Jay Garland constructed this blog to enable readers to use an index to choose what material they wanted to read and in what order to do so. Blogs are programmed to appear in the reverse order from when they were written, the last entry appearing first. Using the index appearing in the margin to the right of this blog and down a bit, you can explore this material as you choose, instead of in the bizarre order in which it appears. In the index “DF” stands for one of the 23 distinctive features of New Earth Institute. In each case the 23 items are capitalized to distinguish them from other items.
Three recommended blogs that give an initial orientation to NEI: Starting with “Jay and Toni Garland's Bio” and “Jay Garland's Abiding Passion” will give you the life experience of the author and his wife, as well as the reasons that compelled them to innovate. The third recommended blog iis “A Space of Love,” New Earth Institute’s mission statement.
If you wish to comment on any section of the blog simply click on the word “Comments” immediately following the individual blog post. Any comments will be appreciated.
Soul Making
Some people may be immediately offended by the idea of soul-making, especially if it is part of an educational process. It makes some want to grab some bricks to reinforce the boundaries between religious beliefs and things that may be discussed in an school setting. My contention, however, is that soul-making is the heart of authentic education.
I have discussed the soul in a separate blog titled “Soul Education,” I quote a portion of that blog below:
“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. It 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).”
In contrast to soul education is modern, industrial, compulsory education that serves ego personalities with normal consciousness bordering on unconsciousness. Ego consciousness may be compared with the awareness in Plato’s, cave, where man reacts to shadows, not realities. Ego awareness takes things literally, personally and is only interested in practical and habitual matters. It is well defended from truth by what Freud called the ego defense mechanisms (denial: deny the existence of anything that threatens your image; projection: project onto others what you deny in yourself; reaction formation: changing your real emotions to their opposite; repression: forgetting what you don’t want to remember: displacement: kicking the dog after being screamed at by your father; dissociation: splitting off sections of your memory that are too painful to remember).
I have chosen to initiate a new paradigm of education based on soul, one that incorporates soul-making into many aspects of its program. But what does soul-making look like? How would one recognize it? Below are six way that New Earth Institute proactively influences and encourages soul development.
1. Relationships. When adults relate to children as sacred. beautiful, intelligent souls with great creative potential. rather than bodies with egoistic minds that need to be programmed according to a set curriculum, these soul mentors support and help awaken the child’s innate consciousness, talents, and abilities and gives that child permission to relate to others in the same way. Of course when parents who relate to their child in the same way, have even a stronger effect. When a child is recognized for his depth of sensitivity, understanding, wisdom, imagination, love, joy, and awe, her deepest nature is validated and she responds in kind.
2. Expression. In any creative activity where students witness simple demonstrations, but later are
given the freedom to express themselves according to their own lights, soul is operative; soul expressing its own preoccupations, its own agenda (rather than the school’s agenda) is soul building its own awareness. Areas of creative activity are, but are not limited to, free play, playing with water, paper and book making, dance, singing, music making, instrument making, cooking, baking, dress up, drama, drawing, painting, sculpture, pottery, print-making, collage, batik, mural-making, mosaics, writing poetry, stories, plays, carving of all kinds, science experiments, gardening, and endless other activities relating directly with Nature.
3. Asking Questions. Instead of asking questions to test the “knowledge” of students, ask them open
-ended questions that invite wonder and imagination. Instead of teaching facts and theories, let them explore the facts, develop the theories, and present their conclusions to others. Conformity to a set curriculum obviates original, creative thinking; It’s important to know what books say and to understand what teachers are saying. Even what experts say. But it more critical to the learner to be proactive and to create what feels intuitively right to them. To break the grip of unthinking dogma, ask what do you the student think about so and so? It asks students to ask themselves to ponder, to question how everything in this world works rather than passively memorize “the right answer.”
It is natural for children to be curious about everything, but most have been trained out of their innate proclivity.
Student also need to be asked those questions about who are we?, what we are doing? and why? Until they create the habit of asking them themselves like they used to do all the time.
4. Living Material. Teachers who appreciate, understand, and use living material (fairy tales, folk tales, legends, creation stories, myths, short stories and literature with many layers of meaning written in the figurative language of the soul [full of images, symbols, analogies, similes and metaphors, synecdoches (“tree at my window, window tree”), apostrophes (“all hands on deck”), metonymies (“the injured boy holds up his hand as if to keep the life from spilling”), allegories or parables, paradoxes, hyperboles, understatements, and ironies.] feed the soul.
