Soul Education

The soul (variously defined as our immaterial essence, our animating principle, the cause of our individual life, a person’s total self, a Nourishing Mother that feeds us or as our moral and emotional nature) witnesses our life as a detached observer of our thoughts and deeds and emotional reactions.

Soul is both the intelligence and deep experience that stands behind our secret self, our quintessence, our vitality, our creative essence, our being, our spirit, our heart, our courage, and our conscience. It is, at the same time, the source of our deepest longings and yearnings. It is the source of our desire to surrender our personal needs and serve humanity, all life forms, Mother earth, the World, the Universe, or God.

The soul is our I AM, the root of our being.

As such soul is the seat of our consciousness. Our soul witnesses our life. It is our deep, reflective pool that mirrors for us our thoughts, emotions, and deeds. Soul allows meaning to enter and float throughout our life. Soul turns outward events into our very own experiences of personal truth.

Among the souls many allies and guides are Nature (Nature which simply is; Nature cannot be misguided or wrong – only humans can), Imagination (the Force behind all Creation – here I refer to the constructive, not the destructive, nefarious forms of imagination eager to cause suffering, despair, and annihilation), unvarnished Honesty, Universal Truth (our soul is happy when are we aligned with it, miserable when we are not), Beauty (which arrests our running thought life and leaves us dumb), a Nourishing Spirit, and certain feelings such as Unconditional Love, Gratitude, Joy, Empathy, Awe, ands Compassion).

Notice that the Soul and its Allies and Guides – Nature, constructive Imagination, Honesty, Truth, Beauty and the feelings of Unconditional Love, Gratitude, Joy, Empathy, Awe and Compassion, Conscience, the Nourishing Mother Earth, are all qualities of the Divine Female representing the inner egalitarian, meditative life in contradistinction to Male qualities of Aggression, Competition, Combat, The Will to Power Over Others, expressed for millennia through patriarchal, Hierarchical Structures like Corporations, the Good, Old Boys Network, and the Mafia with a small Elite who hoard their wealth against a rainy day, and then the disenfranchised faceless masses who live in poverty on the crumbs left over from the table of the rich, the hierarchical churches who demand tithing, the Insurance Companies and Health Care Giants who extort money from the intimidated who live in fear.

In our hierarchical compulsory, government school system, the very concept of Soul is banished from education; the verdict is soul is illusory, not a part of reality (you can tell by its absence in the curriculum or in any discussion about education. In that patriarchal system our essence and our being is denied and violated. This is what I experienced as a second grader but I had no words to describe why I didn’t belong in that educational system, why I couldn’t relate to it. I just knew instinctively that I was an outsider.

Soul experience, and the ascendancy of Feminine values (along with constructive male values) constitutes the very foundation and fabric of authentic education. Communion and cooperation with the Natural World should be the heart of authentic education. Our inner being should be reflected in the many activities we participate in every day.

We should be free to express all our feelings in non-violent, non-abusive, considerate ways. Our feelings are inexplicable linked to our being, our nature; they can’t be forbidden. Unless they are expressed and released, they cause over time sickness, depression, isolation, and angst.
We should be free to dance, to make music, to draw, to paint, to put on plays, to sculpt, etc. Free to participate in crafts, the making of useful, beautiful things. Free to help design and create the space we share with others.

And what of academics? If the expressive side of academics, the use of language, the writing of plays, poetry, short stories, novels, is not graded, but shared, it brings joy and the satisfaction of having communicated what is in one’s heart and soul.

To have vitality academics must be taught imaginatively and interactively through asking a million questions, giving students ample opportunity to imagine, to think, to speak, and express their ideas.

Science, if it is taught as something to do (conduct original scientific experiments, adjust your hypothesis, redesign the experiment and repeat the process until satisfied) and not as something to believe in blindly, will create enthusiasm for new discoveries. And science taught in some depth so that one understands the nature of interrelationships involved and includes the many unsolved mysteries, is appropriate and life giving, especially if the instructor does not talk more than two minutes at a time and asks questions and allows time for students to formulate their own questions.

I’m all for the academic studies IF they support our soul essence, IF the studies are stripped of dogma, the endless memorization of facts out of context, the practice of incessant testing and the fear and trauma it induces. Academics ought to be a joyful activity motivated by the thrill of discovery. Otherwise academic knowledge, and in particular, scientific knowledge can be harmful once incorporated into opportunistic minds. What opportunistic minds?

Think of those who used their knowledge to develop the weapons of mass destruction used today and every day, every year: atomic weapons, germ warfare, agent orange, uranium tipped bombs, burning phosphorus, and land mines. Think of the irreparable harm done by industrial agriculture which sells the byproducts of war as fertilizer, guaranteeing that the crops they are sprayed on will be poisoned. Think of those bright people who create and patent genetically modified organisms and those who persuade or force farmers around the world to grow unhealthy food just to make a profit, food unsuitable for human consumption. Surplus nerve gas is used to make pesticides to spray on the crops we unsuspectingly eat!

The majority of products in supermarkets today contain two ubiquitous gmo’s (genetically modified organisms): corn (syrup) and soy bean oil, both intended to increase the profits of a few giant corporations, both unsuitable for human consumption. Think of all the drugs being dispensed by doctors and health care professions, drugs intended to mask symptoms and not to cure a condition. The already vulnerable and helpless are told, “You have to take this drug every day for the rest of your life.”

Think of the individuals tortured “scientifically,” that is, under the direction of psychologists and doctors, every day in prisons around the world. Think about global pollution, global warming, extreme weather patterns, the sinking of nations, giant oil spills. All these atrocities were perpetuated knowingly by people with the requisite knowledge to predict the outcome. Is modern technology wonderful? Will it save our planet? Are the people who benefit from selling their superior knowledge creating a better life for the rest of us?

Educators should face up the fact that that forms of education which crush the soul, breed violence, poverty, and misery everywhere. It is its hallmark as well as that of its counterpart: the military hierarchy that preaches the use of shock and awe! Such education unmasked is obviously a deadly, destructive force.

Teachers bear a heavy burden. They are responsible for what they teach or don’t teach whether they are part of the compulsory educational system or not. They can have a profound impact on the educational process if they see students a soul beings, if they talk to students as soul beings who possess amazing intelligence and special gifts, if they meditate from time to time on the essence of their students. For teachers who view their students in this way, much information will be revealed about their students special needs, interests, and talents. As Allan Bloom says, "There is no real teacher who in practice does not believe in the existence of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech."

If total disaster is to be averted, Soul Education, with its capacity to awaken students and teachers to the constant presence and reality of our light-infused, powerful soul entities, must replace the current mission of schools: turning out intellectuals willing to compete for grades, for recognition for academic achievement alone, and entry into institutions of higher education where they learn detailed knowledge that may be used for ill or good. This educational system was designed to produce and endless pool of university professors and not much else.

I am committed to Soul Education because I believe that only Soul Education can create a new, transformative, revolutionary culture capable of saving our planet Earth. Staying the course, for me, is unthinkable. What do you think?