanted it to be under I-I's guidance and banner, but we were concerned about whether we would be able to meet many of the requirements. We first decided to go it alone under Stephan's and Miriam's Next Step Integral international NPO, but then were persuaded to "go for" sponsorship with I-I; thus, the showcase date was scheduled for Jan., 2007.
All but Terri and Miriam flew into Denver during one incredibly bone-numbing January weekend to work with Clint and Nicole and other I-I staffers as we wove together our ideas for the FIRST EVER INTEGRAL EDUCATION SEMINAR. Leaving Denver after 3 days, the two groups were deeply appreciative of the others' gifts and dedication, and I was so pleased that the 2 parts of me had joined into one Big Heart. But I-I had gone through an intensely personal and public trauma, and had just engaged the services of a temporary (now thankfully PERMANENT) new CEO, and there was some understandable hesitation to state that we would definitely be able to go out under the I-I banner.
Our weekly executive sangha conference calls thus centered around how to go forward, and not until about March was the decision finalized that we would go forward under the banner of Next Step Integral, but we would utilize all of the I-I talent and AQAL knowledge we could, to make this seminar as close to Integral theory as possible.
One gift to us was the addition of Stephan Martineau to the sangha, Miriam's incredible husband, for whom I have no adequate words. He waas able to devote countless hours organizing what we had spent 3 years theorizing and dreaming under a coherent and feasible formula.
It seems as though this seminar just whipped itself into being, and i cannot account for the many many hours that Steph worked on this, but at last it was time to pack for our pre-seminar retreat, fly across the country again, and rejoin our colleagues.
We were blessed to have Diane Musho Hamilton and my BUDDY!!! Clint Fuhs with us for 2 days to set the AQAL and spiritual tone that we so desired, plus to have these two integral stars with us creates a container of all 4 quadrants, and advances states evocation beyond many folks' previous experience.
Stephan and Miriam with Adonia, now a gorgeous moppet of 4, were joined by Jonathan Reams, a neighbor, along with Abigail, plus John, Nancy, Terri, me, and Patricia, in a luxurious B & B on Whidbey with a memorable view across Puget Sound. Our seminar was sold out,and new people were showing up, it seemed, daily to see if we still had space for them.
Two days flew with physical preparations and daily meetings concerning creating and holding a 2nd tier container every moment that we were together. Our team began to operate as one collective consciousness from the beginning, with great humor, cooperation, creativity, and cooperation. Then Sunday ayt 12:15 our entire troup became mobile and drove to the whidbey Institute, with a bare few minutes to set ourselves up before our first participants arrived; indeed, Dennis had already arrived, and we were ON!
more later....I can tell that what wants to emerge is much different than what i intended.....
The Teen Addict/User
For more years than i care to recall, I have been mentoring teens through a variety of travails, but of late I seem to be attracting kids with addiction issues; sign of the times?? My antenna picking up different energy that I am leaning into?
Perhaps my newfound openness to address the issues of drug usage came from that day at the Robin Ridge house when Ken and Roger Walsh sat with a house full of 20-somethings who wanted Ken's blessings in their continued drug usage. I took notes on his wisdom, and it opened up the world to me, as usual---- the world of the user. Having not been one myself during the sizzlin' sixties, I had a more amber orientation toward drug usage. After all, if I could shift my consciousnesss to an altered state, why couldn't others do it as I did?? Why need exogenous additives when you could train your mind, or just "flick" it, and get as high as I wanted?
I had a ritual of putting on a yellow blouse, yellow slacks, and with my (then) natural blond hair and hazel eyes, I would "tweek" my consciousness into an altered state, and go about as if I were invisible. No, this was not a neurotic aptitude; it was some type of ability that I just presumed everyone else could replicate. I stayed "high" as long as I wanted, then just "readjusted" my consciousness and resumed my normal collegiate life.
That day in Boulder, Ken explained that no matter how "mindful", no matter the purity of intentions, the group would NOT achieve any type of enlightened state or mind while indulging in exogenous altered states. There were folks from communities in the Amazon who had retired from the US to stay in intentional community and use ayahuasca for decades. One refugee reported that the group was as dysfunctional at the end as they were at the beginning. Ken warned the assembled 20-somethings that they could do whatever they wanted, but they should not fool themselves that they would achieve any stage shift ever.
I brought this teaching back to my students, and they began to come forward in private and in small groups to question me more. About then, Erica was dating Steve, who was going to grad school in neuropsychobiology with a concentration on schizophrenia and the effect of drugs on psychosis. I began talking to him and reading Scientific American about brain waves and acquainting myself with the UR areas; Stevve has become an on-going source of plain facts about drugs, and I have emailed him over the years with questions that my kids had about drug usage. He clued me into the NIMH finding that even pot can trigger schizophrenia.
