Learning Strategies: Solving the Riddles of Self (21 slides) creatively compiled by dr. michael farnworth

A Personal Journal is necessary if you are to engage the lessons in such a way to initiate growth and insight. The most important ideas will come to you as you interact with the ideas from the lessons, book and movie. Your reactions, thoughts, introspections and feelings will be your guides through the materials so I hope you take them seriously.

When can you throw a rock into a pond and not make any ripples?

When it is frozen…

Let that riddle be the metaphor for this learning experience.

You will be in charge of the learning. You will decide what you think about and if you are ready to set the stage for inner change. This material about your most important and intimate relationship can be dismissed or underestimated but not without unintended consequences.

Some one once said: That the danger of lectures is they create the illusion of teaching for teachers and the illusion of learning for students. Learning is not being lectured to but rather invites a dialogue of give and take.

The trigger man I will play the role of the trigger man. I will invite you to think thoughts, feel feelings, see new paradigms, and explore your life and history with the materials, paradigms and ideas we will cover in these lessons. My job is to invite you into yourself through introspection and contemplation. It is this educational journey which is the adventure. Your job is to trigger me with your questions, introspections and challenges for more clarity of ideas.

“It seems to me that anything that can be taught to another is relatively inconsequential and has little to no significant influence on behavior. I have come to feel that the only learning which significantly influences behavior is self discovered, self appropriated learning. Carl Rodgers Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. B.F. Skinner

The most profound lessons in life are those that you will learn about yourself.

The root word of education is educe which means to bring out of. Education is not a pouring of information into the heads of people but rather a stimulation for things to emerge.

We have been put to sleep by our cultural training. And this unconscious traditions has chained us to ideas and behaviors that are often time dysfunctional and hurtful to our self and others. The goal of these lessons are to awaken us from the slumber. “How can we realize the shackles placed on us by tradition: For if we can recognize them, then we can break them.” Franz Boaz

Two foundational ideas in your learning strategy learning: #1. Understanding versus agreement. #2. 1 st and 2 nd order of change.

1 st part: Understanding versus agreement Understanding is demanding while agreement/disagreement is easy. Learning stops when agreement/ disagreement rears its head. Understanding takes time, study and pondering and many of us want to shortcut the process!

Too many enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought! Many opinions are just parroted ideas that they have heard or read but have never really paid the price to own. For every 10,000 people who agree with E=mc2 there are probably 10 who actually understand it.

Please understand you will be invited to seriously engage the learning process and that cannot be done if you think you already know. When understanding is achieved then a judgment can be made– to do so before is to short circuit the whole learning process.

2nd Part: First order change This is the kind of change that seems like change but nothing really changes. Kind of like rearranging the furniture in a room things look different but not really. 1 st order change is superficial and surface changes. It is the kind of change that fulfills the French saying: The more things change- the more they remain the same.

Second order change Second order change is the kind of change that is profound and of a deeper order. It is the kind of change that would require a remodeling of the house, instead of rearranging the furniture. 2 nd order change requires a different way of seeing things and of behaving. It requires different paradigms to live in.

These lessons will attempt to invite 2 nd order change If a person spends their whole life looking outside of themselves for the answers then the only thing that really changes are the roles, appearances and circumstances. If a person looks inside for the answers then the nature of the person can be effected. This inner change is the deep and profound 2 nd order change that Life invites us to make. That is why self introspection, confrontation and exploration are so important.

I end with an Old Franciscan Blessing: “May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart. May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace. May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them, and to turn their pain into joy. And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this work, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.”

the end