Aloha,
On 11/5/2007 at 4:52 PM Kathryn wrote:
>Are spiritual techniques so private that they shouldn't be taught in
public
>institutions? I'm truly interested to hear folks' opinions on this
>question.
As a young teenager, I did in fact learn the fundamental and highly useful
techniques which underpin a good deal of the world's magico-spiritual
practices
in a public institution, junior high school, and from a teacher employed by
the public school system.
This training took place during and as a part of an entirely different
overt
enterprise sponsored by the school district which had to do with young
adolescents
learning to manage and use their language skills. And, probably, become a
little more socially competent.
The instruction that we got in magico-spiritual techniques was thorough,
sound, and doable. It had little to no ideological content, but was just
about
learning how to carry out a range of technical practices.
Let me be honest. At the time, I wasn't interested in magic or
spirituality.
I didn't want to be in this language skills class that was overtly aimed at
making me a better speechifier in front of the school. And I had only the
slightest clue that anything that we were being taught was odd, exotic,
or beyond the bounds of school district/community propriety.
Nevertheless, I did do the exercises, learn the techniques, built some
skills,
incorporate all this into my growing world view, and was glad when this
class ended and I moved up a grade.
Some years later, when I began a diligent study of meditation, revolving
around Zen Buddhism, I discovered, much to my own astonishment, that
not only did I get what the texts and teachers were talking about, but also
I had already passed through some of the spiritual experiences involved.
Equally true in the case of Western magico-spiritual traditions.
Because, during that junior high school language skills class, I had
learned
magico-spiritual techniques and put them, unwittingly, into practice.
Let me share a few more comments.
It was clear that the teacher understood that some of the instruction was
pushed the envelope of convention. She did ask us not to blab about it all
over
school yard and home. So far as I know, nobody did.
I grasped at the time that I was getting a chance to be slightly subversive
of
the accepted order by learning some of these techniques, but mostly in the
sense of gaining access to something the school district wanted me not to
have access to. Not with any grasp of what all that entailed.
The only way that this happened for me is that it happened in a setting
sanctioned by the school district but involved instruction not really
acceptable to that school district. The teacher offered an opportunity to
learn more or less out of sight magico-spiritual techniques that could not
be openly provided in school.
As I understand now but couldn't be bothered with at the time, one
of the crucial features of instruction was the teacher's determined focus
on techniques and equally determined avoidance of any ideological
context.
This had, I think these days, the effect of making it all a matter
of technical instruction in skills that could, if necessary, be toted up
as entirely psycho-physical. On a par with gym exercises or doing tasks
to learn how to write a book report. Nothing that could ever be described
as exposing *young souls* to occulture or ideological magico-spiritual
deviance. No heavens, hells, angels, devils, or magic.
So, having myself learned fundamental magico-spiritual skills in a
public educational institution, would I ever suggest that such instruction
become a formal or overt element of the curriculum?
NO! Never!
Look, the context and world view of public educational institutions is
diametrically opposed to learning worthwhile magico-spiritual techniques
along just about every axis.
Imagine, just for a moment, the bureaucracy, ideological and
organizational,
governing public education.
Musing Uh Oh! Magic In the Classroom! Magic In The Laboratory! Rose,
Pitch
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