“Manifest plainness, Embrace simplicity, Reduce selfishness, Have few desires.” ~ Lao Tzu
I crave for human experiences in daily life, places I visit and people I encounter. “How’s the weather?” “Hi how are you?” the general small talk of the mundane has never interested me and perhaps, the people who live around me possibly find me stuck up because I don’t indulge in small talk.
I have always found it hard to mingle in a society where women come down to chat with make up on and clothes of quality I would never be seen in unless it’s an occasion that is considered to be “important”. I’m comfortable in the same T-shirt for the last decade in spite of the holes that let the air come in the sweltering heat in India.
The Bible says never judge a book by the cover, but my Mother who’s a daily churchgoer, can’t seem to get past the starting few pages of the book. That doesn’t make every churchgoer the same, but the superficial has always held a special place for her, the clothes you wear how well-kept your hair is and how monetarily successful you are in society.
Philosophers like Steiner say that you choose your parents or the family that you need to fuel your existence. If that’s true they sure have catalyzed me into being the person that I am, the material facade collapses in front of my eyes to reveal what’s hidden beneath.
With our regimes across the world hell-bent on keeping control with divisive politics, with people lapping it up quenching their starved moralities, feeling frustrated and out of place in a world divided based on hate, its getting more difficult to find a place that homes my yearning soul.
The counter culture movements now have a culture of their own, the beads, the groovy t shirts, tattoos, vegan food, raves, whatever it comes down to, each one seems to be heavily integrated into a consumerism based system that does not provide a sustainable alternative but feeds on the remains of this planet.
The truth is the new whatever it may be, is just another repackaged ploy to keep this broken system functioning.
Our lost connections with each other based on the notions of religion, food, countries, colour stem from years and years of conditions, through media, books and even our education.
Finding an escape from the conditioned masses, a place where inner beauty is regarded more highly than the clothes you have on, a place where interactions are not based on the monetary value, but originate from a place of love.
With the current tumult, not just in India but most parts of the world, I found a place where my soul could call home.
A Home for the Soul
“The Master said, “A true gentleman is one who has set his heart upon the Way. A fellow who is ashamed merely of shabby clothing or modest meals is not even worth conversing with.” (Analects 4.9)” ~ Confucius
The view from the coutyard of Nehru Guest house in Nako
Nako, a village in Spiti, Northern India, is a cold desert. The landscape is filled with brown, barren mountains and snow-capped peaks, making living here a challenge for the locals.
Although the villages manage to grow a few crops to sustain themselves, but the future is uncertain. It has a population of under 500 people and a monastery that is dated to 1025. The village was completely disconnected from the rest of the country, and it was only connected post 1960 because of the India-China War.
This plate filled with Dried apricots and nuts which are grown locally was shared with us as a welcome gift by our hosts.
Walking down every narrow lane in the tiny village of Nako reminds you of divine simplicity. I don’t know how else to say it, the houses are simple and every one of them has symbols, stones and other elements to remind you of a higher power above us.
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“I never wanted to go out of my comfort zone… so I restricted my world just to the things i knew i Was sure I could do well at.” ~ Carol Dweck
Education is changing. In our various corners of the globe; educators, psychologists, parents and above all, children, are leading the way in terms of a grassroot revolution which is changing the way we educate the next generation.
Although the old system still has its hooks in the many layers of human fear, a new paradigm has surfaced, spiraling up from our human consciousness to breathe a much-needed fresh air into learning.
And let’s face it, learning IS life. Spiritual learning and educative learning are actually synonymous. Why it got separated in the first place is anyone’s guess. The old system sold us an industrial model; churning out submissive workers designed to serve.
The new way; whether it has its roots in 20th Century models like Steiner and Montessori; or is reflective of the environment and needs of the community, like the diverse schools of NYC or Brighton UK; Or is a homeschooling or worldschooling situation, where religious and cultural diversity teams up with the physical challenges of traveling the world, or selecting groups to suit a child-led development of skills, the new way is certainly refreshing.
It’s not quite a situation where the baby is on your back while you work the field, older siblings helping with the work, or climbing trees in the distance. And it’s not quite following a curriculum either; no desperation to grasp at the dry snippets of learning, (think conjunctions and cubic centimetres scrounged from a website), the homeschooling parent often having no clue how to serve up what has the potential to be slices of wisdom.
The new way can be an exploration; a balance between role-modelling and guiding, parent-guiding child-and-child-guiding-parent, the parent allowing the child to pave their own way. It can be a healing of the scars of the old system, and those inner voices which have created a reality we feel is far from the world we wanted to create.
When we as parents get out of the way and give our children the tools to nurture their inner learning environment, learning becomes intrinsically motivated, and the environment becomes secondary.
