EDUCATING FOR THE AGE OF REGENERATION — a u.lab journey
I am an explorer drawn to an unusual territory. I am endlessly curious about human potential and the alchemy that stimulates the growth of capacity. This is a wilderness of vast beauty and unexpected dangers. Exploring this territory has brought me into a peculiar relationship with the education system because I am constantly questioning what is enhancing or suppressing a learning experience.
My explorations have meandered through wide interpretations of holistic education pedagogy: Reggio-Emilia programs, Montessori and Waldorf schools, outdoor adventure programs, in public and private settings, homeschooling and unschooling — for myself and for my children. In each learning environment, I have witnessed the many ways in which we weave together our participation and the results this brings — both helpful and harmful. Sometimes education is stimulating evolutionary advance into novelty by awakening our innate capacities and inviting our co-creative participation. Other times it is entrenching broken patterns of the past, disabling our capacities through suppression, manipulation, and intolerance.
I bear witness to the vast potential of participatory learning to support growth of awareness and stimulate curiosity, compassion, and courage. Participatory learning is an approach to education that is at the foundation of all holistic pedagogies, from Socrates to Steiner and beyond. It is a multifaceted practice of cultivating deep sensing and integrating deeper sources of knowing through the learning of the head, heart, and hand with inquiry, exploration, arts, and co-creation. However, I have also experienced that this alone cannot remedy the social disease of harm, where ignorance is taught, isolation is entrenched, and fragmentation is a learned perception. Because of this, I have become deeply motivated to change how education and learning is perceived.
While participating in the programs of The Presencing Institute, I learned about the many facets of awareness-based systems change and I became inspired by the invitation into civilizational renewal. As a part of the program, u.lab, I was able to further my inquiries into the regeneration of education and learning. One aspect of the u.lab program is taking a sensing journey to discover new perspectives. As an explorer, this sounded like just my style. A sensing journey is an awareness-based practice developed by the Presencing Institute for sensing into different and relevant perspectives and experiences. It consists of stepping out of the daily routine and intentionally immersing in a new context in order to break through patterns of seeing and listening.
I consider nature connection and the wilderness rite-of-passage to be of monumental importance for human development and for understanding the participatory nature of all of life. My personal capacity for the many dynamic aspects of participatory learning — deep listening, aesthetic awareness, generative co-creation, ecological philosophy — are founded in my experience of living deep in the wilderness as a youth within the highly sophisticated society of an old growth forest. I wanted to further explore the significance of rite-of-passage for enhancing participatory learning, so I took a sensing journey to The Headwaters Outdoor School in Mount Shasta, CA.
THE SENSING JOURNEY
The Headwaters Outdoor School offers wilderness camps with indigenous-derived skills practice, apprenticeships, week-long nature immersion and wilderness rites-of-passage, as well as field trips for a variety of private schools in California (because what public school could get past the liability issue to let kids get covered in mud, play with fire, and carve with knives?)
Beyond a cozy cluster of modern-style private homes and garden, there is a pacific yurt that houses an extensive library on nature skills, philosophy, and a stunning photo gallery. A trail lined with the signature Mt. Shasta volcanic stones and boulders leads to a completely rustic camp, with native-style cedar bark huts and tent sites nested within groves of towering evergreens and spring water bubbling up from a mysterious 5,000 year old source. The large camp kitchen and crafting area are designed to accommodate up to 50 children or adults during a session. One feels transported to another reality completely.
While I sat in the stillness of the indigenous round house at the heart of the wilderness camp, my long enduring inquiry of the ‘gestalt block’ returned to me once again — Why is it that some people experiment with new learning structures and then return to rote education as though escaping a dangerous wilderness? Why is it that some people do not see the value of ‘other ways of learning’ or cannot understand ‘deeper sources of knowing’? Why is it that some people do not participate in, or even sense, the emerging participatory paradigm? Why is it that some people are stuck in patterns of the past, determined to replicate modern thinking and formal reasoning and the gestures of mechanism that have produced such harsh and detrimental conditions for the whole world, for our entire planet?
Within this unusual setting, I could clearly see outside the barriers of the modern world and formal reasoning and recognized a different sort of reason for this:
quite simply — because they do not recognize thresholds
This small moment was an initiation, a shift in perspective that invited me to explore deeper into the wilderness of our social interactions.
