Are Teachers An Obstacle To Learning?

There seems to come a time when many people reach a level of awareness about themselves and others and then live with love and inner security for the rest of their lives.

There are still challenging days, 

... but shadows have been worked with and now lived with comfortably. Such people seem to be like wise elders and we become eager to be mentored by them.

Unfortunately, there are also many elder men, and it seems a greater proportion than women, that seem totally lost and angry with their lives. There’s a strong leaning on “the world really owes me a lot”, especially if living with a lot of aches and pains.

I thought about that during the 3 months of pain From an infection I have just had. My reaction was, this is what I have, what shall I do with it? So I got into sound and it went away when I surrounded myself with composing.

Meanwhile in hospital ...

other men were pondering on 
how it was not fair 

...and the pain and illness was not owed to them.

A lot of elder men seem to think they are worn out with nothing to offer. They underestimate the value of their story to others. With the courage to share that, and the response, then life can suddenly can means something, and it becomes very cool to be an Elder.

Teaching, or mentoring, seems to come with a lot of responsibility that many people would prefer to avoid. Younger people may seem fragile, believing their experience is too limited yet outwardly they may seem very confident, and also judgemental with it.

They have defined black and white, right and wrongs, with few to no greys in between.

Strangely, we can quite easily shut down our own perceptions, feelings and understanding, and get sucked into this. In Ireland they call this ‘giving out’. At worst this can lead to mob popularism and bullying.

A resolve of this seems to be 
talking as equals 

...rather than combat what what seems to be attempts at superiority. Expressions of superiority can seem to be rude and causes discomfort.

Dominant people proclaiming status, never lifts energies and enthusiasm of a group, but a curious tolerant talker does.

Dominant teachers can quickly be despised because through their stubborn forcefulness, they can seem to pull down the energy of those students present.

Being dominant seems to be an attempt at sustaining integrity but integrity doesn’t mean be being strict and solemn.

An example could be throwing ourselves into raw food diets and then claim superiority over everyone else who does not choose eating raw food diets.

Keeping that diet as a personal choice starts evolving into changes in ourselves that others may asked to learn about. That’s far different to being preached “thou must eat raw food diets!”

We seem to get measured and conformed 

...by the indoctrination of the ‘one size fits all’ education system of schooling, and similar from the teachers. This stays with us and it moulds our definition of integrity.

Many of us may accept our education indoctrination but people also struggle with it as they are aware it is not compatible with their true nature, but also deny it. They do not want to ‘rock the boat’, or ‘cause a fuss’, or ‘have notions’.

I think many people may wish education had included being told to always nurture our inner child responses, that true connection to all things, and live with solid trust of the Great Mystery.

‘One size fits all’ education seems to be obsessed with an illusion of ‘facts’. These ‘things’ that are set to be the way, but very shortly most of them become fiction. Questions also seem to have firm and singular answers, but truths are always an individual experience, and questions to live with.

Education systems seem to be totally focused on getting singular answers, for passing tests purposes. There seems to be little mentoring to help us find our own truths.

Education seems to be cloning. 

It indoctrinates us into living the most accepted rendition of a story. We never clearly understand who’s story it is though?

When we stick to these cloned renditions and are indoctrinated into using them as truths, our imagination may become seriously diluted.

Fortunately, it seems there have been good changes since I was at school. Pieces of paper stating what we have studied are, once again, not as important as our hands on experience and passion, and willingness to explore. Education is not so fixed on trying to secure us into a constant flow of money.

We do carry money concerns, and for many people this is all too consuming. Even when this is so, I firmly believe our passions keep us alive and focused on our dreams. Never detach from our passions.

I strongly believe we have a living duty 
to nurture the dreams that drive our passions.

Bullying, and later peer pressure can get in the way of passions and dreams. Our images of school bullies seems to image and embody everything that is wrong with the world.

The bully is usually an inner cry for love, but they have no mentoring, especially from home, to show how to find that. Their definition of love is enforced authority and prestige. Loyalty and obeying they believe may bring them adoration and love, but they remain feeling empty.

Even so, their presence ignites fear within us, fear being yet another distraction from our passions and following our dreams. How can we offer a bully love rather than loyalty?

Peer pressure is more subtle. The lure of holding others in higher esteem and even trying to clone our interpretation of their lives. A life of doing what your friends do or suggest is not the best way for learning. Certainly not for wisdom.

Sometimes, the most rebellious act we can do 
is asserting our own voices. 

Really, I think this is an essential part of living. Balancing our voices with assertive listening is also important too.

After we have been regimed, it can seem to take a lot of self confidence to be able to stand our ground through our ‘voice’

Part of our peer pressure revolt is refusing to accept that teachers always know best, and refusing to stay silent. Questions are good. The ‘we know best’ authority of some teachers can be a serious obstacle to those who want to learn.

It’s an awful dictatorship when a teacher says something and students are expected to comply with what has been said. Making this worse, even told that this is how the system works. Worse than this is when anyone who doesn’t conform is shamed or punished for not cloning the teacher.

Teachers are not the ‘truth’, but ...

a valuable teacher is one that guides 
to help us find our own truths. 

The best teachers, I feel, are the mentors who feed us questions and let us live with them trying to discover answers. ‘Thinking outside the box’, it seems to be called.

Through life we also tend to be questioned and tested on what we know, rather than what we become wise too. Knowledge, to me, is our reference archive. It takes in what we hear and read.

Wisdom is an accumulation of our experiences. Rather than be collected up in our brain libraries, wisdom is stored as maturity, and where we have evolved to at each moment.

Which of these drives morality, knowledge or wisdom?

There are some people who still call themselves devotingly religious, yet the way they live seems to be far away from what we may imagine as being religious.

I believe that living compassionate, and helpful lives becomes instinct, and not something we try to be. I am sure anyone can have that instinct but it require quite a bit of letting go, for it to flow. There should be no trying, otherwise that’s like trying to fart while trying to hold it in at the same time.

To me, knowledge is a hold in, a personal archive, but wisdom is a process of letting go and connecting.

One experience of this can be from reading a text or watching a video that enlightens us. Then we read or watch the same text or video a year later and suddenly have no feeling for it? There is no longer a ‘yes!’ or ‘wow!’ experience any more. You may even disagree with it a year later.

That is a wonderful experience of knowledge transforming into wisdom. We take some information, let it trigger some openness to our inspirations, and let that wisdom flow.

That initial knowledge was something someone told us through a book or video, but it sparked and ignited something within us that was very sensory and passionate, and became part of us.

Wisdom is quite an unraveller. This broader understanding, of our own conscious making, seems to calm us away from what used to anger us, and what made us sad. These are signs that we may be more integrated with life rather than trying to catalogue it.

Wisdom seems to arise from our emptiness. If nourishment from consciousness is allowed in, we discover we are more calm, and peaceful, and free of fighting responses.

We no longer try to assertively convince people about things. 

We become more aware of the untruths we have been taught over the years.

To me, the knowledge of teachers, seems to include criticism and false measurements, e.g. test scores, that can insult us.

Wisdom uses compassion, and love, to inspire and motivate us to follow our passions.

Luckily, many teachers are very wise and are terrific mentors today, but how many teachers encourage our wisdom.

How many teachers inspire us, and how many teachers get in the way of it?

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