Emotional Literacy Education Course 101 What Is Emotional Literacy Education? by Mark Zimmerman Content: Lesson 1 Title: What Is Emotional Literacy? Author: Mark Zimmerman Copyright: © 2003 Mark Zimmerman. All Rights Reserved. Content: Lessons 2 through 10 Title: Emotional Literacy Education Course 101 What Is Emotional Literacy Education? Author: Mark Zimmerman Copyright: © 2004 Mark Zimmerman. All Rights Reserved. User Agreement: This text may not be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author; except for your own private and non-commercial use; where you may keep one copy on one computer at a time. You may also print one copy, but not more than one. You may not share, sell, trade or in anyway exchange or give a copy to anyone by any means. All copies must remain without modification, and retain this User Agreement, Copyright and Author information. You may not post any part of this text on any Website. You may, however, tell others where they can get their own copy located at: emotional-literacy-education.com Lesson 1: What Is Emotional Literacy? The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed are examples designed to inspire the student to develop their own unique ideas, language and Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to promote anyone's philosophy. 001 Commentary On Susie Orbach #1 11:48 In the spring of 2001, I came upon the concept of Emotional Literacy for the first time. Most of my adult life, I've used the term Self-Knowledge. Where the idea of Self-Knowledge falls short is in the social context; and how it relates to others. Emotional Literacy, on the other hand, has a social connection - which for me immediately meant education. Because the term literacy comes from education. The term literacy means, or it has come to mean, acquiring specialized skills, for example, computer literacy. And I understood immediately that Emotional Literacy was a skill, that could only be learned through an educational system. Self-Knowledge, on the other hand, is primarily self-taught, but very few people are capable of teaching themselves such a complex subject. The first time I came across the concept of Emotional Literacy was at the Antidote Website, where I read Susie Orbach's definition. She is a Psychologist who wrote in The Guardian on August 12, 1998, "Emotional Literacy means being able to recognize what you are feeling, so that it doesn't interfere with thinking." Self-Knowledge means exactly recognizing what you are feeling, so immediately I saw the connection between Self-Knowledge and Emotional Literacy. I have spent the last two years working with Emotional Literacy, trying to see where it connects with my work in Self-Knowledge. And I have been modifying my own work, so that it meets educational standards. Susie Orbach wrote, "Emotional Literacy means being able to recognize what you are feeling, so that it doesn't interfere with thinking." I also became very interested in the concept of Emotional Literacy, because it involved both psychology and education. And combining the two for me means Emotional Literacy. Where psychology becomes important is that psychology is the study of the human psyche. It's the science of studying the human mind. And psychology has made tremendous progress since the time of Sigmund Freud. And it has gradually moved away from a psychology of pathology, and the study of human mental illness, towards a new kind of psychology started by Abraham Maslow. Freud studied mental illness, but he never really explained completely why people were mentally ill. He failed in one area, and that was the study of human health - human mental health. And Abraham Maslow chose to study healthy human beings as a model for his new psychology, which he called the Psychology of Being. His contribution to psychology is as great as Sigmund Freud's for showing that man is not merely a set of pathologies or mental illnesses and neurosis, but that man has human potential far beyond our imagination. Abraham Maslow showed us that human beings can be psychologically healthy. He also demonstrated why humans become psychologically unhealthy. He determined that we become psychologically neurotic, when our needs are thwarted; when we as human beings are blocked in fulfilling our human needs. That this blocking causes us frustration and a rerouting of our behavior into neurosis. Susie Orbach wrote, "Emotional Literacy means being able to recognize what you are feeling, so that it doesn't interfere with thinking." Why do feelings interfere with thinking? Mankind, in its philosophy, likes to separate feeling from thinking. They're not separate at all. Every thought has a feeling attached to it. If we are frightened or angry or confused, it's going to affect the way we think. What is happening here is that we do not recognize our feelings. We're unconscious of feeling. What is conscious is our thoughts. What's not conscious are the feelings attached to those thoughts. "Emotional Literacy," as defined by Susie Orbach, "means being able to recognize what you are feeling, so that it doesn't interfere with thinking. It becomes another dimension to draw upon when making decisions or encountering situations." It can become another dimension to draw upon when making decisions or encountering situations. That is, if we were able to recognize our feelings, we would understand how they affect our thoughts. So her statement is conditional. If we became more aware of our feelings, we would be able to use them to help us make decisions. Feelings which are properly associated with thoughts are what helps us to decide. They lend meaning. They lend gravity. They lend weight to our thought processes. Without feelings our thoughts would be like words in a computer. It's our feelings which give meaning to our thoughts. Its our feelings which help us to decide our behavior, whether we're conscious of it or not. We all start out life unconscious. Becoming conscious requires a special effort. Susie Orbach continues, "Emotional expression by contrast can mean being driven by emotions, so that it isn't possible to think." For most people thinking is an unreliable process. We like to think that it's our thought processes through which we decide what we're going to do, but ultimately it's our emotions that drive our behavior, unconsciously. Only when emotional experiences reach a certain level of intensity of confusion or pain or depression does it make it impossible to think. And it's when we become conscious of our emotions, that our immediate response is to repress them. What we don't realize is that our emotions influence our thoughts more than our thoughts influence our emotions. Susie Orbach continues, "These two things are often confused, because we are still uncomfortable with the idea of the validity of feelings." It's our feelings that need to be sorted out, because our feelings are driving both our thoughts and our behaviors. Men and women function differently when it comes to their thoughts and feelings. Men usually deny that they have feelings. Men are better able to suppress into their unconscious - emotions. And they rely more heavily on their intellect, and this has been hailed by men as a strength. But it is a self-defeating attitude, because their emotions are there, they just block consciousness of them, and amplify their thoughts. And women do just the opposite. In women emotions are stronger, consciously, than in men. Yet, maybe it's these strong emotions which do interfere with their thoughts, because emotions are scary, and fear does interfere with rational thought. For me Emotional Literacy means sorting out thoughts and emotions, because they can work together, when both are made equally conscious. But so much of our psyche is unconscious, that we have problems working within the framework of our own capacities and mental functions. And we tend to work outside in a social context, where we accept direction from without largely because of the uncertainty within. Emotional Literacy means becoming literate, becoming skilled in reading your own emotions. England is far ahead of the United States in advancing Emotional Literacy both politically and in the education system. At the Antidote Website Emotional Literacy is defined as, "Emotional Literacy is the practice of engaging with others in a way which facilitates understanding of our own and others' emotions, then using this understanding to inform our actions." Emotional Literacy should be understood in the social context, because it is the practice of engaging with others, learning from others ways which facilitate understanding of our own emotions, and the emotions of others. Our emotions do inform our actions. They drive our actions, instinctually, and in an unconscious way. But they can also act to inform our actions. Our emotions can provide us with information about ourselves, and about our behavior and about the behavior of others. 002 Commentary On Claude Steiner #1 16:57 Claude Steiner is a Psychologist who works in the field of Transactional Analysis. What is important about this field of psychology is that it focuses on understanding the exchanges in relationships. Which psychologists call transactions. Transactional Analysis helps by focusing on relationships and their emotional interactions. Claude Steiner wrote in his book Emotional Literacy, Intelligence with Heart, "To be Emotionally Literate is to be able to handle emotions in a way that improves your personal power, and improves the quality of life for you, and equally important, the quality of life for the people around you." Claude Steiner realizes in this statement, the importance of handling emotions. If we don't get a grip on our emotions, we're essentially out-of-control. Which causes us to rely heavily on social convention, instead of listening to our own inner impulses; which can give us information more detailed and more specialized about our own lives. Social convention deals primarily with group survival. It doesn't recognize the individual and their survival. Social convention has limitations in fulfilling the needs of the individual within the social group. Social convention is primarily focused on fulfilling the needs of the group, but not the individual. And even though this has been a successful survival strategy for mankind, it is also the technology which allows human beings to commit the worst tragedies to other human beings. War itself is the outcome of social convention. If society was worried about the individual, the need of the individual, society would change its convention about the concept of war. The group never dies in war, only the individual. And the group, the social convention, feels sacrifice of the individual is a noble cause, but it's really a selfish act by the society to preserve itself at the expense of the individual. Social convention and relying on social convention, limits our own potential, our own possibilities. Within the social convention, there's no room for the individual idea, or the individual need, or the fulfillment of the need. Emotional Literacy is not the technology of the individual. It is a technology of learning how to interact with oneself, and in that context, how to interact with others. When we are better able to handle our own emotions, we can improve our relationships, our own quality of life, and as Claude Steiner said, "the quality of life of the people around us." Because every emotion that stirs within our unconscious becomes manifest in our behavior, and affects the people around us. And if we are fearful or confused or angry, we can hurt those around us without knowing it. Claude Steiner continues, "Emotional Literacy helps your emotions to work for you instead of against you." Emotions are signals that carry information. And by ignoring our emotions, by ignoring those signals, we also miss out on the information they provide us. Our emotions also inform us about our environment, because how we feel directly relates to our relationships with others - and how they interact with us. Emotional Literacy is the process of learning about emotions, and learning how to make them work in a positive way. When we are informed by our emotions, they can provide us with guidance. When we are unconscious of our emotions, they always work against us. Claude Steiner continues, "It improves relationships, creates loving possibilities between people, makes cooperative work possible, and facilitates the feeling of community." Emotional Literacy is Self-Knowledge in social context. Emotional Literacy is using Self-Knowledge to figure out the dynamics of relationships. Emotional Literacy is the technology of understanding the dynamics of emotions in relationships. Therefore, it does improve relationships, because it provides us with an array of emotional choices - and how we are going to respond to others. It's not always about being positive in relationships. It's not about never being angry or never being afraid. When we are afraid, what is that telling us. And is it rational? Is our fear rational? Does it have an object that's real, or are we afraid of something inside our own imagination? It's these skills that we have to learn to properly manage our emotions. It's not about eliminating negative emotions. It's about understanding what each individual emotion can do for us. There are times when anger is justified. There are times when fear will save your life. And there are times when anger and hatred will destroy your relationship, impede your relationship. And there are times when fear has no validity. I like to describe two types of emotions. Anger, fear, guilt, frustration can be either functional or dysfunctional. And what I mean by that is, it can be either an appropriate response or an inappropriate response. If it's inappropriate, you're disrupting your relationship, unnecessarily. If it's an appropriate response, if it's functional, then it can be exactly the right response for the given situation. There is no one who can advise you which emotion is right for which circumstance, because circumstances are spontaneous happenings. And emotional responses happen in the moment. And you're not going to have time to consult anyone about the proper emotion or response. Therefore, the only way to determine whether the use of your emotions is functional or dysfunctional - is by becoming conscious of them; by gaining knowledge of them, by understanding them. So that you can learn how to employ them at the right time, and learn how to disemploy them at the wrong time. There is the possibility that Emotional Literacy can improve our relationships. Possibility, because this is a capacity that we have to actualize. It's only a potential. But when this potential is actualized, loving relationships can be made possible between humans. The workplace will become more cooperative and less competitive. And not only will Emotional Literacy facilitate the feeling of community, it will transform the community from what it is now into a community where feelings are as respected as thoughts, and where behaviors are contemplated, rather than automatic. And where the power of the individual is respected as much as the power of the group. Claude Steiner continues, "But Emotional Literacy is not a mere unleashing of the emotions - it is also learning to understand, manage and control them." That's what we do, unleash emotions onto others in our relationships, or one group against another group. We unleash them, unconsciously, without any understanding of the consequences. We unleash them automatically. And this is our fundamental problem, because emotions are directly linked to our instincts. And our instincts are often inappropriate responses to the given situation. Who's to determine, how to determine, if your response is appropriate, if you are not conscious of it? In searching the Internet for definitions of Emotional Literacy, there is one common theme among the definitions. As Claude Steiner said, "It is also learning to understand, manage and control them." Understanding emotions is the most common definition for what Emotional Literacy is. It's through understanding that we learn how to manage and control them, and make them work for us, rather than against us. The only way to understand our emotions is to learn about them through an educational process. Claude Steiner continues, "Being Emotionally Literate means that you know what emotions you and others have, how strong they are, and what causes them." We have a rainbow of emotions - both positive and negative. Some of them attract us to others. Some of them cause us to move away from others. "Being Emotionally Literate means that you know what emotions you and others have...." Emotional Literacy is the exploration of this rainbow of emotions, because each emotion has a specific function. It's not an effort to get rid of emotions. It's actually an effort to bring emotions into our consciousness, into our awareness, into our understanding, into our thought processes, so that they better serve us. So that they guide us in our relationships, and so that we know what we're doing, and the consequences of a particular emotion. Claude Steiner mentions the strength of emotions. Not only must we learn the specific use - for a specific function, but we also must learn how strongly to use a particular emotion. Or, when a particular emotion is very strong within us, how do we interpret that? And what does cause our emotions? Emotional Literacy will also explore what causes emotions. Claude Steiner continues. "Being Emotionally Literate means that you know how to manage your emotions, because you understand them." There is a process that one must go through to reach an understanding of our emotions. Through this process we use our thoughts to make pictures, word pictures, of our emotions. We use our thoughts in combination with our emotions. When our thoughts are in agreement with our emotions, that is understanding. When we have no knowledge about our emotions, that is ignorance. When our emotions agree with our thoughts, they harmonize into understanding. They work together. Claude Steiner continues, "With Emotional Literacy training, you will learn how to express your feelings, when and where to express them, and how they affect others." That's a pretty good summation of everything I've just said. First, that Emotional Literacy is a training process. It's a learned process. It's an educational process in which you will learn how to express your feelings. We are, every day, continuously, without knowledge, expressing our feelings. Without knowledge, how can we know the appropriateness of our expression? When and where and how to express our emotions - is what Emotional Literacy is concerned with. It's what it teaches. And since our emotions are primarily used in relationships, we must learn how emotions affect others. When we express an emotion, how it affects others will help us to understand the consequences of our emotional expression. Did our expression, and the way that it affected another person, turn out the way that you anticipated it to, or did it come out in a way that was harmful; or affected the other person in a negative way? And without Emotional Literacy, without being able to read your own feelings, your own emotions, and your own behaviors, using your thoughts, you will never be able to know if what you did, or said, was beneficial - or harmful to the relationship. How your emotions, and their expressions, affect others is important, because how you respond to others is going to affect the way that they respond to you. And if you want others to interact with you in a positive, loving, caring, respectful manner, the first place to start is through emotional expressions of warmth and caring and understanding. Claude Steiner continues, "You will also develop empathy, and will learn to take responsibility for the way your emotions affect others." He says Emotional Literacy is developing empathy. 003 Commentary On Dictionary Definitions 9:43 What is empathy? A dictionary definition for empathy is the, "identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings and motives." It's important for us to understand the situations and the limitations that others find themselves. Those who are born in poverty, those who are born in a situation that doesn't offer the opportunity of education - requires us to take into consideration their situation. How it makes them feel. And how it makes them behave. Empathy comes from the desire to want to improve the lives of others; to at least to the situation of our own. Without understanding the suffering that poverty causes, people are unable to understand the situation that others find themselves, when it is conditions beyond their control. When it is within our control to improve the lives of others, through a simple concept, we are employing the compassionate emotion of empathy. We are caring about their situation. We are understanding the circumstances which brought them to their situation. We are understanding our own involvement in creating these adverse conditions. And we are actively doing something to improve the lives of others. And why would we want to improve the lives of others? By improving the lives of others, we are improving our own lives. Empathy is comprised of the suffix 'pathy' which means, "feeling; suffering; perception." It means being able to feel, not only your own life, but the lives of others. It means caring, but most importantly, it means feeling. And we tend to go through our lives without feeling. And without feeling, there is very little sense of being alive. So being empathetic has more to do with the selfish need of feeling alive, rather than feeling numb. We live in a society which identifies the strong as those who can function without feeling. Who can act rationally, coldly, steely. Little boys are taught not to cry and not to feel. In the end this only blocks out the world around them, because the only relationship we have to the world around us is how we feel it. Ultimately, this cripples, not strengthens, our children. 'Pathy' comes from the Greek word 'pathos' - which means, "as of an experience or a work of art, that arouses feelings. Feelings of sympathy, tenderness, or sorrow." 'Pathos' is defined this way, because when we feel, we tend to sense the suffering and the misery that surrounds us. But 'pathos' means far more than sorrow. Pathos means feeling, and there's more to life than feeling sorrow. 'Pathos' also means joy. It means pleasure. It means tranquility. But we only reach those emotions after we begin to deal with the world around us - in a responsible way. As Claude Steiner says, "You will also develop empathy, and will learn to take responsibility for the way your emotions affect others." We reach joy through responsibility; for taking responsibility for the way our emotions, and our actions, affect others. If our emotions cause pain and suffering to others, our reward will be suffering and pain. The source of the affliction is within us. And when we affect others negatively, we may not realize it, but that negativity is coming from within. It's our own unconsciousness, that causes us not to feel the pain within ourselves - that is the source of the pain we cause others. So Emotional Literacy is learning how to become responsible for your own emotions, and the positive or negative impact that they have on others. Emotional Literacy means social responsibility. 'Pathos' means sympathy, and sympathy means, "A relationship or an affinity between people or things in which whatever affects one correspondingly affects the other." Emotional Literacy teaches us that we do not live in isolation, but rather in relationships with others. Therefore, what affects one person affects ourselves, and what affects ourselves affects others. We dwell in a state of interdependency. I have defined sympathy as the simultaneous vibration or feeling that exists in two or more persons. We share the same feelings. We feel the same things. And whatever affects one person correspondingly affects the other. The dictionary definition continues, sympathy is a, "mutual understanding or affection arising from this relationship or affinity." Once again we return to the recurring theme of understanding as the basic fundamental definition of what Emotional Literacy is. It's through this understanding, that we achieve affection for others - that arises out of our relationship, and our knowing affinity with others. The dictionary continues, "The act or power of sharing the feelings of another." We all share the same feelings. We just share them unconsciously. We all hurt each other, we just do it unconsciously. And it's only through knowing this - can we stop the hurt that we pass from one person to the next, and from one generation to the next. "Sympathy is the act or power of sharing the feelings of another." We all share the same feelings. There is something universal about feelings. We all share the same nature. And it's out of this nature, our feelings are derived. The definition continues, "A feeling or an expression of pity or sorrow for the distress of another." Why, through empathy, do we experience sorrow? It's because we have caused each other such great misery, that when we open our hearts, we find that's all that's there. But there's more to life, if we get beyond the mutual hurt that we cause one another. But first, we have to understand what we've done to each other, because that's the only way to stop it, and to find new ways of joy to share in our lives. Another definition of sympathy is commiseration. Emotional Literacy is not about commiseration. It's not about wallowing in the suffering of others. It's about rising above the suffering of others - by ceasing one's own participation in causing the suffering of others. Sympathy, the dictionary continues, means, "Harmonious agreement." That's the ultimate goal of sympathy. That's the ultimate goal of understanding. That one falls within a harmonious agreement with oneself, and therefore with others. But this is not our current situation. Our current situation, in relationships, is one of continuous disagreement; continuous discord and continuous conflict. And it's this conflict, and continuous fighting in relationships, primarily for dominance, that continues this suffering that we induce upon each other. Emotional Literacy is the only avenue that I have seen for humanity out of its current situation. 004 Commentary On Claude Steiner #2 4:55 Claude Steiner continues, "Through this training," he says 'training', because Emotional Literacy must be learned, "you will become an emotional gourmand - aware of the texture, flavor and aftertaste of your emotions." Each emotion is different. It has a different use. It has a different source. It has a different feeling. It's accompanied by different kinds of thoughts. Different emotions produce different kinds of behaviors. And Claude Steiner is making us aware that we can differentiate the texture and flavor of our emotions. And he makes another very interesting statement about the aftertaste of our emotions. That our emotions leave an impression upon our mind, in our memory, after they've occurred. By tapping into our memory, we can discover the aftertaste of an emotion. We can also learn if we used that emotion appropriately, functionally. When I say functionally, a functional emotion, did the use of that emotion help us to get what we needed, or did the use of that emotion turn out to hinder us from getting what we needed? Claude Steiner continues, "You will learn how to let your rational skills work hand-in-hand with your emotional skills." Our rational skills, in many ways, work independently from our emotional skills. And by doing so, creates an imbalance, because where emotion does not match our intellect, we have created within ourselves discord. As Claude Steiner says, "You will learn how to let your rational skills work hand-in-hand with your emotional skills." We use our rational skills to make decisions. If we are unaware of our emotional associations with our decisions, we can often find them in conflict, working against each other, defeating each other. But through Emotional Literacy, we can learn how our decisions affect our emotions, and how our emotions affect our decisions, and how, when they work together, work for our benefit. Emotional Literacy is not limited to the training or education in emotions. Emotional Literacy is a holistic educational process - in which we learn about the human self as a whole. With Emotional Literacy we learn about our needs, our emotions, our intellect and our relationships. And what we learn are skills. What we grow are capacities. And what we achieve is our highest possibilities. Claude Steiner continues, "Adding to your ability to relate to other people." Human beings, functioning to survive, have developed social instincts. And a large part of our mental capacities are devoted to relating to other people. Knowing how to relate intellectually, knowing how to relate emotionally, knowing how to relate to others in our behavior - is the very foundation of our emotional condition. When we relate to others poorly, our social condition will be poor. Claude Steiner continues, "Hence, you will become better at everything you do with others: parenting, partnering, working, playing, teaching and loving." These are all social skills: parenting, partnering, working, playing, teaching. Emotional Literacy is the process by which we enhance our social abilities, our social skills, and our capacities to interact with others. 005 Commentary On Susie Orbach #2 3:35 At the Antidote Website Susie Orbach wrote, "Our aim is to create an Emotionally Literate Culture, where the facility to handle the complexities of emotional life is as widespread as the capacity to read, write and do arithmetic." Emotional Literacy is a cultural enhancement achieved through education. In which we are not only expanding the capacities of our emotions, but also we are expanding the capacity of our intellect. We are giving ourselves more choices in our behaviors' to others in our relationships. And we are learning how better to fulfill our own needs, thereby bringing more satisfaction into our lives. Our culture is going round and round in circles with the same emotional responses. We are trapped inside of our own emotions. It's our emotions which create our culture, which create our social structures. A change to our society will only come from a conscious and informed effort through education - to discover new ways to respond to each other. These new ways are known. For example, learning how to cooperate with each other rather than compete. Learning how to treat others with respect and dignity, rather than trying to dominate them. We create our own misery in our society. We beat each other down, as we struggle to make it to the top. And in doing so others are trying to beat us down. And no one ever really makes it to the top. It's just a continuous process of pain inflicted on each other by our own behavior, which makes all of us numb to our emotions, and makes us incapable of utilizing them in ways which are beneficial, and in ways which will enhance our own survival. So this statement by Susie Orbach is of tremendous importance, because she says our aim is to create an Emotionally Literate Culture. It means we have to create it, because we don't have an Emotionally Literate Culture. Our culture is emotionally illiterate. Each one of us every day suffers the consequences of that illiteracy. Susie Orbach continues, "Where the facility to handle the complexities of emotional life is as widespread as the capacity to read, write and do arithmetic." I particularly like this statement. It implies we can learn this. It's within our current educational technology, if we have the will to pursue it. 006 Commentary On Peter Sharp 7:04 Peter Sharp, Psychologist, wrote in his book, Nurturing Emotional Literacy, "Nurturing Emotional Literacy helps people to recognize, understand, handle and appropriately express their emotions. How we manage our emotions, and the positive impact that Emotional Literacy can have on improving standards in schools has been overshadowed recently by the attention given to the three R's. This handbook seeks to redress this, and looks at the importance of the fourth 'R' relationships." I like this particular statement by Peter Sharp, because it defines Emotional Literacy in the context of relationships. Which he describes in education as the fourth 'R'. In our schools children are put together in a classroom, and they are taught how to read, write and do arithmetic. But they're not taught how to interact with one another. Even though we put them in the same room together, and we force them to interact with one another, yet we give them no guidance. Peter Sharp also reiterates and agrees with the other definitions of Emotional Literacy, that we've already heard. That he says, "Emotional Literacy helps people to recognize, understand, handle and appropriately express their emotions." But before we can teach children about how to appropriately express emotions, we as adults must learn how to appropriately express our emotions. We must educate ourselves, before we can educate our children. And this is extremely difficult for adults to learn how to, and to relearn how to respond in relationships. Emotional Literacy for adults is fundamentally different than the education of children in Emotional Literacy. And the reason for that is - that during our own emotional development as children, we have constructed automatic behaviors in response to our needs; and in relationship to acquiring those needs through others. We have learned, and we have made a habit out of our negative emotions. And it's extremely difficult to change these habits. It's much easier to teach children before their habits have formed, but once our emotional habits have taken up residence in the neurological networks of our brain, it's very hard to change those neurological networks, though it is possible. It is possible through the process of education. It is possible for us as adults to modify our own behaviors, and to modify the way we feel, and to change our perception. Emotional Literacy will never become a part of the lives of children, until it becomes a part of the lives of adults. We must find a way to nurture Emotional Literacy in one another as adults. We must be supportive of one another in this effort. I agree with Peter Sharp. That the most important aspect of Emotional Literacy is that it nurtures the development of our relationships. Our relationships are all that we really have. They are all that's really important in life. Western culture has wrongly made of the highest importance the pursuit of money. And we do this at the expense of our relationships. We do this at the expense of our emotional happiness, because the pursuit of money is not the same as learning the capacity, and the potential, of our relationships. So I agree with Peter Sharp. The fourth 'R' in education, whether it's for adults or children, is relationships. And it is of the greatest importance that we understand the value of our fellow human beings, and that we put money, and its pursuit, in its proper perspective. Whenever I think about money and relationships, it always reminds me of Howard Hughes, who spent his entire life accumulating wealth, until he became the richest man in the world. What he was unable to cultivate were human relationships. For he saw other people as only objects of his benefit, of his use; whether it was using starlets that worked under contract for him sexually, or using the people around him to help make himself rich. The end of his life is a sad and pathetic tale of a lonely, narcotic addicted man - who saw no value in other people. Relationships are incomparable with money. They are not in the same category. We can't even say our relationships are priceless, because to do so implies to put a value on them, a monetary value. And there is no monetary value that can be placed on relationships. So Western culture has been barking up the wrong tree, has been walking down the wrong alley, and has found itself pursuing the object that ultimately becomes the cause of its own misery. Because when we place the value of money over relationships, people become property, commodities, something we buy, something we sell, something we trade. 007 Commentary On Asuman Martone 4:55 Asuman Martone, a Transactional Psychologist, wrote, "Emotional literacy is the recognition and consequent development of skills and abilities to deal with our many powerful forces. We must learn about our emotions before we can climb to the next level of development." Of all the definitions of Emotional Literacy, this one has the most profound implications. The statement that, "Emotional Literacy is the recognition and consequent development of skills and abilities," is a very clear picture of what Emotional Literacy is. Because it's the development of skills which help us as human beings to fulfill our needs. And it's only through need fulfillment, that we achieve satisfaction in our lives. So Emotional Literacy is the development of skills, that help us fulfill our needs and achieve satisfaction. She says that, "It gives us abilities to deal with our many powerful forces." That Emotional Literacy is not a concept confined to emotions. It's a concept which encompasses the whole of a person. That each person has many powerful forces within them, the power to create, the power to destroy. And it's how we harness these powers, that makes our lives either empty or full. What powerful forces is Emotional Literacy going to enhance? First, a human being is a composition of needs. These needs are our motivations, and all of the rest of the powers within us revolve around satisfying those needs. So Emotional Literacy has, as its foundation, education in need fulfillment skills - using our other powerful forces of emotions, intellect and relationships. And by becoming skilled in these, through Emotional Literacy, we achieve the satisfaction of our needs. We are adversely affected when our needs are not met. Psychologist Abraham Maslow described this thwarting of our needs as the cause of neurosis and human psychopathology. That as our needs are thwarted, we develop unwanted emotions and behaviors, which are both self-destructive and destructive to others. Therefore, Emotional Literacy is an education in how to overcome the habit of not getting what we need. Asuman Martone continues, "We must learn about our emotions before we can climb to the next level of development." Human beings are fortunate, because mammals have emotions. They have fear. They have aggression. They have domineering behaviors and social structures. But they don't have the intellect to understand, nor the ability to change their own nature. That we start with emotions is clear. That emotions motivate our behavior is obvious. And the only way to make our emotions work for us is by causing them to have a closer match to our environment and our circumstances. The only way to make this change is through learning. And it's through learning, and subsequent growth, that we climb to the next level of development. Abraham Maslow has written extensively on human development, and spoke eloquently about human potential. That man doesn't have to be a static creature. That human development is a lifelong adventure. And Emotional Literacy will rely heavily on the work of Abraham Maslow in the education of human potential. 008 Commentary On Paula Cole 2:59 I have always liked this song by Paula Cole. Paula Cole, Musician and Songwriter, wrote in her song, The Ladder, "I am climbing a ladder of urgency. "Climbing a ladder of hope. "Climbing a ladder of my emotions. "Climbing a ladder of unraveling rope." Understanding our emotions: being able to identify them; being able to recognize them; being able to categorize them into function; and what they do for us; and how they are used; and how they affect others, and what they mean to us, is like climbing a ladder of emotional development. The hope is that our emotions are not a static thing. But that our emotions can develop into wondrous feelings - that bring joy to our lives. And it's this process of learning about our emotions, this process of education - which will unravel the mystery of our emotions, and reveal unto us the knowledge of ourselves. Paula Cole's song ends, "I am only one thing. "One thing I see. "One thing I feel. "I am the ladder." The ultimate responsibility for your own emotions, and whether or not you can bring change to them, lies with you. Because each of us has defense mechanisms; which are also emotions; which block out influences; which may help us to develop. Ultimately, the responsibility lies with you. At the end of a day, no education process, or no teacher can break that shell, that we use to protect ourselves from our own emotions. That we have to be the ladder of our own lives. That we have to be the motivation for our own development. Paul Cole wrote, "Climbing a ladder of my emotions. Climbing a ladder of unraveling rope." An analogy for emotions has been the layers of an onion. And when you peel one back - a new emotion arises. Thus, unraveling the mystery of our emotions. It's when the person goes inside themselves and unravels their own emotions, using their intellect, that they begin to discover who and what they are. 009 Commentary On Mark Zimmerman 21:04 I would like to conclude with a quote, which I have written, and which can be found at my Website: emotionalliteracyeducation.com. There I wrote, "Emotional Literacy Education is the refinement of a knowledge base that has been around for thousands of years. It has been the focus of religion, philosophy, science and psychology. It is Self-Knowledge which has been formulated into a language of emotions which can be taught." For Emotional Literacy to progress, it needs one more component to its definition. That component is education. Education in the tradition of an educational system. What truly makes modern culture stand apart from past cultures is our educational system. It is truly the great success story of the last century. For education is the foundation of our culture. Without education there would be no doctors or engineers or musicians or artists. Without education, we would all be illiterate - unable to read, unable to write, unable to think. Without education, without the ability to read, learning, development and human potential cannot be actualized. So Emotional Literacy, to make it complete, needs one more concept in its definition. And that concept is education. So I start my quote, "Emotional Literacy Education." How are we going to become Emotionally Literate? through education. Education is a technology that we have developed over the past 100 years. Education is a process that we have refined over the past 100 years. Although education still remains an art, it is also a science. And it has proven that we can develop children, and give them skills that they will use for a life time. How do we become Emotionally Literate? How do we acquired the skills of Emotional Literacy? It's only through an education process. And that's where we run into our own limitation. What is this educational process through which we learn these skills? "Emotional Literacy Education is the refinement of a knowledge base that has been around for thousands of years." I have said this, because there have been Emotionally literate persons who have come before us. And their knowledge has been described in different terminology. And it's my preference to organize what they have achieved as Self-Knowledge. For mankind's history is one of trying to understand who we are; and what our relationship is to each other, ourselves and life itself. That's why it's been the focus of religion, philosophy, science and psychology. Deep inside each one of us is the need to know ourselves. For not to know ourselves, in one sense, is not to exist. In that sense only the society exists. In my youth I was confronted with many of the same issues that has confronted mankind since its beginning. Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here? It's these profound questions that have motivated religion, philosophy, science and psychology. And in my effort to understand myself and others, in a society that doesn't value Self-Knowledge, or the individual, I found myself by climbing that ladder of my emotions. By understanding myself and others, I created a set of books titled Knowledge of the Self in Nine Volumes. And I found something peculiar about this series of books that I had written. That even know I understood their meaning, I found that others were incapable of understanding them. And I have spent the last 20 years trying to figure out a way to take this personal language of Self-Knowledge, and formulate it into a language - which others could understand. And it's been a long journey. I feel within my heart that I have been able to take what was essentially a personal language, that only I could understand, and I have developed it into a universal language, which I believe others can learn. And its this language, which I call the Emotional Literacy Language, which can be used to educate others to achieve the skills of Emotional Literacy. It was the attraction of the concept of Emotional Literacy, that caused me to embark on this particular journey; towards creating a universal language of emotions, that others could learn to interpret their own emotions. The idea of Emotional Literacy as a skill, that was being explored by educational psychologists and educators; and knowing that psychology is essentially an exploration in Self-Knowledge, gave me the motivation to try to make this transition from a personal language of Self-Knowledge to a universal language of Self-Knowledge. Without a language, we can't make a picture of what our emotions are. Without language we have no structure for education. All education is based upon structure. Mathematics provides us with a language. The alphabet provides us with ways to interpret the sounds of printed words. And education must follow a structure. And that structure must follow a developmental path. Essentially, what is being taught in education are various languages and various skills. Learning how to read is learning a language. It's learning the structure of words. It's learning how to put them in a sentence. Therefore, Emotional Literacy remains just a concept without a solid educational process with which to base it. Much of Emotional Literacy is the transposing of psychology, and what has been learned by the psychologist in the office with their client; and now it's just being transferred to the classroom. Anger management for children, anti-bullying programs are Band-Aids. Because they do not represent a complete educational system either for children or adults. And as long as we cling to this, Emotional Literacy won't go anywhere. Because people will not be able to learn. What I have done with my own personal Self-Knowledge is that I have formulated it into a language of emotions which can be taught. Because I have created a structured language. And it is taught through the structure, through the terminology, through the vocabulary. I continue, "The fundamental principle of Emotional Literacy Education is the need for the individual to understand him or herself and others. The current educational system is based upon the recognition of the need for the individuals to learn how to read, write and do arithmetic. These skills are taught for the economic benefit of the child. Happiness is an emotional state as well as an economic state. What we, as adults, were not taught in school - is how to achieve happiness." Without the goal of happiness, Emotional Literacy has no meaning. There has to be some emotional state that we are trying to achieve. There has to be a reason for the educational process. There has to be a reward for the person who seeks Emotional Literacy and Self-Knowledge. So anything less than happiness as the goal will keep mankind where it's at. We were not taught how to be happy in school. They were preparing us to be of a part of an economic system, so that we could fulfil our basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. But at the end of the day when we come home from work, and we are full because we've eaten, an emptiness still lingers inside of us. Some emotional emptiness, something in us has not been fulfilled. Some human potential in us has gone untapped. Therefore, the goal of Emotional Literacy Education is no less than happiness for the individual. And when the individual is happy, the society will be happy. Happiness is not an economic state. Happiness means fulfilling all of our needs. And we can better fulfil our needs through a society that learns cooperation over competition. Our current economic structure is a zero sum game. And it's composed of winners and losers. The zero sum game is a competitive game, a hierarchical game, in which dominance over others is the goal. It's the structure itself that keeps us from happiness, because instead of cooperating, we compete. Instead of agreeing, we fight. Instead of sharing, we hoard. It's become a world of haves and have nots. And those that have are no happier than those that have not. But society has come to believe that money is the answer to everything including emotional happiness, but the experience of Howard Hughes proves that that's false. We must find compassion for one another as adults, forgive our past and work towards an Emotionally Literate Culture. Because that's the only way that we're going to achieve happiness as a society, together. I further wrote, "Emotional Literacy Education is based upon an Emotional Literacy Vocabulary." I have taken Self-Knowledge, and I have broken it down into a structured vocabulary, which can be used in the educational process for children and adults. The process for children is different than the process for adults. It is going to be more difficult for we, as adults, to understand this language. But it's time that we try. I wrote, "Emotional Literacy Education is based upon an Emotional Literacy Vocabulary. It is a means by which language is used to introduce a student to his or her own emotional values." The vocabulary which comes out of the Emotional Literacy Language is the mechanism that we use to recognize our emotions. And not only our emotions, but also our thoughts, and our behaviors and our needs. We use words to identify and to recognize our world. The way to recognize ourselves is to have a language which is based upon ourselves. We don't recognize ourselves, because we don't have a language that we study that is about us. All of our language is an objective language. We speak in terms of objects, the car, the telephone, our job. But we don't speak in terms of a language which is self-referential. We don't refer to our own emotions, our own thoughts, our own behaviors. And when we do, we do so in a way that skims the surface, and doesn't produce a detailed image of our emotional makeup. This Emotional Literacy Language is used to introduce a student to their own emotional values. There is no imposition of values here. It's just a way of defining the emotions you already have, and a way of educating in skills in new emotional responses, that help a person deal with everyday life, situations and relationships. I wrote, "Emotional Literacy Vocabulary permeates nearly all literature." That was one of the great realizations that I had. When I took this vocabulary, which came out of Knowledge of the Self in Nine Volumes, and I applied it to classical literature, I found that the text was peppered with emotional content. But I also understood that the authors themselves had a very superficial understanding of the terminology - that they were using in their literature. I took the classical literature at my Website at: selfknowledge.com, and I hypertext linked this Emotional Literacy Vocabulary to dictionary definitions - to offer some depth to the text. And to demonstrate how common these words are. And how we use them in everyday language, but actually know very little about them. And we don't use knowledge of these words to our benefit. So, for me, there's been an evolution from Self-Knowledge, a personal language that I formulated for myself, to understand myself, to the realization that it is possible to educate students - both adults and children, in an Emotional Literacy Language. Which will help them to have a better understanding of themselves and others. I wrote, "Emotional Literacy Vocabulary permeates nearly all literature." That's how common it is. I wrote, "In what we write is how we feel, think, desire and behave." Our literature is a reflection of our emotions. I wrote, "From this vocabulary a structured language will be taught, which relates to the content of our human selves. When we study ourselves, new choices in our feelings, thoughts and behaviors are made available to us." Without this exploration, we are stuck with the emotions that we have. And Self-Knowledge, as it's been demonstrated through history, shows us that mankind, that the individual, that society can have a much broader range of emotions, a rainbow. But those higher emotions are potentials - not actualities. Just like the skill of knowing how to read is a potential in the child. And without education that potential will remain undeveloped. I wrote, "What are the features of an Emotional Literacy Education system?" The first and most important component of an Emotional Literacy Education system is a language, a universal language, the Emotional Literacy Language. Because in language there is structure. And it's structure which can be taught. And from language, from the Emotional Literacy Language, we can derive its individual components, its parts, which is the Emotional Literacy Vocabulary. And its this vocabulary which can be instructed. Step by step we can learn to understand ourselves. Because we can use words to make pictures. And those pictures give us a map of our emotions and our thoughts and our behaviors. So one small step at a time, we build the vocabulary in the student. Whether they are adults or children. And it is because it is a language and a Vocabulary that Emotional Literacy Education can utilize the technology of education - that has already been developed over the past 200 years. So in this sense, Emotional Literacy Education becomes a normal educational process, which includes reference material, the Emotional Literacy Language, a curriculum, teaching materials, activities and the achievement of Emotional Literacy Objectives. 010 Susie Orbach Quotes 1:41 The first time I came across the concept of Emotional Literacy was at the Antidote Website, where I read Susie Orbach's definition. She is a Psychologist who wrote in The Guardian on August 12th, 1998, "Emotional Literacy means being able to recognize what you are feeling, so that it doesn't interfere with thinking. It becomes another dimension to draw upon when making decisions or encountering situations. Emotional expression by contrast can mean being driven by emotions, so that it isn't possible to think. These two things are often confused, because we are still uncomfortable with the idea of the validity of feelings." At the Antidote Website Emotional Literacy is defined as, "Emotional Literacy is the practice of engaging with others in a way which facilitates understanding of our own and others' emotions. Then using this understanding to inform our actions." At the Antidote Website Susie Orbach wrote, "Our aim is to create an Emotionally Literate Culture, where the facility to handle the complexities of emotional life is as widespread as the capacity to read, write and do arithmetic." 011 Claude Steiner Quotes 2:22 Claude Steiner wrote in his book, Emotional Literacy Intelligence with Heart, "To be Emotionally Literate is to be able to handle emotions in a way that improves your personal power, and improves the quality of life for you, and equally important, the quality of life for the people around you. "Emotional Literacy helps your emotions to work for you instead of against you. It improves relationships, creates loving possibilities between people, makes cooperative work possible, and facilitates the feeling of community. "But Emotional Literacy is not a mere unleashing of the emotions - it is also learning to understand, manage and control them. "Being Emotionally Literate means that you know what emotions you and others have, how strong they are, and what causes them. "Being Emotionally Literate means that you know how to manage your emotions, because you understand them. "With Emotional Literacy training, you will learn how to express your feelings, when and where to express them, and how they affect others. "You will also develop empathy and will learn to take responsibility for the way your emotions affect others. Through this training, you will become an emotional gourmand - aware of the texture, flavor, and aftertaste of your emotions. You will learn how to let your rational skills work hand-in-hand with your emotional skills, adding to your ability to relate to other people. Hence, you will become better at everything you do with others: parenting, partnering, working, playing, teaching, and loving." 012 Dictionary Quotes 1:38 The American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition, definition for empathy is the, "identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings and motives." Empathy is comprised of the suffix pathy, the dictionary continues, which means, "feeling; suffering; perception." Pathy comes from the Greek word pathos, the dictionary continues, which means, "as of an experience or a work of art, that arouses feelings. Feelings of sympathy, tenderness, or sorrow." The dictionary continues, and sympathy means, "A relationship or an affinity between people or things in which whatever affects one correspondingly affects the other." The dictionary definition continues, sympathy is a, "mutual understanding or affection arising from this relationship or affinity." The dictionary continues, "The act or power of sharing the feelings of another." The definition continues, "A feeling or an expression of pity or sorrow for the distress of another." Sympathy, the dictionary continues, means, "Harmonious agreement." 013 Peter Sharp Quotes 0:49 Peter Sharp, Psychologist, wrote in his book Nurturing Emotional Literacy, "Nurturing Emotional Literacy helps people to recognize, understand, handle and appropriately express their emotions. How we manage our emotions, and the positive impact that Emotional Literacy can have on improving standards in schools has been overshadowed recently by the attention given to the three R's. This handbook seeks to redress this, and looks at the importance of the fourth 'R' - Relationships." 014 Asuman Martone Quotes 0:27 Asuman Martone, a Transactional Psychologist, wrote, "Emotional Literacy is the recognition and consequent development of skills and abilities to deal with our many powerful forces. We must learn about our emotions before we can climb to the next level of development." 015 Paula Cole Quotes 0:38 Paula Cole, Musician and Songwriter, wrote in her song The Ladder, "I am climbing a ladder of urgency. "Climbing a ladder of hope. "Climbing a ladder of my emotions. "Climbing a ladder of unraveling rope." Paula Cole's song ends, "I am only one thing. "One thing I see. "One thing I feel. "I am the ladder." 016 Mark Zimmerman Quotes 2:27 I would like to conclude with a quote, which I have written, and which can be found at my Website: emotionalliteracyeducation.com. There I wrote, "Emotional Literacy Education is the refinement of a knowledge base that has been around for thousands of years. It has been the focus of religion, philosophy, science and psychology. It is Self-Knowledge which has been formulated into a language of emotions which can be taught. "The fundamental principle of Emotional Literacy Education is the need for the individual to understand him or herself and others. The current educational system is based upon the recognition of the need for the individuals to learn how to read, write and do arithmetic. These skills are taught for the economic benefit of the child. Happiness is an emotional state as well as an economic state. What we, as adults, were not taught in school, is how to achieve happiness. "Emotional Literacy Education is based upon an Emotional Literacy Vocabulary. It is a means by which language is used to introduce a student to his or her own emotional values. Emotional Literacy Vocabulary permeates nearly all literature. In what we write is how we feel, think, desire and behave. From this vocabulary a structured language will be taught which relates to the content of our human selves. When we study ourselves, new choices in our feelings, thoughts and behaviors are made available to us. "What are the features of an Emotional Literacy Education system? reference material, the Emotional Literacy Language, a curriculum, teaching materials, activities, and the achievement of Emotional Literacy Objectives." Lesson 2: Intrinsic Education vs. Associative Learning The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed are examples designed to inspire the student to develop their own unique ideas, language and Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to promote anyone's philosophy. 001 Emotional Literacy Education Is Intrinsic Education 7:47 In the previous lecture, I defined Emotional Literacy. The majority of those definitions were derived from people who include themselves as members of the Emotional Literacy Movement. When searching through these definitions, I could really feel how incomplete they were. That something psychologists were trying to implement, as education, lacked true educational references. The majority of the definitions for Emotional Literacy come out of the field of psychology. And even though there are specialists in the field of psychology, whose main interest is education, their definitions slant more towards the psychology field; than they do to the educational field. It's my main impression that the current Emotional Literacy Movement is interested in porting techniques, that are used in the practice of psychology, into the classroom. There is a limitation in doing it this way. In that education, from this perspective, amounts more to therapy. Which is to be expected, if your field is psychology. But what we really need is Emotional Literacy - whose foundation is in the expertise of education. First, the foundation, of the education techniques for Emotional Literacy, is going to be from the field of education itself. Primarily because education, as a technique, is more fully developed than psychology. That is to say, teachers are more successful at educating, than psychologists are at curing neurosis. So even though Emotional Literacy has its parts in psychology, the primary techniques are going to be based on the acquisition of learning skills. With that in mind, the concept of Emotional Literacy needs to be expanded to include the entire educational field. And all of the expertise that it has acquired, including all of the skills of educating. I have taken the concept of Emotional Literacy, and expanded it to Emotional Literacy Education. Emotional Literacy, to learn it, requires an educational process; more so than a therapy process. Emotional Literacy is acquired through learning and through growth. In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "If one thinks in terms of the developing of the kinds of wisdom, the kinds of understanding, the kinds of life skills that we would want, then he must think in terms of what I would like to call intrinsic education - intrinsic learning; that is, learning to be a human being in general, and second, learning to be this particular human being.... Certainly one thing I can tell you. Our conventional education looks mighty sick. Once you start thinking in this framework, that is, in terms of becoming a good human being, and if then you ask the question about the courses that you took in high school, 'How did my trigonometry course help me to become a better human being?' an echo answers, 'By gosh, it didn't!' In a certain sense, trigonometry was for me a waste of time." From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 164, 1st paragraph. Much of what is being pulled out of the field of psychology has been around for thousands of years. It's very basic to philosophy. That mankind needs a basic understanding of himself. And it's only within this last century that psychology has begun to understand this, and has begun to adopt these philosophies. Which have been around for thousands of years. So, what we have here is the convergence of education and psychology. And it's only been within the past couple hundred years, that education has been taught to the masses. And within the past 100 years, great progress has been made in understanding how people learn. Which, even though it's been around for thousands of years, it's only been available to the wealthy and the elite within the societies. And now the time is ripe for this great skill of education, combined with the psychology of learning about yourself. What is Emotional Literacy Education? It is the convergence of psychology, in the form of acquiring knowledge about yourself, with the techniques of an educational system. It's combining the two skills together. Taking the best from each and putting them into a new educational process. Which psychologist Abraham Maslow has defined as intrinsic education. Emotional Literacy Education, from my definition, is intrinsic education. 002 Language Skill: Dictionary Look Up "Intrinsic" 14:20 When I'm studying and learning a new topic, and I come upon a word that I don't understand, or that I'm not familiar with, or that seems particularly important to the subject that I'm trying to grasp, I like to look up the word in the dictionary. And I find this looking up of words in dictionaries in itself one of the educational techniques, that I personally use to teach myself. Therefore, I want to teach others how to learn. So from time to time, we will be going through the process of looking up words in the dictionary. Therefore, if there's a word I speak during a lecture, that you become curious about, I encourage you to look it up in the dictionary. And give yourself some time to think about it, because it's one very important learning technique. So, I was curious about the word intrinsic, and I looked it up in the dictionary, because it's a keyword in Maslow's definition 'intrinsic education.' So what does the word intrinsic mean? From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, "Intrinsic," the dictionary says comes from the "Latin intrinsecus, which means inward, or on the inside. Intra means within. The word intrinsic means inward, internal." So intrinsic education means the education of the internal, or that which is inward. What is internal? What is inward? Looking at the human body from the outside, from head to toe, we see that it forms a boundary. That boundary makes up a whole. Your body is a whole. And what we can observe from the outside is the boundary of the body. The word intrinsic is referring to anything inside that boundary - the boundary of your body and mind together as a whole. Because it makes up a whole. Therefore, intrinsic education relates to anything within that boundary. And that's what we define as you. We have an interior. And intrinsic education is the study and the learning about that interior. The word intrinsic has some interesting connotations. Continuing the dictionary definition, "Intrinsic means inward, internal, hence, true, genuine, real, reality, essential, inherent." Why does the word internal, why does the word inward, why are those words closely associated with what is true, what is real, what is genuine? Because, as we're defining the person within the boundary of their body, we are defining that as the real you, the genuine you, the true you. That which belongs to you. What we're trying to define here, in intrinsic education, is the education of those things that belong to you. That are within your boundary. That are within your border. Nature has played a very strange trick of the eye on mankind. That trick of the eye is that we are always looking outward. Evolution of the mind has developed through a mind that is continuously looking outward - seeing the other person. And what's interesting about that is, that the eyes don't turnaround and see what's in back of the eyes. Which is exactly this boundary of the body. By the very structure of the way our eyes are oriented to look outward, we have developed knowledge based upon the other person; our interaction with them. Therefore, we become highly developed in our social skills, yet those social skills are lacking an essential component. That essential component is knowledge of ourselves. Because the eyes point outward, we see the other person, but we don't see ourselves. Take the chimpanzee for example. They never see their own face. They see the face of the other. Therefore, facial expression has evolved from an indirect way. That is, our own facial expressions have evolved through how we see them affecting others. Chimpanzees have no mirror. No way to see their own facial expression. It's the same with the evolution of man. Our very own facial expressions, which are so intimate and so personal to ourselves, have evolved without our knowledge. They're within our boundary. They belong to us. Yet without a mirror, through millions of years of evolution, our facial expressions have evolved in a social context. We only know our facial expressions, as they're reflected in other people's response to them. That's a perfect example of something that's very basic and important to us - of which we lack knowledge. We're not aware when we make a happy face, or a sad face, or an angry face. Although the faces belong to us. In the same way, our emotions, which can't even be seen by others, have evolved without our knowledge, without us being able to see them. In the same way that we are not able to even see our own facial expressions. Much of mankind's development has been an evolution in his social skills. Primarily because the eyes face forward and see the other, but they don't face backward and see ourselves. Just like when you're driving a car, there's a blind spot in back of you on either side - of which you can't see oncoming traffic. The body also has blind spots. And even though we can see our hands, and our feet, and our torso, and our legs, we can't see our own faces without a mirror. And we've evolved not seeing ourselves physically - not seeing our emotions expressed through our faces. We've also evolved with a blind spot that relates to our emotions; that relates to our inner selves; that relates to our mind and all of its functions and abilities and capacities. Nature provided this blind spot which forces us to evolve socially in the context of knowledge. That means we've developed knowledge of the other person; their facial expressions, their gestures, their postures. There is even a blind spot in that situation. In the other person I can't see their emotions. I can't see their feelings. I can't see their thoughts. I can only interpret their facial expressions, or their verbal expressions. Which both can be false; can be deceptive. Just like animals use camouflage in nature to protect themselves from predators, human beings use facial expressions. They use language as camouflage. So the eye is tricked again, when looking at the other person. Because there may be camouflage in their emotions. They may be protecting something. And what that does is create another blind spot, because it makes it difficult to use the other person in acquiring self-knowledge. Although it's helpful to observe others, and to understand their emotions. In fact, it's actually easier to try and understand yourself through understanding others, because at least you can see their boundary. At least you can see their border. At least the other person is displaying behaviors that you can observe. By the time that you have behaviors, it's too late to observe your own behavior, making it all but impossible to use your own behavior to interpret yourself. It can be done, but it's more difficult. You have to access your memory, and try to remember how you behaved in an understanding process. But with another person you can clearly see their anger, their frustration. And it's useful to use other people in understanding yourself, because they can give you clues about yourself. These are the words that you might consider looking up in the dictionary: "true, genuine, real, essential, inherent, and the word that I like best is reality." From that perspective intrinsic education means education about the reality that is you. What's inside you. What's internal. What belongs to you. What's inside your border. So intrinsic education means studying what's real about you. And one of the methods for studying what's real about you, since you can't see yourself, is to study about what's real about others. What is true about you? What's genuine? What's real as opposed to what's false? What is inherent in you? What are you born with? And after you're born, what skills, what capacities can you acquire? We're all born with a specific nature. Abraham Maslow refers to that nature as our 'specieshood.' What is it that we're all born with as human beings? Intrinsic education is the study of your nature - of what you're born with. It is also the study of what you can become. What you can become are the skills that you can acquire. And the skills that you can acquire are based upon your inherent nature, or that which you are born with. Emotional Literacy Education is the study, the exercise and the acquisition of very specific skills, which I refer to as need-fulfillment skills. Emotional Literacy Education is a process by which, through exercise, through study, through learning and through growth, we acquire the skills that help us to fulfill our needs. 003 Language Skill: Dictionary Look Up "Extrinsic" 4:29 Continuing the dictionary definition, "Intrinsic is the opposite of extrinsic, which is defined as the merely apparent or accidental. Extrinsic comes from the Latin extrinsecus, which means on the outside. 'Exter' means on the outside plus 'secus' which means otherwise or beside. Extrinsecus means on the outside, otherwise or beside." Therefore, extrinsic means that which is on the outside of us - of our body. So, whatever is on the outside of us; whatever is beyond our boundary; whatever is beyond our border doesn't belong to us. It's not our nature. The very word 'definition' means to draw a boundary around, through words. To define a word, it has to have a beginning, a middle and an end. And by placing this boundary around the definition of something, using words, you're saying what it is, and therefore by exclusion, you're also saying what it's not. And that's how we're using the word intrinsic and extrinsic. We are saying what includes you by definition, by also stating what does not include you. Anything outside your body, anything outside of the borders of your mind, your brain, doesn't belong to you. Therefore, it's not your nature. It's not intrinsic. It's not what you're born with. It can't give you any abilities, or any skills, because those functions lie within your mind, within the brain. Continuing the dictionary definition, "The definition of extrinsic is not contained in or belonging to a body. External, unessential, opposed to intrinsic. Quoting I. Taylor, 'The extrinsic aids of education and of artificial culture.' " Culture itself comes from without. Therefore, culture is not our nature. Our nature is to become a social being. But the particular kind of culture that we acquire is dependent upon the culture that we live in. Therefore, culture is extrinsic, and acquired through learning. If you were born in another culture, you would acquire the traditions of that culture. And these traditions, by this particular definition, are extrinsic. They are not what you are born with, because we acquire them. And the proof that we are not born with them - is that a child will acquire the culture which it is born in. But what is intrinsic is our ability to learn the culture we're born in. We're given that skill. What is extrinsic is that which is external. That which is outward. And that which is external is non-essential, untrue, ungenuine, unreal, merely apparent or accidental. It's accidental in the sense of it's an accident which particular culture you're born into. Therefore, it's an accident what traditions you acquire. 004 Intrinsic Education: Developing Understanding and Wisdom 10:30 Abraham Maslow wrote, "If one thinks in terms of the developing of the kinds of wisdom, the kinds of understanding, the kinds of life skills that we would want, then we must think in terms of what I would like to call intrinsic education - intrinsic learning; that is, learning to be a human being in general, and second, learning to be this particular human being." First, Maslow is defining intrinsic education as wisdom and understanding. Which are both goals of Emotional Literacy Education. He also defines it as the life skills that we would want. And what are the life skills that we would want? The kinds of skills that will aid in our survival are the skills that help us to fulfill our needs, to satisfy our needs. Therefore, Emotional Literacy Education, as intrinsic education, is the acquisition of the skills that help us satisfy our needs. I call these skills need-fulfillment skills. He goes on to say, "...intrinsic learning; that is, learning to be a human being in general...." Because of the way the eyes face outward, we are missing the human being. That is ourselves. And Emotional Literacy Education is education in learning what it means to be a human being. Just what we are without any cultural add-ons. What are we born with? What can we become? That is of the highest value to us as opposed to the current educational system, which educates us to become what others value highly. They too are missing themselves. They too are missing the point of education in which you learn about yourself. In that sense, we are all caught up in the social web of education. In which we are always learning what other people want us to know. Rather than seeing ourselves, and identifying ourselves, as a point of which we need to know. Where is ourself? And what is it that we need to know about ourselves? We have a mental function called identity. And even that mental function is caught up in the social context, because it fails to identify a person as separate from the social group. The way our identity works is through this blind spot in which we can't see ourselves. But we can perceive the social group. We can see what they believe, and how they act. And then to fit inside the social group, we conform to it. Our identity becomes locked up in what it means to belong to the social group. And when the identity functions that way only, then we miss the crucial component. Which is being able to identify ourselves. Knowing that we exist. Knowing that I am. The way the mind is setup, without an educational process, that will be the outcome. In which we will miss ourselves. In which we will fail to identify ourselves - that we exist behind the eyes. And where the current educational system will succeed is that you will become identified with a particular group. And you will see the group as your particular identity. And it will answer the question for you of: "Who am I? I am whatever group I belong to. My values are the values of the group." And the fundamental problem with group identity - is that the group itself formulated its own identity out of a lack of self-knowledge, intrinsic knowledge. When the group formed its value system, its behaviors', it did so missing a very crucial fact. All social groups form the basis for their knowledge on a half truth. That is, the social group is the whole. The social group is everything. And the individual member is just a member of the group, a part of the group. And why that is so damaging - is that the group also believes that the members of the group are extrinsic, nonessential. They can be replaced. A perfect example of that is in the military. Where a person is so badly de-valued, that they can be sacrificed for the good of the whole. And a few missing people won't matter, because they can be replaced. That's the most extreme example of the logic of the social group, when the people within the social group miss the knowledge that they exist. That they are important. That they are irreplaceable. That they are unique. And that they matter to the rest of the universe. Every social group functions along the same line. And that line is ignorance of self, ignorance of self-nature, and its value, and its importance. And Emotional Literacy Education is education in the value of the individual, but not in isolation. It's an adjunct to the social knowledge. It's not an erasure of the social knowledge. One of our strongest, inherent and intrinsic qualities is that we are social beings. We are born social. Therefore, it's not a denial of our social aspect. But rather it's an expanded education, which includes an awareness of the individual and the society. Therefore, Emotional Literacy Education is also education of our social nature combined with education of our individual nature. Abraham Maslow said, "...intrinsic learning; that is, learning to be a human being in general...." It means what are we as a human being in general? What aspects do we all share? As Abraham Maslow called that 'our specieshood.' And he goes on to say, "...and second, learning to be this particular human being...." That each one of us is unique. Maslow likes to use the word 'idiosyncratic' to describe our uniqueness. Being unique is an inherent quality that we're born with. And it's a reflection of nature. For example, when you look at a tree, and compare it to another tree, even of the same species, you will see the trees have different shapes, different growth patterns. This is especially easy to see during winter, when all of the leaves have fallen off the trees. And you can just see their branches. And you can see that every tree that was ever created is unique, is different. And this is the same quality that exists within each one of us. So Emotional Literacy Education is where the student learns what particular kind of human being they are, and in which ways they're different from others. Because we have both. We have things that we share in common with others - that are our nature. And then we have our very nature itself, which we all share that creates within us a uniqueness, a specialty. That makes each one of us one-of-a-kind. And it's only through this awareness and understanding, do you begin to appreciate yourself. That you're the only one in the universe like you. I know that sounds a little bit like Mr. Rogers, but Mr. Rogers was a very insightful man. 005 The Old Education of Associative Learning 6:43 Abraham Maslow continues, "Certainly one thing I can tell you, our conventional education looks mighty sick." Maslow, throughout his work, defines sickness as a deficiency. Here he's referring to a deficiency in the conventional educational system. The deficiency that he's referring to, and which conventional education is missing, is intrinsic education - and along with it intrinsic learning. One of our innate qualities is the ability to learn. Therefore, each one of us has within us an innate quality and ability to learn. Emotional Literacy Education is also the education of the student in how to learn. What natural abilities they're born with. How to strengthen those abilities, and how to utilize those for learning. Learning itself is intrinsic. Is natural. Is what we're born with as a skill. If education is unrewarding, unpleasant, doesn't produce growth, then the student will learn that learning is unpleasant, difficult and doesn't produce growth. What we learn in the conventional education system is to hate learning, because what we learn has no meaning to our lives. It's imposed on us from the outside. And we are taught to perform tasks and skills which we will never use in life. So by the time we come to the end of our educational process, provided by the society, most people are turned off by education. And as adults the process of learning ends for them. It's our nature to avoid what's boring, what's unpleasant, what's fruitless, what's nonproductive - what doesn't help us to grow. The caveat is that the only way to grow, to learn new skills, to lift us up out of our current condition is through learning. That makes it a Catch-22. Emotional Literacy Education for adults is different than Emotional Literacy Education for children. That is, adults have to relearn the pleasure of learning. They have to find excitement in learning. There has to be a reward, an intrinsic reward. Something that they feel inside of them that is rewarding to them. Because if this process does not take place, then true learning will not be reactivated. If the student falls into the pattern of the habits that they learned through the traditional education system, then they will repeat the same boredom, and lack of reward which will cause them to abandon education in general, as adults, and specifically Emotional Literacy Education. So I want to emphasize that Emotional Literacy Education is not the old education of associative learning. It's not information that you must memorize, so that you can pass a test. In fact, it's not about providing you with information at all. It's about informing you about skills that you can acquire; mental skills, learning skills, need-fulfillment skills, relationship skills - but not facts, not information which would be useless in this kind of a process. Abraham Maslow continues, "Once you start thinking in this framework, that is, in terms of becoming a good human being, and if then you ask the question about the courses that you took in high school, 'How did my trigonometry course help me to become a better human being?' an echo answers, 'By gosh, it didn't!' In a certain sense, trigonometry was for me a waste of time." Emotional Literacy Education is the process of learning how to be a good human being. It's growing through learning how to be a good human being. It's learning what goodness is. Not externally or extrinsically, but what is good about being a human being? What qualities are we born with? What skills can we develop that move us toward our own personal good, and also toward the goodness of the society as a whole? What is good is what gets us what we need. What is efficient in providing our needs, that is what is good. Goodness is when we are successful, and the skills that we used to be successful. So Emotional Literacy Education is about acquiring the skills that make us successful in fulfilling our needs. 