In contrast, if one teaches to the ego who sees everything literally and unimaginatively, one uses material with literal language, like is used in many children’s’ books or elementary science books.
5. Models of Intelligences. Learn about, discuss, and research peoples and cultures that do not rely on schools to develop the intelligence of the young. Learn how primitive peoples discover the vital information and understanding that sustains their cultures. Empathetic anthropology has much to offer in this regard. Learn what’s amazing about people who employ the lowest levels of technology. Why are their ways of life sustainable and ours aren’t? Why can they commune with nature? Study the great wisdom the came out of India: the Vedas, the Mahabharata. Learn from Native Americans who have more to teach us about sustainable living and self-reliance than most universities. Why do they know many things that we don’t? Study the life of the people who seeming learned knowledge overnight, like the ancient Greeks who invented or greatly transformed history, drama, science, architecture, philosophy, medicine, sculpture, justice, war strategies, and when perplexed, turned to their greatest authorities: oracles. How did the great flowering of the Renaissance in Florence, Italy happen within a few decades? Why did it abruptly end? Study the great mystics whose vast knowledge came from their inner nature. Together read the poets who transmit so much wisdom to the soul.
5. Talk about Relationships. Weekly Forums abide by specific rules to guarantee non-violent communications (no attacking others). Here ANYTHING may be brought up and discussed. Meeting provides chances to honestly discuss your loves, hopes, goals, resentments, dislikes, and disappointments in an environment that preserves respect for one another.
In volatile situations that erupt at school, we discuss the choices each of us made, what other options we could have chosen, how we feel about ourselves, who we want to become, and tenets we would like to live by. It is an opportunity to reflect upon our thoughts, desires and actions, to consider in the presence of others. It’s a time to entertain alternative possibilities and scenarios, to listen to suggestions and advice, and decide to change something about our habitual patterns, or not. Forum provide a chance to see how our fantasy life fails us in relationships and what we can to do heal what has been wounded. Unconsciousness become aware of its own face. The emphasis is on NOT feeling trapped by our personalities, but on choosing a new way we want to be. Our Forum urges us to examine our experiences and reflect on our identity; much of the language used is figurative.
Forum discussions can lead to the realization that we have conflicting, internal forces, feelings, ideas, thoughts, ambitions, that on some level we are at war with ourselves, and that often we present different personalities to different people. Real discussions that penetrate the veneer of smooth social interactions often lead to life-long friendships.
The object for Meeting is always the same: discovering who we are in this moment and who we wish to be.
6. Observe Nature. Nature, God’s perfection is our greatest Model. We can learn much about nature that increases our appreciation of its workings. But nature, like silence, can also be a significant teacher herself. In a rural setting, near a vast wilderness we have manifold opportunities to commune with nature. What setting could be better?
7. Listen to Students. Differentiate when ego is speaking (the focus is on control, developmental fantasies (i.e. being a hero), coping, “me”, the practical, or the manipulation of objective reali{using literal language} and when the soul is speaking (the focus is on images, reflection, insight, beauty, awe, and awareness {using impersonal or figurative language}. Adults must reply in kind. While dealing with ego needs, one must address the ego’s concerns. When dealing with soul talk one must listen and learn, ask questions, and respond with soul speech.
8. Provide Quiet Time, Guided Meditations, and teaching simple breathing and meditation
techniques.
A school cannot cause soul-building experiences. But it can, through its intention and activities, allow them to happen spontaneously.
I have discussed the soul in a separate blog titled “Soul Education,” I quote a portion of that blog below:
“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. It 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).”
In contrast to soul education is modern, industrial, compulsory education that serves ego personalities with normal consciousness bordering on unconsciousness. Ego consciousness may be compared with the awareness in Plato’s, cave, where man reacts to shadows, not realities. Ego awareness takes things literally, personally and is only interested in practical and habitual matters. It is well defended from truth by what Freud called the ego defense mechanisms (denial: deny the existence of anything that threatens your image; projection: project onto others what you deny in yourself; reaction formation: changing your real emotions to their opposite; repression: forgetting what you don’t want to remember: displacement: kicking the dog after being screamed at by your father; dissociation: splitting off sections of your memory that are too painful to remember).
