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I Number 1 * Spring Equinox * March 20, 2003
The chicken and the egg
by Michael Snyder
Susan Langer, an extraordinary philosopher, one of my favorite writers and a scholar of the arts, really excited me with her book, Mind, An Essay of Human Feeling. She invited my language into action. She said that feeling is not something that happens to you; itŐs something you do. Hearing her words catalyzed something in me. I began to substitute other words for feeling.
Hearing is not just something that happens to you; itŐs something you do. Seeing is not just something that happens to you; itŐs something you do. Thinking is not something that happens to you; itŐs something you do.
It seems that life is a lesson in learning to master our mind.
Why would that be so unless we were truly the creators of our world? We create it and then it creates us is an ongoing dynamic process of mutual co-creativity.. Think about your home. Why do you decorate it? Feng Shui it? One room calls us to eat while another calls us to rest, and another calls us to work. What calls you as you go from room to room, from place to place, from thought to thought?
Callings take on a life of their own.
Go into any room. What calls to you? How many things demand your attention - pulling you this way and that? Go into your thoughts. Ask the same questions. What calls to you? How many things demand your attention pulling you this way and that? By creating the conditions calling us to be that which we truly value we become capable of relieving a lot of stress and confusion in our lives.
A teacher will create conditions and shape an environment
...for a particular purpose or learning goal. The teacher then guides students through an experience asking them to carefully attend to what calls to them. The students inquire, make some movements to see how the situation changes, how the evnironment responds. They learn that different things call different people. They learn that the same things call others for different reasons, or the same reasons.
Learning becomes dynamic - a mutual relating between the situation, the environment, the other people and the questions asked.
The students learn the way they ask their questions determines the answers they get. They discover that they see what they look for. They discover they can try on different ideas that will change the way they see things and the things they see. They become facile with ideas as tools for creating a conversation and a life they love. They discover that when they are ready to learn the teacher appears; they discover that when they are ready to learn, anything or any body can be their teacher. What calls to them? Wonder, curiosity, fascination, awe, entertainment, fun, a desire to know calls all of us.
There will come a time when we will evaluate our learning by our capacity to create the conditions that call to us the experiences we truly value. When this time comes the measure of our success will be the happiness we create in ourselves and in others by the conditions we conciously co-create. Then all multiple-choice tests will quietly disappear.
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"There will come a time when we will evaluate our learning
by our capacity to create the conditions
that call to us the experiences we truly value."