006 Mark Zimmerman's Experience with Education 8:35 What makes me qualified to talk about education? First, I spent many years in the educational system, and had its experiences. Second, as a child, I was a particularly good self-learner. So I lived in parallel worlds. The education that I was giving myself away from school paralleled the education that I was getting through the system. And by the time I was a junior in high school, I discovered that the twain shall never meet. That what they were teaching me in school was not helping me to become a better human being. It was helping me to be the kind of person that other people wanted me to become. And in the process it was destroying my own innate learning capabilities. And the collision of the two, I, as a student became more and more depressed. Spending my days in high school with courses that I knew were designed just to keep me there. After a certain age, when you learn how to read and write and do arithmetic, you have learned the basic and most important skills that the educational system can teach you. Then education splits off into two paths. Those who are bound for college, and those who are not. Most of education in high school is related to college prep courses. And the other path is vocational. Learning to be a carpenter. Learning to be a plumber. Learning to be an auto mechanic. Which are good skills, but they are extrinsic skills. Meaning that if you do not become an auto mechanic, or a carpenter, or plumber, or an electrician, somebody else will. And they will replace you. In a sense you're not needed, when you acquire those skills, because you can be replaced. They are just training you, enough of you to fill the roles, that are already there. The college-bound students get even less meaningful courses, like algebra, trigonometry, and they seem to just be designed to hold you over, and separate those that can do more complex mental tasks from those that can't. Thus, grading you, so that other people can assess you in your abilities for college related careers. By the time that I got to high school, I found a tremendous degradation in the quality of education. Insofar as it began to teach me skills that I didn't need. And the older I got, and the further into the educational system that I got, the less that I needed the skills that they were trying to teach me in school. To the point where they became meaningless as it related to me. I became so frustrated with the educational system in contrast to my own innate learning skills, which I was desperately trying to hold on to, because they were being destroyed by the conventional education system. Because they were not teaching me intrinsic learning. They were teaching me extrinsic learning. They were teaching me the skills that I needed to learn what they wanted me to know. And that was destroying my innate learning abilities - the ones that I was born with. Because I was not able to exercise them. And the frustration level in me became so great, that I left high-school at the end of my junior year. Not because I didn't want to learn. And now as an adult, and decades later, I can look back and see how learning is a lifelong adventure. And the adventure is growth through experience. It's only when we fail to keep learning, that our lives, where we are, become mundane. Because we keep repeating the same experiences. We can only have new experiences through learning, new perceptions, new ways of looking at the same old problems. Through learning and growth our perception of reality changes. Even if we don't travel. Even if we don't go anywhere. Therefore, it's like traveling, because it helps to make every day new. The educational system failed to teach them how to learn, and how to keep learning. Because education has very selfish motives. It's designed by politicians, who are influenced by corporations. Who then lobby lawmakers to pass laws that force the educational system to benefit the social group that we call corporations. So learning becomes this very narrow use of our abilities. And when that is repeated over and over, year after year, that little narrow part of the mind, which is called associative learning, primarily memorization, becomes strengthened. And all of our other abilities are weakened through a lack of exercise. And the mere learning through memory of repetition and memorizing is so dulling to the mind, so boring, so fruitless in what it produces, that we develop a natural aversion to learning. And this natural aversion, which we acquired in childhood, is carried with us throughout our entire lives. And our greatest, innate, intrinsic quality, the quality to learn, the thing that makes us what we are, our learning abilities, is destroyed in childhood by the educational system. So what Emotional Literacy Education for adults has to overcome is this lack of passion for learning. Emotional Literacy Education is going to awaken your passion once again for learning. It's not about an abstract subject which doesn't relate to you, and which doesn't matter in the end. Emotional Literacy Education will be interesting to you, because it's about you, and it's only about you. And all of the other techniques and tools that are used in the educational process, such as studying and learning about others, is just a tool to learn about yourself. Emotional Literacy Education will be interesting to you, because it is about the most important subject you will ever encounter, and that is yourself. Abraham Maslow said, " 'How did my trigonometry course help me to become a better human being?' An echo answers from inside him, 'By gosh, it didn't!' In a certain sense, trigonometry was for me a waste of time." 007 Home Work: Dictionary Look Up 0:50 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, synonyms that might be helpful for you to look up in the dictionary to get their definition for the word intrinsic are: "inward, internal, true, reality, essential, genuine, inherent, innate, natural, nature and real." A synonym that might be helpful in defining the word extrinsic is "exterior." Lesson 3: What Is Goodness? The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed are examples designed to inspire the student to develop their own unique ideas, language and Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to promote anyone's philosophy. 001 What Is Goodness? 10:39 In a 1997 interview from Mediadome.com®, Jewel Kilcher was asked, "What do you observe in the people you meet?" Jewel replied, "I notice everybody wants love, everybody wants to be known as basically good." "I just live my life, and I want to be a good person. I want to be happy. I want to have peace. I want to feel close to divinity, and those are things we all want." The singer-songwriter, Jewel, is very observant of human nature. She says, "I notice everybody wants love." And according to Maslow, love is one of our basic needs. She says, "Everybody wants to be known as basically good." That's because another one of our basic needs, according to Maslow, is self-esteem. We derive our self-esteem from others, when we're recognized as being good. What our educational system fails to teach us is how to be good. Or, at best, it teaches us a distorted version of what goodness is. Like all definitions that come from society, goodness is defined based upon the social good. What's good for the society. Where that fails is where it ultimately contradicts itself. One group within the society defines goodness one way, as it relates to their group. And then another group within the society defines goodness - as it relates to how it benefits them. And in that process we develop contradictory definitions of goodness, because what benefits one group may actually take away from another group. Therefore, what society tries to teach us is the good that benefits the group. And as it relates to the educational system, it benefits the particular group that's in political power at the time. So our definitions of being good fail us. Because while we think we're being good, as defined by one group; another group is tearing down our self-esteem, by telling us what we're doing is wrong, is bad, is detrimental. And it probably is insomuch as it relates to their group. It simply adds to the confusion of what goodness is. Everybody wants to be known basically as good. But what is good? What is good for the individual is good for all individuals. As if individuality were defined as a group. And we all belong to that group, because we are all by nature individuals - separate human beings. From that perspective defining what is good has a commonality to it. What's good for the individual is that which satisfies their needs. Skills that one develops towards need-fulfillment, and the subsequent success of satisfying a need - is what is basically good for the individual. Because an individual whose needs are not satisfied is a threat to all of us. It's in our thwarted needs that psychopathology, that neurosis develops. And these are detriments to everyone. A person who can satisfy their own needs is a good person. Insomuch as they are not threatening to others. Therefore, the basic satisfaction of needs for the individual creates and fosters the goodness of the society as a whole. It develops health for the society by reducing neurosis and psychopathology within the group. Our scariest encounters in the society come from a group, which shares some neurosis. And the root of all neurosis is the individual who can't satisfy a need. And when this becomes manifested as a group neurosis, it becomes strengthened by the fact it is shared amongst many people. Which can endanger other groups and individuals. The best examples that I can give of group neurosis, that became a detriment to the society, to the individual, to groups within the society, and the world as a whole, was the evolution of the Nazi Party in Germany and Communism under Stalin in Russia. When the individual is not taught how to be good, is unable to fulfil a basic human need in themselves, the frustration of the individual can become a cancerous hatred, as we saw in Adolf Hitler. Or, an out of control paranoia that we saw in Joseph Stalin. When enough people in the society share the same neurosis, they can mass together in groups, and vent their frustration out on their own people - within their own society. They can be strong enough to challenge other nations to draw them into war. Such that we're all made to suffer. What happened in Germany, and what happened in Russia, happened again in Cambodia in the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. It happened in the last decade in Rwanda, where 750,000 people were hacked to death. So this condition didn't end with the Nazis. It didn't end with the death of Stalin. It didn't cease because communism failed as an economic system. Because the condition of man remains exactly the same. There is no education to teach people how to be good. And Jewel Kilcher says, "Everybody wants to be known as basically good." Society always comes from the past. The rules for a social group always come from the past. And up until this time in history, we haven't dealt with an educational system which teaches the student how to be good. We're left with a legacy of being compelled to join social groups and organizations that are fundamentally self-invested, of self-interest, selfish self-interest. Which is designed only to benefit the group to which you belong. That kind of social technology just sets up competition between social groups. In which the game is fighting and war. Whoever wins, wins all. This is the learning pattern that we are molded into. Which is self-contradictory regarding the individual becoming good. When you're forced to participate in a social group, which is essentially not concerned with your needs; and helping you to fulfill your needs, or helping you to develop skills so that you can fulfill your own needs; when the social group is concerned only with fulfilling its own group needs, the needs of the individual are ignored. Through that process of not caring about the needs of the individual, the individual's needs go unfulfilled. They become frustrated. That frustration grows into hatred. And it's almost as if at that point you're now ready to be a part of the group. 002 The Thwarted Needs of the Individual 7:10 I've always wondered, if Adolf Hitler, as a youth, if he had been accepted into the school of art in Vienna in which he applied, if the whole Nazi thing would have never happened? He applied at an art school, and he was not accepted. His basic fundamental need was thwarted. He saw himself as an artist. He wanted to develop his artistic skills. And if he had been able to follow his passion, if he had spent his days in front of a canvas, painting, rather than developing his political acumen, we may never have seen World War II. What Hitler experienced is what we all experience. The frustration of having our needs thwarted, unsatisfied. The pain builds up inside of us. We become bitter, angry, frustrated. And in some people it can evolve into such a level as to become destructive. And in the case of Adolf Hitler, there was such a group frustration in Germany, that he became the embodiment of German poverty, German frustration, German anger. Which was partially the result of the armistice, that was imposed after World War I. I have often wondered, if that one moment in history, would have been changed, if Adolf Hitler had simply been accepted into art school. But we have a society that hates the individual, disregards the needs of the individual. And in its place supplants the needs of the social group - whatever social group. And the need of the social group of the Nazi Party became the destruction of the Jewish race. And this is what I'm defining as group neurosis. Which evolved out of the frustration of the Germans, and became a group neurosis. And was manifested in the destruction of the Jews of Europe, and the war with France and Russia and Poland and Great Britain and the United States. So when the society turns a blind eye to the individual, they fail to recognize the damage that they're doing to themselves. The wrath that is going to come upon them, through the thwarting of the needs. And it happens over and over and over. And some of those people, who are particularly susceptible to neurosis, yet at the same time have a particular skill, as Adolf Hitler did, he was a good speaker. They can use such a skill to create havoc for all of us. What he did was he took his skill, and he combined it with his hatred, and his frustration, and expressed for the German people what they were all feeling, and brought them together as a group into a group neurosis. And through that he caused devastation and destruction to much of humanity. And we have a very similar, yet for which I don't know the exact details of Stalin's neurosis, his paranoia. It still led to the death of 20 million Russians through starvation, labor camps and imprisonment. And in which he continuously threatened the rest of the world with his military and nuclear weapons. That the only way to prevent this kind of social neurosis, which is far more dangerous than the neurosis of the pathology of the individual, the only way to prevent it is we have to care about the needs of the individual. And provide them with an educational system, that shows them how to satisfy their needs. By preventing the build up of frustration in the individual, ultimately, we're preventing the buildup of the frustration within the social group. Who is the most dangerous, because they can generate the most destructive power. So if you want to fix the society, you have to think about fixing the individual. Ignoring the individual, allowing neurosis to build up, frustration to build up within the individual, not giving them a satisfactory life, is a danger to all of us. What I find contradictory in the psychology of the social group, is that they see the individual as the greatest threat to the society. But from this perspective, it's not the individual who's a threat to the society. From this perspective it's the neurotic society which is a threat to itself, to other groups within the society. And the first person that they go after is the weakest person. Because of their neurosis, they go after the weakest in the society first. Just like the Nazis went after the Jews, because they were a minority within their country. The society picking on the weakest first, in its neurosis, goes out to destroy, goes out to conquer, goes out to kill. The biggest threat to society is not the individual. The biggest threat to society is the neurosis of the social group, because it is far stronger than the neurosis of any one single individual. Yet, they're interrelated. If you don't solve the problems of the individual, and their frustration, they will use the social instinct to form groups, which become destructive to the society itself. 003 How We Become Happy 5:28 Jewel Kilcher continues, "I just live my life and I want to be a good person." It is a basic fundamental need of all of us. Because when we are good, we feel good. When we feel good, we do good. When we do good, we're recognized as being good. And when we're recognized as being good, we get self-esteem. And that's what we teach in Emotional Literacy Education. Not a specific dogma about what goodness is, but about a set of skills that teach the student how to satisfy the desires. How to fulfil their needs. How to avoid frustration. How to be fulfilled as a human being. Rather than frustrated and empty, as the result of a society that makes every attempt to get for itself, and accumulate for itself. She continues, "I want to be happy." It's a simple observation. Everybody wants to be happy. And how we become happy is by acquiring a set of skills, that helps us to get what we need. Then, we experience satisfaction. And through the skills themselves, there's a certain sense of happiness. A certain sense of joy that comes with the performance of a skill that gets you what you need. So goodness is not a dogma, or a set of beliefs. You are good if you do this, and you are bad if you do that, never has brought a single human being to any kind of happiness. Because that's associative learning. That's being told by the society. And memorizing what the society tells us. That if we do such and such a good thing, we are good. And that if we do such and such a thing, we are bad. But it fails because the person isn't acquiring the skills to satisfy their needs. Jewel continues, "I want to have peace." Peace is feeling satisfied. For example, when we become hungry, food is the object. We say that we need food. Food is the need, but hunger is the drive. Hunger is the displeasure. Hunger is the annoyance. Hunger is the irritation. That effects us physically, and it affects us emotionally. Have you ever noticed that when you become hungry, which is a physical feeling, emotionally you change. And you become grumpy. You become irritable. So emotions are connected to physiological conditions. And it's skills that we have to acquire, so that we can manage our needs. When we are hungry, we need to eat. And it's a simple, most basic need. But it's an example of when, after you eat, the hunger, the discomfort goes away, and you feel satisfied. And in a sense there is a minutia of peace that goes along with that. A minutia of satisfaction. So these are the skills. These are the goals of Emotional Literacy Education. To teach the skills that help people to satisfy their own needs. Jewel continues, "I want to feel close to divinity, and those are things we all want." Those are things that we all need. Some things that we want, we can actually do without. And what Maslow clearly teaches, what Maslow has discovered, as a scientist, and as a psychologist, is that we all have needs. Things that we can't live without. That if we do live without them, we become neurotic. We become frustrated. We burn inside - seethe, ache. And it builds up in the human psyche. And it seeks an outward expression. And that outward expression maybe alcoholism. It may be suicide. It may be the compulsion to form a neurotic group, who vents its frustration on other people who are weaker than them, like the Nazi Party. It's all connected. So these are things that we all need. 004 Human Education 6:36 In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "If one took a course or picked up a book on the psychology of learning, most of it, in my opinion, would be beside the point - that is, beside the 'humanistic' point. Most of it would present learning as the acquisition of associations, of skills and capacities that are external and not intrinsic to the human character, to the human personality, to the person himself." From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 162, 1st paragraph. The main point that Maslow is trying to make, in the first sentence, is that the current education system is being implemented and taught from a very particular, and in my opinion, a very narrow point of view. And that point of view comes from the society, and how it looks upon the student. And the educational values, for the educational system, comes from a very basic human instinct of selfishness. Because what the society is asking is, "What can the student do for me? What can I make the student become, so that it will benefit me, the society." And Maslow is pointing out, that there are other points of view. Different questions a person can ask from which they will get a different type of educational system. The point of view from which Maslow is approaching the question about education is the humanistic point of view. The root word of humanistic is human - human education. What is it that the human needs to know to survive? Since Maslow concerns himself with survival as the fulfillment of human needs. And since he defines human needs in a hierarchical fashion, where he states that when one need presents itself, then the organism seeks to satisfy that need. And when that need is satisfied, another need emerges. And from this perspective, we have a hierarchical succession of needs. That are also related to our own personal growth and happiness. First, we've satisfied the simpler needs. And then the more complex needs. Which produce greater happiness and satisfaction. Which require greater skill to satisfy or to accomplish. Then, we have a system of needs which is perpetually challenging our growth. And that's what it means to be human. Abraham Maslow wrote, "If one took a course or picked up a book on the psychology of learning, most of it, in my opinion, would be beside the point - that is, beside the 'humanistic' point." From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, a dictionary definition for the word 'humanism' is "A system of thought that centers on human beings and their values, capacities and worth." "Humanism," the dictionary says, "concerns with the interests, needs and welfare of human beings." There are two fundamental ways to define what a human is. One way is to define a human in their social context. What group they belong to. What culture they belong to. What religion they belong to. The other way, to define a human being, is simply to ask the question, "What is a human being?" And when we ask that question, we find out that the socialization of the human is just one aspect of the human being. The way education is currently setup, it teaches that the human is a part of the society, rather than the other way around. In which being a social creature is only a part of being human. So all education is directed towards socialization - to make the person conform to the society. Humanism is a system of thought that centers on the human being, as an individual; and what capacities, what abilities, what values are innate inside them. There was a time in history when people believed that the sun revolved around the Earth. And it was a fallacy based upon a lack of knowledge. Education is a system that's based upon the false idea that the individual revolves around the society. That the individual doesn't matter. What's important is the society. What's insignificant, what is replaceable by birth, and through education, is the individual. 005 Associative Learning Is Extrinsic Education 7:48 Maslow states, "...most of it...would present learning as the acquisition of associations, of skills and capacities that are external and not intrinsic to the human character, to the human personality, to the person himself." Most of it, the educational system, presents learning as the acquisition of associations. Which is not a way of acquiring knowledge. Knowledge is based upon experience. Most of current education today is based upon the memorization of facts, and those facts are remembered by a process of association. For the most part, the acquisition of information by association provides us with facts. That we memorize and soon forget. Spending time memorizing these things, that we don't use and that we forget; because it's just a memory that's not used. And when memories aren't used, they're lost. What you have is wasted time, wasted energy. Time that could have been spent growing. Learning is wasted, because then we later forget those facts. Because those facts were useless, and didn't provide us with any benefit. He continues, "Most of it would present learning as the acquisition of associations, of skills and capacities that are external and not intrinsic to the human character...." The skills that we are taught in school are taught to us to benefit the society. That's their primary function. As a secondary result, it benefits the individual. How that is seen clearly - is that if you pursue a vocation, and acquire a skill, that society sees as valueless to it, then they will make sure, that skill that you have, has no benefit to you. So they're not concerned about your happiness, your health, or your mental well-being. The society is largely driven by fear. It tries to teach the individual the things that will benefit it. And that will keep it alive, even if those things that are keeping the society alive are detrimental to the health, to the safety and the well-being of the individual. For example, the mining, the manufacturing, the distribution, the creation of asbestos products, this benefited the group. This benefited the corporations who made a profit from asbestos. Even though they knew it was detrimental to the worker, and to the end user of that product. Yet, the profit motive is always the justification that it is benefiting the group, if it makes a profit. And that is enough of a value to the society, to the group, to the corporation, to justify the loss of a few workers. Or, the ill health of a few workers, or a lot of workers, or, all of the workers. Profit supersedes individual safety, individual health and well-being. In that sense one could say exactly how the profit motive is used. And the way in which the profit motive is used - is the justification and the validation of the health of the group, that we call the corporation. If it fits, and if it matches that criteria, then all other criteria are disregarded. And this is the power group within the society, that sets the educational goals. So they will teach you skills, that are designed to benefit their particular group, the health of the group, the safety of the group. But when it comes down to the individual's safety, the individual's health, it's disregarded as long as their criteria of profit is met. So not only are the skills that we're taught external to us, that they don't represent our nature. They represent the nature of the external society or group and its safety, and its welfare. So what they teach us is non-essential, not intrinsic, not of our nature. It's certainly not intrinsic to human nature, or human character, or human personality, or to the person himself, Maslow says. Humanism, the dictionary says, "Concerns with the interests, needs and welfare of human beings." Emotional Literacy Education is looking at education from a different perspective. And that perspective is the health and the welfare of the human being. From the point of view of asking a very simple question, and that is, "What does this particular human being need to survive? What do they need to be satisfied? What do they need to have happiness?" And from that perspective, needs become an important part of education. The skills that people need to acquire, to fulfil their own needs, becomes a major focus of Emotional Literacy Education. All physiological needs, safety needs, relationship needs, self-esteem needs, self-actualization needs - are all required for the welfare of the human being. 006 An Outline of Mankind's Problems 7:49 In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "Such a goal involves very serious shifts in what we would teach in a course in the psychology of learning. It is not going to be a matter of associative learning. Associative learning in general is certainly useful, extremely useful for learning things that are of no real consequence, or for learning means - techniques which are after all interchangeable....It is important and useful, especially in a technological society. But in terms of becoming a better person, in terms of self-development and self-fulfillment, or in terms of 'becoming fully human,' the greatest learning experiences are very different." From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 163, 2nd paragraph. It is obvious from an analysis of society, and its unsolvable problems, its unsolved problems, that society itself needs a very serious shift. As human population expands, we multiply the unsolved problems. Which range from poverty to nuclear weapons. Most of the world, and its people, live in poverty. And now even the most impoverished nations are acquiring nuclear weapons. The society has tried to solve its problems through the old methods of politics, through corporate structures, through education, and through psychology - among others. What we've learned is that our problems are growing - not diminishing. We're not solving our problems through these methods. We seem to be increasing them. There is a lack of restraint on the part of politicians, corporations, the military establishment, and its pursuit of the most destructive weapons that science and imagination can provide. In the last century we only upped the ante on our problems. Before the last century, we didn't have to face nuclear weapons. We didn't have to face the myriad of drug addictions. And now we have new addictions including entertainment through television. It has become a mass addiction. Because it distracts us from ourselves. It keeps us occupied. It keeps us from growing. It keeps us from learning, when we use it as a substitute for growth - for learning. And corporations are very clever in creating designer foods. Which Western culture has become addicted to. And its led to diabetes and the health problems caused by obesity. The majority of Americans now are overweight. These are problems that didn't exist in the century before. And they are problems which are more profound, and more difficult to solve, than the ones we had in the previous century. And I would like to add, as one of the major problems, mankind's great reproductive capacity. And how its straining resources, overpopulating the earth. And when you combine this overpopulation with Western culture; and the consumption of natural resources, and the burning of fossil fuels - to produce those products, you have a depletion of the natural resources, and a destruction of the environment through over fishing, through mass cultivation, through logging. American rivers are all polluted. The greatest fresh water resource in the world, the Great Lakes, they're all polluted. The air is polluted. The ground is polluted. The very foundation of our survival is threatened by our own uncontrolled emotions. Which are a drive for happiness, but have gotten diverted into uncontrolled and unrestricted and undisciplined human behavior. Which seems to be bent on a self-destruct mode. These things are accelerating. As nations like India and China begin to adopt the ways of Western culture. Which science already knows, that if China and/or India, consumes as much fossil fuel, and drives as many cars - as a ratio of the American population does, it will be more than this planet can handle. From an environmental perspective we know all these things. It's convenient for some politicians, who represent the corporations; who are doing the polluting, who are acting irresponsibly, who don't have any self-discipline, whose only concern is profit - to deny problems exist. It's convenient for them to say there's no global warming. It's convenient for them to deny the destruction of the planet as a whole, because they're the ones responsible for doing it. And they take no responsibility. And the easiest way is to deny. The ultimate irony here is that it's not what we do - that is becoming such a threat to humanity, but rather it's how we do it. It's the undisciplined way in which we do it. It's a lack in our ability to control our own emotions, our own selfishness, our own greed. It's not what we do. It's how we do it in an unrestrained, uncaring, unknowing way. 007 Social Neurosis and Associative Learning 16:00 Abraham Maslow wrote, "Such a goal involves very serious shifts in what we would teach in a course in the psychology of learning." Maslow believed in education. He came to understand that psychology was treating the sick, who were made sick by the society. And when people become neurotic, psychology can ease their neurosis. But it's very difficult to erase the habits learned in childhood and adolescence and young adulthood. Because these are the formative years. And once those neurological networks are setup, it's extremely difficult to change them. They become patterns of behavior, patterns of emotion, patterns of thought, that have a physical counterpart in the brain. A physical structure that has to be changed - a rewiring of the neurological networks of the brain. This is extremely difficult to change in adults. Because it's somewhat painful to change patterns, which have arisen as the result of our thwarted needs. Of which the society itself is responsible. So the cause of neurosis is the society, because it makes no effort to fulfill the needs of children. It makes a half-hearted attempt at filling the needs of children. On the radar screen of society, children are the smallest blip. And the society of adults is the largest blip. And these adults take care of their own needs at the expense of the weakest in the society, at the expense of children. And by doing so, setup a condition in which these children, into adolescence and into adulthood, are unable to satisfy their needs. And therefore, they become neurotic. Dependent upon alcohol, drugs, television and cigarettes in an effort to find happiness. To experience a little pleasure which society thwarts. It becomes a vicious circle of the adults ignoring children, and satisfying themselves. And what you have is a population of children who don't know how to satisfy their needs. Because they are not educated in need-fulfillment. And when this group of children, who do not know how to satisfy their needs become adults, out of their neurosis in an unskilled attempt to satisfy their needs, they repeat what their parents did. Which is to ignore the needs of children - in a desperate effort to fulfill their own needs. So you create a vicious cycle. Maslow uses the word very serious shifts in what we would teach in a course in the psychology of learning. Maslow continues, "It is not going to be a matter of associative learning." It has to be something totally different in the field of education, than we have known in the past. And he's making a declarative statement. Associative learning, the normal educational process, that we go through, doesn't fulfill the needs of man, except for food, clothing and shelter. But that's only successful in Western culture. It doesn't solve the mass poverty in which the rest of the world is not even able to satisfy their most basic needs, their physiological needs. The system that corporations have developed is not very successful in either lifting up the Third World in their need-fulfillment of food, clothing and shelter. Nor is it fulfilling the needs of the whole human in the Western culture. No matter how many billions of dollars we spend on the military, and on the police, our safety needs are still not met. We fear crime. We fear terrorism. We fear the Russians' own lack of control over their nuclear arsenal. We fear a burgeoning China. We fear rouge states, like North Korea in their acquisition of nuclear weapons. So Western culture, though for a small percentage of the world's population, satisfies the basic physiological needs. Which is the lowest level of our human nature. The second level, our safety needs, it doesn't even solve that problem. Money does not solve our safety needs. The only thing that's going to solve our safety needs, if we create human beings which don't threaten each other. So Maslow says it's not going to be a matter of associative learning. He continues, "Associative learning in general is certainly useful extremely useful for learning things that are of no real consequence." Why does he say, "of no real consequence?" It's because if our goal is to be safe, what we're learning in school, and what ultimately becomes the social structure, does not fulfil that need. We are still frightened. And politicians who panic, who are afraid themselves, instill fear in the rest of the population. So I can state that associative learning sets up a culture in which we have skills, that help us to satisfy the needs for food, clothing and shelter. But it does nothing to pacify our fear. Because we are threatened by each other. 