“You want me to what?” I whispered more to myself than to the college professor who smiled somewhat sadistically on the other side of the circle of fifteen or so honors students who seemed to be calmly writing down the assignment.
Read these two books in a week AND be ready to discuss my thoughts on them? No guiding questions? No context? Just read… and be prepared… for a discussion? What the hell did I get myself into? I don’t belong here!
Panic surged through my chest and made it hard to breathe as I looked at the two books that would consume my every waking hour (and some of the few sleeping ones) for the next week with their 2000 pages.
I don’t think I even read a total of 1000 pages over my entire high school career? I can’t do this. I’m a slow reader and I have no idea what I’m looking for in here? And…
Somehow, I managed to read all 2000 pages and jot a few notes down before class the next week. But really, nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to experience.
A college professor who didn’t teach. He literally asked a question and handed the conversation over to us. Some of the students were quiet like me, but many of them just jumped in and started discussing the main themes of the book and debating ideas. I waited for him to jump in at some point and do what every other teacher in my life had done -- teach me something. Put information in. Give me something to memorize and regurgitate to show you I was listening.
No such luck. Every once in a while, he would give us a morsel of historical information that was pertinent to the discussion; but mostly, he just asked one mind-melting question after another.
And then there was this moment in one of the first few sessions where he said something that made this whole new experience make a whole lot more sense: “Some have said that if you look into someone’s eyes deeply enough, and see their soul, you will be tempted to worship them.”
Right after the well-programmed response [Blasphemy!] occurred, something else happened. My heart exploded and tears welled, “Yes! I know that’s true!” Images of the many babies I had held over the years floated across my mind. Their eyes are like little windows into heaven. Nothing but love and connection. They really do seem to know something.
As I took a few moments to compose myself, I realized just how much this professor was actually subscribed to this idea that there was some innately divine image in everyone. I remembered our first phone interview and how I felt while we were chatting. I remembered thinking that his questions about the essay I had written made me feel like he was not just reading my words -- he was deeply trying to understand me and my purpose on this planet. I remembered wondering if he was being genuine because it actually sounded like he was trying to learn from me, and that was just something I had never experienced with any other adult in my life.
Soon after, I settled into the experience of what I would learn was the Socratic method and realized that I was actually learning much more by engaging with other students’ perspectives. In fact, this new approach was making me a highly-critical thinker, which felt extremely empowering. I began to resource from the inside, instead of the outside, allowing myself to experience what it would be like to see every human as a reflection of the divine image -- to see myself this way. Being seen for my divine image (instead of having my “sinner” being pushed to center stage) and invited to engage concepts and wrestle with them to find the truth put me in a much more empowered state.
Quickly, I was inspired to become a high school teacher and give young people the experience I was having -- being treated as a person with innate wisdom rather than a machine that needed data input and behavior programmed.
So much of our society is built on this
industrialized, machine-like model.
You can see it most obviously in education and medicine, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that this way of thinking is at the core of burnout in all of the industries.
Because it’s how we’ve been conditioned,
this machine-like approach often shows up in our
well-intentioned dreams for changing the world:
formulaic approaches to growing a business,
data-and-transaction-focused team meetings,
and even the way that we market and message to
“people that need to be fixed with our solutions.”
Is it really possible to empower ourselves/others to unlock our potential and be the change with this mechanistic assumption? I’d argue “No, not in the long-term.”
We are not machines, and there is a part in all of us that balks and resists this approach because we somehow innately know that we are more and we learn and do more effectively when someone is looking for the divine in us, calling it forth, asking it questions, presenting it with new ideas, and sitting with us in the messy middle until we come out on the other side.
I’d love to hear from you!
Where do you see this mechanical/industrial approach stressing our systems personally and collectively?
Where do you see your efforts to change the world being thwarted by this paradigm?
What comes up for you as you think about shifting the focus from the “broken” to the “divine” in individuals and the collective in order to call forth the learning and healing that’s possible and shed light on what must be removed in order for all of that to happen?
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p.s. The new website is up. It's not quite finished -- still a little bit of formatting to do -- but it's time to launch it. Impact doesn't require mechanical perfection... isn't that what I was just saying? LOL
Please feel free to click on the image below to check out this new expression of True To Intention and let me know what you think!
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