Spiritual Schools and Education

I personally believe that if our minds and hearts are open to what our minds and hearts are inwardly about, we should rightfully be given opportunities to experience the inward meaning and reasons in our minds and hearts. This can come about in many ways. Life lessons, dreams, meditation, reading, relationships and schools are all examples of how those opportunities can unfold. Often the answers are being given inside us, but we lack the facility, for a number of reasons, of the clarity needed in the moment. We can look for help and can get advice and opinions, and we can even go to therapy to learn better ways of coping.

I do support learning and therapy and qualified, considerate advice. I also support schools and methodology. There are many ways of learning. I have seen many schools successfully educating students in informational learning. And some schools are better at teaching some things than others. I have been through a number of schools in my life and I personally prefer that schools take responsibility to teach learning itself. I have had many discussions with teachers, educators, professors and masters on this subject and while I have seen proficiency obtained in many careers and in centers of higher learning, through informational practices, I have also seen a gross neglect of the principles of learning.

Our general educational approach, in the many fields of study, is one that focuses on knowledge as information. Our churches and temples often do the same thing. I believe that we can truly improve our understandings when we challenge ourselves to examine the qualities of our understandings in application, and specifically in the moments that relate most closely with the matters and reasons of our inner lives. Most organizations and teachers find this to be an overwhelming undertaking. I find it to be imperative to proper learning.

I am reminded of something I have experienced in my life. It can sometimes take forever to explain to someone how to use a shovel or how to drive a car. There comes a point when it really is easier to put a shovel in their hand or put them behind the wheel where it’s safe to learn and where they can Know what it feels like instead of knowing about it.

I prefer to practice what I am teaching while I am teaching it. I prefer to go to the inner places being described. I prefer to use the principles to teach the principles. And I think having a reason to drive and shovel gives more reason to learning WITH them in the moment.

Schools serve important purposes and our school serves an important purpose too. While in a total sense, all schools and learnings are serving a common reason…to improve our state of being. But each school also represents particular values in that larger reason and this is important as the world is full of people having different needs and doing different aspects of humanity’s work.

I think it’s important to serve the value of our reasons for being and I think real honor comes in how we do that. We can use our reasons as an escape and we can use them as an obligation. We better use them for their more real value, or we will be living away from those more real values. That is what needs to be considered first. Next comes how, where and with whom to best share those values.

You can now see more of the truth and that is exactly what we set out to do. The things I am sharing with you will bring you into deeper self evident truths and Knowings. And it happens as we share a sense that is Truer. It is not Truer because I say it is. I Say it is because I Know it is.

And you are Knowing more about how it is True for you. The principles help keep us in tune with the sense. You see, the beings of that sense have those principles as their sense. They sense those principles because the principles are living in the Known in proximity to the beings that live with the sense of them.

What a beautiful state of being is the home of what inspires you to truth.

You speak of recognizing your teacher. You know this way of teaching is not common. Is it familiar to your Knowing?

The gap you referred to that you want to “bridge” is common to all humans. Every school is not building the same parts of that bridge. The gap you are here to fill is the particular work you are here to do on that bridge.

You do not have to leave your school. Good schooling remains with us everywhere we go. You can join your school in the bridge building and you may see classmates and even teachers doing their work on the same bridge you are working on. But it is important that you do your work.

There are steel workers, carpenters, masons, welders, engineers, architects and many others at work. Just do not try to hammer nails with a welding torch.

The work of each school and teacher should be something you are willing to support in your way of living.

Something else to consider is that we can work on any number of learnings, including understanding more about the school you have been in there. I am teaching you how to learn, not what to learn. I am teaching you how to connect to source, not what your relationship to source has to be. I am teaching you to move and see through matter, not what matters you must choose to be in.

You say you have occasionally mused about a sense of connection from before. If you have a muse, it must be from before. Why else would someone, unknown to you here, care enough about you to stand inside you offering memories and inner Knowings?

You also asked about language and the Garden. Even Language was Known in the Garden. Imagine being the tall slender grass as Adam and Eve walked by. The grass Knowing them and them Knowing the grass. The grass reaching forth, but held by its roots as these Beings of the Heart passed congruently by, would Know by its reach who was passing. The Knowing would pass through the being of Language and Language would dwell at the connection of all things. The Language was called the Word and the Word was present. The Word was alive and moved through the Garden. The whole Garden was alive with Oneness. The Knowings that were exchanged, as Everything related according to its value, were the basis for our current human understanding and communication. It was given then for us all to Know. The Language was complete and whole. The Sounds, the Sights, the Touch, the Taste, the Smell, the Knowing was open to Understand according to the reason for being in the moment. And that Reason was Oneness in separation. When the Knowing shifted to knowing, the language changed to sights, touch, smells, taste, sounds and words in search of meaning. The words, which had come from the separating of Adam as the Word began searching for their meaning when they had fallen from Knowing the Known. The Reason’s value shifted to a separation in Oneness. Language became a tool to connect as Christ, being the Word symbolizes. Before this, the Word, or Language was an Expression of the Connection. It was and is the Connection in human form.

Scott Walter, Sensei

September 2, 2009