11,000 Americans, every year, are murdered by handguns. It's the highest rate of murder by handguns in the entire world. Our hostility toward one another, our mistrust of each other, our fear of each other cannot be solved by putting more policemen on the street, or spending more money on the military. Those do not address the basic, fundamental cause of our fear. Which is a condition. Which we setup for ourselves. We're not threatened by lions or wild animals. We're threatened by each other. If we simply learned how not to be threatening to each other, there would be no need for fear. We cause fear in each other. So associative learning is of no real consequence beyond the satisfaction of food, clothing and shelter - as needs of the human condition. The second need in the hierarchy of needs, invented by Maslow, is the safety needs. And associative learning does not create a culture which feels safe with itself. Rather it builds large social groups, which act like bullies. And whose primary function is intimidation. We can never be safe, as an emotion, as a feeling of safety, through associative learning, because it simply does not address the problems. Maslow says that, "Associative learning is extremely useful for learning means, techniques which are after all interchangeable." As I've stated, the society functions like a machine, and the human being is treated like a cog in the machine. And the child, the student, is formed through associative learning. Molded and shaped into a type of cog, into a type of gear that fits someplace into the machine. And the society treats that person like a thing, like an object, like a tool, like a device. And all tools, all devices, all gears can be replaced. We treat other human beings as replaceable, as not unique, as not individual. We setup the society so that people are replaceable. We setup the society, so that a person has no real value beyond how they fit into the machine. And when you no longer fit, or when they change the machine, they simply discard you. Just the very notion that you're treated as a part in a machine, that when you wear out, you can be replaced by an identical part. That's how associative learning molds people into what to become. Just a part in a bin somewhere, that can be pulled out from a collection of similar parts, and placed into the machine, easily replaced. They just order a new part. So we learn techniques which are after all interchangeable. Maslow says. "It is important and useful especially in a technological society." It is a society which is only concerned with the machine, with the mechanism, producing parts out of human beings to fit into the technological machine. Computers are just machines. Every part of our technological society is just a machine. From the abacus to the geared clock to the steam engine to the first computers - are just all machines. The computer on your desktop may not look like a machine, but it is. It's just the new machine, the more consolidated machine. Where the parts are smaller. And the human beings are taught skills which fit us into the technology of how to use these machines. And they have improved our lives, but on such a low level that we then end up existing at. Our belies are full. We get enough water, and we have a roof over our heads. But deep down we feel the emptiness of our other needs not being met; our safety needs, our relationship and love needs, our self-esteem needs and our self-actualization needs. Maslow says, "It is important and useful especially in a technological society." And the problem with the technological society is that it has no self-discipline. It has no control over its own technology. The United States was unable to control the nuclear weapon that it created. Russia had it within five years. Amoral science is learning how to clone human beings. Where is the self-discipline here. And knowing when to stop. And knowing the consequences of our own actions. It reminds me that science has recently discovered, psychology, that adolescent teenagers behave the way they do, because the part of the brain that processes the consequences of actions is yet not developed. That's why it's easy to send a teenager to war, because they don't see the consequences of war. And it seems this lack of development in understanding consequences has also become part of our culture. In which we fail to assess the consequences of our own actions. And we create more problems for ourselves. And that's what I mean when I referred to an undisciplined society. It either doesn't care about the consequences when it knows them, i.e. the tobacco industry. Or, it simply doesn't process the future consequences of a particular action, as a failure of the development of the human mind. And we all pay the price of that. Because we all suffer the consequences of our own actions. 008 Self-Development and Self-Fulfillment 5:30 Maslow continues, "But in terms of becoming a better person, in terms of self-development, and self-fulfillment, or in terms of becoming fully human, the greatest learning experiences are very different." Emotional Literacy Education is an educational system that helps a person to become a better person, through self-development. There's only one way to become a better human being, and that's through personal growth and self-fulfillment. We are fulfilled, as human beings, when our needs are satisfied. The body, the emotions of the mind, provide a natural state of discomfort. Which drives us to fulfill our needs, like hunger and thirst, feeling cold or too hot. The very word self-fulfillment implies satisfaction. And as long as we're in a state of hunger, thirst, fear, low self-esteem, we're simply not fulfilled, not satisfied, not happy. Emotional Literacy Education teaches self-fulfillment through the education in skills on how to satisfy needs. Because when our needs are satisfied, we feel fulfillment. We feel satisfaction. We feel comfort. We feel peace of mind. Human need is tremendously complex. Emotional Literacy Education is a system of educating the student about their needs, and how to fulfil them. And nature provides this, as our growth mechanism. The higher the happiness, the more complex the need-fulfillment. For example, we are already satisfying in Western culture basic food, clothing and shelter; basic physiological needs of hunger, thirst, maintaining homeostasis in bodily temperature, in nutrition. But as a matter of becoming fully human, there is much to learn through an education system that specifically addresses self-development and self fulfillment. Becoming fully human is not a static place that a person reaches. The operative word here is 'becoming.' We are forever becoming more fully human. And the path is need-fulfillment, because needs are arranged in a hierarchy of complexity - with the simplest needs of the body manifesting themselves first through hunger, through thirst, through sexual arousal. All are very much animalistic in nature. In that we share these same feelings of being cold, being thirsty, being hungry with other animals. And beyond that there is a host of needs. In Maslow's discovery a hierarchy of needs, which represent our complex nature. Which gives us the ability that other animals don't have. Which is development and growth into a more complex form with greater intelligence, with understanding and wisdom, with compassion and with an ability to fulfill those needs; when they are presented to our bodies, our minds, our emotions, our thoughts. We are forever becoming fully human. And as we become more fully human, we become less like animals and more like ourselves, like our true nature. Maslow continues, "The greatest learning experiences are very different." And what he means by that is that they are different from associative learning. They are different from the normal educational process which we've all suffered through. Lesson 4: The Human Soul The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed are examples designed to inspire the student to develop their own unique ideas, language and Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to promote anyone's philosophy. 001 The Human Soul 16:43 In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "We might almost say that these extensive books on the psychology of learning are of no consequence, at least to the human center, to the human soul, to the human essence." From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 162, 1st paragraph. Psychology, education and science fail to recognize that we have a human center, a human nature that makes us what we are. By failing to recognize the most fundamental foundation of our existence, systems of thought, whether it's science or education or psychology, fail to provide the most fundamental building blocks of learning. If we exclude what we are from education, if we exclude our nature from psychology, if we fail to discover through science our human center, we begin the educational process, the scientific process, the psychological process - in a kind of human ignorance. Which misses the fundamental point. Which fails to educate our most basic reasons for existing. Maslow said, "We might almost say that these extensive books on the psychology of learning are of no consequence, at least to the human center, to the human soul, to the human essence." It's like teaching the biology of the human through a description of just their arms and legs. How is it possible to explain the human body if we miss its trunk, its heart, its liver, its lungs? What you end up with, in that kind of medical knowledge, is a complete failure of medical knowledge in its description of what the problems are; and what the solutions are. Because the problems of the body are not found in the limbs. Human beings have a center. That center can be described in many different ways. One way to describe the center is the declaration of its nature. What are the qualities of the human center? How are those qualities interacting with its environment? Without a basic description of that interaction, it becomes impossible to draw a complete enough picture of both human mental illness and mental health. This human center is so important that without it the body simply doesn't function. Therefore, all bodily functions interact with it; our emotions, how fast our hearts beat, our thoughts. To deny the human center is like explaining to someone an automobile and its motion without a description or knowledge of its engine. It sets up systems of knowledge which fail in their most basic function. Which is to educate about what is. It seems to me that the denial of the human soul, as a social phenomenon, not the fact that we pay homage to the human soul in religion. Because somehow that doesn't translate into politics or education or science. It seems to me that this denial within the society serves the corporate purpose. Because if a human being was significant, because they had a soul, they would have to be treated differently. In exactly the same way that African-Americans were labeled inhuman, and therefore we could treat them like animals. So it seems that this corporate denial of the human soul serves the purpose of the corporate value system. Denying the humanity of the individual, denying their significance, denying their nature allows corporations to treat human beings as animals - as things. That are nothing but replaceable bodies. How the concept of a human soul effects education is very profound. It becomes the focus of education. It steals the glory of the society that believes itself the essential, the center, the most important thing in the universe. The human soul is so significant in its nature, it surpasses the corporate value system, all social and group value systems, because its reality is more important and more significant than any social beliefs system or structure. It is a thing of nature, and has been around longer than our social values; longer than our corporate structures. Yet, we have known since the beginning of man, that the human being has a soul. When it's not convenient to recognize the human soul by the society, it's simply forgotten. Forgotten in the educational system. Forgotten in science. Forgotten in politics. It's simply convenient. Because the beatitude, the glory, the magnificence of the human soul far outshines any social group. So social groups choose not to recognize it. Choose not to give it significance. Emotional Literacy Education explains that we have a human soul and its significance. And it is of primary importance to fulfilling one of mankind's most basic needs, self-esteem. Without recognizing your soul, you gladly turnover control of your life to the society. Because it has hypnotized man into believing that the significance belongs to the group and its belief systems, rather than that the most significant thing that we can conceive is our own human soul. And it's from the value that we give to the soul that we derive our self-esteem. It's through the soul that we have a relationship with the rest of the universe. It's through the recognition of the soul that we recognize that the universe has a soul. And that our soul has a relationship to the universe and its soul. Society wants you to only remember society. It wants you to forget about the bigger picture - about man's relationship to himself. And therefore, mankind's relationship to the soul of the universe. That's where we derive our self-esteem. Knowing its relationship to the whole. That relationship is bigger than any society. More powerful than any group. Longer-lasting than any social organization. If mankind has an eternity, it's not going to come from the social group. It's not going to come from its belief systems. It's not going to come from a paycheck. It's not going to come from the corporate value system. If the human soul has eternity, it's only possible source is the soul. Such a great power to have eternal qualities solves our safety needs, because then there's nothing to fear. The soul's relationship to life being of an eternal nature is the only knowledge that can erase our fear. Because ultimately all fear is related to death. On Maslow's scale of his hierarchy of needs, safety is number two; first, physiological needs, then safety needs. Without discovering the eternal quality of your soul, you cannot satisfy your safety needs. And the only way that you're going to recognize this is through growth. And the only way to achieve growth is through intuitive learning, not associative learning. Not indoctrination into a culture, into a society that makes you forget you have a soul. But into an educational system, which teaches you not only that you have a soul, but helps you to discover its essence. Not give you facts or information about your soul, which is absolutely worthless, because you can't fool your fear. It's not going to succumb to substitute information that only resides in your memory. Which is a small part of your brain. Which will never satisfy your doubt. But through growth and experience and the energy that your soul accumulates, it will make itself manifest to you. And through your experience, you can gain knowledge of the eternal qualities of your soul, the eternal qualities of the universe. The second need that knowledge of the soul brings with it is a clarification of Maslow's love needs, relationship needs. If society is constantly confusing you about relationships, what are your fundamental relationships, you can never find satisfaction. The social relationship is a forever changing landscape. Like a desert of sand, it keeps shifting. Because it doesn't have any foundation in the most significant points of our human existence. Politics, for example, where have they settled on any issue? It just keeps changing, because it has no center. It has no soul, because the politicians have no knowledge of their soul - of their essence, of the soul's relationship to the whole. Maslow's third need in his hierarchy, which is the love needs, the relationship needs, also needs the requirement, the knowledge, the recognition that you have a soul. Once you have a soul, what is your primary relationship? In a transitory world, in a world of birth and death, your primary relationship has to be with the whole. No matter what name you give that, by its very nature, all human relationships are transitory. Because we all die. There has to be something in us that doesn't die. Something that relates to the eternal nature of the universe. And that reveals a kind of love that comes from the whole. That strengthens, that supports and that satisfies this need for a relationship, which gives us the highest reward. Which is an eternal nature. It is not possible to create an intrinsic educational system without its foundation, without the fundamentals. There are some things which simply cannot be explained about our emotions, about our minds, and how they work, without a good working theory of what role the soul plays in the mind. It's too much like explaining the circulatory system without mentioning the heart. I've decided to include the most essential part of our human nature in Emotional Literacy Education. And the psychology of Maslow supports that. 002 The Self-Actualization of the Person 16:09 In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "Generated by this new humanistic philosophy is also a new conception of learning, of teaching, and of education. Stated simply, such a concept holds that the function of education, the goal of education - the human goal, the humanistic goal, the goal so far as human beings are concerned - is ultimately the 'self-actualization' of a person, the becoming fully human, the development of the fullest height that the human species can stand up to or that the particular individual can come to. In a less technical way, it is helping the person to become the best that he is able to become." From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, pages 162 through 163, 2nd paragraph. Emotional Literacy Education is the education of the student as it relates to themselves. That we are human. And that there is a particular knowledge that relates to being human, which we all lack. Science diverts our attention away from knowledge of our own humanness. By studying stars, plants, cells, atoms, everything but what it means to be simply human. And if we were to discover what it means to be human, as the center of all knowledge, of all education, in it we would find knowledge about atoms and molecules and cells and biology; about the environment, about the biosphere, about the sun, about the solar system. With that knowledge we can see our relationship to those things. And the relationship that those things have to us. Which is significant because then it shows the whole, rather than these unrelated scattered parts. Like the hub of a wheel with spokes, it gives us a beginning point of which we can see ourselves in the picture - of the larger picture. As Carl Sagan said our biology is made from the ashes of the death of stars. There's a relationship between us and the rest of the universe. And seeing, understanding that relationship gives us the complete picture. Where studying a cell in biology, just for the sake of studying the cell, doesn't relate to our humanity. Or, studying the stars, just as they relate to the planets or matter or galaxies, doesn't clue us in on our purpose. Or, how exactly we fit into the scheme of nature. The study of human nature is essential to removing human confusion, human ignorance. Maslow states, "...such a concept holds that the function of education, the goal of education - the human goal, the humanistic goal, the goal so far as human beings are concerned - is ultimately the 'self-actualization' of the person..." On Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the first need that needs to be satisfied is the physiological needs; second, the safety needs; third, the love and relationship needs; fourth, the self-esteem needs; and fifth, the self-actualization needs. He is describing an educational system that is complete. That strives to complete the human being, so that the human being experiences the fullness of what it means to be a human being. We are a potentiality, rather than an actuality. And to reach our full potential, we have to make an effort to actualize it - to make it real. We have to make an effort to grow. And the way we grow is through learning. And learning has two branches, dysfunctional learning and functional learning. Dysfunctional learning, by definition, is a learning process that we go through in which we never reach our potential. Functional learning is a type of education, and a learning process of the student that helps them to reach their full potential. Anything less than that will leave a person unsatisfied, unfulfilled. By our nature the potential is there. And we sense it. It communicates to us. It makes its presence known in our dissatisfactions - in our miseries, in our depressions. In one sense it's a burden, but in another sense it's a blessing, because it's not given to most of the other animal species. Their potentiality is fixed at birth. A lion cub has only one path, one course, one thing to fulfil. And that is to become a lion. Its fullness will only ever reach becoming a lion. Where a human being has this tremendous growth potential through its massive brain. That when structured properly can produce tremendous intellectual, emotional and spiritual heights. That we have all heard rumors about. Down through history great men and women who have achieved a process of the transformation of potential into actuality, reality. So Maslow leaves the last need in his hierarchy open ended. He gives a few clues about what it means to fulfil the self-actualization needs. And yet, leaves open even greater possibilities of what a human being can become. And the truth is we don't know the limit of what a human being can become. It seems as if we can always become more. And this infinite potential, when it's denied, causes the mind, the soul to whither. To remain unfulfilled, incomplete. And as a result, mankind tends to act more like the animals, than like himself. Maslow says, "...this new learning, teaching and education - is ultimately the 'self-actualization' of a person, the becoming fully human, the development of the fullest height that the human species can stand up to or that the particular individual can come to...." Emotional Literacy Education is not about a particular person reaching a particular height. It's about taking each individual person and allowing them to become the height that they can become. Human beings are by nature different and unique from one another. And we all have different strengths and weaknesses. Growth itself is a branching of becoming what we're strongest in. And allowing someone else in the society to help us in the areas that we are weak. That's the benefit of a social structure. That we don't have to be everything. We cannot be every strength that humanity can become. And there is human enjoyment in listening, and there is human satisfaction in sharing our strengths with others. And there is human satisfaction in allowing others to fulfill part of our needs. Mankind is not really a group of separate people. The way mankind is structured biologically and socially - is that together mankind is a whole. Any one person unto himself or herself is not complete. We are complete as we join together. And that's been both our greatest weakness and our greatest strength. Maslow continues, "In a less technical way, it is helping the person to become the best that he is able to become." Emotional Literacy Education is intuitive. Associative learning, the normal educational processes, the colleges, the universities, the society is contra-intuitive. It fails to recognize what we do to each other by our emotions. How they structure the society into a hierarchy. And this very emotional social structure hinders people from becoming the best possible person that they can become. Because when someone becomes better at what they do, they are a threat in a competitive society, like job advancement. So those in power, those in control, those in established positions make the contra-intuitive effort to suppress human growth, human potential. And they actually prevent people from becoming the best that they can possibly become. That becomes the goal of the good society. What more can you do for your children? What more can you do for your fellow human than to help them to become the best that they can become? What other purpose is there? By taking the other route, society sets up a situation in which it becomes the bad society, the bullying society, the domineering society, the controlling society, the repressive society. The society that talks about freedom, but its behavior is to limit, as much as possible, human freedom, human development. And it's contra-intuitive. Society hurts itself. Then no member of the society can become the best that they can become. The people who are repressed from becoming their full potential, get into positions of power; corporate, political, social. Then, they behave in exactly the same way. And they work to limit the young. Those developing, because they see them as the greatest threat to their jobs, to their social and political positions. So it's contra-intuitive, because the good society makes an effort to make everybody their best. Then everybody has an opportunity to be their best. In the current society no one has an opportunity to become their best. And in that sense alone, it's a group neurosis. We have emotions, like jealousy, that act against someone who might threaten, who might become better, who might develop. Take our job, our wife or husband, replace us. But this constant battlement is self-defeating. Because in exactly the same way that we work to prevent people from becoming the best that they can become, the whole society could work, so that everybody can become the best that they can become. That's intuitive. That's common-sense. 003 The Neurotic Education System 8:06 In a 1997 interview from Mediadome.com®, Jewel Kilcher said, "We have media telling us how poorly we're always doing. How raping and pillaging and evil we all are. And on top of that, we have parents who are quite often damaging. I don't say that as a judgment. It's only because they've been damaged. And on top of that, we have teachers who are underpaid and uninspired and thus uninspiring. "So what are we given? We're also given, my generation, the disillusionment of our parents. We're too young to be disillusioned. It's the people that had the dream in the '60s that wasn't manifested. They became disillusioned. And we're raised with their hopelessness, in some degrees, and their materialism. "So then, on top of that, we don't have any spiritual leaders. We don't trust religion. We don't trust politicians, and we're given drugs and sex and television to pacify us. So it's very understandable where kids are at. It's not a big mystery that we're not taught about our spirits or how to behave. "I was never taught about my emotions. How to understand what I was feeling? How to understand the affect of other people on me emotionally, and what that made me create in my relationships? We're not taught that kind of thing at all and we should be, because that's human life, that's raising children, that's the foundation, the fabric of what we are. And it's also what the greatest thinkers understood well." I'm including this quote from singer-songwriter Jewel Kilcher, because it came when she was still very young. When she gave this interview, she was only 23 years old, and still very close to the educational process, the educational system. She's reflecting on that system, and she's remembering what it lacked. What she felt was missing in the educational system for her personally. She begins, "We have media telling us how poorly we're always doing. how raping and pillaging and evil we all are." Not only is the media, which is a reflection of our behaviors', and the events in our lives, telling us how bad, how evil we are, so does every part of the social system. Media is just a reflection of a system that's degrading of the human condition - both physically, spiritually and emotionally. And our religions are negative. And they paint a picture of a negative image of what it means to be a human being; thus, from birth eroding our self-esteem. The educational system is based primarily on punishment. On separating out the good student from the bad student. Categorizing them, labeling them - informing their emotions how lousy of a person they are through the grading system. Through this obsession with testing. Which has now become the peak of the neurosis of the educational system. Because not only do we have our normal tests; spelling and reading - after a particular lesson, now we have these imposed state standardized tests; proposed national standardized tests. Which are of no benefit to the child. They degrade the child. They actually inform the politicians who should be retained and punished for poor performance. In a system that never works on self-esteem. It only works on pushing people down. It doesn't work to lift people up. It says, "Oh, good you got A's! You got B's! You're satisfactory." And the people who got F's, C's and D's are considered lazy, or stupid or anti-social. So the system is not designed to lift people up. The system is clearly designed to separate people out by pushing them down. By making them feel inferior. By making them feel stupid. By making them feel inhuman. By making them feel like failures. Jewel continues, "We have parents who are quite often damaging. I don't say that as a judgment. It's only because they've been damaged." And are our parents damaged? Of course they're damaged. They're damaged from a legacy that's handed down from one generation to the next generation. Then our parents pass that emotional damage on to us, our generation. And then when we have children, we pass that emotional, intellectual damage on to our children. It's a perpetual cycle. So we really can't blame our parents for the damage that they've inflicted on us. They were damaged. They did what they knew. At some point in history we have to recognize how damaging we are to one another, and especially the most vulnerable among us, our children. And make a concerted effort to repair our damage, so that we do not pass it on to our children. Jewel goes on to say, "We have teachers who are underpaid and uninspired." If you were a part of an educational system that was demeaning to children, that was underpaid and in which there is a current effort by the politicians to destroy it, you would feel uninspired too. 004 The Disillusionment of Another Generation 8:02 She continues, "We're also given, my generation, the disillusionment of our parents. We're too young to be disillusioned." Every generation begins with hope and every generation ends in disillusionment. The hope that we're given, The American dream of freedom, when we become adults, we realize was false. Because as long as we do not have financial freedom, and our bodies are controlled by corporations; where we're going to go; what we're going to do; what we're going to say; how we're going to think, we are in bondage - all of us to the structure. And each generation has hope that it won't fall victim to the corruption of the society. But every generation finds that unless you conform to a corrupt system, you will not have any of your needs met. At least if you conform, you'll have food, clothing and shelter. And this destroys hope in each generation. It grows cynicism, and every generation becomes cynical, becomes jaded, becomes hopeless. She continues, "It's the people that had the dream in the '60s that wasn't manifested, they became disillusioned. And we are raised with their hopelessness, in some degrees, and their materialism." The only hope this society offers is the hope of materialism. When our dreams are replaced with reality, there's nothing left but materialism. That's the structure of the society. That's what it works toward. That's what it makes you become. But I would like to say about my generation, those who lived through the '60s, that they made a difference. Blacks, African-Americans helped the rest of the nation seek freedom. They inspired the rest of us. The civil rights movement was the spark that started the flame of the women's movement, the environmental movement, the intellectual movement. Which for the first time began to question the materialism of this country. And to loosen its bonds on all of us. By questioning its true value. Its true meaning. The generation of the '60s transformed music into a kind of freedom. That we never had before. It was the youth who served in Vietnam bravely, that helped all of us to learn the true nature of war, the horror of war, the lies of war. It was those who sacrificed that taught us more than any other generation of warriors. Our generation, those who lived through the '60s, also learned of the lying nature of politics. Nixon was a liar, a pathological liar. Jewel continues, "So then on top of that, we don't have any spiritual leaders. We don't trust religion. We don't trust politicians. And we're given drugs and sex and television to pacify us." We don't trust politicians, because they're liars. And at least that information is being passed down to our children. Instead of naively believing everything that they tell us. So it's an improvement. Without recognition of the problem of the neurosis' of the society, there's no opportunity to make a healthy society. So far from being disillusioned by the '60s, it was an awakening from a deep slumber, a deep fantasy of the Leave It to Beaver world that our generation was being taught by their parents. I'd rather live with an ugly truth than a beautiful lie. And why don't we trust religion? Jim Bakker comes to mind. Jimmy Swaggart comes to mind. Fraud comes to mind. Saying one thing and doing another comes to mind. And why don't we trust religion? Ask Galileo. And now religion, which is disguising itself as politics, is attempting to take control of our country. Certain persons within this country are using religion to advance their political ends. So it's not religion at all. It's politics disguised as religion. It's a power grab by narrow minded religious fanatics. Who want to impose their Leave It to Beaver world on the rest of us. And if this generation is not diligent, and doesn't guard itself from this neurosis, we will all adopt it. We will become it. There will be no separation of church and state. In the town I came from, near the high school, there was a bridge that crossed a river to a park. And on that bridge, my graduating class, though I never graduated high-school, wrote in paint on that bridge their motto, their hope for their generation. It said in graffiti, "Love plus Hope, plus Peace of Mind, equals the class of '79." And yes many from my generation became lost in the materialism of the society. But there were many others; musicians, artists, college professors - just people who refuse to give up their dreams. Jewel continues, "So it's very understandable where kids are at. It's not a big mystery. That we're not taught about our spirits, or how to behave." As I said that is intentionally left out - about knowledge of your spirit. Because you are easily manipulated, when you cannot find yourself. When you have no center. 005 I Was Never Taught about My Emotions Part 1 8:35 Jewel continues, "I was never taught about my emotions." The thing that I carry with me all the time, my emotions, are unimportant to the society. And therefore they're not included in the educational system. And Jewel is recognizing what happened. How could they have missed that? For her it was just simple common-sense. How could they have not taught me about my emotions? How could they not have recognized that I had emotions? She continues, "I was never taught about my emotions. How to understand what I was feeling? How to understand the affect of other people on me emotionally, and what that made me create in my relationships?" She's just saying I wish that they would have taught me about my emotions in school. That's all she's saying. She says I wish they taught me how to understand my emotions in school. She's recognizing something missing in herself, an inability to understand her emotions. And that's exactly what Emotional Literacy Education will correct. Because it is the study of human emotion. Jewel Kilcher continues, "I was never taught about my emotions. How to understand what I was feeling? How to understand the affect of other people on me emotionally, and what that made me create in my relationships? We're not taught that kind of thing at all, and we should be. Because that's human life. That's raising children. That's the foundation, the fabric of what we are. And it's also what the greatest thinkers understood well." Jewel says, "That's the foundation, the fabric of what we are." The reason that it's the foundation is because primarily we are social creatures. Our emotions are what drives our relationships. To be without knowledge of emotions is to be blind in relationships. The correlation is like a fabric. Emotions are the fabric of our relationships. And our relationships are so vitally important that without human relationships, the human being couldn't survive. So relationships are a fundamental and basic need of survival. Jewel is recognizing here, as she reflects her own educational experience, that she was never taught about her emotions. She understands how closely related emotions are to relationships. She states that she's aware of how her emotions create her relationships. Not knowing our emotions, we are ignorant and blind in relationships. Which is the fundamental reason for the high divorce rate, for dysfunctional family relationships, and for the constant warfare that goes on between social groups and nations. She's making a very profound observation by linking emotions directly to relationships. Our emotions are the fabric of our relationships. They are the organizing principle of relationships. Not having awareness of the affect of our emotions on other people causes us to respond in relationships, which are destructive to the relationship. When the very goal of a relationship is not merely its maintenance, but to generate some kind of partnership, cooperation and benefit. In our darkness instead, we create pain and misery. When two people come together instead of cooperative agreement, it turns out to be friction, like two sticks rubbing together - a battlement ensues. Primarily based upon our instinct to dominate each other, and who holds that position in the relationship. And we do this unconsciously without knowledge. It requires education to learn about relationships and emotions. They're really not separate. Our emotions are our relationships. We are not even aware of what emotions we have, or how they are programming our relationships. She's simply stating something for all of us. That we would like to have been taught by somebody about how to effectively generate beneficial, cooperative, team-like partnerships in relationships. What emotions must we learn for this partnership and cooperation to occur. The emotions that we're born with, and the ones that are handed down to us from generation to generation are the competitive, combative emotions and strategies of domination. Which we have no control over. We're not even aware that this is how we're behaving. It's just the emotions that our parents had. It's the emotions that their parents had. And going back through evolution, you could see that that's the emotions baboons have and chimpanzees have. It's well-documented in the scientific literature that most animals act in this way. The origin of our emotions can be traced to the animal instincts within us. Man is finally emerging into consciousness, and now is able to reflect on how we have been behaving for millions of years - unexamined and therefore without any other choice. 006 I Was Never Taught About My Emotions Part 2 9:49 Jewel says, "I was never taught about my emotions." Recognizing a deficit, wishing she had been taught, wishing she could find an educational system that would inform her about her emotions, because she's realizing how they affect relationships. She continues to explain what is it that she feels she needs in relationship to emotions. And she states, "How to understand what I was feeling?" She wants to know not only the name of her feelings. She also goes on to state that she would like, "...to know how to understand the affect of other people on me emotionally." She not only wants to know how her emotions are affecting others, or how they're affecting herself. She also wants to know how other peoples' emotions are affecting her. She's absolutely correct in this observation. Being the social creatures we are. We are, through our senses, susceptible to the emotions of others - to the point where we model them, copy them. We make them a part of our own psyche, unconsciously. And we begin to behave through our emotions in a sympathetic union - with the way other people are behaving through their emotions. If it's negative, unhappy, painful, depressing, self-defeating, non-constructive, in the sense where the relationship is not something that builds upon itself and gets better. Over 50 percent of marriages de-construct, unravel and come apart. Relationships are either growing, adding on or they're unraveling. I suppose an even greater tragedy than that is a static relationship. At least if you unravel a relationship, and there's a divorce, you have an opportunity to try again. But a static relationship that neither grows nor disintegrates, may be the worst kind of relationship; fear of going forward, fear of starting over. So she wants to know the affect, the change that is occurring inside of her, as a result of other peoples' interactions with her. Why we need to know how others influence us, especially if they influence us in a way that is harmful to our own psychic construction of how we behave in relationships. Somebody hurts us. We hurt them back. It doesn't solve any of the basic fundamental issues regarding the building of a relationship. But rather it becomes a tearing down. Jewel is also mentioning her awareness that what other relationships that she's had, like parental, she wants to know how that makes her behave in her relationships as an adult. She must be sensing some frustration in her relationships, some failures, some repeated pattern in her adult relationships, that she experienced in her parental relationships. She's just speaking in a very general way, a vague awareness of a problem, a knowledge deficit in emotions, in her self-knowledge. She's simply longing for some answers, that can help her to break from repeating the relationships that her parents had with her. She doesn't want to repeat the same mistakes in her adult relationships, but she doesn't know how. Jewel continues, "We're not taught that kind of thing at all, and we should be. Because that's human life. That's raising children. That's the foundation, the fabric of what we are." It's a statement of fact. It's also a very good definition of what intrinsic education should be, and what Emotional Literacy Education is. She's referring to the need for a type of education that deals directly with human life, human experience. Which is the fundamental foundation of Emotional Literacy Education. Maslow mentioned how his greatest learning experiences didn't come from his degree in education. He spoke about his marriage as being far more profound of an educational experience, than anything he learned in school. Another event that he learned a great deal from was the birth of his child. That's human life, raising children, the parent child relationships. Emotional Literacy Education is about human experience. It's about learning how to understand our everyday experiences. Our encounters which are the most profound teachers. That's the foundation of knowledge. The fabric of knowledge is knowing who we are. What we are, and why we do the things that we do in our relationships. And she adds another important point that, "This is what the great thinkers understood well." That what we learn in school cannot compare to our everyday experiences. To the experiences that are organized by our nature. Whether or not we attend school, we're going to have human interactions. We're going to have emotions no matter what vocation we do in our lives. That's not a foundation. You may find yourself changing jobs, changing the types of work that you do throughout your entire life. But you will never change the fact that you have emotions. Or that you must interact with other people. What we learn in school is accidental, peripheral, superficial. It can come and go. We are not forever a carpenter, or a lawyer, or an educator. We learn these skills. Eventually, we may change jobs. When we retire, we usually stop doing them all together. That's what the current education system teaches children. It's what as adults we all have become through the educational system - just our jobs. That's not the fabric of our lives. The fabric is what we're born with. The fabric is what we have as a continuum throughout our day. The fabric is the parent child relationship, the husband and wife relationship, the family relationships; and our relationship with our friends and our enemies. That's the fabric of our lives. And emotion is a continuum within that fabric. Which is something that the greatest thinkers understood well. Lesson 5: Learning to Grow The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed are examples designed to inspire the student to develop their own unique ideas, language and Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to promote anyone's philosophy. 