"The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable." - Carl Jung
I love being an educator - at the same time I am overwhelmed by a system that seems to move farther away from the human values that I see as integral to the learning process only to creep back the other way when no one is looking. Concurrently, there is a educational movement (reform) that causes me despair while another is using social media to "grow" practices that are engaging and meaningful to our learners as well as providing them with the skills necessary to compete in a global workforce.
Years ago, I did a book study with one of my inter-state professional learning groups (before social media!) using Bernie Neville's Educating Psyche: Emotion, Imagination and the Unconscious in Learning. Bernie teaches at the Graduate School of Education at La Trobe University in Australia.
At the time, it was a very inspirational book for us all. It is a book I have given Thanks for often because it increased my ability to shift my perspective and therefore my perceptions in the classroom and "see through" education in general.
Our group was so moved by the ideas in this book, that we "honored" it by writing our own pieces - aligning our beliefs about what is great about education to Psyche. As Neville writes, "Where intellect seeks reality, soul finds poetry." p.9 As a group, we felt the reality of increased high stakes testing was beginning to get in the way, beginning to create an imbalance, between the process of the logical and factual expected in test prep and tests; and the creativity and play needed to foster insights and process.
The following is the piece I wrote those many years ago. NLPers will note that we also aligned our pieces to Dilts' Neurological Levels of behaviors, capabilities, values, beliefs and identity. This piece, written with Eros and Psyche in mind is about education - though some may read it differently.
The Metamorphosis of Perception
The woman, in her robes, sat reading on a mystical evening
the spring wind making dance the luminescence of the moon.
The lover approached,
she could not see him-
she was not fully awake-
she could not hear him-
she only perceived the wind
She could feel him-first from the inside-anticipation
quickening heart - nostrils flare-
she felt him -
a feeling as primal as the beginning-
primal as wolf scent in deep mountain wood.
He approached her - opening
her robe of sleep, of half-blind eyes,
of complacency
and began to caress, to stroke,
what she had hidden for the eonsbehind those robes.
How could this happen?
This lover - this demon/teacher/musician/gardner/Eros
What was his power
that she allowed, then encouraged
him to remove her luxurious robes?
Little by little at first, tentative, careful subtle shifts-
lacy water on soft sand
becoming more deliberate, force
full waves pounding on the shore-
changing a carefully orchestrated landscape.
Moving to a rhythm more natural than the sea
(was it coming from within or without?)
her depth of yearning surprised her.
Her lover sees what the robes have kept virginal
for all those years.
Virgin hopes, dreams and longings for fulfillment
the fulfillment that comes from the mind/energy, sexual/spirituality, the beliefs/heat
of him, the lover,
the most instinctual, natural, explosively slow connected knowing.
Connected together by bonds deeper and wider than the universal tap root,
together by bonds stronger than any tie previously known-
stronger even than the tie that had encircled her robes, keeping her starlight hidden.
The robes kept falling, falling, drifting to the earth as a magical wind
shifted the masks once again in the darkness.
Minds humming, bodies vibrating to the universal tune,
the lovers fell back onto the soft discarded robes
and mingled all that they had been, and all that they would become
in both symbiotic and embryonic ecstasy.
The butterfly flapped its newly open wings,
gently creating a new wind
to encircle and caress the metaphorming universe.
Reference: Neville, Bernie. Educating Psyche: Emotion, Imagination, and the Unconscious in Learning. Melbourne: Collins Dove, 1989.
