#3 The wholes we have in mind re Creation + Soul and Above

On Beyond Waldorf, 

Team Human K-12 Education; 

Goethean Psychology Applied to Child Development and K-12 Schooling; 

Some Assembly Required

I believe any and every Progressive and/or Cultural Creative org, group or association benefits by having at the start an explicit ecumenical "plank." Why? It bespeaks "tolerance," "inclusion" and "lack of judgement" better than any other platform plank I know of.

What's your conception of Creation and Soul and Above? Later I'll share mine.

Q: Why does K-12 ed need to acknowledge anything spiritual? Can't we remain atheistic-agnostic as we have been since corporations took over all the commons?

A: No. The atheistic-agnostic trends in post-2012 world culture primarily track back to corporate-consumer-paternalistic-capitalism-oligarchy. Briefly: atheism and agnosticism are perceived as safer and more conducive for commerce, buying and selling.

The ideal parent for and ideal teacher in Team Human K-12 schools has:

- Stopped listening-responding to denials and dismissals of every immortal-eternal aspect of human beings--however locally defined; and

- Stopped listening-responding to "Religiosity" and "churchianity" separated, segregated and dissociated from Emotional Intelligence, interpersonal competency and building local community.

This describes a big aspect of your ideal customer for Team Human K-12 ed.

Q: What evidence do you have?

A: There is not much evidence yet as in 2018 Team Human K-12 ed is throwing forward to a future time and a future goal.

Some evidence is the success and profitability, since 1983, of the University of Santa Monica's two-year Spiritual Psychology program, Awakening the Inner Counselor. USM has inspired many similar Masters programs, but none have been as successful or as profitable; in part because, USM draws in part from an already-existing Cultural Creative tribe-community who buys personal growth classes with a heartfelt look and feel.

I believe the time is coming soon when a bigger push for healthy integration of psychology-spirituality will come from women with voices, worldwide. My perception is since 1985 women generally intuit a wholeness corporate male types wish not to see.

Why? The male paradigm is competition. The female model is connection, cooperation, collaboration.

The way men have organized things since the 1830s or maybe 1750, is exhausted, well into the cannibal phase.

My sense is women generally and internationally realize--however inarticulately:

- You can't heal the culture, or start new Tribes, based on the male competition model,

- To better and expand Emotional Intelligence and interpersonal competency, discussing truly human values is essential,

- Discussing truly human values, sooner or later, inevitably overlaps with each person's view of how they connect with their own Divinity.

If the men don't like it because it moves cultural and economic power away from the male paradigm--sorry.

To ground the above more, between 1986-2001 I had the pleasure and honor of visiting about 25 Waldorf schools, independent and charter. I never got a job out of this; still, I saw a lot. Among many wonders, I saw many aspects of what healthy future female-led culture looks and feels like. Occasionally men were leaders at these school communities.

This book is not about my tour of Waldorf communities. This text does pertain to one of the consistent deficits I saw, a lack of evolving rhetoric appealing and engaging to parents and to the school's ideal prospective parents. Too much of the rhetoric within schools and shared at parent meetings and in parent education was recycled endlessly, bottled, stale Waldorf rhetoric, much of it from Europe, not even honoring of the best of the American spirit.

This is why Eugene Schwartz and a very few others, have been in high demand to speak at schools and to parents. Eugene has stepped away from the bottled Waldorf rhetoric and been able to expand his own thinking and feeling both above, below and beyond where many Waldorf establishment thinkers left off evolving, about 1980.

If this text is nothing else, it is a treasure trove of topics worth surveying for what might interest ideal prospective parent candidates in your school community.

PACME+Soul and Above

QUOTE Every Educational theory has behind it a certain image of the human being, even if the image is not explicitly stated ~ Astrid Schmidt-Stegmann in Child Development and Curriculum in Waldorf Education [PDF online]

To paraphrase: NO education system can be defined, apart from or outside of, a vision of the whole human being.

If you do--if you try--to define K-12 ed outside of and apart from your vision of truly human values and the whole human being--you will inevitably, unconsciously, replicate and re-create your unconscious habits-beliefs about social-class differences.

Why? The above is related to an NLP insight: perception is projection. You can't perceive without also projecting from your unconscious.

Consider: Each person's immortal-eternal soul aspect is of very similar vibrational frequency, to truly human values, however uniquely defined by you. This is not an accident.

This suggests for anyone wishing to define Team Human K-12, or any kind kind of K-12 ed, it helps if the speaker first sketches their vision of the whole person, if new to this audience.

I guess this applies equally to me, so hee goes.

I've worked at this; I can do it now in 50 words:

quote The whole person I have in mind consists of is a waking adult who consists of:

- a physical body,

- an imaginal body,

- an emotional body,

- a mental body,

- a mythological body, and

- a capacity for free choice--not free will--from Soul and Above.

Any questions?

An ecumenical approach to spirit works best

Each of the "bodies" above has multiple meanings. Every psychology, every religion, every spiritual path has its own terms for these aspects of the waking human experience.

This is why since about 1985 an ecumenical approach works best.

If you look up "ecumenical," you learn it originally pointed to a "Christian thing," efforts to find common ground across multiple sects.

"Ecumenical" has since evolved to point to common ground for any faith-path. "Ecumenical" seems more elegant than "non-denominational" which I hear as a synonym in 2018. In the negative, "ecumenical" means avoiding and/or not over-reacting to words and ideas which might trigger myself or my discussion partner.

"Ecumenical" also connotes "hearing the explanations sounding together," an idea we later explore at length as relates to children and learning.