These following thinkers – progressive thinkers in the world of education – offer us a deeper look at what is possible for educators and children alike. They show us what happens when we dissect the act of learning and turn it inside out. When we actually ask ourselves: What is it to learn?
Ken Robinson on Finding Your Passion
Ken Robinson is an educationalist and British author, who has some beautiful insights into the education system and passion. Probably his most famous TED talk is ‘How Schools Kill Creativity’, and there’s another interesting talk on educational paradigms of his below, complete with a fantastically inspiring and motivating animation.
But when it comes to Ken Robinson and his role in progressive thinking, there may be little point in going over the faults of the education system. I want to look primarily at his take on Passion, and how discovering your passion, for adults and children, is integral to creating a new paradigm in the field of education.
“THE element is the point at which natural talent meets personal passion.” ~ Ken Robinson
Passion, according to Robinson, is essential to transcend the old educational paradigm, as it enables a child to hone in on their personal interests, something which will even transcend and overtake their interest in technology!
A passion, for example gaming, might morph into much creativity if a child utilises their passion for computer games to realise their abilities at coding and creating their own games. If a person finds their passion, they’re no longer bored, and most subjects can actually feed in to any passion.
By focusing on a child’s passion they become hungry learners, and will actually realise their calling, challenge themselves to the max, and generally steer and own their own learning. Ken Robinson has also championed divergent thinking, and how it strongly links to our innate genius.
If everyone is a genius, and is encouraged to be a divergent thinker with a strong passion and drive, imagine what an individual could create when collaborating with other divergent thinkers? And so, according to Robinson, therein lies the key: Discover Your Passion.
Read more on finding your passion, in Ken’s book: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything.
Carol Dweck and Growth Mindset
Carol Dweck is a Stanford University Psychologist, and a world renowned author of Mindset, The New Psychology of Success. She looks at the two mindsets; fixed and growth. Fixed mindset is the belief that talent is innate. That you’re either smart or stupid, and that if you fail you’re generally a failure, and if you’re a winner, then you’re set up for life. It’s a negative belief which we can all relate to, agreed?
Growth mindset, Dweck explains, is the building of confidence and an understanding of oneself; a person’s limits, edges and skills, as well as their passions and what’s driving their exploration. She looks at how we sabotage our children by telling them they’re smart, or give them any other labels, and how that can lead to a fixed mindset.
Expectation + creating results = a fixed mindset. If children hear parents and teacher praise their outcome, then they’ll have an external motivation, and a desire to please the adult. Whereas if we praise the attempt and the fact they tried, we can turn their learning into a personal journey, and get to the heart of their USP, or Unique Success Point, without the needs and desires of any adults in their lives getting in the way.
So instead of conditioning children to think they’re talented, and that talent is innate and something you’re born with, the growth mindset model is to recognise that we create our own achievements through perseverance and a nurtured belief in ourselves.
‘Not yet’ is the mantra of Carol Dweck, and in her talks she looks at how a few simple reframes can revolutionise the way we educate children. Not yet indicates the goal hasn’t been reached yet, and so ‘I can’t do it’ and ‘I failed’, becomes ‘I didn’t do it yet’, which increases the chances of completing the task, as well as creating a positive and fun learning environment which nurtures their internal learning.
‘I’m really proud you read that book’ is also a no-no, Dweck explains that this implies the parent is taking ownership of the outcome, which will lead to a fixed mindset. Instead we can employ a certain curiosity, which enables children to feel we’re learning alongside the child, rather than that the child is learning for us and from us.
‘Tell me about that book you read,’ Dweck gives as an example of how we can reframe this simple achievement on the part of the child, and remove all expectation, ownership and pressure on the part of the parent.
Carol Dweck is also an advocate for making the neuroscience behind learning explicit, so children can understand why their brain feels like treacle when they’re learning something new. That it’s because their brain is working hard to build neural pathways, and they can come to recognise the different types of learning, where their edge, or their limit is, and to listen to the inner voice of mindset which speaks to all of us, in order to shift it and reframe negatives such as ‘I’m stupid’ into ‘I didn’t do it yet, but if I persevere, I will’.
Read more of Carol’s work in Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Ron Berger and The Power of Drafts
Ron Berger is an educationalist, who like Ken Robinson and Carol Dweck, also believes in passion-driven education where the student is encouraged to nurture a growth mindset. But in his study ‘Austin’s Butterfly’, he looks at the power of drafts and how they can build on both passion and mindset.