001 Emotional Literacy Education Is Learning to Grow 16:36 In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "Education is learning to grow, learning what to grow toward, learning what is good and bad, learning what is desirable and undesirable, learning what to choose and what not to choose." From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 172, 3rd paragraph. Emotional Literacy Education is learning to grow - how to grow. Growth, like relationships, is one of the foundations of our lives. It's easily observed in children. What is not observed in adults is growth. That is, we can see children growing physically. We can observe them growing emotionally and mentally, but after physical growth stops, there is the potentiality in adults for continued lifelong growth. In fact it's the only answer to the problems that we encounter in our lives, in our relationships. The only way that we're going to find a solution to a problem is through growth. The simplest way to grow, the only way to grow, is through learning. The words learning and growth are synonymous. When we learn, intrinsically, we grow. What do we grow towards? What are the goals of growth and learning? We grow toward skills that help us to better satisfy our needs. It's a simple formula, yet with the complexity of the skills that we need to acquire to satisfy our needs. What is good and bad? What's bad is when we don't get what we need. What's good is when we get what we need. Our needs are physical, emotional, intellectual. Getting what we want is not always good. Getting what we like can be bad, but getting what we need is always good. Emotional Literacy Education teaches the difference between what we need, and what we want and like. What we like can just be a bad habit. Getting too much of something that we want can be bad. Emotional Literacy Education teaches the student how to distinguish between what we need, and merely what is a whim - the things that we want and the things that we like. The things that we want and like, we tend to like too much. And they become excesses. Getting what we need satisfies our nature, and contributes to our growth. As Maslow clearly demonstrates in his hierarchy of needs. When one need is fulfilled, it goes away, and is replaced by another need. Which also represents our growth. It is as if nature has preprogrammed our growth and our capacity for growth through our needs. Where, what we merely want or like can actually be destructive to our growth. By ignoring what we need, and substituting it with what we want, what we like, we can actually inhibit our growth through habitual behavior, that can be bad for us. Bad in terms where it may be destructive to relationships, to our bodies, as bad habits. We have to learn what's good. Not merely pleasurable, but what fosters, nurtures spiritual and psychological growth. As well as what promotes the healthy body. Our body has very specific requirements and needs. Of which there's an optimum level of nutritional values. Which can also be a perfect example of excess in getting what we like that is bad for us. Like the habit of eating too much food. Or, the habit of eating food that is not nutritious. In which our bodies can still manage to function, but not at an optimum level. We have to learn good nutrition, learn what we can do for our bodies. To not only meet its basic needs, but understanding that the body can function at an optimum level. Your car can run on motor oil, even if you don't change it, but your car is going to wear out faster. It's not going to function at its optimum level, if you don't change the oil regularly. And knowing when to change the oil is knowledge that benefits you and the car, because your car will last longer. This is just an example of how the human body also has an optimum level at which it can function. This is also the case emotionally. There's an optimum level at which it can function. There's an optimum level at which your intellect can function. There's an optimum level at which your relationships can function. Science has documented what's called physiological homeostasis. And that's a scientific way of saying your body has an optimum range in which it functions. Your blood has an optimum range for the components of your blood. For example, too much sugar in your blood is hypoglycemic, which can lead to diabetes. Your blood has ranges for all of its constituent values of salt and oxygen and potassium and certain vitamins. When it gets out of range, it becomes non-functioning at its optimum level. And when it drops below a certain range, you become ill. Other physiological homeostasis includes the output of your heart, breathing, your metabolism all have an optimal range. What I have discovered is emotional homeostasis; and intellectual homeostasis, and relationship homeostasis. In which each of these has an optimal level of function. This optimal level of function is need related. In the same way that physiological homeostasis is also need related. When your blood sugar drops too low, you become hungry. The need is food, but the physiological manifestation is hunger. And that becomes our motivation in our behavior to search for food. It's such a basic drive that it's what gets us up in the morning to go to our jobs. Physiological homeostasis motivates us to maintain the quieting of our hungers, of our thirsts. When you become tired, that's a part of physiological homeostasis. When your body becomes tired, the physical act is sleep that satisfies. What drives us to sleep, to lay down, to quiet ourselves, to close our eyes, is the feeling of tiredness. The feeling of tiredness is also a signal of a need. That physiological need is satisfied through the act of sleeping. What is good is when we get the right amount of sleep. If we don't get enough sleep, it can effect our concentration, our immune system. We start getting symptoms, like headaches, sore throat, an inability to think. Our physiological needs are related to our emotional needs, to our intellectual needs, and to our relationship needs. What I've discovered is the four set homeostasis. In which they all have the same characteristic of an optimum level. And getting too much is bad. Not getting enough is bad. And homeostasis is the balancing act between too much and too little. The four types of homeostasis are physiological homeostasis, emotional homeostasis, intellectual homeostasis and relationship homeostasis. Emotional Literacy Education is the education in human need - as it relates to homeostasis. In which one learns how to balance these four types of homeostasis. I've given the example of physiological homeostasis, because the other types of homeostasis work in much the same way. That is they are needs, which we can feel. That drive us to some behavior to satisfy the need. Maslow continues, "Learning what is desirable and undesirable, learning what to choose and what not to choose." Choice comes from our intellectual powers. And when our intellectual powers are not in equilibrium, are not at their optimum level, we make poor choices, bad decisions about relationships, about emotions, and about our physical health. Because it's our intellectual powers that provide us with pictures of our homeostasis levels. That's why truth is such an important aspect of the intellect. When we have the truth, we are at equilibrium. We are at optimum homeostasis for the intellect. We are in agreement, making clear pictures of what's real inside of us emotionally, physically and in our relationships. When the intellect is not balanced, not in the state of equilibrium, not dwelling in truth, it's not functioning at its optimum level. The result is we make bad decisions. Decisions which are ultimately undesirable. The right decisions are based upon the good they bring us, the benefit they bring us, the level of desirability. The word desire is very close in function to the word need. Though we desire things that we don't need, it's out of desire that we satisfy needs. Intellectual homeostasis, truth in the intellect, as an accurate picture of what we need, helps us to choose the right desires, and helps us to eliminate desires which are harmful or fruitless. And they are undesirable in the sense that we carry them, yet unknowingly they give us problems. And they are undesirable, because we want to get rid of them in us. And we can only do that through understanding our needs. Once our needs are met, we need not repeat and overindulge or under indulge. We have to learn how to choose, and also what not to choose. 002 What's Your Idea of a Perfect Day? 12:31 In a 1997 interview from Mediadome.com®, Jewel Kilcher was asked, "What's your idea of a perfect day?" Jewel Kilcher replied, "I love learning; as long as I'm growing, no matter how hard it is, I love it. I love being alive, and I think we should live bravely, love bravely, not be afraid of a little bit of pain. I try not to shy away from that, but at the same time to surround myself with what's beneficial, what is going to grow with me, what is growing with me, what helps me to grow." Maslow and Jewel reached the same conclusion about learning and growth. Simply because it's their experience. That learning and growing are synonymous. Learning is growth. If it's real learning, not associative learning, not memorization and recital, and memorization and recital. A tape recorder can do that, and there's no growth. Through intrinsic learning, growth is spontaneous. It produces love. It sets the tone of our relationship with everything. It opens the mind, the heart, and the soul to everything. It increases interest in the object that you're trying to learn about. My experience has been that love and learning are also synonymous. Not love for learning, not as separate phenomenon. But that learning itself is love. We reject what we hate. We deny what we hate. We close down learning of what we hate. We want to know what we love. We are attracted to what we love. The more we learn about what we're attracted to, the more we love it, the more we're attracted to it, the stronger, the more intense the attraction becomes. It's self-love, self-producing love. Because as long as we go on learning, we go on loving the experience of learning. Which produces self-esteem, confidence, strength that is a kind of self-love. When we're successful at learning, we love ourselves. When we're a failure at learning, we hate ourselves. Everything flows through that part of the brain, which is structured in its function toward learning. When we come upon something familiar, the learning part of the brain is bypassed. When we come upon something new, the learning part of the brain, in a normal healthy person, is activated with the desire to know the new thing. And that desire to know is our attraction towards it. And our attraction towards it is love. So, one of Maslow's needs, self-esteem, is directly related to the process of learning, and its success and failure. If things are unfamiliar, and we can't learn them, we reject them. It sets up a condition of hate for the object that you can't understand. Which is simply self-hate. Because the person carrying the feeling, carries the hate. They're the ones that suffer from their failure of not learning, and not growing, and therefore not strengthening their self-esteem. Self-esteem is directly related to your problem-solving abilities. And if you can't solve problems, you're going to have a low self-esteem. The only way to solve a problem, because no one is going to solve your problems for you - is to learn your way out of that problem. Success creates high self-esteem. And failure and a lack of ability to solve a problem creates low self-esteem. The traditional education system kills love for learning, because it never asks the student what it is that they want to know. What is it they're attracted too? What is bothering them about something that they don't know? Instead, we place in front of children what we want them to know. Of which they have no interest in learning, nor is it one of their problems. They're not attracted to solving it. The real learning mechanisms of the brain never fully come on. When you repeat this over and over, and when children become adults, they learn to hate learning. And by doing so, they learn to hate themselves. It's not that learning has to be pleasurable, because it's not always pleasurable. It's a struggle. It's an effort. But the key ingredient of a successful learning process is the interest of the student. That's where Emotional Literacy Education will be totally different from associative learning. The student will be able to choose their own subjects, and unravel their own problems, select their own topics of study. That's the only way that real learning will take place. I want to know what my problems are. And I want to know what the solution for my problem is. I can't fix somebody else's problem, and I don't expect somebody else to fix mine. And from that perspective, I have to decide what my problem is. What subject it relates to, and then study what relates to me. And that's what Emotional Literacy Education encourages. More than that, it's how the Emotional Literacy Education system is set up. There will be a list of subjects to choose from. And the student will choose their subject of interest that relates to their particular emotional, intellectual, or relationship need. Jewel says, "I love learning, as long as I'm growing. No matter how hard it is, I love it." Our needs are our challenge. Growth requires challenge in solving new problems. How hard it is - is of no consequence as long as there's progress in growth, because one senses their own success. When one reaches a level of growth, a level of need fulfillment, that is its own reward. And how hard it was to get there is forgotten, because one is living in the moment, in the satisfaction, in the pleasure of knowing what you didn't know before. The joy and success of solving a problem, rather than it being a negative experience, that is intrinsic education. It produces positive emotional states by overcoming, by problem solving, by reaching the next level of need fulfillment, the joy of success, satisfaction and pleasure. A problem with adult education, in Emotional Literacy, that the student has to recognize and overcome, if they're going to pursue intrinsic learning - is the revulsion to learning that came out of years and years of training in associative learning. Which was tiring, produced no pleasure, no self-esteem, no feeling of success. Which sets up the adults to shut down that huge part of them, that is their learning, processing center in their brain. Because we're not going to do that. We're not going to repeat associative learning as a method. We're going to study what you want to study within the framework of your humanity. And what you don't know about it. And it's a big subject. But there is something particular about it that you want to know. And therefore, the student will search through the materials that are given to them. And they will choose the topic that invites them to solve their problem. It's when we're able to choose what we want to learn, that creates the kind of attitude that Maslow and Jewel are familiar with. It creates an excitement, when you wake up in the morning. That not only are you going to find out something new, but you're going to find out something that you need to know. 003 I Love Being Alive 8:32 Jewel continues, "I love being alive." It's her mentality, her relationship to herself, her relationship to her own learning process. She has found through self-education, self-learning, a joy, an excitement, a satisfaction. Which makes her proclaim, "I love being alive." Why this is true - is because the learning neurological network is such a large part of our brains, that when it is not used, it lies dormant, and reduces the overall function and activity of the brain. And that makes us feel dead inside, and makes us feel tired and sleepy. And it's because part of our brains have fallen asleep. We learn to hate learning. And it is such an important part of a dynamic mind. Which is synonymous with our levels of awakefulness, our levels of mental alertness. If a large percentage of your brain is asleep, while you're awake, not active while you're awake, it's going to drag the other parts of your brain down with it. Overcoming this hatred of learning is important in overcoming self-loathing and depression. And there's no denying that learning is not easy. Jewel continues, "I think we should live bravely, love bravely, not be afraid of a little bit of pain." Jewel also associates bravery with learning. It's natural for us to be afraid of what we don't know. It is a natural hurdle. It is a natural challenge from our very own nature. The unknown is frightening. And we can live in fear, doubt and suppress our pain. Or, we can accept life's challenges. Which after all are only there to help us grow, and use the opportunity to solve our problems. Which to me is the same as fulfilling our needs. Not to learn we are denying our own need fulfillment. Nature provides the motivation to learn. Fear of the unknown, it's like hunger, in that it motivates us to action in the healthy individual. It stops action in the neurotic individual, because it's become learned - to avoid learning, to escape the unknown. But it's what we don't know, that will kill us spiritually, mentally and physically. It's ignorance that leads us into the dark corners. It's a lack of knowledge that prevents us from seeing the dangers. So it's neurotic, because it's self-defeating, not to confront your fears, not to confront the unknown. Jewel says don't be afraid. Live bravely. Love bravely. And don't never mind a little bit of struggle in the process, a little bit of effort, a little bit of difficulty. Because that's a part of the process of growth and of learning. After a time one becomes accustom to a new problem arising. And we must deal with it when it happens, try to understand - try to learn the answer. Learning is difficult. Entertainment is easy. If you want to be entertained, you won't grow. Through entertainment you won't be challenged. You won't discover new things. It's work. It's effort, but it pays off. And the currency that it pays is your growth, your need fulfillment, your reaching the highest possibilities of what it means to be you. Jewel continues, "I try not to shy away from that, but at the same time to surround myself with what's beneficial." We have to learn what's beneficial and what's detrimental. And what's detrimental can become a habit. If we learn what's beneficial, and surround ourselves with what helps us to learn, then growth and the benefit one derives from learning becomes a habit, but a good habit, a beneficial habit. All of life is an effort to surround ourselves with what's beneficial, the books we read, the art and music we surround ourselves with, the relationships that we choose, or don't choose. At the center is you. And the most beneficial thing is not something you can surround yourself with, externally. The most beneficial thing that you can wrap your soul in, because it provides energy and power for the soul, food for the soul - is your own capacity, intrinsic capacity, internal capacity - to learn. If you can muster, reactivate your own capacities for learning, the next step is to choose what is going to be most beneficial for you to know at this particular moment in your life. We don't have a lot of time on this planet. Every moment is precious or wasted. Therefore, what you choose to learn is of the utmost importance. We don't have forever this opportunity that we're given as a gift. What you choose to learn is something you have to search inside yourself for. Only you know what's best for you. Only you know what you need to learn right now. How does Jewel define what to surround herself with that she considers beneficial. She says, "What is going to grow with me, what is growing with me, what helps me to grow." 004 The Ideal College 17:10 In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "The ideal college would be a kind of educational retreat in which you could try to find yourself; find out what you like and want; what you are and are not good at. People would take various subjects, attend various seminars, not quite sure of where they are going, but moving toward the discovery of vocation, and once they found it, they could then make good use of technological education. The chief goals of the ideal college, in other words, would be the discovery of identity, and with it, the discovery of vocation." From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 176, 2nd paragraph. You must understand that, wherever you are, intrinsic learning is an effort to try to find yourself. In the ideal culture, in the ideal society, there would be an ideal college. Until that day comes, your college, your institute, your learning facility has to be wherever you are. And ultimately, even if you were to go to a college, you would still have to create for yourself an atmosphere of learning about yourself. No matter where you are, it's still ultimately your responsibility. It's a responsibility that you choose for your own health and benefit. You must try to create for yourself a space, in which you can make an effort to find yourself. Abraham Maslow continues, "Find out what you like and want, what you are and are not good at." Here, he's stating that we're all different. Therefore, no one can educate you in what you like, or what you want, or what you're good at. But rather that's what self-discovery is. Starting from a place where you don't know what your needs are. You don't know what you want. You don't know what you like, and you don't know what you're good at. All of us are lopsided when it comes to skills. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. We gravitate towards what we're strong in, when given the chance. When we make the effort. Finding yourself is finding what you're good at, and developing it. It fosters the growth of self-esteem. The educational system, as we've come to know it, teaches a particular set of courses. Of which, not all of us are good at. Some of us are not so good in any of the courses. But it's so narrow, it shouldn't be what determines your choice of vocation. School for me didn't provide education in the skills that I was good at. Which ultimately became language and writing. But writing is not one particular skill. I was interested in the kind of writing that helped me to find myself. I wasn't particularly interested in writing essays on Walt Whitman's poetry. I was interested in using writing to help me see myself; to help me find myself, to help me discover what I liked and didn't like about myself. So that I could change it. And they weren't offering that course in school. Yet society puts so much emphasis on the courses at school, and so much de-emphasis on everything else. That we learned to disregard all of life's other skills, as we were channeled through this very narrow set of academic courses. Most of us didn't like most of the courses. It created discouragement in all of us. And we thanked the day that we finally graduated. We never wanted to go back again, because of what they did to us. And what they did to us was that they stole our joy in learning. They robbed us of the opportunity to find what we loved doing, and what we're good at. Abraham Maslow said, "The ideal college would be a kind of educational retreat in which you could try to find yourself." The educational system doesn't provide that opportunity. Emotional Literacy Education is the continuous opportunity to try to find yourself. Maslow, in this particular quotation, is challenging you to find what it is that you love doing. What you're good at. He's not referring necessarily to a paying job. The society doesn't care if you love your work, or if you hate your work, as long as you show up for work. And the educational system trains you not to find out what it is that you love doing. When he uses the word vocation here, he refers to it as a calling. What is your calling in life? What's your fate, destiny. Those are the interchangeable words that he uses for the word vocation. He doesn't use the word high-paying job, or rewarding opportunities. He specifically refers to vocation in this context as a calling. What he means by that is an inner calling, your inner voice that tells you, "This is what I must do, because it's the right thing to do. It's the best thing that I could do, and it makes me happy." Not once have I read where Maslow refers to the word 'vocation' in the context of salary. It's more of what people refer to as a religious calling. Although, he doesn't use the word religious, just the word calling. What pulls you. What do you gravitate to. And they will be directly related to the things that you're good at. Which will reward you in self-esteem and love for yourself. When we take on a job we hate, we hate ourselves. And we pass that on to our children. Our emotions are never in isolation. That when we hate what we do, the people around us feel it. Vocation in this sense is equal to the discovery of self. Because when you find out what you're good at, you gravitate towards it. You want to learn more. You want to refine the skill that you're good at, and become better in it. It lifts you up. And your self-esteem will soar. It will help you fulfill Maslow's need of self-esteem. Maslow continues, "People would take various subjects, attend various seminars, not quite sure of where they are going, but moving toward the discovery of vocation...." How do you want to spend the rest of your life? The discovery of vocation means discovering what it is that you love doing, and spending your day doing it. The expectation in Emotional Literacy Education is that we expect the student not to quite be sure of where they are going. I'm not sure where I'm going. There's no other way to set up a journey. There's no other way to continue the process of self discovery, if you know where you're going. Emotional Literacy Education is set up so that various courses, various subjects and various lessons are available for you to choose from. So that you're not forced to take a particular course. Nor are you forced to learn these subjects in any particular order. Maslow continues, "Once they found it, they could then make good use of technological education." When you discover what it is that you love to do, as the foundation of your daily activity, then you can bring in the peripheral tools - that will help you in your chosen vocation. For example, my basic vocation is that of a writer. Yet, I use all the advantages of technology in my writing. It motivates me to want to learn other skills. My first skill that I learned in relationship to writing was how to type. And that skill eventually lead me to learn the computer. From the computer I learned various software. Having a core vocation leads to an expansion of skills in related areas. And gives us the motivation to learn these complementary skills. Therefore, it actually helps us to grow, to expand our vocation into technology. They are not at odds. They are complementary. He continues, "The chief goals of the ideal college, in other words, would be the discovery of identity, and with it the discovery of vocation." I've always found the word identity to be a very curious word. Because what does it really mean the discovery of identity? The mind has a function; the ability to identify, to label, to name, to associate. And what we're taught in the normal associative learning process - is to identify who we are through our association with the society as a whole. I'm an American. I'm a German. I'm an Englishman. And to identify oneself, to define oneself through the groups within the society - that we belong to. I'm a Christian. I'm a Muslim. I'm a Jew. I'm a Buddhist. I'm a Republican. I'm a Democrat. The society consciously or unconsciously knows how to manipulate the identity function in your brain. And the educational process intentionally leaves out identifying your own existence. And it includes education - that causes you to learn how to use the identity function of your brain. In a way in which you determined who you were by what group you belonged to. It totally fails to educate you. To use the identity function of your brain to recognize yourself and your own existence. As far as the social order is concerned, as far as the traditional educational process is concerned, you don't exist. Here, the discovery of identity means to find yourself. It means using that function in your brain to identify yourself as a whole separate individual. And to identify your component parts, your emotions, thoughts and behaviors'. It means identifying your needs. It means identifying what it is that you need to learn to satisfy your needs. Once you discover that you're there, the depth of you is a continuous journey in self-discovery, because of your infinite nature. So there are many things to identify within yourself that are you, that belong to you. That also are utterly unique to you, and no one else. And at the same time, there's the discovery of, as Maslow would say, your species hood. Which are the things that we find in common. That we all share emotionally. The identity function of your brain is a part of your intellect. And it's a very important part. That requires development. That requires exercise. That requires growth. But of which you can acquire the skill. And with the discovery of identity, when you begin to be able to identify those things in yourself that you're good at; when you're able to identify those things that you enjoy doing, when it becomes a calling, meaning I must do this, when it becomes your passion, then it is the same thing that Maslow is referring to as the discovery of your vocation. Lesson 6: A Search to Find Your Passion The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed are examples designed to inspire the student to develop their own unique ideas, language and Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to promote anyone's philosophy. 001 We Were Those Children 5:24 In a 1997 interview, from Mediadome.com®, Jewel Kilcher was asked, "What should schools do to better educate children?" Jewel replied, "It's a matter of teaching our children from younger ages. Of asking them what their passions are. Not how they're going to make a living, but what makes them happy. What dump things, what absolutely useless things, what fear-based limiting things we are taught. As kids we need to be asked and inspired and told, 'You have a little spirit. You're good by nature.' "We need to be asked more about our dreams, and be allowed to daydream more. How is our life created? by our hands. If we live thoughtlessly, we just respond to our environment, instead of us controlling our environment. Nobody's taught that at a young age; I wish that I was taught that when I was six, because we can spend from age 6 to 18 figuring that out, and we're dumped off at age 18 and expected to figure it out. So we drink a lot and we go to college, and it's kind of un-useful." Whoever thought to ask children about what they should be educated in? It seems certain that children are the largest part of the educational system. They're the ones whose lives are affected for a lifetime, yet they're treated with no respect and no dignity. We consider their feelings unimportant. They're pawns in a political game. Their education is based upon how much profit they can bring to corporations. They're confined to a tiny space. Thirty children in a small classroom. Herded to the drinking fountain. Herded to the lunch counter. Herded out to recess time. Herded in to the reading circle. We give them no dignity, no self worth. We were those children, and we were not asked. And our feelings were not taken into consideration. We were never asked what our interests were. We were never given the opportunity to find out. We were never allowed to find what we were good at. We were never allowed to search ourselves for skills that we are born with. Once we were those children, longing for a happy life, longing for freedom to grow, to be ourselves. Now we're the adults who have paid the price. And I like this interview with Jewel. She's just coming out of the educational experience. These feelings are still fresh in her mind. She's asked the questions at just the right time. What should schools do to better educate children? We never ask any children their opinion. But when asked, children will provide the truth, and that's why we don't ask them. But they are us. We were there in their shoes. And we were damaged by the process. For that reason alone we should make an effort to undo the damage. That is a large process. And that is a large part of the process of Emotional Literacy Education for adults. Because our needs were thwarted as children, because we were not allowed to follow our dreams, we have become neurotic. 002 Defining Neurosis and Psychopathology 13:17 I have previously stated in an article about Emotional Literacy Education, that the terms neurosis and psychopathology are not appropriate terms for children. Because neurosis is learned. We're not born neurotic. Its source is the neurosis of the society, and before I go any further, I would like to define for you these two terms: From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, the dictionary definition for the word neurosis is: "Any of various mental or emotional disorders arising from no apparent organic reason, and involving symptoms such as insecurity, anxiety, depression and irrational fears." The dictionary definition for the word psychopathology is: "The study of the origin, development and manifestations of mental or behavioral disorders." Even the healthiest among us are subject to the influences of the society. We're all a part of a neurotic social system. We influence each other through our neurosis. And anyone who's open, caring, loving is going to be susceptible to the neurosis that emanates from the society. The only way not to feel that is to escape the society. Even those attempts have proved fruitless. Joining a monastery, shutting oneself out from the rest of the world, denying fundamental basic needs only leads to greater neurosis. Priests who become pedophiles are the prime example. It's better to accept our neurosis, than to try to escape from it, because that only compounds the neurosis. It only makes it worse. Psychopathology is the study of what we do to ourselves that makes us neurotic. It's the study of the origin. What is the origin? The origin is in the society. What is the development? The development is the relationship of the society to the children. Children develop the neurosis of their parents, and of the society that they live in. Children are not born neurotic, but adults cannot escape the fact that they are. That makes the educational process more difficult. A person has to put in greater effort, devotion and fortitude to overcome even the mildest neurosis - that we've accumulated. Centuries and centuries of our needs not being met by the culture, has led to such twists in the neurological pathways of the brain - as to have distorted them. Which further limits need satisfaction. We develop neurosis in childhood. And how do we know we're neurotic. It's because their manifested in our mental states, and they are expressed through our behaviors. There's no point here in drawing a list of Western culture's neurotic behaviors. If you would like to compile a list, pickup any newspaper on any day of the week, and there they are. There's no good news. Only the news that's a manifestation of our neurosis. The list is much longer. These are just examples. All of our emotions have a purpose. Through development those emotions can take on two qualities, functional and dysfunctional. Either our emotions work for us, are our friends and helpers, or they're our worst nightmare, our worst enemy. As a society we have not begun to structure our own emotions at the optimum level. Our emotions conflict. They often lead us down the wrong road. For the simple reason that we have not contemplated them. We have not tried to understand them. We have not figured out their purpose in our lives. Yet, it's our emotions which drive our thoughts and behaviors. If your emotions are screwed up, your thoughts are going to be screwed up. And your behaviors are going to be not what you would have chosen had you been conscious, and understanding, and purposeful with your own emotions. We share group neurosis, social neurosis. Those neurosis that are common to the majority are seen as normal. Because so many people have anxiety, doubt, irrational fear and depression, that we think it's normal. It's normal only in that we all share it. It's not normal healthy. It's normal unhealthy. We ignore our emotions. Yet, they send us to the doctor - millions and millions of people on anti-depressants, anti-anxiety medicine, and that's normal unhealthy. Anxiety is not a healthy state. It may be normal to the majority, along with depression, but it's not how we want to live. It's not our destiny. It's not our humanity. Children become neurotic in the educational system. They become us. We were them. We have to think about our own mental disorders, if for no other reason than to stop ourselves from making our children neurotic. It's time we examine ourselves, understand our problems that we cause ourselves. And do something about it. That's why I've chosen to work on a program of Emotional Literacy Education for adults. Adults need to be made to understand, and make an effort to rectify their own emotional disorders. If we can see them in ourselves, it may be possible to change our behavior, so we do not repeat this neurosis in our children. If you don't feel this need, then Emotional Literacy Education is not for you. It won't help you, because that's the only way we're going to make progress. Emotional Literacy Education for adults is not the same as Emotional Literacy Education for children, because they're not neurotic, yet. But the older they get, the more neurotic they become. And soon they become us. A huge part of our brain is devoted to defense mechanisms. Fear is a defense mechanism. Anger is a defense mechanism. Denial is a defense mechanism. I can't penetrate. Nor can Emotional Literacy Education penetrate your defenses. Only when you recognize yourself, and your defense mechanisms, can you begin your own self-healing process. In a letter to a dear friend of mine, Asuman Martone, who is a psychologist, I wrote to her, "Regarding Emotional Literacy Education for adults, yes my theory will model healthy relationships, and the education system will teach that model. I have learned a lot from you, including about peoples' neurosis. Undoing the neurosis is the problem. I would define neurosis here as a learned behavior, and neurological pathway that has become a habit. That is very difficult for someone to change. Of course, that habit is by definition somehow detrimental to the person's health and/or happiness, but they cannot stop." I'm including this, because it has my best definition of what I think neurosis is. It's a learned behavior. That's the good news. Theoretically, you can unlearn the behavior, and you can learn new behaviors through growth. The bad news is that in childhood and adolescence and young adulthood, these learned behaviors became structures in your brain - neurological pathways of feeling, of thought, of defense mechanisms, of behavior. They've become habitual. They've become reinforced. They've become self-justified, and that's the bad news, because they are unconsciously repeated over and over. And that strengthens the neurological pathways in your brain, and sets up a condition where only a rewiring of your brain is going to erase the neurosis. This is not something that happens from the outside. It's something that you have to find the erase button on the recorder inside yourself, and erase the program. And it's extremely difficult. People are in therapy for years and years, and they get nowhere. Not from a lack of effort by good psychologists. But by the mere fact that it's nature's way. 003 We Are the Most Successful Animal 7:35 Mammals in particular require, it's their need, to go through a learning process. A part of our brain is hard wired at birth - meaning preprogrammed. In computer terms it's read-only memory. You can read from it, but you can't write to it, nor can you modify it. Another part of your brain is the type of memory that is written to through learning. Which sets up neurological pathways in your brain, that become your behaviors, your thoughts, your desires. And these learned behaviors in the mammal, passed down from parent to offspring, are not really meant to be modified. The mammal parents are suppose to provide the optimal behavior model for its offspring in its pursuit of survival; hunting skills, gathering skills, nest making skills. The best places to find these things; the best place and the safest place to find water - is written into the brain as the offspring follow the mammal parent through its daily activity. This is handed down from generation to generation. And it's refined over time with slight modifications. One water hole dries up. Another water hole becomes available. These neurological pathways, although they're on the learning network, are suppose to be permanent. Lasting a lifetime based upon the criteria, that evolution has provided in the parent the optimal survival behaviors. So that when they are written to the offspring, they inherit the optimal survival behaviors. The human brain has a much larger capacity for learning. Its evolution has been sudden relatively speaking, and in comparison to other mammal species. One or two million years ago the human brain was one-third the size that it is today. Nature has provided us with both a blessing and curse. The blessing is our large brain, and the curse is that we have yet to grow into it. It has provided for us an infinite range of social behavior. In that infinity we have evolved nearly an infinite number of behaviors. As seen in the variety of cultures that we have on this planet. If a tribe is long enough in isolation from other tribes, an entirely new culture, which is a learned set of behaviors, will arise. Such a great diversity, yet none of them provide the optimum survival strategies. As if man were still an experiment of nature, working out the kinks, the difficulties of having such a large brain. Both the problems and the opportunities that it provides. Mankind's latest leap in evolution may not be older than 80,000 years. This new behavior, not seen before, found in the caves of France, expressive art, a complex language, new social skills that arose out of complex communication, has given rise to a culture that is not more than 50,000 to 80,000 years old. We are still an immature species, in that we haven't learned how to fully operate our own brains. It seems as if they operate us. As Jewel said, "How is our life created? by our hands. If we live thoughtlessly, we just respond to our environment, instead of us controlling our environment." And that seems to be the case. So something that was designed to be permanent, what we learn as children, which structures our neurological pathways, the shape of the signals in our brain, is meant to be permanent. There is the assumption of nature that the parent will provide the optimal behavior strategies for survival. And it can be argued that human beings have been successful as a species. The most successful species surviving the most adverse and greatest variety of conditions of any animal on the planet. We swim. We walk. We fly. We even go to the moon. We walk the Sahara Desert. We walk the coldest regions of the world. We climb the highest peaks. And we have spread ourselves throughout the whole world. And from the point of view of our physiological needs, our ability to acquire food, clothing and shelter, and our ability to propagate and spread into any environment and find a way to survive, shows we are the most successful species on the planet. As an animal we are the most successful animal. 