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20 Opportunities to Transform Yourself While Teaching​
Intuitive Teaching
 What if we are in the midst of a change that is bigger than we have realized up till now?
 
What if we are evolving to be different, and the birth pains of this transformation is of greater magnitude than we imagine?
 
If more disease, polarization, and the dissolution of our institutions challenge us, do we want to:
  • try to analyze    or try to center?
  • try to be   right    or empathize?
  • dominate  or connect?​

Do we want to go to our   heads  or our   hearts?
Much more than education is at stake right now.
 
You   CAN  change the world ... but you   MUST  start with yourself.  
Wake up.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”​

- Aristotle

Wake Up Call #1a
First, Change Yourself
"Problem People"
 
Today's wake up call is for any of us who are wishing to help the world change. How to do it? First, change yourself! You can't do any good if you are not ok. Ok? Therefore, the question is, "What is a great - but simple - exercise I can do any time I want to remind myself about changing myself?" Here's one that simply reminds me what I already know. It takes less than sixty seconds and has been quite effective for me for over half a century. It's simply moving from head to heart.
 
Picture someone with whom you have a problem. (Don't have any? - I want to come to live in your house!) Now picture the problem itself. Now ... and here is the whole exercise - picture that somehow, some way, this problem can get better. Maybe you can even believe that it is already getting better.
 
"How are you going to do it?"
 
Don't answer that question.
 
"Why?"
 
Don't answer that question.
"What, exactly will I do for the solution?"
 
Don't even think about it.
 
If you can move your heart toward, "I think this can work." You are doing the exercise. While you are holding a new possibility of your problem disappearing or at least improving - do not try to picture how you got there! Do not think of the logistics of the specific changes that healed this problem. Just picture moving toward this new possibility.
 
You probably have an opportunity to do this every day with somebody. Start to believe in your heart that things can work. Now you are in your heart. And this is where awakening occurs. Next, ask your head, "How are we going to do that? What's a good path?" As long as you first went to belief, it is a good move to now, ask your head about the logistics.
 
You have just lead from your heart.
 
Don't we usually go the other way a lot of times in our life and say, "Well, how am I going to fix that?" - asking our head about the logistics or how something will get solved. It's not a good question! The way to ask the question is, "I think I can do it, now, how can we do it?"
 
In other words, always lead from the heart. "You have the permission to Awaken. You may begin to move toward a new possibility before you see how to get there" (bickart.org - The Teacher's Bill of Rights). Almost every training in education since the 1800s would have asked a student, "How are you going to get there?", first. The question should be, "Do you believe you can?" That's the question! And then, "How are you going to get there?" comes from that question.
 
I have a friend who is staying in a single room in a motel with his wife and four children. They have been there for more than a year since I have known him. He works very hard to make it out and bring his family to an apartment or a house. His wife is infirmed and works a part time job toward the same end. I see him every week and he always says the same thing when I ask him how things are going. He says, "Well, you have to be positive. I think things will be alright." When I grow up, I want to be like him.
 
This act of beginning to move toward a change without analyzing how you will get to that change is the exercise itself. And you can take sixty seconds whenever you want - even several times today - to do it. This is an opportunity to transform yourself by spiritually awakening.
 
Well, that's my wake up call for today. Have fun and I'll see you in one of those tomorrows.
- click to request contact with John for a consultation or workshop
Story #1b
First, Change Yourself
 
“For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.”
– Christ (Luke 6:45)
“See the false as false - the true as true. Look into your heart."
- Buddha
  1. You have permission to Awaken. You may begin to move toward a new possibility before you see how to get there.
 
Do you want to take down this edifice - this master that is running your life - that is your head? Audre Lorde, in Sister Outsider (1984), said that if you want to dismantle the master's house, you can't do it with the master's tools. You can't fix your head, with your head. If you want to transform, isn't that going to your heart? So, you've got to use your heart to go to your heart.
 
Let me give you an example. It's back in the 1990s, a decade before the very sad bombing of the twin towers on 9/11/2001. I'm a training consultant to the Fortune 500 business community, currently at the World Trade Center in New York City. I'm on assignment to the World Trade Center Association of which there are 180 worldwide at that time. I'm entering the building and going through security. A little-known fact is that the day before - a decade before what we call, "911" - a car bomb had been set off in the garage of the twin towers. But the bomb did nothing to the building, it only hurt a few of the cars next to it. So, the increased security I experienced as I went through the lobby was simply to check our briefcases. No one thought that you could take down the World Trade Center. No one thought that anyone would bomb America on her own soil.
 