I have chosen to initiate a new paradigm of education based on soul, one that incorporates soul-making into many aspects of its program. But what does soul-making look like? How would one recognize it? Below are six way that New Earth Institute proactively influences and encourages soul development.
1. Relationships. When adults relate to children as sacred. beautiful, intelligent souls with great creative potential. rather than bodies with egoistic minds that need to be programmed according to a set curriculum, these soul mentors support and help awaken the child’s innate consciousness, talents, and abilities and gives that child permission to relate to others in the same way. Of course when parents who relate to their child in the same way, have even a stronger effect. When a child is recognized for his depth of sensitivity, understanding, wisdom, imagination, love, joy, and awe, her deepest nature is validated and she responds in kind.
2. Expression. In any creative activity where students witness simple demonstrations, but later are
given the freedom to express themselves according to their own lights, soul is operative; soul expressing its own preoccupations, its own agenda (rather than the school’s agenda) is soul building its own awareness. Areas of creative activity are, but are not limited to, free play, playing with water, paper and book making, dance, singing, music making, instrument making, cooking, baking, dress up, drama, drawing, painting, sculpture, pottery, print-making, collage, batik, mural-making, mosaics, writing poetry, stories, plays, carving of all kinds, science experiments, gardening, and endless other activities relating directly with Nature.
3. Asking Questions. Instead of asking questions to test the “knowledge” of students, ask them open
-ended questions that invite wonder and imagination. Instead of teaching facts and theories, let them explore the facts, develop the theories, and present their conclusions to others. Conformity to a set curriculum obviates original, creative thinking; It’s important to know what books say and to understand what teachers are saying. Even what experts say. But it more critical to the learner to be proactive and to create what feels intuitively right to them. To break the grip of unthinking dogma, ask what do you the student think about so and so? It asks students to ask themselves to ponder, to question how everything in this world works rather than passively memorize “the right answer.”
It is natural for children to be curious about everything, but most have been trained out of their innate proclivity.
Student also need to be asked those questions about who are we?, what we are doing? and why? Until they create the habit of asking them themselves like they used to do all the time.
4. Living Material. Teachers who appreciate, understand, and use living material (fairy tales, folk tales, legends, creation stories, myths, short stories and literature with many layers of meaning written in the figurative language of the soul [full of images, symbols, analogies, similes and metaphors, synecdoches (“tree at my window, window tree”), apostrophes (“all hands on deck”), metonymies (“the injured boy holds up his hand as if to keep the life from spilling”), allegories or parables, paradoxes, hyperboles, understatements, and ironies.] feed the soul.
In contrast, if one teaches to the ego who sees everything literally and unimaginatively, one uses material with literal language, like is used in many children’s’ books or elementary science books.
5. Models of Intelligences. Learn about, discuss, and research peoples and cultures that do not rely on schools to develop the intelligence of the young. Learn how primitive peoples discover the vital information and understanding that sustains their cultures. Empathetic anthropology has much to offer in this regard. Learn what’s amazing about people who employ the lowest levels of technology. Why are their ways of life sustainable and ours aren’t? Why can they commune with nature? Study the great wisdom the came out of India: the Vedas, the Mahabharata. Learn from Native Americans who have more to teach us about sustainable living and self-reliance than most universities. Why do they know many things that we don’t? Study the life of the people who seeming learned knowledge overnight, like the ancient Greeks who invented or greatly transformed history, drama, science, architecture, philosophy, medicine, sculpture, justice, war strategies, and when perplexed, turned to their greatest authorities: oracles. How did the great flowering of the Renaissance in Florence, Italy happen within a few decades? Why did it abruptly end? Study the great mystics whose vast knowledge came from their inner nature. Together read the poets who transmit so much wisdom to the soul.
5. Talk about Relationships. Weekly Forums abide by specific rules to guarantee non-violent communications (no attacking others). Here ANYTHING may be brought up and discussed. Meeting provides chances to honestly discuss your loves, hopes, goals, resentments, dislikes, and disappointments in an environment that preserves respect for one another.
