There was no reward for innate knowing: my schooling did not develop natural human wisdoms. I was expected to allow myself to be molded into the shape that would fit the needs of society: to be a cog in the great machine of British Empire and Space Age both.
I was educated in an institutional room of desks and chairs arranged in parallel rows. I was enough lucky to have natural light streaming through the windows, but the windows were high on the wall: the view was of the tile slates on the adjoining building, and a tiny patch of sky. The design did not inspire or instruct. It did not feed my soul.
In school there was no time for telling the story of my life, no examination of how my experience, and the processing of that experience, might inform my interaction with Life, World, People. Personal story was not honoured.
I lived my childhood in an age of specialized information. I had different teachers for geography and chemistry and cookery and maths. None of them was interested in what I might have learnt an hour earlier from someone else. When a housecraft teacher taught me about the cooking habits of our European neighbours, I was not encouraged to bring that knowledge into French class.
There were heavy boundaries around each topic; each discipline belonged in a compartment of its own. There was no suggestion of synthesizing something greater than the parts.
Relationships in my schools were based in a culture of rigidly defined roles and a class system. The Future was a vision which had been imposed by parents, adults and the invisible expectations in which we swam without ever knowing they were there. We did not communicate from our hearts. I had no idea what my heart was feeling – what *I* was feeling.
From the age of four I obediently sat neatly, listened nicely, and regurgitated the teaching which poured over me for hours every day. I was blessed. My learning style is suited to that technique. Even in sports there was serious learning and rules to memorize; strategies to comprehend. There was no place for play in the timetable.
I was deemed successful – although I lived in a state of awaiting exposure as an imposter. I knew that the Real Me was not who or what they thought I was.
Order and orderliness ruled my life, and the lives of my parents and grandparents. If the meaning of life had been questioned, the answer would likely have had some religious overtone and have been about simply perpetuating that which was.
I had and have within me these senses of design; story; synthesis; empathy; play and meaning. What I did not have was self-knowledge or connexion with my natural wisdom.
Awakening into the Age of Concept means reclaiming those natural senses which have been repressed, disconnected or denied.
The Work of Spiritual Awakening cannot happen through externals in the way that a sleeping physical body can be wakened by alarm bells, removal of blankets, or aromas of an enticing breakfast.
Awakening these precious senses requires introspection and moving from where we are. For that we need safety and a caring, heart-centred community.
Through the webinars we are building that community. At the retreat we will share the heavy lifting and unveil the wonders we carry within.
Sensate Awakening: A Journey Inward. This is the time to move into the Age of Concept, and show the world what living in alignment really looks like.
Awaken Your Senses as you immerse yourself in a community that stimulates your inner guidance and inspires heightened awareness. Walking meditations in the labyrinth, Numerology and Enneagrams will reveal our unconscious patters and unveil our significant gifts, as we celebrate the evolution of our spirits.
Toronto is a big city with multiple telephone area codes. Someone came up with a great idea that makes a 7-digit phone number work in all these area codes. Wonderful idea, but it is amazing how some marketers can even screw up simplicity. Apparently, this system only works from landline phones, not cellular, and not phones from outside the geographic area (such as someone using their US cell phone in Toronto, um, like me). Oops. I guess this would work… if this was 1985. So, I got a little peckish last night and wanted to call to order a pizza from the closest pizza place. This is what I encountered:
“From a land line”?? Are they serious? You guessed right: calling using my Toronto cell phone didn’t work. There’s no area code or alternate number to try to call via “regular” dialling with an area code prefix. Their “contact us” page includes only the corporate 9-5 Monday to Friday phone number.
Apparently, this company doesn’t want to be bothered dealing with the generations and hundreds of thousands of consumers who are dumping landline phones as fast as people bailing water out of a leaky lifeboat. There’s lots of pizza companies out there. Please come to the kitchen prepared.
I was finally able to locate the local pizzeria phone number on the “locations” page, but that was so graphically intense with maps, that it took much too long to load over a 6 MB/second DSL line. Because some wannabe web designer thought it would be cool to load Google Maps for all 26 locations on the same page instead of quick-loading thumbnails tied to a Google Map popup. And, if you leave the location page and then go back to it, get ready to wait another long time for the whole thing to load again. I shudder at the page load time for folks using cheaper and slower Internet service.
This ain’t rocket science. But, for some marketers, shooting oneself in the foot is just too easy. Sigh.
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I couldn’t agree more! I have been in the new media business for a long time and always amazed when I encounter situations like this. The web is supposed to make access to information and buying decisions easier, not more difficult.