E.F. Schumacher, in his book, ‘A Guide for the Perplexed’, encourages us to see the thresholds between levels of consciousness. He shares his concept of the two different sciences that result from different perspectives: a control-based science of manipulation or a value-based/ consciousness-based science of understanding. Perhaps he was suggesting that whether or not we recognize thresholds results in different perspectives on reality. For it follows that if we are entrenched in one perspective and never experience a transition into a difference facet of reality, then there is little opportunity for respect of diversity, or interplay for evolution.
I always thought of rite-of-passage as an act that holds sacred the transition from the childhood lifestyle and ways-of-thinking that are based on family of origin and initiates a new life journey through the family of the world. I particularly find valuable the wilderness rite-of-passage that bonds one to the more-than-human family of nature. However, now I am beginning to see a new perspective in the negative space of the lack of rite-of-passage: the ‘uninitiated’ are born into one way of thinking and never leave this pattern. They never develop the capacity to see and sense that there are other possibilities and other ways of knowing.
To use the approach of Jennifer Gidley to articulate my sensing of the importance of this threshold: a pre-formal rite-of-passage gives one the capacity to sense and see outside of the formal paradigm and formal reasoning that is constituting our social structures and operations. Without a pre-formal initiation, one may not be able to recognize the possibility of post-formal reasoning and a post-formal reality. There is more than one path through the wilderness.
The majority of human beings on the planet have been born into the modern paradigm and a mechanistic, control-based culture. The rites-of-passage that are recognized have to do with a collection of objects, or events seen as trophies — first car, first phone, first date, first kiss, first paycheck, first degree, first marriage, first child, first divorce, etc. This way of thinking doesn’t initiate growth of consciousness, but passes on broken patterns of the past — promoting independence over interdependence, isolation over participation, ego over eco. All the while, there are initiations happening that are not recognized as meaningful by the culture, so are not fully integrated for the development of capacity and consciousness: first cherished friend, first seed planting, first community celebration, first lighting of a fire, first solo, first lead facilitation, first sensing journey.
This sensing journey helped me to see that when we come to recognize the thresholds between levels of consciousness, we can better navigate our circumstances and discern between the pseudo-initiation of commerce and the initiations that are supporting the growth of capacity and consciousness.
SENSING INTO THE CRACK
My sensing journey opened a crack in my perception that drew me to look deeper at the thresholds between pre-formal, formal, and post-formal perspectives and how they are impacting the education system.
When formal reasoning has been entrained, other non-formal reasonings are blocked out of our consciousness. Whereas, many other forms of reasoning are integral and allow for the possibility of multiple perspectives and experiences. For example, modern formal education propagates a perspective of single-minded domination, entrained through traumatic initiations of failure that lead to ever greater fragmentation of self, society, and nature. This approach to education is a misrepresentation, a mechanistic fabrication, of the original holistic bildung envisioned by German Idealism that integrates the learning of the head, heart, and hand and is highly adaptable to an individual, an organization, and a region.
My sensing journey led me to wonder: What rite-of-passage could we begin now to step out of dualistic thinking into a consciousness that is re/generative? From the tunnel vision of modernity to the deep sensing of the emerging participatory paradigm? If we could highlight post-formal initiations, could we accelerate civilizational transition to a regenerative paradigm? To further explore this inquiry, I interviewed Tim Corcoran, founder of the Headwaters Outdoor School.
The term ‘generative’/ ‘regenerative’ here is not to be confused with the mechanistic idea of ‘productive’. Rather, it is generative in the sense of ‘generous’, the organic sense of an abundance of energy rather than items. In my experience, the children that are coming into the world now are geniuses, not because they are ‘super-smart’, but because they are born with greater generative capacity. They are astonishingly generous, inspiring, creative, and vibrant. However, this doesn’t mean they don’t need guidance, care, support, and the love and wisdom of mentors. If we are to guide them, or even just leave some sort of legacy for them, we need to be initiated with a regenerative rite-of-passage into the new participatory paradigm. Even if we don’t fully understand the new territory of integral consciousness, at least we are speaking to the territory rather than perpetuating broken patterns of the past.