In volatile situations that erupt at school, we discuss the choices each of us made, what other options we could have chosen, how we feel about ourselves, who we want to become, and tenets we would like to live by. It is an opportunity to reflect upon our thoughts, desires and actions, to consider in the presence of others. It’s a time to entertain alternative possibilities and scenarios, to listen to suggestions and advice, and decide to change something about our habitual patterns, or not. Forum provide a chance to see how our fantasy life fails us in relationships and what we can to do heal what has been wounded. Unconsciousness become aware of its own face. The emphasis is on NOT feeling trapped by our personalities, but on choosing a new way we want to be. Our Forum urges us to examine our experiences and reflect on our identity; much of the language used is figurative.
Forum discussions can lead to the realization that we have conflicting, internal forces, feelings, ideas, thoughts, ambitions, that on some level we are at war with ourselves, and that often we present different personalities to different people. Real discussions that penetrate the veneer of smooth social interactions often lead to life-long friendships.
The object for Meeting is always the same: discovering who we are in this moment and who we wish to be.
6. Observe Nature. Nature, God’s perfection is our greatest Model. We can learn much about nature that increases our appreciation of its workings. But nature, like silence, can also be a significant teacher herself. In a rural setting, near a vast wilderness we have manifold opportunities to commune with nature. What setting could be better?
7. Listen to Students. Differentiate when ego is speaking (the focus is on control, developmental fantasies (i.e. being a hero), coping, “me”, the practical, or the manipulation of objective reali{using literal language} and when the soul is speaking (the focus is on images, reflection, insight, beauty, awe, and awareness {using impersonal or figurative language}. Adults must reply in kind. While dealing with ego needs, one must address the ego’s concerns. When dealing with soul talk one must listen and learn, ask questions, and respond with soul speech.
8. Provide Quiet Time, Guided Meditations, and teaching simple breathing and meditation
techniques.
A school cannot cause soul-building experiences. But it can, through its intention and activities, allow them to happen spontaneously.
A Balance of Feminine and Masculine Traits
In a significant and powerful way, each one of us is both male and female. Even though outwardly, we’re either male or female, inwardly we’re capable of expressing and experiencing the full spectrum of masculine and feminine traits. Whether the expression of each of these traits is met with joy or horror, whether we delight in our potential or deny it and bury it in our bodies, each trait continues to have the power and energy to mold our life.
Although we may claim we never had a say in the nature of our identity, the truth is, as creative beings, we determined, desired, and espoused, our identification, our personality, our selfdom. The magical (or grim) game of choosing our own identity empowers and disempowers us in myriad and subtle ways … until we decide to revise our identity by choosing again.
Those attributes we embrace, whether labeled positive or negative, make up our ego identity; those we deny become the basis of hating and judging ourselves and hating and judging others through the mechanism of projection.
We create our consciousness by choosing what characteristics to grasp or entwine ourselves around and what to reject and disown. It’s all a creative game we willingly partake in although the consequences, as I’m sure you appreciate, are legion and inescapable, UNTIL the moment we elect to embrace an altered identity. Then the exterior world adjusts swiftly and irrevocably to our revised decision.
So given these life axioms about creating identity, let’s open our eyes to the world about us.
What then is the cause of what we see occurring in the world at the present moment. The financial abuses, the daily destruction by sophisticated, high-tech weapons, endless wars, coups, the canyonesque gap between the super rich and the impoverished, industrial farming poisoning those who eat mass- produced foods, supermarkets stuffed with genetically modified “food” products undermining health,. failed schools that produce graduates with no life skills, a health care system based on harmful drugs, heavily polluted air and water that sickens everyone that breathes and drinks, oceans that are becoming cesspools --- who is responsibility for this disaster of untold dimensions? This ever creeping calamity of the Industrial Age that has made Mother Earth toxic? Who or What has changed Paradise into Hell?
My answer: For the last five thousand years we (both males and females) have chosen to support the notion that males have the right to rule females. Most males have no problem with this idea; it becomes part of their identity that they are naturally or by God’s decree, or by brute force the superior gender. And women have bought into that notion and identify with those who must submit to male power over them, with some notable exceptions … until recent times.
Right now we are in a transition of switching from male to female dominion.
We have experienced five thousands of years of total domination of Planet Earth by an extreme form of Patriarchy, the systematic, conscious practice of awarding men power, wealth, property and the right to make crucial decisions for themselves and their family.