004 We Have Needs that Go beyond Our Animal Nature 10:04 Other animals' behavior is attuned to acquire food, water and shelter and to propagate. Yet nature, by giving us such a large brain, and the possibility of fulfilling something in us that is not animal. That is not driven merely by physiological needs. Something in us hungers for more than food, more than shelter, more than water and more than sex. As if nature is trying to show us, we are more than an animal. That we have needs that go beyond our animal nature. And as Maslow pointed out in his hierarchy of needs. His theory that needs are prepotent. And what he means by that is our lower needs, in this case our physiological needs for food, clothing and shelter, emerge first, become our first motivations, our first drives. Which cause us to act towards their fulfillment and satisfaction. And our other needs, our safety needs, our love and relationship needs, our self-esteem needs and our self-actualization needs are dormant. That they tend to emerge in a sequence of the most important ones first. The ones that mean our most immediate survival; breathing air, drinking water, eating food, staying warm and having sex for procreation and the continuation of the species - emerge first. And the others lie dormant. He states in his theory that when these needs are fulfilled, a new need arises. We begin to hunger for something more than food. And at its highest the needs become purely spiritual in nature. They relate directly to what the soul needs. And we cannot get there. In that those needs will not make themselves known to us, until we fulfill these lower more basic physical needs first. We're taught by the culture how to satisfy our physiological needs. And we do, at least in Western culture, very well in that area. Then what happens is that we sense an inner emptiness, even though our stomachs are full, we feel an inner emptiness. Which is representative of our higher needs going unfulfilled. The very structures that we create in society to satisfy our physiological needs, then become the hindrance to fulfilling our higher needs. They form neurological pathways, which become a habit. It can be said that nature allows, in the process of fulfilling physiological needs, acts of killing, of stealing, of deception, because the animals do that. They steal from each other. They show aggression and dominance behaviors. And it seems natural that in man's competition with other animals, that we use these behaviors as a competitive strategy against other animals, other predators. We kill to eat. We trick and deceive animals with traps. We steal their lives from them. I'm just trying to make the comparison here between how we satisfy our physiological needs. And how it's very similar to the way animals, especially predatory animals, fulfill their needs. They use camouflage as deception. We use deception as camouflage. And it has proven successful to us. But man has done something that no animal has done. Because these behaviors are meant to point outward as a protection from the environment. And we have left our old environment. Where those survival strategies made sense. We have replaced the woods, the deserts, and the marshes, and the animals that inhabit them, as our environment, with society. We have turned these behavioral strategies on ourselves. Instead of aiming death at the animal, so that we can eat its meat, and satisfy our hunger, we become neurotic, in that we've turned death on to ourselves. The reason is very simple. We have maintained the same emotional and behavioral responses to our environment, but our environment has changed. The environment that we inhabit now, and the one that we have replaced is the society. We no longer get our food from our environment. We now get our food from other people. We depend on others to provide our water. We depend on others to build our houses. We depend on others to provide the energy that keeps us warm. And these instinctual emotions and learned patterns of behavior, of competition, of fighting - have been turned in on us. Mankind has done a lot of killing - of its own. Mankind has caused a lot of pain to its own. It's not an issue of blame. It's a problem of evolution and emerging out of our old environment. Which has been replaced by a new environment. Which arose because the social strategy, the social technology has been so successful. That it has dominated our development. To the point where the only thing that most people will ever know are other people. So we have to negotiate our survival from other people. And in the process we use our old instincts and the patterns of behavior, that have been handed down from generation to generation. At one time these patterns of behavior were optimal, but when we substituted the natural environment for the society, we went from coping with something that was real, to now coping with something that is artificial. That is manufactured. Which is our culture. Our culture is a mix of our animal instincts, and our physiological needs, and the requirements and the demands that they place upon us for satisfaction. And the ways that we use those instincts to try to manipulate food, clothing and shelter from other people. Therefore, our cultures have arisen, not as optimal behavioral strategies of survival, but rather as a confused array of false notions of what our new reality is. Which we haven't yet been able to put our finger on. 005 Make Learning a Lifelong Goal, a Lifelong Journey 6:36 Nature has given us a problem. In that our neurological pathways were designed to be semi-permanent. Those behaviors that we learned in childhood, were placed in a part of the brain which has a semi-permanency. Unlike other mammal species, that we're aware of, we can unlearn behavior. These are semi-permanent neurological structures. It took tremendous effort on the part of the child to learn these behaviors. A difficult struggle of growth which in adulthood we forget. To unlearn our neurosis requires the same amount of energy. It requires the same amount of energy to undo our learned behaviors as it did to learn them. In addition to that, it requires new energy, and new effort, and a new learning process - to add new emotional responses, thought processes and behaviors. We have a very difficult road ahead of us, as a society, to undo the habits that we learned in childhood. But I see no other way. Life is never easy. Yet, we can utilize our own innate abilities to learn, and our abilities to grow to change ourselves, even as adults. Especially, when you make learning a lifelong goal, a lifelong journey, a lifelong effort. Learning is the only door out of our problem, our group problem, our social neurosis. I'm defining neurosis here as a habit that is detrimental to a person's health, safety, relationships, self-esteem, or ability to reach their full potential. In other words, our neurosis can be defined as any emotion, thought process or behavior that hinders us from fulfilling our needs. A healthy person is able to fulfill these needs. That's the definition of human health. The definition of neurosis then is when we have a need, and we're unable to satisfy that need. We are unable to express and act upon that need in a way in which that need is satisfied. The need is still there, and it seeks fulfillment through other channels of the mind which become neurotic. Which become detrimental to our health, and to our happiness. For example, we need pleasure. And we need it through being good at something. Something that's beneficial. A skill that helps us fulfill our needs, and gives us self-esteem. An activity that fills our day. That both challenges us, and because of our skill, we are successful. And that brings us self-esteem. That brings us pleasure. If we are blocked, we still need the pleasure. Pleasure has a calming affect, a satisfying affect on our psyche. It calms our nervousness. It bathes our anxieties in endorphins. And if we can't get that through the development of our skills, and their performance in satisfying our needs, then we seek pleasure in neurotic ways. We overindulge in so-called entertainment, television, 59 channels and nothing is on. We eat too much food. We take too many drugs and become addicted. Greed becomes a substitute for a healthy relationship. Power becomes the substitute for pleasure, which corrupts us. In my letter I wrote, "Yes, my theory will model healthy relationships, and the education system will teach that model." Abraham Maslow's primary study and research was in using healthy people as models. For how humanity might solve these problems. Freud focused on defining mankind's neurosis. Where he was not healthy. Maslow focused on where mankind is healthy. This is a profound revolution in the field of psychology. Which has broad implications for society. With a model of health we can move forward with an educational system that teaches this model. 006 What Makes You Happy? 3:34 Jewel Kilcher said, "It's a matter of teaching our children from younger ages. Of asking them what their passions are. Not how they're going to make a living, but what makes them happy." Her reference to passion is about asking children what their interests are. What they love doing. They know what they love doing. And this is just as valid a statement for adults. It's just as important to adults, as it is to children. Don't postpone finding what your interests are. What your passions are. Don't wait. Don't put it off until tomorrow. Don't think that you will have time when you retire. What are your passions? The criteria to use in discovering your passions is asking yourself, "What makes you happy?" That will lead you to your passion. Making a living is not the criteria. It is a false criteria. Which leads people into a lifelong occupation. Into a job they thought they were going to love. But society is deceptive in what it tells us how our jobs are going to make us feel. Jewel continues, "What dumb things, what absolutely useless things, what fear based limiting things we are taught." The politicians benefit from our ignorance. Intelligent people are hard to train. They give us absolutely useless things, useless lessons, useless education, insofar as our happiness is concerned. Worst of all the politicians fill us with a fear based philosophy. To keep us dependent and clinging to them for safety. They manipulate us, so that we feel afraid. They teach us to be afraid, because it benefits them. One of the main goals of Emotional Literacy Education is to help you learn about your fear, and how you are being manipulated through your fear. Only by understanding your fear, which is a natural instinct, and their influence over you. And how they use it to manipulate you. And to make you feel more afraid of things that are not real, the better you'll be able to loosen their influence over you. 007 You're Good by Nature 3:11 Jewel continues, "As kids we need to be asked, and inspired, and told, you have a little spirit. You're good by nature." That has to be the foundation of any educational system. That's based on reality. You have an immense spirit. And even what appears on the surface to be man's inhumanity to man - man's atrocities are the result of nature trying to work out complex problems. Trying to bring us into a biological condition, where we begin to feel and recognize our own spiritual nature. Even what man has done in the past, though it seems horrific, is just a part of a natural process. It's neither good nor bad in one sense. In a higher sense it's all good. Because it has brought us here, now, to the present. And it offers us so much promise and possibilities for the future. If nature is good, we are good. And as far as I can see, nature is good. It has been miraculous. A planet with a poisonous atmosphere, and some rocks, and a little bit of water - to have evolved into this massive ecosystem of abundant life. Does it really matter how we got here? Isn't it more important that nature figured out a way for us to be? No matter what that path was? The equation for life on this planet is incalculable. It is not for us to judge the methods of nature. We can't understand something that is beyond our comprehension. There is this feeling that it's good. That it all has meaning, and fits into the overall plan that leads to development. That is evolution. If there was another way for us to have evolved, nature would have taken that route. This being the only route, it has to be good. Because it has produced a good result, in the plants, in the birds, in the sunsets, in the mountains. 008 Giving Ourselves Permission to Dream 3:52 Jewel continues, "We need to be asked more about our dreams. Be allowed to daydream more." We need to give our children permission to daydream; permission to have dreams. And thereby giving ourselves permission to dream. As adults we primarily please others. We need to give ourselves permission to please ourselves. Not in the selfish meaning, but in the meaning of where we allow ourselves to dream - to dream of happiness. And if we do that for ourselves, we can help our children to find their dreams, to experiment with their ideas. The two are closely connected. If we don't give ourselves permission to dream, we're not going to give our children permission to dream. We are going to criticize them, until they stop dreaming - from which all creative and new ideas come. We only come to answers through trial and error. And we get our choices of what we are going to try from our imagination. What secret lies hidden in our children, that maybe the answer to this dilemma that mankind finds itself in? Imagination is also a crucial component in the learning process, in the growth process. Imagination is that random process within our thoughts that takes us in search. And searching is 50 percent of learning. So a mind that wanders should be encouraged to wander. A mind that daydreams should be nurtured, rather than stymied. We must give ourselves permission to dream. And we must give our children permission to dream, as a matter of mental health. Once again, we have a large part of our brain devoted to imagination, devoted to dreaming, devoted to creativity. Which if we turn it off, it numbs us. It shuts down learning. It crushes growth, because it's one of the mechanisms of our minds, that we use to go in search of ourselves. If we point our imaginations toward self-discovery, the mind is not going to settle on a particular definition of what the self is. It's going to wander in search of what the self is. Along the way it's going to find answers, but only if it's allowed to dream. The ideas about who you are, are going to come from your imagination. 009 A Search to Find Your Passion 4:02 Jewel continues, "How is our life created? by our hands. If we live thoughtlessly, we just respond to our environment, instead of us controlling our environment." We were just taught to respond to commands. We don't listen to our inner voices. We don't trust them, because they were never made strong in us. Our environment goes on controlling us, and sifts us, and places us in some position within the hierarchy. Jewel continues, "Nobody's taught that at a young age. I wish that I was taught that when I was 6. Because we can spend from age 6 to age 18 figuring that out. And we're dumped off at age 18, and expected to figure it out. So we drink a lot, and we go to college. And it's kind of un-useful." We are not taught at any age how to discover our passion. Jewel found hers, but most of us never find it. She states that I wish I was taught that earlier in life, so that she didn't have to drift and wander aimlessly. But she was lucky, as luck goes, because at least by the age 18, she had discovered her passion on her own. And what she's saying here, is that she wishes every child was taught their passions through the educational system at the earliest age. And the reality is most people don't find their passions during their whole lives. They never awaken that flame that excites the spirit. Emotional Literacy Education is a search to find your passion, your vocation, your calling. Instead of finding our passion, we drink, and many of us go on to college, primarily because we haven't found our passion. And Jewel says, "It's kind of un-useful." It's totally un-useful not to find your passion. Because without it, you're not going to have what it takes to make a difference in this world. You're going to end up with a mediocre position. Where the system is influencing you, and you're not influencing the system. We're responsible. All of us are responsible to contribute in our field, what the direction towards a better society is. We like to fool ourselves, Americans, that we have the greatest society the world has ever known. But it is a society that's based upon all of the old ways of controlling people. Manipulating is not freedom. It's just a new form of bondage, corporate bondage, corporate influence, corporate control. And we go to work to a job that doesn't inspire us. That maintains the status quo. And that's kind of un-useful. Lesson 7: The Last Need: Self-Knowledge The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed are examples designed to inspire the student to develop their own unique ideas, language and Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to promote anyone's philosophy. 001 The Last Need: Self-Knowledge Part 1 13:11 In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "Another profound learning experience, that I value far more highly than any particular course or any degree, that I have ever had, was my personal psychoanalysis: discovering my own identity, my own self." From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 163, 5th paragraph. Around the age of 40, Sigmund Freud realized that he was going through a personal crisis. What he decided to do was to use the techniques that he had been using on his patients on himself. Instead of analyzing other people, he thought to analyze himself. I felt myself going through a profound crisis in my life at a much younger age. I had dropped out of high school at the age of 17 - to write The Old Man of the Holy Mountain. And after a year-and-a-half, I had finished the book. I sent it off to several publishers, and received rejection from the society, from the corporate structure, invalidating my passion, my dream. I went on to collect about 75 rejection form letters from various publishers. Even though that wasn't the cause of my personal crisis, it certainly added to the pressure. And I felt a need to understand what emotional difficulties I was going through. The writing of The Old Man of the Holy Mountain, for me, was a journey from the world of fiction, of story telling, of parables - to the discovery of a fundamental truth, a fundamental need. And that is I hadn't a clue to what was the cause of all of my emotions. That discovery is written in The Old Man of the Holy Mountain. All of the characters represent a part of me. Some were expressing confusion, frustration, feeling of being lost. And the Old Man somehow represented to me a lifeboat, an answer to the situation that I had found myself in, from a psychological perspective. From the perspective of confusion, and of not knowing why things were happening to me - not understanding the society, its behavior. And I was using my writing as a way of putting my thoughts in front of me. So that I could analyze them. So that I could see where my thoughts made sense. And where my thoughts were not making any sense at all. And I was searching for some basic clue on how to proceed forward with my life. I knew enough about the society. Enough truth about the reality of society, such that it held no attraction for me. I was aware of all the choices, the occupations, the social positions. I was aware of how to get to them through college, climbing the corporate ladder. I was aware of being told by the society of the American Dream; the house with the white picket fence, the wife, the children, the job. And there was one particular part of it that stood out. It was the mortgage. It all seemed like the perfect trap. Because once you've signed that 30 year mortgage, you have to go to that job every day to pay for that mortgage. And I saw people in their jobs, and I saw them miserable. I worked starting at the age of 10 as a janitor for my grandfather's appliance business. And for someone my age, because I worked, I had money. More money than my friends did, because I was working. And because I believed what society told me. I wanted to be wealthy. What better way to become wealthy than to study wealthy people. I read Noah Dietrich's biography of Howard Hughes. And I discovered what a miserable man he was. And that he died with hypodermic needles broken off in his arm. He was a codeine addict. It's like morphine. It's like heroin. He died absolutely friendless, without a wife, with no children. He didn't care about anyone. He made no will, left his money to no one. He just lived without decent relationship skills. He cut himself off from everyone. In his isolation he became a hypochondriac, afraid of germs, afraid to go out. His only associate, that had stayed with him throughout his adult life, was Noah Dietrich. Who was an accountant, that Howard Hughes hired shortly after his father died - to help him run his business. Noah Dietrich was practically a 50 percent partner, as far as organization and management of his businesses. And Noah only wanted one thing from Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes promised him 10 percent of the Howard Hughes empire, because of the devotion of Noah Dietrich. How he saved Howard Hughes on more than one occasion by handling his business deals. They were both getting old. And Noah was thinking of his retirement. He began to ask Howard for his promise in writing. "You promised me 10 percent," he said to Howard Hughes. And Howard Hughes said, "I know, Noah. I will give it to you, but not today." This went on for years and years. Noah Dietrich finally said, "Howard, I'm getting old. I just want you to follow through on what you promised me. And if you don't, I'm going to resign." And Howard Hughes padlocked his office, told the security guards not to allow Noah Dietrich on to the property. And their long relationship was terminated in that moment. And I understood what a fool's game chasing after money is. That it had no relationship to happiness. And America has become Howard Hughes. Clearly, Howard Hughes was not receiving satisfaction in his relationships. I think it was because he didn't have those skills. He never learned them. How to find love. He substituted money for love. He pursued money, as if it was love, as if it was a relationship. The trap is it's not. And therefore the pursuit never satisfies. Without that realization, the pursuit never ends. If I just made a couple more million, I would be happy. A person makes a couple more million, and they're miserable. Because they're not developing the skill in relationship to the need, that would bring them true, deep satisfaction. Money can bring food, clothing and shelter. But it can't bring us love. It can't be a substitute for a satisfying relationship. Like all addictions, that are substitutes for something that's missing. The emptiness is never filled. The pursuit is ongoing. The deception is thinking that if I make just a little bit more money, I will find happiness. And happiness isn't found. Therefore, the pursuit of money continues. In the process the ruthlessness, the cunningness, the deception, the hurting of other people, the exploitation of the worker, makes one feel miserable. It's counterproductive to building a satisfying relationship. It becomes self-defeating. In that the very thing that we wanted most, just to love and to be loved, turns out making us the worst kind of lover, the worst kind of relationship maker. I saw all this at a very young age. After reading Noah Dietrich's book, I lost my ambition, my desire to be rich. Because I saw it as being a fruitless life. That was the procession of the whole society. The movement of the whole society, and the direction of the educational system, which I abandon. Because that wasn't making me happy. It was just training me to be Howard Hughes. So I never felt the need to return to school. It had given me what I needed to know. Which was an education in the ways of society. I just wanted what everybody wants, happiness. Mostly, what I saw was the things that society were offering to me, and I realized they were not going to bring me happiness. That was my crisis. What to do? Where to go? How to be? If the society can't offer happiness, where am I going to find it? 002 The Last Need: Self-Knowledge Part 2 11:26 Writing The Old Man of the Holy Mountain helped me see my thoughts. And I was in a lot of pain. I was looking for direction. And I wrote this passage. From The Old Man of the Holy Mountain, "One way to relieve yourself of unhappiness, and grow toward your greater happier self - is through the narrow door of your understanding self." I also wrote, "Your understanding of yourself and others will bring comfort to yourself. And all that is you will become one in rhythm with itself. Thus, pain within you will diminish." And that came from some inner voice inside myself. It was against all I had been taught. Yet, it became my only hope. It said, "One way to relieve yourself of unhappiness...." I was looking for relief. I was miserable, unhappy and relief sounded good. I continued, "...and grow toward your greater happier self." And there's that word again, growth. It was my door, my way out of where I was. My only hope was growth. But how was I going to grow? How was I going to change? How was I going to find a way to relieve myself of unhappiness. I wrote, "...through the narrow door of your understanding self." I've come to realize that's the same thing as Maslow's personal psychoanalysis. From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, psycho means, "Mind." The origin of the word psycho comes from "the Greek" and it means "soul." So it means to analyze your mind. It means to understand your soul. But it goes deeper than that, because the word analysis is an intellectual meaning. To analyze something is to use your intellect. It is useful. But thought is so distorted, that there has to be something more. And that more, which is necessary for personal growth, is consciousness. It's our consciousness that informs the soul, not our thoughts. Our consciousness carries our thoughts to our soul. But it also carries our feelings to our soul. And when we awaken our souls, it's ultimately the soul that rewrites the mind, the neurological networks of the brain. The soul is the engine of the brain, the heart. The real power behind the mind, behind the emotions, is the soul. Emotional Literacy Education is more than self-analysis. The goal of Emotional Literacy Education is to find your soul. To discover it. To be it. To understand that your mind is just a tool of the soul. That you're the master controller, because you are the soul. And that the thing that you control is not other people, but your own mind. If you don't control your own mind, the society will. The society is neurotic, and will show you, and will teach you, and will guide you in the ways of its neurosis. Until you become as sick as it is. 29,350 people a year commit suicide in the United States. That's not a healthy society. 29,573 people a year are murdered by handguns. 42,116 people a year die on the highway. Alcoholism, drug addiction, take its toll. I continue, "Your understanding of yourself and others will bring comfort to yourself." A little voice in me said that. And comfort was what I wanted more than anything, because pain and depression were the only things I knew. It sure sounded good. But that's not where I was when I wrote this. It was a direction given to me by my soul to my brain. A tiny little bit of wisdom, a little whisper in the dark, something to go on - I listened. And I trusted. And I went from writing The Old Man of the Holy Mountain, a fictional book, with fictional characters, to the pursuit of something that was nonfiction - the discovery of self. And I continued to use my writing skills to lay out my thoughts. But I abandoned fiction. I wanted just to know what pain was. I just wanted to know what anger was. I just wanted to know what fear was. And I just wanted relief. I just wanted comfort. But I needed to have a direction. I needed to know where to go. I continue, "And all that is you will become one in rhythm with itself." I understood I was experiencing discord. I understood the way I felt wasn't right. I had had moments of peace, of beatitude. Maslow would describe them as peak experiences. And I wanted more. I wanted to return to feeling that way. I slowly began to feel a direction to go. I continue, "Thus, pain within you will diminish." Understanding brings comfort, and comfort diminishes pain by replacing it. I used the word diminish, because my hope was that it would decrease over time, as my understanding of my emotions increased. It was more like a hunch. It was more like intuition. It wasn't my experience. I hadn't known a state of continuous comfort. It was the only hope I had. The confusion was so intense, and the pain was so great inside me, that I had no other choice, but to listen to this inner voice inside me. This guiding principle that came to me in a moment of inspiration. I had no other choice. This was the only one that was offered. I knew what didn't bring comfort. Society was no comfort. Education was no comfort. Money was no comfort. Family was no comfort. Friends were no comfort. Relationships were no comfort. So I felt alone, but with this insight I began a five-year exploration of myself, and I became better at understanding. And I felt progress. It didn't happen overnight. It didn't happen easily. There was a tremendous amount of effort, single-minded devotion to the search. Gradually, I felt my comfort occupy more and more of my day, and anxiety and depression diminish. I also discovered that my thought processes were a mess. Over time they found more truth. Little by little the truth seeped in, and vanquished ideas in me that were false. And the darkness began to give way to twilight, to dawn. It was my hunger. It was my only need, and it worked. My confusion disappeared, and my understanding replaced it. My pain diminished, and my comfort replaced it. And I began to see how self-knowledge was a need. Without it the darkness remains, the confusion remains, the doubt and the fear remain. It's need based upon a higher recognition, that comes out of the experience of misery. Which ultimately is a hunger for happiness, for satisfaction. 003 The Last Need: Self-Knowledge Part 3 7:06 Abraham Maslow wrote, "Another profound learning experience, that I value far more highly than any particular course or any degree, that I have ever had, was my personal psychoanalysis, discovering my own identity, discovering my own self." Maslow does not put in his hierarchy of needs self-knowledge. I would like to add to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, self-knowledge. The last need beyond which there are no more needs. He says, "Discovering my identity, discovering my own identity, my own self." They're not the same thing. Identity is a function of intellect. Self-knowledge is a function of the soul. Its goal is wisdom far beyond the intellect. They are not equal. The identity is a small part of the self. Discovering your identity is not the same as discovering your soul. Because of Freud we get stuck and wallow in our own dark corners in our minds. Maslow begins a never ending journey, that takes us higher and higher. And the time is right that the world should regard Maslow as one of the greatest men who has ever lived. Psychology has not been able to understand him. Nor has it been able to incorporate his work, which is scientific, into their psychology practices. Psychology focuses mainly on neurosis and mental illness, as if it is a disease. It's not a disease. It's simply a matter of education, of learning, of growth and effort. The field of psychology has ignored Abraham Maslow for the past 30 years. He's not a part of our culture. He's not been accepted into the field of psychology the way he ought to be accepted. He should be a pillar the way Einstein is a pillar for physics. Maslow should be a pillar for psychology. His findings were scientific. His research was extensive, and spread out over his entire career. And without his contribution psychology will remain fixated on neurosis, on psychopathology, on illness, on sickness. And in that sense, without understanding that humans can be healthy, we condemn patients to being continuously sick. We don't really offer them anything more than temporary relief, mostly through anxiety and depression pills. Abraham Maslow is absolutely needed, not only in the psychology of today, but he is a pillar in the field of Emotional Literacy Education. As it is foundational. It shows us the direction of how people can be when they are healthy. And how to get there through satisfying our needs. And how we become neurotic, when those needs are not fulfilled, when they are thwarted. In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "What do we mean by the discovery of identity? We mean finding out what your real desires and characteristics are, and being able to live in a way that expresses them. You learn to be authentic, to be honest in the sense of allowing your behavior and your speech to be the true and spontaneous expression of your inner feelings." From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 176, 3rd paragraph. He came so close to truly understanding the last need of self-knowledge. In the same way that Socrates came so close, and Plato, and Aristotle. I've read his work. He doesn't define what desire is. What characteristic is he talking about? That's what self-knowledge is. What is desire? What is emotion? What are our feelings? What is anger? What is guilt? What is frustration? What is compassion? Emotional Literacy Education is the study and understanding of the whole person, and all of his parts that can become conscious experiences. He takes us to the door and he shows it to us. He invites us to go in. His work was foundational in pointing to the need for self-knowledge. Why we need it. Lesson 8: Imagination, Logic, Creativity & Intuition The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed are examples designed to inspire the student to develop their own unique ideas, language and Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to promote anyone's philosophy. 001 What Are Imagination and Logic? 