Love Expands Intelligence LO27562

From: AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Date: 11/19/01


Replying to LO27534 --

Dear Organlearners,

Mark Feenstra <mark@bookrite.com> writes:

>You wrote in response to Gavin...

>>At first I could not understand this impairing of many
>>7Es and sometimes even all seven of them. But then I
>>began to understand how deeply these 7Es depend
>>on each other for its own growth. For example,
>>sureness may first become deeply impaired . As a
>>result of this some of the other 7Es will also become
>>impaired. I began to learn how important it is to find
>>that first one when helping people to become healthy
>>in their spirituality once again. It makes the healing far
>>more rapid.
>
>AT would you share with us what you are learning
>about helping people "find that first one"? I am
>assuming here that when you refer to creativity you
>are referring to the same creativity that gave rise
>through Albert Einstein to E = MC2, dances the
>spiral pattern of the Milky Way, informs a poets
>writing and a healing touch.

Greetings dear Mark,

Yes, I am thinking of creativity in the widest possible sense.

What Einstein did in his mind to arrive at E=MC^2 and what happens when a
flower gets polinated so that its ovary develops into a mature fruit with
seed have exactly the same patterns of "form
evolution"=morphogenesis=poetry.

However, we have to bear in mind that when a seed germinates, the seedling
plant cannot produce flowers immediately. It first has to grow up.
Likewise Einstein did not create his theory of Special Relativity as a
child. He first had to grow up as a day dreamer rather than "ungrow" his
day dreaming. He then created that theory as young adult in a most daring
and imaginitive manner.

Up to 1982 I was sensitive to only the first (poetic or emergent)
assymptote of creativity. But the next four years I became increasingly
aware of the second (prosaic or digestive) assymptote of creativity. When
I eventually discovered that both the physical and spiritual worlds have
"free energy", I began to understand why people who neglect the prosaic
assymptote gradually whither away in the poetic assymptote.

>I am also assuming that when you refer to people
>becoming "healthy in their spirituality" that you are
>in some way referring to their ability to allow this
>creativity to flow through their being in order to
>meet what is needed in the moment. I share these
>assumptions with you just so that you may see a
>little more clearly the origin of my question...

Yes, I think of "reparing the spirit self"=autopsychotherapy here. As
early as 1972 I became aware as a science teacher that there are just not
enough science teachers in our country to guide all learners how to learn
science creatively. In 1976 I became aware that the attitude of "business
as usual" in the government of our country would never provide for
sufficient teachers who could guide all learners in all subjects to learn
them creatively.

When I began to teach in 1979 at the University of Pretoria, I soon found
out just how many students had immense learning problems. I was taken by
surprise. As a teacher at school and then at college I had to work with
the full spectrum of learners. But since at univerity where I would have
to work with the "cream of the milk", I was not expecting anything worse
than my previous eight years of teaching.

Almost daily I had to question my own ability to teach rather than the
students' capacity to learn. Were it not for my past successes, I would
have doubted in myself so much that I would have given it up. But having
had to struggle with such a worse situation made me increasingly aware of
the vast difference between rote learning and authentic learning.

Pupils at school and students at college can still fool themselves by
staying abreast with rote learning. Their memories can cope with the
information supplied to them and they have enough time to find suitable
applications for many alien concepts. But at university the information
deluge which they have to memorise and the short time in which they have
to internalise it by finding applications become too severe to cope with.

Fortunately, by stressing the spirit of creative learning, many of the
students who failed the system and not merely the subject chemistry, came
to my office for private guidance. I tried my best to guide them how to
learn creatively. I had to work with each student through many of the
subjects he/she was failing to find out precisely where his/her troubles
began.

I became aware in the back of my mind that I had to experience their
troubles before I could help them. Reading self books and papers on
creativity and learning just did not provide me with a framework good
enough to identify their problems other than through experiencing them
myself. Believe it or not, I have to admit in shame I believed that in
some document I will find some framework which I was seeking for. Is it
not foolish that I who was so convinced that authentic learning was the
solution to most of the learning problems of students and who designed
many novel learning tools was still a rote learner with respect to solving
their problem of impaired creativity.