So, I tell this story to illustrate that we thought of the master's house in terms of the master's tools. In other words, we could not conceive of what was about to happen to the World Trade Center a decade later. The point is that if you want to make a change to yourself, don't use your head to make the change. Don't picture yourself as an impenetrable building that cannot be changed easily. Picture yourself as totally able to become something different. And that is the process of having heart thought - to picture things that are really outside of your possibilities, believe they are possible, and then ask your head how to accomplish them. A heart thought will ask the head and the gut how to do things. But, heart thoughts lead with the belief that new things can happen. You think with all different parts of yourself, but the heart must be in charge - the heart must decide.
 
So, now fast forward. It's now 9/11/2002, exactly one year after the bombing of the World Trade Center. I apologize for bringing this subject up because it is a sore topic for many people. I do it because I have an important point. I'm working in a school now. I'm not a consultant to the Fortune 500. I'm teaching in a school - an alternative school. It's my first week. I've switched careers. And I'm so excited to be with the kids, that that I forget that it's 9/11, the one-year anniversary of the twin towers. New Jersey and New York are on hyper-alert because there has been speculation that there may be another bombing. I'm teaching in a school in New Jersey, 40 miles from ground zero as the crow flies, across Lower Manhattan Bay, where the twin towers had been. I forgot all of this because I'm so excited about teaching. I do a chemistry experiment, blow up a balloon with propane and oxygen. Boom. The principal and the school go into hyper-alert. The principal comes into my classroom and quietly says, "Could you have sent us an email?"
 
In this moment, I saw my principal visibly getting ready to change himself in order to handle me. Later, he told me how he had to transform himself as he got to know me. He loved the way I helped students with my methods of using a little danger to color outside the lines, so he decided that he would change himself to support me. We worked together for seven years. I had a wonderful time with him and have remained very close friends to this day. He did his job as well as I have seen anyone do a job. And this day, I saw him decide in the moment to follow his heart. You could see him supporting you and believing in you - before he knew how he was going to do it. And this is the genius of this man. He truly knew how to use what I call heart thought.
 
And that is how to change yourself. Move from your heart first, then think in your head how to do it. Well, that's it for today. I'll see you in one of those tomorrows.

References 
Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider: essays and speeches. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press.
“Only then, will you transcend tense
To fully be here now.
Only then, no harm
will the universe proffer
nor you to her,
for you will be
not you but she
​and both – the universal
​Great Integrity.

​- Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching, circa 500 BCE, Verse 13 on Identity)
"I get down on my knees
And I start to pray
‘Til the tears run down from my eyes
Lord, somebody, ooh somebody
​can anybody find me somebody to love?"
​
- Freddie Mercury (Farrokh Bulsara)
“
​You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”

― Dr. Seuss
Ways to Encourage Your Intuition
[Have some fun with this exercise when you are feeling low. Instead of reading the whole list, maybe you could try picking one line out. Read it before bed and let it work on you through the night.]

  • Getting outside of spacetime through meditation.

  • Seeing wholes … seeing the whole in the part … “As Above, So Below”.

  • Noting when something is non-physical versus when it is physical.

  • Using your intuitive self to go into your senses, rendering the intellect ineffective.

  • Think of going into the intuitive like escaping from a prison to find freedom.

  • Separating observation from analysis.

  • Accessing your childhood (or ancestors).

  • Embracing paradox, the middle way, or heart thought.

  • Resurrecting  animism    or   artificialism    or   purpose    or   intention    or   connectedness.

  • Experiencing without yet talking / talking while still listening.

  • Feeling relationship without reflecting.

  • Engaging before labeling, naming, or categorizing.

  • Becoming familiar before describing, conceptualizing, or articulating.

  • Understanding before talking about, remembering, or reviewing.

  • Supporting a little more awareness before analyzing, concluding, or theorizing.

- from Heart Thought Exercises

The Teacher's Bill of Rights

1.            You have permission to Awaken. You may begin to move toward a new possibility before you see how to get there.
2.            Learn something from your student that transforms you, then show your gratitude. In other words, truly teach by modeling true learning!
3.            Listen for an intuitive insight - even while you are speaking.
4.            Look at something you have seen before. Note whether it looks better, the same, or worse than before. Then look to yourself ... you have just tested your awakened state.
5.            Question everything - modeling learning by deconstruction.
6.            Sometimes … fall down on the job - then be picked up by your students - in other words, be vulnerable enough to put yourself in their hands.
7.            Listen to your students as if their commentary may reveal deeper truth than yours.
8.            Have fun - and respect students for wanting to have fun.
9.            Accent aspects of the curriculum that you love, so that you model real connection to your material.
10.       Be ready to have your thoughts turned in a new, useful direction at any moment.