I'm going to jump ahead in my narrative to talk about the latest learning that I am doing in being the official counsel to "RR", a 16 year old addict who is now in my class. I am pulling out all the stops to assist him. He has flunked out of 2 private schools and 1 rehab residential school due to his multiple addictions. Now he is here, living with another family where pot is smoked daily and often, without any hassle from the adults. I am in touch with an Integral recovery expert, and will be looking at this as a case study of the effect of an Integral approach to teen addiction.
Much more later....
Authentic Self, Pt. 2
When adults speak of the authentic self, and then remind us to acknowledge Shadow and to use our Integrity and MORAL effort to unearth it to the curative power of the Light, what do we say to a 15, 16, or 17 year old who has little Shadow and not much strata to dig through in search of one's authenticity? How do we add ken's description of the young and the Soul into our daily interactions with teens? And how much of this is safely done in schools?
Work with Zones #1 and #2 as separately as possible, for one thing. Deal with the inner subjective thru dream work, investigating spiritual and religious differences in their experiences, which is something I am now digging into in my research. Deal with the inner objective to explain the constant stream of feedback that students receive daily, and contextualize it. That gives the Authentic Self room to grow in a healthy environment, and gives the teen as best a reality check as possible before going beyond the "nurturing" confines of high school. This fosters the Individuation process, or movement toward the integration of inner and outer realities in a meaninful wholeness. Who more than teens needs this done for them with sensitive and wise educators who have done this process themselves? Can you imagine qualifications for this Life Course, which would be required prior to graduation: "Teacher must be in a process leading to Enlightenment, self-inquiry, or other transpersonal work". OK, let me dream.....
Let's go Jungian for a minute, and deal with the social self/persona/ego of the conscious, mediative role that interacts with others and navigates on a daily basis, and the unconscious that represents both demon (Shadow/rejected self) and Infinte Ground of Being/heaven. Sibylle Birkhauser-Oeri speaks to this as the Individuation process, "a psychological pattern of development that leads one into a confrontation with one's shadow side and with evil, and also involves owning up to unrealized potential". (1988, 23) WOW----RIGHT ON!!
Kids are fascinated with their dreams, and during these stressful years, can come upon quite a few realizations from them. I do a Jungian guided meditation with several archetypes that I then discuss (that will be described in my book!) and each student discovers something authentic from that (perhaps) first forray into their subconscious. For those who are interested, I offer lucid dreaming, and each year I get the right kids to go more deeply into it. Then during the year, they come to me and we discuss their particular dreams, altho I never never present myself as a psychologist, and rush them downstairs to the child study team if their dream is not really transparent to them or to me.
And what of their Shadow? I first teach them Freud's defense mechanisms, and I explain that these are all ways of dealing with untolerable levels of anxiety, then asked why they drank, did drugs, and they responded YES, it is to self-medicate against anxiety!! So now they have a reason that is authentic, real, true, and just leaves the truth out there for them to deal with. Of course I have tons of teaching stories to illuminate each of them, and I make sure that it relates to their lives, the 1/3 of their time that is rarely acknowledged in school, their lives of quiet or rowdy reactivity and energy-depleting time spent dealing with anger, jealousy, betrayal, hurt, terror, etc.
So they now understand that there is hidden wisdom beneath the mascaraed eyes and Juicy couture outerwear. It feels to them as exciting as Lewis and Clark must have felt, exploring a new world. But the experience is theirs, and they now have a few methods of entering into a dialogue with the hidden parts of themselves.
I add to this study of brainwaves, and they understand the UR correlates to these UL manifestations without reducing the UL to the UR. One of my kids found KW's brain wave experiments where he flatlines his EEG on YOUTUBE, and I was able to teach from that, which just blew their minds!!!!! Ironically, I had just spent a night at a sleep lab, and had my own results for them. Their next question was, how did he DO that?? The answer---30 years of meditation. And being KW.
Their seeing him with active Delta waves while flatlining the others gave vent to many questions. Here's where some of my "drug-experienced" students catch on faster than others. Nate asked, Is that the Witness??? An "A" for him. We then got into endogenous and exogenous altered states, which I contextualized sociologically, and then gave them KW's talk on how it will not get you any where except becoming a burnout and getting into heaps of trouble.
I might get into a heated discussion with psychologists here, and i am going on instinct and experience only. But when it comes to teens (and perhaps others, I don't know), Shadow, Authentic self, is where character education misses the boat.
What is the Shadow? what is considered to be the inferior part of the personality, or as Jung noted,
"The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspect of the personality as present and real. The act is the essential condition for self-knowledge, and it therefore, as a rule, meets with consideable resistance. Indeed, self-knowledge as a psycho-theraputic measure frequently requires much painstaking work extending ove a long period" (Singer, 1973, 215).
So we are aking for teens to continue moral education while not splitting off certain aspects of themselves that might become projections, impulsive acts, or reasons to engage in dangerous behavior.
