Question: People are generally not interested in receiving information about forms of interaction, introspection, and development in self-actualization until their life becomes unbearable. Only then do they come to specialists and are willing to engage in internal work.
Does it mean that without the “I can’t live like this” scenario, it’s impossible to convey to people information about the integral method?
Answer: I believe that we must first do massive work with the people through different cinematographic, theatrical, and Internet-based campaigns, which would clearly demonstrate to people those events that, like in the movie, are happening to others, and how they can be solved.
We must show them examples, involve them in this, and through such productions, make them active participants, sympathetic and really involved in these transformations. We need to show them how all of this transpires through the example of the hero of some production, movie, or novel. But they must be serious works, such as Pelevin’s. I think that in this manner, we can create a demand for the integral method. It seems to me that this should precede everything else when it comes to the general population.
If we’re talking about specific people, representatives of culture and science, then we need to try to clothe it in the format and knowledge of whatever they are doing. For people like that, we need to disseminate materials about connection, the human influence on the world, and how it is realized linearly and globally, integrally, what the difference between the two is, and so on. We also have a big problem with children. If we show how integral upbringing transforms a child, we, in fact, create a human being of him or her, and then it would be a shining example for the parents.
There’s a very good example of that in our country. Here in Israel, by the way, a principal can do whatever they want within the framework of the school. He or she is given unlimited power, and they can introduce new disciplines. When school principals learn about our methodology, they agree to implement it because they feel and understand that it should give positive results, at the very least with regard to discipline in the classroom, reduction of violence, and various problems among children.
If they agree, then we put forth a condition that first, the teachers need to master the integral method. We come to the school one or two times a week and conduct courses on integral education and upbringing. Thus, before educating the children, the teachers themselves learn this methodology, and on themselves experience this whole transformation.
Gradually, teachers become our associates, colleagues, and partners, although in general, they are always characterized by conservatism and initially don’t understand the essence of integral methodology. But when they gradually become imbued with it, then they feel how much they benefit from the fact that they can enter a classroom without fear, that a friendly atmosphere during the lesson becomes a normal phenomenon, that academic achievement increases, and children listen to and receive from each other since a lesson is carried out as a conversation between them.
When children share their knowledge with each other, they absorb it much better than when receiving information from the teachers. This, essentially, is how old schools were arranged; children simply discussed all the problems amongst themselves and through that revealed and enriched knowledge.
A very interesting thing happens here. Once you attract the teachers to our side and work with them for some time on integral upbringing, like with children in a circle, they begin to feel for themselves how much the teaching staff has changed, how different the atmosphere in the staff room is, as well as their relationship with the management of the school. They begin to feel that there really is something revolutionary here, something completely new. And then we tell them that it isn’t enough to work with children on this methodology only in the school, they need to feel the same environment at home, that is, we need to work with the parents as well.
Then, during meetings with parents, the teachers start to convince parents that the new methodology is needed to ensure that their children, the most precious thing they have, would become real, new people, good and kind, able to understand the world correctly, interactive in the classroom completing school successfully, receiving good grades, and there wouldn’t be violence, drugs, and all else that unfortunately goes on in schools. Horrible things occur there, and we only know a small part of it. That pressure, that environment to which our kids are subjected, this is the most salient and vivid manifestation of the most negative human traits.
When we tell parents that for this purpose it’s necessary to create a slightly different atmosphere at home, they agree immediately, especially women. This is enough because a woman “presides” over the household, while a man, as we all know, exerts very little influence on everything that happens in a family. In this manner, we begin to attract mothers to the integral methodology, and eventually encompass essentially the whole population.
Through women, through children’s success, this spreads as if in an open field. Everyone else immediately begins to see, hear, and feel. The chain from a school principal to the parents—this already is an enormous amount of people who become included in re-education.
This should definitely be taken into account.
[79986]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/20/12
Related Material:
In A Friendly Atmosphere
First Phase Completed: What’s Next?
The Fashion For Integral Transformation
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