PEDAGOGY

A Pedagogy of Process – our Philosophy of Education

The New Education is Mythic Co-Creation

Introduction

We begin with the assertion that this work-in-progress contains within it the seed of its own evolution. We do not expect our teachings to exactly conform to these guidelines; rather we find our way is continually transforming as the context of our reality also changes and evolves. As such, these guidelines are simply that: guidelines, not rules or absolutes. Thus this pedagogy is open to revision, amendment and improvement as time passes and we find our understanding deepening.

 Our pedagogy moves away from the control and product-oriented programming of traditional schooling; it reflects the open systems paradigm of learning: not necessarily linear, measured and determined, this paradigm of organic change is one of emergence and growth made possible by interaction, transaction, disequilibrium, and consequent equilibration. Transformation, not a “set course” is generated from the inside out.

 Our pedagogy will simplify itself as we grow. We also are highly aware of the conundrum that any kind of “education” or forced “teaching” about “how things are” is what creates programs, expectations and ultimately dysfunction within the human child, and thus the human adult. For more information about this view, Joseph Chilton Pearce is an excellent resource; we highly recommend his books. Instead of “education” we like the term “co-creation”.

Overview

We believe that the purpose of education at this time on our planet is the same as the function of ‘myth’, which is a numinous concept. As explained by Joseph Campbell, the function of myth is: to foster the centering and unfolding of the individual in integrity, in accord with his or her self (microcosm), our global culture (mesocosm), the universe (macrocosm), and with the ultimate Mystery beyond and within All things.

We believe that the focus of the new education will be to empower our human family to re-find their own sovereignty, authorship and connection to the Higher Intelligence of the SELF, so that true intelligence and not just intellect, can flourish. The new education will facilitate and support our family’s re-connection to Unity Consciousness and each individual’s genius.

 The sustaining pedagogy of our programs and services – including Elfhood UnSchool & Camp Heartwood Mystery – can be summarized through six main principles:

1. Deprogramming and Silence
2. SELF as primary teacher
3. Interdisciplinary Perspectives
4. Experiential Earth Play
5. Creative Heart Intelligence
6. Mythic Living

 

 

 

 

1. Deprogramming and Silence

We have observed that to deepen the reality we share and to heal our collective pathology, de-programming is required. Current education systems tend to stuff us full of facts and information, rather than catalyze our deepest potentials. Instead of allowing the innate intelligence coded in our hearts to emerge, education trains us to agree upon the collective worldview; it instructs us to become citizens in a social structure that is failing to provide for community and integral living; it indoctrinates our minds to believe that mainstream science, rationalism and logic are the only acceptable ways to understand the world, instead of allowing that the heart needs to be coupled to the mind for true intelligence to emerge : it programs us to fit into the suppression matrix.

Educational (as well as other, such as cultural) systems suppress, block, smother, and imprison the wild, true, authentic self and teaches us to conform to a restricted lifestyle where we are but barely alive. Through this education or “indoctrination,” our minds become cluttered with illusion, belief, knowledge, facts and programming and this knowledge is sterile, dead, and disconnected from our living, breathing hearts. This pathology creates a dysfunctional, competitive, violent, repressive and unstable world from the personal to the communal to the global level.

De-programming and de-activation of the limiting beliefs of the individual is thus of paramount importance. Accessing the silence beyond thought is key to this process.

2. Self as primary teacher

The patterns of the Self echo the patterns of the cosmos, and so “there is understanding of the world precisely to the degree that there is understanding of the Self” (Manifesto of the Sovereign Integral, www.wingmakers.com). Inherent within each of us is the holographic universe itself, the Source from which we are created, and all possibilities therein. We observe that the Quantum Self teaches the human self when a space of mental silence is created and continually allowed. Into this silence of Being come the impressions, keys and codes of the Quantum Self, impressions we learn to translate into our conscious knowing and affiliated actions with increasing accuracy. (Please note that the Quantum Self is also referred to as the Soul, the Quantum Presence, the Higher Self, the inner genius, the Sovereign Integral, your True Self, and many other names).

3. Interdisciplinary Foci

The purpose of interdisciplinary education is to explore the cosmos through a variety of perspectives so we may move towards a living cohesion of wisdom and knowledge, being and doing, synthesis and analysis, dreaming and manifesting. Each discipline and framework-of-seeing is an aspect of the whole, and it makes an aspect of the universe intelligible by communicating information in its particular language, be it the language of the heart or mind, be it physics or poetry. Each discipline is a description or model of reality, a re-presentation, a story. Exposing ourselves to many divergent models and perspectives enhances our fluid intelligence and facilitates a healthy and balanced development of consciousness, allowing us to understand that no portal of perception contains the full truth or reality, but that each can be a valid window illuminating something in a unique and beautiful way.

Moreover, true interdisciplinary education is not only about looking through a variety of frames; it is also about overlapping those frames to create new ways of seeing, to design new and completely original perceptions of reality. It is also about seeing how divergent models can all point to the same thing in different ways. Indeed, the current interdisciplinary sharing now occurring in and out of academia around the world is so profound because we are coming to see that many different disciplines, in their own language and in their own way, are converging on the same startling story: the cosmos is alive, conscious, and responsive to our creative intelligence.

One of the most important “windows” through which to learn is of course accessing, through the portal of the breath, the “emptiness, nothingness or void” that is the source of all frameworks and actually cannot be named.

