The word education is derived from Latin ēducātiō (“A breeding, a bringing up, a rearing”). So how do you want to bring yourself up? I think of two interesting quotes. “If it isn’t broke don’t fix it.” And the other “if it isn’t broke break it.”
So what does this have to do with healing? Let’s start with the simple mechanics of suffering. I see suffering in simple terms-blocked energy. Of course most of us are dealing with the why they are frustrated, angry, anxious, overwhelmed, etc. which in turn makes for more frustration and the energy gets even more blocked. So if free flowing energy is no suffering and blocked energy is suffering we wonder do they have a relationship? What if blocked energy is the potential for free energy? There is the saying that crisis is opportunity. Another huge question is how far reaching is this blocked energy?
If we want to truly “bring ourselves up” we must deal with our breeding. The massive programming we experience permeates our entire consciousness. To me the meaning of education is focused around one simple question. In this very moment is what I am feeling true? True means I am feeling in alignment? If the answer is I am feeling out of alignment then the next step usually is to ask yourself what can I do? However, as many us of know, we try so many things and do so much and still suffer tremendously. We soon come to the realization that this problem of being out of alignment requires a radical transformation in our approach.
It seems we wrestle against nothing. Could that be true? As soon as the mind believes something or attaches itself to a belief what inevitably happens? Conflict. If one looks more deeply into themselves we suffer because there is some belief we are clinging to. Even the thought I must survive is a belief. Is it true? The opposite is I must die? Is that true? The problem with the belief I must survive is that humans have made life a living hell. This one belief has created incredible distortion in the mind which has vastly altered the entire ecology of our shared existence.
The great curse of eating from the tree of knowledge became mortality. Knowledge is death. Thinking demands conformity to itself. Once the mind conceives anything trouble begins. That thing now has identity, needs energy and distinguishes itself from another thing. This is not the road to peace. All data in our minds are essentially things with borders that are in conflict. Once you realize there is indeed nothing new under the sun, then the question becomes can you transform the mind in its essential nature. The foundation of healing work starts here. The purpose is to awaken the mind’s data (“some” ”thing”) to self transformation. This is the central theme in my work. I understand that to be true to oneself (“one” ”self”) is to create ways to liberate our essential conditioned nature which we are all partaking in. The mind must be transformed in its very nature.
Now most would say that this is absurd. No one can transform the mind, it is too vast. Things never change. Interesting term “things” “never” “change.” What if “the thing” hasn’t been educated into seeing its true nature?
This is the one underlying principle in Advanced BodyWork practice: All “things” (data) create energy blocks, seek to be accessed, fight like hell to be seen (yet want to be seen) but eventually seek to be liberated.
This is the essence of deceit, of the original lie, the fall, of suffering. For most we think of truth or lie as being in conformity with the thing itself. The things of the mind have one interest. “A thing set in motion must stay in motion.” Why? Because that is the nature of things. Now all things die eventually. This staying in motion takes energy and the competing fields of one thing versus another will eventually cause their momentum to degrade.
So back to the bodywork. This is the crux of the work and worth repeating: All “things” (data) create energy blocks, seek to be accessed, fight like hell to be seen (yet want to be seen) but eventually seek to be liberated.
What is most incredible is that we have inbuilt into our very bodies a liberation process. The work is to help the obscured blocking fields work themselves to a free state. This is a dialectical process that can not be described. It is the primordial call and response of the conditioned mind with that which has been called by many names.
Can we fight back against this massive onslaught of programming that we call our way of life. The way we live defiles the simple meaning of the word ”way” which for me means “to create a path.” And what we call life looks like death. Our way of life is to block life itself. The good news is that this process begins deep within ourselves. We are the root cause of this blocking phenomena. Once you realize that you are the cause you gain incredible potential to transform not only yourself but the very foundation of suffering. All ones focus can now be towards looking at what one can do to liberate that which impedes life itself. The foundation of Chinese Medicine is to unblock and balance the flow of life. The foundation of natural western dietary systems is to eat “Living Foods.”
The focus of holistic education is to understand that which blocks life force and understand that which enhances ones life force. Most of the work is focused on how to improve ones ability to clean, in other words to remove that which stands in the way. Master that part and you have become a master of living. One begins to examine what we can do to becomes beings of clarity. To become a being of clarity one must clear. When ones vision becomes clear one sees with great depth and in turn that seeing creates greater clearing. It requires re-framing to move from a content oriented existence to this point of view. This process of retraining the mind for some is easier than others but it is the essential task for all us.