Education and the Whole Person

Fragmentation defines our view of the world.  My job, your future, and her opinion are all separate and distinct concerns, we believe. 

Many of our industrial based systems, including education, divide subject matter and students artificially.  Matthew Fox suggests in “Educational Transformation: Welcoming the Right Brain in Each Person,” that we must consider ourselves and our students as we are: inter-related with one another and all that exists (p. 23 OriginalBlessing). 

Fox quotes Kabir writing, “Do you have a body?  Don’t sit on the porch! Go out and walk in the rain!” (p.59).  Engaging the creativity and innate passions of young people is what education is about.  To think of students primarily as minds to be molded misses the point.  It excludes those “original blessings” that we’re all born with. 

We speak of helping students “make connections” in the education world.  This is valuable, but I think we ourselves need to take a step back to see how we can better model and highlight the connections that already exist.  A state of connectedness is the condition of our world, whether we deny or accept it.

Reconnecting

Do we really believe that we’re isolated, disconnected from the rest of the natural world?  Can we care for “the environment” with such a view?

Our challenge is more than egocentrism, writes Joanna Macy.  We live out anthropocentrism.  Macy quotes the Australian deep ecologist: “Anthropocentrism means human chauvinism.  Similar to sexism, but substitute ‘human race’ for man and ‘all other species’ for woman…” (p. 46 Coming Back to Life).

How to overcome?  Macy offers guidance in reconnecting with our minds and bodies through “Practicesto Reconnect Our Lives, Our World” (Coming Back to Life).

Wholeness: Faith & Reason

Modern science clearly impacts daily life.  At the same time, spirituality or religious tradition shapes experiences for many of us.  Yet the worlds of science and religion are often at odds.

There is a history to this antagonism.  By the sixteenth-century “the creativity of the West was now situated primarily in the scientific inquiry…” and not in the religious traditions, notes Thomas Berry the cultural historian (The Sacred Universe, p.6).  Berry writes that “…traditional religion, alienated from the modern world, has reached a spiritual impasse” (p.14).

The message of wisdom always seems to be one of wholeness.  Take everything that is, and work with it.  Don’t throw out discoveries of science.  Similarly don’t dismiss traditions of religion.  Let them mold each other.  See how they can inform and teach each other.

I agree with Berry that there is hope in efforts to allow modern realities to add “new vigor” to old traditions (p.17).  Science and religion need each other.  Without spirit, reason can grow egocentric and meaningless.  Lacking reason, spirituality can become removed from the realities of here and now.  They need to evolve together.

Further, the either-or debate of science or religion reflects the dualistic nature of many arguments and fields of study.  We can learn from this by seeing the need for more integration of academic fields, more acceptance of difference – the need for greater wholeness in ourselves.  Making connections and seeing the wider field, the bigger picture is the way forward for science and religion, for academic study, and for communities.

Getting There

In Wherever You Go, There You Are, author Jon Kabat-Zinn writes that in order to get there, you must be fully here.


I don't think most of us live like that.  We plan, we hurry, we follow automatic patterns of behavior that we hardly - if at all - notice to be patterns of behavior.  Once I get [fill in the blank] done, then life will be better.  Once I get [name the place or situation] then I'll be able to really relax.  I do it, too, and it's silliness.


In fact, whatever we're like now is probably how we'll be when we arrive there, wherever or whenever 'there' may be.  So in some ways the message is comforting: be present now and that prepares us for whatever is ahead.  It's a common theme, really.  It's one of openness, willingness, and allowing.  And it takes some work.

Rest

What do you do to relax? 

Maybe watch tv, read, put your feet up and look at magazines, eat a snack, go outside?  Do you even have time to relax?

In my judgement, most of us are simply overstimulated.  It doesn’t make any of our activities or stimuli bad, per se.  I know what it means to feel like you have too much going on.  I think most of us try to do too much.

We need rest.  Our bodies and spirits need healing from daily activity and old hurts.  Being more mindful of what we’re doing, how much we expect from ourselves and demand from others is a start.  For example, when we allow ourselves and our students to notice that emotions or tensions are rising up, we can allow them to work well in us.  We can respond more patiently noticing that frustration or anger is arising, we can focus on what we’re actually doing, and we can be kinder to ourselves and one another.

So I encourage you to be a little more aware, a bit more mindful this season.  Notice what you’re thinking and doing.  And be loving enough to rest.  Even if the rest is a matter of going about one of your projects in a more relaxed manner, that’s a worthwhile start.

If not now, when?  When you’re done?  Done with that list?  There’s always something to be done.  That’s good.  Re-creating in between and creating space for some rest nourishes us.

Silence

What emerges from the stillness, the silence?

"For almost three decades, John Francis has been a planetwalker, traveling the globe by foot and sail with a message of environmental respect and responsibility (for 17 of those years without speaking). A funny, thoughtful talk with occasional banjo."

On Eliminating the Word "Perfect"

Do you ever feel like a hypocrite?

Here I am sharing ideas about mindfulness.  And sometimes I have moments, days, or weeks when I feel like I've hardly been mindful about anything.  I'm buzzing about, distractedly thinking about what's coming next.  I experience these times both at school and in other settings.

It's easy for me to blame.  It's the schedule, it's other people, it's my own poor planning.

But I think I feel like a hypocrite at those times of little focus because I'm too busy striving for something that simply does not exist: perfection.  In this case, I'll define perfection as a state in which the outer circumstances and my inner experience matching identically with a mental vision of how I believe things ought to be right now.  Eckhart Tolle reminds us that such clinging to how we want things to be leads to unhappiness.  Accepting and experiencing what actually is right now - living in the present moment - leads to fulfillment.

So this is my case for eliminating the word "perfect" from our usage - or at least changing its meaning to accept whatever is at the moment.  The more I recognize that I'll never be perfect (according to my own conception of what perfect is), and neither will my students or anyone else, the easier it is to accept what is, to respond lovingly to things as they are, and to live more fully.