...I learned that it helps to have a spiritual experience!
Turns out, as much as I read in the land of self-help and Buddhist dhamma, I just could not wrap my head around equanimity and egolessness without going through the experience of Vipassana meditation.
While the almost 12 day experience was the most arduous I've been through (imagine 11 hours in a single day thinking only about the sensations of the breath in the area above the upper lip!), it was also one of the most productive. As I began to emerge from my own misery, I was left with the ability to again be of service to others.
In terms of my return to Kirkwood, I was also left with a clearer (though still exceptionally fluid) sense for where my classroom reforms must go in order to infuse spirit in sociology and higher education. I feel strongly that duality of opinion and solution must be abandoned in favor of experiential sources of inspiration.
I see the need to design the curriculum around healing at all levels. Amidst all of the pain and misery at the individual, societal, and natural levels, we must begin to identify what type of world we want in future and how to heal the one we have already created that is suffering so greatly. I hope to start out with students getting to know each other better, but then getting to know themselves better. I want them to identify ways that they (or their family) might be suffering and participate in solutions (e.g., service learning) to those problems. I also want them to realize that they are creating the future world in which they want to live and, therefore, must use the 15 weeks in the semester to carefully reflect on their role in that process. Likewise, I hope they are able to reflect on their (capital J) job in the world not just in terms of vocation but in terms of service and spiritual nourishment.
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