Patriarchy and hierarchy always go hand in glove. Where precisely does hierarchy reign? In the business world in general, in corporate board rooms and corporate offices in particular. In government at every level including our secret government (see National Security Act of 1947 for this horror); in schools from pre-schools to graduate schools; in churches, mosques, temples, synagogues, and ashrams; in corporations of all kinds (banks, chain stores, supermarkets), in insurance companies, in health care systems (public and private), in the financial markets, in the real estate markets; in non-profit corporations; in every branch of the military, etc. And patriarchy with its hierarchical prerogatives sleeps in the beds of many families as well.
What is the value system of unchecked patriarchy? Relentless Power Over others (Might makes right), the bottom line, aggression, violence, Fascism, Pure Capitalism, duplicity, spying, mafia-like intimidation (scare tactics), torture of enemies, relentless misinformation and propaganda, a penchant for retaliation and revenge, a perpetual deluge of public relations and advertising (continuous lying), and a breezy attitude that me or my buddy or my religion or my country are right even when we’re wrong and the fantasy or reality of f___ anything that moves!
Want to see it all played out. Turn on television! Its being acted out all day and all night.
Of course ingrained patriarchy instinctively pursues the systematic devaluation, degradation, and humiliation of feminine qualities and traits, so Unconditional Love, Honesty, Gentleness, Protection of the innocent, Nourishment of the dependent, Empathy, Compassion, Sharing, Crying and Grieving and Suffering, Art and Beauty, Intuition and Universal Truth are OUT! So they are ridiculed by macho men as traits of the weak and lowly, the feminine and effeminate.
Of course not all men identify with power, control, deception, and holding their cards close to the chest. But all men understand the macho stance and mask; probably most have practiced extreme patriarchy at some point in their lives.
And of course all women don’t identify with the positive, feminine qualities listed above either. Many have accepted a superficial relationship to themselves and others at the price of an authentic experience of themselves. Some, like some men, are overly emotional, overly jealous, overly possessive, overly controlling, or overly needy for approval.
But all of us have been forced to deal with or are privileged to benefit from the injustices and ruthlessness of patriarchy, and all of us have taken our particular stand concerning it in life.
Until now! In case you haven’t noticed, patriarchal tactics and gambits have been fully exposed for what they are, methods of intimidation designed to coerce others. The greed, the lies, the guile, the fraud, the hypocrisy of the suit-and-tie “professional” stance has been revealed, especially in the past decade.
In The Serpent of Light Drunvalo Melchizedek, who actively traced the journey, details how indigenous people recently followed the kundalini serpent energy from male-dominated Tibet, the power center of the earth for the last 13,000 years, to its new location between Chile and Peru the new home of feminine energy and power. This migration symbolizes the shift of power from male to female that has just begun.
Look at education. It is a telling development that females now outperform males in an educational system based on male values, especially in competition for grades and jobs in our patriarchal good-old-boys system.
You’ve no doubt noticed that our patriarchal, hierarchical system of education is fast dying, losing support as it fails to educate despite the enormous resources poured into it, the endless attempts at reform, experiments with magnet schools and charter schools. Despite the fact that the public is forced to pay more and more for compulsory, public, “free” education, its natural demise is part of the same transition from patriarchal, hierarchical, industrial, corporate power OVER system to the matriarchal, egalitarian, nature-based, power With, new paradigm that hopefully incorporates a balance of masculine and feminine traits in a new society.
For education it means a big change. It means harmonizing both masculine and feminine virtues by radically upgrading feminine values. Creativity rather than analytical, intellectual knowledge will become the basis for education, Nature instead of abstract Science will dominate the core curriculum, Communication and Cooperation, not “Keep Quiet!” and Competition will dictate operations, empowering Artistic, Creative Expression will replace Endless Testing, Intuition and Feeling and Joyful Movement will complement Thinking!
New Earth Institute is based largely on this switch to a balance of masculine and feminine traits within boys and girls, men and women, students and teachers. NEI’s values: Communion with Nature, Self-knowledge, Self-reliance, Self-expression, Cooperation and Compassion, Giving and Forgiving, Non-violent Communication, and Interpersonal Growth will form the basis of school activity.. Our education will be Holistic; it recognizes both feminine and masculine values and integrates and explores all the ways of obtaining valuable information: thoughts, feelings, intuition, and body movement.
