Recently I did a spontaneous spoken word/poetry performance piece, entitled (after the fact) "I KNOW WHO I AM!" which worked through the issue of self awareness and self knowledge.
The basic idea is that by imposing external concepts upon a child's mind, and heart and by conditioning through schooling, the child is alienated from his or her true sense of self, and that is the basis for control by others. The implication is that as a new born baby "I KNEW WHO I WAS".... as we all do.
Read this and understand that the workings of the Education System, Corporations, Media and Government are predicated upon the direction of children away from themselves!
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William Torrey Harris
..........it's time for you to meet William Torrey Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906. No one, other than Cubberley, who rose out of the ranks of professional pedagogues ever had as much influence as Harris. Harris both standardized and Germanized our schools. Listen to his voice from The Philosophy of Education, published in1906:
Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.
–The Philosphy of Education (1906)
Listen to Harris again, giant of American schooling, leading scholar of German philosophy in the Western hemisphere, editor and publisher of The Journal of Speculative Philosophy which trained a generation of American intellectuals in the ideas of the Prussian thinkers Kant and Hegel, the man who gave America scientifically age-graded classrooms to replace successful mixed-age school practice. Again, from The Philosophy of Education, Harris sets forth his gloomy vision:
The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places.... It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.
–The Philosphy of Education (1906)
Nearly a hundred years ago, this schoolman thought self-alienation was the secret to successful industrial society. Surely he was right. When you stand at a machine or sit at a computer you need an ability to withdraw from life, to alienate yourself without a supervisor. How else could that be tolerated unless prepared in advance by simulated Birkenhead drills? School, thought Harris, was sensible preparation for a life of alienation. Can you say he was wrong?
from : http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/5k.htm
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A child who is unaware of this process, will have suppressed that true sense of self, and replaced it with a persona that the society and parents will have, in one way or another, indicated to the child what ideal role to adopt, and the child will of course evolve her or his own adaption to that role. That child will all the more easily do the same to his or her own children, and of course, rationalise the whole thing as being for the child's own good!
Yet within, the true self is looking for ways to live, and this creates a series of tensions within the individual.... tensions that can be temporarily assuaged by addiction, hobbies, religion, ideologies, compulsive behaviours, achievements and so on.
The only way to resolve this issue is to get to the core true self, and to then live that self. And the only way to do that, is through ruthless self honesty.... no external will replace that quality, no drug, no cosmic vibration, no guru, no yoga , no self-help book will do that work.... and certainly no psychiatrist or psychologist will do that work for another, for they can only do it for themselves, and having done so, can only, at the very best, be an enlightened witness and supportive companion for another who wants help in this area. And this is rarely the case.
For me, the knowledge that I KNEW WHO I WAS as a child led me to the understanding that who I am is a lot about what I honestly feel about the way things are being done around me - I either like them or I do not, they either work for me or they do not, there is no confusion, just a clarity
We know that the heart is a cognitive, sentient and intelligent organ, that it contains a brain and is linked to the main head brain by direct neurons, single cells connecting them both. We know the heart will sense and observe aspects of the world around before the eye/brain cognition kicks in.
Visit www.heartmath.org to learn more about the heart brain intelligence.
We know that in great literature, and in the popular arts alike that the heart is portrayed as emotional, non-rational and is to a degree sentimentalised. And that directs the cognitive functions away from the heart to the brain, mind which is heavily conditioned as outlined above.
We need our heart intelligence because it is closer to our true self, and that as a bulwark against bullhsit we get the rationalised world of ideological economics, wars, pollution dumping and priestly paedophilia!
Is it not time to unveil the greatest taboo in our society? We are conditioned, and have been conditioned to comply with the abuse of our own children and then rationalise it as being for their own good so they can get a job and prosper! And then extreme cases of abuse are held up on the media to allow a scapegoating that lets the State and it's sponsors off scott free!
Kindest regards
CorneiliusDo what you love, it's your gift to universe