INTERVIEW WITH TIM CORCORAN, Founder of Headwaters Outdoor School
Whether you bear witness to it or not, we are all experiencing the impacts of diminishing relational space. Our relationship with nature and our true inner nature is constantly being interrupted by technology, images, social conditioning, pollution, and isolation. Relational understanding — human to human, human to more-than-human, human to spirit — brings multifaceted awareness, a depth of self-understanding, a sense of one’s place in the ecosystem. In the practices of the Presencing Institute, we often speak of this diminishing relational space as the three divides — the social divide, the ecological divide, and the spiritual divide.
Tim Corcoran, founder of the Headwaters Outdoor School in Mt. Shasta, California and author of ‘Growing up with a Soul Full of Nature, one man’s story of a childhood filled with Nature as teacher and friend’, has poignantly witnessed the diminishing of relational space in the changing culture. He sees how the lack of integrity in the social environment has led to disparity in youth, over-parenting and un-parenting, failure to strive in education, and the absence of intimacy with nature and the more-than-human. Above all, he identifies as foundational to human integrity the importance of mentors and the process of developing a moral code.
Tim was born and raised in southern California. He first went to the woods at age six and knew that this was home. At seventeen he spent four months alone in the Canadian wilderness practicing earth living skills. In 1974, he began a career teaching wildlife conservation. In 1992, with Headwaters Outdoor School, he realized his lifelong vision to share what he has learned from the Earth and to inspire people to discover their own connection with the Earth.
“Children being raised today will need a deep connection to the natural world in order to help heal nature, plus find stability and inspiration for their own lives. After all, Nature is an amazing teacher and constant friend; it just takes knowing how to listen and communicate to the Earth, and the teachings come flooding in.”
Tim has led wilderness rites-of-passage and skills programs for over 30 years. His approach is based in indigenous practices from his native mentors as well as the teachings he learns directly through participatory knowing from the presence of nature. He also has a rich heritage of family mentors and teachers that taught him with the strength of authenticity and demonstrated integrity. All his work, from boisterously demonstrating a bowdrill to silently leading a sweatlodge, is based in deep listening that comes from an astonishing capacity of love and respect for every living being.
“At the moment of commitment the entire universe conspires to assist you.” — Goethe
This is Tim’s favorite quote. More than anything else, he has experienced the power of commitment and how it has the potential to change an entire life. A rite-of-passage involves a physical test that is important for discovering and integrating a sense of honor that brings confidence to one’s actions. Tim feels that it is the commitment to this discovered moral sense that generates integrity and brings continuity in the relational space, resulting in greater joy for everyone.
As a part of the Presencing Institute u.lab 2x prototyping program, I came to Tim with an inquiry to explore: How could educators be supported in developing the awareness that is foundational to participatory learning? How could educators be supported in becoming the mentors that are missing from our culture? How could the importance of initiations be brought to the educators who are not able to participate in a wilderness rite-of-passage?
Within the modern school system, educators have come to be regarded as ‘information police’, lacking principles to align with their practices, and blinded by dominant education to the deeper philosophy of participatory learning. In truth, educators are the most influential role in a society and deserve deep respect. They have the capacity to bring revelation and regeneration to an individual, an institution, and a society. They are the stewards of our concepts, and bring our ideas into ever-new relations for revelation. Teaching in schools is designed for passing on patterns of the past, whereas mentoring is a relational experience of beholding that generates guidance into the future. Yet, to become an educator that is able to mentor, one must have a deep connection to the source of education and learning, and a relational understanding of participatory learning.
Tim’s philosophy is that connecting to nature is connecting to your true nature. Whether in the wilderness or not, the wildness of authenticity is always available as the source of other ways of knowing. When the experience of connecting to your true nature is witnessed by a mentor, it becomes a defining moment. A rite-of-passage magnifies these defining moments into a life altering event that facilitates a broadening shift in perspective. It is meant to be uncomfortable, out of the ordinary, an empowering struggle that awakens the spirit.