We need to explain to them that there are some parts of themselves that need to incorporate social norms and not disrupt the educational process for themselves or others. Concrete thinkers can have this spelled out to them in cause and effect terms as THE RULES; formal operational thinkers will be able to conceptualize it as necessary to assist them in the future with their personal and career goals. My exercise on value-->norm--->sanction makes complete sense to them, even tho they will grouse about the value.
We need to explain to them Eriksonian stages of development, and what their existential questions are. They will have to know that guilt has a socially productive purpose, and that those without any guilt are predators. "Who am I?" is a crucial question for them, and should be followed thru the curriculum a part of the UL, not just as part of the LR or UR. Using personality tests are fun, non-threatening, and neutral; they help the teens understand the categories into which they fit, beyond "cool", nerd, slut, jock, etc.
We need to traverse spiritual/religious questions, which will become more and more difficult, and less and less likely to be mentioned in public schools as we balkanize education. But I still argue that by dealing with the 4 Qs, it can be done tactfully and relevant to everyone in the class. Then again, I did not have ultra-fundamentalists this year. Without integration of these aspects of American life, we leave them without HEALTHY ADAPTIVE RESPONSES TO THEIR ANXIETIES!!!!!!! Stan came to me after his operation and said that since he quit smoking pot, he has no clue how to ease his psychic and physical pain---IS THIS NOT A GREAT INSIGHT?" And if we want them to say NO to drugs, how are they to deal with their anxieties?
We need to figure out---I don't have any wise answer here at all---how to structure a public school where the kids feel free to engage these questions. They already know that my class is a safe space, and I just know that there are other teachers who can do the same in their subjects. We put pink triangles on the doors for safe space for gays; why not put turquoise infinity signs or quadrants!! on the doors of teachers where it is safe to discuss inner processes and thoughts.
I often speak of my course as an owner's manual to the Self.
OK, it's after 1 am, and I am getting sleepy. Dream on....
Authentic Self
Bravo and Yippee!!
Now page back to Ken and Andrew's discussion of authentic self. Andrew says that he's trying to get the self to be responsible for maintaining the higher perspective that it discerns during endogenous altered state experiences thru meditation, etc. Andrew continues,
"As I've been saying, an unusual level of integrity is required"
Ken responds that in addition to the 5 elements of AQAL, there is the self in 1st person terms, and in 3rd person terms it is called the self- system.. Ken states that the self has several characteristics:
1--it is the seat of will, intention, integrity
2--it is responsible for integrating whatever parts of the 5 elements are present
3-- it has its own structure, pattern, characteristics
4--it is the source of identity and will
5--it is the source of our defense system, which in a healthy situation is like a healthy immune system
6--it is the seat of navigation of anything that's presented to you
But Ken cautions that all of this is only the precursor to a turnaround in the self-system before it can orient itself to moving forward on evolution's arrow for the health of the Kosmos, what Andrew calls "soul integrity".
They both continue by talking about soul authenticity, and here we go right back to Boomeritis Buddhism, which i've been listening to this morning. Let me entwine Ken's comments on this with the topic of authenticity, into the situation with Integral education.
Studies indicate that 25% of the population is now at Green; Green denies there are stages, a stage that denies that there are stages. Most public schools center at Blue/Orange, and in my school, Green is an anomaly except in the guidance and special education programs, where the mantra is to reduce all/most problems in secondary school with the UR and thus the LR regs in adopting Green wisdom, have crafted treatment modalities and procedures within the classroom that conflict with Orange in order to mollify the Green parents and laws.
Now the place for education to go would be Orange center of gravity (excellence) which NCLB attempts to do, but with Amber belief-systems supporting it, giving reductionist and faulty awards and punishments. Many teachers are Green, and with proper nurturing, they might begin to pop into 2nd tier. But having them clustered in education at the top, middle, or classroom, will only lead to Boomeritis Education.
Any developmental stage above and below Green will look similar. Pre and post verbal can easily be confused. Pre/post conventional look alike, since they are not conventional!
Egoic rationality vs. non-rational spirituality will look wrong. Attempts to include postrational teaching will be confused with prerational stuff, thus permitting the study of crystals and taarot cards to being confused with vajra Buddhanature, and thus labeled as spiritual progress. And today's TIME magazine herals that the Bible should be taught in school----THROUGH WHICH LENS??
Green Stage will take from Eastern philosophies and identify that with ultimate truth. So the future and further challenge will be to clear up these problems for the 20% of educators who are at Green, and they may even meditate! But they will interpret their state thru their stage lens. Excellence, achievement=Orange; Green=everything is enmeshed and interrelated. Yet Mutual interpenetration is a metaphor, and not a call to end holarchies or discernment or evolution or development!
What has this got to do with 14-17, 18-20 year olds? Their very existential questions that they must resolve brefore moving into adulthood has to do with who they are. And more and more find Paris Hilton worthy of emulation. I myself am obsessed with "reality TV", with a steady diet of American Idol, Project Runway, Survivor, Top Designer, The Apprentice, just for the joy of seeing something even close to real people being real people.
