Enchantment in Education or how to Fall in Love with the World

CIIS, SF, California, 2015

An aimless life is always a miserable life. Every one of you should have an aim. But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life.Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to all. The Mother.

I remember being in a class of cosmology when a student asked, What if science and technology instead of focusing on power, control and profit, would focus on beauty, compassion and awe? How would our world look like? We all wondered in silence for a moment, the question was so simple and so profound at the same time… How would it look like? The silence pressed in the room. -“It would be fantastic, so different, our world would look more magical and much more beautiful” our professor said. “Imagine all the human endeavor and energy that is being invested in profit and control, and imagine if they were reoriented to make our world more beautiful, wow, that would be awesome.”

I keep asking myself, What if this type of questions were being asked not only in my classes, but also in all the classes all over the world? What if we as a species would use the power of education to question our true purpose? What if we as students and teachers would take seriously and closely the enigma of our existence? How would the world look like? What if the main focus in education would be on how to awake our innate sense of reverence? What if education meant the process in which each one of us discovers his or her own unique gifts to this world? And, What if we educate only in and for love? How would the world look like?

I feel something is missing in our education today. It seems to me that the educational systems are still operating under the influence of those who think and act as if the world is some inert object from which we can subtract the resources we need for our commodities and needs. From a society that thinks that productivity, profit and growth are the most important values to have a meaningful life, and from an all-pervasive media that wants to sell us the idea that happiness and beauty are supposed look and taste in certain way.

All this ideas, images and values seem to impregnate and control de mindset of our educational systems leaving the students that go through this process with the necessary skills to perform the task needed to became a part of this gigantic consumer-machinery that our culture has become, but soulless and with a deep sense of emptiness in their hearts.

I have to acknowledge that I am not saying that these social and economic structures are just mere assumptions and easy to dismiss. No, I actually believe in the reality of those barriers, those barriers exist in the world, and how it is organized now. And they exist in our minds; does are real challenges, but challenges that I believe can be overcome by the awakening of our hearts, so I ask myself, How are we going to teach the power of being amazed? Well, Maybe we can tell them a story of how our liver changes completely every 14 days! Our remind them that the women cycle actually correlates with the cycle of the moon! We do not only live on the Earth we are Earth; we not only live in the universe we are the Universe!

It seems that the main goal of going to school for the majority in our culture is blind, and it is future oriented: it is about who are you going to become, what kind of job you want to have, or how are you going to earn a living. And that is misleading and kind of sad because it is always putting the value of your life into something that is not yet here, and to me life in every moment is precious.

What if we went to school to become ever more excited about who we are and where we lived? What if we went to school to have the experience of being alive that day, only that day and let it be however it feels and learn that is ok? Maybe we would learn to be free, free from expectation, free to look at the trees and the stars and wonder.

By going to school we become more acculturated, we learn to socialize, how to write, sum, divide, read, learn the periodic table, the parts of a plants and so many fascinating stuff, but we might learn all this things without nobody pointing out their significance, there awesomeness and their sacred dimension. Think for example in the periodic table, what is it?, Well, it show the elements of all there IS, and it is showing the relationship and patterns of interconnectedness of everything, and not only that but we now know that all this elements were possible because of a star explosion! What! Think about that. Can you imagine experiencing that while learning the periodic table!?

I get sad when I imagine all the things that I miss to see in school because of they way they were taught to me. I get sad for all these students that don’t have the chance, the chance to see the wonder in everything! Because everything around us carry its own enigmatic beauty, everything we learn can have a huge significance if we are able to show it to them. And here I think about Steiner repeating once and once again Goethe words, “It is not what, but how we teach”.

I wonder what are we really teaching in our times and for what? But more deeply I ask myself, who is going to be there and saved us from disenchantment?— Who will be there to teach us how to recover our humanity?