A key element of this alchemy is the mentor as a person of practice and respect who has been through the initiation and is participating in the cycle of virtue that flows between nature and the participants. Along with the role of mentors, Tim identified these other key elements present in any rite-of-passage:
- a clearly defined and intentional opening that sets aside the usual and the ordinary
- a presentation by an initiated and practiced mentor/s on the importance of deep awareness of self and nature, and clarifies the journey ahead
- activities to explore the senses and sense of self in this deep and potent context: at Headwaters classes, this is a playful exploration of group wilderness skills and individual challenges
- charged by mentor/s in a defining moment to craft these deeper senses into a commitment: Tim structures this as a code of honor
- presented with a physical challenge to contemplate and integrate the commitment: native traditions structure this as a 24 hr. to 4 day wilderness sit spot and/or ceremonial sweatlodge
- integrating the entire experience by sharing and reflecting on the commitment with a circle of supportive peers and witnessed by mentor/s that will uphold the commitment
- celebratory closing, including much joy and wildness: feasting, bonfires, music, dancing, and the beauty of togetherness
- integrate the rite-of-passage into the outer world with a community service project: giving back to others
And Tim reminds us, ‘most of all — have fun. Play creates a deep and meaningful bond to nature and to one another.’
As a respected mentor who is participating in the cycle of virtue, Tim shares that a rite-of-passage teaches us how to recognize defining moments and use them as medicine. We then have the inner code of honor and self-respect to be completely authentic in any situation. In this way, every act becomes a ceremony, cultivating the strength and beauty of authenticity, mindfulness, participatory aims, and non-attachment.
“Educators can’t be answering to the system,” Tim says, “they need to answer to their own inner nature, what they know is good and right, according to their own moral code. Every moment matters. You never, never know how your actions will change a life. Showing you care and taking interest — kids never forget that. One moment can set an entire life on track.” Every moment matters.
Ideally, every educator would be an initiated mentor, guiding their students through the wilderness of life by passing on the inner cultivation of honor and respect along with the outer cultivation of a curriculum. However, in our current social reality, there is a desperate shortage of mentors and a blindness to the tradition of initiation. Defining moments are happening all the time. Without a mentor as witness, significance can slip away, unintegrated. With the lack of access to means, mentors, and nature, it is inevitable that this is accumulating into an absencing cycle of trauma and harm. We are becoming lost in a synthetic wilderness.
If you have access and means, without question, book yourself a wilderness rite-of-passage. What code of honor might you craft within this sacred space? What wildness of authenticity might emerge to be integrated into your everyday life and work? However, if this is not accessible to you, another dynamic is available.
As a part of the u.lab journey, my u.lab2x team further explored how we might hold this integration space for one another and talked with many others who are exploring the same territory. We felt that in the emerging participatory paradigm, it is possible to recognize defining moments and ‘use them as medicine’ by reflecting for another the significance within everyday events. We found that when we sit in circle and practice presencing, nature and our true inner nature is the witness and voice of the mentor. What are the moments of significance that you could be integrating if others were holding space for you? How might you adapt the fundamental aspects of a rite-of-passage to hold space for the people in your context? Variations on this ancient tradition may be what makes it possible to step out of cycles of ruin and initiate civilizational renewal with interdependence over independence, participation over isolation, eco over ego.
Tim Corcoran is currently innovating his work and scaling up his vision of restoring relational space with the book ‘The Earth Caretaker Way’ and has initiated the Earth Caretaker Way Foundation and a community of practice to support a global movement for nature awareness and conservation. The Earth Caretaker Way, foundation and community will be available in early 2023. (link coming soon)
AN INITIATION INTO THE AGE OF REGENERATION
Participatory knowing was emphasized by Goethe as the foundation of human understanding. Coming to recognize this threshold of consciousness, we can begin to see that participatory knowing is happening all the time — even in the modern world. Reflective practices such as inquiry, exploration, aesthetics, and dialogue help us recognize the moments of significance that arise from deep sensing. However, without a mentor to speak to it and a community circle to witness it, the significance of participatory knowing can slip away, unintegrated. The participatory perspective can only be truly integrated through co-creative practices that generate positive futures. This is participatory learning. It cannot be accomplished in isolation. What then is the initiation that will support us in generating the community care needed to cultivate participatory learning?
After exploring the edges of the education system in u.lab1x, I was a part of a u.lab2x team that helped me reflect on and integrate the deeper meaning of these exploration and everyday initiations. As a team, we felt called to sense into the disparities and opportunities of initiating other ways of knowing. For the prototyping phase, we took a deep dive into what practices best support educators in enacting participatory learning.
