Back in High School, one of my favorite classes was an elective called Humanities. The course was created by a great teacher who brought his theatrical personality, and philosophical spirituality to the classroom. In short, he embodied his humanity, if you’ll pardon the pun.
Our class ran like a group, which ended up being a precursor to some of my social work classes later on in graduate school. Seating arrangements could look like a traditional classroom with rows, or perhaps more avant guard small groupings of desks or resemble a horseshoe configuration. These seating arrangements and rearrangements are pretty typical and more commonplace in today’s classroom environment to help keep the energy flowing to facilitate the learning process.
In my case, going down multidimensional mind trips and wormholes wasn’t a new experience for yours truly. But in this class, the expanding group consciousness was unfolding in our classroom. In my experience, it was easier to come in and out of realms; somewhat akin to a UFO hovering in and out of dimensional bleeding between realities.
As always for yours truly, the classroom and school environment was anything but boring to a guy like me. To my teacher’s chagrin, it wasn’t typically the lesson plan that captivated my attention. Humanities class was a different story. We explored differentiation between Plato’s Republic and Pericles’ Democracy, our teacher’s own ‘Theory of Good’, and read Herman Hesse’s classic book entitled Siddhartha, among other curricula.
Looking back zen, Plato’s Allegory Of The Cave really struck a chord in me that has remained like a light flickering in a shadowy cave, if you’ll pardon the pun. This class really exposed some of the chinks in my armor that were key dynamics to my protective survival instincts at that time.
Furthermore, the metaphor of humanity being asleep and trapped in own own darkness lit a fire in my neurons and energy field. Death and rebirth were beginning to take root in my psyche, as they had done earlier in my formative years. I’d never heard of higher level thinking, metacognition or superconsciousness as common language experiences yet. But that didn’t stop me or others from having them. I remember when our teacher chalked up a simple diagram of his take on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave on the old school blackboard. As I reflect right tao, this visual resembles the ancient cave art we see from our ancestors. What can I say, the novel learning experiences still resonate.
Take care of yourselves everyone,
Ari
Classroom Mothership Earth 