A Conscious Education
Almost everyone agrees that the education we receive from elementary through high school or college, and/or graduate school; as well as from our parents, peers, and culture, prepares us for what we call normal life; and actually, it does! The problem is that we define normal life almost exclusively in terms of external, material, financial, and recreational needs. What makes this a problem is that all real purpose, meaning, and fulfillment depends on learning how to understand and master the internal world of our mental and emotional needs and potentials, as well as thinking for understanding.
Anyone who studies human history quickly sees that as a species, we have never learned from experience—we only repeat it! We repeat the same violent tragedies, and the same discontents and empty lives with conflicted close relationships. As a result, the problems Socrates and his wife experienced 2500 years ago are essentially the same as any modern couple. No learning, and predictably, no change! Of course, political conflict and the horror of meaningless wars, along with predictable episodes of economic booms and busts, are still an inescapable part of everyday human life.
The critical source, or ultimate cause of our collective inability to learn from experience is that as a species, we have never learned how to learn! Instead, we unconsciously persist in fearing the facts that define human life, and persistently adopt beliefs, or live in our feelings and fantasies; while everyday reality remains a murky fog, impossible to understand.
Since we never learn how to learn, we stubbornly repeat all our destructive patterns, generation after generation, as if no one had lived before—and we were the very first generation. One tragic consequence is that we forever fail to see reality accurately enough to learn that our external desire for success, money, and entertainment may be required for survival and comfort, but it can never create real purpose, meaning, and fulfillment.
What we still need to see, and learn, is that feeding and fulfilling our internal needs and potentials is required for peace of mind, self-worth, and being complete with life; so, we can learn how to fulfill ourselves, build emotional bonds, and create meaningful work. This means that in fact, we do need material success for survival and comfort—but we also need internal, mental and emotional development, if our lives are ever going to matter!
Because human beings are born blank slates, we have to discover everything about life, love, learning and living from knowing nothing; so, we must be educated in how to become conscious, and in the process, master every internal and external need and potential. Sadly, our entire history as a species has been defined by our obsession with success, approval, power and pleasure; and to date, we have not consciously studied, or clearly identified precisely how to understand and master our internal needs and potentials.
Filling this gap in human knowledge and conscious awareness has been my life’s work. Now, it is everyone’s job, if we want to collectively survive as a culture, and as a species, to learn how to master both external survival and comfort—and internal fulfillment and lasting happiness. It is important to note two things: one, we need to add internal development to external survival and comfort—it is not an either/or situation; and two, internal development requires a conscious education that is an evolutionary step for human beings, and therefore, a very big deal!
Education requires that we acquire both objective information—and specific skills. To do this requires multiple sources of experience. Reading books, individual consultations, workshops, and videos are all part of the educational experience in learning how to become a conscious, complete, and internally fulfilled human being.
In the process, each student must also learn how to observe his/her own daily experience. From our own observations, as well as books, movies, consultations, interactions with other people and time in Nature, we build an inventory of information about ourselves, life, and other people that we rely on to apply reason, make hypotheses, and test with our own experiments; so, we can truly learn about ourselves, other people, and Nature.
As you can see, getting a conscious education, over and above your normal education, is going to take focused effort—sometimes called work, as well as committing your time, real caring, and on occasion, maybe even accepting some suffering, as just part of the cost.
A good place to begin is with reading the four introductory books beginning with: The Structure of Mental & Emotional Development. This book provides the fundamental facts necessary to understand the anatomy and physiology of mental and emotional development. This information is critical to understanding ourselves as a human being; as opposed to Gorillas or Gila monsters, and for the first time, truly understand our uniquely human internal needs and potentials, along with an introduction in how to master them.
Next, reading Timeless Lessons from a Well-Lived & Loved Ordinary Life, will give you insight into how to apply a conscious education to the ordinary events in your daily life. Where The Structure book reads more like a text-book, the Timeless Lessons book is a psychological autobiography that reads more like a novel. Each book offers a different angle on how to see and understand the vast new world of human developmental tasks.
The next book directly addresses the issue of developmental tasks. This book is titled: Developmental Tasks of Children, Adolescents & Adults. Being fulfilled and creating lasting happiness requires we become consciously aware of each stage of life as we march through our lifespan. Surprisingly, people tend to be unaware of the current stage of their lives, and often have no information or skill in how to identify the the developmental tasks necessary to grow into, and be relaxed and fulfilled at each stage of life.
The last book of the first Introductory Four, is in fact, the first in everyone’s development. The reason I list this book last, is because it represents a core change that everyone so far has mightily resisted. This book deals with how to first understand, and then change from being normal and relying on beliefs and feelings to define reality and everything in it, to relying on observations, questions, reason, and experiments to consciously understand life, ourselves, other people and Nature. The title of this book is: How to Create a Personal Environment of Internal Fulfillment & Lasting Happiness.
This book is critical, because as a species, we humans are just now beginning to understand that we live in complex environments, so for us, it is new and sometimes overwhelming to see that nothing in ourselves, other people, or Nature ever comes down to just one thing! Life is always a complex environment of things, where if we destroy one thing, it affects everything. This is true for individual happiness, as well as for other people and Nature. This means that if we persist in relying on beliefs and feelings to define reality, then we live in fantasy worlds that make us forever inadequate to fulfill ourselves, or nurture other people, or the planet. Life on Planet Earth cannot be sustained on fantasies!