And what precursors of the authentic self do we see operating throughout a student's schooling? What nibblets, as Ken puts it, of the authentic self show themselves, and how do educators deal with it now? How SHOULD they deal with it? What does character education really teach? What does early religious training such as CCD classes, bar/bat mitzvah training, really offer to them?
"The soul is not itself developmental. It gets fuller, it gets freerm it gets wider....you can have integrity at earlier levels of development as appropriate to those levels. you can have integrity at amber or at orange, and earlier as well. So if you have, in the self's development, going back to childhood, those conditions that help the self become integral ata those earlier stages, then by the time it hits second tier, it's going to be more likely able to awaken as ther authentic self".
And that, dear friends and colleagues, is what I have devoted my life to explore.
The BIG Picture
I have spoken to several people who have given me excellent ideas on how best to write this book, with exercises, curricula, for me to create an entire system of Integral education. But I don't need to be exhaustive in my coverage, which reduces my tension around the project.
I often buy WIE, but at times I've found the articles off of the topics I find compelling, except for his exchanges with Ken. But this issue resounded with relevant articles, I bought 3 books as a result of the articles, and I am off and running with encouragement.
"Professors Without Answers" is the perfect complement to my Kosmos Journal article! This brought me back to HERI, and I really need to get in touch with the Astins; they are doing precisely what I need to use for substantiation of my work.
Ken's and Andrew's conversation was just wonderful, lifting me into a shimmering state of consciousness.
"KW: What do you think are the precursors of the authentic self, the little nibblets of it showing up in childhood and getting bigger in adolescence and then flowering at second tier?......The soul is nascent in its early stages during childhood and starts to blossom later on......One thing that's obviously important is not just that cognitive component but the real capacity for integrity......So if you havem in the self's development, going back to childhood, those conditions that help the self become integral at those earlier stages, then by the time it hits second tier, it's going to be more likely to be able to awaken as the authentic self....The point is that we can help people at earlier stages be prepared for this by helping those precursors to be in place---....I think it's great to think about these precursors, because it does allow us to think about education----an education for the authentic self."
This has been my life for the past 15 years, as each year I began to experiment with Ken's theory and gently push along the lines of incorporating Integral education into my sociology, history, and law classes, ninja-like, while keeping the harmonics enjoyable and non-confrontational for those who are not at that stage to truly register what I am saying.
Next article, by Robert Godwin, "The Only Journey There Is", serves as background that helps us surround and highlight the laser-like precision of Ken's words into a softer, chalky smudge that can fill in the frame of the Bigger Picture. He uses the metaphors of the horizontal versus the vertical elements of evolution. The horizontal is what my school considers to be education, the piling on of more and more facts, and to call that an educated person. But the depth is rarely hit upon, and the students notice this! They are frustrated but used to the lack of attention to the vertical depth and height of the very material that they are trying to get the kids to appreciate. My students tell me that a work of Shakespeare might be taught by memorizing who said what lines, and only rarely is the existential import, depth and heights, of the work even touched on---gotta move that curriculum!!
(I'm tired, more tomorrow on WIE and the great articles. I'm subscribing again!)
(back the next morning. I have free time from about 10pm to about 10:45 when I poop out, and am no longer focusing.)
Evolution is what he refers to as the vertical shift forward, which is a really easy way of explaining Ken's more accurate typology of LR causing shifts in the LL and then reverberations all over the matrix. He states the exact words that I just used in class last week---attachment theory, round 3! How we are hard-wired during the 1st 2 years of life, the pre-verbal time, hard to unearth those existential dilemmas, as I call them when I teach Erikson.
Now here's a book to throw in Mel Gibson's ugly anti-semitic face (ooops, can't forget compassion/forgiveness) when he made Apocalypto. his thesis is that those ugly barbarians were rescued by the arrival of God-fearing Spaniards who would teach them Almighty Love. Well, Mel, read Lloyd deMause. I've read about this but have now purchased his book on the history of child-rearing. IT WAS HORRIBLE IN SPAIN, IN FRANCE, IN ENGLAND. It has only been the LR techno-economic base that made child labor no longer a necessity, the change in understanding of the body's pain responses, Freud, Marx, Erikson and so on, who changed the way we look at children, and thus how Western culture treats children. The Enlightenment plus the 20th century has made it impossible for us to empathize with or understand strapping bombs onto our young men and women and then celebrating their explosion into shards of flesh and bone.
And Godwin thrills me when he writes that our brains are, indeed, evolving: "The more humane your child rearing and the better your nutrition, the more opportunities you have to actualize your potential". So what is the next stage of maslow for us to offer in high school, in my hgih-functioning, excellent public scfhool? Just the very program of Integral that I can filter into it.