- more

“There is nothing either good or bad,
​but thinking makes it so.”

- Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) , Hamlet, Act 2 scene 2

Congratulations … Intuitive Teacher!

[Have fun with this exercise. Read it to yourself whenever you need to re-center.]

Meditate.
​-------------
Start from your Heart.
​-------------
Have fun.
​-------------
Learn something from your student that changes you in the moment. Then, show your gratitude. Now, you are truly teaching … you are the grateful learner you wish your student to be.
​-------------
Distinguish between your intuition and your intellect.
​-------------
Know when you are observing as opposed to when you are analyzing.
​-------------
Demonstrate several ways to be the adult in control, yet let the students provide intuitive wisdom.
​-------------
Read the book of nature … which means letting interpretations of natural processes speak through poetry, history, science, mathematics, and common experiences.
​-------------
Run discussions that allow students to turn expository (descriptive) lessons into didactic (instructive) ones.
​-------------
Be alert to the aspect of a lesson that might awaken in students their purpose in life.
​-------------
Encourage students to make psychological connections to ordinary factual material.
​-------------
Convert teaching information to transformation.
(Tobin Hart, 2001)
​-------------
Use context: facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, eye contact, posture, gestures, big picture, feel of an experience, images, emotions, get personal, gut feeling, heartfelt sense, autobiographical references, move parts of your body below your head.
​(McGilchrist, 2009)
​-------------
Some Ways to Lead with Your Head … analyzing, articulating, solving, being logistical, planning, being right, quick to respond, intensity, heaviness, seriousness, “stop that or else”, “you’re wrong”, “don’t even tell me your way”, “because I said so”.
​-------------
Some Ways to Lead Your Heart … intuiting, observing, connecting, feeling, pausing, centering, touching, empathizing, eye contact, slow to respond, keep it light, playful, humorous, “let’s go another way”, “I see what you’re feeling”, “do you think that will work?”.
​-------------
Some Things Wrong with Education: left brain dominance (McGilchrist, 2009; Siegel, 2018), 1800s factory model (Skinner, 1953; Thorndike, 1913/2010), children are little adults (Piaget, 1929/2007), too much testing (Darling-Hammond, 2010), people are not machines (Dewey, 1916/2005), assumed separateness (Kuhn, 2004), right answers, restricted resources, working alone vs. collaboration, trying to build something with one tool, no help, and no questions (Dintersmith, 2018)
​​-------------
​Some Things ?Coming? to Education: The spiritual child (L. Miller, 2015; L. W. E. S. Miller, 2021), awareness and mindsight (Siegel, 2010, 2018), belief (Dispenza, 2017; Lipton, 2005, 2006), mindfulness (Lantieri, 2008), emotional and social intelligence, presence (Goleman & Boutsikaris, 2006; Goleman & Senge, 2007; Goleman & Whitener, 2005), maker projects, students-only, community-centered, not tests, not algebra, not control, not norms, education does not equal school, integrated disciplines, inspirational, repeatedly failing so they are allowed to iterate (Dintersmith, 2018)
- from Heart Thought Exercises

Abstract for the Intuitive Education Workshop

Recent research in neuroscience highlights both horizontal integration of the brain as well as vertical integration of the body, brainstem, limbic areas, and cortex. Horizontal integration means connecting “our left hemisphere’s narrator function with the autobiographical memory storage of our right hemisphere” (Siegel, 2010, p. 74).

A great joy for me is that the time we live in embraces the intersection of spirituality in education through the research being done on the integration of right and left brain and the parallel integration of heart thought and head thought. In other words, the right hemisphere uses our intuitive abilities for observation while the left hemisphere uses our analytical abilities to narrate what we have observed. My experiences with students for over 50 years is that they seem to have a window into their spiritual values when they start looking at themselves first with the heart, then follow with the intellect. Other research suggests that humankind, in the far distant past, used to lead with our naturally intuitive heart, then pass information to our head for the purpose of analysis (Dispenza, 2017; Dispenza & Boyce, 2016; Dispenza, Knight, & Encephalon, 2005; McGilchrist, 2009).

