Have a Heart! Please! Have We Learned Nothing?!

Bad news abounds, but so does good. I might wonder why people wish to hear the bad news if I didn’t know the answer. When we don’t know our own hearts, when we haven’t awakened to self, then we feel hopeless. Hopelessness thrives on negativity — makes it less painful.

​More disturbing than bad news, however, is the acceptance of it, the acceptance of the negative, rotten things in life. Why does such acceptance happen?

Many factors contribute to such a phenomenon; however, a basic one is education. Yes, I said education. Do you know why? The basic philosophy of the institution is designed to produce obedient and passive workers. Oh, there is the illusion of choice and throwing in some of the good-sounding verbiage that even I talk about, but the establishment’s use of it is a ruse.

If you’ve never listened to George Carlin’s three minute “The American Dream” video, give it a try. It’s brilliant, but I do not agree with his nihilism. Hopelessness is not inevitable and the only future open to us, and maybe Carlin put the argument as he did because he wanted us to wake up. Awakening to self is THE answer to the current ethos of obedient passivity, in America, at least. Hearing and heeding Heart produces a life and spirit of hope.

As with other societal phenomena, this is a learned pattern of thinking. Actually, it’s much more insidious than that, because the educational philosophy and framework is engineered. I have in my novel, Fellowship of the Heart, and in some of these posts referred to it as an informal conspiracy, at best. The foundational philosophy of education needs to change. We should not be producing workers, preparing pre-trained employees for multi-billion dollar conglomerates. That is exactly what is desired, and they make themselves sound as if they are concerned, magnanimous, and luminaries.

Here’s the deal, in short, very short. Education, the concept, the institution, should be lived out as an organism in school buildings and in every classroom. I’m not even sure there should be set classrooms, but that’s another discussion. Whatever the foundational beliefs are will be played out in those classrooms, which means every individual child is conditioned by whatever the philosophy is. If the foundation is, as it now stands, one of pre-written, pre-set curriculum with pre-designed tests, those kids will learn to accept oppression and control, and if you think that is not dangerous, get the hell out.

True, deep learning occurs when the ego is minimized and the heart is engaged. Oh, do you believe in that sweet, syrupy goodness of smiling school marms doing their self-sacrificial best for the kids? Wake up. Many educators have that mindset because they have been conditioned to it — obediently and passively accepting it. Bullshit. Hearts give that awakening to self-identity that allows us to thirst for ways, knowledge, and thinking to engage that core Self with the whole world — enthusiastically and actively. See the contrast?

And the result of a heart-centered educational philosophy will be reflected in the classroom, affecting every student. I can spend a few days in a classroom and tell you exactly what a teacher believes about human potential, children, and the world based on their actions. Foundational beliefs, philosophy, whether consciously or subconsciously adopted or consciously or subconsciously practiced, will always be revealed. Maybe that is a bit tautological, but it is crucial to understand, because if the philosophy has been covertly diffused and passively accepted, guess what happens? No, really, you guess.

Heart-centered education would radically change the face of society in any nation, let alone the classroom. Want proof that it’s ego-centered now — easy, peasy. Grades. Grades are egoic. Grades do nothing to create thinkers and true learners. They establish competition in an area where competition is not warranted, and they kill intrinsic motivation to learn. No grades in a heart-centered educational philosophy — period.

Ego has control and manipulation built into it because that’s Ego. That means that the current ego-centered system leads to oppression and control. That means that at some point those who do, through no help of education, awaken to self and respond to Heart will understand and take action. Others, the masses who have heard the lullaby of being successful, accepted, good little workers, will start to feel the oppression when inequity arises, which it always will. Then, resentment erupts in an avalanche of social ills. We see it every day.

​The really great, super, intelligent, meaningful, significant good news is that self-awakening allows us to operate far above all of that. Notice I said operate, not disassociate, because those who live Heart love, love, love, but we also, as I quoted Maya last night, rise, rise, rise. Put me down for that and I hope put you down for that and watch the ethos, the zeitgeist, of a nation change!