For two years, I had explored the community-of-practice model as a generative space with my u.lab hub, Regen Collective. Now that we had identified this model as the most ideal container for participatory learning, we experimented with presencing practices that could support the recognition and integration of participatory learning. From deep listening and generative conversation, to embodiment practices and art-as-inquiry, these practices are re/generative and stimulate novelty, allowing us to sense in a desensitized world. However, we recognized that without an initiation to open the mind, heart, and will to other ways of knowing, people could not commit to shifting the attention of their work and life to align with the intentions of participatory learning or the participatory paradigm.
Along with Tim’s favorite quote, Goethe also encouraged us to see that ‘to die is to become.’ Initiations are essentially a crossing of a very deep threshold in which we die to one perspective and form of reasoning, and awaken to a more vast experience of reality. In the extreme experiences and ritual of the indigenous rite-of-passage, facing death is a way to more fully integrate with the sacredness of everyday life. In modern culture that lacks sacred rite-of-passage, we are forever on a treadmill of the ego to benefit corporate gain.
What might it look like to commit to standing present to one another as we die to enslavement and modernity, and are allowed to be, to belong, and to become our full participatory self? What initiatory steps will lead us out of formal reasoning into the multi-dimensional experience of integral consciousness? What loving gestures could facilitate a gestalt shift from conquest to participation? The participatory paradigm is already available to us, we only need to recognize the threshold and follow our longings into this beautiful wilderness, bridging the divides.
Zak Stein shares his insights about the loss of intergenerational transmission of wisdom during and as a part of civilization transition in his book, Education in a Time Between Worlds, and in this excellent dialogue and this interview with Elizabeth Debold, editor of evolve magazine. He shares that, as a culture, we no longer know how to lead children into ways of being, thinking, and acting that will cultivate a healthy, thriving culture of diverse humans in deep relatedness with Nature and the more-than-human world. Zak invites us to think together about the educational crisis we are in the midst of and to re-imagine education as a fulcrum for civilizational transition.
Even if it is not recognized as valuable by the dying modern culture because it is non-formal, we can support one another in developing a new sense of self-respect and act from the wildness of our authenticity. We can craft a sacred space for one another to fully integrate our everyday initiations. When we are able to live from the strength and beauty of authenticity, a teacher is never just practicing a curriculum, an administrator is never just organizing and managing affairs. We become mentors who are beholding, who are connecting to the soul of a person, a place, and a society. In this way, we can guide one another through the wilderness, and begin to shift the education system from the inside out.
The dominant narrative of the modern paradigm will continue to promise the allure of success ‘bigger-better-farther-faster’, while bringing the ‘bigger-better-farther-faster’ collapse of nature, society, and self. Therefore, we need to begin our regeneration of the education system by addressing personal and cultural assumptions and inviting one another to move beyond limiting beliefs. Recognizing that we have been told that there is a scarcity of care and trust and that love isn’t relevant, we can begin to resource one another in new and creative ways. We can cultivate the trust that brings regeneration, recognizing the detox and supporting the decompression that comes from the experience of being allowed to be, to belong, and to become.
One possibility for cultivating relational space is that educators can integrate presencing practices into their work. Over time, this can create a sacred transition of stepping away from modernity and its blind spots, into the participatory. Presencing practices help us to take a deep dive to the source of our knowing. This re-enlivens our senses and liberates our intellect to be woven together with our instinct and intuition. Sensing in a desensitized world can be radical, inviting others to step into new ways of being simply with the powerful presence of your awareness. Sensing can become revolutionary when we take it to scale — shifting crafted learning away from dominant education and into awareness-based education. As systems change, this will re-enliven mentoring and recenter the heart of society on guiding one another into the best of possible futures.
