Learning: The Dimension of Mind

Mind offers the whole personality a horn of plenty: differentiation, judgment, critical analysis, discernment, deciphering, discrimination, sequencing, planning, and providing direction.

Mind is meant to communicate and cooperates with the other natures.

Mind is the master of language. It names and it translates. It names and translates the fleeting and transitory things in our experiences --- our images, our sensations, our emotions, and our intuitions --- into words. Mind is essential in order to communicate our experience to others or to make sense of others’ experiences.

Mind is the function most disconnected from experience. It is the observer more than an actor. It stands back and interprets life according to the assumptions it has already swallowed. It is helpless to do otherwise.

In Western culture rationality is the boss in the household and in the school. It automatically concurs with the rationalizations of authorities, including those anonymous authorities that write textbooks. In most schools, The Curriculum is the gospel, the alpha and omega of what is true and essential at any time for any grade level. Mind is the chosen vehicle for imprinting what the authorities decide students shall ingest. As long as we are taught what to think, we cannot discover how to think independently, for we represent the system, not ourselves.

In authentic education, as opposed to traditional education, mind is not the master or authority that demands deference; it does not unilaterally make decisions for the whole personality about what is true and what is not, or what is fruitful and what leads nowhere. It is only one player who offers its essential analytical and scheduling skills.

Holistic education seeks to validate both intellect and affect, so that both these important resources can contribute to the health of the personality. Unless both are honored, cultivated, and integrated, we are incapable of experiencing the unity and beauty of life. When mind and heart are integrated in action, when reason and love stop arguing and join forces, we can enter into and participate in the creative process of life and the creative process of our own consciousness. When mind ridicules and disenfranchises heart, the personality as a whole becomes dysfunctional and loses its creative capacity.

Every object around us was created by thought (and feeling as well). Nature is the manifestation of the Creator’s million thoughts. Every manufacted thing was first perfected in thought. If not, it is a failure. All features in a house were first thought through, revised until it was time to build. Thought always precedes manifestation. When we view the world, a combination of natural and artificial, you see thoughts manifested.