17:04 In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "The technique here is just to wait to see what happens, what comes to mind. This is what Freud called free association, free-floating attention rather than task orientation. If you are successful in this effort and learn how to do it, you can forget about the outside world and its noises and begin to hear these small, delicate impulse voices from within, the hints from your animal nature, not only from your common species-nature, but also from your uniqueness." From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 179, 3rd paragraph. The first part of Maslow's quote, in which he refers to what Freud called free association, is the same thing Jewel was referring to in her quote. When she said, "We need to be asked more about our dreams, be allowed to daydream more." Both are a reference to the function of imagination. Which is an important technique in Emotional Literacy Education. It's learning what artists do. It's learning what writers do. It's where creativity flows from the mind. It is a skill. It can be learned. We float our imaginations all the time. This is more of an effort to flow your imagination into a particular direction. Knowing it's there, and using it as a part of mind building, of thought construction. As an exercise technique, that will help to strengthen all the areas of your mind. Thought is not confined to one particular area of the brain. Different parts of the brain are involved. What imagination does is cycle through the different areas of the brain, thereby, utilizing imagination, free association and daydreaming. We can exercise the brain. When we direct it towards a particular subject, a particular topic, we can narrow the focus a little bit. So that it's not totally free association, but rather subject oriented free association. In that you're utilizing your imagination on a particular subject, or group of subjects. Which allows for a building process in the brain, a strengthening of the brain. And an exercise of the brain which involves thought. When I say thought is a large phenomenon in the brain, I mean that it uses visual memory, and auditory memory, language memory, feeling memory. By daydreaming, free association, and by using our imagination, we cycle through these different areas of the brain. And we ask what's there. What's in our feeling memory? What's in our language memory? What's in our hearing memory? What's in our visual memory? We ask what's there, and we trigger its entrance into our consciousness. It comes in a random way. This is a technique of exercising and strengthening the brain. Which is what Emotional Literacy Education is. What it is not, is about feeding you full of a bunch of information that you can't use, or don't understand. Emotional Literacy Education provides information, but its primary function is to educate you in learning need-fulfillment skills. You cannot know what your needs are, unless you can make a mental picture of them. You need to be able to make your own description of your needs. You need to be able to have a personal language, which relates to your specific needs. Which are unique to you. We're all arranged differently. No one's needs come at the same time. The technique here is calling it a technique. I call it a skill. Either way it's an exercise. And the more you exercise your imagination, the more you are exercising different parts of the brain, strengthening them. Which is what we're really trying to accomplish with Emotional Literacy Education. We want to exercise your brain, to strengthen its functions, and to bring them into alignment with one another. So that function is magnified by grouping function together in combination and/or in sequence. It's a chain. And if one area of your brain is weak, it will lessen the effect of the whole. The effort here is to try to strengthen the whole mind by exercising it. Imagination is fundamental. And utilizing it, and exercising it is crucial. It's a part of the skill of learning. It's the mind going in search of an answer. First, it checks what you already know in the various parts of the brain. It signals when you don't know, if you listen. Then that prompts you to seek information from others, in books, on the Internet. The exercise of imagination is the important point. What you use your imagination for is unique to you. If I were able to hear your imagination, as it flowed, it would be unique. Therefore, I cannot teach you, instruct you to imagine a particular thing. Except in that it stays within the framework of self-knowledge. That is the focus of Emotional Literacy Education; understanding yourself, and therefore understanding others, or, understanding others, and therefore understanding yourself. It is such a large topic. Your problems, your needs are what you must conjurer up in your imagination. Maslow wrote, "The technique here is just to wait to see what happens." If you allow it, you are just watching with just one criteria. What is it that you want your imagination to search for? You point it into a certain direction, and then you let it flow freely. It's not totally random, though that is the very nature of imagination. It randomly searches your mind. And you just watch, and let it do the work. And see what it comes up with. The mind has its own energy, its own dynamic. And if you just let it go, let it flow into a particular direction, it will hunt your mind for what you know. The next step, which is not the same. The next step is where you try to organize your thoughts. And that's where writing them down allows you to remember, what you thought in your imagination was important. And then, it also allows you to go back and make a sequence out of them. Because meaning comes from the sequence of an idea, a series of ideas. Emotional Literacy Education will show you the different functions of your brain. It will give you strategies and exercises to strengthen those parts of the brain, like imagination, like sequencing your ideas. The two work hand-in-hand. Your computer has a function called random access memory. Your hard drive works through random access memory. That is, when you ask it for a file, what it doesn't have to do is start at the beginning of the hard drive, and sequentially go through each tract, until it finds your file. Your hard drive, on your computer, looks like an old vinyl record or a CD. A sequential process would be like an old phonograph album. Where the needle of the record player is put at the beginning of the album, and then it plays the track sequentially, as the platter rotates. That's a sequential memory, because the album is just a memory. That is a sequential memory access. And it makes sense, the music makes sense. We hear things sequentially, and it makes sense to us when it's sequential. Your hard drive on your computer would take forever, if it always had to start at the beginning of the hard drive disk to find your file. There is a way in computing to go directly to the location on the hard drive platter, where your file is at. In the operating system, each file name also has written, in a little mini database, the location of the file on your hard drive platter. Therefore, when you request it, it skips the sequential process, and goes directly to your file, using the data of where its location is at. The hard drive is also like a phonographic record in that it is set up with a track. Instead of it being a groove, like on an old vinyl record, it's a magnetic track, like videotape or cassette tape. The track has written on it numbers that represent location. Even though it's a sequential track, it can be randomly accessed. Even your file is not in one particular part of that track. It can be spread out in lots of different non-sequential places on your hard drive, especially with large files. Because the files are written in small blocks, and if your file is large, it will find various blocks, non-sequential. Not only does it find things in a non-sequential way. It also writes to your hard disk in a non-sequential way. But when it pulls that file up so that you can see it, when you've requested it, it has to write it back to memory sequentially. By doing so it makes sense to you. If it wrote it back, say a text file, if it wrote it back to you in a non-sequential way, your words would be all mixed up, and they wouldn't make any sense to you. How that relates to the brain - is the brain has both those functions. The computer copies brain functions. The idea of the computer came out of understanding how the brain worked. We copy nature. And in this case, we've copied how the brain functions, as a design for the computer. This analogy is helpful. And I'm bringing this to your attention, because these are two primary functions of your intellect, your thoughts. Imagination, out of which creativity occurs, it gives you the opportunity to create something new out of something old. By randomly giving you this information. Which may lead to a new idea. 002 What Is Creativity? 14:26 Creativity is a law of nature that exists in everyone. It does not belong to the exclusive domain of artists or scientists like Albert Einstein. Creativity is innate to your soul. That is important because you have the innate power to create your own mind, your own thoughts, your own emotional responses to your environment. Without that creative law, that you're born with, you would be stuck with the mind that you have. As if you were preprogrammed to only function in a specific way. And in which you were unable to do anything about it. That is just not the case. Knowledge of your own creative abilities and capacities is vital to your self-esteem, because it's a power. It's a strength that you're born with. That society absentmindedly forgot to tell you about, forgot to tell you about you. Without knowledge of your own creativity, you don't know to exercise it. With knowledge of your creativity, you can exercise it. Whether we do it or not, we know the importance of exercising our bodies. We can see the muscles. We know their functions. We know that to exercise is important to health, physical health. It's important to your metabolism. It's important to cardiovascular strength. And we know it's important to exercise our muscles. It's interesting to note that in the evolution of species, the first truly complex animal was the sponge. And after the sponge evolved a new kind of animal, which I don't remember the name (Cnidarians, examples: jellyfish, coral, hydra & sea anemones), the scientific species, but it did something that the sponge cannot do. It could move, because it had muscle tissue, and the sponge has no muscle tissue. How the muscle in this species was able to move is it had nerve cells. In the evolution of animal species, in the evolution of bodily form, muscle cells and nerve cells evolved together. Demonstrating that they are not far a part. Muscles, muscle tissue, muscle cells are either a variant of the nerve cell, or the nerve cell is a variant of the muscle. They're in our bodies. They're connected, and that gives you voluntary movement. At the end of a long chain of nerve fibers, it terminates in a muscle. Showing that one requires the other. One is very similar to the other. The muscle is responsive to the nerve, and the nerve is responsive to the muscle. They are almost the same. Your brain is a bundle of nerves. They are like muscles, in that through exercise, your brain functions can be strengthened. In exactly the same way that when a muscle is not used, it will atrophy. It will wither. And it eventually will become non responsive to nerve impulses. Your brain, when it is not exercised, atrophies. Your brain, when it is exercised, strengthens. The main focus of Emotional Literacy Education is not to fill you full of a bunch of information that you can't use. The main function of Emotional Literacy Education is to isolate brain functions, and give you the exercises to strengthen them. When you utilize them, you will automatically organize them into skills, that you can use to fulfill your needs. The law of nature, of creativity, that exists within your soul - is manifested primarily through two brain functions. Those two functions are imagination, which is the same as daydreaming, which is the same as free association. That's half of creativity. That is your mind functioning to compile, in a random way, your experiences, your knowledge. The second key to creativity is the part of your brain that works to sequence those random thoughts. And that too is a function of the brain. And that too can be exercised, by writing your thoughts down in a journal, in poetry, any form that you like. How a good writer functions is first through his imagination. Just writing down what comes to your mind first. And not being concerned about the order. Just free flow thought. Then, you can use a different function of the brain. In which you take those thoughts, that you've written down, and you try to rearrange them. So that they make more sense to you, when you read it. And you can either do that paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, and ultimately word by word. So that as you're reading through it, each time after, you see a new order. And make that change while reading through it. It will make more sense to you. And in writing we call that drafts. First draft, second draft, third draft, until you get your thoughts into the best sequence that you can. Maslow uses the word free association. This process implies that you begin with some subject. You are trying to apply this process to a subject. The word association means: you're picking a subject to associate all of your experiences, and all of your thoughts, and all of your memory. And all of your knowledge to the one particular subject that you've chosen to free associate. Otherwise, it would fall just under the category of just daydreaming. In which you are using your imagination, but it has no direction. I am talking about a discipline here. For example, writing is a skill. Which requires discipline to strengthen. I'm not suggesting your vocation become that of a writer. What I am suggesting is that you can use writing as an exercise to strengthen these two parts of the brain. Which is also a part of language. Language is what you need to understand your emotions. We're trying to strengthen your mind. To a place where your language abilities reach a level of skill, where you can make thought pictures of your emotions, your behaviors, and your needs. And then you can use that information to make choices. I like to call these two functions of the brain the non-sequential and the sequential mental processing. We're familiar with the sequential part. Every time we read something, every time we hear someone speak, it's given to us in a sequential way. Maslow wrote, "The technique here is just to wait-and-see what happens, what comes to mind." Emotional Literacy Education will give you techniques that will be exercises to strengthen your skills. Which relate to specific functions of the mind. Maslow continues, "This is what Freud called free association, free-floating attention, rather than task orientation." First, the words free-floating attention, another part of your brain that's involved in this process, and which also needs to be strengthened, is your abilities in attention, your ability to focus your mind. Utilizing the subject as the center of your attention. From which you allow a free floating imagination. It means not merely daydreaming. It means using your imagination with focus, with attention, and with concentration on the subject that you're trying to understand. That you're trying to sequence within your mind - to give you a better understanding of that subject. And he compares it to task orientation. All tasks are sequential. You couldn't do a random task. He's comparing it to the old educational system. Where the student is given a sequential task to perform. In our jobs we're given known things to do. And we're instructed to do them in a sequential way. The education is sequential. You will do this thing step by step. It's already been worked out for you. All task orientation is given to you in a sequential way, and its performance by you is sequential. We can live our entire lives through task orientation. And never tap into that, imagination, and never use it to your advantage. And never become strong in that ability. From my experience, imagination is your mind and non-sequential processing. Sequential processing, which is logic; and when you combine them both together, you get creativity. The imagination creates a new order to your thoughts. Your abilities in logic allow you to sequence your imagination in a way that makes sense. When you combine the two together, you can create something new. That's why it's called creativity. It requires both skills. 003 What Is Intuition? 14:32 I don't see this as the same thing as Maslow's reference to being able to hear these small delicate impulse voices from within. That is a difference skill. Imagination is chaotic. It is random. And it is an unclear picture. Listening to your imagination, as if it were a guiding voice, would only give you a chaotic voice, a random voice. Which doesn't make any sense. Maslow continues, "And if you are successful in this effort, and learn how to do it, you can forget about the outside world, and its noises, and begin to hear these small delicate impulse voices from within." Hearing a voice, an impulse voice inside you that makes sense, requires you to go a little deeper than imagination and logic. Which are aspects of your intellect. For this next part we're going to open up the subject of a different part of the brain. It's more on an emotional level than an intellectual level. Thoughts, imagination, creativity and logic are a good chalkboard. A good way to write out the activities of your mind. To help you in problem solving. Here, when we refer to impulse voices from within, we're closer to intuition, than we are to logic. It's closer to your needs, than it is to a tool of language. Imagination and logic can become voices that are so loud inside you, that it drowns out these delicate impulse voices from within. First, you have the problem of the society. And that's what Maslow is talking about when he says, "You can forget about the outside world and its noises...." People in the society are constantly giving commands. Of which we are expected to respond too. We listen for those commands. They not only drowned out our delicate impulse voices, but they also drowned out our own imagination and logic. Society has a ready-made structure for you to fit into the very day that you are born. The only thing that you hear from the time that you are born is how you're going to fit into that structure. All associative learning, traditional education, is task orientation - to fit you into that structure. Which drowns out your own imagination, and circumvents exercising your skills as logic - to sequence your own thoughts. So that they make sense to you. The society insists that it has the answers. That it already makes sense. Thus, it cripples even the idea that we should exercise our own minds to make them strong. The first voice that drowns out knowing yourself - is the voice that comes from outside. The second voice, that can drowned out your intuition, is this imagination and thought processes that go on in your own mind. There is a way to distinguish the difference between your imagination and your reason. Which is the same as logic and your intuition. The way you differentiate them is by seeing their functions. Thought, imagination and reason never have a destination. They never have an arrival point. Rather they are just tools to utilize to help you find solutions. In contrast, your delicate impulse voices are your destination. They are an arrival point. Because they flow from your needs. Therefore, when you hear them, they will speak the voice of what you need. I like the word impulse. The neurological networks within the brain function by impulse, electrical discharges. Signals are impulses. And the brain functions through signals. They are not a speaking voice. That's just a metaphor. These are felt rather than heard. Or for those of you who use visualization as thought, they are felt rather than seen. It's impulse that drives our behavior. It's even impulse that drives our thoughts. In that sense you could say the underlying structure of your imagination, of your creativity, of your reason, are these impulses. They exist at a deeper layer in the unconscious, at best subconscious. We can use our thoughts to try to give names to our impulses, help us to discern, and to discriminate individual impulses within us. This is a fundamental principle of Emotional Literacy Education. That we learn to sense these impulse voices, because they are so fundamental to our motivation and our behavior. All of the activities of the brain, that by succeeding in feeling them, we begin to discover our own makeup. Maslow goes on to say, "The hints from your animal nature, not only from your common species nature, but also from your own uniqueness." The underlying structure of the brain is impulse. These are impulses to action. Normally we say action is physical. It's what we do with our bodies. It's what we can see ourselves do. What we can't see is the action of our minds. Our brains are constantly sending signals in impulses. Which is an action of the mind. The electrical activity causes the dynamic of the mind. Therefore, we have an internal behavior, internal actions. Which cannot be seen in our behavior. Which include our thought processes. Maslow is correct when he says, that these delicate impulse voices are hints of our animal nature. We're born with instincts. Structures in the brain that are hard wired at birth. Which are basic to the actions, behaviors and dynamics of the mind. We all have, in varying degrees, aggressive impulses, passive impulses, fear impulses. Which are determinants of the mind's behavior. They effect our impulse voices. They commandeer them. They also can drown them out. Fear can takeover, so that the only thing that we hear is terror and doubt. Our aggressive tendencies can take over, so that the only thing that we hear is our anger and our bitterness and our hatred. These small delicate impulse voices are sandwiched between our animal nature, our imagination, and the social influence. Making it very difficult to hear these delicate impulse voices. It can be said then, that this is a skill that has to be learned. We are drowned by all these other voices. That are much louder than intuition. Only by getting control over these other mental activities, finding the volume control on them, and turning them down, can you begin to hear these delicate impulse voices that are from your nature. They are from your soul. And in that sense, the soul is drowned out. Its voice is not heard by you. Being able to hear your intuition is a skill. It takes training. It takes discipline. The ability that you must acquire, to hear your own intuition, is the ability to quiet the mind. When the mind becomes quiet, intuition becomes the sole voice, speaking directly from your soul. And it flows out into your mind, and becomes its sole voice. It's the soul speaking through the mind. It's beyond understanding. It's wisdom. Maslow continues, "The hints are from your animal nature, not only from your species nature..." Which is the things that we all share in common. "...but also from your own uniqueness." This intuition, this wisdom is the voice of a different kind of uniqueness. Everyone of us has a brain that shares commonalities. And everyone of us has a brain that is unique. This is a reference to the uniqueness of your soul. Every soul is different. Though like the brain we share commonalities in our souls. Each soul is also utterly unique. And it's for that reason alone that another person, from the outside, cannot be that voice, cannot hear that voice for you. Another person, therefore, cannot give you intuition, cannot give you wisdom. It goes to the very core of your being. And for you to know what to do with your life, you have to be able to hear that unique voice coming from your soul. Everyone has a unique soul. And everyone is in a unique position in the universe. And because that is true, only you can make choices for you. That relate to both your environment and the particular characteristics of the uniqueness of your soul. Lesson 9: What It Means to Be Psychologically Healthy The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed are examples designed to inspire the student to develop their own unique ideas, language and Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to promote anyone's philosophy. 001 The Limitations of Science 5:18 Science is based on knowledge, which is primarily derived from observation. Science calls it empirical knowledge. It is information primarily gathered from the sense of sight. From what we can observe with our eyes, and figure out with our thoughts. Laying a foundation for facts that can be verified by others. Making observation and verification repeatable. It is a powerful tool, when you are trying to understand objects, observable phenomenon. Where it totally fails - is the world of the invisible. Which scientists now believe make up 90 to 95 percent of the whole universe. Astronomers estimate that the visible light that comes from luminescent bodies, like stars and galaxies, or light that can be detected through other instruments, like X-rays and radio waves; from what they can observe, they have come to the conclusion that this dark matter does exist. It is a testimony, by science itself, that through its current methods alone, they can only give us at most five to 10 percent of the total picture of the universe. Through this observation, and calculations about gravity, and the amount of mass that must exist, they have come to the realization of a new kind of matter. It is called dark matter. It demonstrates the limitations of the methods and techniques of science, to bring us knowledge of the whole universe. This dark matter is inferred. They cannot see it directly. They cannot observe it directly. If you had to make a decision in your life, based upon only having five to ten percent of the facts; and the other 90 percent is inferred, and you have to guess, from that perspective, it becomes an unreliable criteria to base your decisions. This is just an analogy. That science cannot work effectively in all areas of existence. In one area, in which they have been unable to discover the facts, is our own subjectivity. Science has a problem observing emotions, thoughts, desires. Yet, individuals have found that they can observe, through their consciousness, with the aid of their thoughts, the activities of their own minds. Which are invisible to science, hidden from science. Science itself, the methods of science, are set up to look outward at the universe. They have no scientific technique to look inward at a living emotion or thought. They can hook you up to machines, but they cannot read your thoughts or your emotions. 002 What It Means to Be Psychologically Healthy 7:18 In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "People whom we describe as healthy, strong and definite seem to be able to hear their inner-feeling-voices more clearly than most people. They know what they want, and they know equally clearly what they don't want." From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 176, 5th paragraph. Abraham Maslow devoted his psychology and scientific career to defining what a psychologically healthy person is. It makes sense to try to understand what it means to be psychologically healthy. In medicine the body is assumed to be healthy, as long as there is no manifestation of disease. That philosophy does not hold true for psychology for two reasons. The first reason is that neurosis is handed down from generation to generation. What we consider common neurosis, neurosis which appears in the general population, we consider that normal. We do not identify that normalcy as neurosis. The second reason is that health, mental-health, is achieved through psychological growth. Psychological health represents a higher condition of man. Which is beyond normal, supranormal. Psychology does not go in search of the supranormal. What I mean by supranormal is mental health that goes beyond the normal shared neurosis. The function of psychology is to bring a person back to the accepted norms of society. The accepted norms of society are exploitation, social hierarchy, social privilege. Where people are born into families that have more money, and therefore can offer their children more resources than the middle-class. Instead of accepting that one is just lucky, for them it's a declaration of the right of birth, the ruling class. Who then impose their neurosis through a hierarchical structure. That the further down the hierarchy you go, the less need fulfillment is achieved. To the point where we call people poor. Their poor in their ability to fulfill their own needs, but it's not necessarily their fault. But rather it's the neurotic society that refuses to accept them as a part of them. There's an even lower level. We call the lowest level the homeless. They're even without one of our most basic needs. Which is shelter. And it's not necessarily their fault. It's the result of this apathetic society. That pools resources towards the top through a social structure, which drains resources from the bottom. There's cruelty in that. It's not brother and sisterhood. It's compartmentalization and exclusion based upon neurotic hatred. Psychology doesn't question normal neurosis as being unhealthy. Rather, they function like chiropractors. In that they try to realign your psyche, through a psychological adjustment, so that you fit back into the system. Which is a selfish system. Maslow is a revolution in human thought that transcends psychology, and spills over into education and science. He's the only person I've heard speak of human health, as being beyond the psychological norm. And it's beyond the psychological norm, because the way you get there is through growth. When Maslow says, "People whom we describe as healthy, strong and definite...." I know he's referring to a body of scientific research. Of which he conducted and produced results. I know what he's referring to. In his work he gives clear definitions of what the healthy person is. This here is just a small part of his research results. He describes them as strong and definite. Meaning they show clear characteristics in their personalities. They come out strongly and with a definite nature or characteristic. Emotional Literacy Education is not the study of neurosis. It's the study of our feelings from a holistic perspective. It is inclusive in that it names our lowest emotions. Which we all share. And our highest possibilities for emotion. Which only the healthiest among us share. 003 Inner-Feeling-Voices: Interpreting Our Inner Signals 12:14 He says, "They seem able to hear their inner-feeling-voices more clearly than most people." He is drawing distinctions. Which are useful in giving us a definition of what a healthy person is. Which also gives us a definition of what we are growing toward. Here he modifies the inner voice. It's the voice you're more likely to hear than the intuitive voice. Wisdom is a possibility. It is arrived at through growth and recognized as intuition. The inner-feeling-voices are always there. They can be unconscious, semiconscious or conscious. They are the combined total of our impulse voices. If we were to become conscious of an impulse, and we were able to feel it, it would be what I would call an individual desire. Impulse voices, our desires, are small and delicate, and hard to hear. One of the goals of Emotional Literacy Education is to help you learn how to hear your impulse voices. They can be distinguished from your inner-feeling-voices in that they are object oriented. They're specific impulses to a specific action, usually requiring a specific object. For example, if you like ice cream, before you get up from your chair in the living room to go get the ice cream, there is an impulse to action. There is an urge for the ice cream. Why this is important - is by being able to identify these desire-impulses, as they arise in the mind, you can stop yourself. And use your intellect to ask yourself a question. "Do I really need this? Or, do I just want this? Do I really need this? Or, is it a whim, something that just brings me pleasure, something that I just like?" The reason for asking the question is to determine whether or not this particular impulse-desire is for your benefit, for your health, for your well being. Or, is it one too many calories for the day. I'm just giving an example. We are made up of millions of impulse desires. Emotional Literacy Education is about learning how to read those impulse-desires. Learning not to act on them automatically. Learning to categorize them into categories of good and bad, good for me, bad for me. Our normal way of operating is after we've eaten the ice cream, or smoked the cigarette, we look back on the act, after the impulse, after the cigarette is finished, or the ice cream has been eaten. And we might conclude that we wished we hadn't indulged. Then it's too late. Then it's just regret. Which doesn't help at all. It doesn't stop you next time from a habitual behavior. I'm not saying you shouldn't eat ice cream. And it's up to you whether or not you smoke cigarettes. It's just symbolic of desires, and demonstrative of how to harness them. And why you need to hear them? Of course, you don't actually hear them, you sense them. Emotional Literacy Education is learning to sense these impulse desires. They are not strong like feelings. They are subtle like impulses. If you can catch an impulse as it's arising, it can become a choice. You can choose to act on it. Or, you can choose to not act on it. It's the only way, as far as I know, to step in between your desire and your action - to minimize the negative effect of bad habits. That are by definition detrimental to either your physical health or your mental health. All of us are stuck with habits that we've acquired. Being able to sense an urge, that's what I would call them, urges. Being able to sense an urge is very helpful. But they are very subtle. And we're not use to looking for them before the act. What you're more likely to encounter is an inner-feeling-voice. Which basically amounts to impulse voices in groups. It's a complex set of impulses. And they carry with them information that is useful. Understanding, hearing, identifying, discriminating our feelings is how we interpret our emotional states. Which we use as a reality test. Examples of our feeling-voices are frustration, guilt, fear, depression and anxiety. Frustration carries with it the information that a group of desires is hindered. An entire plan is blocked. One simple action, being blocked, is strong enough to set off frustration. It's an event that tells you that your dreams are threatened. The goals are not being met, and the entire plan is in jeopardy. Therefore, it represents a set of desires. When they feel blocked, it signals frustration, and that is a positive thing, if it's used correctly. And it's a negative thing, if it's used incorrectly. What I mean by that is, frustration with knowledge of what frustration is, tells you what's going on. Frustration which is dysfunctional will find another outlet, other than knowledge. Its most likely outlet is anger, is blame. Somebody else is the problem, why the dream is not being fulfilled. Emotional Literacy Education is the study of the entire spectrum of emotions. What information they're trying to tell you, and how to interpret that information. So that you can use it to benefit you. What we have now is a condition of a lack of knowledge of our emotions. Such that when they occur, we don't know what they're trying to tell us. Therefore, we don't know how to act on the information. It leaves us confused and unable to choose, and make decisions about how to cope with our obstacles. To get around them, so that we can still meet our needs. Emotions can be either functional or dysfunctional. Emotions are always dysfunctional, when we don't know their purpose. Emotions are always functional, when we know why they're happening to us. Because it gives us information about what to do. Nature is trying to inform you through your emotions. If you listen to your inner-feeling-voices, you will find them carrying information that you need. They are there for a purpose. Maslow even go so far as to say, "People whom we describe as healthy, strong and definite, seem to be able to hear their inner-feeling-voices more clearly than most people." He defines a healthy person, as one who can hear their inner-feeling-voices. They make better decisions. They have more choices. They are better able to manage those feelings, and use them to their advantage. The alternative is that these feelings get in the way. They become a liability and a disadvantage. They confuse us. They remove choice, and make us unable to make the right decision. 004 Healthy People Know What They Need and Don't Need 2:48 Maslow continues, "They know what they want, and they know equally clearly what they don't want." They have learned how to distinguish, what they want, and what they don't want. Based upon a clear recognition of what satisfies their desires. Of what fulfills their needs. And the criteria, for which they base this distinction, is whether or not what they want brings them health, and makes them feel better. When we want something, and we get it; and we're unconscious of our feelings, we have no way of determining, whether or not it's good for us. Because our feelings let us know. Maslow is describing healthy people, as people who know what they want. And they know equally clearly what they don't want. What they don't want is what makes them unhappy. Emotions of unhappiness are there as our friends, in equal proportion to our feelings of satisfaction and happiness. We need contrasting feelings. So that we can associate what we want, with what we don't want. Our unhappy feelings serve that purpose. Without feelings of unhappiness, we would want everything. Life is filled with danger. Our psychological health and our physical health are fragile. They are our protectorate. They are there for a clear purpose. This comes sharply into view with consciousness, with experience, with discrimination. Which are acquired skills, learned skills. Skills which we are not informed about. Skills which if we had them, we would live better lives. Emotional Literacy Education is to help you have a better life, by teaching you how to strengthen your own skills. So that you can better use them to interpret your own reality. 005 People Are out of Touch with Their Inner Signals 9:47 In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "Other people, in contrast, seem to be empty, out of touch with their inner signals. They eat, defecate, and go to sleep by the clock's cues, rather than by the cues of their own bodies. They use external criteria for everything from choosing their food ('it's good for you') and clothing ('it's in style') to questions of values and ethics ('my daddy told me to')." From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 176, 5th paragraph. He's trying to contrast a healthy functional attitude with an unhealthy dysfunctional attitude. Being devoid of hearing your delicate impulse desires and inner-feeling-voices, and being without intuition and wisdom; a person is left without a compass, without inner signals that direct. Which leaves a person empty. This has been the condition of man for thousands of years. By not informing you, by not helping you to discover your feelings and desires, society is setting up a condition in which you become dependent on it for direction. Society provides an endless list of rules, of regulations for you to follow. Its failure is that those rules contradict themselves. Further diminishing our own capacities to make decisions. The end result, when we're given contradictory values and contradictory signals - of how to live our lives, it is confusion. It is a crippled decision making system. In which the society, which destroyed your decision making ability, then comes to your rescue with the answers. Maslow continues, "They eat, defecate, and go to sleep by the clock's cues, rather than by the cues of their own bodies. They use external criteria for everything from choosing food and clothing to questions of values and ethics." When we're crippled on the inside, we turn outward for the answers. John Lennon, one of my favorite artists, wrote in a song titled, Crippled Inside from his Imagine CD: "You can shine your shoes and wear a suit. "You can comb your hair and look quite cute. "You can hide your face behind a smile. "One thing you can't hide is when you're crippled inside." It doesn't matter what particular occupation a person has in life. We arrive at the same conclusions. Maslow is saying the same thing from the perspective of a psychologist and a scientist. And John Lennon is reaching the same conclusion as a musician and as an artist - in his observations about humanity. We all wear masks to hide not being able to make our own decisions; not being able to come to our own conclusions, not being able to rationalize and understand for ourselves what's happening to us. Because we don't want others to know how weak we are inside. To show weakness allows others to take advantage of us, so there's a reason why we hide. The fact that we hide it from ourselves, though, is not helpful. We need to know the deficits, the weaknesses, so that we can strengthen them. John Lennon continues: "You can wear a mask and paint your face. "You can call yourself the human race. "You can wear a collar and a tie. "One thing you can't hide is when you're crippled inside." Well, we can hide it from others, and we do. It doesn't change how we feel about ourselves. You can fake something, so that other people don't recognize you. But you can't fool nature. You can't artificially boost your self-esteem by hiding. Rather, it compounds the problem, because it's an additional weakness. Self-esteem equals our strength, our power, and our effectiveness as human beings to satisfy our own needs. And you can't fake that, not to yourself. It's still there. The weakness is still there. It affects everything you feel. It affects the way you think. It affects how you think. We can fake. We can fool the world, and through self-deception we can fool ourselves. But you can't fool reality. Reality doesn't bend to your self-deceit. Your weakness remains just under the surface, under the facade, under the cover of a smile. Your tears would be more authentic; would make you more human, would bring you closer to yourself, than pretending that we're strong. John Lennon was a harsh critic. And I believe he failed to hold the mirror up to himself. What he says in this song is certainly true about himself. He continues: "Well now you know that your cat has nine lives, "Nine lives to itself. "But you only got one. "And a dog's life ain't fun. "Take a look inside." It is easy to say. It is difficult to do. John Lennon didn't look inside, ran from his own weaknesses, tried to cover them. But his statement is valid. The conclusion is correct. Take a look inside. Emotional Literacy Education is a support system to help you look inside. Knowing how difficult it is. How scary it is. How much effort is involved. And I believe we need a support system to be able to move through this process. We need to support each other in this process. It's the most difficult to go it alone. And though it's not easier, it is more comforting to share with others. I would like Emotional Literacy Education to be a classroom. Where we can share with one another, and learn from one another our experiences. That will lend support to each other. 