Cultivate personhood
When we devote no time to the inner life, we become strangers in our own lives.
~ John O’Donohue
The longest, most arduous trip in the world is often the journey from the head to the heart. Until that round trip is completed, we remain at war with ourselves. And of course, those at war with themselves are apt to make casualties of others.
~William Sloane Coffin
When we devote no time to the inner life, we become strangers in our own lives.
~ John O’Donohue
The longest, most arduous trip in the world is often the journey from the head to the heart. Until that round trip is completed, we remain at war with ourselves. And of course, those at war with themselves are apt to make casualties of others.
~William Sloane Coffin
I have grown in self awareness this year an incredible amount. At the beginning of this year I felt uncomfortable to even correct my own family when they misgender me and now I’ve been able to correct complete strangers. When people asked me how I’m doing I didn’t want to say anything other than “I’m fine,” but now I’ve been able to tell people about how my anxiety is affecting me. Most importantly, I’ve finally come to terms with a big part of my identity, what labels I want to use, and I’ve found myself willing to share it with people instead of just keeping it to myself. I’ve shared very vulnerable parts of myself through my art, along with having amazing and important conversations with people. I’ve started exploring the inner workings of what makes me who I am and I’m incredibly glad I have been able to start sharing it with others as well. ~ Springhouse 10th grade learner, 2020
Education is a cultural leverage point where we can pass down to young people something vital, or something that perpetuates the unsustainable culture we are living. Stephen Sterling, in his book Sustainable Education: Revisioning Learning and Change, focuses on the importance of education as a primary agent for individual and collective change. He takes a holistic approach and writes that education today should educate the whole person, which includes the interior life of the individual. In a world where data and testing overrules the inner geography of our children, the inner landscape is often neglected in education. Stephen Glazer in his book, The Heart of Learning: Spirituality in Education, speaks to this: “Education can serve as the core of a lifelong journey towards wholeness, rather than merely an accumulation of facts, figures or skills.” To live into this transformative educational paradigm, one that is a pathway to building regenerative culture, we must be willing to explore the interior of our lives.
When we think of landscape we often think of external geography; rolling hills, never-ending plains, tall pine trees rising towards the blue sky or the place where the ocean meets the jagged rocks. But there is another landscape that we are invited to consider in this human life, and it is the one that we cannot see; the landscape of the interior. As human beings we are given the gift of self-reflection, and through this gift, we are able to experience the depths of what it means to be human. Self-reflection is a choice, and like in any relationship, in order to learn from the interior life we must choose to pay attention to it. To traverse this inner territory takes great courage and discipline and a willingness to embrace the unknown. In this design, grounding in our bodies and cultivating connection to the sacred supports us to live more fully and courageously as we learn to explore more wholly who we are. Developing a stronger relationship with ourselves builds a stronger relationship with the world. When we have a sense of place in the body, we are better able to traverse the inner landscape, which can lead to a greater sense of belonging and safety.
Personhood becomes a gift to the world when it is strengthened and given opportunities to express itself fully and courageously. In this section, we will explore several facets of cultivating personhood including embodiment, the sacredness of self, and the importance of self study and exploration. When we take the journey into our own unique singularity, we find greater unity with the world around us. When we make the choice to turn inward, to know ourselves more deeply, we begin to awaken to the world around us in new ways. It is from this embodied and awakened place that reverence and care for all life is possible.
Resources
Reclaiming a Relationship with Our Bodies
Natural Intelligence
Body-mind Psychotherapy
Getting Our Bodies Back: Recovery, Healing, and Transformation through Body-Centered Psychotherapy
Being Bodies: Buddhist Women on the Paradox of Embodiment
Body: Recovering Our Sensual Wisdom
The Meaning of Body
Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind & its Challenge to Western Thought
Discovering the Body’s Wisdom
The Absent Body
Divining the Body: Reclaiming the holiness of your physical self
Giving the Body its Due
Writing the Body
Embodied prayer: Toward wholeness of body mind soul
Let the body out: A love letter to the academy from the body | Request PDF
Adele Diamond — The Science of Attention - The On Being Project
The Spell of the Sensuous
Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology
All Knowledge is Carnal Knowledge: A Correspondence | Abram
Earthbodies: Rediscovering Our Planetary Senses
Body and Earth: An Experiential Guide
Dancing in the flames: The dark goddess in the transformation of consciousness
The Sacred Self
The Wounded Healer
Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche
Defining Mystical Experience
Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology
Why Gods Persist: A Scientific Approach to Religion
Spirituality and the Meaning of Mysticism for Our Time
The Varieties Of Religious Experience: A Study In Human Nature
Mystical Encounters with the Natural World: Experiences and Explanations
Exploring Magic and Mysticism
Mysticism East and West: A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism
Mysticism: The Preeminent Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness
Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People and Abba: Meditations Based on the Lord's Prayer
Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing
A Qualitative Exploration of the Wilderness Experience as a Source of Spiritual Inspiration
The Sacred Breath: Teachings from the Inner Landscape
The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature
Nature and the Human Soul, Dr. Bill Plotkin
Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World, John O’Donohue
Self Study and Exploration
The mentor as artist: a poetic exploration of listening, creating, and mentoring
A Little Book on the Human Shadow
The Undiscovered Self: The Dilemma of the Individual in Modern Society
Breadth vs. Depth: The Deeper Learning Dilemma
The Website of James Hollis
Marion Woodman Foundation
Books By Marion Woodman
Modern Man in Search of a Soul
Barbara Brown Taylor New Book Faces the Darkness
Learning to Walk in the Dark: Taylor, Barbara Brown
The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice and Applications
The Dark Side of the Light Chasers: Reclaiming Your Power, Creativity, Brilliance, and Dreams
The Red Book
Winnicott on Jung: destruction, creativity and the unrepressed unconscious
Shadow Dance: Liberating the Power & Creativity of Your Dark Side
Meeting the Shadow of Spirituality
Awakening the Soul
The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries
Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche
Branches of Mentoring: Michael Meade
Springhouse Examples
Mentoring Program
Defense of Learning Structure
DOL Guide for Panel Members
Recorded DOLs 2020-21
The Well-Depth Education
Well Participants find purpose, community connection, and more
Reflection Questions
Reclaiming a Relationship with Our Bodies
Natural Intelligence
Body-mind Psychotherapy
Getting Our Bodies Back: Recovery, Healing, and Transformation through Body-Centered Psychotherapy
Being Bodies: Buddhist Women on the Paradox of Embodiment
Body: Recovering Our Sensual Wisdom
The Meaning of Body
Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind & its Challenge to Western Thought
Discovering the Body’s Wisdom
The Absent Body
Divining the Body: Reclaiming the holiness of your physical self
Giving the Body its Due
Writing the Body
Embodied prayer: Toward wholeness of body mind soul
Let the body out: A love letter to the academy from the body | Request PDF
Adele Diamond — The Science of Attention - The On Being Project
The Spell of the Sensuous
Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology
All Knowledge is Carnal Knowledge: A Correspondence | Abram
Earthbodies: Rediscovering Our Planetary Senses
Body and Earth: An Experiential Guide
Dancing in the flames: The dark goddess in the transformation of consciousness
The Sacred Self
The Wounded Healer
Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche
Defining Mystical Experience
Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology
Why Gods Persist: A Scientific Approach to Religion
Spirituality and the Meaning of Mysticism for Our Time
The Varieties Of Religious Experience: A Study In Human Nature
Mystical Encounters with the Natural World: Experiences and Explanations
Exploring Magic and Mysticism
Mysticism East and West: A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism
Mysticism: The Preeminent Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness
Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People and Abba: Meditations Based on the Lord's Prayer
Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing
A Qualitative Exploration of the Wilderness Experience as a Source of Spiritual Inspiration
The Sacred Breath: Teachings from the Inner Landscape
The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature
Nature and the Human Soul, Dr. Bill Plotkin
Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World, John O’Donohue
Self Study and Exploration
The mentor as artist: a poetic exploration of listening, creating, and mentoring
A Little Book on the Human Shadow
The Undiscovered Self: The Dilemma of the Individual in Modern Society
Breadth vs. Depth: The Deeper Learning Dilemma
The Website of James Hollis
Marion Woodman Foundation
Books By Marion Woodman
Modern Man in Search of a Soul
Barbara Brown Taylor New Book Faces the Darkness
Learning to Walk in the Dark: Taylor, Barbara Brown
The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice and Applications
The Dark Side of the Light Chasers: Reclaiming Your Power, Creativity, Brilliance, and Dreams
The Red Book
Winnicott on Jung: destruction, creativity and the unrepressed unconscious
Shadow Dance: Liberating the Power & Creativity of Your Dark Side
Meeting the Shadow of Spirituality
Awakening the Soul
The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries
Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche
Branches of Mentoring: Michael Meade
Springhouse Examples
Mentoring Program
Defense of Learning Structure
DOL Guide for Panel Members
Recorded DOLs 2020-21
The Well-Depth Education
Well Participants find purpose, community connection, and more
Reflection Questions
- What are your thoughts on this quote from John O’Donohue: When we devote no time to the inner life, we become strangers in our own lives”? What is your relationship with yourself currently? Good friends? Stranger? Acquaintance? Enemy? Or something else?
- Is self awareness an important quality to have as a person? How is it cultivated in your life? In your context?
- What are the ways that you have seen self awareness cultivated in an educational setting or learning community?
- When it comes to relationship with the body, how do you see disembodiment in our culture? In your community? In yourself? What are the implications of disembodiment?
- What are ways that your community cultivates a connection to the body? Are there other ways you could introduce in your own life and community to strengthen your relationship with the body?
- Are you a mystic? If so, what does that mean to you?
- How do you relate to the ineffable life source within and around you?
- What are the challenges and the gifts of designing structures personally and collectively that honor and draw out vitality?
- What does self exploration and study mean to you? How do you feel about going deeper into yourself? Are there implications for not doing this? Are their effects of engaging in this self study in your life and community?
- After reading about the shadow, do you understand what this terrain is within yourself? Can you identify your strengths and weaknesses?
- Do you have a mentor or guide to walk with you on this journey? Is mentorship important, if so why or why not?
- Have you had people in your life who have helped you to grow up? If so, who are they?
- How can our evaluative processes respect the individuality of the learner and even be life giving? How do you assess depth and growth in yourself and in your community?