This is why we need intuitive education - a way to let children remain in an intuitive state of observation before they engage their analytical ability to narrate and reflect. To be completely honest, I think that education is often facing 180 degrees in the wrong direction and the youth know it. Education needs to lead with the right brain. We need to replace exclusive left brain thinking that basically says, “To have a good life, you must get things – and school is the place to learn how to be successful at getting,” and integrate this with the right brain tendencies of including and giving. Also, we need to replace the habit of exclusively having the older generation teaching the younger. The very fact that the new kids already know that the only hope for humanity lies in learning how to give is evidence that we need to learn from our students – now more than ever. At this crucial time in history, we need to leave certain habits behind and re-learn the truly ancient way of giving to each other – to the earth – and to other beings.
- click for more

​Are You Alone? Me too.
"Our Treasure is the Great Integrity"

"While most people are obsessed with superficialities, we feel empty.
While most people feel they know so much, we feel simpleminded.
While most people believe they live happily in the best of all possible worlds,
we are depressed to witness this world!
It is so painful to know that we will always be outsiders, endlessly moving like the ocean, aimlessly blowing like the wind.

While we fear what others fear, we don't treasure what others treasure.
Our treasure is the Great Integrity.
However, until it is shared, it will not be the Universal Integrity,
for we are part of them, and they are part of us."

(Laozi, Tao Te Ching,  circa 500 BC, Verse 20, The Sadness of Superficialities and of The Unfulfilled Great Integrity)
-   Read more
Language Reduces Experience

Language Reduces Experience. The way it does that is because you give a name to something that is more than its name. If you give a name to a person or a tree, it’s so much more. If you say in language, "I fell in love," does that say it all? So, there is no way, completely, to explain experience with language. It's always a reduction.

But it's worse than that. We have to go a little bit farther to understand what we are going to do for our exercise to reintegrate our lives. Our lives come apart when we use language. If you go back to the earliest languages, they didn't take things apart and have a subject and a predicate to a sentence - "The light flashed." They would say, "flash" - one thing. There wasn't a light and a flash, they saw "flash." It's a noun and a verb. So, not only is it a subject and predicate, they also blended what we have as tenses. But they didn't blend - for them it was together - they were in the present.  ...
-  Read more
Awakening
What  happens in a spiritual awakening?

When the Wall Street Journal interviewed Dr. Lisa Miller, she explained that “Spirituality is innate,”.  She noted that “Some of us are more predisposed than others to feeling spiritually connected. And how a child is engaged shapes and forms his or her spiritual core. But we can all cultivate this natural capacity and build our spiritual muscle.”

She presents scientific data that shows one way to view spiritual  awakening in her book, The Awakened Brain. “The data has also shown that character strengths and virtues such as optimism, grit, commitment and forgiveness go hand-in-hand with strong spiritual awareness,” Miller explains. “It helps us be more creative. It also leads to more gratitude and more resilience. There is a sense that things will work out.”

​Moving Toward and Away

All right I have a confession. I usually enable people in the relationships in my life because I go for fun. You've heard me, if you've listened to any of these videos, talk about fun a lot. But, perhaps I go a bit too far with that. Just this morning, I learned a lesson about it.
 ______________________________________________
​
I was picturing my next week. Monday I will be with the Youth Transformed for Life kids. I always get them too wild. The teachers have to come in and say, "Oh yeah, he had fun - they had fun - but now they're a little too wild. The week after next, I'll be at the Rainbow Community School, where I usually get them a little too wild. It's because I go for the fun first, and then the kids get a little bit too out of control. And then, I have to establish structure afterward. So, I was reflecting on this tendency this morning, getting ready for those classes. And I realized that part of me did not want to think about it. I was trying to move away from the whole problem of enabling with too much fun up front, then regaining structure and discipline when it is a little too late.
 
And then I remembered Dr. Lisa Miller and her book, The Awakened Brain (2021). In it she says that there are two modes in which you live your life, achieving mode and awakened mode. Your achieving mode might tend to look at problems as something to get around. But awakened mode might look at those same problems as lessons. In awakened mode, you might look at a problem as presenting an existential question - a chance to change your existence - make a learning experience from something that is a little bit annoying to you.
 
So, I want to read to you from her paragraph on integrating those two modes in what she calls "quest awareness" or "quest orientation", which makes your life a journey. Listen to this.   
 
"Quest orientation is characterized by a tendency to journey in life: to search for answers to meaningful personal decisions and big existential questions; to perceive doubt as positive; and to be open to change, or more accurately, open to perceiving with fresh eyes, and then using new experience to fuel change. In quest, we open ourselves to the messages from life, take seriously this discovery, and then actively use learning to shape our decisions and actions—our personal operating manual" (Miller, 2021, p. 169).
 