‘An ethic of excellence’ is what Berger believes is essential to teach in the classroom, something which doing drafts of the same piece of work can help foster. In creating this culture of excellence, Berger believes you need five things:
To assign work that matters (think passion and real-world learning): To study examples of excellence (completed by other students): To build in a culture of -critique (which is helpful, specific and kind, and will help a child take their work up to the next level of excellence): To do multiple revisions (to take their work up to the highest level, which is actually never-ending, so knowing when to draw the line is also important): And to provide opportunities for public presentation, (so that children see their work received, preferably in a real-world context, where they can gain further feedback for the next project).
Here is Berger’s model in practice:
One criticism of Berger’s work, is that Austin’s Butterfly only applies to how to make a draft more scientifically accurate, or that it focuses on scientific accuracy, but critique can be applied to any practice.
It’s actually something we naturally do, and when framed in the right way (see Carol Dweck section), critique can be a catalyst for the creation of marketable work. Children can quickly accelerate into the real world of understanding audiences within the space of one or two years once the method of draft critique is practiced.
If a child is connected to their passion and has a developing growth mindset, then the power of drafts becomes exponential. Like learning, it consumes the child’s spirit, being, mind and soul to really connect with what they came here to do.
So having looked into the work of these influential thinkers, how does this change the face of education as we know it?
We’re already seeing children casting off the old educational paradigm, and even in countries where learning to read and write is a struggle due to poverty, conflict and culture, children are beginning to take ownership of their passions, and delving into the real world.
Children are recognising it’s time to just go for it, and be the person they came here to be. They are seeing they’re unique, and that with their friends they have a strength in collaboration, by putting their heads and their skills together. It’s becoming an evolution in education, and these progressive thinkers have been at the helm.
To the person who uses metal straws to save fish but consumes animals, I’d like to say thank you. To the vegan who isn’t aware of our homelessness problem, thank you. To the climate change activists who aren’t attentive to fast fashion, thank you. To the girl who gives her old clothes to the disadvantaged but isn’t educated on sex trafficking, thank you. To the guy who picks up rubbish on his way home from a surf but isn’t well-informed about male suicide rates, thank you. To the people who stand up for horse racing concerns but are uninformed of the cruelty of the dairy industry, thank you. To the positive Instagram influencer who hasn’t cultivated a plastic-free lifestyle, thank you. To the grandparents who knit for sick children but aren’t up to date with current race and homophobic issues, thank you. To the students that stand up for bullying but are unaware of the constant domestic violence epidemic, thank you. To the peace activists, feminists, stray dog adopters, teachers, volunteers, foster carers, recyclers, givers, doers and believers, I say thank you. We are all on a different path and we all see through different eyes. Current world issues that you are passionate about, aren’t always what other people are trying to change… and that’s okay. It’s not everyone’s job to save every part of the world but it is everyone’s responsibility to thank every person who is doing THEIR part to save the world. Don’t critique, just appreciate. Don’t judge, just educate. We’re all trying our best. Thank you. ~ Carla Borthwick
All the records of your past lives are contained within your own mind, just as the records of your ancestors are contained within your DNA. ~ Frederick Lenz
I used to be a hardcore skeptic about past lives, but I had a very shocking experience as a novice hypnotherapist that made me drastically rethink them. I worked with a person who had claustrophobia and wanted to get rid of it. Fear is often very simple to work with in hypnosis, especially with NLP, if the client learned the fear from an easily identifiable experience.
This person had been shoved into a coffin as a child and believed their claustrophobia developed from that. So, I thought it’d be an easy fix. I put them into a trance state and we began our work.
As we went back into the memory to adjust their feelings about it, a portal opened in their mind and they found themselves in a past life where they had been driving recklessly and crashed, killing the love of their life. They were sitting in my chair, still in trance and sobbing uncontrollably.
To be completely honest, I froze and freaked out a bit. I had no idea what to do with this person. But as we worked through this emotion, they were able to forgive themselves and apologize to their love. They let this experience go and were able to die in peace in that past life. I didn’t know what to think about the experience.
So, I brought them out of trance and had a conversation with them. They felt a great weight had been lifted. And to my surprise, their claustrophobia was gone! Somehow, working through this past life memory shifted their current life. It blew my mind and made me less of a skeptic.
So, I encourage you to take the information here and explore it before making a decision about what you do and don’t believe about past lives. I’ve done past life regressions for clients and friends, but have also personally explored past life hypnosis, meditation, psychic readings, and even a between life hypnosis. All gave me interesting things to think about.
What are past lives really?
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The real love story was always you and you. It was how you walked alone and learned what you needed to carry. It was how you began to see through your own eyes, and not someone else’s. It was how you began to dig joy out from beneath your cynicism, how you slowly built your desires into form. It was how you learned what you like and don’t, and what you came here to be. The real love story was always how you opened your heart to yourself. ~ Brianna Wiest
