Replying to LO24289 --
Dear Organlearners,
Morty Lefkoe <morty@decisionmaker.com> writes:
>My experience, however, is that more than "support, love and
>attention" is required. If you'll read my previous posts, I explain
>one approach I've developed that facilitates unlearning. I'm sure
>there are others.
Greetings Morty,
Thank you for your sensitive reply.
Your first sentence which I have quoted, concerns some vitally important
truths. These truths is derived from the very fact that they are based on
your experiences, even though experiences do not automatically ensure
truths to follow from them.
The "support, love and attention" are required to, what I may express as,
loosening these hurtful experiences -- to bring them into suspension and
keep them in suspension. They almost function as blood functions in our
phsyical body. That is why some religions forbid the eating of blood.
Your phrase "is that more than" points to something else, but just as
important, namely wholeness. Fellow learners may remember that holsim is
defined in the Oxford as "the whole is more that the sum of the parts".
My very concern with the "hurting experiences" in "unlearning" or
whatever we may call our counciling, is how we act with them in terms of
wholeness. We cannot keep them in suspension indefinitely because that
will require continuous caring love which may eventually become a burden
to the councillor, especially in a very violent society with few
councillors.
We must follow the whole path of these "hurting experiences".
Should they have to disappear, then they will need "spiritual kidneys"
just as our body uses its kidneys to get rid of harmful substances. But
just as this harmful substances need to be transformed by the liver in an
appropiate form for the kidneys to be able to function, we will also have
to seek the "spiritual liver" to do the same.
Should they have to be fixed into the appropiate place for our personality
to become more complex, then we need enzymes to modify them and connect
them at the right place as I have explained before.
[Jan Smuts (1926, Holism and Evolution) was one of the few people who
understood how essential wholeness is to physical and spiritual evolution.
For him the pinnacle of this "deep evolution" is the unique personality of
every human.]
In other words, we cannot ignore the whole path which these "hurting
experiences". have to travel. They will not cease to exist as a result of
our ignorance. The loosening step by "support, love and attention" is for
me as much a step of authentic learning as all the rest of the steps are.
Authentic learning has to deal with also "hurting experiences" and not
merely "beneficial experiences".
Learning without wholeness is impossible, whatever we may call such
learning, "authentic learning", "unlearning" or many other possibilities.
I wish it was true to say the same for any "learning" which denies
wholeness. The present languages which I am acquainted with allow us
indeed to call such a thing a kind of learning. The best example is "rote
learning" which we rather should have called "parrotry"!
One thing I am very sure of. Should any organisation contemplate any
learning while ignoring wholeness, that organisation will not have the
feintest clue of a Learning Organisation.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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