So, I got to thinking about this. You're born to this life and at first, you think everything is good. You don't move away from things. That's why you can take candy from a baby. If a stranger walks up, the baby looks up and thinks everything is going to be great. Then life happens and you go to the school of hard knocks. So, bad things start to happen to you, and you start to fall. But, the game of life is getting back - recovering your childhood - the ability to see things as wonderful again. But how? They're not wonderful.
 
Well ... in total freedom ... you can have the choice to make life a quest - make life a journey! You can decide for yourself to look at the school of hard knocks and take the hard knocks - use them - learn from them - and say, "Thank you! Why did that just happen to me? Why am I like that? Why is this bad thing surrounding me? And what can do about it - what can I do with it? It must be that there is a lesson for life in here, somewhere!"
-   Read more
Is there Advice for Depression?

"Schooling stuffs the brains of our children with trivia.
The more trivia, the more their anxieties.
They indoctrinate the children to believe that the consequences are grave
when they fail to distinguish "good" from "evil", and agreement from disagreement.
What gross nonsense!"
(Laozi, Tao Te Ching, Verse 20, circa 500 BC)

​"Look at the same student and see no remarkable attributes one time – and striking qualities   by looking once again."
- The Teacher's Bill of Rights

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
- Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)

​-  Read more
ISHMAEL
An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
by Daniel Quinn (1992)
​This is the novel that was awarded $500,000 by the  Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award  in 1991, for a book offering creative solutions to global problems.

SYNOPSIS
The story starts with an intelligent ape that 'talks' telepathically to a human. The ape becomes the man's teacher. The teaching takes place primarily through questions - in the Socratic tradition.
  • What do you have to teach?
    Captivity. It is what I know. But I will show you how humankind is captive, right now.
  • How is humankind a captive?
    Humans are captive to their story.
  • What is their story?
    That they are superior to all of the rest of nature. 
    That they are the end of evolution.
    That they deserve any part of the earth for habitats.
    That they deserve any food the earth offers.
  • How does this make them captive?
    Since their story is, "The world was made for us," they do what they want with it. Therefore there will be no end to their hunger.
  • But where is the captivity?
    In constantly taking, they will never be satisfied. They will be captive to a kind of thirst. In trying to quench it they will consume resources and seek pleasures until they destroy themselves or all of the rest of nature - whichever comes first.
  • Was humankind always like this?
    No.    ​
Read  More

Do you remember when you were very young?

Would you like to reawaken the wisdom of the child?
Would you like to rediscover the wisdom of the ancestors?
Would you like to regain the wisdom of the heart?
Would you like to transform yourself to once again access that   wisdom?
​
Heart Thought
"What is a heart thought? ...
​You kind of know somewhere inside you, what you wish at any one time in your life, if you stop and think about it. ​"
Have you assumed that
all atoms are the same?
Why?
How do you know?
​Is matter a physical material, only?
Wake Up Call #4 ... The Test of Awakening

[Following is a excerpted transcription from the video]
 
Ready? Take a color in your environment, right now. Maybe it's a piece of your clothing. Maybe it's something on the desk or the wall - a color you like. Just, look around to find which one you're going to look at. And for a very short period of time - it does not have to be long - just look at it.
-pause-
 
And now ask, "Does that color look better, the same, or worse than the last time you stopped to look at that color - not the object - the color?" It's a very good question, it turns out.
 