But in 1985 I discovered the 7Es (seven essentialities of creativity)
which I have reported elsewhere on the list. Each one of them was known to
some other thinkers under various names. For example, wholeness is known
as holism, dharma, monadology, consilience and integrity. My only
contribution was to discover all seven together in an attempt to find a
bridge between the physical and spiritual world.

I began to grasp the significance of the 7Es in helping students to learn
creatively. I began to spot which one of the 7Es was impaired in a student
who came to me for remedial consultation. I tried to help the student to
imbetter that impaired 7E, but progress was slow. I was simply blind to
other impaired 7Es.

Then came a lot of healing myself. Because of my training in mathematics
and physics, I initially thought of these 7Es as seven independent
patterns, a sort of 7D (seven dimensional space). But as I searched the
literature for other thinkers aware of each of them, I began to discover
how they would articulate one 7E by name and use some of the other 7Es in
their descriptions without naming them too. (One exception which I could
remember was David Bohm who articulated both wholeness and openness.) They
were actually thinking of an interrelationship between the one 7E which
they named and the others which they used unnamed in their descriptions.

So I had to make sure whether the 7Es acted independently as I initially
believed. To my greatest surprise, once I began to question the
possibility that they were interrelated, their dependence on each other
became rapidly clear to me. I was glad for this "rapid conversion" because
suddenly I could find more than one clearly impaired essentiality in a
student with learning problems As I questioned students, I became aware
how one of the 7Es which got a bad knock reverbated in most of the 7Es.

I also became aware how not only individuals, but also organisations could
be impaired in some of the 7Es. This can happen to organisations a large
as a nation. I began to study the history of South Africa once again
feverish to find out which of the 7Es got the initital knock such that the
white people would opt in the elections of 1948 for
apartheid=non-wholeness="aparthood". Was it wholeness self or was it one
of the other 7Es? I eventually came to the conclusion it was wholeness and
I still think so.

How do I find out which one of the 7Es usually got the bad knock. (Please
bear in mind that all of them can get a bad knock when a child has to grow
up in a community stricken with spiritual poverty.) What I do is to trace
by questions the "creative history" or "creative evolution" of the student
with learning troubles. I never try to explain the 7Es nor even mention
them. But with each question I focus on one of the 7Es of which the
students answer will give give me a "clue between the actual wording" of
the condition of that one 7E.

I cover with my questions all the walks of that student's creative life --
family, community, hobbies, reading, music, sport, physical health,
travel, character, politics, religion, academic history, science, world
view and personality. I will seldom ask more than two questions on a walk,
but after having covered several walks, I often come back again to a
particular walk to question it, but then focussing on other 7Es.

In my probing I first try to make sure which 7Es are severely impaired.
Then I make sure that those which do not seem to be severely impaired, are
definitely not severely impaired. Up to this stage I will never refer to a
past answer of the student. This is how openness works. I try to get as
much information from the student as possible to get self a picture of
what is going on in the mind of that student. I refrain from making even
one judgemental remark on an answer. Sometimes the student will invite me
to make a judgement and it is here where I stress that I am not interested
at all in giving a judgement.

Finally I begin to search for the one 7E which took the severe knock. It
is here where the closing up of openness begins. I usually begin with a
remark such as the the following. "We have covered your thoughts enough
for me to get some picture of what is going on. Creative learning begins
by examining self one's own thoughts. I am now going to help you to
scrutinise your own thinking. I will be using the answers which you gave
me, not to lead you in a trap nor to make any judgement, but to let you
become aware by yourself what your problem is."

I will then use a past anwer which indicated a severe impairing in one of
the 7Es in one walk of life to formulate a question which focus on another
impaired 7E in another walk of life. To an outsider it might seem that I
am mentally spinning like a spider that student into a web of
confrontations and inconsistencies. But actually I am helping that student
carefully to increase his/her mental entropy production to move to the
ridge of chaos. I make sure that one such a question will lead to an
entropic force while the next one will lead to an entropic flux. I might
also describe it that I lead that student by questioning into mental
chaos. It is sometimes called a catharsis or purifying of the soul by
opening a festering wound.