In my participation of u.lab, I was held by the Presencing Institute community — allowed to be, to belong, and to become. Through this, the u.lab team within Regen Collective was able to explore the importance of participatory learning and develop the prototype, ‘Educating for the Age of Regeneration’. By exploring participatory practices, we revealed the gestalt shift bridging the divide from dominant education to awareness-based education. We collected the highlights of our journey in these three diverse forms:
- a small e-publication of materials to make accessible the concept and practices of Participatory Learning
- Regen Circle events specifically for educators to prototype a new approach to their teaching or facilitation practice
- An accredited course: ‘The Art and Science of Participatory Learning’
In ‘Educating for the Age of Regeneration’, we are not teaching content — we are cultivating the conditions for participatory learning, so that you might also cultivate the conditions, adapting the practices as needed. Experiencing the container of care, trust, and encouragement is a large part of what is being initiated and integrated. Through ethical space and aesthetic practices we are co-creating with you and empowering that you already know: you already have the innate wisdom and the powerful capacity to love that allows us to navigate the new territory of the participatory paradigm.
Most importantly, this circle of regeneration is supporting the wildness of authenticity. As we acknowledge that these powerful and innate capacities have been disabled in isolation, we can begin to facilitate a shift from fragmentation to relationship, from fear to trust, from me to we. Our creativity and discovery allows us to learn from one another and all of life as needed.
When we are able to live from the strength and beauty of authenticity, we become mentors who are beholding, guiding, and connecting to the soul of a person, a place, and a society. Only this will allow us to guide the brilliant, generous youth of today into a bright future. Even if we don’t fully understand the new territory of integral consciousness, we must at least speak to the territory and acknowledge the broken patterns of the past. In this way, we can begin to shift the education system from the inside out, to the heart of society.
As Tim illuminated: the power of commitment has the potential to change an entire life. Regen Collective also recognizes that the power of commitment within a community of practice escalates this immeasurably, generating integrity and ever-widening circles of cultivated relational space.
Committing to participatory learning and awareness-based education is unique to each person. It may look like taking a wilderness rite-of-passage to connect to the participatory nature of all of life. It may look like an awareness-based degree program, such as those offered by Schumacher College. It may look like shifting a curriculum to be inquiry-based, or shifting a classroom to be project-based. It may mean homeschooling your children in nature. It may mean deepening your approach by drawing upon holistic pedagogy, or broadening your approach by drawing upon the surrounding community. It could mean leaving one organization to join another that is more aligned with participatory values, or crafting a co-creative offering of your own.
Wherever your explorations may take you, let your commitment be an initiation which helps you cross the inner threshold into the age of regeneration. Crossing from the perception and reasoning that brings isolation, fragmentation, and ignorance, into an awakening of a more vast experience of reality. Be sure to surround yourself with the support of friends, colleagues, and mentors who can hold a nurturing space for you so that you can more fully integrate the participatory nature of the experience, and then pass it on to others.
Once you have recognized the threshold between dominant education and awareness-based education, you will find that there are many, many others who are walking the bridge into the participatory paradigm. As we each commit to bridging the divides, we become available to one another, supporting, encouraging, and regenerating self, society, and nature. As Regen Collective, we hope that you find our project, ‘Educating for the Age of Regeneration’, supportive to your journey of becoming.
Learn more about the Participatory Learning Collective Resource Library HERE
Blissful Longing
Tell no one but the wise
For throngs will merely scoff:
I praise what is alive
And what longs for death by fire.In the cool nights of love
Where you get, as you were once begotten
A strange feeling falls upon you
As the candle, silent, gleams.Nevermore shall you be captive
Amongst these darkling shades;
A new desire rends you
Towards a higher conjugation.No distance can weigh upon you
You come flying and enchanted
And at last, longing for the light
You, butterfly, transform yourself in flame.And so long as thou hast not
This: ‘Die and become!’
Thou are but a dismal guest
Upon this dark Earth.— Goethe
Regen Collective is a multinational organization that cultivates awareness practices for social regeneration. We are a community-of-practice for the regeneration of education and learning, with community gatherings on the first Friday of each month. Regen Collective is also a u.lab hub: a self-organized group exploring awareness-based practices to support positive cultural change. As a collective, we seek to shift the education system from the inside out, to support the emergence of new social cohesion, and disrupt cycles of ruin in a nonviolent and evolutionary manner. Learn more about participating in Regen Collective HERE.
Regen Collective was created within the Societal Transformation Lab of The Presencing Institute in order to co-create awareness practices for social regeneration and cultivate the conditions needed for the evolution of education and learning towards holistic and humanitarian practices. We look forward to cultivating this with you!
Please consider donating to support the work of Regen Collective HERE