If you can now take this one step further, try to make your experience of the color become better - more beautiful. (Another favorite version of this exercise is to do it with faces.) If you can change it, then you are the master of your destiny. You are actually commanding your presence. You are waking up right now. You're moving toward more wakefulness, not less. And this is always in your power. And I dare say, there is no situation where less wakefulness is better than more. No matter what's happening around you, you can always bring more presence to it and that always makes things get better.
​...
​​
​“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment .”
- Marcus Aurelius (121 -180 AD, Meditations)
Workshop: Recovering Your Childhood
in Adulthood 
A series of practical exercises to move from depression to growth through spiritual knowing.
​​Finding oneself requires a reintegration of childhood in adulthood. We must be careful here not to fill students with theory and intellectual jargon. Rather, we need to practice real-life, simple exercises every day in order to recover our world by recovering our self. Recent studies show that this integration is a physiological / psychological act of brain integration that is vertical: body, brainstem, limbic areas, and cortex (Hart, 2001, 2010, 2014a, 2014b; L. Miller, 2015; L. W. E. S. Miller, 2021; Siegel, 2010, 2018), and horizontal: intuitive, right brain and analytical left brain (McGilchrist, 2009; Siegel, 2010). But studies aside, the actual reintegration of childhood in adulthood is a recovery that is spiritual and down to earth. One way to ward off depression or destructive behavior and move toward growth is to spiritually know oneself more fully. Spiritual knowing involves:
  • Reawakening the child in the adult. Exercise: recover the ability to see work and play as one.
  • Heart Thought - using the "quest orientation" (L. W. E. S. Miller, 2021, p. 169). Exercise: catch yourself several times a day with "doubts and downers" and look for life's deeper messages.
  • Teach yourself to create practical exercises from ancient wisdom teaching. Exercise: Seeing humankind as a child in the Tao Te Ching (Laozi, 2005/circa 500 BC).
Read  More
​
For the children and the flowers are my sisters and my brothers,
their laughter and their loveliness would clear a cloudy day.
And the song that I am singing is a prayer to non-believers,
come and stand beside us we can find a better way."
- John Denver (Rhymes And Reasons)
Heart Thought
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ― Maya Angelou​
Intuitive Education Workshop
​​Recent research in neuroscience highlights both horizontal integration of the brain as well as vertical integration of the body, brainstem, limbic areas, and cortex. Horizontal integration means connecting “our left hemisphere’s narrator function with the autobiographical memory storage of our right hemisphere” (Siegel, 2010, p. 74). A great joy for me is that the time we live in embraces the intersection of spirituality in education through the research being done on the integration of right and left brain and the parallel integration of heart thought and head thought. In other words, the right hemisphere uses our intuitive abilities for observation while the left hemisphere uses our analytical abilities to narrate what we have observed. 
Read More
Humankind Three Dot O
Version 2.0 of Humankind is out of date.   It’s passé, lapsed, antiquated, invalid, obsolete. Look it up on the Mayan calendar. If this version of humankind was a can of beans, it would have a label that says, “Expiration Date: December 21, 2012.” Version 2.0 is over. Time is up. People walking around trying to still be 2.0 are simply hanging on to the old way because they don’t want to change. They just don’t get it. You can’t live in the past. And Version 2.0 has passed! Look. It’s simple. Basically speaking, there are three versions of humankind. You know how we label computers as version 10.11.7 and 8.0 and all? Well, what if humankind came with an operating system. It would have had Version 1.0, 2.0, and now, 3.0. Version 1.0 humans are the pre-historics. Version 2.0 humans started writing and recording history around 5,000 years ago – and they ended (or should have) in 2012. And we are now in Version 3.0 - though some of you are desperately trying to avoid it. Avoiding 3.0 and trying to still act like 2.0 is like a comedian staying on the stage past when the audience was laughing. It’s getting creepy and awkward. It’s just not funny anymore.

I look back at Version 2.0 with mixed feelings. I see just about all of Version 2.0 as a kind of an intermediate, awkward stage of humankind – one where we were trying to be grown-ups, but really weren’t. It’s like humanity’s collective puberty. Version 2.0 is what you get when humankind was a teenager with raging hormones. I mean, look at all of the stupid things we experimented with, not to mention what we gave up from Version 1.0 in our reckless, headlong quest for adulthood. Do you remember good ole Version 1.0? There we were walking around our caves, wearing our nifty one-piece fur outfits, - no need to dodge traffic - having fun. We got up with no alarm clock, straightened up the cave, went out for lunch, then went fishing and swimming. Version 2.0 humans would call that a vacation! Now that I think about it, it just might be that Version 1.0 felt like a vacation more often than not! I don’t believe, for one minute, that picture they gave us when we were little. Weren’t you told that cavemen and cavewomen had a terrible life; they pulled each other around by the hair; they were always in grave danger of being killed off by saber-toothed tigers; they weren’t too smart, had poor posture, poor vocabulary, poor clothing, poor grooming - they apparently didn’t think of pony tails or buns to keep their hair back; and they used clubs instead of using their words to resolve differences? Isn’t that what you were told? Well, I don’t believe any of that crap. Isn’t it possible that some of the time, Version 1.0 people sang and danced and played games and made great food and well, basically partied? If so, who would you rather be: a Version 1.0, on your way to a party, occasionally skirting the La Brea tar pits because some saber-toothed tigers are there eating a wooly mammoth, or a Version 2.0 navigating the L.A. freeways every day for the rest your life? Who has the greater chance of survival? Who’s got the better quality of work-life?
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The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
by Charles Eisenstein
​(2013)
​​Eisenstein warns that we often project our modern self onto ancients and miss how they truly experienced the connectedness of the parts of their life.
 