3. Experiential Earth Play

The role of unstructured, untaught play is so profound that it can easily be overlooked. Play is the heart of evolution, its role nothing less than preparing our neural circuitry to make the quantum leaps characterized by the word “genius”. Play is what allows the highest intelligence of the human to unfold. Many adults and even children today have lost the ability to play, create worlds, imagine new possibilities, and conceptualize creative scenarios and solutions. Allowing children ample time to play creatively is of profound importance in their development. Commensurate with this importance is allowing space and opportunity to play with the natural world through the sensuality of the body.

We connect with the consciousness of the natural world, including tree, forest, rock, salamander, river, daisy, squirrel, cloud, sky, earth, star and mud. We immerse ourselves in the context of natural forms and allow their intelligences to speak to our own and become our own. We become receptive to the consciousness of Earth, who is a co-creative entity asking for our partnership in creating a sustainable future.

By playing and experiencing through our bodies, we refine our abilities to acquire, express and live our wisdom, for experiential learning occurs at muscular, cellular and sub-atomic levels, creating not only a mental knowing but an ability to be, to actualize that knowing. Mentally understanding a need for compassionate action is one thing; a compassionate act is better; and even deeper is the discernment to distinguish exactly which compassionate act is appropriate for this situation, and then apply it and review the results.

Through a wide range of playful physical movement we purify the body-mind, gather energy into our haras, open our meridians and stimulate acupressure points to allow the circulation and integration of prana into our bodies, the healing and release of old patterns and wounds, and the vitality of feeling awake, aware and alive.

4. Creative Heart Intelligence

The sacred space of the heart is one of the most powerful untapped tools in existence. The heart has its own intelligence, and when it is accessed through the focus of Imagination and the breath, new realities can be created and sustained. The heart can provide the motivation for our every thought, word and action, which produces a way of living rooted in compassion, peace and harmony.

Most of us have been “taught” that the governing intelligence of our human instrument is the mind, but repositioning the heart as the governing intelligence, and the mind as a tool, is of profound importance at this time in humanity’s evolution.

When the heart becomes our map and compass and we connect to the heart network (of all beings) through the portal of our conscious respiration, we are aligning ourselves to all beings now. Service becomes our operative mode, service to humanity, the Earth, and to all beings everywhere. The heart and its virtues of appreciation, compassion, forgiveness, humility, understanding and valor become our map, foundation and compass by which to navigate, the first point of our presence, which catalyzes a depth of learning that allows for our true genius to emerge. This is the art of living from the heart.

5. Playful Mythic Living

When one lives a mythic life, one is living holographically, multidimensionally, playfully, and authentically.

Around the world myths have historically acted as the foundation or sustaining story that gave indigenous cultures a purpose, showing their place in the family of things. “Myth expresses in action and drama what metaphysics and theology define dialectically” (Mircea Eliade). Myth offers a narrative to place one in context, to show the individual in relationship to each other, to the Earth, and to the Great Mystery within all things. Myth offers a map for the Journey, a map that IS NOT the thing itself, but a map that can be useful, catalyzing, and coded with the generative instructions of DNA.

It is clear that in our world today that we have lost a Sustaining Story that places us in context and we listen instead to fragments, shards and pieces of many disconnected tales, often in the form of sterile facts or fear-laded information. These fragments place us out of context, create alienation and fuel the separation of ourselves from the earth, our communities, our integrity and our True Selves. Taking apart the pieces is an analytical process that has taught us to believe in a cold, dead, mechanical universe where we must sacrifice self to survive. Dead parts cannot come together to form a Whole Picture that is living, breathing and changing like an alive organism. What is necessary is an emerging myth, a new story.

The emerging paradigm of the holograph for integrating divided realities provides a scaffolding for understanding how local and universal events are related. “The hologram is an image where all parts are co-tangent and therefore the whole is resident in each of the parts,” writes Jean Houston; the human body is a map of the cosmos, and contains the cosmos within it; more literally than we at first can understand. Understanding this paradigm allows one’s living to become mythic, where our own actions become cosmic, universal and divine, affecting all other beings on all dimensions and in all universes. Responsibility becomes a key factor in transforming one’s life and living from a mythic perspective as we realize that our 2500 cubic foot local universe radiating from the electromagnetic field at our hearts is holographically equal to the non-local multiversal cosmos of planets, stars and galaxies.

There is only one creature in the entire universe: US. We are part of one Field, Matrix or Reality, one Creature, one Being, with many different parts, such as trees, rocks, humans, stars, atoms; many different dimensions, such as elemental, biological, archetypical; many different roles, stories, perspectives and viewing angles. Many parts, but one “life-form”. Many avenues of expression, but one unified consciousness. What we have just described is a mythic perspective that is a tool to unite the individual separate self with the composite, unified self in a way that creates a personal, dynamic relationship. This perspective is also a tool that makes real the idea that if you help another, you are helping yourself and vice versa.

Mythic living is participating with the conscious universe in an integral manner that is uniquely your own: and when we do this authentically, it is often naturally a playful activity. This participation is motivated by the understanding that you are the Original Mythic Being Now Creating An Event, in a new form, a new story, a new way. And that you are part of a family of Creators living in Eternal Time, the family known through Unity Consciousness.