December 14th, 2022—Nature is a great mentor and teacher. I often find myself engaging in conversation with the natural world when I’m looking for ways to understand and respond to current teaching challenges. What I appreciate about these conversations is that nature never offers concrete ideas and suggestions, but rather the answers arrive as riddles, metaphors, and visual images.
For instance, while watching a recent sunrise I saw something in the ways clouds move that helped clarify the mystical nature of a recent conversation with two students. Both have great potential, and both seemed to be struggling with finding ways of showing their full humanity. At times they appeared to be constrained by external norms. Their inner-light and gifts seemed to flicker with intensity depending on their current level of work and commitment to learning. I sensed, more than witnessed, an inner-fire that could be brighter, more reveling of their identity. The clouds, like my students, were less distinct as they started their journey. Only as they approached the rising sun did the clouds become more visible and full of light.
Before describing the link between the clouds and my mentoring conversation with the students, let me state a belief. All students are whole and have within their soul, heart, or inner-spaces, the shining light of creation. There are many social norms and dehumanizing experiences that cover over or dull this bright light. For instance, the educational push towards productivity and testable knowledge can drive learning toward external metrics rather then internal and embodied sources of knowing. As such, my work as an educator is to break up the overburden. To create learning opportunities that invite students to emerge, not in ways I predetermine but rather in accordance with their inherent fullness, their deep identity. Additionally, one of my latest interests is the relationship between mysticism and my teaching. By mysticism I mean the capacity of all educators to connect with a form of knowing greater than self and self-knowing. It is a form of spirituality, according to Evelyn Underhill, consisting of three phases. The first begins with an awareness that the world is full of unique beings, each with its own internal light and fire of being. The second phase seeks to understand the unified energy behind each being. This entails a prolonged effort at reducing external distractions like ego or gain that can obscure the ability to perceive others clearly. The final phase is letting go or yielding to the unifying energy of the whole. A willingness to slide into the underlying energy of the generative nature of the universe, which allows for novel and creative solutions that are not present to the results-oriented self.
When applying this framework to my conversations with the two students, I recognize that the first phase corresponds to my belief in the inherent worth of each student. An attentiveness to the presence of their inner-light and being. The second phase requires an active process of cutting through all the imposed labels I place on students, are layered on by society, or that students carry into the classroom. This is an ongoing challenge, one never fully accomplished. The final phase is yielding to the flowing of my gifts into the task of uncovering the gifts of each student. I describe this experience as accessing wisdom which goes beyond my collected experience and is not available through the rational mind, policies, or program protocols. It resides beyond structure.
With this background, let me describe my sunrise experience, connecting the natural world with my experience of mysticism as central to my mentoring conversations with both students. While watching the scene unfolding across the horizon, I noticed that the clouds were coming in sideways (west to east). On the far edge of their western approach the clouds were dark, almost invisible. Only the clouds further to the east, were in various stages of light as they moved toward the rising sun. But in a curious way, the sun filled clouds suggested the presence of the obscured clouds behind them. This is the way I experience students, as phases of learners, some starting the program and others graduating. The newer students foreshadowing the existence of incoming students who I sense but don’t yet fully see.
I’m at my best as an educator when I let the qualities of students appear naturally as they move closer to the light of their calling and passion to teach. In my conversations with the two students my intent was to invite them to move toward the sun of their passions and therefore to reveal more of their inner-wisdom. I’m not the initiator of movement. That is a force that comes from an outside spiritual or moral commitment. I’m the watcher. The one tracking their entry into the periphery of my vision. Like clouds, if the atmospheric conditions are ideally arrayed, if the learning space is just so, they shine in a way that suggests the quality of their inner light. Each cloud, each student, shows subtleness in texture, movement, light, and direction. My goal is to use my gifts to listen, wait, and point out the unique qualities of students as they glow.
As a witness, I must remind myself that as much as I might try, I cannot control the clouds. I can only observe and describe. And I cannot, nor should I force students to transform. Time and patience are central to the task of creating the right conditions for change. The universal light will always be present in the natural world and for humans. When the proper circumstances arise, the classroom becomes the wider spaces of the sky within which this drama of self-emergence from the shadow of social labels and identities takes place.
My mentoring of the two students was the metaphorical equivalent of the process of cloud formation that I was watching in nature. From my position as observer, they are both in the process of moving toward the sun of their calling. They are beginning to shine around the edges. They are less hidden and obscure. It is not clear, nor is it important, if they realize this, and I wasn’t sure if I saw them fully either. My conversations were about naming my uncertainty and expressing a deep interest in seeing them glow with the brilliance that lies deep in their being. And maybe this will happen with today’s sunrise. Or maybe it will happen in some future sunrise. Surrender and yielding to forces beyond me is as important as paying attention to the shining light within the students I teach. There is always the dawning of new possibilities and fuller notions of self.