We will have an outstanding academic program. Our studies will take an interdisciplinary approach and examine how the different branches of knowledge connect to form a holistic picture of the Holistic Universe. As all living things and the whole of Nature is connected in a cooperative, symbiotic way (the new sciences of Ecology and Quantum Physics are examples of new, holistic ways to study Nature), we will explore how people of all places, societies, and times are connected by a common psyche, common needs, and desires, and how different cultures and societies meet those needs and desires.
The beauty of mathematics will be used to enlighten nature, science, art, music, theater, and dance. Original scientific experiments will examine how Nature works. Art will reveal how different cultures interpret reality. Music will reveal not only its mathematical underpinnings, but how different cultures express their central values. Drama will teach us much about psychology, personality traits, personal relationships, human conflict and, in some cases, conflict resolution, as well as history, fantasy, and imagination. Dance will offer another way to express what is inexpressible with words. Beauty will shine forth in all areas and be created in all the arts.
With feminine values well represented in our curriculum, we will strive to let boys and girls, men and women flower fully and embrace the best of masculine and feminine traits.. Like Leonardo De Vinci, the model of Renaissance Man (multi-talented, multi-faceted), we will taste and sample all the academics and all the arts and bless our Mother Earth.
Although we may claim we never had a say in the nature of our identity, the truth is, as creative beings, we determined, desired, and espoused, our identification, our personality, our selfdom. The magical (or grim) game of choosing our own identity empowers and disempowers us in myriad and subtle ways … until we decide to revise our identity by choosing again.
Those attributes we embrace, whether labeled positive or negative, make up our ego identity; those we deny become the basis of hating and judging ourselves and hating and judging others through the mechanism of projection.
We create our consciousness by choosing what characteristics to grasp or entwine ourselves around and what to reject and disown. It’s all a creative game we willingly partake in although the consequences, as I’m sure you appreciate, are legion and inescapable, UNTIL the moment we elect to embrace an altered identity. Then the exterior world adjusts swiftly and irrevocably to our revised decision.
So given these life axioms about creating identity, let’s open our eyes to the world about us.
What then is the cause of what we see occurring in the world at the present moment. The financial abuses, the daily destruction by sophisticated, high-tech weapons, endless wars, coups, the canyonesque gap between the super rich and the impoverished, industrial farming poisoning those who eat mass- produced foods, supermarkets stuffed with genetically modified “food” products undermining health,. failed schools that produce graduates with no life skills, a health care system based on harmful drugs, heavily polluted air and water that sickens everyone that breathes and drinks, oceans that are becoming cesspools --- who is responsibility for this disaster of untold dimensions? This ever creeping calamity of the Industrial Age that has made Mother Earth toxic? Who or What has changed Paradise into Hell?
My answer: For the last five thousand years we (both males and females) have chosen to support the notion that males have the right to rule females. Most males have no problem with this idea; it becomes part of their identity that they are naturally or by God’s decree, or by brute force the superior gender. And women have bought into that notion and identify with those who must submit to male power over them, with some notable exceptions … until recent times.
Right now we are in a transition of switching from male to female dominion.
We have experienced five thousands of years of total domination of Planet Earth by an extreme form of Patriarchy, the systematic, conscious practice of awarding men power, wealth, property and the right to make crucial decisions for themselves and their family.
Patriarchy and hierarchy always go hand in glove. Where precisely does hierarchy reign? In the business world in general, in corporate board rooms and corporate offices in particular. In government at every level including our secret government (see National Security Act of 1947 for this horror); in schools from pre-schools to graduate schools; in churches, mosques, temples, synagogues, and ashrams; in corporations of all kinds (banks, chain stores, supermarkets), in insurance companies, in health care systems (public and private), in the financial markets, in the real estate markets; in non-profit corporations; in every branch of the military, etc. And patriarchy with its hierarchical prerogatives sleeps in the beds of many families as well.
What is the value system of unchecked patriarchy? Relentless Power Over others (Might makes right), the bottom line, aggression, violence, Fascism, Pure Capitalism, duplicity, spying, mafia-like intimidation (scare tactics), torture of enemies, relentless misinformation and propaganda, a penchant for retaliation and revenge, a perpetual deluge of public relations and advertising (continuous lying), and a breezy attitude that me or my buddy or my religion or my country are right even when we’re wrong and the fantasy or reality of f___ anything that moves!
Want to see it all played out. Turn on television! Its being acted out all day and all night.