While doing it, covering again the "creative evolution" of that student's
whole life, I become step by step aware which one of the 7Es took that
severe shock. When I am sure which one it is, I keep my questioning
innocent by jumping to the other 7Es which are severely impaired as well
as those which seem to be healthy. I do not home in on that 7E which took
the severe knock until the student begin to show in body language that
he/she is now climbing self the ridge of chaos. (See entropy landscapes.)
The student may do one or more of several things: shiver, move jerky,
speak louder or softer, stutter, frown, bend forward so as to take up the
fetal position to mention a few.

As soon as the body language shows that this catharis is happening, I home
in with each successive question on that 7E which took the severe knock.
Most students may sooner or later burst into tears when the awareness in
them emerge which 7E took the knock (even though I have never mentioned or
explained that 7E). The rest of the students may stop talking, close their
eyes and become dead to the world. What ever the case, I will take both
hands of the student in my hands and stop questioning self. I keep a role
of toilet paper on my desk because the crying student will use it up fast
and sometimes I have to use it too.

After the student has calmed down or has awaken to the outside world, I
softly ask the student to make sure that I did not force the insight upon
the student nor even cleverly suggested it to the student self. I will
give a short summary of which were the main questions (mine) and answers
(the student's) which helped us to come together to the insight. I then
invite the student to have a drink with me at one of the several
cafeterias in our campus. There I let the student do most of the talking,
sometimes backing it up by telling of my own experiences.

Lastly I will invite the student that as soon as he/she experiences a
learning disability, to get hold of me as soon as possible so that
together we together can improve what is still lacking. That usually
happens within a couple of days. In a minor number of cases it took a
couple of weeks. Usually I became very worried because I can indeed make
an error, telling myself that I had screwed up the student's soul. But the
longer they took to come back to me, the more their inner health radiated
and the more they had taken control of their own creativity.

I still remember the case in which the student took longest to come back
-- four months. I really thought that I had fouled up this case. It was a
medical student in his fourth year. But the day when he walked proudly
into my office, I knew for better. He had just came back from a journey in
which he walked through the entire Verneukpan ("verneuk"= cheat,
defraught, swindle, trick, "pan"=pan) in the Bushmanland desert. It took
him two days to cover this vast, lifeless, dry salt pan on foot, knowing
that he might not succeed.

Mark, I suspect that you will aks me how I know what question to ask next.
This I cannot tell simply because it depends entirely on the previous
answer of the question. In other words, it is foolish to prepare a
questionair in advance. However, this I can tell. The whole sequence of
question-answer-question-answer-...... follows a path which Goethe
articulated as "Steigerung" (and which I used to call the "moncat"
pattern). It can also be described as a fractal course through the soul.

>One other reflection back to you around
>creativity and its relation to spirit that may be
>useful to you is to refer you to the work of the
>late Edward Matchett. For me he offers a
>beautiful understanding of creativity and genius.
>Google will provide some initial leads if you are
>not already familiar with his work.

Thank you Mark. I did not know about him nor was I famliar with his work.
I was pleasantly surprised. One of the sites which mentions his name, had
the following to inform on experential learning:

  < http://www.cmcsite.com/lemain.htm >

"Experiential learning - learning by doing which involves body, heart and
mind is incredibly powerful. This way of learning - which many people
leave behind with their childhood - is invaluable as a way of overcoming
the blocks to change that more conventional learning too often evokes."
What they call "conventional learning" is what I call rote learning.

On another site which mentions his name is:

  < http://www.toutley.demon.co.uk/ILM.htm >

I read: "Many scientists confess - though usually in private these days -
that what is essential in their work is to come into a direct experience
of what they are studying, as if to 'become' it."

A third site which mentions his name is:

  < http://www.duversity.org/ideas/inner_exercises.html >

Here I read: "However, in such matters as these exercises, the fact is
that the 'learning' of them has nearly always been done by sitting down
with someone familiar with and experienced in such exercises and being
'taken through' it. It is believed that the actual physical presence of
the experienced person is a necessary condition for learning the exercise
correctly."

>PS I am still writing a reply to your generous
>responses re Valentinus the Learner...

Please take your time because I think it involves something not only
complex, but also delicate -- how much may we "interfere" with the life of
another person -- the relationship between individual ("dassein") and
collective ("mitsein" creativity) -- the relationship between a Learning
Individual and 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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