Spiritual Mentoring Pt. 3
"What does a SPIRITUAL MENTOR do? Spritual Mentors are individuals who use their intutition and spirituality to help and influence others. Spiritual mentors have skills to interpret dreams, help persons determine life's purpose, assist individuals how to use ...methods and tools and can also teach others to meditate for health and overall well being.
| Spiritual mentors help individuals achieve spiritual growth, heightened awareness, mind clairity, and inner peace. A spiritual mentor can be a personal support and individualized cheerleader of emotions. Spiritual mentors can help persons to find solace, hope and can enhance daily lives of people whom they mentor." |
How does a student present? It depends, and I will be describing how I have embedded my senior sociology classes with Integral theory and praxis, and where I introduce topics that qare likely to generate interest and a response from students at that stage of exiting and entering the next.
So what precisely might we be asked, and how much can we or should we even attempt to involve ourselves with?
There is translation and transformation, and the overwhelming number of students approach us for translation, how to fit in better, how to change exterior behaviors that will help them fit in with their target peer group. These are most easily dealt with, and there has been enormous amounts written for the teacher. transformation, however, is a trickier matter.....
Take Victor, who i identified quickly in his freshman year. He was sent by the school paper to talk to me about being a teacher. he was to make up 5 questions. His first one was, "How do you see teaching evolving in the future?"
BINGO!
I told him that I knew something about him that perhaps had never been told to him before...I've done this "reading" on students for well over 10 years, and if witches were still burned at the take, I'd have been dragged off and lit aflame....I told him that he tendss to see things that een adults cannot discern in a situation or argument; that he gets frusstrated when things are so obvious to him but not to others; that he has trouble relating to his peers, not just due to his IQ, but to some other quality that even the kids with higher GPAs can't follow him.
After his jaw dropped, I told him that when he feels alone, that no one can see him or the reality that he sees so clearly, to come see me.
Weeks later he reappeared, and I sat there with the knowing smile of the brilliant savant teacher/guide, and he began to tell me his problem...except i wasn't listening deeply, I was awash in my own egoic special-ness, so i kept interrupting him and telling him what he was thinking, feeling, and about to say...All the while he kept trying to interrupt me, but i just plunged on..."I know what you are going to say, let me say it for you"...until he finally broke thru my own trance and blurted out, "No it has nothing to do with perspectives!! I just want to find out how to get laid!!!"
Brilliant lesson for me....listen deeply first...let the student present and then let him talk about what his presentation means to him before taking up your own desire to discuss what you want to tell him to do!
At this point I want to place my curriculum and explore how each lesson now tracfks to a specific part of AQAL, and I can predict fairly well what that will trigger in the student who is ready to exit his current stage.
A natural query comes up when I begin to explain the evolutionary track of humanity, and I state that we have some inklings as to where that ar might be heading. Those who want to know this specific information will make themselves known to you, so just keep a sharp eye out, and you will connect with them. They are fascinated with understanding the faculties available to a human being (including "higher" faculties.
Another type of inquiry arises when we discuss the similarity between animal/mammalian similarities and humans. The question as to the full depth of the human being (from animal-like to Divine, especially when describing the triune brain, and some of the theories surrounding serial killers.
Those students who are already involved with their religious traditions will ask how the natural (or Divine) laws or principles can be aligned with human functioning.
Still others have begun to experiment with independently acquired information or practices where they have experienced interesting results that they need put into a healthy context, and the mentor is aksed how the heat that arises in the friction between old and new habits is managed or endured.
Indicating that a path exists is often enough, and then to permit the student to come ack at her own pacre and her own inclination to check in at critical points. Significant spiritual growth can occur only when we have understood and transcended all the primary obstacles, whether they are set by culture, society, biology, psychology, or even conventional religion, and .
"Realization is a Transmission. Various apparent efforts can be made to serve it, but no one can Transmit or influence others with anything other than the state of Realization or the limit of existence that is real for that one. Everyone transmits. All of you are transmitters. You reinforce these limitations in one another and you transmit them to one another. Each one of you emits invisible forces that are locked up in limited messages that reinforce the same limitations in others ". This is from Adi Da's website, and reinforces what I wrote earlier, that no educator/guide/teacher can ever fool herself into believing tht she is transmitting mor than she is; the Shadows will flow with her. In a sense, high school might be an ideal time for this, since an extended amount of time with one teacher does not occur any longer, so the amount of transmission received is more than the student would otherwise receive, and unexpectedly so, so that the Shadow is not invested with anything of the magnitude of a guru or spiritual master........
(not done yet)
Teachers as Spiritual Mentors, Pt. 2
And of course there is the LL and LR of the school and community. I tread very very carefully in everything that I do, since I have a loud and well-funded group of Evangelicals who have attempted to get high-funcitoning teachers fired and the Humanities course curriculum entirely re-written from a "Christian-centric" perspective. When my students demand daily meditation, as much as my heart tells me to go along, I know that I will run into trouble somehow, even if I language it as stress reduction.
