After watching Charles Eisenstein’s Deschooling Ourselves workshop video, I realized how important it is to be aware of how much of ‘who we become’ as a person in our society and in relation to others is shaped in and by the schooling system. To this, it would also be unfair to only look at school as the only one problem there is in our society, because schools were created by us human beings in the first place so there’s a human mind behind it all; albeit for all practical purposes, the idea of ‘education’ and the blind trust that parents confer to the schooling system makes of the schooling system set up the most easy way to actually justify integrating values, beliefs, behaviors, ways of thinking reality, ways of relating to others, ways of survival among one another where we are geared to continually having to prove ourselves to be ‘the best’ or ‘the worst’ in a system of standardized marks.
School is also the place where we come to first get in contact with people of different backgrounds, where our initial social clash begins which leads us to start inherently doing a process of preference over principle, which is how we come to build our very first friendships and relationships, where we as children do not have a full awareness of us in fact being in a closed-system where one gets to be friends with people that could or could not afford some private/public school, and so already from there, we start classifying ourselves based on our socioeconomic background.
I have to say it is also unfortunately the place where parents place their most trust on within the systemically integrated belief that ‘whatever happens in school is just fine’ and that teachers and the government system behind it as education system ‘knows best’ – while parents mostly see this as some free time from their parental duty – or are deliberately also kept busier with long hours of work which is leading to unattended children growing up in front of TV’s, computers plugged into the myriad of boundless information on the internet and learning tricks about drugs and developing sexual deviances as a way to escape the inherent anguish of living in a world where parents must work 24/7 to get money to live, and where you as a child/youngster will invariably have to end up doing the same… I mean, who would not react to that expectative of one’s ‘future’ in this broken world? Yet we dismiss it and actually have come to blame schools, blame media, blame the government, blame parents and so as you can see blaming each other for the problems we have co-created in our society of which school is one great and pivotal pillar of.
There’s a complete structural problem in our society and a large part of it has to do with how we haven’t questioned our sacred institutions like schools and the way they exist nowadays, which from my perspective are more like prisons or reformatory cells, they have always been the brewing ground for behavioral conditioning, human experimentation and indoctrination which goes unnoticed within the idea that there’s always an authority that somehow has a ‘greater understanding,’ because we place our trust on systems of validation, certification and quality-proof standards placed by some organization we’ve defined as government, which are a few individuals that have unfortunately proven to be easily bribed to rather arrange laws and regulations in a way where other individuals can be benefitted from it all – either for profit, for further population control or both. All of this apparatus of authority is currently quite skewed of course and it is rather alarming since school is the spot where kids are mandated to go to every single day – yet, even if kids do not go to a school per se, the same principles of it are still embedded in the way that we organize ourselves, in the way that we related with one another, in the way that we value ourselves, in the way that we choose what we want to do with our lives, in the way that we behave with our families and friends. The sheer idea of ‘education’ as it exists now is only a reinforce and catalyzer of essential mind and behavioral patterns that have existed within us as human beings since the beginning of our species, as they are all existent in the very core programming and functioning of our minds. So, what have we done then? We have only perfected the mechanism to make it a continuous mandatory process for kids to get to like/dislike certain things and make decisions based on, well, mostly fear of survival so that we can keep the same slave system mechanism running. But is it really the system that is the enslaving one? Or is it that we haven’t really realized where the real policeman ‘in the head’ resides in? Hint, the answer is already given in that question.
In Charles Eisenstein’s Deschooling Ourselves, a group of people walk through and expose all the behaviors, personalities, quirks and fears that they have become throughout their schooling years, wherein either one would stick to the rules and follow or dissent and rebel in whichever way possible, one would start valuing oneself according to the kind of work you deliver to the teacher, another would seek to prove the teacher wrong, another would seek be approved by them, another just wanted to break free and rebel against all rules… this also included some other more personal aspects like because in school we also have mostly faced some of our most embarrassing or stressing moments.
I’ve shared before about crying over getting lost during math calculation exercise and not being able to keep track of it, getting so anxious that I burst into tears. From my experience, I’ve shared before about the usual pressure one would get when being ‘on the top’ and so having some classmates trying to ‘take me down/take ‘my place’ and directly letting me know how they would win over me and how they would see me fall and be glad for it, etc. All kinds of bullying also comes when being the one that sticks to all rules and does things ‘to the T,’ which to me for example later on became a way to simply dislike being used as an example for the class, which led me to then want to hide while still wanting to keep my sense of public recognition. This influenced the way I shaped my main personalities: I started to desire being ‘cool’ for any other reason other than getting straight A’s … and kind of a ‘rebel’ by liking non-popular things so that I could make it clear that I wasn’t ‘the teacher’s pet’ either for example.