“This is not merely an enlightened understanding that no person can be truly healthy if his family, village, or ecosystem is not healthy; it is a broader definition of self that includes family, village, and ecosystem. It is an understanding written into such spiritual teachings as the hermetic principle “As above, so below,” the Taoist concept of an internal universe embodying all the relationships that exist externally, and the Buddhist teachings of karma— that anything you do to the world, you do to yourself— and the unreality of the self.” (2013b, p. 155)
 
He calls the connectedness among us ‘interbeing’ and powerfully advances examples with studies he cites from both science and psychology.
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A conversation between a Humankind 2.0 and a 1.0
​​Do you think cavepersons wish they had what we have now? Maybe Humankind Version 1.0 had a life. Think about it – try selling writing and texting and blogging to a Version 1.0. You catch up with her as she’s in the middle of ecstatically tasting some fruit with a partner, on their way to bathe and sun in a waterfall.You say, “Is that fun?”

She says, “Yes.”

You say, “How about you stop and enter it on a blog, then take pictures of it and send them to lots of people to show the fun you’re having and share?”

To which she replies, “Huh?” Not because she has poor vocabulary, but simply because of her incredulity.

You try another tact, “Isn’t there anything about this you need to remember?”

​To which she replies, “I like where I am, who I am, my friends, my family, and my time. I’m not at war with any people, nor any part of nature. I don’t need a clock. I’m not trying to get ahead in life – I’m not trying at all. I’m actually happy. There is enough food - so more isn’t better. My friends and I share clothing, housing, and club accessories, so I don’t need money. There are no transportation or communication devices, so I have no appointments with the local garage or internet service provider or phone company. So, what do I need to remember? To remember actually means to put back a part (a member) of something that used to be whole. I am whole. My life is whole. I know what I need to know when I need to know it. The member parts of my life are all together. I do not need to re-member. So I do not need to write things down.”

But, the worst part about Version 2.0 is the sophomoric arrogance that sometimes accompanies adolescence. Version 2.0s go around like they’re the only thing that has ever lived on the planet, in the galaxy, or in the multiverse. They project themselves onto everyone and everything. Go ahead, try to ask a 2.0 some kind of intelligent question about inclusion. Inevitably the conversation goes something like this.
 
You: “Is there anything you haven’t thought of?”
2.0: “No. We have a theory of everything.”
You: “Is there any resource you don’t deserve?”
2.0: “No. We deserve any land, food, water, and air we can conquer and defend. But, you have to use your rugged individualism to earn it.”
You: “What do you mean earn it?”
2.0: “Well, take farming. That’s a totally good thing to do, right? Well, to earn a farm, you first make boundary lines in the dirt, then you kick out animals and sub-species like weeds and rocks. Next you divert the nearby stream. Then you blockade your God-given plot of land with fences and spray insecticides to protect your crop. It takes hard work and rugged determinism to conquer and fend off all of those undeserving others.”
You: “Is that how your ancestors did it?”
 2.0: “Doesn’t matter. They knew nothing compared to us. We are the crowning achievement of humankind and the most important species around. With our science we can figure out how to control nature. Could our ancestors control their lives like we can? They were superstitious. They were at the mercy of the weather, their enemies, disease – and they were probably bored to death without TV.”
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Test the Power of Your Incredible Intuitive Mind

Plasee raed tihs aluod and ntoe the seepd at wihch you    poreced.
A hamun bnieg lokos mroe for cnotxet and wolhe wrdos tahn for ecaxt sllpneig. Yuor inceiblre mnid mstoly lkoos for the fsirt and lsat ltretes of a wrod. Yuong cilhrden wtcah for eevn brodaer ctenoxutal cleus. Trefheore, mkae srue taht you aenttd to btoh the wlohe and its prats.
Humankind 2.0 (moderns) & Humankind 1.0 (cavepersons)
2.0: Don't you cavepeople wish you were like us? Nowadays we have great security! We can lock the house, lock the car, lock the office, lock the inner office, lock the desk, lock the bathroom, and lock the safe. We have secret passwords to secure all of our computer accounts. Our food, our money, and our possessions are safe.
1.0: No. Our food, clothing, and shelter was plentiful.
2.0: But, what if someone stole your stuff?
1.0: What stuff?
2.0: Didn't you own anything you wished to protect?
1.0: We shared.
2.0: What about insuring and  protecting against disasters?
1.0: We would rebuild.
2.0: What did rebuilding cost? Did you call it insurance?
1.0: We called it community.
- from Humankind Three Dot O ​

