Let’s look at this objectively:
What assumptions do we live by?
Let me suggest a few:
We have to earn a living
We have to work in jobs that we don’t necessarily enjoy or are passionate about
We have to constantly upgrade our possessions
By upgrading our possessions, we are upgrading our lives
There is no ‘gain’ without ‘pain’
Anything commendable is something that has been striven and struggled for
We owe the world something/our best
We must *deserve* to live and we *deserve* by working hard, doing what is considered *right* and making sacrifices (or if you don’t like the word *sacrifices*, how about ‘being realistic/practical’?)
I could go on but let’s deal with these and I shall deal with them collectively rather than individually as they all pertain to one theme – A life of Conformity, Limitation, Compromise and Unworthiness. In short, an effortful and unenlightened life
When we look at the progression of our lives from infancy to adulthood, we see that a substantial part of it was spent at school. It therefore makes sense to question what the purpose of schooling is, whether we agree with it or not and why or why not.
John Dewey believed that the purpose of schooling was to help children deal effectively with their current circumstances, in other words, how to live pragmatically and immediately in their given environment
George Counts, on the other hand, felt that the purpose of schooling was to prepare students for living effectively in society.
Others, such as Mortimer Adler, have proposed that schools help children acquire skills for their personal wellbeing as well as for the wellbeing of society and included the need for occupational preparedness.
It’s interesting that at their website, the Queensland Government Department of Education, Training and Employment (a telling name in itself – from ‘education’ to ‘employment’) outlines its Pursuit of Excellence initiative in terms of ‘The Who’, ‘The What’ and ‘The How’.
What is glaringly obvious to me is the missing ‘Why’.
Is this because the government assumes that we all know ‘Why’ schooling is necessary and why it is the way it is and that we all agree with it – a moot point? Or could it be that there hasn’t been any radical (re )thinking about the purpose of schooling?
I deliberately use the word ‘schooling’ rather than ‘education’ because so little time, value and resources are given to EDUCATION, a word which derives from the Latin word ‘educare’ which means to ‘DRAW OUT’.
The only time my education was interrupted was when I was at school – Bernard Shaw
How much of your schooling would you say was about ‘drawing out’ your limitless potential and yes, we do have limitless potential, each one of us because we are all drawing from the same Source, the same Consciousness, the same Field of Infinite Intelligence, Potential and Possibility?
If your schooling was like mine and countless others, past and present, I dare say most of it was about filling you with stuff rather than drawing out from you what you would naturally and effortlessly express of the Infinite Field.
The continued emphasis on Numeracy and Literacy skills and the costly ongoing development of tortuous testing devices seem to best serve the purpose of killing the natural, creative and limitless Spirit of our children. The rationale is that they are critical skills for proper and productive functioning in society i.e. getting a job.
We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living.
It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist.
So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living. – Buckminster Fuller
In this way, the factory line paradigm continues to dominate our societies and its *products* by and large are masters of conformity, limitation and fear-based thinking. The very few who fall on the outer extremes of the bell-shaped conformity curve are deemed either sociopaths or the maverick luminaries and trailblazers of the human race.
We lock up to the former when we can and when we can’t, because of the power and influence they wield, we pretend that we do not know or shake our heads helplessly.
As for the latter, we’ve been known to lock them up too for failing to conform and tow the line. Then there are some that we place on altars so high and so sacred that they become demigods. And why do we do this? Because we need to believe in ‘specialness’ and ‘giftedness’ and we need to venerate and worship those whom some people have decided demonstrate these qualities.
And why do we need to believe in ‘specialness’ and ‘giftedness’? Because, really, it is an aspect of OURSELVES that we are desperately trying to reclaim and reconnect with! We are, each and every one of us, ‘special’ and ‘gifted’ by virtue of the simple fact that we are each a UNIQUE expression of the Divine, the Source. There is no other reason for it. None at all.
It is not because of our achievements or our possessions that we are special and gifted. It is only because we are each a unique expression of the One. There is no other you or me. And it is for this simple unique expression of the Divine, so beautifully captured in the Indian greeting of Namaste, that we honour each other. There is no other reason.
Meanwhile, the majority of the *products* of factory line societies fall within the widest section of the bell. And whereas the bell shape was originally meant to REFLECT the distribution of people in a given population, it has since been used as a predictor and shaper of desirable outcomes i.e. of what is NORMAL!
We tell children to go to school because it will be useful to prepare them for the future, but what if we have a wrong idea of the future? Looking at curriculum reform efforts, which are mostly reclassifying and rearranging old knowledge in familiar academic boxes or subjects, I get the impression that we think the future is merely an extension of the present. Nothing could be more dangerous. Nothing could be more wrong’ – Dr Victor Ordoñez (UNESCO)
So well have we been ‘schooled’ that we have become slaves of our own designs so that day in and day out, we get on that social and economic treadmill, taking great care not to wander from the middle region of the bell!
Conformity breeds limitation. Limitation breeds unworthiness. Unworthiness breeds compromise. And together, they spell EFFORTFULL, UNENLIGHTENED and UNNATURAL. What is natural, effortless and enlightened is the unique expression of the natural force and power of the Universe, of God, of Love through each one of us.
And when we are not being natural, when we are not being effortless, when we are not being enlightened, we struggle, we make compromises that never fully satisfy and we live like flower buds that are tight, closed and unable to bloom to fullness.
We have a word for this – NORMAL!
And I say, ‘Get off the frickin’ treadmill called ‘Normal’ already! It’s so unenlightened!
Effortlessly 🙂
MENTORING
Let Life express itself intoxicatingly, uniquely, powerfully and limitlessly in, as and through you. Don’t settle, whatever your age. Know your true Self. Follow your Bliss. Live the Life that you know you want to! Contact me here.
MINDFULNESS ONLINE
Join me every week to sit in the presence of your true Self and experience the greatness of Life flowing naturally, effortlessly and powerfully in, as and through you!