All of these patterns are part of a lengthy self-investigative process that is contained in the pages of this blog as I’ve seen that most of the times when investigating any mind pattern, word or behavior, it invariably goes back to one of those ‘memories of schooling days’ and how some of the most ingrained fight or flight patterns, behaviors, attitudes, self-definitions like qualities and virtues, likes and dislikes as well as career choice a.k.a. who I wanted to be and become as a person, were shaped based on the same education system. To me it also involved a process of sharing a room with either 6 other kids in my first school and then moving onto being with over 35 in the following schools and universities, which is already quite a challenge when it comes to seeing how it is virtually impossible for teachers to be truly aware of students in large classes.
School becomes ‘the place’ where we are supposed to ‘find our ground in life’ and so, it’s quite obvious that we only become copies of the copies of stereotypes that we also acquire from the usual imprinting of professions we are supposed to go veering toward from an early age as part of the social-structure – however along with that, we got movies, TV shows imprinting a whole different set of values with which we believe we are in fact ‘making a free choice’ to do what we want, but we have never even questioned whether what ‘we want’ is in fact something we truly developed for ourselves or something we learned from school or saw on TV or internet.
In essence, we have never really been genuinely ‘ourselves’ as all we have become is copy of the copy of the coping and survival mechanisms we’ve shaped as personalities or professions, and that’s what I mostly have realized also when it comes to investigating myself and my ‘core personalities’ and how everything that I developed as ‘my personality’ was a collection of bits and pieces of popular counter-culture aspects along with a decision to antagonize the system no matter what, while remaining ‘safely’ in it at the same time since I would still like to be the obedient straight A person in school, lol, even if I tried to ‘rebel’ at the end… it just would not work as I couldn’t simply fathom myself being irresponsible at school which involved a sense of responsibility of ‘school being the one thing that I had to do as my main activity’ throughout the years.
What is behind that, for example? Fear of being punished, fear of being left behind, fear of losing my self-value and definition? Fear of losing my ‘throne’ as the first one in the class? Well, these points are definitely something that come to define ‘who one is’ based on a particular setting like school, where we actually acquire this way of thinking based on achievements, values, marks, behaviors and responsibilities that lie not within a common sensical practical outcome, but according to doing things the way they are asked to be done and according to a ranking system that is in no way based on the particular skills and abilities that are unique to each child, that is simply not part of our school system.
At the end of that Deschooling workshop by Eisenstein, the ultimate question remains: how to Deschool ourselves? And I simply realized that actually walking this process of self-investigation, of writing oneself to freedom, of developing self-honesty wherein we investigate our core patterns within ourselves is the best way to deschool ourselves, because in investigating our behaviors, our personalities, our fears, our manias, our weaknesses and strengths, our relationships, our friendships, our first traumas, our first embarrassments, our bullying experiences, our relationship to authority, our ability to learn, our qualities and deficiencies, comparison and judgment toward others, our discriminatory or empathic behaviors, our friendships, our enemies… all of these aspects that one actually gets to first live in school – most of the times – are part of what one can write out for oneself, investigating each pattern within the awareness of writing the experience out to identify how is it that one has limited oneself in such pattern.
So for example, if I had continued to only value myself according to what marks I would get in school, and feel ‘bad’ for getting a lower mark, then I would have continued to seek to get some ‘straight A’s’ or the equivalent way to get such ‘superiority validation’ somewhere else in my world, just because of not wanting to get to the opposite side of that and so lose my self-validation/recognition. So I had to work with understanding ‘who am I as recognition’ and the desire thereof, where am I not valuing myself, how have I accepted and allowed myself to only value myself according to achievements at school? Or how have I believed myself to only be a brain that thinks well? Where am I not actually seeing myself beyond this limited valuing perspective and really seeing through a broader potential that I had probably and most likely would not have developed if I had continued to only stick to my personality and personal desires.
So, deschooling ourselves involves a practical and continuous application of walking a process to self-forgive and let go of all the plethora of perceived flaws, definitions, beliefs, limitations, fears and rather work with developing real self-value, real self-acceptance and skills to develop ourselves to our utmost potential. In this, for example, I had to stop the desire to be recognized by others, while at the same time also walking the opposite polarity – because, as one walks one pattern you also get to understand how the mind works in polarities. And so I realized that along with my desire to be recognized, I also got to fear being recognized and so actually sought to ‘hide’ or become a rather ‘low-key’ individual while still holding on this ‘recognition’ point in place, so essentially I would create my own inner conflict which I even externalized in the way that I would dress in a rather extravagant manner while at the same time using my body’s posture to indicate that I didn’t want to be seen, so I would hunch while walking because I believed that standing straight was ‘showing off’ and only able to be done by good looking girls for example, lol, yes all of this is a fine example of how we pollute our minds in fact.