I am using Susanne Cook-Greuter's action-logics for the teachers, and will deal with the levels of the mentees tomorrow.
Let's take a moment with the Opportunist:--if this person sits with a senior after reading the tales that I tell of what goes on in my classroom, his understanding of the situation, and his particular interpretation will be quite different from mine. It might be tempting for him to disparage the young seeker, and to label higher moral reactions as lame and weak. I doubt that anyone at this level of ego development would be interested in taking on the role of spiritual mentor, unless assigned to do so, or to label the student in some way from her moral perspective. Needless to say, the relationship would not mature, unless the student were susceptable to criticism, and too insecure to understand that the label was an act of selfishness on the teacher's part.
Diplomats would also be preoblematic in this role, and their responses would most likely conform to the status quo of the school. Students who were at the Concrete level of cognition would find confirmation of their understandings as long as they conformed to protocol or rules. A circuit would be developed that would be of use to the entering Concrete thinker, but such association would not help the student face paradoxes or stretch their perspectives.
Experts are probably in abundance in high schools, as memorization and understanding of their particular subject matter are of paramount importance. They often dazzle students with their arcane knowledge, and since the educational system privileges these individuals, in many instances rightly so, with objective information prized as productive for high stakes testing.
Interested in perfection, they would encourage the seeking student to adhere to the specifics of his chosen path, or recommend different paths quite objectively with pros and cons stated in 3rd person. I find that Experts do not possess good discernment, and it is this very quality that is most sought after in the questioning student. Which path is right? better? what of my dream? I don't want to hear about REM sleep and brain wave patterns and the latest article in the Economist; I want to enter my UL zone # 1 and #2 to come to a deeper touching of my own interior. Where is the Bigger Picture? why can't you help me see it? Students usually report frustration over the long and detailed recounting of objective knowledge that they receive from these well-intentioned educators.
Now to the achiever: the student might receive a "plan" for spiritual or religious learning from this teacher. But I have found that they do not listen deeply to the undercurrents of what and why the student is seeking, and tend to accept the presenting quetion, which is rarely the deeper reason for the questioning, growing, and stretching. They want very much to solve the problem, to give an answer, but poften cannot bring themselves to just sit and be the vessel who listens deeply and thus intuits the sacredness of the student's requesnt and longing. The achiever would likely direct the student to the best books to read, which is of value, but often ultimately leads to frustration, as the deeper search is never herd nor addressed.
When non-rational paths are asked about, it is likely that they will dismiss the transrational, committing a pre/post fallacy of ignoring the trustworthy transrational paths. I have had this reported to me by my students, and I then have to explain what the adult's perspective was, and why the Left-hand path was marginalized or dismissed as ridiculous. I don't believe that the 17 year old has the capacity to analyze what the Achiever has done, and thus might give up in frustration, or in the rational belief that his feelings and intuitions are false.
The Individualist is in a far better position to deal with the seeking student. he usually knows about postmodern beliefs and revels in relativism, which can be freeing and of great benefit to the exiting formal operational student. These are great teachers, and they tend to be magnets for the seeking students. They play wonderful mind games, throw out gret hypothetical situations, can quote the latest and most fascinating test results. The Individualist would be an ideal mentor for students of the type that we are dealing with, and thee are enough of this stage that a school is likely to have a ffew on faculty. It is never a secret as to who they are---just look at what type of student shows up voluntarily after class to just sit, learn, lsten, and play!
(more tomorrow)
The True Self, pt. 1
I began yesterday's lost entry with the invitation to anyone reading this who might like to engage me in conversation over anything I've written, to get some feedback, I'm at lawteach@aol.com. I've tried to get conversation over metacognition going at my HS, but no takers, really. I suppose it is too novel an encounter for most to want to give up time to it, yet when we begin to touch on really key questions, people always say how much they'd really love to have the time to get into the topic.
I've been fascinated by Nathaniel Branden's discussions about the True Self, and self-esteem, and how that has been circumvented by today's society. Neither self-resonsibility nor self-esteem can be given; it must come from the individual, says Branden; yet the individual is embedded in a LL, and that LL can sabotage the accrual of the elements of both.
One of my top students told me once he graduated that he felt like a fool that he had never cheated. The culture made honesty look purile, soft, and lacking in initiative and drive. Don Beck gave us a scale, which I can't at the moment locate, about the layers we go thru when effectuating true change: it starts with just mouthing the words (like AA's "as if" suggestion), and it ends with deep memetic/values change. So if the deep value is "strive-drive", dog-eat-dog, hypercompetitiveness, then my moral student was deviant and felt that way! Branden certainly acknowledges this.
Branden then continues:
---Young people are most likely to learn self-responsibility from adults who personally exemplify it in their behavior.
---Young people are most likely to learn self-responsibility if their parents and teachers require it.
