The 19th Reflection, “Moving On?”

Hi.  You haven’t heard from me in a while.  Life got in the way, you know how that goes.  This summer was filled with surprises, twists, turns, and yet another journey brimming with lessons to be learned.

However, learning those lessons requires preparation, especially those of our personal nature and the likelihood we can truly benefit from those lessons based on our traditional education system frankly isn’t very good.

In fact, somewhere along the way we made a collective societal decision to separate the objective from the subjective, the personal from the political or professional, and we sanitize our education through a political correctness of limiting any discussions of personal introspection  to the topic we study, instead of creating the possibility of personal transformation through the topic.  It does occur, but infrequently, and not because our curriculums are built to do such, but because sometimes the person has a process to demand a higher level of self-inquiry that transcends what we are trained to do. 

But it is that higher level of critical self-inquiry, which melds the self with the world around it, starting with the teacher’s personal transformation and not the student.  That higher level recognizes the student is also the teacher and the teacher the student, but that the teacher must jump into the waters of personal transformation through any lesson before she or he can effectively create that transformation in others.  Few are willing to pay the heavy price for such lofty outcomes, as it comes with a process that vents one’s personal pain, suffering, and routine through the topics first studied, then taught.

One must be prepared to make many mistakes along the way, which must include a process to  forgive onesself after studying the error, drawing conclusions from it, and then assessing the validity of any claim drawn.  One must prepare to investigate’s one own soul, determine one’s own values and purpose, including their methods for self instruction, before trying to tackle any topic through teaching.