We need a better story. Tomas Berry said “ We need a story that will educate us, a story that will heal, guide and discipline us “and I add to it, we need a story that will teach us how to love and be ever surprised by the never ending wonders of this existence. We need an education that teaches us to wonder, to imagine, to enjoy and delight; to be real. We need an education that assumes the challenge of provoking in all of us, his and her students our deepest capacities for awe, for reverence and of humility. The disenchanted cosmology and the disenchanted education are outdated and need to be transformed right away. The new sciences tell us that, the ecological crisis tells us that, and our own hearts beg for that! We need to let the spirit in!

In The Universe is a Green Dragon, Brian Swimme tells the story of our universe in such a way that the inherited conceptions about an inert lifeless cosmos are radically challenged. What he offers us is a reality in which everything becomes ever-changing, alive and full of creativity. He invites us to a new story that finds that the history of each being in the planet, the water, the bee, that flower and each and every one of us is actually much bigger than what we thought; in his story the whole universe is enchanted, and we are enchanted with it. By his teachings we become made of star stuff, we are a product of evolving powerful forces of a universe trying to know itself, to feel itself, to love itself through each and everyone of us.

Under this perspective to be a human being is to be part, and active participant, and not an owner of this beautiful journey. His story is not a story about facts or measurements, It is not about words, it is about what lies behind them, in that other language that is always older than words, and rocks! It is about feeling it! Imagine if we teach that and from that spirit, from that loving awareness! How would the world look like?

You might start to wonder what is what is the pedagogy that I am suggesting and that I see emerging in our new story… What am I saying…. Well to be clear I am not suggesting something that goes in the curricula, or something to add to the calendar, even if I think those things will eventually evolve and change, what I am suggesting goes deeper than that, it is what Emerson is pointing out when he says, “Men imagine that they communicate their goodness or wickedness only by overt actions, and do not see that goodness or wickedness emit a breath every moment”. I am taking about breath! I am talking about our own Breath, I’m talking about the breath we can feel when someone really is engaged with what he o her is teaching, I’m talking about that passion and compassion that we transpire when we care. When we really care about life.

I am suggesting that we need to teach and learn to SEE as Teilhard de Chardin said we need to recover our ability to SEE a flower, not watch, but SEE it clearly. See life unfolding in everything.

What I want to convey is that for education to be transformed and therefore for the whole world to be transformed, the most important thing we need to do is change our feeling toward life, because enchantment comes from within and not for the without. The new story is also what the powers of its symbols can awaken in our spirit, and those symbols need to be and feel alive. I am talking about our intentions, our deepest and highest intentions. What I see is that as teachers we need to open our spirits to receive, to cherish deeply and profoundly this life we have, because it is a gift, and we need to teach that. Make it clear and evident. That life and our home, this planet, are a gift!

Education can be this powerful tool to help us wake up to the realization that we are part of this living planet, and that here lies our humanity, so we need to relearn how to work with it, not against it. We need to recognize Gaia as our mother, as our home and as the beautiful, expansive, creative, interrelated and powerful being that she is, that we are. Lets change our hearts and hear the magic and the mystery once more. Let’s be enchanted so we can re-enchant everything and everyone completely with earth fragrances and meaning.

Let then the aim of whatever we are learning, or whatever it is that we are teaching be enchanted. Remembering that there is always some possibility to awake in our students and in everybody around us a profound passion and zest for living. Sometimes it is as simple as telling them the amazing process of growth of an apple and that the seed is the only part of it that carries a little amount of poison in order to propagate its own existence! And that that is life, Is life intelligence, Is life itself acting in such a way that if we notice it always leaves astonished. Sometimes it can be by explaining them the most complex theory of physics or biology, like, what is the deal with DNA! and sometimes even by just seeing them and reflecting them back, to each student, the deep and real significance of their own existence. You see! it is all about love and how to fall in love.

It is easy, but it is a huge task, so I Invite you all to have a moment, close your eyes, and think in one way you can start re-enchanting life.

You can open your eyes now.

Thank you!