As we pass the millennium, and Humanity begins to visualize and to work constructively with large bodies of knowledge, we find that the acceptance of new ideas is more essential now than ever before. Those ideas, currently considered ideals, will become manifest as Humanity realizes worldly needs for new solutions.

Part of the Lesson of Humanity within the third-dimension has been to "flesh out" the creative aspects/components of the physical, mental, and astral planes of awareness. The foundation of those planes has been firmly established, but standing before us still is the challenge to get the three sub-planes of Consciousness to harmonize and integrate in a manner consistent with the Divine Consciousness of Humanity, thus integrating the abstraction of Spirit, and incorporating that into the knowledge and creations manifested by Humans in the third-dimension.

Simply put, it is time to get Spirit back into Education.

Throughout history, any "group" of people who sought to educate another group of people did so by adopting either a methodology, or an orthodoxy, and generally preferred to adhere to an "accepted" medium of education. In the public school system of the United States, we see glaring signs of obsolescence and even neglect to education or even the true social and academic welfare of the students at large. Very rarely do we see, in the public school systems, examples of teachers and students being paired on the basis of personal compatibility, learning or teaching styles, or in a ratio that personally responds to the mutual needs of attention or reciprocation between teacher and student.

The exceptions that we do see are those cases where either the parents of a student take the time to work directly and communicate with the teachers of their children, or those cases when dedicated teachers go "outside the system" to devote attention to exceptional students - whether gifted, or substandard for some reason.

We credit those administrators of education who seek to help develop curricula that directly relates to the student body. The purpose of organized education, after all, is to teach the student body what will be helpful to know, and that is fairly universal in scope, so that a student is "informed" sufficiently to be able to function interdependently within society.

This supposedly gives those students a foundation from which to work, extrapolate, and incorporate new ideas, but is completely useless on a spiritual or even mental level if those students have not also been taught to think, to suppose, and to discern.

For example: monkeys can be taught an astonishing number of tasks by rote, but would you want a monkey to settle your case in court? (Though sometimes it does seem that we would have been better off if a monkey HAD been sitting on the bench.) The point is that traditional education often seems incapable of teaching wisdom, compassion, and conscience.

Education must remain fluid. It must incorporate Humanity, or else it becomes "another brick in the wall", a sausage factory grinding out human beings who regurgitate trivia and expel didactic thoughts without questioning for meaning or Truth.

An illusion inherent in some of the academic institutions is that knowledge is static, logical, and therefore perfect. This assumption is incorrect on all three counts. At best, the assumption presumes that any new knowledge simply replaces outdated knowledge or at least is incorporated into the existing library. At worst, the system turns out narrow-minded individuals who are isolated in their belief that what they know is what there is to know, and that no other thoughts, opinions, or experiences are worthy of their attention or respect.

We understand - and wholeheartedly agree with - our current system of keeping "church and state separate". And, as our educational system currently stands, education is considered a government function (at least, technically.) However, we feel that the pendulum of balance has shifted too far off-center, and in the effort to keep religion out of education, to keep education strictly mental, or rational, education often runs the risk of becoming crystallized, and therefore ossifies the imagination of the student.

It is imagination, and the Spirit to conceive, and to reach for new ideas, that keeps education - and knowledge - alive. It is that knowledge which has allowed Humanity to progress as it has, and it is that same flexibility and ability to stand receptive to new knowledge that removes the barriers of the mind and the soul, and allows individuals and groups to transcend their circumstance and experience greater than exponentially, if the freedom to reach and to yearn remain unrestrained.

It is up to the teachers, then, to not just reach out to the students, but to allow the students to reach out to them. This does not necessarily require mental or emotional attention from teacher to student. The classroom is (often) the one location in many people's lives where their minds are forced to engage, and while the mind is open is probably the greatest opportunity a student has to learn by example. A teacher who "shares of himself" by being human, and being conscious of that connection with fellow Humanity, keeps the door open to empathetic communication, and it is the transference of emotion from teacher to student that truly forms the "cradle" that supports the retention of knowledge.

A bored teacher will create a bored, and boring, student body.

Thus, the astral relationship in the classroom is every bit as important as the mental relationship. It is the astral plane by which emotion and feeling are relayed instantaneously, and forms the emotional framework that helps to anchor mental receptivity.

We will say that empathy is a necessary component in teaching. It is empathy which directs a teacher to a student at need; it is empathy that allows the teacher to perceive the light of understanding when a student's eyes light up and to experience sympathetic joy; and it is empathy that reminds the teacher to apply himself to perceive education as the student perceives it, and to ask, as the student would, WHY is this information important? — and it is empathy which encourages the teacher to explain just why that information is important, so that the student will then have a point of reference with which to apply that knowledge to himself.

Empathetic teachers help define the meaning, or the spirit, of education to their students. Those teachers also help to set the standards, and therefore the patterns, of behavior that will launch students into society with an already-integrated sense of consciousness and of compassion. A student who is taught with wisdom, compassion, and conscience has been taught to also teach with wisdom, compassion and conscience, and to evidence those traits at home or in the workplace.

We believe that the future of education rests squarely on that understanding. We have seen signs that this trend is already being affected; indeed, we know that there have always been wonderful teachers who have "gone against the grain" and exhibited personality. We also believe, that as we cross into the New Age, that that understanding will not be an abstract concept, but a full-fledged application of Thought and Love that will be incorporated into the academic mainstream.

As the needs of students are revised and tailored to suit the times, students are going to need an expanded base of knowledge regarding holistic thinking, universal and environmental relationship, and "esteem-training" so that the student understands his/her relationship with himself and the world, so that the student learns his own power of creation and of knowledge, and learns to consciously draw that forth from within his own internal resources of ancient, cellular knowledge (that we all share) - to pool that into the body of knowledge that will be instantaneously (and perhaps, telepathically) available to all of Humanity.

Particles of knowledge are collectively drawn from individuals and must be voluntarily produced in harmony to be integrated successfully into the mainstream of conventional education. As the relationships between individual teachers and individual students continues to evidence, the "intensity" of thought and emotional transference will increase rapidly and dynamically, and it will be up to the creative and imaginative people to allow the flow to progress without restriction, and to allow for quick adaptation of methodology and suitability of curricula.

Conventional education, as it has been, has tried to teach "that which is." Metaphysics teaches that which is, but also that which might be. "Meta", as in medium, or middle, is simply a point of reference to suggest a transition. We say that the "science of education" is going to alter its current form and shift to a blend between that which is, and that which might be, and thus the experience of teaching - and of learning - are going to build and establish a whole new dimension of Thought, one that adopts the energy of Love consciousness within its form.

We look forward to that day.

Love, Galadriel
05/30/2004
Druidry/teaching.html