So, this is just a tip of the iceberg example that one is actually able to investigate for oneself when looking at all the patterns we’ve become in our lives, not only from school but acquired from parents, from people we watch on TV, from the books we read, from the people we admire, from our friends and people around us, etc. As I’ve mentioned, we’ve become the copies of the copies and so the schooling system, the social system has become nothing but a reflection of these categories and identities existent and developed in our minds wherein we get lost in comparison, judgment and the idea of value in relation to ‘who we are’ within the system, all of which actually enables us to coexist within our current dog-eat-dog mentality, where all that matters is achieving personal glory regardless of who or what is abused and affected by it, or ‘collaterally damaged.’
I am a product of this society and I’ve had to walk this rather astounding process of deschooling myself, of deprogramming myself in my mind while at the same time walking a process of self-creation, which is a continued process of self-investigation of every single moment, every single day wherein one continues to assert oneself as the new integration of common sense, of living principles, of a sense of commonality, of a consideration of what’s best for all, of not following an experience as to ‘how I feel’ or how I believe ‘I should feel/be like/act like/talk like’ to dictate who I am in the moment, wherein it is a continuous process of letting go of any constrains and limitations that I have previously identified through writing, and have released through the process of self-forgiving behaviors, emotions, feelings, thinking patterns, ideas about myself so that I could then practically and actively work on stopping myself from running-through the same old programmed ‘me.’
Now I place my focus on attention on this self-creation process which is truly a first-timer for us all to be able to walk and do, because it is now that we are for the first time becoming more and more aware of things that were deeply rooted in the unconscious before. Now we are able to slowly but surely as humanity able to spot these patterns and behaviors with greater ease, and I have to say that this then a great opportunity and it does rejoice me to see more and more people starting to question themselves, and the overall world-system, which indicates there’s in fact a great opportunity existent here to change the direction of our lives if more and more people start waking up and smelling reality for what it is so that we can work together to correct and align it.
I must also say that when I speak of this process, it isn’t something I do ‘by myself’ nope, it would have been mostly more difficult I’d say – I walk with a group of people networked through the internet – around the globe – with whom we’ve shared our lives, our writings for over 7 years now, keeping in constant processes of developing and strengthening our communication and feedback processes to ensure that we don’t get lost in this re-educational process we’re walking, which has to do little to nothing to any regular ‘schooling system,’ but we are all more than certain that more individuals must recognize the vital importance of implementing this self-investigation process as part of our schooling system, learning how to work with our minds as our thoughts, feelings, emotions, to learn how to effectively write them out and communicate about them while integrating a sense of self-support through developing common sense: the consideration of what is best for all.
It is about time we realize that it makes complete sense to actually focus on empowering each other to learn how to best coexist as human beings rather than focusing on being liked by the teacher, or beating our classmates, or planning ways to get into a group of friends to ‘fit in,’ or planning our greatest success where we disregard another’s life of lack of opportunities and suffering that is and has become our collateral damage in this zero sum reality.
It is thus in our greatest and most common interest that we could all walk this self-education process of self-honesty which is a process of self-creation according to living principles to get to develop ourselves to our fullest potential, and so make it part of our educational programs in whichever way they take shape in the (near) future once that we more and more realize how detrimental and even harmful our current standardized type of educational systems are which actually stems from the skewed and misconstrued value systems in our minds.
So, the best way to deschool ourselves, which is the same as saying the best way to change ourselves is definitely walking the Desteni I Process. There’s no greater set of tools in this world, nor greater group of people that commit themselves to support one another throughout this Journey to Life, to live in dignity and equality. And I can only encourage everyone to try it out for yourself, because if I had aimed at simply wanting to ‘change’ but not really investigating my mind and living patterns to the utmost degree, to really learn how to sweep behind the rug of my memories, my past, my experiences, to understand who am I within my mind and how to practically apply and establish solutions in my day to day living, I would have been equally lost in a constant yearning ‘for change’ but not really knowing how or where to start.
This isn’t an easy thing to do either, it’s probably the greatest commitment we’ll ever make in our lives, which is our commitment to actually learn how to live in the benefit of ourselves and all life considered. However, it will for sure be the most rewarding and long lasting for future generations as well.
Recommend to Read:
Teacher’s Journey To Life
Artwork by Damián Ledesma
Recommended to watch:
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Anna Brix’ vlog One School, United Against Life
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Charles Eisenstein’s Deschooling Ourselves
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Jane Elliott A Class Divided
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The Forbidden Education subtitled English (Movie HD) – La Educación Prohibida
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How to Herd Your Tax Cattle – Corbett Report
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[44] Solutions for Common Core’s Industrial Education
Hear the Podcasts:
- 47. A Class Divided and Conquered
- 23. Nice Guys Finish First
- 46. Egosystem: Recognizing our Limitations
- 35. The Forbidden Education: A Stepping Stone for New Education
The Free Desteni I Process Lite course is a first platform of self-support to learn more about ourselves, our mind and understand how we can practically improve our potentials and skills.
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