OF SPARKS AND FLAMES

www.centerforlivingethics.org
www.harmoniesway.net

Q: Traditional education has an established track record of producing graduates who step into successful careers. Failed departures from the norm have consistently resulted in returning to the basics. Why try to fix something that’s appears to have worked for over 100 years?

A: Life-affirming answers come from a penetrating look at hidden potentials in our roles as parents and teachers. Our relationship to the child is like that of the match to the candle. The wick extending through the center represents the conduit between body and soul. The spark must touch the candlewick to produce a flame. 

       Accounts of healthy tribal life, such as the Hopi, portray children immersed in dynamic communal life; growing in proximity to the example of their elders. Such children have been called, “The happiest in the world.” Engaged in interesting, meaningful labors, the elders allow eager apprentices to participate from a young age. Gentle patience and trust in the organic process guard faltering hands and feet. Augmented by songs and stories, purposeful challenges ignite intelligence. The livingness itself  is a vastly superior motivator when compared to imposition, coercion and judgment.

       Civilized life has obscured the potency of the current generations’ innate spark, the ability to draw out (from the Latin root ‘educare’) childhood potentials. Removing childhood ever further from meaningful pursuits, we have placed children in stifling confinements for forced academics. Institutional priorities tend to snuff out the teacher spark, forcing him or her to forgo heartfelt methods. Biased measures further remove the elders from the  vibrant potentials of healthy relationships.

       Now is the time of the awakening—the time to dream to life a new way, reviving the best of our ancient heritage. We awaken dormant potentials to ignite the self-constructive powers of childhood, when we forgo lifeless academics dogged by coercion, testing and scores. Nature supports empowered roles as models, mentors, and inspirers of innate potentials. In the new/old way let us welcome childhood to our sides as we construct, prepare, discover, explore, design, and create. And let us sing with children and teach them through stories. The challenge to redesign is formidable, but beckoning.

       In the Communal Embrace of the new/old way let  boundaries between home and school fade away. Let teachers and parents and children share complementary relationships. The power to ignite the highest potentials of our offspring lies in the flame in our hearts.

        We, the elders, hold the spark, the children carry their own flames.

OF FLOWERS AND BEES

Q. You emphasize nature as though it offered a panacea for childhood disorders. Yet, millions of people thrive in cities, enjoying the charged energy and cultural offerings such as museums, opera, ballet and concerts. Are we not simply following an evolutionary imperative in which human ingenuity designs its own complex habitats including man-made mountains and canyons?

A. The very heart and soul of humanity is embedded in the legacy of genius in the arts, philosophy and science.  Yet rampant signs of ill-health of the planet, including children, reveal the formulations of the sorcerer’s apprentice have run amuck.
    The answer to the riddle, “Which came first: the flower or the bee?” hints at the secret of restoration of health of the planet and our children. New scientific revelations about the co-evolution of wholes and parts, for example biomes and their flora and fauna, shed light on this dilemma.
    While brain matter of the current paradigm builds linearly and competitively, Nature Consciousness conceives blueprints for energetic reciprocity.  In biomes interspecies resonances encourage co-involvement. For example, the mutualism of two separate kingdoms, the flowers and bees, reveals the influence of the Heart of Nature. Nectar for honey, hairy bee legs to transport pollen—for one to have evolved ahead of the other is not logical. Comprehensive Intelligence choreographs the energetic dance between the bee and the flower. The perfumed essence that beckons the bee, and the honey that feeds its offspring evidence the conception and birthing of a garden of mutual delight.
    In much of the human kingdom the Mother’s influence has been shunted aside for empire building, factory fumes, and academic institutions alike.  Yet, her return is imminent, for the Mother must respond to the cry of feverish children for her touch. Gathering her lost children, her enigmatic reply to, “Which came first?” might be, “Neither.”
    As heirs to Eden’s gardens, our children benefit at all levels from a cross-kingdom energetic reciprocity. We might see them as pollen-carriers themselves, their generative genius, analogous to honey production for subsequent seekers of wild flower nectar.

    Informed by the Mother essence at the Heart of Nature, each cultural architect is also a cultural choreographer, dancing instructions for the nourishment of present and future generations.

NAUTILUS SHELLS AND TRAIN TRACKS

 

High Intelligence eludes a linear destination. Its multifaceted and multidimensional radiance is represented more accurately by the spiralic growth of the nautilus shell than the straight line of a train track. 

The Basics Before Application Theory is an artifact of the Age of Compartmentalized, Linear Thinking. It imposes a one-dimensional regime (academic), with two-dimensional application (worksheets and written tests) on multifaceted, multidimensional beings (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual). The scores we anxiously watch measure intellect that is a mere sliver of whole-brain intelligence. The rigid segments of linear thinking force children along a ponderous track, in a system that applauds mileage through lifeless terrain. Tragically, its regimented strictures suppress nature’s design for exponential growth—not only in its recognized casualties, but also in its smiled-upon successes.

Scientific understanding of the heart/brain system is rapidly dismantling this limited and limiting paradigm. The rich complexity of connections in the heart/brain system accounts for genius. Only contextual learning decreed by Mother Nature for the Child Nature interweaves physical, emotional, mental and spiritual strands.

Linear counting and schooling proceed like this:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc.

Nature designs oak trees, roses, nautilus shells and child intelligence to unfold by exponential growth closer to the Fibonacci Sequence: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, etc.

The formula is simple. Its extrapolations, breathtaking! Contextual learning, which fosters true brilliance, occurs in the context of attractive relationships (with nature, other humans and individual proclivities). Natural learning (in accord with the child nature) offers positive feeling tones (enthusiasm, high interest, enjoyment) in conjunction with experience (large and small motor child conquests) and imagination (idea generation for innovation and creative expression). These are the key ingredients for a whole child, high intelligence quotient. 

Nature’s elegant signature endows her products with surpassing beauty.