Of course ingrained patriarchy instinctively pursues the systematic devaluation, degradation, and humiliation of feminine qualities and traits, so Unconditional Love, Honesty, Gentleness, Protection of the innocent, Nourishment of the dependent, Empathy, Compassion, Sharing, Crying and Grieving and Suffering, Art and Beauty, Intuition and Universal Truth are OUT! So they are ridiculed by macho men as traits of the weak and lowly, the feminine and effeminate.
Of course not all men identify with power, control, deception, and holding their cards close to the chest. But all men understand the macho stance and mask; probably most have practiced extreme patriarchy at some point in their lives.
And of course all women don’t identify with the positive, feminine qualities listed above either. Many have accepted a superficial relationship to themselves and others at the price of an authentic experience of themselves. Some, like some men, are overly emotional, overly jealous, overly possessive, overly controlling, or overly needy for approval.
But all of us have been forced to deal with or are privileged to benefit from the injustices and ruthlessness of patriarchy, and all of us have taken our particular stand concerning it in life.
Until now! In case you haven’t noticed, patriarchal tactics and gambits have been fully exposed for what they are, methods of intimidation designed to coerce others. The greed, the lies, the guile, the fraud, the hypocrisy of the suit-and-tie “professional” stance has been revealed, especially in the past decade.
In The Serpent of Light Drunvalo Melchizedek, who actively traced the journey, details how indigenous people recently followed the kundalini serpent energy from male-dominated Tibet, the power center of the earth for the last 13,000 years, to its new location between Chile and Peru the new home of feminine energy and power. This migration symbolizes the shift of power from male to female that has just begun.
Look at education. It is a telling development that females now outperform males in an educational system based on male values, especially in competition for grades and jobs in our patriarchal good-old-boys system.
You’ve no doubt noticed that our patriarchal, hierarchical system of education is fast dying, losing support as it fails to educate despite the enormous resources poured into it, the endless attempts at reform, experiments with magnet schools and charter schools. Despite the fact that the public is forced to pay more and more for compulsory, public, “free” education, its natural demise is part of the same transition from patriarchal, hierarchical, industrial, corporate power OVER system to the matriarchal, egalitarian, nature-based, power With, new paradigm that hopefully incorporates a balance of masculine and feminine traits in a new society.
For education it means a big change. It means harmonizing both masculine and feminine virtues by radically upgrading feminine values. Creativity rather than analytical, intellectual knowledge will become the basis for education, Nature instead of abstract Science will dominate the core curriculum, Communication and Cooperation, not “Keep Quiet!” and Competition will dictate operations, empowering Artistic, Creative Expression will replace Endless Testing, Intuition and Feeling and Joyful Movement will complement Thinking!
New Earth Institute is based largely on this switch to a balance of masculine and feminine traits within boys and girls, men and women, students and teachers. NEI’s values: Communion with Nature, Self-knowledge, Self-reliance, Self-expression, Cooperation and Compassion, Giving and Forgiving, Non-violent Communication, and Interpersonal Growth will form the basis of school activity.. Our education will be Holistic; it recognizes both feminine and masculine values and integrates and explores all the ways of obtaining valuable information: thoughts, feelings, intuition, and body movement.
We will have an outstanding academic program. Our studies will take an interdisciplinary approach and examine how the different branches of knowledge connect to form a holistic picture of the Holistic Universe. As all living things and the whole of Nature is connected in a cooperative, symbiotic way (the new sciences of Ecology and Quantum Physics are examples of new, holistic ways to study Nature), we will explore how people of all places, societies, and times are connected by a common psyche, common needs, and desires, and how different cultures and societies meet those needs and desires.
The beauty of mathematics will be used to enlighten nature, science, art, music, theater, and dance. Original scientific experiments will examine how Nature works. Art will reveal how different cultures interpret reality. Music will reveal not only its mathematical underpinnings, but how different cultures express their central values. Drama will teach us much about psychology, personality traits, personal relationships, human conflict and, in some cases, conflict resolution, as well as history, fantasy, and imagination. Dance will offer another way to express what is inexpressible with words. Beauty will shine forth in all areas and be created in all the arts.
With feminine values well represented in our curriculum, we will strive to let boys and girls, men and women flower fully and embrace the best of masculine and feminine traits.. Like Leonardo De Vinci, the model of Renaissance Man (multi-talented, multi-faceted), we will taste and sample all the academics and all the arts and bless our Mother Earth.
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