I believe that the overwhelming number of teachers exemplify and demand self-resonsibility; it is the second concept that seems lacking, and one that is difficult for the school to deal with, unless, like our local elementary school, it acknowledges that the HS is embedded within the community holon, and cannot direct self-resonsibility when this is not a true value of the parents. An important observation that I have struggled with is the either/or, adversarila nature of the vast number of parent/teacher meetings. I myself gird for such encounters, figuring that the good vs. bad divisions are already determined, and that i will be pushed into that mold. I try to rearrange the environment, but if targeting begins, it is difficult to reverse. I will need to learn some new methods, since I've experimented with many over the years. thank goodness, I am rarely involved in this type of encounter, since I refuse to consider myself in an adversarial relationship with my students.
"Children are unlikely to learn self-responsibility from adults who are passive, self-pitying, prone to blaming and alibis, and who invariably explain their life circumstances on the basis of someone else's actions or on "the system." Such adults do not teach self-responsibility, and if they do pay lip service to it, they are probably not convincing."
So how does the community change this social ethos that abounds, the victimhood celebrated in media and literature? what will happen as the schools change from Orange into Green? from diplomat and beyond? I have often held that Orange parents push Green morality onto the teachers, making us feel as tho our powerful positions make it impossible for us to ethically even consider reprimands against students. And the UL reactions of students are also held against us, since if we make the student "feel bad", we are again seen as the victimizers and the powerful oppressors.
"In nature, if we behave irresponsibly we suffer the consequences not because nature is "punishing" us but because of simple cause and effect. "
This is my cry now, and I tell the story of erica's life-lesson as I was instructed to teach her when she was a 10th grader at Dwight-Englewood. She had gotten her history final date confused, and slept thru it on Tuesday, thinking it was on WEDNESDAY. When the school called to ask why she missed it, we both panicked, and I asked that she be permitted to take it that afternoon; I was denied. Her teacher, the department chairman, the principal and the headmaster stuck firmly to their refusal. The headmaster then taught me a very important lesson, that if I failed to rescue her this one time, causing her to get an F on the final and a C for the course, she would never miss another appointment in her life.
She's 27, and she has never missed another appointment in her life!
OK, now how do we effectuate that change in insight for parents and administrators, against the competitive ethos of today? I've become obsessed with "Intervention", the series that has gotten hotter on cable. I see the changes--or NOT--that can result from lack of rescuing and lack of co-dependency. Now who is going to hold interventions for children who aare lacking in self-responsibility because they have no real sense of their real SELF??
"This brings us to the subject of culture, political philosophy, and social policy."
Teachers as Spiritual Mentors, pt. 1
I long ago questioned the difference between a "regular" teacher and a "spiritual" teacher if one is Integral. From another article in Encounter magazine, my question is re-explored. This article concerns James MacDonald's embrace of Jung's collective unconscious, although I am indebted to Ken for his re-examination of this phrase.
I would have to look at the article written by Kathleen Kesson, Vol. 16, No. 4, thru the AQAL lense, since her article is post-modern, and thus almost but not quite Integral. When she speaks of MacDonald's individuation process, we need to take it one step beyond, and rename it Integral: to expand the boundaries of conventional thinking about the professional development of teachers to include the integration of inner and outer realities into an Integral framework.
Unfortunately, by having to langauge her article about Jungian archetypes to the methodology of the LR, she's weakened her thesis considerably. By keeping with Ken's 8 indigenous perspectives, by looking at zone #1 and zone #2, we can clarify her attempt to persuade us of the need to include the zone #1 experiences in teacher professional development.
Too bad that she has no acquaintance with AQAL, since her plea, while laudable, is weakened by her confused argumentation. She mentions the fragmented sense of the psyche, quoting from Fordham 1966:
"To be whole means to become reconciled with those sides of personality which have not been taken into account.... no one who really seeks wholeness can develop his intellect at the price of repression of the unconscious, nor, on the other hand, can he live in a more or less unconscious state." p. 77
An interesting observation is her advocacy of confronting the Shadow as a result of having to compromise the Self with cultural norms. Both teachers in training as well as HS-aged students should be introduced to this concept, since their personas veer away from their authentic selves as they conform to the edicts of their sociocultural groups. The Shadow, when suppressed, finds its own expression, often with dire, uncomprehensible ways to the youth, who then retrets into a sense of failure at his core.
Quoting Singer, 1973, 215, he sttes that the shadow is a moral problem, since it takes considerable moral effort to become conscious of it. How interesting!! This brings us full-circle to character education. The gross body needs to conform behavior on Kohlberg's line,, but the subtle body needs to account for Shadow on a higher moral level, 5 or 6.
Now back to spirituality: "Spirituality is a dynamic, exploratory process and religion is a structured form that emerges to contain, and to some extent, control the process"., 27. Great quote. I can see that any spiritual content runs head into the Blue-coded religions as anathema, as opening the door to heresy. So how to enter it into a public school realm?