006 The Window of Consciousness 7:06 In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "There are signals from inside, there are voices that yell out, 'By gosh this is good, don't ever doubt it!' This is a path, one of the ways that we try to teach self-actualization and the discovery of self. The discovery of identity comes via the impulse voices, via the ability to listen to your own guts, and to their reactions and to what is going on inside of you." From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 171, 2nd paragraph. The signals are there, unconscious. They exist without our knowledge. They compel us to act in certain ways. And to think in certain ways without our permission, without a conscious decision making process. Thus, we are easily prone to make mistakes. And to do things, habitual things, that are harmful to us. Which actually sets up conditions of our own unhappiness. In cycles which we repeat, making our unhappiness a continuum. Nature provides us with a key. The way light dispels darkness, consciousness dispels unconsciousness. It's not like turning on a light switch. It's more like turning on a light dimmer switch. The way that we increase the volume of light, incrementally, is through our thought processes. Most of the mind functions unconsciously. One aspect of the mind closest to consciousness is language. We have to choose our words. It opens up a little window. We can use thought to pry open the window of consciousness. Though they are not the same mechanism. It's just that thought and language are more closely connected to consciousness, more on the surface, than our inner-impulse-signals. Emotions, when they reach a certain level of intensity, become conscious. We can use both to help open a window into the darker recesses of our minds. To the place where we can begin to hear these inner signals. They are shouting, but without a mechanism to hear the shout, their voices go unheard. Their impulses go unfelt. That's why an educational process is required. To unlock these windows, to amplify our feelings. And to become skilled enough in language, to help us be able to identify these impulses, these desires. Maslow says, "This is a path. One of the ways that we try to teach self-actualization and the discovery of self." Emotional Literacy Education will help you to become an explorer of yourself. It provides maps to help you navigate your feelings and thoughts. By providing a language that you can learn. That will help you to identify what is already inside you. That has no name. The language of Emotional Literacy will help you to define your feelings, and to discover their meaning. It is a path, like any educational system. But it is non-sequential by nature. In that it is important for you to choose, out of the language, what it is that you need to know about yourself, now. The discovery of self is not an A-B-C process, because the mind has a random nature. Therefore, to follow it, you have to have a random process - a process of choice, an exercise of choice by gravity, by attraction. By what pulls you. By what you need to know about yourself right now. Which isn't what somebody else needs to know about their self right now. Maslow continues, "The discovery of identity comes via the impulse voices." The Emotional Literacy Language will help you to identify your impulse-voices, by giving you a language. Which will help you to name them, based upon your experience of them. Further, it expands upon identifying feelings, thoughts and desires, by providing you with definitions. More importantly, it will help you to exercise your own ability to define for yourself how you feel. 007 Each of Us Possesses a Unique Inner Personal Language 7:54 There is no single way to define a particular feeling. What I have discovered is that each of us possesses a unique inner language. I call it a personal language. Emotional Literacy Language is a universal language. Which is a tool that you use to write your own personal language. It's a starting point. It's a beginning. It's primary function is to help you exercise your own skills, to create your own definitions; to help you understand your own feelings and thoughts. It's to help you exercise your mind in such a way, that you're able to create your own language. That's the only way, that you will be able to understand your own feelings. It's a skill. It's a language skill. Language that is developed, being so closely related to consciousness, will also help you to grow your consciousness. And when it is of sufficient strength, you will become aware of your inner signals. Then, they will yell out! As Maslow said, "By gosh this is good! Don't ever doubt it!" They also scream, this is bad. Leave it by the roadside. Forget it. You don't need it. You don't want it. You don't like it: is just as important to discovering how to be happy, how to feel satisfaction. Emotional Literacy Education, along with the Emotional Literacy Language, will help you acquire the ability. By exercising your own mind in such a way, that over time you will gain the ability to listen to your own guts; your own inner most feelings, your most subtle impulse-desires. They will help you. They carry with them information. That is their function. In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "The discovery of identity comes via the impulse voices, via the ability to listen to your own guts, and to their reactions and to what is going on inside of you." Page 171, 2nd paragraph. He continues, "An important part of self-knowledge is being able to hear clearly these signals from inside." From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 176, 6th paragraph. He clearly associates his work with self-knowledge. Making it synonymous with being able to hear clearly these signals from inside. That there is no distinction between Maslow's work and self-knowledge. Self-knowledge has been around since before the time of Socrates. Yet, it has failed to find a place in society. There's a fundamental reason for that. My self-knowledge is a personal language, that only I understand. Which cannot help you, directly. When I speak about my self-knowledge, it jumps from all of these experiences that I have had. It is condensed into language. And then it's expressed through words. And by the time it reaches your ears, it's just information. And that information cannot carry the structure of my mind, or the experiences that I've had. This is a new discovery. The new discovery is my self-knowledge is a personal language. Which I cannot transfer to you. I cannot transfer growth. A simple analogy is: a composer writes music, hears the song, uses imagination to hear it, and reason and logic to make it into a set of sequential notes. And his skill, the composer's skill, took years to develop; practice, practice, discipline, concentration. Those things cannot be transferred. The composer sets his music on paper. And when he hands it to you, assuming that you're not a musician, those notes will be utterly meaningless to you; will have no value to you. It's just information. Now, if you were to take music lessons; and acquire musical skills, and strengthen your abilities in that area, then when I give you the sheet music, you may be able to understand it. To help you, I have devised Emotional Literacy Education, and the Emotional Literacy Language and Vocabulary. To help you exercise the functions in your brain - to strengthen them. So that you will acquire all of these abilities. The goal is for you to create your own personal self-knowledge. Which is related to yourself. In which you will develop your own language. Which you will then be able to use as a tool to help you solve your problems, satisfy your desires, and fulfill your needs. Lesson 10: The Emotional Literacy Language: A Technology of Happiness The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed are examples designed to inspire the student to develop their own unique ideas, language and Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to promote anyone's philosophy. 001 Maslow's Peak Experiences Are Conscious Experiences 17:02 Emotional Literacy Education emphasizes using your own senses, and mental capacities to explore your own interior. Many people have been able to create knowledge within themselves about the activities of their own minds. Self-knowledge has been around for thousands of years. It has been affirmed and reaffirmed by the poets, by the mystics, and by what Maslow calls peak experiencers. Maslow's research has found that nearly all of us at one time or another has had a peak experience. His research focused on the healthy person, and he found a correlation between their peak experiences, and the frequency of those peak experiences, and their level of health. He discovered that these peak experiences changed people for the better. Peak experiences are dynamics within the mind, that reach a level of activity such that they become conscious. Maslow also discovered, in his research, a correlation between peak experiences, which we all have had, and the experience of the mystics and the poets. It's when we have a peak experience, that something within us becomes conscious enough, that we can begin to recognize it. A glimpse of our own mental dynamics can be seen in peak experiences. Whether or not they're a positive or negative experience. When fear rises to a certain level of intensity, it's a peak experience. When joy rises to a certain level, it's a peak experience. It's identified as a peak experience by the very fact, that we become aware of it. When something reaches our awareness, in the same way as when our visual field reaches our awareness, then we can use language, to identify and begin to make a picture of what it is. In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "Colin Wilson (159), in his book, Introduction to the New Existentialism, pointed out that life has to have meaning, has to be filled with moments of high intensity that validate life and make it worthwhile. Otherwise the desire to die makes sense, for who would want to endure endless pain or endless boredom?" From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 180, 2nd paragraph. Maslow speaks in his work about peak experiences. And how they add meaning to our lives. A simple explanation is that unconscious existence, dynamics within our mind that remain unconscious, cannot provide us with any information, any knowledge, any meaning. Nor can they be intellectualized, brought into language and expressed. Even though those dynamics happen on a continuum, without levels of consciousness, they still drive our behaviors. But automatically without intellectual recourse; without choice, without going through a decision making process, without analysis, without comparison. Reactive emotions to perceived threats is how we behave. From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, a dictionary definition of the word existential is: of, or relating to, or dealing with existence. Having existence. Based on experience. Of, or, as conceived by existentialism or existentialists: as an existential moment." I love the word existence. From which the word existential is derived. It has two connotations. That which exists, of which we are aware, and that which exists, of which we are unaware. In other words, a thing can still have existence without us knowing it. The word existence is synonymous with the word reality. We have existence in reality, but largely our existence remains unconscious. The value of the peak experience is that it transforms something, that exists within us, from unconsciousness to consciousness. That is the basic fundamental change, that takes place in the human being. Where we go from a knowledge deficit of ourselves to self-knowledge. The peak experience is the way to get there. But without a language to identify those experiences, they are not registered as strongly in our memory and our thoughts, as is required to make a benefit from them. Existentialism means having an experience of your own existence. Another word which I love is the word experience. For me it means to exist in consciousness. An existential moment is a conscious moment, especially one of the highest intensity of the dynamics of one's own mind. Experience is the total combined functioning of the body, mind and soul. Such that they work together to produce an experience. We can have existence without conscious experiences. And we can have existence with conscious experiences. Our conscious experiences are what Maslow refers to as our peak experiences. Maslow tends to define the peak experiences, as our highest moments of joy and happiness. That's a partial truth. Because our highest, most intense experiences, also include our moments of deep unhappiness. Either his research improperly asked the question. Or, those who were questioned, about peak experiences, tended to forget their unhappy moments. Which became conscious moments. As far as experience goes, there is no differentiation between moments of unhappiness, satisfaction and happiness. All three are equally valid emotions. Insofar as, each one delivers a different message. Of which, we need to know the things that make us unhappy. We need to know the things that satisfy us. And we need to know when we're successful through feeling happiness. Our negative emotions are just as useful as our positive emotions. Both are friends. Both need to be treated with acceptance into our consciousness. Where we can understand and bring language and expression to them. Then they function as helpers. Unhappiness is not something to avoid. It's something to inform. We are healthier as human beings, when we can arrange our lives, to be more successful in satisfying our needs, and accomplishing our goals. Thereby, diminishing the experiences of unhappiness. But not eliminating them as sensory perceptions. Which give us information about our environment and our reality. Human experience is a large phenomenon. We tend to fight consciousness of our more intense, negative emotions, of fear and hostility. We repress them. We repress memories of them. With an intense negative experience, we are taught to avoid them. We habituate this. When we sense a negative emotion arising, we learn how to block it before it reaches consciousness. There is a reason for that. We're not taught how to handle negative emotions, when they do arise. Another way of looking at it is - that we are taught that, when negative emotions do arise, how to repress them. How to fear them. How to make them return back into unconsciousness. And how to block thinking about them. It's not a surprise. That Maslow's research into peak experiences tends to report more heavily, highest moments of happiness. The problem with that is - highest moments of happiness happen by design; happen through intent, happen through goal setting, plan creation and subsequent follow-up in successive steps. Following the plan, being successful at that, until one accomplishes their final goal. Which requires your consciousness. It requires planning abilities, goal setting. All of that is wiped out along with our fear and repression of our negative experiences. Consciousness will not function by picking and choosing what to be conscious of, and what not to be conscious of. It is more like a light switch. If you turn it off for the negative emotions, the positive emotions are turned off too. The very term used by Maslow to describe the highest moments of happiness, peak experiences, imply experiences of a periodic nature. He used the word episodic. It's an episode. It's transitory. The state of happiness, as taught in Emotional Literacy Education, is not a transitory state. It's a state of wisdom. It's a state of awakefulness, of discrimination and consciousness, turned on in a continuum. It is also a state that encompasses, or embodies, unhappiness and satisfaction as states. It's not the elimination of unhappiness. But rather allowing our emotions to function properly. To provide us with information - to be functional. His study cases, who reported periodic, episodic peak experiences, were largely accidental. And the person didn't know how they had the moment of happiness, or how to get it back. 002 Missing The Peak Experience 8:56 I wrote in The Old Man of the Holy Mountain, "A young man questioned the old man. And he said, "Happiness seems to have escaped me. Is it true happiness exists in others?" The old man answered him saying, "Happiness comes from within. And if you cannot find happiness within yourself, it will hinder you from finding happiness within others." A young woman spoke sincerely with an open mind and an honest heart. And she said, "How may I come upon happiness within myself?" The old man answered, "I know you have been within the bounds of happiness, yet you know it not. And you have seen her blessed ocean shores, and smelled her sweet orchid fragrance. Though unhappiness veils pleasure from your hearts. I believe if you were to understand yourself and others, you would find happiness within you." I wrote this when I was 17 or 18. I was referring to myself. Asking myself about happiness. Knowing in my own memory, I had experienced happiness. The question itself is being asked, from the point of view of where did it go? How do I get it back? Knowing I had been within the bounds of happiness. Yet, while I was happy, I knew it not. That I had seen her blessed ocean shores. And smelled her sweet orchid fragrance. But this one thing I knew. That unhappiness was veiling pleasure from my heart. I was conscious, that I was unhappy. And I remembered being happy. I felt the contrast of the two, consciously, and began to long for my happiness. And it continues, "I believe if you were to understand yourself and others, you would find happiness within you." In that sense, it can be said, that through understanding we learn how to orchestrate our own happiness. Happiness doesn't come naturally. Mankind, and its social order, demands a particular set of interactive emotions. Emotions that play a role in social function and social success. We are unconscious of those, because they're negative. We use fear to intimidate, to get what we want in the social sense; religious fears, political fears, threats of hunger, threats of homelessness, threats of imprisonment, threats of humiliation - is how we keep people in line. We might respond with anger to such a system and hatred and bitterness and revenge. The point here is that to participate in the society, is to participate in a particular limited set of emotions. Which are acceptable. Yet, when we examine them, they are unhappy. That is the set of emotions, which we use in survival, and which are handed down from generation to generation. Meaning we're automatically taught them from birth; these negative attitudes and dispositions of hatred and fear and deception. Therefore, happiness, which is comprised of a different set of emotions and mental responses, is outside that experience. That makes happiness only possible by conscious design. It has to be learned outside the normal neurotic emotional structure of society. If it had happiness, I know it would gladly hand it down from generation to generation. It just is not a survival skill that we've learned yet. Abraham Maslow wrote, "Colin Wilson (159), in his book, Introduction to the New Existentialism, pointed out that life has to have meaning, has to be filled with moments of high intensity that validate life and make it worthwhile. Otherwise the desire to die makes sense, for who would want to endure endless pain or endless boredom?" Because our current survival strategies, and their accompanying emotions, are painful, we flatten out our experiences. We enter into a kind of self induced hypnotic depression. In which we become bored with our lives. Colin Wilson is pointing out the need to unflatten our emotions, to have peak experiences, highs and lows. They add meaning. They validate life, and they make it worth living. People commit suicide in the United States every year. It's symptomatic of feeling empty and bored. Of having no hope, and suffering endless pain. To where one begins to wonder why I am here just to suffer? We unconsciously flatten out our own experiences, our own emotions, as a defense mechanism to feeling extreme unhappiness. In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "One of the goals of education should be to teach that life is precious. If there were no joy in life, it would not be worth living." From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 180, 2nd paragraph. For the sake of our own survival, we have to work out a design for our own happiness. In which joy is not a random, accidental peak experience, but rather a common experience. 003 The Emotional Literacy Language: A Technology of Happiness 16:55 In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote, "We must make a new vocabulary for all these untilled, these unworked problems. This 'cognition of being' means really the cognition that Plato and Socrates were talking about; almost, you could say, a technology of happiness, of pure excellence, pure truth, pure goodness, and so on. Well, why not a technology of joy, of happiness?" From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 169, last paragraph. To solve a problem, even the simplest problem, requires a description of the problem. We can't solve a problem, no matter how much it effects our lives, unless we know about it. Our social technology has solved for us many of our survival problems. It has helped us to become more efficient in satisfying our physiological needs. In our attempt to solve those problems, we've created new ones. Particularly the problems that arise from social behavior; that arise in our relationships. We have unnamed problems that go on inhibiting our happiness, primarily because of the way that we socially interact. And as new problems effect us, they require a way to describe them. That is why Maslow says, "We must make a new vocabulary for all these untilled, these unworked problems." Our problems are compounding themselves. As we become more complex socially, we are adding new problems on top of old problems. We are not solving problems as they emerge. They are accumulating. Maslow is stating the need for a new vocabulary. That represents a description of our problems, but also a plan to resolve them. The core of Emotional Literacy Education is the Emotional Literacy Language. It is the principal tool used in the educational process. The Emotional Literacy Language is new. Its subject is self-knowledge. It is designed to fill in the missing knowledge in the society and in education itself. This need for a new language has been around longer than Plato and Socrates. Humanity has been struggling with knowledge of itself. In Learning Emotional Literacy, A New Language of the Emotions, Psychologist Claude Steiner wrote, "Learning Emotional Literacy is like learning a new language. With the emotionally literate language a different tone of voice is used. Words are combined into strange sounding sentences, and a number of 'neologisms' are used in order to communicate the desired emotional content." Claude Steiner continues, "With emotionally literate expressions, they often make no sense to the listener. Who might conclude that what is being said is nonsense." Claude Steiner continues, "The language of the emotions is required for the development of the higher levels of Emotional Literacy. The language elaborately deals with the exchange of strokes, with the identification of our and other peoples' emotions, and the clarification of their causes. This language is foreign to the average person. Who will have to learn it in order to develop Emotional Literacy in their lives." When I came across the phrase 'Emotional Literacy,' I realized that it implied learning a new skill. As I studied Emotional Literacy, I realized that the new skill centered around learning a new language. I went back to my previous work in Knowledge of the Self in Nine Volumes, and I realized I had created a new language out of an old language. I also understood, that it could be adapted to an educational program. In which one could acquire the skill of Emotional Literacy. That is literally being able to read your own emotions, to identify your own emotions, to interpret their content. Then to be able to use that information to help the student make better decisions. When Claude Steiner says, "Learning Emotional Literacy is like learning a new language." There is, in that statement, the hope for a new language. It's not a declaration that one exists. For me one does exist. It was something, that I needed to create for myself. So that I could make a picture, a word picture, of what was going on inside me, emotionally. And what was going on around me in others. Learning Emotional Literacy is acquiring the skill to understand this new language. Also, how to use it, and apply it in your everyday life. I have created the Emotional Literacy Language. And I've broken it down into individual words, that are categorized by subject. To the point where I have created the Emotional Literacy Vocabulary. The reason for breaking it down into a vocabulary - is so that it can be fit into an education system. By breaking it down to its smallest parts, they can be taught through concept building. Where simple concepts are taught, which evolve into more complex usage, and more complex concepts. Without an Emotional Literacy Language and Vocabulary, the skill of Emotional Literacy cannot be taught. The need for a language is there. It's the language of our emotions. Which as Maslow said, "We must make a new vocabulary for all of these untilled, these unworked problems." Claude Steiner continues, "With the emotionally literate language, a different tone of voice is used. Words are combined into strange sounding sentences, and a number of neologisms are used in order to communicate the desired emotional content." From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, a dictionary definition of 'neologism' means: "A new word, expression or usage." If I substitute his word 'neologism,' it reads like this, "With the emotionally literate language, a different tone of voice is used. Words are combined into strange sounding sentences, and a number of new words, new phrases, new expressions, word combinations, and new usage for common words are used in order to communicate the desired emotional content." The Emotional Literacy Language uses common words, like fear and joy in combinations, that form new phrases. That have new meaning that wasn't there in the language; that isn't in the dictionary. That's why it's called a new language. As with any new language, that the student is not familiar with, to become familiar with it, the student has to go through an educational process. That's why I have added to the phrase, 'Emotional Literacy.' Which is a new combination of common words, like 'computer literacy' is new. I have added to the phrase, 'Emotional Literacy,' the word 'Education' - to form the phrase 'Emotional Literacy Education.' Because literacy in emotions is a skill, and it requires an educational process to acquire the skill of understanding the language. The purpose of the Language is to help us describe to ourselves, and to understand all of the different aspects of the mind including emotions. It's a language which is referential to our subjective experiences. Claude Steiner continues, "With emotionally literate expressions, they often make no sense to the listener. Who might conclude that what is being said is nonsense." For example, the phrase 'Emotional Literacy' makes no sense, because emotions cannot become literate. Emotions can't read. That's why new meanings are created for old words. New word combinations or phrases are used to express meaning of things that are beyond our current knowledge. Every profession, whether it's the teaching profession, or the legal profession, or the various engineering professions, they all have their own language. They use words, that if you're outside the field, you're not familiar with. That's why lawyers and engineers and doctors and psychologists and educators and carpenters and plumbers go to school to learn the language of their trade. This is a very common thing that we do, when we develop a new skill. It requires a new language to describe the skill. Claude Steiner continues, "The language of the emotions is required for the development of the higher levels of Emotional Literacy. The language elaborately deals with the exchange of strokes, with the identification of our and other peoples' emotions, and the clarification of their causes. This language is foreign to the average person who will have to learn it in order to develop Emotional Literacy in their lives." Learning any new language comes down to a matter of need. We learn new languages for vocational purposes. The need to learn the Emotional Literacy Language is directly related to the need to improve our relationships, and the need to better cope with our emotions. It also has a direct relationship to personal development and growth toward satisfaction and happiness. It provides the language of our needs. It describes what emotions we're employing in our relationships, that are hurtful and helpful to getting what we need. It provides the Language that relates to our emotional problems, and gives us the skill to describe those problems to ourselves. And also it gives us the Language how our own emotions, when developed, can provide the solutions to those emotional problems. 004 The Emotional Literacy Language: A Language of Being 6:03 Abraham Maslow continues, "This 'cognition of being' means really the cognition that Plato and Socrates were talking about; almost, you could say, a technology of happiness, of pure excellence, pure truth, pure goodness, and so on. Well, why not a technology of joy, of happiness?" Maslow often referred to, in his work, 'cognition of being.' One of his most important contributions to psychology is his book The Psychology of Being. In it he defines two types of cognition. One is 'being cognition' and the other is 'deficiency cognition.' Which he referred to as 'd cognition' for 'deficiency cognition,' and 'b cognition' for 'being cognition.' To put it simply, his being cognition is a form of cognition, in which we become aware of what is. And deficiency cognition is its opposite. It's not being aware of what is, as it relates to our own existence, the internal makeup of our own minds. The word cognition means to know. It means to know, in this sense what we are. It's not enough just to have an experience. We have to have a Language for our experiences, and a way to describe them to ourselves. And a way, using language, to express our experiences to others. The Emotional Literacy Language is the Language that we use to describe to ourselves, and to express to others our experiences. It's a tool. It's a new technology. It's a description of happiness. And the method and means of how to become happy. In this statement, Maslow is talking about something that had not yet been created. The same is the situation with Claude Steiner's statement. When he speaks of an emotionally literate language, he's referring to a Language that did not exist, in a complete form, to his knowledge. Here, Maslow is wishful thinking, that psychology and education need a new Language, a new Vocabulary that would amount to a new technology. That would be a tool to help human beings achieve happiness and joy. I recognized this need in education and in psychology itself. That's why I have created the Emotional Literacy Language, and have evolved it into a Vocabulary; that is a description of our experiences. Emotional Literacy Education is a technology of happiness. Which utilizes the tools of the Emotional Literacy Language and the Emotional Literacy Vocabulary. How it works is by combining this Language and Vocabulary with the technology of education, and the advancements that we have made in the field of education. It incorporates the best that education has to offer - by way of educating students. It is the first technology of happiness; the first that has a complete form. The first that utilizes a language which is comprehensive of human experience, and encompasses all human experiences. And provides them with a language. Which, when the student learns it, they will be able to express to themselves their own experiences, and will be able to express and communicate them in their relationships. 005 The Emotional Literacy Language: A New Beginning 6:46 Singer-songwriter, Tracy Chapman, wrote in her song New Beginning - from the New Beginning CD: "The whole world's broke and it ain't worth fixing. "It's time to start all over, make a new beginning. "There's too much fighting - too little understanding. "It's time to stop and start all over. Make a new beginning. "...We need to make new symbols. Make new signs. "Make a new language. With these we'll redefine the world." Here, I'm giving the example of two psychologists, Claude Steiner and Abraham Maslow. And Tracy Chapman, who's an artist and a poet and a musician; coming from different fields, yet arriving at the same conclusion. Their conclusion is that we need to make new symbols. Symbols that represent our real problems. Symbols that represent real solutions to those problems. Tracy Chapman says, "...We need to make new symbols. Make new signs. "Make a new language. With these we'll redefine the world." There is a need for a new language. A language which symbolizes all that we don't know about ourselves. A language which informs us about ourselves. A language which covers all the unknown parts of ourselves. Tracy Chapman wrote, "The whole world's broke and it ain't worth fixing." From the perspective of carrying on the way that we currently do, and the way that we approach problem solving - is not going to fix our problems. Our problems keep piling up and increasing. We keep trying to solve those problems, using the same methods that haven't produced any result. That's the part that she's referring too. If we continue to try to solve our problems, using the same old methods, we're going to continue to get the same old results. We need a new approach to problem-solving. Rather than trying to fix the old approach, we need a brand new perspective. That can only come from a new language. She continues, "It's time to start all over. Make a new beginning." It is time to make a new beginning in the fields of education and psychology. Neither of the current approaches of psychology or education are solving mankind's problems. That's why we do need to make a new beginning in the fields of education and psychology. She goes on to say, "There's too much fighting - too little understanding." Psychology is not preventing violence. Education is not preventing children from growing up to becoming violent. We need a new technology, that employs understanding. The way to understand - is the application of a new language, that describes the problem and the solution. She continues, "It's time to stop and start all over. Make a new beginning. "...We need to make new symbols. Make new signs. "Make a new language. With these we'll redefine the world." A technology that helps people to grow, to become stronger, to find happiness - by its very nature will redefine the world. Its unhappy people who fight amongst themselves. Happy people have no need to fight each other. It will redefine the world from the perspective that humanity will clearly have, in front of them, a new set of emotional responses - to utilize in their relationships. Which will make their relationships more satisfying. Which will bring their relationships more joy, more success. We do recognize the problem. Abraham Maslow, Tracy Chapman and Claude Steiner point to the solution; a new vocabulary, a new language, and a new educational system. That is a technology for educating students in human relationships, and how to make those relationships better. 006 Life Is Education and Everybody Is a Teacher and a Pupil 13:11 In his book, Motivation and Personality, Abraham Maslow wrote, "All of life is education and everybody is a teacher and everybody is forever a pupil." From Motivation and Personality, by Abraham Maslow, page 253, 7th paragraph. As far as human happiness is concerned, there is no college that you can go to - to get a degree in how to be happy. Happiness comes out of life as education. The most important point that I think Maslow is trying to make - is that life itself provides all of our experiences from cradle to the grave. That life is our teacher. The experiences that life provides to us is our teacher. Therefore, every experience that you have is an opportunity for self education. To learn from experience, a language is required. When we have an experience, and we cannot name it, or describe it to ourselves, the information that would have been useful and beneficial to us, from that experience, is lost. Experience, to be useful, has to be put into a language, that you can understand, and apply to your everyday life. Emotional Literacy Education is the process of acquiring the language of your experiences. So that when you have an experience, you're able to apply the language. And from that experience create meaning out of it. Maslow said, "All of life is education." That's because we are given a continuous flow of experiences from life. When you can master this technique of understanding your own experiences, you become a teacher. You become the teacher of yourself. Maslow states, "All of life is education and everybody is a teacher and everybody is forever a pupil." Through experiences we teach ourselves. And in that sense we become our own students. I wrote in my book, The Old Man of the Holy Mountain, "And the humble man questioned the Old Man saying, 'I have heard many things concerning your teaching. Yet they say that you proclaim yourself not to be a teacher. What is the meaning of this saying?' "The Old Man stood near, yet he seemed distant. And he said, 'I do not teach others, because I cannot teach others. I may only teach myself. " 'And everyone teaches their own self all that they learn. " 'We choose that which we desire to know. " 'And if you desire to know yourself, you must become your own teacher, and be your own disciple, and learn about yourself.' " From The Old Man of the Holy Mountain, by Mark Zimmerman, Chapter 17, I Cannot Teach Others. A person who is called a teacher is more like a facilitator of learning, rather than an educator. What I mean by that is, ultimately we educate ourselves. That's clear to see when a student refuses to learn. If I could teach, the student's cooperation would not be required. I would go to the student and educate, and they would automatically learn. The teacher can point a person to the material. Can give direction on what material they might study at a particular time. But ultimately, the student participates by turning on the learning center in their brain. Which becomes the actual educator of the student. Learning is not something that comes from the outside. Learning is an innate skill, that we're born with. Therefore, if you really want to know something, you will have to teach it to yourself. That is, you will have to point your mind into the direction of the subject, that you want to learn about. And then, turn on your learning center in your brain, and allow it to do the work. I wrote, "I do not teach others, because I cannot teach others. I may only teach myself." The clue to this statement is where I say, "I may only teach myself." That is a realization, a personal realization of mine. That I know what I need to know. No one can teach me. If I need to know it, I will have to become my own teacher and educate myself. It's a statement of knowing that no one is able to teach me. When I want to learn something, I have to apply myself. That I have to turn on my learning center. That I have to direct my mind toward the subject, because no one else can do all of those things for me. I wrote, "And everyone teaches their own self all that they learn." We are not taught this. Students don't realize it. They're actually teaching themselves everything that they learn. The greatest teacher is our experiences, our life experiences. We can either choose to learn from them, or we can choose to ignore them. Ultimately, the responsibility for learning lies with the student. Who chooses to become their own teacher. Who recognizes learning is an innate skill inside them. Which only they can turn on, and of which they have the power to turn off. I continue, "We choose that which we desire to know." Unconsciously or consciously, we pick and choose what we want to know. And we choose what we don't want to know. That is how the world gets so lopsided. That's how people justify themselves. By learning what they want to know, that helps them in their justification. And by ignoring what they don't want to know. Which might be hurtful to their justification. With experience choice is not optional. All experiences are valuable. Picking and choosing the experiences, that we want to learn from, causes us to compartmentalize our brains. Causes us to pick and choose based upon what benefits us. I wrote, "We choose that which we desire to know. "And if you desire to know yourself, you must become your own teacher, and be your own disciple, and learn about yourself." Knowing yourself is your choice. Not knowing yourself is also your choice. If you desire to know yourself, it's you who must take responsibility to be your own teacher. You perform both roles. In that you are the person who asks the question. In which case you are the student. But also in the sense that you're the one who's going to answer the question. You're the one who's going to be the student, by going in search of the answer. But ultimately, when you find the answer, you're going to be the one who gives the answer to yourself. And in that sense, you take on the role of both teacher and student. This is far more important in self-knowledge, than in associative learning. Which doesn't add anything to your life, except the experience of going through a memory exercise. It's more important in learning about yourself, because what experiences that you have come from inside you. Those are your questions. Those are the questions for which you need to go in search of the answers. That's why I like Maslow's statement when he says, "All of life is education, and everybody is a teacher, and everybody is forever a pupil." How well you do in Emotional Literacy Education, is directly related to how great your desire is. How great your need is to know yourself. If your need to know yourself isn't very great, if you put up a lot of blocks and defenses to learning about yourself, then how much you learn is relative to that. If your need to know yourself is great, if the feeling is intense, then your success will be relative to that. It's about being responsible for yourself, taking responsibility for your own emotions, and using Emotional Literacy Education as a benefit to you. It's an opportunity, which is not imposed on you. I wrote, "If you desire to know yourself, you must become your own teacher, and be your own disciple, and learn about yourself."