“It is very simple to be happy;
​but it is very difficult to be simple."
- Rabindranath Tagore
In other words, always lead from the heart. "You have the permission to Awaken. You may begin to move toward a new possibility before you see how to get there." Almost every training in education since the 1800s would have asked a student, "How are you going to get there?", first. The question should be, "Do you believe you can?" That's the question! And then, "How are you going to get there?" comes from that question.
- from   The Teacher's Bill of Rights
East Meets West
[Use this list to practice moving old habits of being ‘Western’ to leading your thinking with a more ‘Eastern’ approach. Of course, this list does not mean that all Westerners are one way and all Easterners the other. It is just a generalization to help you practice heart thought instead of too much head thought. Remember - ‘Start from the Heart’.
East
There is no Chinese word for ‘individualism.’ The closest one can come is the word for ‘selfishness.’ In Japanese, there are many words for “I,” depending on audience and context.

Easterners live in an interdependent world in which the self is part of a larger whole.

Easterners value success and achievement in good, because they reflect well on groups they belong to.

Easterners value fitting in and engage in self-criticism.

Easterners are highly attuned to the feelings of others and strive for interpersonal harmony.


Easterners are accepting of hierarchy and group control.

Easterners avoid controversy and debate.


​Like ancient Chinese philosophers, Easterners are inclined to see a world of related substances – continuous masses of matter.

Easterners have a holistic view focusing on continuities in substances and relationships in the environment.

Ancient Taoists and Confucian philosophers believed that things are constantly changing; and movement in a particular direction, far from indicating future changes in the same direction, may be a sign that events are about to reverse direction.

Cyclical movement applies to change over a very great time span.

Kaiping Peng gleans three Eastern principles as …
  1. The Principle of Change – the world is dynamic, in constant flux, fluid and subjective; not fixed and objective.
  2. The Principle of Contradiction – the world is in constant change, oppositions, paradoxes, anomalies constantly being created. “As the founder of the Taoist school, Lao-tzu, put it: ‘When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty, there arises the recognition of ugliness; when they all know the good as good, there arises the recognition of evil. And so, being and nonbeing produce each other …’”
  3. The Principle of Relationship, or Holism – as result of change or opposition, nothing exists in isolation, to really know a thing, we have to know all its relations, like notes in a melody.

Typical, plausible, or desirable conclusions:
  • Things can be and not be; be true and false.
  • Things can change.



​Easterners tend to view societies not as aggregates of individuals but as molecules, or organisms. As a consequence, there is little or no conception of rights that inhere in the individual. For the Chinese, any conception of rights is based on a part-whole as opposed to a one-many conception of society.
West
There are many words for individualism … many ways to say “I” accomplished this or that.


Westerners live in a world in which the self is a unitary free agent.

Westerners value successes because they are badges of personal merit.

Westerners value individuality - trying to look good.

​Westerners are more concerned with knowing themselves and are prepared to sacrifice harmony for fairness.

​
Westerners prefer equality and scope for personal action.

Westerners have faith in the rhetoric of argumentation.


Like ancient Greek philosophers, modern Westerners see a world of objects – discrete and unconnected things.

​
Westerners have an analytic view focusing on salient objects and their attributes.

Ancient Greek philosophers (West) were powerfully inclined to believe that things don’t change much or, if they really are changing, future change will continue in the same direction, and at the same rate, as current change.


Linear movement applies to change over a great time span.

​
Western Utopias believe (including Plato’s Republic, Puritanism, Shaker communities, Mormonism, the American and French revolutions, communism, and fascism - with the chief exceptions of the biblical ideas of the Garden of Eden):
  • there is steady, more or less linear progress toward them;
  • once attained, they become a permanent state;
  • they are reached through human effort rather than Fate or divine intervention;
  • they are usually egalitarian; and
  • they are usually based on a few extreme assumptions about human nature.
 


​

​Logical conclusions:
  • the law of identity, which holds that a thing is itself and not some other thing,
  • the law of noncontradiction, which holds that a proposition can’t be both true and false.

Westerners seem to believe there is only one kind of relation between individual and state that is appropriate. Individuals have certain rights, freedoms, and obligations. When Westerners see East Asians treating people as if they had no rights as individuals, they view this only in moral terms.
Nisbett, R. E. (2003). The geography of thought : how Asians and Westerners think differently -- and why. New York: Free Press.
 Heart Thought       
We need to commit!

What if we cannot see the next version of humankind by using our heads to analyze our current situation?

​Isn't it time to Awaken, then look again by thinking with our Hearts?

We cannot transform the world around us
​until we first transform ourselves.
Picture
​
​​Telling, I became a teacher.
Listening, I became a student.
Thanking, I became a friend.
And then I realized ...
I was Truly Teaching!

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