Thru the back door, perhaps, within such courses as psych, soc, creative writing, art, music, and other blended courses that permit the 4 Qs. Yet, by introducing the 4 QS, and the 8 perspectiv es, it is possible, I berlieve, for the individual to have the space, permission, and guidance for experimentation within the inner, zone #1, dminesions that can lead to spirit unfolding.
And why not permit this within the substance abuse program? Wouldn't parents prefer that kind of exploration over substances to achieve the same inner voyage??? And what if IS is explained to parents/administrators at progressive schools??
How might we do this? I agree that beginning with teacher-training programs, we could open up those students to experiment with zone #1 and to see the benefits to themselves, and their expanding container of care, as transferable to their students.
How wonderful if we could explain AQAL to all educators, how great to permit them to self-reflect, to journey into their own depths.
"Jung believed that the relationship between teacher and student was of primary importance to teaching and learning". Fordham 1966, 111. Great observation as well. And what IS the subtle effects of the unconscious mind of the teacher on the student??? How's THAT for a critical question on ttest score results?
(not done yet, more later)
Love
I've had an intense life, as any who know me here probably have heard all about it. For 3 years I tried cutting myself off from those old memories, and lived in bliss from today and tomorrow. But, as ken always says, Shadow comes and bites you in the ass, which it did, quite frequently, including just this past few months. I see now the energy that builds to throw me off course and to set me into a defensive posture. Susanne and I discussed my defensiveness, but it will take much prodding and poking and pushing before I can dig deeply enough to unearth that reactive response and replace it.
So on Bert's recommendation, I have registered for the Quadrinity process, which seems to be another leap forward such as I had at Spectrum. It will be for a week this summer, and I am willing to forego the Omega workshops for this, more instensive process.
But this got me to thinking back to education, and I am reading about negative love by the founder of the Process.
"Whereas love is a disposition to give, born of abundance, 'negative love" is wanting to receive, rooted in deficiency"--Naranjo.
Robert Hoffman, the crator of the process, who died in 1997, uses the duality, the Trinity (body/mind/soul) and the Quadrinity, which is the Integral model, and he references Ken here.
He then begins with the Emotional Self, and lists the negative and positive patterns, and then does the same with the Intellectual self.
Our spiritual self is but perfection, light, non-programmed, similar to Essence of Aalmas.
He then brings in Bowlby's attachment theory---how fantastic! I just read and downloaded his theory today! Aaaah, synchronicities, tuned into the Universe, to direct us. I'm in the stream at the moment.
Bowlby's attchment theory highlights the critical nature of the baby's attachment to the mother/primary caretaker, for survival benefit. This fear of abandonment shapes the baby forever. Any leave-taking, lack of direct caring, is seen as this non-loving quality within the child. After all, every child is egocentric (ha! here we go with Piaget, I am becoming circular in where I'm roaming these days....), and thus takes everything personally, from a 1st P perspective alone. "If the parent is not dependable, they will not develop this inner guide".
He then talks about Horney, one of my first teachers, back in 1975. Horney categorizes how basic anxiety gets hold of the child:
--direct or indirect domination
--intolerance
--erratic behavior
--lack of respect for child's needs
--lack of guidance
--disparagine attitudes
--too much admiration
--lack of reliablre warmth
--having to take sides in parental arguments
--too much/little responsibility
--over protection
--isolation from other children
--injustice
--refusal to keep promises
and then he goes onto Alice Miller, where the child believes that all of this is for his own good.
So to end the separation with our parents, we adopt their attitude about us, unconditionally, completely, innocently. So we try to repeat these attempts and to become like our parents, to get love by recreating these patterns that they inflicted upon us, and when folks in our adult lives turn against us even with us trying to fit into our parents' mold, we are doubly upset, feeling that our best attempts to gain love have backfired, and our contract has been broken unfairly.
How do we repeat these patterns?
1--by Adopting their negative treatment of us, by being self-critical, critical of others,
2-- Adoption + Rebellion = Conflict of push/pull behavior, acting out the adopted behavior one time, the opposite the next
And then there is TRANSFERRENCE, which I can vouch for having done repeatedly.
So how do we see this in ourselves and our students? Easy. At first, when following these negative patterns, and then being told that we can find releas from their dictates, we and our students can experience invalidation, cynicism, and skepticism. Isn't that what we all see when we approach our students about the possibility of change? When we try to tell them that they might just have potential? They are being told that they have to defy their parents, upon whom they still depend.
I need to revisit this entire dynamic now, to stop the negative patterns that have followed me into adulthood. But it also speaks volumes to me about my seniors, who believe that they really have a true sense of themselves now, while they still live with thir parents. When I talk to them about their UL and LL, they want to know why no one obthers to explain this to them. Their health classes deal with sex and AIDS, but not with their self-senses, with what they are going thru. My hs would nevere permit me ot teach a unit on BEING ME--THE SENIOR YEAR. Boy, would I love to model that.
OK, another issue to meditate upon, to figure out how to bring this idea into being.






